Chasing Good Intentions With Bad Physics

Comedian Joe Rogan interviewed physicist Amit Goswami in his 334th podcast (here).  In the two-and-a-half hour interview, Dr. Goswami shares his views about what quantum mechanics teaches us about human consciousness and reality.  He echoes the likes of Deepak Chopra and many others who use quantum mechanical concepts to support their belief in the supernatural (or at least, the super-normal).

Many, including Joe, find this worldview appealing.  The average person may not understand the details, or even really care to, so popularizers of such worldviews can get away with a considerable amount of sloppy, scientific-sounding ideas.  Then again, quantum mechanics itself can be rather nonsensical, as Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman said, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”  Niels Bohr, one of the founding architects of quantum mechanics, said something similar:  “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”  In fact, in the interview, both Joe and Dr. Goswami quote them on this point, though they used the quotes to justify sloppy thinking about what quantum mechanics really says.  Spreading nonsense about what is nonsensical does not help advance the state of our search for truth.

A Non-Local Consciousnesses Entered A Bar …

For example, in the interview, Dr. Goswami tries to explain to Joe how human consciousness has supposedly been shown to be non-local.  According to classical physics, which applies to macroscopic (non-quantum) objects, all physical phenomenon is local, that is, the speed of physical communication is limited to that of light.  Think of physical signals such as sound waves for verbal communication (which travel at a snail’s pace compared to the speed of light), digital electronic pulses for landline phones and the internet (which travel nearly the speed of light), and radio waves for cellphones and laser pulses through fiber optic cables (which travel at the speed of light).  But if something is non-local, it can communicate across time and space without limit, potentially instantaneously to the farthest reaches of the universe, as well as backward and forward in time, without need of any physical signal, perhaps with just a thought as if by magic.  To say human consciousness is non-local is to say it can communicate instantaneously by non-physical means.

To support why he believes human consciousness is non-local, Dr. Goswami describes how certain quantum mechanical systems behave, hand-waving away the details as probably too complicated and uninteresting to Joe’s audience.  However what he did try to explain was at times inaccurate, misleading, and simply incorrect.  It is one thing to simplify complicated theories and experiments to make them more understandable to the general public, but quite another to misrepresent scientific findings to legitimize mystical beliefs.  To understand the truth about some of his points, let us first gain an appreciation of how entangled photons actually behave quantum mechanically.

Einstein Gets Bohr’d

First a brief history lesson.  Even though Albert Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, he refused to believe to his dying day it is a complete theory, because it is inherently probabilistic, and he couldn’t believe God plays with dice.  In a famous series of public debates, he argued against Neils Bohr, a strong proponent of quantum theory, whom we quoted earlier.  Einstein and his team would propose arguments to poke holes in the new theory, and Bohr and his team would refute each in turn.

One of Einstein’s thought experiments went as follows:  Imagine two photons which are entangled (Dr. Goswami prefers to use the term “correlated”), that is, created in such a way the laws of conservation require them to have properties dependent on each other.  For example, one conservation law says the total spin (imagine a spinning top, but only as an analogy) of a system must be conserved.  This means if a system starts out with a total spin of zero, where nothing as a whole is spinning, then the final total spin of the system after any reaction must still add up to zero.  So, starting with an atom which initially has a spin of zero, two photons which are emitted by the atom as a result of a reaction must have opposite spins, say, spin up (+1) and spin down (-1), to conserve the total spin of the system (0+1-1=0).  In this way, the spins of the entangled photons are correlated, and upon measuring the spin of one, you will instantly know the spin of the other.  To keep this discussion simple and focus on the key concept, I’m intentionally leaving out some technical details, such as how the measurements are performed.

Here is where Einstein gets clever.  Take these two entangled photons and separate them over a vast distance, way beyond which they can communicate by the speed of light within the timeframe of the experiment.  For example, put them in two separate galaxies millions of light years apart (a light year is the distance it takes light to traverse in a year), so millions of years would be required for information to be classically transferred between them.  Never mind how you managed to accomplish this, since this is just a thought experiment meant to help bring out our intuition on the essence of a problem.

Now measure the spin of one of the photons.  If the result of the measurement is spin up, then at the same moment, you know with absolute certainty the other photon millions of light years away must have spin down, since the photons are entangled.

If photons behaved classically in the above example, there would be no violation of locality, because each one has a definite spin the moment they were created.  As an example, at the moment they were created, photon 1 definitely has spin up, and photon 2 definitely has spin down.  So, after their spins are finally measured millions of light years apart, no information needs to travel from one to “tell” the other what spin it should have:  they both had definite spins all the while from the start.

