Quantum Philosophy and the Long Tail
The new paradigm coming this fall.
Not too long ago I logged onto Amazon and bought a used copy of “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, oh the irony!
I think Chris has found one large arena where some of the philosophy of Quantum Mechanics is seeping into mainstream culture. First some background on what this means.
As an undergraduate student I was privileged to take a Physics and Philosophy course with Professor Shimon Malin. In this class among other topics, we discussed the differences between the philosophies of the science of determinism, classical mechanics, and the science of probabilities, quantum mechanics. These discussions stayed with me through my Ph.D. work at City College and have been in the back of my mind since starting Shelby.tv.
It turns out that the 19th and 20th Centuries have been dominated by deterministic thought that leads to statements like:
“If X happens then Y will happen”
or
“This OR that can occur.”
Malin, among others, argues that we are in the midst of a paradigm shift leading us to a new mainstream philosophical framework that leads to statements like:
“this AND that can occur”
or
“If X happens then there is some chance that Y happens.”
The classic example of this quantum philosophy is Schrodinger’s Cat in a box (I will leave you to read about that, you really should). The gist:
the cat in the box is both alive AND dead.
As a society we do not think like this YET of course. If we flip a coin it is heads OR tails (classical), not heads AND tails (quantum). But through my reading of The Long Tail I think there are some aspects of society that are finally tipping to a more of a quantum nature than classical.
On page 68 Anderson says,
“Wikipedia, like Google and the collective wisdom of millions of blogs, operates on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics– a matter of likelihood rather than certainty. But our brains aren’t wired to think in terms of statistics and probability.” In this passage Chris points out an interesting facet of the current and forthcoming paradigm shift to probabilistic thought. We as humans might not be truly capable of pure probabilistic thought but our inventions are and they provide us with a user experience that converts what is probabilistic in nature and hard to understand to something our minds can comprehend.
Anderson goes on later in his book on page 182 to say,
“[The] shift from the generic to the specific doesn’t mean the end of the existing power structure… [or] a shift to all amateur, laptop culture. Instead, it’s simply a rebalancing of the equation, an evolution from an ‘Or’ era of hits or niches… to an ‘And’ era… a mix of head and tail, hits and niches, institutions and individuals, professionals and amateurs.”
Chris, you hit it right on the head! People are starting to realize that not just hits are enjoyable entertainment and current web technology is finally allowing us to explore our niches.
See Netflix, Youtube, Instagram, Tumblr for content that is GREAT and HORRIBLE. At the same time.
Finally, on page 183 Anderson goes on to say,
“[We] can now treat culture not as one big blanket, but as the superposition of many interwoven threads each of which is individually addressable and connects different groups of people simultaneously.”
Hear that? Culture is a superposition! Not only is all of this language I have highlighted quantum mechanical in nature but I believe it hints at how our culture is starting to enter the age of probabilistic thought.
If I say I am going to meet you for dinner at 7 PM somewhere, I mean I will be there; not that there is a 70% chance I will be there.
Rather, how information is ingested and digested will take on a probabilistic nature, whether it is a conscious or unconscious move on the part of our society.
This is just my first go at linking these topics and am curious what I hear back from people.
Quantum 4ever!
Thoughts?
- You should read Shimon Malin’s book, Nature Loves to Hide, its pretty darn good!
- “Awareness doesn’t just happen, it has to be developed over time…”
