The Separation of Fact and Meaning

Meaning and Purpose:
Jungian Archetypes
The Most Important Question
Fact and Meaning

One of the most natural questions to ask is, “What is the meaning of life?” Why are we here on this planet, existing as living beings with the abilities to have conscious experiences, learn about the Universe, and make choices about how to act in the world? What is the purpose of our existence? This question is near and dear to us because we are built to focus our lives around a purpose, and we have a primal craving for that purpose to be as worthwhile as possible.

When we speak of “meaning,” there are three possible definitions. The first has to do with communication. When one person wants to get an idea from their head to someone else’s, they use words or non-verbal signals, and we say that these signals carry meaning. I have imbued every sentence on this blog with this kind of meaning, with the hope that you will receive it when you read it. The second kind of meaning is the wake of physical signs that are left after an event or series of events. If you walk into a room and see balloons and streamers in disarray, tablecloths with stains, and paper plates with crumbs, it means there has just been a birthday party in this room, and no one has cleaned it up yet. This kind of meaning is what detectives look for at crime scenes, and what scientists look for in experiments and observatories.

The meaning we are interested in for this discussion is the third kind, the sense of meaning, which we get when we feel our choices and efforts are in line with a worthwhile purpose. At the center of our natures, what we humans want to do more than anything else is that which is meaningful. That’s why I sacrifice time that could have been spent playing video games to write blog posts and stories. Writing itself doesn’t give me much pleasure. In fact, coming up with the next words can be uncomfortable, or even painful if I really push myself. But when I get something finished and ready to present to the world, the sense of meaning it gives me is worth every moment that could have been spent on things that would have given me immediate gratification.

We humans have sought purpose and meaning from outside of ourselves for as long as we have been around. We have looked to the Earth, the Universe, and the metaphysical nature of Reality, in the hope that we can find some principle or message woven into the fabric of existence that will give us a purpose that is so noble that we will perpetually be driven toward it and our lives will be constantly awash in meaning. However, my thoughts on the matter have led me to conclude that when we do this, we are looking in the wrong place. Meaning of the third kind comes from acting in accordance to purposes that resonate with our own instinctual natures, and are not determined in any way by the facts of our environment or our world.

To support this claim, I argue that the sense of meaning is different from the first two kinds of meaning, both of which depend on external facts. First, we observe that simply acting as you are told does not necessarily give us a sense of meaning, whether the person we follow is a parent, a ruler, or even a God. You might say that if God writes our natures into us so that we find following his instructions to be meaningful, then the meaning of life is found in God’s commands, but this is not correct. Even in such a scenario, our sense of meaning still comes from our actions lining up with the purpose found within our nature, not from the content of God’s commands.

As for the second kind of meaning, following trails of evidence can teach us facts about the world, past events, or future possibilities, but we can always ask, “so what?” At the smallest level, the building block particles of reality behave somewhat like particles and somewhat like waves. So what? Gravity is the bending of space and time. So what? Dumping waste chemicals into rivers can kill fish and make people sick. So what? Facts by themselves don’t give us purpose, they only show us how effective our actions will be at furthering our purposes. Therefore our purpose-oriented sense of meaning cannot be the same as the second definition of “meaning.”

From this point on, when I use the word “meaning,” it is understood to be the third definition, the sense of meaning that comes from aligning one’s actions with one’s instinctually inspired purposes.

Some people say the Universe has no meaning. This is not correct; in fact, as they say, it is not even wrong. Meaning and fact are completely separate realms of existence, so trying to talk about the meaning of something that can only be described in factual terms is nonsense. Meaning exists within us, when the messages we hear resonate with us, giving us energy and driving us toward a noble purpose. This is what we mean when we talk about having a meaningful life.

The separation of fact and meaning leads to a very unfortunate dilemma regarding a very important word: truth. Most people take for granted that if something is true, it is both factual and meaningful. But we have just shown that fact and meaning are uncoupled, independent of one another, so there is no guarantee that what is factual will also be meaningful, or that what is meaningful will also be factual.

In the face of this dilemma, some people use “truth” to describe that which is factual, and not necessarily meaningful. Many scientists and science-enthusiasts hold this view. The problem with this is that “truth” has a feeling to it, a ring of purity. Truth is supposed to be a good thing, supposed to set you free. In a fact-only view of truth, there are many things that are true, but knowing them would only bring suffering.

