Notes
‘The two hours of concentrated attention had somehow “fixed” my consciousness in a higher state of awareness,’ he said. ‘There was also an immense feeling of optimism, a conviction that most human problems are due to vagueness, slackness, inattention, and that they are all perfectly easy to overcome with determined effort.’ An intense period of effort and concentration had resulted in Wilson seeing the world in an entirely different way.
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The subatomic world, ultimately, is a fuzzy sea of guesswork and speculation which only commits to becoming clear and definite when observed. The exact nature and timing of that observation can change what that foam of maybes coalesces into. We can’t directly see this fuzzy sea because our attempts to observe it cause it to solidify, just as we can’t read the minds of journalists but only see the finished stories they produce. The quantum world is like the fun your teenage children and their friends have in their room.
You know it exists because you can hear their shrieks and laughter throughout the house, but if you pop your head around the door, it immediately evaporates and leaves only a bunch of silent self-conscious adolescents. A parent cannot see this fun in much the same way that the sun cannot observe a shadow. And yet, it exists.
The story of quantum physics is the story of people failing to find adequate metaphors for reality.
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The most significant factor deciding whether you would eat a doughnut was not willpower or good intentions, but whether everyone else in the office took one. As Pentland discovered, ‘The single biggest factor driving adoption of new behaviours was the behaviour of peers.’
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In alchemy, there is a process known as solve et coagula. Solve means the process of reductionism or analysis; the reducing of a substance to its indivisible components. In the I Ching this is represented by hexagram 23, ‘Splitting Apart.’ This is equivalent to taking a pocket-watch to pieces in order to understand completely how it works, and is necessary before the equally vital second stage of the formula can commence. Coagula is the reassembly of the pocket-watch in a perfected, or at least improved, form. It is the equivalent of holism as opposed to reductionism, or the purposive process of synthesis as opposed to that of analysis.
In cultural terms, the individualism of the twentieth century can be likened to the process of solve taken to its logical end. Everything was isolated, and in isolation it was understood.
The network allows the process of coagula. Things are being reconnected, but with transparency and understanding that we did not have before the process of solve. Things are still liberated enough to be recombined into wild postmodern culture such as Super Mario Bros. But this can be done now with a sense of purpose and intention that was perhaps lacking before.
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