YOUR BRAIN ISN'T A COMPUTER. IT'S A QUANTUM FIELD

 

Psychology has long been puzzled by the irrationality of human thoughts. We typically respond "fine" or "good" when people ask how we're doing. When questioned about a specific event, such as "How did you feel about the important meeting with your employer today?" we immediately categorise our responses as "good" or "fine" on a scale from horrible to excellent.

In a few words, we can contradict ourselves: we're "excellent," but we're not pleased with how the meeting went. So, how can we generally be "good"? Every choice we make and every emotion we display is influenced by a conscious and unconscious interaction between bias, experience, knowledge, and circumstance. Probability theory usually fails to anticipate human behaviour because it is challenging to do so.

Enter quantum cognition: a team of researchers found that, while on a "quantum" level, our choices and beliefs may be predicted with remarkable accuracy, they rarely make sense or follow a pattern on a macro level. In quantum physics, studying a particle's state has an impact on that particle's state; similarly, the "observation effect" has an impact on how humans perceive the subject at hand.

Psychologists and neuroscientists can now understand the mind as a beautiful universe rather than a linear machine according to the quantum-cognition hypothesis.

If someone uses the meeting as an example, we instantly come up with ways it went well. But if they inquire, "Were you apprehensive about the meeting?" we might recall how unnerving it was to present in front of a crowd. The inability to hold competing thoughts simultaneously in the mind is the second borrowed idea from quantum cognition. In other words, it's similar to Schrödinger's cat how decisions and opinions are formed.

The quantum-cognition idea allows psychologists and neuroscientists to view the mind as a beautiful universe rather than a simple linear computer. But it has long been believed that human cognition and existence are richly contradictory. In addition, science gets closer to the perplexing logic at the core of every religion the more researchers and academics examine the irrational rationality of our thoughts. For instance, Buddhism bases its teachings on aphorisms like "Peace comes from within. Don't look for it elsewhere. And the paradox that Christ was both a human being made of flesh and blood and the Son of God serves as the foundational metaphor for Christianity.

Religious writings have long examined the idea that reality deviates from what we initially perceive it to be, but that it is through these ambiguities that we learn more about ourselves and the world around us. In the Old Testament, the beleaguered Job begs God to reveal why he has been subjected to such hardship. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, God then asks inquisitively? (Job 38:4). Why would God ask someone in his creation where they were if God Himself created the world sounds absurd. However, there are some similarities between this paradox and the famous paradox Einstein used to refute Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle": "God does not play dice with the cosmos." Stephen Hawking responds that as God would cease to exist if all outcomes were predetermined, "Even God is bound by the uncertainty principle." It is the unpredictability of certainty that makes him the "inveterate gambler" of the universe.

Quantum cognition states that the mind then "gambles" with our "uncertain" reason, emotions, and prejudices to create opposing thoughts, ideas, and opinions. In order to relate to our "certain" reality, we then blend these competing alternatives. By investigating our thoughts at the quantum level, we can alter them, and by doing so, we can alter the reality that shapes them.