The Physics of Consciousness by Evan Harris Walker

If memory serves, this book was a gift from a friend -- someone who knows my scientific, yet strangely spiritual bent, and who thought I would enjoy this stroll through a mysterious garden of quantum events that explain everything and nothing at the same time.

I didn’t.

My experience in reading Walker’s book reminded me of the same frustrating experience I had reading The Mind and the Brain, but Walker seems even less grounded in facts and more willing to let literary interpretation stand in for them.

Let’s jump right in.

Matter is not really both particle and wave, but rather discrete packages of energy that dart from place to place in a frenzy of quantum jumps, that ebb and flow in waves of chance. It is a world in which nothing stays long where it should be but only stays where it could be. The atoms dance and the electrons hop, zipping about from the wildly random thermal commotion and from the blurry speed with which probability waves speckle the tiny electrons around their nuclei, painting fleeting mazes into solid things like you and me -- and her.

And yet none of this is what is there. All of this motion is frozen. All this darting and all these quantum jumps exist only as potentialities. The jumps and darts happen when measurements take place, when we observe, and when things interact with other things. We cannot view the probability waves as arising because real discrete particles of matter in precise locations with exact speeds dart about so fast or so discontinuously that we cannot follow their true paths. They have no path. They have no exact place and no exact momentum. They exist as potentialities at all these places at once: a frozen static frenzy, the silent excitement of nature. Particles do exist, but their states are represented by waves of probabilities. That is the resolution of the wave-particle duality paradox. That is the solution that cloaks still more mysteries than we ever thought might hide there.

This is about as concise a statement of Walker’s thesis as I can find in his book, they key phrases being “Particles do exist, but their states are represented by waves of probabilities,” “The jumps and darts happen when measurements take place, when we observe, and when things interact with other things,” and “Painting fleeting mazes into solid things like you and me.” I’m going to have a lot to say about each one of these ideas.

Her

But before going to those places, the reference to “her” in the above passage warrants some kind of explanation.

And so it goes -- algebra, Latin, English, study hall; Mr. Goodwin grading test papers; jolly debate class; Whitson with an idea to canoe to Mobile in the summer; and walks with Merilyn, always Merilyn. Walking with her between classes; walking her to Homewood for her Les Amies Club meeting; going home with her; phoning her to talk for an hour -- going back again some nights. Reading the poems she had written and, sometimes, something I had written. How much of my time and how much of my life … even then I did not know.

Walker’s book would be about half as long if he didn’t constantly interrupt his argument with vignettes and reminiscences like this of an old teenage flame named Merilyn Ann Zehnder. The book begins and ends with her, as if she, her death, and his memory of her are the keys that he wants us to use to unlock the secrets of the universe.

With all due respect for the deep emotional bond he obviously had with her, Walker’s obsession with ‘always Merilyn’ frankly grows tiresome and tedious. It’s deeply personal for him, but it’s distancing for the reader, a little too much like reading someone’s diary. And what, other than his exploring the inside of his own head, does it have to do with the physics of consciousness, the purported subject of his book? I honestly think it clouds Walker’s judgment, this intense focus on this emotional experience, and it only helps him jump unreasonably to his hypothesis about nonphysical consciousness. Because that’s where his argument will eventually take us. Quantum mechanics proves that consciousness is nonphysical -- and that it is the mechanism that creates physical reality.

Walker’s journey, ultimately, is that of a physicist, who followed his physics down the quantum rabbit hole, hoping to find meaning, only to not just find no meaning, but actually nothing at all. He’s angry about that, because he wants it all to mean something -- he desperately wants his memory of Merilyn to be real -- and so he makes it mean something, something personal, and then something universal; something, ultimately, that only he and his mathematics can see.

Particles do exist, but their states are represented by waves of probabilities

Walker’s book is a great history lesson, detailing and documenting the rise of quantum mechanical thought -- and two of the biggest stars in that galaxy are Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, each of whom had a different way of pinning down the elusive atomic particle.

