Erwin Schrödinger was a physicist who wanted to illustrate the absurdity of applying quantum properties to the macroscopic world.  It was (and still is) popular to look at the state of a quantum object, such as an electron or photon, to be “in flux” until its state is observed.

The basic thought experiment is that a healthy, well-fed cat is placed into a box with a vial of toxic gas, a very sensitive particle detector, a quantum particle with a half-life of one day, and various mechanisms to connect them.  The particle detector is set up so that, if the quantum particle decays, it will trigger a mechanism to open the vial of toxic gas, killing the cat.

So, using the common quantum paradigm, the particle is in flux between decayed and not decayed the second we place it into the box.  Because the box is closed and we’re forbidden by the rules of the experiment to look inside until a day is passed, the vial of toxin is in flux between contained and released.  The cat, therefore, is in flux between being alive and dead.

Schrödinger intended this, as I said before, as an illustration of the absurdity of taking this idea to the macroscopic dimension – but many people chose instead to take it seriously.  They spoke with a grave sense of wonder about the poor cat, neither alive nor dead, in this state of flux, until someone opened the box.

Many of these people would also argue that, if a tree fell in the forest and nobody was there to hear, there might not be a sound.  But my view is that there is no reason to believe there would not be a sound, unless longitudinal shock waves traveling through the air do not qualify as sound until there is an ear to hear them.  If you want to tell me there won’t be any sound waves, then you might as well tell me that the tree might fall up instead of down, or that any number of other physical rules don’t apply when there are no observers.

I understand that all this is philosophically possible.  There is no proof that the physical laws of the universe apply in the absence of any observer, but we have very good evidence that the universe acts very much as if they do.  Perhaps, when we come upon a fallen tree for the first time, all of the universe’s laws get instantly applied to it, retroactive to the last time it was observed.  But that seems pretty silly to me.  It’s much simpler, in my opinion, to believe that the unobserved tree fell in exactly the same way as if it had an audience of thousands watching it, that it disturbed the air, and that it made sound waves.

And so, back to Schrödinger’s cat, I believe that the simplest view is best.  The cat, at any one moment, is either alive or dead, the same as if the nation were watching it on video.  The gas vial is either released or unreleased, and the particle is not in flux, either.  It’s possible that the last statement goes further than Schrödinger might have wanted to go.

Erwin Schrödinger might have believed that the particle was in flux, and that the silliness was in the act of taking the concept to the macroscopic world.  I’ll say more on the subject in another posting, but I believe that far too much weight is given to human observation in dealing with the quantum world.

It’s true that observation changes the quantum world, but it’s the mechanical act of observation, not the entrance of data into a human brain, that causes the changes.  So I don’t believe that the unobserved particle is “in flux” between being decayed and not being decayed.  I believe, instead, that the particle is in a state unchanged by observation, a state that we don’t understand.

But, you see, the vial is not in a state we don’t understand.  It’s a macroscopic object, and its potential transition between closed and open is well understood.  Similarly, the cat is a macroscopic animal, and the workings of the toxin (should the cat find itself in the unfortunate 50% of possible scenarios) is also well understood.  There are no quantum states required, and the fact that a quantum state decides the cat’s fate does not, in any way, translate to the cat having a quantum state of its own.

I’m open to people disagreeing with me on this point.  It’s certainly possible that I have oversimplified the concepts behind quantum flux.  But I’ve yet to find anyone who could convince me that a tree of any size falling in a forest ever fails to make a sound, or that a cat in a box is ever in flux between life and death for any appreciable period of time.

If you feel you can change my mind, by all means, please have a go at it.

Several times in my life, I’ve stepped out of a familiar restroom, usually at my place of employment, and experienced a moment of mild surprise and disorientation.  I wasn’t where I expected to be.  The surprise never lasted long.  I soon figured out that I had gone into the restroom on another floor.

The restroom on my floor was being cleaned, or the stalls were full when I needed one, or maybe I’d had a quick task to do on the other floor, and stopped into the restroom on the way back.  The exact cause varied, but I always remembered it shortly after stepping back into the world where the sights varied from one floor to the next.

The absent-mindedness necessary to have that little shock of surprise may not be common in humanity; my presence of mind may be abnormally low.  But I think it could happen to almost anyone if they were tired enough or distracted enough.  I never thought too much about it until I realized that an episode like this is a real-life example of dimensional travel.