Others use “truth” to mean that which is meaningful, and not necessarily factual. Professor Jordan Peterson, whom I look up to as a role model in many ways, is one of them. The problem with this view is that it can be used as an excuse to declare things to be true without much justification. When two people with sizable followings declare contradictory “truths” in this manner, it can create conflict, which, in the more extreme cases, can become violent.

Others simply refuse to separate fact and meaning. This leads to problems, because they prioritize intuition over evidence, and it can lead to rejecting important, well-supported facts, like that humans are influencing the Earth’s climate, and that we are part of the same tree of Evolution as all other living things on Earth. What these people fail to realize is that these facts do not dictate what our purpose should be, rather they inform us how best to live in accordance with our purpose. In denying well-supported facts, they sabotage their own purpose, making it harder for them and those around them to live meaningfully.

Still others decide to throw out the word altogether, claiming there is no truth, which, as you may imagine, does not sit well with anyone who holds a different view. My own tongue strains with derision toward these people, so I will decline to comment further about this view today.

My own way of dealing with the fact-meaning gap is to simply say there are two kinds of truth, that which is factual and that which is meaningful. We can call these literal truth and metaphorical truth. “Most snakes have fangs” is a literal truth, whereas “we are filled with snakes” is a metaphorical truth, signifying the side of human nature that runs counter to our nobler purposes. If we understand that there are two kinds of truth, it is not very hard to figure out from the context which is which.

There is a good chance that you do not like the conclusion that fact and meaning are separate. I know I don’t. Deep inside of ourselves, we want facts to be meaningful. After all, one of the most powerful ways to show meaning is by telling stories, which come in the form of a bunch of fact-like statements. But as any good storyteller knows, there is a reason why scientific papers are boring, but science fiction novels are gripping, even if they explain the same facts. That reason is because well-written stories tickle our senses of beauty, empathy, and archetypal resonance. We wish the same thing were true for reality, but we do not have to look very hard to see that Reality is not like stories. Tragedy strikes with no bright side. Patterns seem to appear and lead us nowhere. Ultimately Reality behaves exactly as we would expect if it were governed by clockwork mechanics and probability, not by human archetypes.

Meaning exists. It is not found in the facts of science, but in our own actions. As living beings, we are driven to do things, to devote our lives to projects and responsibility. Some life projects are extremely meaningful, others less so. What determines this is not the nature of the Universe, or how we have come to be as we are, but how well our actions resonate with our internal unconscious drives. The more our actions and drives are in harmony, the nobler we perceive our purpose to be. On the other hand, we find ourselves in a world made of facts, which put conditions and constraints on how we can go about our purposes. Meaning and fact are separate, but they are both important. Our sense of meaning points us toward purposes worth pursuing, and facts tell us how best to pursue our purposes.

Resolutions of Truth

In his Ted Talk, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman talks about how he and his associates did many simulation experiments where they created a variety of virtual worlds and creatures to inhabit them, and ran them forward using Evolutionary algorithms. They found that, with natural selection, the trait of seeing the world as it was went extinct, and fitness won out every time. Hoffman suggests that we see our world like a computer desktop, an interface full of icons that help us interact with the world, but are completely different from the objective parts of reality they represent.

Life evolves to see the world in ways that are useful, not in ways that are true.

We already know that the Universe is different from how we see it. The Earth looks flat, but it is really more like a sphere. Solid objects seem like continuous matter, but really they are made of atoms, which are mostly empty space. Planets seem to follow Newton’s idea of gravity as a force, but as Einstein discovered, objects in space really take as close to a straight path as possible in curved space-time. Hoffman’s idea, however, is more like what I discussed in Representational Realism, where reality-in-itself is fundamentally different from anything we can imagine, because the act of constructing a picture in our minds is automatically at least one step removed from reality itself.

In their public conversation, Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society and professor of psychology Jordan Peterson discussed Hoffman’s interpretation of an icon-based perception of the world. They disagreed slightly with his interpretation, because our perceptions and mental pictures inform us to some degree of what will happen when we interact with them. Thus, it is not correct to say that the icons we see are nothing like reality, but they are versions of the truth at a low-resolution.

