Rex Kerr
1 min readJan 15, 2024

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The essay you linked to is basically poetry loosely inspired by physics. This can't really be understood as science, and of course, if you want to take poetic liberties with interpreting scientific results there are all sorts of ways to do it.

In particular, Barad says, "As the quantum eraser experiment shows, it is not the case that the past (a past that is given) can be changed (contrary to what some physicists have said), or that the effects of past actions can be fully mended, but rather that the ‘past’ is always already open to change." but this isn't even true.

The quantum eraser experiment doesn't erase anything, but rather is a selection between an informative and uninformative measurement that doesn't change where anything went but does change how you can label things yourself to see a pattern or not. I'm not sure this was appreciated properly when Barad wrote that, but for instance, see https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2019/09/21/the-notorious-delayed-choice-quantum-eraser/

(Sabine Hossenfelder also has done a nice video on it.)

Anyway, that you learn different things about the past depending on what you measure about it is not surprising in the least, even if the particular details of what you learn when is weird in the way that QM is always weird ("wait, you mean I learned more so I know less??").

Anyway, in retrospect I think we can pretty clearly declare: problematic. If your central take-home message is based on a misinterpretation of what the physics even is, that's pretty much a problem.

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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