Escape from Quantopia

Philosophers and theoretical physicists commonly assert that time is illusory. Our sense of a present moment flowing out of the past into an undetermined future is somehow concocted in the brain. Yet time is integral to who we are, not only the fleeting “now” but memory and stable identity and purpose and hope. If becoming is illusion, so is living. Consciousness, by this account, reduces to a byproduct of a neural machine, itself a byproduct of a genetic machine. In a mechanistic world drained of meaning, who cares if capitalism punishes some with trauma and hopelessness while lavishly rewarding those who fixate on personal advancement at the expense of humanity and ecology?

Science is where people are supposed to check their dogmas at the door and make do with evidence and reason. Yet scientists are as vulnerable as anyone to collective self-perpetuating delusion. In my first book (forgive me) Escape from Quantopia: Collective Insanity in Science and Society (Iff Books, 2014), I examine “autodelusion” across a range of disciplines, including denial of time in physics, denial of life in biology and denial of power in economics.

Selected articles:

Diabolical Anderson Valley Advertiser

Special Relativity in Superposition Axiomathes

Evolution as Nature’s Trajectory from Computation to Narration Cosmos and History

Time and the Quantum Measurement Problem International Journal of Quantum Foundations

Information and Explication Cosmos and History

Collapse of the Ontological Gradient Philosophy and Cosmology.

Literally Insane CounterPunch

The Arrow of Time Cosmos and History

Israel as Irony CounterPunch

Memory as a Property of Nature Axiomathes. Available free of charge at philpapers.

The Conservation of Presence Philosophia