This fits with my own experience, and I presume the experiences of most people as they progress through life. In our quest for nobler purpose and deeper truth, we keep finding that the truth as we see it is not entirely correct, and that some nuance at the edges of it speak of something more complex. We continually find ourselves looking closer at things we thought we understood, only to find new insights about them that cause them to make even more sense and explain things more thoroughly.

As reality pertains to the human experience, the lowest resolution is one of stories. We see how the patterns in the world and our lives line up with the archetypes buried in our unconscious minds—or how they deviate in tragic or amusing ways. At a slightly higher resolution, the world is made of agents of choice,* people with free will who craft the future through effort and action. At a higher resolution, we find deterministic biology and physics, with organs, neurons, and fluid systems performing their tasks like clockwork. And at the highest resolution known to humankind, we find probabilistic quantum physics, where two systems that start out exactly the same can end up differently, but with well-defined probabilities for each. That might be the highest resolution, or there might be more layers hidden beneath it. No one knows.

You might wonder, as we come to understand higher and higher resolutions of truth, if there is any reason to look at the world in the lower resolution pictures. Shouldn’t we just go with the clearest, most in-depth understanding of reality, and throw out the naive views we had before? I’ll answer that question with another question: is it better to look at a map of the world, to walk along a beach, or to examine a handful of sand? All of the layers are important, because every time we peer closer, we lose a little of the big picture. What I’m saying is that reality comes in layers. At one level, physics is probabilistic, but at a large enough scale, it behaves deterministically. At one level, human beings have free will and the power to make the future, and at another level we act out our archetypal instincts like actors on a stage. All of these pictures are true, and we find the richest, fullest understanding and engagement with the human experience by taking all of them seriously.

*I am actually not sure what order free will and archetypes come in. It may be that free will is sandwiched between telling stories at a lower resolution, and acting out archetypal instincts at a higher resolution. I left the main text as it is, though, because its lower-resolution explanation gets my point across nicely, while this higher-resolution explanation in the footnote would bog it down.

Why does Anything Exist?

We have talked a lot on this blog about the nature of reality, about how real things exist objectively, and have natures by the mere fact of their existence. But there is a question we have yet to touch upon, and that is why there is a reality in the first place. Why is there a Universe and people and furry critters and chocolate fondues, instead of nothing at all?

When we speak of “nothing,” there are three definitions we have to keep track of. The first refers to the lack of something expected, such as when a parent asks their child, “what are you doing,” and the child replies, “nothing.” We are not interested in this type of nothing today. The second type of nothing people think of is empty space. There is no air or other matter, just the void. Those who are thorough in their thinking will say that it does not count unless no light is passing through it either.

We, however, will go a step even beyond that. To get a true State of Nothing, we must eliminate even time and space. No matter, no energy, no particles, no space, and no time. When we ask, “why does anything exist rather than Nothing?” this is what we mean.

Figure 1: This is an empty rectangle. It is not Nothing.








Figure 2: This is not even an empty rectangle. It is Nothing.

One possible reason reality exists is because there is an eternal God who has the ability to will things into existence. With this kind of God, creatio ex nihilo, or “creation from nothing,” is possible. If you look carefully though, this does not answer the question, but shifts it to “why is there a God rather than nothing?” A common response to this is that God is exempt because he is eternal, whereas the Universe had a beginning. This is unsatisfactory on two accounts, the first being that the claim that something exists eternally does not, in fact, explain why it exists in the first place. Secondly, we don’t know for sure that the Universe is not eternal. Perhaps a parent universe gave birth to our universe, in which case the Greater Universe might have an infinite sequence of past events. There is also the issue that time behaves in ways not well-understood in extreme cases like the big bang, and future scientific discoveries might reveal that concepts like “beginning of time” and “past-eternal” are naive, like the belief that all matter is made of air, water, fire, and earth. Alternatively, it may be that God is ontologically necessary, that is, it is impossible for him not to exist. But the justifications for this claim, the Ontological Arguments, are circular in their logic.

Another common response to the question of why anything exists is to reverse it and ask, “why should we expect there to be Nothing rather than a Universe?” It is a fair question, but not an answer in itself, and we have to be careful not to use it as an excuse to stop thinking about the topic.

