We Should Always Follow The Facts, Rather Than What “People Think” About The Facts
To accept “spooky action at a distance” is to live in an interpretive fantasy that is broken. Einstein was right when his mind revolted at the idea.
To live closer to the truth is to accept “action at a spooky distance,” because this perspective accurately designates the feeble part of that statement — i.e., it is “distance,” which is a conceptual interpretation, that has been broken by the facts. The action of entanglement is the fact. It is undeniable, and even though we have no idea how entangled particles can be in instantaneous communication over astronomical distances, we can still build technology upon the facts — in this case, the fact of entanglement, as recent ‘quantum computing’ research has shown. We don’t know what entanglement actually is, but we can learn how to harness it for our practical needs.
By dint of habit, we accept the interpretive structure we humans today have built up for ourselves — even when facts arise that should otherwise be taken as indications that something is amiss in our understanding. But we much prefer science fiction today, than science fact…
It’s one thing when a fact seems to point up a shortcoming in the ideas we have, it’s completely another when an impossible fact arises — impossible within the understanding we have developed, because reality has shown us it is otherwise than that.
In my own case, I tried for the better part of three decades to integrate my meditational imperiences and insights into the understanding that “everybody knows is true,” and failed, just as Einstein failed trying to make sense of everyday experience by putting micro-scale events together. He despaired of ever finding the truth until he changed his perspective and worked from everyday experience instead. I finally realized the same lesson, and I stopped trying to integrate the fruits of my meditation practice into today’s common understanding, and instead turned the problem around and tried working everyday facts into my meditational insights. My understanding today is still a creative attempt at getting closer to the truth — all such understandings, and the doctrines and ideologies that accrete onto them, are creative attempts at getting closer to the truth — but I no longer despair of having a cohesive and coherent understanding.
We should always follow the facts, rather than what “people think” about the facts.
Not only can particles be entangled together and instantly “communicate” over astronomical “distances,” it is a proven fact that light “travels” at the same speed — regardless of the “speed” of an observer traveling towards the light, or away from it. These break the conceptual idea called “distance.”
So, rather than distance, perhaps we are dealing with a complexity of entanglement. Two photons that once “touched,” have a very simple and direct entanglement. You and I are in a much more complex ordering — and the universe is a plexus of entanglement of almost infinite complexity. Thus, to go from ‘here’ to ‘there’ in a particular way, means following along a coherent network of entanglement, much as we advert our attention from one thing to another, or work out our family tree connections to “distant” relatives.
So, “action at a spooky distance!”
It is a mistake to infer from my criticisms of conceptual understandings that I do not accept the facts those understandings are attempting to explain. I just see things differently today, then perhaps you and others do, but certainly different from an early version of myself once saw things.
You see, it’s not entanglement, or the speed of light that doesn’t take the motion of anything into account that must be explained — because they are just facts. What must be explained is why our idea of distance is wrong.