[Heisenberg’s] formulation does not follow the particle from one location to another but, rather, creates an array of values representing all the possible measurement results that might be found when a measurement is carried out on the object. It is as though the way in which an object gets from one place to another, from one energy to another, or from one orientation to another matters much less than the idea that eventually the object will be observed, and that when it is observed, it may be found in any one of a whole collection of possible states. Physics no longer describes where, but the potentiality of where; not how energetic, but the possibilities for an object’s energy. In Heisenberg’s case, the conception of reality had changed to a picture in which the things that actually are real are the measurement events. Things between observations become a bit fuzzier than they had ever been in physics. In a way, things seen now become “imaginary” potentialities to affect what we will see.

Did you catch what he did there? If you’re not up on your physics, Walker is talking about the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle here, in which it is claimed that you can never definitively know both the velocity and the position of an electron. You can measure its velocity, but then you won’t know where it is. Or you can measure its position, but then you won’t know its speed or direction. Both are artifacts of the math that physicists use to describe (and then define) reality, but that’s not what I want you to notice.

What I want you to notice is that Walker first starts talking about “particles,” then shifts to talking about “objects,” and finally settles on “things.” He is evidently applying the Uncertainty Principle to them all, even though he never bothers to define them. I’m pretty sure than Heisenberg was strictly talking about electrons (which, by the way, are only “particles” in the scientific definition of that word). But Walker, like a lot of other authors I’ve read on this subject, aren’t satisfied with staying so rigorously in the atomic world. They wish to subtly expand the use of these concepts and ideas to the macro world by introducing the fuzziest language possible. Electrons, eggs, elephants -- what’s the difference, right?

So that’s Heisenberg. Now, here’s Schrödinger

Where Heisenberg used matrices -- whole arrays of numbers to represent the positions and motions of an atomic particle -- Schrödinger took de Broglie’s conception of matter as waves and developed an equation that would describe matter exactly in terms of these waves. Where Heisenberg gave us matrix mechanics, Schrödinger gave us wave mechanics. The paradox of wave-particle duality gave rise to two paradoxical formulations of physics: one in which the discreteness of particles extended even into the description of space and motion as arrays of discrete numbers, and one in which everything was seen as waves. Incredibly, both gave the same accurate answers.

Schrödinger’s wave mechanics will lead us to something called the wave function -- a complicated set of mathematics that provides the probabilities for all the possible locations and velocities of the atomic particle in question. Where Heisenberg worked to pin the pesky electron down precisely, Schrödinger approached the challenge from another direction, figuring out not where the electron was, but the likelihood all the places it could possibly be.

Both are accurate ways of solving the problem, but in acknowledging that, Walker accidently gives us a peek up his magician’s sleeve.

If both Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s formulations give the same correct answers, then somehow, underneath it all, they must merely be different mathematical attire dressing up the same reality that each formulation only partly reveals.

Exactly.

Heisenberg and Schrödinger (and Walker) are using math to describe reality with greater and greater precision, but they are not defining reality because math doesn’t do that. And yet, as with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Walker will slowly begin to apply Schrödinger’s wave function to larger and larger objects in the real world, thinking that because its math describes the interaction of electrons, it can equally be applied to the interaction of eggs and elephants.

Particles do exist, but they only exist at the subatomic level.

The jumps and darts happen when measurements take place, when we observe, and when things interact with other things

What is a “measurement”? Like “particle”, it seems to be a term with no fixed definition in Walker’s text, forever as malleable as he needs it to be in order to support his suppositions.

...if quantum mechanics does describe the true nature of reality -- if [the wave function] is the complete representation of reality -- then there exists the possibility that a choice made by one’s mind, whatever that may prove to be, has an effect on physical events. Could this be what reality actually is? Is it possible that reality is not ultimately a vast collection of overly agitated billiard balls or even a world of fuzzy, hopping, and popping atoms and elementary particles? Could it be, instead, that mind actually does affect matter?

This, to my way of thinking, is a leap, similar to the leaps that led us previously from electrons to eggs to elephants. “Measurement,” to Walker’s way of thinking, is not limited to their earliest example he provides, which is illumination. Shining a light on something in the macro world isn’t going to do much, but sending a photon into a quantum system is another matter entirely. If you’re not careful, you’re likely to kick an electron up to another energy level, completely changing the behavior of the thing you’re trying to detect. In this context, “not knowing what you have until you measure it” makes a certain amount of sense. But Walker doesn’t want to stay there.