Two common philosophical ideas about Nothing are of interest to us. The first, is ex nihilo, nihil fit, which means, “from nothing, nothing comes,” or, “nothing comes from nothing.” It seems like common sense that if nothing exists, nothing can come from it. After all, we don’t see random things popping into existence out of nowhere. However, “out of nowhere” is an example of the first kind of “nothing” that we said at the beginning of the discussion that we were not talking about. It is different from out State of Nothing, because in our everyday experience the Universe is already there, and the Universe is not Nothing. Still, it may not seem a stretch to assume that nothing can come from a State of Nothing either.

The second philosophical idea about Nothing is that in order to be a true State of Nothing, not only must it have no matter or energy or space or time, but no laws of physics may apply to it either. In this view, a law of physics would count as something, and such a law would itself need an explanation as to why it exists.

Let’s take a look at what happens when we try to apply ex nihilo, nihil fit and “no laws of physics may apply” at the same time. As we talked about last time in the Nature of Reality series, a law of physics is a representation, often written as a mathematical equation, of a physical state’s nature. If Nothing’s nature is that nothing comes from it, we can write that as a mathematical equation, dQ = 0, where Q is a vector of all possible quantities that can change, and d represents any change that happens to those quantities. Translated into English, the equation means, “the change in anything that can be changed is zero,” or, “nothing changes.” Thus, if nothing comes from Nothing, then that in itself is a law of physics that applies to a State of Nothing.

What we have just shown is that the claims, “nothing comes from nothing,” and “no laws of physics apply to a State of Nothing” contradict each other. This means that at least one of them is not true. Either at least some law of physics applies to a State of Nothing, or a State of Nothing would be unstable, and instantly create something.

If we accept that at least some law of physics applies to a State of Nothing, we cannot yet answer why anything exists, because that law could easily be “nothing comes from nothing.” However, it could also be something like String Theory or some as yet unknown Theory of Everything, which would predict universes coming into existence. Either way, we run into the question of why that law of physics exists rather than Nothing. The only solution I can think of is that, since mathematics and logic are transcendentally true, there is something buried deep within their uncharted depths that makes the ultimate law of physics ontologically necessary.

On the other hand, if we accept that Nothing has no laws of physics that apply to it, then something must come from it. As there is no limitation on what pops into being from this state, we might expect not only to get the Universe from it, but an infinite number of universes, where everything that is logically possible happens. These universes would be completely separate spacetime continua, so we would never be able to observe them, and it does not make sense to think of them as being in any direction from us, or before our universe or after.

Ultimately, I cannot answer the question of why anything exists rather than Nothing. We can, however, propose some possibilities. Perhaps, emergent from pure logic and mathematics, there is a law of physics which, when acting upon a State of Nothing, causes a universe to be created. Perhaps Nothing is not bound by any law, and so from it all things that are logically and mathematically possible spring forth into existence, each in its own universe. Perhaps there is a middle-man, like a God or a Force or a cosmic automated factory that is brought into eternal being by pure logic, and from which universes are created. Or perhaps the Universe merely exists because it exists, and the State of Nothing is a meaningless construct. Regardless, the Universe does exist, so let’s get out there and make the most of it.

Life in the Universe – Probability and Perspective

Recommended Pre-Reading:
The Fermi Paradox

When we look up at the sky at night from a place without too much light, we can see thousands of stars. Telescopes and centuries of formal astronomy have shown us that there are billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Considering the mind-bogglingly high number of chances for civilizations to arise, and the incomprehensible amount of time that has passed since the big bang, it seems natural to ask why the sky is so silent. Where are all the aliens? This is famously called the Fermi Paradox. But is it actually a paradox? Do we really have good reason to believe there should be aliens everywhere?

Back in the days of Ancient Greece, Aristotle modeled the solar system—or rather the terrestrial system—with the Earth in the center, and the sun, moon, stars, and planets revolving around it in perfect circles. There is something in human nature that makes it easy to believe that the universe is centered around us. Aristotle’s model survived for over a thousand years into the middle ages, until a troublemaker by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus shook the world with the model we all know today, with the sun in the center and the Earth being a planet, just like all the other planets. Since then, the Copernican Principle has been the idea that there is nothing special about us. We don’t live at the center of the Universe, Earth is not a special planet, the sun is not a special star, and so on. We are an ordinary part of the Universe, just like everything else. Taking the Copernican Principle to its conclusion, it seems the cosmos should be positively teeming with civilizations’ phone calls, TV shows, and internet sites.

