It’s quantum consciousness!
Biophysicist Mae-Wan Ho has described how the living organism, including the human body, is “coherent beyond our wildest dreams” in that our bodies are constituted by a form of liquid crystal, which is an ideal transmitter of communication, resonance, and coherence. All living biological organisms continuously emit radiations of light that form a field of coherence and communication.
Moreover, biophysicists have discovered that living organisms are permeated by quantum wave forms. In her 1998 book The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms, Ho informs us that
the visible body just happens to be where the wave function of the organism is most dense. Invisible quantum waves are spreading out from each of us and permeating into all other organisms. At the same time, each of us has the waves of every other organism entangled within our own make-up …
This incredible new discovery actually positions each living being within a non-local quantum field consisting of wave interferences (where bodies meet). Each person is thus not only in an emphatic relationship with each other but is also entangled with one another.
Neuroscience, quantum biology, and quantum physics are now beginning to converge to reveal that our bodies are not only biochemical systems but also sophisticated resonating quantum systems. These new discoveries show that a form of nonlocal connected consciousness has a physical-scientific basis. Further, it demonstrates that certain spiritual or transcendental states of collective Oneness have a valid basis within the new scientific paradigm.
If we are willing to step down from the donkey, we will find that our new path ahead has a place for reconciling science and spirituality. We should focus on the best of both worlds: engage in cooperation, not in conflict and competition.
I think it’s time to pull a Sokal on HuffPo.
Pulling a Sokal on HuffPo is a great idea. But I doubt any parody published in it will be distinguishable from the laughable BS that HuffPo already publishes.
That’s the point.
I meant distinguishable to a physicist. Anyone with a fair knowledge of physics could easily identify the Sokal article as a parody.
Doing the same in HuffPo seems to be heavily “Poe constrained”.
Wow.
What a load of crap.
I’m not a scientist, but every time I see the word “quantum” in any context other than a discussion of really hairy physics, I assume that a tsunami of bullshit will follow shortly.
Quantum physics may be weird, counterintuitive, and beyond the full comprehension of everyone but a small handful of researchers. That doesn’t mean it’s literally hoodoo. Mmmkay, HuffPo?
Man, Deepak Chopra is gonna love this shit.
I think I’ll stay on the donkey.
If Kingsley Dennis wishes to dismount, perhaps we should have a fookin’ sack waiting.
You and I are part of an enmeshed quantum consciousness. Or is it just I? or you? or an inseparable we? I/You/We is/are confused.
Ah yes, how the perpetrators of woo love quantum physics. It’s like a gaping, bottomless chasm into which all manner of stupid can be endlessly poured.
…or perhaps a Planck-sized black hole [but it’ll be too tiny!] into which all attractors of quantum woo fly into.
Might this may already be a Sokal? Does Poe’s Law apply?
Ask him! He’s around.
I’ll let an expert on vibrations explain it all to you:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoe3ZjRV7-I]
ps: for those who don’t “know” me, I am being sarcastic.
The Myth of Quantum Consciousness(pdf)
Victor J. Stenger
Published in The Humanist, May/Jume 1992, Vol. 53, Number 3, pp. 13-15.
I don’t know about the crystal part, but my body is definitely full of liquid.
Well, partially full. I need a beer top-up.
BRB.
… Kinda looks like somebody just did!
I think they should be encouraged to run with this.
It used to be that the New Age mantra was that “Everything is connected” (and isn’t it wonderful! Tra-la-la…). Which meant Us, and the sky, and the mountains, and the rivers, and the whole Universe!
(One of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen is the beatific glow of religious revelation in the eyes of New Agers when they rapture on, and on, and on, about this.)
But if they’re hooking this business to biophotons, they’ve willy-nilly wiped out most of the observable universe as something that could be connected to. Biophotons = property of living things. “Everything is connected” now shrinks — implodes — down to “Everyone is connected”.
Oops. No more “energy” from ancient artifacts, burial sites, spiritual landmarks, crystals. No more Cosmic Consciousness. No more connections to things that were once alive, either, because they’re not emitting biophotons, are they?
Let ’em run with it, I say. And grab some popcorn, pull up a chair, and enjoy the faction fights.
