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If a person tries to convince you that you can bend reality with the power of your mind, be very wary of them, and if they bring up quantum physics to defend their claims, run straight away.
The idea that human will can change the way the world works is an old one: we don’t know since when people performed rituals to induce rain, fertility or animal migrations, but it has certainly been around for a very long time. However, many have achieved high social status, power, and eventually wealth by claiming otherwise, by convincing a large number of people that they are particularly skilled at carrying out this idea, and in some cases even promising to pass on their skills to them. Some believe themselves without a doubt, while others know very well that they are cheating, but they don’t care about the cheaters.
But the rise of science is proving to be an obstacle for these (and many other) charlatans. Hooray! As over time mankind was able to explain more and more different phenomena, the scope of magic was progressively reduced to fantasy books. However, not everyone is ready to accept this fact – for them, quantum physics is a gift from God (or perhaps from Einstein). Compared to the world we are used to, at the quantum level things behave so strangely that it is possible for all kinds of nonsense to sound plausible.
It is in this shadowy niche that we can find books like “The Secret” that talk about the “law of attraction” with which you can arrange your life forever with just the power of your thought. Some describe the law in purely psychological terms – motivational speaker Tony Robbins, for example, quotes the Buddha himself as saying, “What you think, you do.”
There is enough truth in these words, at least metaphorically, to have some resonance with us. We have all seen people who have lost faith in themselves – whether for internal or external reasons – and failed to achieve things that were within their capacity. For them, focusing on their achievements and goals instead of obsessing over their failures can pay off. There is a reason that cognitive behavioral therapy—despite the fact that it is not perfect and universal—has been verified in a significant amount of clinical trials as an effective treatment for many people.
However, a program that helps some for a while is not enough of a strong marketing gimmick. That is why “The Secret” claims that the “law of attraction” is a universal physical law – like gravity. Not only do positive thoughts attract positive results, the argument goes, but you can attract anything you want at all – think of abundant money or sexual partners who meet your exact requirements, and inevitably they will appear in your life almost like a order.
For this marketing purpose, it is very useful to use terms that sound scientific, but which most people do not understand. So we have a book called “Quantum Success” and another titled “Quantum Success Training Academy” written by (we kid you not) a “Master and Certified Law of Attraction Coach”.
The first problem with all of these people’s industry is that it is well known that quantum physics only works at the level of very small subatomic particles. The word quantum itself originally referred to the smallest possible amount of a physical property such as, for example, energy.
Those who claim that the law of attraction has a quantum basis like to refer to the so-called observer effect, which is really one of the strangest things in quantum mechanics. However, it is something that also manifests itself only at the subatomic level, such as for individual electrons.
Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment with the cat is an attempt to demonstrate how the whole idea falls apart when applied to our known universe.
Taken literally, the quantum law of attraction will bring you the smallest currency possible, possibly from a place with a heavily devalued currency. But of course it won’t even do that because the universe is not a machine centered around your thoughts. If it were, there might just as easily be a law of repulsion.
Physicists, and now biologists, have invested considerable energy in researching whether quantum phenomena penetrate the world of classical physics to which our senses are tuned. There are certainly cases where this happens: by cooling materials to temperatures just above absolute zero (-273.15°C), we can make clouds of atoms behave in a quantum way. However, no one has achieved such behavior simply by thinking. Similarly, the ability of some animals to detect magnetic fields appears to arise from quantum superposition, but pigeons sense the fields, they do not transform them at will…
There are many dangers in this kind of abuse of quantum physics, aside from harming the reputation of real scientists and science. One is that people who get hitched and don’t get what they need – even can make them feel even worse about themselves – it’s one thing to fail when the odds are against you, it’s quite another to think there’s some universal law that you’re not the only one in able to apply
Also, these misconceptions can prevent people from using approaches that have a scientific reputation. If clinical trials have shown that a treatment has an 80% success rate for your disease but has some not-so-wonderful side effects, it can be tempting to go with the quantum magic promised elsewhere. And by the time you realize it’s not working, it may already be too late.
Of course, there’s one way this “law of attraction” works – when it’s quoted by someone with undeniable charisma and questionable morals, it tends to attract a lot of money from gullible wretches to it. In this case, however, it works more like the law of conservation of energy – every note in their bank account is one less in someone else’s.
Photo: Phrenological Chart of the Faculties (Not credited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
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