On the other hand, we must also consider the Anthropic Principle,* which basically says, “we should not be surprised to find ourselves in a place where intelligent life is possible.” For example, if you were to wake up in a room and find a letter which said, “There are a million rooms just like this one, and only one of them is occupied,” would you think to yourself, “what a miracle it is that I find myself in the only room out of a million that is occupied”? Of course not, because the fact that you are there is what makes it occupied. When applied to life in the Universe, the Anthropic Principle shows us that even if the chances of life arising around any particular star are a soul-crushing one in one septillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 0.000000000000000000000001) over 13 billion years, it is completely unsurprising that we find ourselves here on a planet that is perfectly suited for intelligent life. In fact, since we have no reason to believe the entire Universe ends anywhere near the edge of the observable universe, it doesn’t matter how infinitesimally small the odds are, there is really nothing interesting about the fact that we exist.

Taking the Copernican and Anthropic principles together, all we can really conclude is that we are probably normal as far as civilizations go. However, we still can make no reasonable guess as to how many civilizations should exist. There might be millions in our own galaxy that we are just on the brink of finding, or there might be no others in the entire observable universe. There are those who claim life should be everywhere, and those who claim Earth is unique. Who is right? We don’t know. What we do know is that neither has a good enough argument to win the debate, because there just isn’t enough data yet.

Click to view larger.

Speaking of data, we can turn this question into a scientific one with the Drake Equation, which says the number of civilizations in a given volume of space is equal to a bunch of stuff multiplied together. Those variables are the rate of formation of stars in that volume that could potentially host life, the fraction of habitable stars with solar systems, the average number of habitable planets per solar system, the fraction of habitable planets where life begins, and the fraction of planets with life that evolve civilizations. I have taken liberties and condensed some of the variables together to make it easier to explain, but that is the gist of it. We know the first three pretty well. Almost all stars have solar systems, and it is quite common for stars to have rocky or ocean planets in their habitable zones. However, Earth is the only planet we know of that has life, and we don’t know how it got started, so we have no idea what the last two variables are. They could be anything from so small that ours is the only planet in the Universe with even microbial life, to so large that we might stumble upon our neighbors’ interstellar radio network any day now.

Talking about the Fermi Paradox has always bothered me. Not because it is a paradox, but because everyone calls it a paradox and I don’t see why. A paradox requires a valid theoretical prediction that either leads to two apparently contradictory conclusions, or disagrees with observational evidence. But the assumption that life should be everywhere in the Universe is not valid, hence no paradox. Regardless, whether or not we are alone is still one of the deepest, most awe-inspiring questions a human being can ask.

*The Anthropic Principle should not be confused with the Strong Anthropic Principle or the Weak Anthropic Principle, both of which apply the Anthropic Principle to the Universe. The Weak AP assumes there is a multiverse, while the Strong AP assumes there is not.

The Question at the Core of Existence

Meaning and Purpose:
Jungian Archetypes
The Most Important Question
Fact and Meaning

A year ago, the intellectual giants Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson got together on Sam’s podcast to talk about the relationship between fact and morality, and ended up arguing for two hours about the definition of the word “truth.” Sam argued for what Jordan called Newtonian truth, which is the set of beliefs that most closely resemble fact, while Jordan argued for what he called Darwinian truth, which is the set of beliefs that lead to the survival and flourishing of humankind. Though they parted on a friendly note, they left with the frustration of talking in circles without end, and their audience felt the same.

From the promotional poster for their Vancouver event this coming June.

Although I side with Sam over this disagreement of definition, the question begs to be asked, what went wrong between them? How can two men with IQs so far through the roof that you couldn’t see them with binoculars disagree so stubbornly about the mere definition of a single word? I suspect it was not about the word at all, but something deeper and more profound than either of them realized. It surrounds a single question so basic and monumental that the entirety of human existence revolves around it.

For most of my life, I thought the most important question was, “What is true?” After all, it seemed like the quest to understand the universe and how we have come to wake up in it was the highest, most noble goal of being alive. If someone was factually incorrect, it seemed my duty to drum up a logical argument and correct them for Truth’s sake. As recently as August of last year, I wrote a blog post titled “Truth,” in which I treated Truth with a capital T as if it were a god. But being skeptical in nature, I came to doubt that putting Truth at the center of my existence was, in fact, objectively correct. To my great surprise, I discovered that there is another, more fundamental, more profound question than what is true.