A typical men’s restroom may look something like this:

There’s not a lot to look at, really, but it becomes familiar if you use it every day.  There are usually no arrows or axis labels (x, y, or z) along any of the corners, but I wanted a clearly-defined z-axis for the discussion below.  Now, if someone leaves a crumpled-up paper towel on the counter, you don’t think it’s another restroom.  If a crack develops in one tile, or a mirror gets replaced, or the chrome on a faucet gets dulled by harsh cleaners, you still don’t think it’s another restroom.  The familiarity of everything else keeps you grounded in the fact that it’s the same place.

Yet the difference in restrooms from one floor to the next is often no greater than this.  So, if you go to a restroom on a different floor, all you have to do is forget the trivial matter of how you got there, and your mind accepts it as the same familiar restroom you always go to — that is, if you’re as absent-minded as I am.

The figure to the right shows how a dimensional shift, a displacement along the Z-axis, can move you from one restroom to another.  Generally, you make that shift in a very roundabout manner, using stairs or an elevator.

Outside the world of the restroom, the absolute similarity between floors generally stops.  The floors have different purposes, different offices — perhaps even different companies.  The rest of the floor is remade according to the needs of the people who are working there.

But the needs of people going to the restroom don’t vary as much.  So, after the construction company runs the plumbing up the wall, from floor to floor, placing the stalls and urinals and sinks in the same place out of mere convenience, and buying the same fixtures at bulk rates, the tenants of the building tend not to bother changing these utilitarian rooms too much.

So we have a logical narrative to explain away our dimensional dilemma.  But sometimes I wonder what would happen if I walked into my familiar restroom, on my floor, and miraculously walked out of the restroom on another floor.  The shock would initially be greater than normal.  But then, I’m pretty sure I would convince myself that I had walked into the same restroom I’d walked out of.  Nothing else would make sense.  My mind would create the story, and it would become a memory.  By ruling the present, I would rule the past.

So, maybe this type of thing happens all the time.  How would we ever know?  A spontaneous shift up or down the virtical dimension might be expected, so I heard somewhere, every googolplex years or so.  That’s about 10⁹⁰ orders of magnitude greater than the most commonly accepted age of the universe — or, in more simple terms, a ridiculously long period of time.

But, of course, that’s counting on quantum jumps to transfer all of a person’s atoms, in exactly the same orientation, through close to three meters of vertical space.  If there’s another way for it to happen, I don’t know it.  And that’s why I’d convince myself I’d made the dimensional shift to a parallel restroom by conventional means, and then simply forgotten about it; and science tells me I’d very probably be right.

When people talk of parallel universes, whether in scientific speculation or in fiction, they’re generally talking about just such a dimensional shift — except they’ll pick a different axis, maybe a w-axis, to shift along.  This is much more difficult to put into a picture, and I won’t bother here.  Usually, parts of these parallel universes are very similar to ours (like the restroom), and parts are very different (like the rest of the floor).

Some would say that my example doesn’t quite qualify, since I used one of the restroom’s actual dimensions (represented by the z-axis) to shift along.  But, if you limit your universe to the thickness of one floor of a building, you end up with a universe that functions a lot like a two-dimensional universe, and I think you can still use that third dimension to shift along.

Besides, I never said that I had a real-life example of parallel universes.  I said it was a real-life example of dimensional travel.  That’s undeniable, I think.

Plus, with all the explanation I’ve done, I still have no proof that I’ve never been spontaneously shifted from one restroom to another — or even into a parallel universe.  Perhaps there are ways for that to happen that are more probable than random quantum shifts.

But, as I said before, I can never prove it either way.  And, in truth, I know I’m generally going to accept the simplest explanation, as occam’s razor dictates — So why even think about this?  Because life is more interesting for me if I do than if I don’t.

A few years ago, my son was seriously questioning the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  This reminded me of my own childhood, and the flexibility of the young mind to hold onto these beliefs as long as it could was amazing.  The formulae to dismiss the logical objections to these entities’ existence were as many and varied as the children who used them.  The fact that classmates didn’t believe carried little weight, at least at first.  Many children would believe in Santa and not the Easter Bunny, or vice versa.  And so, islands of faith persisted in a sea of skepticism, for years longer than one would normally predict.

My own “journey of faith” regarding the Holiday Bringers of Things to Children (HBTC) took an unusual turn.  I was seeing a school counselor in early elementary school.  I didn’t know exactly why back then, and, even now, I know only what my parents told me later.  I think they were trying to see why someone who seemed so bright (their assessment, not mine) had so much trouble getting simple assignments done.  This was an era when ADD was called “won’t pay attention”, ADHD was called “won’t behave in class”, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was called “lazy”, and Tourette Syndrome was called “he can’t help it.”

