I remember reading a book by Fred Alan Wolf, PhD, when I was in high school and into the quantum mysticism stuff, but that book sorta turned me off of it, because he said that electrons were conscious.
I'm glad that the book I read on quantum in high school turned out to be David Z Albert's, instead of something like that. I think it helped me get what was going on when I got to college more, having a good conceptual framework to start with and keeping an eye open for the interesting philosophical paradoxes.
Just out of curiosity, what would you say about Fritjof Capra's books (assuming you read any of them)? I have the impression they are a good deal less ridiculous than Fred Alan Wolf's, although I haven't read anything by either.
Maybe quantum mysticism was your equivalent of what Objectivism was for me, something that appealed a lot to my philosophical prejudices at the time, and was a learning experience, but ultimately I view as pretty embarrassing. I don't think I would have bought any of it if I had read the quantum mysticism stuff in high school though... even when I read David Albert's book, I was very skeptical and kept thinking "surely all of these paradoxes have some natural simple explanation, and this is just a case of scientists not being clever enough to see how it's just an ordinary classical theory". By the end of the book, I was convinced it was really interesting and not easily explained, although at that age, my inclination was that something like Bohm's interpretation was likely the right answer, and the more bizarre interpretations were too complicated and bizarre to be true.
I think if I would have read something about quantum mysticism in high school, I would have felt even more negative towards it than I would if I read it now, so I guess we must have come from pretty different early philosophical prejudices which is interesting.
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I remember reading a book by Fred Alan Wolf, PhD, when I was in high school and into the quantum mysticism stuff, but that book sorta turned me off of it, because he said that electrons were conscious.
I'm glad that the book I read on quantum in high school turned out to be David Z Albert's, instead of something like that. I think it helped me get what was going on when I got to college more, having a good conceptual framework to start with and keeping an eye open for the interesting philosophical paradoxes.
Just out of curiosity, what would you say about Fritjof Capra's books (assuming you read any of them)? I have the impression they are a good deal less ridiculous than Fred Alan Wolf's, although I haven't read anything by either.
Maybe quantum mysticism was your equivalent of what Objectivism was for me, something that appealed a lot to my philosophical prejudices at the time, and was a learning experience, but ultimately I view as pretty embarrassing. I don't think I would have bought any of it if I had read the quantum mysticism stuff in high school though... even when I read David Albert's book, I was very skeptical and kept thinking "surely all of these paradoxes have some natural simple explanation, and this is just a case of scientists not being clever enough to see how it's just an ordinary classical theory". By the end of the book, I was convinced it was really interesting and not easily explained, although at that age, my inclination was that something like Bohm's interpretation was likely the right answer, and the more bizarre interpretations were too complicated and bizarre to be true.
I think if I would have read something about quantum mysticism in high school, I would have felt even more negative towards it than I would if I read it now, so I guess we must have come from pretty different early philosophical prejudices which is interesting.