One might assume that this state vector collapse occurs when we disturb the system by having some measuring device interact with it in order to make a measurement on the system -- that is, when the outside world interacts with it. But that is not how quantum mechanics works. When a second system interacts with the first system, all that happens is that we get an even more complicated system with more potential states: a bigger [wave function] with more little [wave function] component pictures than before. The measurement device we use to look at quantum mechanical atoms is itself governed by the Schrödinger equation, and, therefore, it cannot give us anything but a more complicated [wave function] that is made out of the set of pictures that represent the overall system’s potentialities, but now consisting of two parts: one part for the atomic system’s state in each picture and one part for the measurement device’s corresponding readings.

Are you with me so far? After arguing that reality doesn’t become reality until it is measured, Walker is now expanding his wave function of probabilities to include the measuring device itself. It’s not just the electron that doesn’t exist until you measure it, the yardstick you’re using to measure also doesn’t exist until you … until you … what? Well, that comes next.

But we do know that when we observe the system, we will see only one picture, one state, one condition. We know that the state vector collapse must have already occurred or that it occurs at the time of this observation. As a result, investigators often speak of “state vector collapse on observation.” But observation is just a euphemism for consciousness, for mind; this interpretation of quantum mechanics says that the system undergoes state vector collapse because of our mind! Moreover, there appears to be nothing else to blame for state vector collapse. Everything else is something physical and, as a physical system, must be subject to the Schrödinger equation. At best, it can only create more potential states, not remove them. Yet when we observe the system, we know that state vector collapse has occurred. We only see one state, one of the component states [of the wave function]. This effort to obtain an entirely practical interpretation of quantum mechanics -- this Copenhagen interpretation -- leads us to the incredible conclusion that mind, or consciousness, affects matter!

Here, we see the leaps in action. First illuminate, then measurement, then observation, then consciousness. Walker doesn’t explain how he jumps from concept to concept, evidently trusting that they will be as obviously connected in his reader’s mind as they are in his. But they aren’t. Sending a photon into an atom adds energy to the system, but thinking about an elephant doesn’t. And yet, Walker would have me believe that the elephant doesn’t exist until I think about it.

Painting fleeting mazes into solid things like you and me

But getting to consciousness is absolutely essential to Walker’s thesis, primarily, I think, because consciousness is one of those terms that even he admits can’t concretely be defined.

Consciousness cannot really be defined. These words merely suggest analogies, and you have been asked to examine your own experience to see whether you recognize what we are talking about. The reason why we cannot define consciousness is that definitions, true delineations, require objective demonstration, and here that it not possible.

How convenient. So, in other words, you can make consciousness mean anything you want it to and it is up to me, the reader, to “examine my own experience” and see if I recognize what you are talking about. Great. So not only are you pretending math is reality, you’re not even pretending to do science any more.

Walker will spend the last third of his book on two ideas -- one, that consciousness is nonphysical, and that, two, although nonphysical, it causes things to happen in the physical world. It is the thing that paints fleeting mazes into solid things like you and me. For me, this section of the book is so riddled with dogeared pages and confused comments scribbled with frustration in the margin, that I can’t even try to fairly represent Walker’s attempt at quantifying these ideas. I frankly don’t understand what he’s doing -- or why.

But here, for entertainment’s sake, are a few of those frustrating journeys.

Quantum Tunneling

Here’s some comments from Walker’s section on quantum tunneling. If memory serves, Walker will somehow use the idea that electrons “tunnel” across the synapses in our brain to define his nonphysical definition of consciousness.

First, the idea of quantum tunneling itself:

Walker: What clearly separates quantum processes from classical processes is the way objects move. In our everyday world, an object can go from one location to another only if it moves smoothly step by step, point by point, along a path connecting the two locations. Ordinary things move on definite, specific paths.
Me: Arrghh! Quanta are not objects! Particles are not billiard balls! Stop confusing the terms!