However if photons behave quantum mechanically, neither photon actually has a definite spin until they are measured.  Before the measurement, only probabilities for the spin exist.  As an example, each photon may have a 50/50 chance of being spin up, meaning after 100 measurements, on average 50 times the spin would be up, while the other 50 times, down, like the odds of flipping a fair coin.  The catch is, whatever the spin of one of the photon is measured to be, because the two photons are entangled, the spin of the other photon must be the opposite at the same instant in time.  Even if they are millions of light years apart when the measurement occurred!  So how did one photon “tell” the other its spin has to be the other way if physical communication between them could not occur?  The entangled photons appear to violate locality.

The analogy of flipping coins is helpful.  Replace the 2 photons with 2 coins.  If a pair of entangled photons behaved classically, they would be like 2 coins prepared to always have opposite sides (one heads, one tails) before they were separated.  Once they are millions of light years apart, you finally see one of them is heads, so you know instantaneously the other is tails.  There is no magic here, since their states of heads or tails was fixed from the start.

In contrast, if a pair of entangled photons behaved quantum mechanically, measuring their spins would be like flipping two coins millions of light years apart from the other, and when one coin comes up heads, the other must (must!) come up tails.  If the coins were flipped at the same time, since no physical signal could have communicated the information to the other, which by their separation distance would have taken at least millions of years by the speed of light, then the information somehow transferred instantaneously.  Non-locally.  Magically.

Note another semi-classical, semi-quantum possibility:  flip the coins millions of light years apart, one coin comes up heads, but it takes millions of years for the information to travel through their separation distance to “tell” the other coin it must be tails.  In this scenario, we illustrate both the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, and we also preserve locality, since the speed of communication is limited to that of light.  This would certainly be an odd state of affairs, since either coin could be flipped at any time, but whether its counterpart comes up heads or tails would be in limbo for millions of years awaiting the information to finally arrive.  The absurdity of this outcome suggests it could not in fact happen.

Einstein proposed this clever little thought experiment to argue quantum mechanics must be incomplete, because thanks to his special theory of relativity, he understood the speed of light to be the ultimate speed limit of information transfer.  The classical universe governed by special relativity is local.  Locality appears to be violated by the entangled photons in the thought experiment, and thus quantum mechanics must be missing something.  The thought experiment is a proof by contradiction, whereby assuming something is true (entangled photons behave quantum mechanically), we show what follows is false (information can travel faster than the speed of light, violating special relativity), and thus the original assumption must be false.  Bohr had to concede to Einstein quantum mechanics must then violate locality, however counter-intuitive that may seem.  To Einstein, this “spooky action at a distance” is ludicrous.  To Bohr, it is a necessarily true aspect of the quantum realm.

It took many decades before physicists could actually put Einstein’s thought experiment to the test in the laboratory.  Soon after theorist John Bell recast the essence of the argument in a statistical formulation, now known as the Bell’s Inequality Theorem, physicists developed the technical skill to test it.  To date, every experiment testing Bell’s Inequality Theorem supports the non-local nature of entangled quantum mechanical systems.  Einstein was wrong:  quantum mechanics is not missing something, and locality can be violated.  (Ref:  Bell’s Test Experiments, Wikipedia.)

That is the actual physics.

Bad Physics

In the interview, Dr. Goswami misrepresents the above in the following ways:

He says by “flipping” the polarization of correlated photons, physicists have proven superluminal (that is, faster than light) communication is possible.  No, they have not. 

First, physicists do not “flip” anything in these experiments, like a light switch, but merely take measurements of specific quantum properties, like whether a spin is up or down.

Second, what propagates instantaneously between the two entangled photons is the collapse of their probability wave-functions, the technical way of saying their spins become definite values from initial probabilities.  But it is not possible to use this wave-function collapse to convey other information, simply because the results are entirely probabilistic.  You can no more control whether a spin is up than you can a fair coin toss coming up heads.  The only thing you do know for certain is that if one spin is up, the other must be down.  On the other hand, meaningful communication requires definite, deterministic control of signals, which is completely absent here.  So, while something does happen instantaneously, violating locality, it cannot be utilized to devise some sort of quantum-based telegraph to meaningfully communicate with someone else.  As far as we know, the rate of meaningful communication is still limited to the speed of light.

