Now that I know how extremely cool quantum mechanics is, I regret that I never became a quantum physicist. If I had read this book on the quantum brain in high school, I probably would have become one. But naturally if I had read this book on the quantum brain in high school, I wouldn't have understood it, and therefore I wouldn't have become a quantum physicist [what a conundrum!].

I guess I can blame my college introductory physics professor, who was an expert in relativity. He made relativity seem very cool indeed, and I was so inspired by his descriptions of it that I calculated how much less I would age than my classmates who didn't go home for Thanksgiving, taking into account my speed and the length of my trip and so on (it was like 5.11 x 10^-26 seconds or something). When it came to quantum mechanics, however, our textbook showed a series of "quantum machines" where a photon would go in the entrance to the machine and come out of one of the two exits. The exit that the photon came out of was random, but in aggregate the number of photons that came out of each exit had a particular statistical distribution.

What did I just say? Statistical Distribution? I can't think of anything less interesting than a tiny particle that you can't see going into a black box and then coming out in a way that was described by a STATISTICAL DISTRIBUTION. Gag. Every bit of quantum mechanics annoyed the shit out of my 19-year-old scientist attitude towards life.

1) First there was the black box, the "quantum machine". In the book it was drawn like a little combustion engine or widget-maker banged out of metal with steam coming out the top. What the hell is that supposed to be? I felt like there was something I wasn't being told, that my professor was keeping the secrets of physics to himself and not revealing them to us because he thought that we were too stupid to understand them. Black boxes seemed to be the anti-science. Why were there 20 of them in my text book?

2) Secondly there was the statistical distribution. I've always hated statistical distributions. This could be because I never really took a decent stats class, so statistical distributions were like Reimann sums... each year your teacher takes 15 minutes out of one class period to describe them, but you never really figure out what they're talking about. When I finally did understand statistical distributions and Reimann sums, they had already earned a reputation for being annoying. But real reason I've always hated statistical distributions is because they are a giant stark reminder of a bunch of things that we don't know! If we knew everything perfectly, the flap of a butterfly's wing in Texas, the movements of tiny molecules as they get heated up and interact with each other, etc., then there would be no statistical distributions. Statistical distributions said to me, "We are too lazy/lack the computing capacity to model everything we need, so we're making broad parameterizations of the Unknown in the form of statistical distributions." [I've learned since then how useful and time-saving this is, and how it is useless to waste time modeling things which can be handily summed up in a statistical distributions, but at the time I thought of statistics as a tool that politicians used to fool people into thinking anything that they liked.]

3) Thirdly I had mono during the quantum mechanics and thermodynamics sections of introductory physics. I didn't realize it at the time, all I knew was that I was so sick that I didn't move from my room for a week or more. I must be fair and admit that the mono may have had an effect on the way I viewed quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and anything else that required statistics.

Had my professor explained that the reason there was a "black box" instead of a mechanical process for how quantum particles traveled from point A to point B was because there IS no mechanical process... had he explained that far from traveling a specific trajectory that the particle traveled EVERY possible trajectory simultaneously.... had he bothered to mention that the "machine" in which the quantum particle was traveling was not only as large as the universe but extended in to multiple parallel universes... had he mentioned that quantum particles move but are not moved by anything in the physical universe... had he specified that while most statistics was just parameterizing of smaller, not-as-well-modeled mechanical interactions, while quantum uncertainty was TRULY RANDOM... had he explained that by creating an interference pattern with a couple of classroom lasers and some tiny slits that we were probing into the deep secrets of the matter and energy and the Universe ITSELF... had he told us that the little cartoonish machine in the textbook represented a giant frontier of mathematics, physics, neuroscience, humanity, and GOD, then maybe I would have paid a little bit better attention. Then again... what if he DID say those things and I WASN'T paying attention!? What if I was flat on my stomach in my dark bedroom lying on a pile of clothes shivering and feverish and hoping that I would die?

It may be ironic that due to small random quantum movements in my cells and those around me being amplified by my brain and forming my thoughts did I reject quantum mechanics before really knowing what it was.

I considered being a physics major. I didn't want to take Particle Physics, which was the next required course. I didn't like the idea of studying tiny little things that you couldn't see ricocheting off of other tiny things in a dark and sterile laboratory. Lasers were cool, on the other hand, as were lenses. I liked my physics to be on the macro scale. I liked building circuits, but I hated analyzing them. Electric fields bored the crap out of me. I didn't like angular momentum. Rotating coordinate systems were the banes of my existence. I liked being outside. I enjoyed tromping around the desert in the sunshine. I liked clambering up boulders and smashing things with a hammer. When I studied the planets I could get a handle on our corner of the universe and I could still have a heavy, solid object in my hand which I could saw apart without feeling bad and which looked pretty under a common laboratory microscope. I could think about things at the scale of the Universe and the Beginning of Time while still being able to tell people where they should build their houses, why their crops were failing, and how deep they were going to have to dig their wells. I became a geology major and made money on the side as an undergraduate physics TA.

I don't regret my choice... geology rocks.
And after all, I'm talking like my life is already over here! As long as I'm alive I can still do whatever the hell I want!

I could become a quantum physicist. I could found the field of "quantum geology". I could create a french salon and invite important and witty people to sit around drinking wine and discussing the philosophical ramifications of quantum theory. I went to a talk one time about Hilbert Spaces, and I had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. But I could go back and figure that out if I wanted to.

So I say to you:

AS LONG AS YOU'RE ALIVE YOU CAN STILL DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT!

Don't you see how important it is to know that? Don't you see that no matter what things are like right now there are an infinite number of superposed possibilities for things to get better? Don't you see that even if you feel like your hands are tied by money and family obligations and your supposedly limited skill-set that there is actually an ENTIRE UNIVERSE out there and you live on a giant spherical paradise exploding with life and opportunities????

In the end, YOU decide what you are going to contribute to the world. You decide to think great thoughts. You decide to write moving stories, moving songs, moving poems. You decide to keep trying to understand even when it takes you five times as long as anyone else in your class. You decide to apply yourself to something more profound than what you are going to eat for dinner. Do you think Einstein thought of general relativity because he sat around watching TV all day? NO! [Because TV didn't exist back then!] He sat around doing equations just for the hell of it! It took Einstein TEN YEARS to go from special relatively to general relativity. He screwed up many many times. But unlike everybody else, he just kept going! Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Guess who said that? That's right--- Thomas EDISON, whose name also begins with an E!

Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. The point is that quantum physics is awesome, and that I am starting a salon filled with incredible, deep-thinking, universe-pondering, world-changing geniuses, and I'm calling it Nutang.

You are all invited.

HECK YES
I'm like the quantum you that decided to freaking love quantum mechanics. Remember when I posted about it a while ago? The exact same stuff blew my mind hahaha.
» middaymoon on 2011-12-05 06:36:41

Oh dear...
I think you had it worse than I do. I agree with your analysis of the situation with friends and with avoidance, that's pretty much the same conclusion I've come to. Thanks for the feedback!

Wow! That's so cool. I'm glad that I could help, and flattered that I had such a big impact.
» middaymoon on 2011-12-06 10:46:17

I'M SO PROUD TO HAVE MET YOU IN PERSON
» The-Muffin-Man on 2011-12-08 05:03:13

» dont-see on 2011-12-08 08:47:27

» dont-see on 2011-12-08 08:48:18

Just you know, Zanz....you CAN have your cake AND eat it, too ;)

But I totally get what you're saying
» The-Muffin-Man on 2011-12-15 12:41:58

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