Helgoland

to a system is determined by the transition amplitudes that are functions of events realized with respect to the same system, and not by the amplitudes that are functions of events realized with respect to other systems.

*In the Many Worlds interpretation, every time I observe an event, there is “another me” who observes something different. In Bohm’s theory, only one of the two components of ψ includes me: the other is empty. The relational interpretation disconnects what I observe from what another observer observes: if I am the cat, I am asleep or awake, but this does not prevent interference phenomena, because there is no element of reality actualized with respect to other observers that would limit such interference. The observation I have made is an event relative to me, not to others.


*Two variables have relative information if they can be in fewer states than the product of the number of states that each can be in.


*This is an example of tetralemma, the form of logic used by Nāgārjuna.


*An example of this attitude is Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, a book that obsessively repeats: “It does not seem possible to me.” On a careful reading, I find that it doesn’t offer any convincing argument to sustain its thesis, but rather declares ignorance, incomprehension and, especially, explicit lack of interest in the natural sciences.


*There are, of course, many lines of thought that take inspiration from or are rooted in quantum physics, more or less seriously. I find fascinating, to mention only one example, Karen Barad’s utilization of the ideas of Niels Bohr in Meeting the Universe Halfway (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007) and “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (2003), 801–31.