Dr. Goswami also says when experimentalists like Alain Aspect first demonstrated non-locality, they were proving Einstein right, when in fact, they were proving him wrong, since Einstein had framed the argument as a contradiction.  Einstein would not be pleased to learn of the results of the actual experiments.

Dr. Goswami then went on to describe an experiment which supposedly showed brain waves of two physically isolated, meditating human subjects synchronizing with each other.  The subjects were placed in separate rooms, isolated by Faraday cages which effectively shielded them from electromagnetic signals.  Subject A was exposed to regularly pulsing stimuli (for example, lights or sound), and his brain waves became entrained to the frequency.  The brain waves of the other subject, who was not exposed to the stimuli and was physically isolated from Subject A, synchronized with Subject A’s.  Dr. Goswami explains because they were meditating, they were correlated, and because they were isolated in Faraday cages, no physical means of communication could occur between them.  Thus they must have experienced non-local communication.  Ergo human consciousness is non-local.

While the analogy between meditating humans and entangled photons may be creative, it is completely inconsistent.  First, entangled photons require considerable technical expertise to create, which is why it took decades before we could accurately test Einstein’s thought experiment.  To say meditative intention correlates human consciousness in the same way entangled photons are correlated is an enormous leap which is at best scientifically unsupported and at worst simply wrong.  Indeed, Dr. Goswami’s usage of the word correlation to characterize synchrony between macroscopic entities like people is completely opposite from its quantum mechanical meaning.  More on this inconsistent usage later.

Second, Faraday cages only shield certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves, so even if the subjects’ brain waves really did synchronize, many other possible physical factors which do not require invoking violation of locality may have been involved.  Joe himself tried to propose alternative explanations, which Dr. Goswami reject, though without any good objective reasons.

To actually demonstrate non-locality had occurred, the researchers need to demonstrate the subjects’ brain waves synchronize instantaneously upon changing stimuli.  For example, if the brain waves synchronize immediately (or at least faster than could by communicating at light speed) in response to a change in stimuli, then indeed locality may have been violated.

Still Confused!

To his credit, the astute Joe kept pressing Dr. Goswami over and over again that even after over an hour of discussion, he still did not understand why human consciousness is non-local.  That’s right, Joe, because you have good reason to still be confused!

The examples then strayed further away from quantum mechanics and into the realm of psychology and sociology.  For example, Dr. Goswami cites how the emotions of people in stadiums at athletic events seem to become correlated with each other.  Joe chimed in to offer his own example of correlation about how his listeners report positive changes to their mentality and lifestyle after listening to his podcasts.  Dr. Goswami also appeals to Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance to suggest non-locality extends to all consciousness, including those of animals and even plants.

However, while certainly interesting, none of these examples has anything to do with quantum mechanics, and none require invoking non-locality.  For example, the group psychology of mob mentality has more to do with how our brains evolved to conform to group behavior as a survival mechanism.  Neuroscience has discovered “mirror neurons” in our brains, which specifically help us empathize with others.  And Joe’s listeners still rely on physical mechanisms to hear his podcasts, and it takes time and processing before positive changes begin manifesting in their lives.  All this happens far slower than light speed.  So, while we can all relate to how humans can become correlated by sharing similar emotions and behaviors, it is a phenomenon which occurs many orders of magnitude in size above that of the quantum mechanical realm where correlation between entangled photons occurs.  The two are literally worlds apart.  Brains, beings, and groups are macroscopic entities, which as far as we know behave classically and locally.

Indeed, the very meaning of correlation in Dr. Goswami’s macroscopic examples contradicts the meaning of quantum correlation:  macroscopic correlation means something acts in sync with something else (if one person in a crowd becomes angry, the whole crowd becomes angry), while quantum correlation of entangled properties means something is diametrically opposed to the other to conserve the original property (if one photon is spin up, the other must be completely opposite, down).  If Dr. Goswami is trying to extrapolate quantum principles of correlation to the macroscopic world, then he should say if one person in the crowd becomes angry, then another must become happy to balance things out.  Otherwise, his usage of correlation is inconsistent and misleading.

Pressing for more clarity, Joe asks Dr. Goswami for the best evidence human consciousness is non-local.  Dr. Goswami then describes experiments in telepathy and remote viewing, such as those performed at the Standford Research Institute for the U.S. military during the Cold War by physicists Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff.  He also cites the experiments of Dean Radin, chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Science, which was founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell to study paranormal phenomena.  The paranormal investigations of parapsychology certainly have a long, fascinating history filled with controversy, well beyond the scope of this essay to even summarize.  Suffice it to say while some parapsychology research offers intriguing results which tickles the imagination, the experiments are notoriously difficult to consistently reproduce, let alone be accurately and coherently explained with a rigorous theory.  Consequently,  parapsychology lies outside the mainstream of science, though diligent researchers continue to work to push its state forward.

