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MBlume comments on Open Thread: March 2009 - Less Wrong
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Requesting rationalist assistance:
Somebody is talking to me about either advanced physics or magic, and I can't tell which one.
He mentions electron tunneling, superstring theory and quantum mechanics, in explaining why positive thoughts attract positive things, he mentioned a book called The Physics Of Consciousness, something about a quantum level of the brain.
I know there's benefit to thinking positive, but isnt that explained by evolution? I didn't think that quantum mechanics or a universal attraction of things to other things was involved.
Your friend is suffering from a confusion of levels. Electron tunneling occurs on a vastly different level of organization than do positive thoughts. Anyone speaking of the two in the same sentence should at least set off warning bells.
ETA: I think I can state that a bit more clearly. Positive thoughts are invisible to a tunneling electron in the same way that New York is invisible to an ant in Central Park. The pattern of the whole is simply not accessible from that lower level.
ETA2: It is sensible to say "the sky is blue because dipole radiation is frequency dependent," despite the fact that "blue sky" occurs at a larger scale than "dipole radiation". However, this is because the contributions from the lower level add in a simple way: a blue sky is built from a mole of deflected blue photons. A happy thought is not composed of a mole of "happy" electrons.