love affair with Barbara Ehrenreich's new book (part 1)

the following excerpt is from her new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America:

   The great promise of quantum physics, to New Age thinkers and the philosophically opportunistic generally, is that it seems to release humans from the dull tethers of determinism.  Anything, they imagine, can happen at the level of subatomic particles, where the familiar laws of Newtonian physics do not prevail, so why not in our own lives?  Insofar as I can follow the reasoning, two features of quantum physics seem to offer us limitless freedom.  One is the wave/particle duality of matter, which means that waves, like light, are also particles (photons) and that subatomic particles, like electrons, can also be understood as waves—that is, described by a wave equation.  In the loony extrapolation favored by positive thinkers, whole humans are also waves or vibrations.  "This is what we be," NSA speaker Sue Morter announced, wriggling her fingers to suggest a vibration, "a flickering," and as vibrations we presumably have a lot more freedom of motion than we do as gravity-bound, 150-or-so-pound creatures made of carbon, oxygen, and so forth.

   Another, even more commonly abused notion from quantum physics is the uncertainty principle, which simply asserts that we cannot know both the momentum and position of a subatomic particle.  In the more familiar formulation, we usually say that the act of measuring something at the quantum level affects what is being measured, since to measure the coordinates of a particle like an electron is to pin it down into a particular quantum state—putting it through a process known as "quantum collapse."  In the fanciful interpretation of a New Agey physicist cited by Rhonda Byrne, "the mind is actually shaping the very thing that is being perceived."  From there it is apparently a short leap to the idea that we are at all times creating the entire universe with our minds.  As one life coach has written: "We are Creators of the Universe.... With quantum physics, science is leaving behind the notion that human beings are powerless victims and moving toward an understanding that we are fully empowered creators of our lives and our world."

   In the words of Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann, this is so much "quantum flapdoodle."  For one thing, quantum effects come into play at a level vastly smaller than our bodies, our nerve cells, and even the molecules involved in the conduction of neuronal impulses.  Responding to What the Bleep Do We Know?, which heavily invokes quantum physics to explain the law of attraction, the estimable Michael Shermer notes that "for a system to be described quantum-mechanically, its typical mass (m), speed (v) and distance (d) must be on the order of Planck's constant (h) [6.626x10^-34 joule-seconds]," which is far beyond tiny.  He cites a physicist's calculations "that the mass of neural transmitter molecules and their speed across the distance of the synapse are about two orders of magnitude too large for quantum effects to be influential."  In other words, even our thought processes seem to be stuck in the deterministic prison of classical Newtonian physics.

   As for the mind's supposed power to shape the universe: if anything, quantum physics contains a humbling reminder of the limits of the human mind and imagination.  The fact that very small things like electrons and photons can act like both waves and particles does not mean that they are free to do anything or, of course, that we can morph into waves ourselves.  Sadly, what it means is that we cannot envision these tiny things, at least not with images derived from the everyday, nonquantum world.  Nor does the uncertainty principle mean that "the mind is shaping the very thing that is being perceived," only that there are limits to what we can ever find out about, say, a quantum-level particle.  Where is it "really" and how fast is it going?  We cannot know.  When contacted by Newsweek, even the mystically oriented physicists enlisted by Byrne in The Secret backed off from the notion of any physical force through which the mind can fulfill its desires.

   But no such qualms dampened the celebration of quantum physics, or perhaps I should say "quantum physics," at the gathering of the NSA conference in San Diego.  Sue Morter fairly bounded around the stage as she asserted that "your reality is simply determined by whatever frequency [of energy] you choose to dive into."  Unfortunately, she added, "we've been raised in Newtonian thought," so it can be hard to grasp quantum physics.  How much Morter, a chiropractor by profession, grasped was unclear; quite apart from the notion that we are vibrations choosing our own frequency, she made small annoying errors such as describing "the cloud of electrons around an atom."  (Electrons are part of the atom, orbiting around its nucleus.)  But the good news is that "science has shown without a shadow of a doubt" that we can create our own reality.  Somehow, the fact that particles can act like waves and vice versa means that "whatever you decide is true, is true"—an exceedingly hard proposition to debate.

