Shrodinger Cats - Jan 6 2024

 

Shrödinger Cats

Jan 6 2024

The Observer Effect.

Heisenberg's uncertainty.

Memory reworked

with each revisit.

Even electrons

behaving differently

depending on whether they’re watched.

It seems everything changes

under scrutiny.

So, is there any such thing

as objectivity?

Or is reality simply the version we see,

the very act of observing

creating one's own singular truth?

Even putting aside

the how of what one sees;

selectively,

forgetfully,

distractedly.

I can only hope no,

because I'd rather live with certainty;

not some slippery truth,

but a predictable world

that is knowable

and consistent.

And how powerful

could the mind's eye really be?

Do rays project from my head,

my pupils beam out light?

After all, the wall never moves

this chair feels the same,

the morning coffee

smells like yesterday's.

Yet as I reflect back on my life

the narrative keeps changing.

The more I poke and prod the past

and the deeper down I burrow

secrets emerge,

convenient lies are exposed,

and the bedrock verities

that always guided me

wobble in shifting sand.

What to believe

when there is no certainty?

No facts

and no hard truths?

When the act of observing

changes the observed,

and no two versions match?

No immutable reality,

but a quantum world

of action at a distance

and inscrutable Schrödinger cats?

Anthropology, quantum physics, and sometimes psychology: three ways of exploring reality where the observer effect changes the outcome. Not just observer bias, but the actually act of observing.

Physics studies the very large — cosmology — and very small — particle physics. The mistake is in assuming that quantum effects — present in the vanishingly small — apply in our macro world; one where simple Newtonian physics works well enough most of the time. Which rather undermines the conceit of the poem!

But what to think in this time of “truthiness”, when you choose your own facts, opinions count as truth, belief is its own validation, and Kelly Conway's notorious coinage “alternative facts” was taken seriously? When reality is made to seem as fluid as quicksand?