Walker: In quantum theory, we discover that objects move according to the ebb and flow of probability waves. It is possible in quantum mechanics for an object to go from point A to point B even though the two points are separated by a barrier that the particle cannot pass through nor even exist within. Quantum mechanically, an object can go from the inside of a bottle to the outside without removing the top, or breaking the bottle; without punching a hole in it, or squeezing past the cork. The phenomenon is known as quantum tunneling. Although it is virtually impossible for this to occur in our everyday world, tunneling goes on “everyday” in the atomic world. The radioactive decay of radium and uranium is due to the fact that a part of the nucleus, an alpha particle, can suddenly pop out of the “bottle” formed by the nuclear forces that hold the nucleus togethers. It pops out even though it does not have the energy to get out! It tunnels out without going through a hole. It is inside one moment and outside the next -- without ever going through the barrier, without the barrier ever being removed.
Me: By describing quantum tunneling this way, you are applying “billiard ball” concepts to quantum events. Maybe there is another solution. After all, who says it is the same alpha particle and both sides of the barrier -- especially since the “barrier” of nuclear forces is something that doesn’t map cleanly onto our macro understanding of physical barriers?

Now, it’s connection to consciousness:

Walker: We have found a way to bring together the idea that consciousness stems from a quantum mechanical process and the requirement that consciousness be connected to the basic hardware involved in the logic-processing functions of the brain, the synapses. Moreover, we have shown that this insight into the way the brain must function in order for consciousness to be explained in terms of quantum mechanics has yielded a new understanding of the structure and functioning of synapses. This is the kind of confirmation that builds a conviction that we are on the right track. But it is now time to see how well these ideas fit the phenomenology of consciousness itself. We must ask, “If consciousness arose from quantum mechanical tunneling of electrons at individual synapses in the brain, what would be the nature of our conscious experience?” We should ask, “What spatial extent should we expect to characterize consciousness according to the picture of its mechanism as so far developed?” What we have so far is merely consciousness tied to individual synaptic firings. There is, in fact, no spatial extension at all. There is nothing here that would give rise to a process integrating synaptic functioning into a single holistic entity. We have not shown why a synapse that fires in one part of our brain should be integrated into a conscious experience involving some other synapse in our brain, nor have we shown why a synapse that fires in your head should not contribute to my conscious experience just as strongly as any synapse firing in my head.
Me: Walker’s entire book seems to follow the same pattern as this confusing paragraph. Make assertion. Then speculate on what assertion might mean if true. Then accept assertion as true. Then make new assertion based on “factual” foundation of last assertion.

One of the key supports of Walker’s house of cards is getting the electrons in question to tunnel all the way across the synapse -- a distance that even he admits is far larger than can be explained by the mathematics of quantum tunneling. He does this by introducing his “hopping” theory: the electrons hop across a series of free-floating molecules in the synaptic soup in order to make it to the other side. He spends a lot of time on this, and then, without support, makes a startling conclusion.

Walker: It is possible, therefore, for this quantum mechanical interaction to join events taking place in the brain’s switches into one grand, unified process. This holistic process brings the mysteries of quantum mechanical uncertainty into play in the functioning of the brain. It links “thought” -- that little fire of the fleeting, jumping electrons -- and the specter of the “observer” of quantum mechanics into one orchestration of mental phenomena. Without this connection, the brain might, for all the world, be nothing but a big billiard table of senseless chaos. But this contact between synapses and electrons, reaching across the space of the brain, turns on the light of consciousness.
Me: Ummm … how does it do that? For all the math and chemistry you’ve described, you still haven’t shown why electron jumping = consciousness. After all, don’t electrons “jump” in the brain’s non-conscious processes as well?

Zen Buddhism

Walker starts talking about Zen Buddhism pretty early in his exploration, and especially how its teachings include the idea of the impermanence of the self.

Buddhism points us to a particularly intense and clear understanding of what consciousness is. It points to a realization that consciousness experience is reality. It is what I am. It is what you are. It points to a realization that this book in your hand is your actual being. This book at this moment as you hold it in your hand is in fact you because that is the content of your consciousness at this moment. Not just “content” but, in fact, the full being of your existence. You are nothing else.

For those familiar with it, this is pretty garden-variety Buddhism. We are not the entity paying conscious attention to the book. We are the conscious attention. Not “I think, therefore I am,” but “I think, therefore thinking occurs.” Walker uses this mind-bending concept to loosely connect a lot of his confusing dots together, appealing more often than not to the poetry rather than precision of the idea. But when he gets down into the quantum mechanical details, this sometimes helpful concept gets thrown out the window.

