Subatomic Darwinism

blamanj writes "In the beginning was Darwinism, then there arose Social Darwinism, now physicists are proposing Quantum Darwinism. According to the Nature article: "If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find? Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states."."

Comments

Re:Don't forget ...

[WhiplashII]

I think a lot of insight can come from your parent/child conversation. Another way to look at it is a conversation between GOD and the Guy that thinks rubbing sticks together for fire is pretty cool.

GOD: I created the Universe.
GUY: Woah! How long did that take?
GOD: Well, you see, time didn't really exist at the start...
GUY: (Blank look)
GOD: 6 Days
GUY: Neato! What did you do next?
GOD: I waited for everything to congeal.
GUY: How long did that take?
GOD: (Exasperated) One day.
GUY: Wow! How did you make me?
GOD: I altered the quantum equations of the Universe temperarily so that the carbon, nitrogen, and other elements moved to precisely the right relative locations.
GUY: (Blank look)
GOD: I made you from dirt.
GUY: Ohhhhhh!

I believe many of the places where God has been proven "wrong" come from things like this - where God was trying to use "little words" to describe very complex things. Like when you tell your daughter that the sky is blue because it has water in it - it sort of is, but it is really due to refraction, etc. But there is no way your daughter would understand that!