So I’m not sure they knew what to make of me.  I have some ideas, but they’re beyond the scope of this piece.  When I was five years old and in kindergarten, I told the counselor about monsters and giants as if they were real.  The counselor told me that they were make-believe.  There’s no harm there.  I’d probably been told already by both my parents and my teacher that giants and monsters were make-believe.

But the counselor (whose name is withheld for reasons related to my not remembering it) apparently felt a need to ground me in reality.  The next year, when I was six, he told me that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren’t real.  His explanation of how parents create the illusion seemed pretty compelling.  There were, after all, always nagging questions, like how Santa could get all around the world in one night.  I remember thinking, already at that tender age, that The Night Before Christmas, where Santa paused in the house to chuckle and smoke his pipe, could not possibly be accurate.  He’d have to be much faster.

All that speculation instantly became moot.  The nagging questions ceased to nag, and, even before I asked my parents about it, I was pretty sure he was right.  I did ask them, and, after having a short, quiet, and somewhat sad discussion, they came clean.  I was at least a couple of years ahead of most of my classmates in realizing the truth as my counselor presented it.

Now, David never had a counselor tell him anything about Santa or the Easter Bunny.  But, in the last years of his faith in HBTC, he came to me with some pretty compelling evidence against them.  He had more than just classmates who no longer believed.  He had friends whose parents had freely admitted their part in the ruse.  Some had caught their parents in the act of wrapping a present from Santa, or hiding an Easter egg.  But compelling evidence isn’t always conclusive evidence.

Just because someone pretends to be Santa, I reasoned with him, doesn’t mean Santa doesn’t exist.  The old defense about multiple department store Santas being Santa’s helpers worked here, too.  Even someone who doesn’t believe Santa is coming to their house can be Santa’s helper.  Further, Santa may even skip these houses to save time.  After all, Santa’s work is still being done.  Since no one has ever seen Santa, I continued, Santa may not even be a visible person.  He may even work entirely through helpers; but many people have no idea who their “Santa’s helpers” are.

When the presents arrived under the tree, David’s doubts seemed to evaporate.  He referred to Santa as a real person, a real bringer of gifts.  I don’t know how much of that was pretense.  It didn’t really matter.

But, when he found leftover candy and bags in my closet after Easter one year, it was all over. There was no keeping the illusion alive.  Even if I could have removed that straw from the camel’s back, it would still have remained broken.  And so a new era of cooperation began, and he became one of Santa’s helpers, too.

Despite being one of Santa’s helpers, he doesn’t really believe in the mission.  It’s fun for him, and he sometimes gets to eat cookies.  But there’s more to it, and I hope he comes to see it someday.  I didn’t just play a trick.  I didn’t just tell lies.  I made magic happen.  I lit up faces.  Yet that magic didn’t come from me, or I could make it happen all the time.  It came from the story of Santa.

Now, I’m sure the origins of that story are well documented, as much as the known body of historical literature allows — but I don’t think that matters.  If enough people act as if something is real, it becomes real.  If Santa isn’t real, what’s making all those parents wrap all those extra presents?  Why are they adding to their holiday stress to do such a thing?  Are they really doing all that work because they believe Santa doesn’t exist, or are they doing it because they believe Santa’s work must be done, and they’re not sure if Santa will do it himself?  Most of them probably even believe that Santa won’t do it himself.  But, once again, whose work are they doing?

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are part of our culture.  They influence how we act, and they allow children, for one or two days a year, to give free reign to avarice, to bless it and call it their own.  Greed has been, and sometimes still is, an essential survival skill.  It’s a common trait, to varying degrees, in everyone, and it’s not absent in the presence of altruism, any more than fear is absent in the presence of courage.  Santa may be an idea, a spirit of the season, an invention of our culture; but I believe in him anyway.  I believe I’ve been doing his work on some level since I was six years old, and possibly even longer.

After all this, I STILL have no proof that the original Santa doesn’t visit some houses.  I took an Arctic route when flying to China to get my daughter Dani, and I never saw any workshop.  But maybe I missed it by a hundred miles or so.  Actually, I think it’s been established that there’s no workshop at the geographic North Pole, the magnetic North Pole, or anyplace nearby or in between.  Of course, that’s just details.  He could be headquartered anywhere — or, as I’m more likely to believe, everywhere.

