Gate Crashers

I have mixed feelings about this one.

It was billed as funny science fiction. It has funny moments and it has warmth and wit, but I wouldn't call it a comedy.

It has frequently been compared to Hitchhiker (including by the author); however, I don't see that at all.

It was written more than a decade ago and published two years ago. I suspect the author's worldview has shifted dramatically in that time. Some of the book seemed to reflect the outlook I see in his twitter feed, but it carries the ghost of what I suspect were his earlier views.

There were a lot mixed messages and I'm not sure what the book's aim was.

I enjoyed the writing style and the character development. I think I'd like to read something Mr Tomlinson has written more show more recently as I suspect this isn't the best he has to offer. show less

“The Quantum Entanglement Radio is one of the great accomplishments of mankind, although it had so far failed to supplant sliced bread for the top spot in popular colloquialism. The QER operated through the principle of quantum entanglement. At the core of each set of devices sat a pair of neutrons. Once entangled, these neutrons precisely imitated each other’s behavior instantly and over any distance as if by magic - which, if you’re honest, is all quantum mechanics is, minus the hats, rabbits, and bisected lovely assistants, but only because these things don’t exist at subatomic scales. The rest of the device was comprised of an impossibly small gravitational manipulator that controlled the spin directions and speed of the show more particle, and very sensitive Heisenberg detectors to record the reply. These functioned by surreptitiously observing the entangled particle from behind a nanoscale newspaper and dark sunglasses, so as not to arouse suspicion.”

In “Gate Crashers” by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Review from my pedant doppelgänger in a parallel universe:

““Naïve realism” and “good old commonsense” of causality based world outlook (the “view of understanding” for Hegel) on which the edifice of physics was built; now lies in ruins after the recognition of “biological evolution” and the “quantum phenomena” in Nature. Thus physics (like everything else in the world) through its own phenomenal developments has reached the inexorable nodal point, where what was true and certain now proves to be false and uncertain and vice versa. This is palpable in the despair and outrage of physicists like Einstein and philosophers like Bridgeman:

In Einstein‘s own words: “Many physicists maintain - and there are weighty arguments in their favour – that in the face of these facts (quantum dynamical, F.H.), not merely the differential law, but the law of causation itself - hitherto the ultimate basic postulate of all natural science – has collapsed”. A. Einstein, “Essays in Science”, p. 38-39 (1934)

The American mathematician and philosopher P.W. Bridgman laments in despair that the quantum principle means: “nothing neither more nor less than that the law of cause and effect must be given up, the world is not a world of reason, understandable by the intellect of man”. Quoted in C. Suplee Ed., “Physics in the 20th Century”, N.H. Adams Inc. N.Y., p. 88 (1999).

So, what is to be done? Should physics remain dazed and perplexed and try to rebuild the shattered edifice following the same principles of causality and the old notions of rationalism? This is impossible, as Immanuel Kant found out in philosophy (and long before natural science) that objective reality is a mess of unknowable things-in-themselves, full of logical contradictions, a horrible mixture of opposites – good and bad, true and false etc. that lies in the very unit of a thing or a process! The only alternative to deal with reality for philosophy, Kant posited is to take recourse to the thought world and subjective idealism of his logical categories and impose these on the messy objective reality to bring order! At the advent of these new developments in natural science, Einstein, following Kant, took recourse to the same thought world of mathematical idealism to comprehend objective reality.

The fact of the matter is that Kant was absolutely right about logical contradictions in objective reality! This IS the real characteristics of objective reality and one must accept it as such to be able to comprehend it. Contradictions are the very reason there are self-induced change, evolution, developments etc. in Nature, Life, Society and Thought. This also leads to the fact that things and processes in the world are mediated not by “cause and effect” of the old world outlook that conventional physics and philosophy relied on, but through the dialectical contradiction of “chance and necessity” – a fact that the quantum phenomena so dramatically demonstrates.

The quantum phenomena show that at micro-level Nature is inherently in-deterministic and is mediated by chance, but with an iron necessity that is inherent in chance itself! The uncertainty principle quantitatively formulated by Heisenberg in not due to uncertainty in measurement alone or a mere statistical problem only, as is commonly assumed; but Nature at micro-level is inherently uncertain and follows the laws of dialectics. Attempts by modern official physics to subjugate the “evil quanta” within the norms of the old world outlook through the fantasy of “realism” of “multiverse” or through the “certainty” of idealism, positivism, solipsism etc. will lead physics nowhere.

Only a dialectical synthesis from this nodal point, can rescue physics from the lowest point that Einsteinian mathematical idealism has led it to; the same way the dialectics of Hegel rescued philosophy from its own lowest point it reached with Kantian subjective idealism. The recognition of the fact that innumerable contradictions of chance and necessity at the micro-level are resolved and average-out at macro-level to give net results that is approximated by our good old commonsense and causality; is the kernel of the dialectical world view. To understand Nature and Life, science has to follow and understand the specific and deciding contradictions at each nodal point and how these contradictions are resolved through discrete qualitative leaps, leading to change, evolution, development etc. Causality as it is practised in modern physics will either lead it to a Kantian unknowable mess of reality or to the mystery of a “first cause”; which in fact is our well known God of theology!

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Space-Time-Whence-Cometh-Matter/dp/984041884X�...

Someone in this universe waving and screaming at my doppelgänger:

”Sometimes the cream puff for a clodhopper returns home, but a ruffian always can be kind to an accurately saintly bubble! Another debutante plans an escape from a girl the bubble bath related to a ballerina. Unlike so many bonbons who have made their surly marzipan abhorrent to us, toothpicks remain sprightly. An unseemly clock hibernates, and the dahlia reads a magazine; however, a ménage à trois underhandedly negotiates a prenuptial agreement with the ridiculously likeable toothpick!”

http://stupidstuff.org/main/nonsense.htm show less