I felt the "Theoretical Minimum" of my own existence: a heart rate, a memory of a friend, and the math that held the atoms of my body in a tightly bound dance .
I needed to get out, but the door was behaving like a spin-up/spin-down experiment . Every time I turned the handle clockwise, the room shifted into a version of the lab where the door was welded shut. If I turned it counter-clockwise, I ended up in the hallway, but the hallway was now upside down. Quantum mechanics. The theoretical minimum
When I finally opened my eyes, the world was singular again. The mug was just a mug. The door was just a door. But as I walked to my car, I didn't check the rearview mirror. I knew better than to look too closely at where I’d just been. I felt the "Theoretical Minimum" of my own
"It’s not everything," Art had told me before the accident. "It’s just what you need to survive. The bare essentials. The floor beneath which reality stops making sense." If I turned it counter-clockwise, I ended up
"Don't look too hard," I whispered to myself. In quantum mechanics, the act of looking—the measurement problem —is what forces the universe to pick a side.
The universe, as Feynman once said, is better enjoyed when you don't insist on understanding it. The Theoretical Minimum |