One of the observations that led me to this conclusion is that not all truth is equal. For instance, it never does you any good to know exactly how many atoms are in the paint on a particular stop sign. It is obvious that this type of fact is pointless, but I needed to know why. What makes some truths worth knowing, and others a waste of time?

We are here, existing with corporeal bodies on Planet Earth. We have internal drives that cause us to do things, but we also have a strange feature called a will, which lets us choose actions and courses that deviate from the path of least resistance. We can do things that are easy, or things that are hard. We can reach for pleasure or satisfaction, or to meet the needs and desires of others. We can set out to punish wrong, or to forgive. Thus, after the observation of self-existence, the very first question, which guides our lives from beginning to end, and which must be asked anew every waking moment, is “What should we do?”

In answering this, we find a momentary purpose. Some people go out and act on this purpose immediately, but those who are wise look open-mindedly for relevant facts, using the purpose as a guide. For the most part, the better informed we are about the facts relating to our purpose, the better we can fulfill this purpose. It may be that during our pursuit of relevant knowledge, we discover something that makes us reevaluate our purpose, and this new purpose may send us looking for other information, and the cycle continues. We might say that this is the course of intellectual maturity. Looking at this cycle, it is easy to see how one might get these questions, “What is True?” and “What should we do?” mixed up in their order of importance. It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. Which came first? It’s hard to tell.

But it can be resolved by considering an asymmetry between the questions’ results. It is possible to have great and meaningful purpose while being completely wrong about the facts. Just compare people from different religions, who believe different sets of facts that contradict each other, but who have equally purposeful lives. On the flip side, however, things are different. It is completely possible to have deep and thorough knowledge about many things, problems that need solving, injustices that need correcting, and also have a clear understanding of the boundaries of one’s knowledge, and yet do nothing at all. While logically these amount to A and not B, and B and not A, there is no question that from a human perspective there is a world of difference between the two. It is infinitely more fulfilling to be with purpose than with knowledge, and fulfillment is what we spend every bit of energy striving toward.

I think the core of the argument between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson, the disagreement between the lines, is to what degree one must ground themselves in factual reality in order to have a maximally positive purpose-driven life. Sam’s position is that it is essential to have the facts straight, and the more factually correct you are, the nobler a purpose you find, and the better you will be able to successfully live it out. Jordan is more interested in what to do when the facts are beyond one’s reach or comprehension, or when doubting one’s current knowledge might lead to a loss of purpose. Both men have important things to say, and are well worth a respectful listen.

Where Secrets Lie – The Well of Images Part 2

Read Part 2: "Where Secrets Lie," at WritersCafe.org.

After months of hard work, I am pleased to announce "Where Secrets Lie," the second story in The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster, book 1 of The Well of Images.

Accepting Professor Berkeley's offer to take her on as a research assistant, Hope is dismayed when Berkeley forbids her from entering the Realms on her own, because of dangers unknown. Samuel, the only person who could be her delving partner, is completely disinterested. Can Hope find a way to convince him to join her, or will she have to brave the uncertain depths alone, behind her mentor's back?

When starting a new project, it can be easy to get wrapped up in beginner's enthusiasm. Getting through the first challenge is tough, but your excitement gets you through it. The hard part begins with the second challenge. You're already tired, and some of that enthusiasm is draining away. Worse, all of the parts you're most excited about don't happen until later, and you find yourself having to grind through the boring parts of the journey, while trying to make it look interesting enough to keep your readers' attention. With that in mind, getting "Where Secrets Lie" to a high enough quality level to share with the world is one of my most significant writing milestones. Here is to a successful future of the series.

The Well of Images is a fantasy series of short stories, following two college students in their adventures through the Unconscious Realms, full of symbolism and mythological archetypes. If you have not read part 1, or if you are from the future and want to read a later chapter, you can find them in the Finished Stories tab.

The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster:
1. Pandora’s Gate
2. Where Secrets Lie
3. Limits of the World
4. The Fool’s Gift
5. Loki’s Game

If you like "Where Secrets Lie," why not support me on Patreon? It means a lot to me to know that others find what I am passionate about to be meaningful.

Quantum Entanglement

Science has discovered a whole lot of cool and mysterious phenomena, some stranger than fiction. Today, we will dive into one of these, explaining it with accuracy, as well as the background knowledge that someone unfamiliar with it would need in order to understand. Today’s topic is quantum entanglement.

