It doesn’t tie in directly to evolution, but the misconceptions are related.
I received my fair share of nonsense ‘facts’ growing up, and I had a hell of a time autodidacting myself as an adult—mostly because some of the consequences of our scientific knowledge base are never explicitly said. Here’s a brief list of high-probability truths I’ve had to infer:
-‘Observer effect’ is a quantum-level mechanism, not a conscious entity.
-Schrodinger’s cat would not be a superimposed waveform, the waveform would have collapsed immediately (likely leading to a many worlds split, but in our universe the cat is definitely something). As far as its a thought experiment, its been solved.
-Macro- and Micro-evolution are not actually science; all evolution is micro-evolution, and it’s a false distinction invented by creationists.
-c is a fundamental calibrant of the universe; it’s not a ‘speed’ per se, but rather it’s an aspect of space/time
-Gravity propagates at c
I’m about 98% certain that those points are correct; they mesh nicely with everything else I know (what I’d call common knowledge, though it probably ain’t that common). If any of them are incorrect, then all the other puzzle pieces get thrown into dissaray—and yet once you know these things, you can start predicting where the puzzle pieces will go with good accuracy.
But I’ve never seen any of them stated explicityly (until I started following LW and OB, anyway). It’s my contention that if these things were pounded into kids’ heads, then science education would be a lot easier. Instead they’re taught that entropy is “like when your room gets messy over time.” Barf.
It doesn’t tie in directly to evolution, but the misconceptions are related
What I mean is, if there’s some special feature of humans that collapses wave functions, do all living things have this feature, or was there an animal that had it whose mother didn’t have it?
Greg Egan wrote a book, Quarantine, specifically playing with that idea. (that is, the premise for the story is that it is specific features of the human brain that causes collapse… and those features can be artificially disabled)
Larry Niven mentioned something similar to this, regarding his… um… Future History books (the ones with Beowulf in them—and the three-legged centaur aliens).
At one point in the series he postulated that the centaurs had been breeding the humans for luck—we’d become the luckiest species in the Galaxy. He later on said that, if luck was an inheritable trait then it would be the best inheritable trait. Everyone would have it already.
Presumably the same thing would go for QM waveform non-collapsure; it must be useful somehow. Not that it makes any sense.
It doesn’t tie in directly to evolution, but the misconceptions are related.
I received my fair share of nonsense ‘facts’ growing up, and I had a hell of a time autodidacting myself as an adult—mostly because some of the consequences of our scientific knowledge base are never explicitly said. Here’s a brief list of high-probability truths I’ve had to infer:
-‘Observer effect’ is a quantum-level mechanism, not a conscious entity.
-Schrodinger’s cat would not be a superimposed waveform, the waveform would have collapsed immediately (likely leading to a many worlds split, but in our universe the cat is definitely something). As far as its a thought experiment, its been solved.
-Macro- and Micro-evolution are not actually science; all evolution is micro-evolution, and it’s a false distinction invented by creationists.
-c is a fundamental calibrant of the universe; it’s not a ‘speed’ per se, but rather it’s an aspect of space/time
-Gravity propagates at c
I’m about 98% certain that those points are correct; they mesh nicely with everything else I know (what I’d call common knowledge, though it probably ain’t that common). If any of them are incorrect, then all the other puzzle pieces get thrown into dissaray—and yet once you know these things, you can start predicting where the puzzle pieces will go with good accuracy.
But I’ve never seen any of them stated explicityly (until I started following LW and OB, anyway). It’s my contention that if these things were pounded into kids’ heads, then science education would be a lot easier. Instead they’re taught that entropy is “like when your room gets messy over time.” Barf.
What I mean is, if there’s some special feature of humans that collapses wave functions, do all living things have this feature, or was there an animal that had it whose mother didn’t have it?
Greg Egan wrote a book, Quarantine, specifically playing with that idea. (that is, the premise for the story is that it is specific features of the human brain that causes collapse… and those features can be artificially disabled)
Ooooooh!
Larry Niven mentioned something similar to this, regarding his… um… Future History books (the ones with Beowulf in them—and the three-legged centaur aliens).
At one point in the series he postulated that the centaurs had been breeding the humans for luck—we’d become the luckiest species in the Galaxy. He later on said that, if luck was an inheritable trait then it would be the best inheritable trait. Everyone would have it already.
Presumably the same thing would go for QM waveform non-collapsure; it must be useful somehow. Not that it makes any sense.
Back to our regularly scheduled reasoning...