But people – the resonance! And the everything connected…and the resonance!!
The resonance…yes! These guys surely have no idea that a driver is needed to make physical objects oscillate at a certain frequency so that they end up with a huge amplitude [which can lead to broken bridges and glasses!]. That is resonance!
If anybody wants to try this, they should recognize, as Sokal did, that sycophancy and critic-bashing are essential to the enterprise of getting people to buy bullshit.
See Tom Johnson.
And for the Sokal version, Tom Johnson is played by Stanley Fish.
Ah, Mae-Wan Ho: I remember her when she was all about morphic resonance. Happy daze in Milton Keynes…
Yes I remember back then, when she would come down to the QEC Theoretical Biology Discussion Group meetings from the OU.
I couldn’t read more than a couple of paragraphs of this toxic mess before I became I’ll.
Everything in the universe is made of one element, which is a note, a single note. Atoms are really vibrations, you know, which are extensions of THE BIG NOTE.
Looks like the nut cases are getting a steadily harder shell.
Is that due to evolution?
Max Tegmark, Phys. Rev. E 61, 4194–4206 (2000), on the ever popular quantum mind:
“Based on a calculation of neural decoherence rates, we argue that the degrees of freedom of the human brain that relate to cognitive processes should be thought of as a classical rather than quantum system, i.e., that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the current classical approach to neural network simulations. We find that the decoherence time scales (∼10-13–10-20s) are typically much shorter than the relevant dynamical time scales (∼10-3–10-1s), both for regular neuron firing and for kinklike polarization excitations in microtubules. This conclusion disagrees with suggestions by Penrose and others that the brain acts as a quantum computer, and that quantum coherence is related to consciousness in a fundamental way.”
It’s _a simple calculation_ for FSM sake, especially for a classical mind! 😀
(Note that the model is general, despite discussing Penrose’s et al proposed microtubule mechanisms.)
Quantum consciousness has actually been considered by some legitimate scientists and saw some light in peer-reviewed journals, but it’s simply too much of a reach to enter mainstream neuro-biology. For those interested, I can offer the following post…
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2010/03/02/yet-another-spawn-of-quantum-consciousness/
That said, Mae-Wan Ho is just vomiting forth Deepak Chopra’s regurgitated brain drippings and his “theory” is a huge mess of New Age nonsense based on word salad science and utter scientific illiteracy.
our bodies are constituted by a form of liquid crystal, which is an ideal transmitter of communication, resonance, and coherence.
Wha………….?
Yeah, the other nonsense was making my irony meter shake, but it wasn’t until the word ‘coherence’ popped up that it blew completely.
More stealing of scientific concepts to support woo [not you, Ophelia Benson, of course]. I call plagarism on that sentence!
Thanks, every time I think we can’t get any dumber I read a piece like this. I used to think that snake oil sales men are evil but I am thinking of starting my own website to sell some quantum medicine that the experts don’t want you to know about. I am even willing to put disclaimer after disclaimer that the pills I am selling you are nothing more than sugar and this is a joke and I still bet I will sell product hand over fist.
Does anyone else find it amusing that an ignorant rant about ‘coherence’ is incoherent?
Just like “the incoherence of philosophers” by al-Ghazali.
I felt sufficiently geeky when knowing the Sokal reference without looking it up. My time on the intertubes has paid off well!
I’m not a HuffPo fan, but doesn’t anyone here suspect that HuffPo is Sokaling itself for the entertainment value? I mean, read the comments responding to that piece. And now the HuffPo site meters have just recorded a bunch of new hits as a result of the free advertising they received from humorless defenders of strict naturalism.
You guys have been played.
That is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve read outside of the Bible.
“I think it’s time to pull a Sokal on HuffPo.”
If you asked me I’d say it looks like someone already did.
And here I was thinking that this article explained so much so clearly…
Penrose and Hameroff first proposed “quantum consciousness”, so cast stones on them as well. Penrose, in particular, should know better. More on the general (ab)use of scientific concepts and the Sokal hoax (who was my TA when I took quantum mechanics at Harvard):
“Keeping an Open Mind is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
http://www.starshipreckless.com/blog/?p=386