…I’m still stuck on how quantum entanglement relates to the anthropological postulate of “the psychic unity of mankind.” (There’s a relationship there, but I haven’t had the time to sort it out.)

If quantum entanglement is a lie, then the author is quite correct in his assertions. If the entire field of science is a lie, then the author is correct in his assertions. i.e. nothing is predictable in mathematics or science.

(hmmm…How does all of that relate to Couzin’s work on collective behavior?)

…and if one premise of the author’s statements is true, then why are physicists able to isolate photons and hold them in ‘stasis,’ let alone ‘transport’ them from ‘here’ to ‘there’ in laboratory experiments. If the actions of the smallest observable particles are not predictable?? Where does that leave us? (Even the results of the dual slit experiment are predictable.) If those assertions are true, then how can they be observed in laboratories…which are already recording the actions of those particles?

If other parts of his underlying premise are true, uncertainty is universal and Murphy rules all. Entropy no longer applies and extropy is a fantasy. (Digital Physics and The Holographic Principle become meaningless.)

…then… there’s that whole Simulation Theory to think about…mirror neurons, brain entrainment and plasticity…

If you can’t predict a universe you aren’t a part of, doesn’t that make Bohm, Feynman and others complete fools, or possibly even outright liars?

Just thoughts in passing, here. I’m honestly trying to understand what the Professor is saying, here.

Perhaps the case is that we don’t know all there is to know about all there is to know? Just because we do not understand how to accurately model certain levels of complexity, doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. It just means that we don’t know how to do it, yet.

E.E. “Doc” Smith
First Lensman

not a bad mission statement for the tea party

(As an aside, the Dune series is probably one of the most depressing storylines of what can only be called “anti-science fiction”. Strong AI ends up being dangerously infeasible. Liberal democracy just leads back to the same old aristocratic circlejerkery. Space travel did nothing more than expand humanity’s age-old problems of Malthusian resource scarcity pressures and Hegelian power struggles to the rest of the galaxy. Religion and faith (which were always a lie after all. Sorry, no Second Coming for you!) ends up being more coercive and reinforcing of class-structure than ever before. Pharmacology offers humanity only a hobsian dilemma between escaping through hedonistic oblivion (Semuta music) or seeing but not being able to achieve transcendence before going mad (melange). Only eugenics offers some prospect of trans-human advancement, but only for the One descendant who is the end product of all the genetic engineering. Everyone else just has to fall down and worship him or get massacred by his jihadi worshipers.)

Even without mathematics, but with the use of other academic disciplines, I have been able to predict the behavior of societies and nations, even down to the level of ‘predicting’ the rise of certain types of personalities and celebrities in popular culture and politics – in addition to the approximate timing of their appearance on the national and international stage. (President Obama, Joe the Plumber, Paul Potts, Sarah Palin, Susan Boyle…and, in broad strokes, even the T.E.A. Party movement and Scott Brown. Such things are almost as regular and predictable as a metronome or a bar of music…or the movement of a flock of birds or school of fish.)

With the help of a mathematician and perhaps a physicist, I could be much closer than I have been. (Only three large ‘misses’ in eleven years with perhaps four or five small misses.)

There also appear to be a couple of big, fat, gaping holes in your logic, Dr. Hall. Could you clarify your point, please?

I mean, if certain aspects of chemistry and physics weren’t predictable, there wouldn’t be computers chips *or* the ability to program them. If the behavior of both hardware and software is not predictable according to scientific theory, it is no longer science that I am presently using to type this note on this website. It’s magic! I know that your example wasn’t the point of your article. Perhaps it was just a bad analogy on your part?

The present world isn’t quite full of ‘super intellects,’ but there are lots of them. Numerically, 5% of the world’s population have IQ’s that are at near genius or genius levels. Two percent of 7 billion people is quite a lot of super intellects. In general, the behaviors of such intellects, and their impact upon other people, is predictable, just as the behaviors of crowds is predictable. (‘Ants have algorithms,’ flocks of birds.) Once group behavior is predictable, which it is, individual behaviors become predictable. (system dynamics??)

There is either something you’re not communicating, or something I am not understanding, here. …and I am not an ignorant man, Professor.

Look Mom no eco footprint!