Indeed, Joe challenges if parapsychology is valid, why has magician James Randi’s One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge prize to anyone who can unequivocally demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon remained unclaimed?  Dr. Goswami responds by criticizing Randi for always pushing the bar ever higher to avoid having to concede and pay out the prize money.  Some even question whether the money really even exists. Truly, the field is filled with controversy.

So, Who Observes the Observer?

Dr. Gowami also describes the role of the observer in forming reality.  He gives the example if everyone in a city falls into a deep sleep such that no one is consciously observing it, then the city itself becomes just a cloud of probabilities, which could cease to exist altogether, though with a very small probability.  He asserts without conscious observers, only probabiliy exists.  (Ah ha, maybe that is why Randi’s prize money may not exist!)  Joe expresses his bewilderment and disbelief something could stop existing just because no one is observing it.  Again, Joe, you have every reason to be skeptical.

After all, if something must be observed to exist, then who observes the observer to ensure he exists? (and on and on …)

Perhaps this notion that observers create their reality arose from misinterpreting experiments of the wave-particle duality of light.  Set up the experiment to observe the wave nature of light, and light will behave as a wave.  Alternatively, set it up to observe the particle nature of light, and light will behave as a particle.  In other words, the result of the experiment depends on what the observer expects.  The reality of the nature of light, whether it is a wave or a particle, depends on the observer.  That much is true.

Somehow, this fact gained metaphysical wings into the questionable notion that macroscopic reality depends on an observer.  Another founder of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrodinger poked fun at those who would try to extend the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics into the macroscopic world with his famous half-alive/half-dead cat.  In his thought experiment, a cat is in a closed box which also contains an apparatus which may release poison based on a radioactive decay trigger.  Radioactivity is a quantum mechanical process which is probabilistic and completely random.  Indeed, it is non-causal, not caused by anything.  Something radioactive simply decays or it doesn’t.  But since the box is closed, no observer can witness whether the decay had occurred.  So, what is the state of the cat?  Does it also exist only probabilistically, neither alive nor dead until someone opens the box to see?  Be assured in this context, the cat is definitely alive or dead independent of observation.  A fuzzy line appears to separate the macroscopic from quantum realms, and our every day reality of cats and the like is devoid of quantum effects.

Moreover, in quantum mechanics the observer does not have to be a conscious human being at all.  It could simply be a macroscopic object such as a camera or other non-conscious recording apparatus.  Any object conscious or non-conscious can satisfy being an observer, so there’s no danger of never being observed.  If every conscious being in the universe suddenly ceased to exist, the universe will still be here, as it had been here long before consciousness ever arose (though some propose consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe which has always existed, but that is a metaphysical theory for another time).

The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

My purpose here is not to bash on Dr. Goswami, but to point out inaccuracies in his use of quantum mechanics to support his particular worldview.  He offered some things which I did appreciate, such as how psychological issues like depression and anxiety should not be treated by default with pharmaceuticals; we should always strive to love and be compassionate toward others; blindly chasing career goals may leave one feeling empty and lost; yoga, meditation, and other spiritual exercises and traditions can help clear and focus one’s inner self; humans are filled with potential and possibility; and everything we do begins as a thought in the imagination.  These positive notions have comforted, strengthened, and motivated for ages.  If worldviews such as Dr. Goswami’s are helping people progress towards greater enlightenment, peace, joy, and self-activation, then more power to him in spreading his message.  We need more who have his good intentions.

But in our quest to evolve, let’s be careful not to chase good intentions with bad physics.  Channeling long ago sages, Feynman warned, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  Misrepresenting science to promote spiritual worldviews is a disservice to both spiritual and scientific seekers, because the actual science may justifiably cast doubt on the otherwise good intentions.

Rather than pretend we know more than we do, we should honestly acknowledge how ignorant we really are.  The mysterious realm of the quantum is just the tip of the iceberg of our ignorance.  Dark matter and dark energy are two other examples, together constituting over 95% of the mass-energy of our observable universe, which means we know next to nothing about the vast majority of what makes up our reality.  And consciousness is another deep mystery about which we do not know where to even begin to understand it.  Let us dedicate ourselves to careful experimentation and honest reflection, always mindful what we think should be is often not what is.