Guarding the Wall: tunnels, bridges and tendrils

[Prashant Kumar]

My take on it is this: what DC and others does is manipulative (in that it
does prey on people who must necessarily "trust the experts") and shits all
over a nascent field; applications of quantum mechanics in the life
sciences is only slowly being studied for all the damage new agers have
done (academic jobs being the way they are, no newly minted PhD wants to
risk his or her reputation on something so fringe. It's unreasonable to
expect people to live as tortured maybe-geniuses). It's a technique of the
right: teach the controversy. DC et al. in this article are attempting to
blur the line (and there is one) between his horseshit and actual
speculative science which exists outside the norm.

Quantum consciousness is a prime example: there is no way to maintain
quantum coherence at the energy scale at which the brain
operates.<http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009> Now,
this doesn't mean that quantum physics has no role in biology.
Here<http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/v9/n1/abs/nphys2474.html>is a
wonderful review article detailing various applications. Turns out,
magnetoception in pigeons *may *be quantum mechanical in nature! This is
the kind of research which we don't hear about, thanks to these arseholes.
I'm willing to bet reality is more interesting than anything Chopra could
come up with.

P.


On 21 April 2013 21:28, <bandwraith at aol.com> wrote:

>  You mean... It's just another rope trick?  : )
>
> Thinking about it in general terms, I guess there're lots of "cracked
> pots"- scientific, religious, artistic, etc. Some are endearing, some more
> consciously manipulative and willing to prey on people's niavete. But I
> maintain that - if I can be excused the royal "we" here- we are all a
> little cracked in our own way, and its probably okay to embrace our inner
> crack-pot, just not too vehemently, lest we seal the cracks and it becomes
> a pressure cooker- just enough to foster a little empathy.
>
> I was going to say something about the Liberty Bell, but I'm uncertain
> now. It's Sunday here. I'll go meditate on it for awhile.
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
> To: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sun, Apr 21, 2013 5:31 am
> Subject: Re: Guarding the Wall: tunnels, bridges and tendrils
>
> This guy and his quantum mechanical snake oil...in the language of my
> people: "madarchod".
>
>  P.
>
> On Saturday, April 20, 2013, wrote:
>
>> "...On the other side of the wall are lethal enemies and malefic magic.
>> For centuries, no one has seen the zombie-like White Walkers who live on
>> the other side of the wall, nor the dragons that once ravaged Westeros
>> .
>> Even so, after magic and zombies fell into disbelief, a hereditary band
>> of guardians swore an oath to keep watch at the wall, generation after
>> generation. TED has put itself in rather the same position. What the
>> militant atheists and self-described skeptics hate is a certain brand of
>> magical thinking that endangers science. In particular, there is the
>> bugaboo of "non-local consciousness," which causes the hair on the back of
>> their necks to stand on end. A layman would be forgiven for not grasping
>> why such an innocent-sounding phrase could spell danger to "good science."
>>
>>
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/dear-ted-is-it-bad-scienc_b_3104049.html
>>
>
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