Quantum Mysticism, a.k.a what if we write about spirituality as if we would report pop-science.
It's been a while since I came across one as flagrant as this article.
Light projects from a light source -> Some of that light bounces off of my fern -> Some of the reflected light reaches my optical nerves -> This triggers a bio-electrical signal in my nervous system -> The patterns of bio-electrical signals are recognized by my brain as my fern.
There is a physical reality of photons and carbon atoms and the medium of space/time in which all of this occurs. Some people get so caught up in what's happening in the nervous system that they discount the very large amount of empirical data we have that demonstrates the existence of a physical reality. Even if we are in a simulation, the simulation seems to be operating this layer we call physical reality.
A tiger too is "just a cloud of atoms" but nevertheless I wouldn't like to share a room with it. The article sounds a bit like a variant of Solipsism.
Like most writing along these lines, it conflates physical reality, with the human conscious perception of physical reality.
This has always been a problem of human psychology, but it seems to be getting worse.
Typographical note: Grey text on a black background is really bad for reading.
It’s been getting worse since the invention of the TV. Each subsequent advance has pushed us further from base reality into a mediated simulacrum. With the dawn of LLMs, people finally seem to be losing their grip on what it means for something to be “real”.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen people deny evidence for something, even evidence that’s right in front of them, just because an AI “said so”.
I can’t totally blame AI, though. People were already losing their grip before Covid. I can’t tell you how many adults I knew who suddenly decided they were witches, or otherkin, or superhero vigilantes.
And that's an attempt to be as generous as possible to the author and their work.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938...
They'll co-opt anything if it raises the IPO price.