Earlier this summer I heard a piece on NPR - generally known for fine science reportage -- that suggested two people in love may be in a state of macroscopic quantum entanglement. Through this entanglement, the positive sentiment that one person evinces can bring about measurable physiological changes in the other.
What a charming idea! . . . But no.
Not to skew the conversation, but I wanted to get my cards on the table right off. In the studies referred to, a woman sits inside a closed room while her partner sits in another. When the partner sees her picture flash on a screen he thinks loving thoughts. Within two seconds of that emotive state, the test subject in the room experiences changes in such physical parameters as blood pressure, skin conductivity and perspiration. QED.
Well . . . I doubt it. But even if I'm wrong, there are various reasons a QM interpretation can't be right. The first that comes to mind is that "entanglement" is a fragile condition that only applies to microscopic systems that have yet to decohere (although . . .). Enormous objects like people sitting in rooms can't (thus far) be described in quantum terms. To say it another way, the woman sitting in the chair is sending all kinds of data about her state, all the time. Her various information-bearing collisions with the surroundings, from the simple thermal background the scoop of spacetime she is distorting to the very fact that an experimenter is watching, immediately collapse whatever wavefunctions we might choose to describe her state. It's not even clear that a conscious system *could* experience superposition, even if you could super-isolate all its atoms it in some way without immediately killing it.
Granted, some credible thinkers take the quantum approach to consciousness seriously, and maybe there's something in what brains do that will be explained by what waves do. But this looks like a classic (although not classical, ha-ha) instance of folks using terms like "entangled" and "uncertainty" and "spooky action" in ways that don't apply. Readers of this blog know that's a pet peeve . . .
From the article:
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"So how do you explain this? No one really knows. But Radin and a few others think that a theory known as "quantum entanglement" may offer some clues.
Here's how it works. Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level.
But Radin wonders: Could people in close relationships -- couples, siblings, parent and child -- also be "entangled"? Not just emotionally, and psychologically -- but also physically?
'If it is true that entanglement actually persists, by means of which we don't understand," he says, "if they are physically entangled, you should be able to separate them, poke one, and see the other one flinch.'"
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As I said, it's an appealing idea. Still, entanglement has nothing to do with positive affect, other than a certain metaphorical suggestiveness in the name. If Schroedinger had named it 'quantum clinginess' or 'quantum codependency' we probably wouldn't confuse it with love.
And there are good reasons entanglement has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level (actually the atomic level), though researchers are producing larger and larger entangled states all the time. Still, the fact that this story ran on NPR itched at me. (Full disclosure: I write from time to time for A Moment of Science, a popular science radio show that runs on various NPR-affiliate stations.) And the article makes strong claims:
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"After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results."
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Thirty-six double blind studies showed this happening? Out of curiosity I contacted Washington but couldn't find out who was doing this work; chime in if you have.
To be sure, the All Things Considered article includes a splash from Columbia University's Richard Sloan:
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"This idea -- that we may be connected at some molecular level -- echoes the words of mystics down the ages. And it appeals to some scientists.
But it infuriates others -- like Columbia University's Sloan. The underlying idea is wrong, he says. Entanglement just doesn't work this way.
"'Physicists are very clear that the relationship is purely correlational and not causal," Sloan says. "There is nothing causal about quantum entanglement. It's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.'"
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Amen. More importantly, though, this sort of claim obscures the fact that there really is something philosophically deep about quantum entanglement. It's a real phenomenon, as we've known since the first half of the last century. Could we use it build unbreakable quantum cryptography in *this* century? Infinitely fast processors? Quantum teleporters?
And then come the Foundational questions: Does quantum entanglement make possible superluminal information transfer--which means, from some inertial frames, sending messages backward in time? Does it suggest that the separation between particles--even their vast separation--is only apparent? If so, does *that* suggest that space itself is, in some sense, illusory?
Whatever your feeling about nonlocality, hidden variables and the like, none of those possibilities is off the table right now. And that's plenty.