   After Morter's presentation, I went to a workshop entitled "The Final Frontier: Your Unlimited Mind!," led my Rebecca Nagy, a "wedding preacher" from Charlotte, North Carolina, who described herself as a member of the "quantum spiritual world."  We started by repeating after her, "I am a co-creator," with the prefix "co" as an apparent nod to some other, more traditional form of creator.  Slide after slide went by, showing what appeared to be planets with moons—or electrons?—in orbit around them or announcing that "human beings are both receivers and transmitters of quantum (LIGHT ENERGY) signals."  At one point Nagy called for two volunteers to come to the front of the room to help illustrate the unlimited powers of the mind.  One of them was given two dousing rods to hold and told to think of someone she loves.  But no matter how much Nagy fiddled with the position of the rods, nothing happened, leading her to say, "No judgment here!  Can we agree on that?  No judgment here!"  Finally, after several more minutes of repositioning, she mumbled, "It ain't working," and suggested that this could be "because we're in a hotel."

   I began to make it my business to see what other conference goers thought of the inescapable pseudoscientific flapdoodle.  They were an outgoing lot, easy to strike up conversation with, and it seemed to me that my doubts about the invocation of quantum physics might get us past the level of "How are you enjoying the conference?" to either some common ground or a grave intellectual rupture.  Several modestly admitted that it went right over their heads, but no one displayed the slightest skepticism.  In one workshop, I found myself sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as a business professor.  When I told her that I worried about all the references to quantum physics, she said, "You're supposed to be shaken up here."  No, I said, I was worried about what it had to do with actual physics.  "It's what I'm here for," she countered blandly.  When I could come up with nothing more than a "Huh?" she explained that quantum physics is "What's going to affect the global economy."

   I did find one cynic—a workshop leader who had introduced himself as a "leadership coach" and "quantum physicist," though actually he claimed only a master's degree in nuclear physics.  When I cornered him after the workshop, he allowed as how "there is some crap" but insisted that quantum physics and New Age thinking "overlap a lot."  When I pushed harder, he told me that it wouldn't do any good to challenge the ongoing abuse of quantum physics, because "thousands of people believe it."  But the most startling response I got to my quibbling came from an expensively dressed life coach from Southern California.  After i summarized my discomfort with all the fake quantum physics in a couple of sentences, she gave me a kindly therapeutic look and asked, "You mean it doesn't work for you?"

  I felt at that moment, and for the first time in this friendly crowd, absolutely alone.  If science is something you can accept or reject on the basis of personal tastes, then what kind of reality did she and I share?  If it "worked for me" to say that the run rises in the west, would she be willing to go along with that, accepting it as my particular take on things?  Maybe I should have been impressed that these positive thinkers bothered to appeal to science at all, whether to "vibrations" or quantum physics, and in however degraded a form.  To base a belief or worldview on science or what passes for science is to reach out to the nonbelievers and the uninitiated, to say that they too can come to the same conclusions if they make the same systematic observations and inferences.  The alternative is to base one's worldview on revelation or mystical insight, and these are things that cannot be reliably shared with others.  In other words, there's something deeply sociable about science; it rests entirely on observations that can be shared with, and repeated by, others.  But in a world where everything you decide is true is true, what kind of connection between people can there be?

   Science, as well as most ordinary human interactions, depends on the assumption that there are conscious beings other than ourselves and that we share the same physical world, with all its surprises, sharp edges and dangers.  But it is not clear that there are other people in the universe as imagined by the positive thinkers or, if there are, that they matter.  What if they want the same things that we do, such as that necklace?  Or what if they hope for entirely different outcomes to, say, an election, or a football game?  In The Secret, Byrne tells the story of Colin, a ten-year-old boy who was initially dismayed by the long waits for rides at Disneyworld.  He had seen Byrne's movie, however, and knew it was enough to think the thought, "tomorrow I'd love to go on all the big rides and never have to wait in line."  Presto!  The next morning his family was chosen to be Disney's "First Family" for the day, putting them first in line and leaving hundreds of families behind them.  What about all those other children, condemned to wait, because Colin was empowered by The Secret?