Quantum woo

Quantum woo happens when irrational beliefs are justified by an obfuscatory reference to quantum physics. This typically uses buzzwords like “energy field”, “probability wave”, or “wave-particle duality” that magically turns thoughts into something tangible to directly affect the universe. This results in such foolishness as the Law of Attraction or quantum healing. Some have turned quantum woo into a career, such as Deepak Chopra, who often presents ill-defined concepts of quantum physics as proof for God and other magical thinking.

When an idea seems too crazy to believe, the proponent often makes an appeal to quantum physics as the explanation. This is a New Age version of God of the gaps.

This is an attempt to piggy-back on the success and legitimacy of science by claiming quack ideas are rooted in accepted concepts in physics, combined with utter misunderstanding of these concepts and a sense of wonder at the amazing magic these misunderstandings would imply if true. A fairly easy way to tell if a claim about quantum physics has scientific validity is to ask for the maths. If there isn’t any, it’s invalid. …

The reason why quantum woo works is because of the almost mystical status of quantum mechanics in the collective imaginary: nobody knows what it actually is, but whatever it is it’s definitely extremely hard science about very awesome stuff. Even having a basic understanding of quantum mechanics requires a working knowledge of differential, integral, multivariable, complex, vector and tensor calculus, differential equations, linear and abstract algebra, classic Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism. Such topics are … out of the league of anyone who hasn’t spent at least three years studying them, and this, combined with the efforts of pop science authors to make science accessible to the masses, inevitably leads to quantum mechanics being widely summarized as all the weird, wonderful properties of matter in the tiny nanometric scale—and all it takes to make something appear to be based on Hard Science™ is spouting a little bit of vague technobabble about quantum stuff. One bad habit often exhibited by pushers of quantum woo is throwing out the theories of Isaac Newton because his work supposedly has rendered obsolete by quantum theory. In actuality, Newtonian equations for motion work quite well when it comes to predicting the motion of a football, asteroid, or comet (in fact, the computers used in the Apollo mission were programed with them).

Concepts such as “non-locality” or “quantum probability waves” or “uncertainty principle” have become social memes of a kind where people inherently recognize that something “strange” is going on. Practitioners of fraudulent and silly ideas can tap into this feeling of mystery to push their sham concepts …

via Quantum woo – RationalWiki.

Richard Bach’s “Illusions,” the book with the blue feather on the cover, was my first intro to the exciting idea that we can change the physical universe by changing our thoughts.  How do we really know the Law of Attraction is nonsense?

The main criticism is that anecdotal evidence is used with self-selecting positive reports susceptible to confirmation bias and selection bias. In other words, by chance, some good stuff happens while you are thinking good thoughts and when it does, you blame the good thoughts. You ignore the 9,999 times that nothing good happened when thinking good thoughts, or explain it away as there being a “delay” between thoughts and manifesting reality.

Did I test this carefully and scientifically? No. So, I’m showing skepticism bias. I’ll conduct some experiments and get back to you.

 

Opening the gate to robust quantum computing

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory led a team that demonstrated a protected quantum gate in a solid-state system. The physicists (c) isolated the system from forces in the environment  while maintaining
coherence between the nucleus and electron in the system.  This was a major step forward in quantum information processing beyond simply (a) establishing coherence between parts of a quantum system (but without isolation from the environment) or (b) decoupling all parts of the system from the environment (and each other).

Scientists have overcome a major hurdle facing quantum computing: how to protect quantum information from degradation by the environment while simultaneously performing computation in a solid-state quantum system. The research was reported in the April 5 issue of Nature.

A group led by U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory physicist Viatsheslav Dobrovitski and including scientists at Delft University of Technology; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and University of Southern California, made this big step forward on the path to using the motions of single electrons and nuclei for quantum information processing. The discovery opens the door to robust quantum computation with solid-state devices and using quantum technologies for magnetic measurements with single-atom precision at nanoscale.

Quantum information processing relies on the combined motion of microscopic elements, such as electrons, nuclei, photons, ions, or tiny oscillating joists. In classical information processing, information is stored and processed in bits, and the data included in each bit is limited to two values (0 or 1), which can be thought of as a light switch being either up or down. But, in a quantum bit, called a qubit, data can be represented by how these qubits orient and move in relationship with each other, introducing the possibility for data expression in many tilts and movements.

This power of quantum information processing also poses a major challenge: even a minor “bump” off course causes qubits to lose data. And qubits tend to interact quite sensitively with their environment, where multiple forces bump them off track.

But, because the key to quantum information processing is in the relationship between qubits, the solution is not as easy as isolating a single qubit from its environment.

“The big step forward here is that we were able to decouple individual qubits from the environment, so they retain their information, while preserving the coupling between the qubits themselves” said Dobrovitski. …

via Opening the gate to robust quantum computing | Ames Laboratory.

Gas Prices Driven Up By Credit Card Swipe Fees, Convenience Stores Say

Ten months after the American retailers won a lobbying victory on Capitol Hill against debit card swipe fees, a trade group representing convenience stores is pushing for the government to crack down on similar fees for credit cards. According to a new report from the National Association of Convenience Stores, swipe fees were adding roughly 7 cents per gallon to the price of gas at the beginning of April, with credit card swipe fees alone costing convenience stores $11.1 billion in 2011.

Although financial speculation in the oil futures markets receives far more attention, swipe fees also serve as a way for Wall Street to profit from consumer pain at the pump. In return for the privilege of accepting plastic, banks charge retailers a fee for every card swipe. On credit cards, that fee is a percentage of the total price tag of each purchase. So the more a customer spends on gas, the higher the fee charged to retailers. Retailers pass these costs on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

“When fuel prices go up, banks receive a windfall without providing any additional services or value to merchants or customers,” states the National Association of Convenience Stores report.

Huffpost | APRIL 9, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/7ZaaU

Rattlesnake attacks Robosquirrel

In order to truly understand how a signal functions, researchers need to be able to conduct playback experiments that recreate elements of the display in a controlled fashion. To create a playback of a complex visual signal we, like many other animal behaviorists, have turned to the burgeoning field of biorobotics. That is, with collaborators at UC Davis, we have created a mechanical model of a squirrel that we think is a reasonable representation of the squirrel display. Details of the robosquirrel model and our efforts to date are summarized in Joshi et al 2011 (see Clark Lab webpage). This video shows some of our preliminary tests of the robosquirrel. It is potentially a very useful tool for more experimental work in this system, but we still need to iron out some wrinkles in terms of field deployment. Check back soon!

This clip shows two of our preliminary field trials with robosquirrel. In the first clip, you can see the snake hiding in the tall grass in ambush position. The robosquirrel track is put in place, and the squirrel mount is slid down the track close to the snake and made to tail flag via remote control. The snake exhibits no overt reaction. In the second clip, the snake is again hiding in ambush position at a different location. The squirrel model again is slid into position down the track, but this time with no tail flagging. The snake launches a predatory strike at the squirrel, biting it in the head region. We collected several large deposits of expelled venom from the pelage of the squirrel model after this trial. Please see the Clark lab website at San Diego State University for more information: http://www.bio.sdsu.edu/pub/clark/Site/Home.html

 

Robosquirrel presentations to rattlesnake – YouTube.