Robert Lanza’s Quantum Woo
Here we go again – in an article that would make Deepak Chopra proud, Robert Lanza over at the HuffPo has written a
mystery-mongering piece about biocentrism. Lanza asks the question – Why are you here? This is one of those cosmological questions that borders on metaphysics, like why is there something rather than nothing? These are interesting questions, but one needs to tread carefully along a tightrope of logic amid a chasm of philosophy and ideology. Lanza dives right off the cliff into the chasm. He sets up the question:
Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the probability of random physical laws and events leading to this point is less than 1 out of 100,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, equivalent to winning every lottery there ever was.
The lottery reference is appropriate, because Lanza is committing the lottery fallacy. In fact, his entire article is one giant lottery fallacy. This fallacy comes from reasoning backwards about probability and asking the wrong question. If John Smith wins the superball lottery with odds of 100 million to one against, this should not be considered a cosmically unlikely event that requires a special explanation. The wrong question to ask is – what were the odds of John Smith winning? The correct question is – what were the odds of anyone winning (pretty good, it turns out).
Likewise, Lanza is asking the wrong question – what are the odds that we would end up existing here and now with the universe in the state in which we find it? This is as important to us as the odds of winning the lottery are to John Smith, but this is a highly egocentric view of probability. The universe, it turns out, does not care about John Smith’s financial situation, nor our existence. The appropriate question is – what are the odds that anything would exist? It turns out that the odds are 100%, since we exist.
Yet Lanza is trying to spin this logical fallacy into a theory of everything which he calls biocentrism. This is really just a repackaging of the
anthropic principle (so it’s not even original BS). So-called weak anthropic principles states that the universe must have the properties necessary for intelligent life because we exist – in any universe where there is an entity capable of asking the question, the physical laws must be compatible with such an entity. This is ultimately an unremarkable circular argument – and that’s kind of the point. The fact that the laws of the universe allow for our existence is necessary and unremarkable.
The dead are dead
snip
Another tactic that believers resort to, other than pseudohistory, is pseudoscience. This is remarkably popular, especially among the New Agey set, and the usual science that gets mangled is physics. The quantum is usually involved, too. I’m sure he wouldn’t want to be an exception, so when Robert Lanza asks in the Huffington Post (you already know what kind of fluff you’re going to get from the information given just this far), “
Does Death Exist? New Theory Says ‘No’“, you can count on yet more nonsense.
Lanza has respectable credentials as a stem cell biologist, but he’s also the author of one of those all-encompassing, total-explanation-of-the-universe, crackpot theories, which is his, and which belongs entirely to him, called “biocentrism.” We know this because his tag line in the article is “Robert Lanza, MD is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is the author of “Biocentrism,” a book that lays out his theory of everything.” I’ve noticed that leading scientists tend not to have to introduce themselves by declaring that they are a leading scientist, but that’s another issue.
Lanza recently lost a sister in an accident, and most of his article seems to be a kind of emotional denial, that this tragedy cannot have happened and his sister really is alive and well somewhere. I feel for him — I’ve also lost a sister, and wish I could see her again — but this is not a reason to believe death doesn’t happen. I’ve stubbed my toe and wished with some urgency that it hadn’t happened, but the universe is never obliging about erasing my mistakes.
But then Lanza goes on to babble about quantum physics and many-worlds theory.
Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling – the ‘Who am I?’- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn’t go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, it’s still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
I have heard that first argument so many times, and it is facile and dishonest. We are not just “energy”. We are a pattern of energy and matter, a very specific and precise arrangement of molecules in movement. That can be destroyed. When you’ve built a pretty sand castle and the tide comes in and washes it away, the grains of sand are still all there, but what you’ve lost is the arrangement that you worked to generate, and which you appreciated. Reducing a complex functional order to nothing but the constituent parts is an insult to the work. If I were to walk into the Louvre and set fire to the Mona Lisa, and afterwards take a drive down to Chartres and blow up the cathedral, would anyone defend my actions by saying, “well, science says matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, therefore, Rabid Myers did no harm, and we’ll all just enjoy viewing the ashes and rubble from now on”? No. That’s crazy talk.
Dr. Robert Lanza and “biocentrism”: Time to get out the paper bag again
I don’t know if I need to get out the infamous paper bag or–even worse–the Doctor Doom mask out yet. As you may recall (if you are a long time reader, anyway) is that the mind-numbing stupidity of certain MDs has driven me to want to hide my face in utter shame at the embarrassment caused by my fellow physicians. Most frequently, it has been everyone’s not-so-favorite creationist neurosurgeon with dualist tendencies, Dr. Michael Egnor. So bad was he that I compared him one time to Deepak Chopra.
Damned if P.Z. hasn’t led me to another
highly embarrassing physician woo-meister. Worse, it’s not just a physician woo-meister, but apparently a reasonably well-respected physician-scientist; that is, when he isn’t laying down swaths of napalm-grade burning stupid woo that easily rivals that of Deepak Chopra. So break out the Doctor Doom mask yet again, it’s time to take a look at just how much nonsense a physician can lay down.
Guess where he is. That’s right, his name is Dr. Robert Lanza, and he’s got a blogging gig at–where else?–The Huffington Post. The first post of his that got my attention is entitled What Happens When You Die? Evidence Suggests Time Simply Reboots.
I take that back. Dr. Lanza might be able to out-woo the master himself. At least it’s a diversion. I’ve been a bit too serious lately.
Woo.
Sid
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm now thinking it has been some years since I first read about him. 