First, what is quantum physics? Put simply, it is the study of the very small. In a microscope, we can see things that are too small to see with our own eyes, like the cells that make up all living things. This is still far too big to be quantum. Zooming waaaaay in, we find organelles, chromosomes, DNA strands, proteins, and finally the basic building blocks of all matter: atoms. Now we have arrived at the level of quantum physics.

“Quantum” means the smallest possible amount. It does not mean consciousness, alternate histories, or time travel, so put those thoughts out of your mind. Quantum physics is the study of things that cannot be divided. For instance, an electron orbiting an atomic nucleus cannot have less than a certain amount of energy, called its ground state. Above that is the first excited state. To gain more energy, an electron must receive enough to make the difference between the ground state and the first excited state. After that, comes the second excited state, and so on. Think of it like climbing a ladder. If you want to get to the next rung, you have to lift your hand all the way up to it. If your hand isn’t high enough, it won’t be able to grab onto anything, and will fall back to where it was before.

Electrons have a little-known property called spin. They don’t actually rotate, because that doesn’t make sense, but they have a magnetic field as if they were rotating. If you measure an electron’s spin, you will either find it to be aligned with your measurement, spin up, or opposite your measurement, spin down. The details get complicated, but the important thing is that there are only two possible spins that an electron can have. Also, it is impossible for an electron to be without spin.

A quantum state is the way that a particle or system of particles is at any given time. An electron’s state includes its energy level, which atom it is a part of, or lack thereof, and its spin. Electrons are a type of particle called fermions, which means that two of them cannot have their total state be exactly the same at the same time. Looking at an atom again, there can only be two electrons in the ground state of energy, since there are only two possible spins. A third electron would have to go in the first excited state, and would not be able to get to the ground state.

There is one more important fact about quantum physics: a particle can be in two or more states at once. An electron can be 50% spin up and 50% spin down. This is called quantum superposition. To be clear, it is not halfway between spin up and spin down; it is both at the same time. If you measure something in quantum superposition, it becomes 100% one of its options, and we say it collapses. This means that if you measure an electron in a 50% spin up, 50% spin down state, it will collapse to be either 100% spin up or 100% spin down.

Think of it like these two sine waves. There cannot be two fermions with the same wave, but they can be antisymmetric like this.

Note: this does not mean consciousness creates reality. What exactly counts as a measurement is still debated, but there is no evidence that it has anything to do with consciousness. There is no counter-evidence either, but the burden of proof is on the person who wants to make the claim that there is a connection.

So if you have two electrons in an atom’s ground state, you would think that one has spin up and the other has spin down. But in reality, one is 50% spin up and 50% spin down, and the other is 50% spin down and 50% spin up. You might ask, how can this be? We just talked about how it is impossible for two electrons to be in the same total state. Well, unlike in everyday life, in quantum physics, order matters. Half-down-half-up is different from half-up-half-down—different in exactly the right was so that the two electrons occupy different total states.

If you take an electron away from its atom, its spin will still be in a superposition of up and down. This means that if you measure it, it will have a 50% chance of collapsing to spin up, and a 50% chance of collapsing to spin down. The same is true for the other electron, 50% for spin up, 50% for spin down. But here’s where the magic happens: When the two electrons are in the atom, they must be opposite from each other. If you take them out of the atom, they must still be opposite from each other. So if you measure one and it collapses to spin up, you immediately know the other one is going to be spin down. The thing is, it does not matter how far apart the electrons are. You could separate them by light years, and measuring one will collapse the spin state for both of them at once. This is quantum entanglement. It can happen for all kinds of particle combinations, and for many properties besides spin. A lot of neat stuff regarding it has been observed in labs, and there are even theoretical technologies based on it like quantum computers.

To reiterate, when two particles are entangled, measuring the entangled property of one will immediately determine what you will get when you measure the entangled property of the other, even if two people do the measuring at faraway places at the same time. Although it seems like instantaneous action faster than the speed of light, there is unfortunately no way to use entangled particles to communicate, so it does not break the speed of light barrier. After all, when you measure your particle, you have no idea if the one on the other end has been measured yet. Too bad for humanity’s galactic civilization 10 million years from now. But even if it doesn’t solve communication light-lag, quantum entanglement has plenty of other uses, and it’s quite a marvelous mystery of the universe.