World Cup Goal Roundup - Thursday June 19
If we fail to plan, we plan to fail.
If we fail to plan, we plan to fail.
Returning for a limited encore, this one-of-a-kind cinematic experience features the greatest movies of all time–over 450 international films–spliced together into a visionary montage that tells a single unified story of a man and a woman.
3. Quantum Uncertainty and Quantum Weirdness
Goldberg adds that there's another idea that has been misinterpreted even more perniciously than "theory." It's when people appropriate concepts from physics for new agey or spiritual purposes:
This misconception is an exploitation of quantum mechanics by a certain breed spiritualists and self-helpers, and epitomized by the abomination, [the movie] What the Bleep Do We Know? Quantum mechanics, famously, has measurement at its core. An observer measuring position or momentum or energy causes the "wavefunction to collapse," non-deterministically. (Indeed, I did one of my first columns on "How smart do you need to collapse a wavefunction?") But just because the universe isn't deterministic doesn't mean that you are the one controlling it. It is remarkable (and frankly, alarming) the degree to which quantum uncertainty and quantum weirdness get inextricably bound up in certain circles with the idea of a soul, or humans controlling the universe, or some other pseudoscience. In the end, we are made of quantum particles (protons, neutrons, electrons) and are part of the quantum universe. That is cool, of course, but only in the sense that all of physics is cool.
Before Risk, before Dungeons & Dragons, before Magic: The Gathering, there was Diplomacy. One writer enters international competition to play the world-conquering game that redefines what it means to be a geek (and a person).
No comments:
Post a Comment