It was a quiet thought
Like the shadow August moons
Keep under the broken wing
Of lonesome fruit bats
It was a lost name
Left in secret meadows
That wore the scent August rain gives
To untaken paths
Of lonesome souls
It was a stone that rolled
Hoping for an unplanned ride
Through the ordinary
It was a quiet thought
March 30, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
Physics always attracted me - on this blog I have numerous essays about the intriguing parallels between quantum physics, the interactions at molecular level, to human behaviour with the world around us, or at the macro level.
Among these is our characteristic of having
perceptions albeit not always knowing
how they translate to our understanding of our environment. More importantly,
it is our “unknowing” how to translate these perceptions into evaluating our
present and future behaviours.
In fact, this very topics has puzzled scientists for
more than a century, especially when exploring the role of the brain vis à vis our
perceptions in interpreting our sensory experiences. The scientific formulation
of this inquiry was in the 19th century by a German physician and
physicist Hermann von Hemholtz. He proposed that while our brain interprets
sensory signals/stimulations , many of us perceive and interpret that same
signal in different ways. After all, visual arts, even written poetry send the
same signal to everyone’s brain but we perceive what we experience differently,
making art a platform where our individual past experiences bypass the wiring circuits of our brain and
transform the predictability of the interpretation fluid, different and personal.
Present day scientific research has expanded Von Hemboltz’s
framework of brain and perception to brain-mind perception. The intervening
dimension in the new framework is that of consciousness
when the mind translates what the brain analyses into perception. Thus, the
brain records facets of an observation or experience, and the mind/consciousness
interprets them within the parameters of perception that are influenced by the
past experiences of the “brain owner.” Such experiences range from feelings, passing
through pragmatic decision making, to actions taken based on superstition. In
this context, it has been proposed that the relationship between quantum
physics, perception and effect on behaviour becomes more scientifically tenable.
Why?
In the observation of micro, molecular level
interactions, quantum mechanics has demonstrated a fundamental effect of the
observation on the behaviour of the observed. In the early 19th
century, the German physicist and Nobel Prize recipient Werner Heisenberg discovered
that when atoms are observed, the very act of observing them affects their
behaviour. It is called the “observer
effect” and has influenced scientific research beyond physics, including
psychology and medicine. And that is where the molecular world of quantum
physics has guided our understanding of our own behaviour in, and interaction
with the macro world.
How?
Any creature, including us humans, interacts with
its “world” by interpreting the observed and reacting to it. That reaction can be appreciation, rejection,
fear, fight, flight as well new understanding leading to future reactions when
similar observations are interpreted. As
such through the initial observation, the observed becomes real, and it shapes
our own self. Further, through our actions post interpretation, we change the behaviour
of that original observed which will now take a new “form” when encountered
again. But through this new experience of observation and interpretation, we
are also changed by understanding the process.
That is the essence of what is called “Quantum Leap” in psychology. Specifically
that through the observer effect of daily life, we become multiple versions of
our own selves – that we acquire different abilities to interact with our
reality. And those multiple versions of us are like the particles observed in
quantum physics – they will be affected and changed through observation. Thus
the “Leap” we develop is like particles – going from version of ourselves to
another, never at the same time, every time we are faced with a new interpretation
of reality.
In a funny way, the quantum mechanics contribution
to psychology, and the field of consciousness in the interpretation of reality,
seems a mirror image of the observer effect – it is we who change when reality looks back at us!
… Today we face a new challenge – that of Artificial
Intelligence (AI). Simply put, AI would act as a brain by processing all
available “knowledge” about an observation of topic, and synthesizes a signal
of that composite for us to run through our consciousness and perceptions. In
traditional human terms, the composite signal the AI offers us is not reality
as our brain is built to record, but a “Suprarealty” (my terminology)where “Supra”
stands for “beyond and outside the limits”.
No doubt, this new reality is one that
we have to learn to adopt, but with a caveat – our past experiences and
knowledge will not be able to fully analyse that new reality through our present
consciousness, hence perceive its meaning. We may not know wrong from right,
real from fiction, and thus be unable to dissociate our known reality from the
AI generated Suprareality.
The fundamental challenge may be because our reality
and the Suprareality do and will coexist. Perhaps the human brain will evolve
to accommodate such duality, but for now our old brains are not designed to
guide our consciousness to evaluate the two realities in tandem.
As a simplistic experiment, I ran the photo at the
top of this page through a rudimentary AI function on my phone. It is a photo I
took in Mumbai during a passing summer rain.
The goal of my experiment was to see how that photo would be modified
using the synthesis of drawing techniques and result in a product that would
qualify as artistic. Here is the result:
As a street photographer, I aim at capturing reality
as it happens. I do not alter what I observe, and my past 50 years of people
photography have shaped my consciousness to predict the next behavior based on
an initial one and get ready to take a photo when that predicted moment happens.
Looking at the “drawing” of my photo, I cannot hear
the rain, the brouhaha of the busy street, and almost smell the humid air in
Mumbai.
Maybe I will, one day, learn how to have those feelings
when looking at a Suprareality photo. And that would not be a quantum leap, but
rather a paradigm shift.
Sample from my previous posts about the role of physics beyond scientific research
1.
https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2013/11/paradox-and-uncertainty.html
2.
https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2015/06/yin-yang-and-st-augustine.html
3.
https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-oak-sleeps-in-acorn-james-allen.html
March 25, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
There was a flame
At the end of a busy road
Stubborn and bright
Accepting to the wind
There was a melody
Simple and inviting
At the middle of the road
Echoing on its own notes
And the road kept the flame
As long as the flame wanted to hear
The melody bounce on concrete and steel
On people's faces and on their steps
For the road kept them busy
Unaware of the flame and deaf
When a summer rain covered the flame
In melody, in caring lyrics, drop
By
Drop
March 23, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
When that path
Finds your pace
On an
Ordinary
Day
When a smile
On that path
Becomes
A misty
Rhapsody
When you drink
From an empty
Cup
Laughter and
Silence
Your space is the await
For that dusty
Path
Which
Once
Found your pace
March 15, 2024
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2024
