The Quantum Mindset

tl;dr:?more explorations of the quantum world

Travels with Sushi in the Land of the Mind?bills itself as a children’s book that makes quantum physics accessible.

An oxymoron if I’ve ever heard that, I figured that reading it would perhaps give me a “beginner’s mind” when it comes to exploring the topic and help me get grounded in the fundamentals.

On that count, it achieved the objective, but I would say that it is far from a children’s book. Perhaps teenager-ready, but that’s a stretch.

The story draws on a lot of Jewish/Kabbalistic themes to make its point, not surprising given that the author also wrote,?From Infinity to Man: The Fundamental Ideas of Kabbalah Within the Framework of Information Theory and Quantum Physics, which I am working my way through as well.

There are many parts of quantum physics that I don’t understand. In fact, one of the most frequently cited comments is Richard Feynman saying, “if you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics.”

But two of them, which are mind-bending is that, at its root, everything is not matter or particle, it’s information. It’s code. Another is that, since all of this code is interconnected, and we as humans are part of the code, it is possible through a directed effort of our own consciousness to “alter the program” that is running and shape our future.

The code represents itself as matter in our minds (whether it’s there or not is a post for another time), because everything represents itself in our mind. There is no world absent of our own minds.

That’s a pretty big idea. There’s no “objective reality” because, like the tree falling in the forest, there’s no one there to observe it.

But what “Travels with Sushi” and the other quantum books I’ve been reading remind me is that, the mere act of observation brings forth one of many possible worlds at that moment and, as a result, with the present being the only “real” thing in our lives, we serve as real-time co-creators, collectively, of the world around us.

When we feel victims of events beyond our control,?Viktor Frankl?was right.

You always control how you respond.

And how you respond has a real (though not always visible or even measurable) impact on the world.

In other words, each and every one of us really matters.