When addressing philosophers who compare the brain to computer hardware and consciousness to the software running on it:

Walker: Though the similarities to religious ideas are only slight (at least in this point of our story), what we have in the quantum mechanical picture is closer to a conception of a soul-like consciousness inhabiting and animating the machine. (I didn’t start out with this as a goal; it is just the idea that seems to work best at present.) The classical machine cannot have consciousness, and it cannot have any identity of its own. It is we, of course, who anthropomorphically imbue the collection of mechanical parts with its machine identity. But there is a transformation that takes place with the onset of consciousness. Something changes when the brain undergoes the transition to this new mode of functioning that lies outside the capabilities of all present computing machines. When this happens, we acquire our identity -- and identity that exists in and as that consciousness state. Individual identity resides in the continuity of the quantum mechanical process.
Me: Here’s the first chink in his Zen Buddhist armor. He’s desperate to explain the apparent continuity of consciousness, and he’s going to hang it on the “something” that changes in the brain when we focus our conscious attention.

But the Zen Buddhist doesn’t necessarily believe in the continuity of consciousness, as Walker makes clear as he explores several interpretations of his theory of the quantum mind:

Walker: The third option is that when we awake, we are indeed someone new. It may be that the you who now reads this, perhaps just before retiring, are about to pass into oblivion. It may be that each morning a consciousness is born, lives one day, and dies to eternity -- no soul, no greater existence, no further purpose; a legacy only in what you pass to tomorrow’s inhabitant of your borrowed body.
Me: It may actually be worse than that. “You” may not even be a consciousness that lives for a day and that drifts into eternity. Remember your Zen. “You” are only the experience of “your” conscious attention, and that comes and goes through each day. Remember your drive to work today? Or chewing your breakfast? “You” may not have existed in those time periods.

You can’t have it both ways. So don’t distract me with your Zen poetry if you’re not going to accept the logical consequences of its teachings. But having it both ways is something Walker needs for his hypothesis of quantum minds to work.

Walker: Finally, when the “observation” happens -- when state vector collapse occurs -- one synapse, from all those that could have fired, does fire. And the state selected by the synaptic firing, by this process associated with consciousness, specifies just what the brain, and consequently, what the body, will do next. This observation process brings our brain’s next thought and out body’s next action into being. This is a perfect description of will. Like Maxwell discovering that light is an electromagnetic wave, we have found that will is quantum mechanical state selection going on in the brain.
Me: So which is it? We are dependent on synapses firing to be conscious -- or it is our consciousness that causes synapses to fire? It can’t be both.

Attacking Materialism

Towards the end, after Walker has piled so many speculations on top of each other that the reader is understandably lost, he starts ripping into the “materialistic worldview” -- the idea that only the things that can be detected are real.

Walker: Materialism in science has served us well. It has enlightened us. It has brought us closer to many truths. But science’s investment in materialism has itself turned into a creed, with its own high priests ready to torment the unorthodox. Many phenomena have been ignored in the name of this materialism. The obvious -- such as consciousness -- has been shut out, exactly as if such ideas were the teachings of a heretic. Phenomena that would not fit materialistic concepts have been made anathema and estranged.
Me: Two points: (1) Consciousness has been studied (nature.com returns more than 8,500 articles when “consciousness” is searched), you just don’t accept the materialistic conclusions of much of this research; and (2) “Phenomena that would not fit materialistic concepts” is a synonym for “things that don’t exist.”

But it’s not just “materialism in science” but “science” itself.

Walker: Science has the capacity to show us the path to truth. We must go down that path and face whatever is there. But I think that just as some high priests of past religions have sought to impose their personal wills by distorting the teaching of their own prophets, so too scientists have often guided our steps down equally false trails. We have often presumed the direction of science first and cut the path later, before checking to see whether we were going the right way. Science has ignored all issues that might have suggested some middle ground or that might have compromised its secular bias. It has now brought us to the very edge of a world stripped of all innate moral values, without giving us anything to take its place.
Me: It has not. Read Moral Minds. Innate morality is alive and well, and it is science, not religion, that is helping us understand it and its biases.

And since “science” is so bad, we’re justified in making whatever claims we want and calling them facts.