I don’t need to invoke fairies, like the famous Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus editorial reply did in the 1800s.  I don’t need any supernatural part of the invisible world.  All I need are thoughts, feelings, and stories, both shared and private — memes that motivate.  It takes a powerful concept to motivate people who say they don’t even believe in it.  What could be more real than that?

So, to any children who came across this little posting and actually read all the way through it, I say this: Santa is real.  You can believe it now, and  you can keep believing it as long as you want to.  If I don’t believe in the same Santa you do, that’s fine.  I don’t think any two people believe in the same Santa.  All the details are just guesses.  Have a very Merry Christmas!

If you have the same name as a nationally-recognized thinktank’s world famous project, I defy you not to think it’s cool.  So, I must confess that I think that the NCSE’s Project Steve is wicked cool.  First, and most important, it has my name on it!

But I also agree with its goals.  Science is a tool for human thought, carefully crafted over the centuries to limit the effects of individual bias.  Whether or not it has universal applicability is a separate question.  If science cannot give us all the answers, it still is not served by having ideological views imposed on it.

I’ll step off the soap box.  The NCSE make the case for themselves quite well without my help.  Project Steve compiles a list of scientists, artificially limited by requiring them to be named Steve, who believe that no form of creationism should be taught as science in our nation’s public schools.

Because the Steves have to be scientists, generally with PhD credentials, I do not, alas, qualify to have my name added to their list.  But I can buy the T-shirt if I want.  They’re working on a new one even as I write this.  They also have FAQs, a press release, and even a Steve Song.  They sing my name over and over again!  Once again, how could I not think this is cool?

 Will this tongue-in-cheek project change any minds?  I really don’t know — but I’ll be rooting for my little namesake project all the same.

Read your daily Dilbert without opening a newspaper.  Put together by United Media, the people who bring you Comics.Com, Dilbert.Com has personal touches by Dilbert author Scott Adams, not least of which is the Dilbert Blog.

The Dilbert Blog is a nearly-daily sampling of Scott Adams’s writing, more similar to the non-cartoon text in his books than to the cartoons themselves.  He allows himself more artistic freedom than his comics permit, and the results are many and varied.  You can get analyses of political thought (though he rarely admits writing anything that actually is political), philosophical explorations about the nature of life and thought, and the occasional post entirely centered around penis jokes.  If you don’t like one day’s post, wait until the next one.  You may not like it any better, but it will be different.

Accomplished Las Vegas musician Dan Trinter enters the world of Flash animation with his wickedly humorous piece, Naughty Noel.  The graphics and animation are as tongue-in-cheek as the lyrics, but pay attention to the creativity, especially in the accompanying music.  View it on YouTube here.

 A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is not for everyone.  If you need a likable protagonist, or you need your less likable characters to get what’s coming to them, this book will frustrate you to no end.

The very first paragraph of the book may turn your stomach, describing Ignatius J. Reilly, our decidedly unlikable protagonist, in obnoxiously distasteful detail.  But, as I got to know Ignatius, he grew on me.  The way he used language, circumstance, and his fellow humans was so outrageous, it could not help but make a darkly mischievous part of me smile.

Along with the outrageous Mr. Reilly, the author presents a cast of characters, some off-center in their own right, some just ordinary, off-the-street types, but all credible, showing a deep understanding of humanity in their construction.  These characters are swept up in a plot beyond their own control or design, with preposterous coincidences tying disparate story elements together in ways I found highly entertaining.

People tend to love this book or hate it. I love it.

Click here to buy this book from Amazon.com.

While this entry has potential copyright issues, I’m giving Scott Adams (and, through him, United Media) every opportunity to respond.  I’m guessing they won’t mind.  Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by Möbius strips — one-sided surfaces.  At any one point, the figure seems to have two sides, yet you can move your finger along the strip, and end up on the “other” side without lifting your finger from the strip.

 You can also cut along the middle of the strip, and cut it in half — but it will still be a single strip.  There are countless more tricks, and I may even write more about them someday.  But that is not the point of this entry.  Because Möbius strips have been a part of my mental landscape for so long, I couldn’t help but put together the following “sculpture” when I saw Friday’s Dilbert strip.

Click on the image above to see the full-sized and more readable version.

There’s something about the effect of the photo (and the real-life “sculpture”) that, to me, fits the spirit of the strip.  You can view it from almost any angle, and see all three panels.  You detect endless repetition, without any net progress or suggestion of a deeper purpose.

Such is Wally’s career.  We all hope our careers (or at least our lives) have more purpose.  But maybe the best we can do is create a better illusion.