Tuesday, April 10, 2007

More Bastardization of Quantum Mechanics

Another case of bastardization of quantum mechanics. This time, there is a claim of quantum mechanics being applied in marketing, of all things.

This author claims that by strongly believing in the product will lead to success.


But, I've always suspected that my strong, mental visualization of success played a role as well. From that day forward, I've felt in the pit of my stomach that when I really believe in a product and in the benefits customers will get from it, then my campaigns always have better results.

The key is in really believing -- solidly, calmly and completely. Over-the-top hypey excitement doesn't work. It has to be centered in your stomach and dead honest.


Of course, the "scientific justification" for all this is then associated with quantum mechanics.


I heard about it thanks to Sherpa Reader Steve Kayser at Cincom, who sent me a new book that's *packed* with science from highly reputable labs (think Harvard), all about how the human mind really does affect reality -- including marketing campaign results -- far more than we suspected.

Just published Jan. 7, 2007, the hardcover book, 'The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World' is *not* new-age gobbledegook or get-rich-quick dreck. Instead, it's an educated, well-footnoted, review of the science -- especially quantum physics -- around your thoughts' power over reality.


I'm sorry, but this IS "gobbledegook"! As I've said before, many people who have no foundation in the mathematics of quantum mechanics, WILL think that the phenomena associated with quantum mechanics simply appear out of nowhere, as if they were made up. Thus, if QM can make things up, why can't they? Because QM is so disconnected from our classical understanding of the world, and have no continuous connection with our classical intuition, it does appear as if anything and everything are fair game with QM. This is what happens when the mathematical formulation is completely ignored, which is often the case when one only understands about QM when reading pop science books, or even worse, dubious books such as the one cited.

For some odd reason, none of these people seem to ever mention (or realize) a very obvious fact - QM phenomena are NOT EASILY OBSERVED at the macroscopic, classical scale. This means that extrapolating quantum phenomena into human scale does not normally happen. In fact, there are ZERO experimental evidence that human interaction and activities can be described as a quantum phenomenon. NONE! And last time I checked, marketing is a human interaction and activity. There is also no evidence that simply by "thinking or visualizing" about something, one can affect the outcome of something. No credible evidence have been produced to support such arguments, including all those claims of "prayers" affecting something. No evidence.

So what are they bastardizing out of QM in this? The "collapse" of a wavefunction upon observation. This, it seems, is the whole "scientific" evidence that allows these people to run away with claiming that such a thing is possible. Forget about the fact that in QM, one has to FIRST set up the Hamiltonian of the system, solve (or at least make an intelligent model) of the wavefunction, make sure that the operator that represents the observable is not only Hermitian, but also is the eigen vector to the wavefunction (if one wants a well-defined eigen value upon measurement), etc... etc. In other words, there's a boatload of MATHEMATICS involved in the QM description. It isn't just plucked out of thin air! But these people don't know that, and thus, they have no qualm, nor do they have any issues, with bastardizing it.

So the author of this blog is mistaken. She should be laughed at for invoking such dubious connection between marketing and quantum mechanics. The sad thing here is that, most of the people who read her blog would not know any better and would probably get seduced by the message.

Zz.

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