Walker: But more than all of this, surprisingly, we have discovered that every path we have taken to learn something of the structure of the universe finally comes around to the same result. Whether to understand the interconnections of will, to understand the most basic facts of quantum theory, or to discover the beginnings of the Big Bang universe, each path leads to the fact that there must exist a supreme Consciousness out of which everything else springs. It is Consciousness that began everything, that grows matter into a universe of existence; it is Consciousness that unifies and constrains all of us as individual beings; it is Consciousness that orders space and time out of a chaos of random events.
Me: “It all leads to the fact that there must exist a supreme Consciousness out of which everything else springs.” That’s quite an assertion, and it suffers, from my point of view, from the same failing that we began this treatise with. Can you please define your terms? Just as an electron is not an elephant, and I wonder if Walker’s supreme Consciousness -- if it exists at all -- might be something different than the attentive light that exists between my ears.

And where is this attack on science leading? Do you really need to ask?

Walker: There are many questions to which we do not have answers. We have the beginnings of many answers, but many questions remain about the structure of reality, about other realities, about life after our bodily death. We have many questions about just how we should sort the wheat from the chaff of all the religious literature that has come down to us through the ages. We should know that if we can understand the message clearly, it has something to tell us. But we need more tools to find the comfort of truth that faith alone has been able to give us in the past. Faith was never meant to be blind faith. Faith was always meant to be a faith guided by revealed truth -- revealed through the experience of something beyond our own physical self; revealed through the lives that many have lived as examples; revealed in histories; in prophesies, and in the poetry of scripture.
Me: I told you he wasn’t even pretending to do science anymore. But wait. He’s not done.

Walker: But the demands are so much greater now. Now we can see better how easily we err and how easily we stray. We need a better way to seek out truth, to assimilate the jewels of all our religious teaching into one universal faith founded in knowledge that we can verify as we do the facts of science. I hope that the discoveries recorded in this book are the beginning of such a mission. No one who believes in the truth of any of the world’s great religions should fear losing any essential part of that faith by testing its truth against what we can learn with this new science. Those willing to discover an even greater truth in their religion will find untold wonders hidden in what they already believe.
Me: Okay. Here’s what I don’t get. Even if the quantum universe is conscious -- again, whatever that means -- why does that mean any of the ancient ideas of any of the “world’s great religions” are true? Why doesn’t the supposedly scientific discovery of the conscious universe negate old religious ideas, just as those of Copernicus and Darwin did?

Unlocking the Mystery

There is, however, one very positive thing I can say about Walker’s book -- and that is that it helped me unlock the mystery of quantum mechanics. And it’s not what Walker thinks it is.

Here’s the part where the epiphany hit me.

In all of this, some may be bothered that what we are really determining is not the temporal length of consciousness but the speed at which neurons can operate. For example, it takes about ⅛ second for a neural impulse to transit the brain. When you drive down the highway at 60 miles per hour, you are really about 11 feet in front of where you think you are just because of the delay in the nervous system.

We’re deep in the section where Walker, like any good mathematician, is trying to come up with a formula to describe how nonphysical consciousness works and how it creates reality by collapsing all those physical wave functions. But what he tosses off as a passing comment hit me like a ton of bricks. Wait. Back up. How can I be 11 feet in front of where I think I am? I thought my consciousness created my reality. How can I be somewhere that I’m not conscious of being?

But Walker doubles down on this point.

When we speak of consciousness -- of its characteristics, of its contents -- it seems we are speaking of the brain. This problem mirrors the problem of distinguishing brain functioning from the external world, recognizing that we do not see the external world directly but rather images of the world that are created in the brain. Indeed, this is that hard path to enlightenment with which we began. We do not see the outside world, but instead we see the “inside” of our brain! And then we realize that we do not see images created by our brain but that we see instead our consciousness. We discover that what we see is ourselves, our own consciousness. The brain is there and the outside world is there, but consciousness, not these other things, is our existence that we know directly. All of these elements fold so perfectly into one another that we almost miss the reality, miss the hierarchy, and miss the finding of enlightenment.

Okay. So, if all we see is our own consciousness, then isn’t it an obvious conclusion that the strange and reality-distorting effects of quantum mechanics are an effect of our consciousness and not part of the external world? I mean, if I am really 11 feet in front of where I think I am, then isn’t it also plausible that state vector collapse is the quantum of my conscious attention? In other words, I’m not collapsing wave functions by making observations, the wave function is instead the mathematical representation of the most granular observation that I can make.

That idea almost makes it worth re-reading Walker’s book. How much of his meanderings can be better explained not by a universe comprised of a superposition of infinite probabilities, but by the biological delay built into our own conscious attention?

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.