A Quantum Field Theory of Education

Since science education is no longer considered enlightened unless informed by SCholarly Research On Teaching And Learning, a modern theory of education is needed in order to take full advantage of the clarifying terminology developed to make relativistic quantum mechanics more transparent. This essay constitutes the hermeneutics of a new quantum field theory of education (QFTE), in which the usual roles of integer spin intermediaries and interacting fermions are interchanged.

In QTFE, second quantization is applied to the following fields:

• Morons: a type of bozo that likes to condense into a moronic BEC which exhibits stupidfoolidity.

• Lessons: in QFTE all interactions between morons are mediated by the exchange of lessons, a type of fermion. This makes the interactions very weak, since no lessons are ever absorbed — just back-propagated on exams.

The moronic BEC has this interesting property: once it reaches its stupidfoolish ground state, unless excited by very high energy lessons, the bozos will continue to display stupidfoolidity indefinitely without any sign of dissipation; best measurements suggest a decay time of at least the age of the universe.

It has been recently discovered that morons come in two types, spin 0 (little morons) and spin 1 (big morons). Big morons interact only through gravity, thus proving the validity of the old joke. (“…Why did the little moron stay on the horse? …”)

When a little moron finally absorbs two lessons it can’t forget, it becomes a big moron, graduates, and never interacts with anything again, except to add to the dead weight of “society“, a denser moronic BEC of big morons.

A very small fraction of the morons absorb enough lessons to be promoted into excited states called Professors, which decay gradually back to their ground state by lesson emission, contributing thereby to the production of a new generation of morons. Unlike in the case of leptons, however, successive generations of morons are indistinguishable. Perhaps this is because morons, having zero or integer spin, also lack a lepton number.

A lesson must have half-integer spin, or it would be just another bozo. Most lessons are spin 1/2 and have almost no substance; these are called light lessons or drek particles. Occasionally we find lessons with spin 3/2, the so-called strange lessons or boreyons, and very rarely we see a doubly strange superheavy lesson known as the Omygod boreyon.

Lessons have a rich spectroscopy. Even drek lessons come in many flavors. (Morons claim that the variety is endless, but what do morons know?) It has been speculated that lessons are composed by quacks, but this has never been confirmed, because quack Professors always invoke a physician’s principle known as “‘Ask on topic!’ freedom” when asked if they were involved.

The lightest lessons of all are called “new” lessons, which are closely related to “improved” lessons, neither of which have any substance at all. Only the charged lessons carry any weight, since even morons will absorb some lessons if they have paid good money for them.

Some speculative work has been done on the theory of stupidsymmetry, in which each moron has a fermionic partner called a “morino” and each lesson has a stupidsymmetric “slesson”. No one has the faintest idea how anyone could tell if this were true.

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This theory was formulated over many years, but was first consigned to paper on November 26, 2006.

 

When I wrote this in 2013, I’d had a nasty head cold for the past few days. Then one day I felt better (though not yet well) and it was so wonderful it reminded me of something important:

It’s better to feel better than to feel good.
Most of the time I feel pretty good, and all I can think about are the aches and pains and deficiencies that keep me from feeling perfect. I am well housed and well fed and well loved and well paid (well, pretty well) but my attention is rarely drawn to these good fortunes – only when I get caught out in the cold rain without an umbrella, or I miss a meal, or I’m away from my loved ones, or I get a bill I can’t pay right away.

This is a trite lesson, I know, but I think some reflection might help me devise a better strategy for maximizing the joy in my life. Bear with me for a moment.

We are creatures driven by gradients, not absolutes. Our sense of well-being is extremely sensitive to how much better things are today than yesterday, and not very sensitive to how good they actually are now. The wealthy cannot really appreciate their wealth, they only get satisfaction from accumulating more. The poor are not really different; if they become wealthy, after the initial delight their static wealth becomes just as hollow. This is perfectly understandable in this model. So is the wayward eye of the person with an attractive, loving spouse. The stranger’s approval means more than the lover’s, because we already have the latter.

Is there any way this understanding can be anything but depressing and discouraging? I think so. Arrange to lose what means most – your health, your family, your home, your wealth – just so you can enjoy getting it back? That’s no solution, though many people resort to it.

But at any given time you there are some things you lack, and hunger for, while other hungers are satisfied. You can maximize your appreciation of life by what I call “Gradient Hopping“: quit seeking what you already have; refocus your attention on your unsatisfied needs and take action to gratify them without compromising those which are currently in good shape. Later on you can (and will probably need to) return to service the currently satisfied needs, since most of them recur periodically. In this endeavor you are unlikely to accumulate unappreciated excesses of any needs – which will benefit others with whom those resources should be shared.

More later….

I say, “If you do what you love with elan and determination, and don’t worry about ‘making a living at it’, eventually you will ‘succeed’.”

“Easy for you to say,” says the spokesperson for all those in despair over their careers.  “You are the child of privilege, plus you got lucky.”

“This is true,” I confess, “but my way was never easy.  I had to work hard at what I loved, and I never gave up, in spite of many challenges.”

“What do you know of ‘challenges’?”

“What do you know of my life?”

The argument goes on to compare the merits of “doing what you love” right now versus working all your life at a job you hate, in order to save enough that you can retire at 65 and then “do what you love”.

This elicits the response, “Retire?  I will never be able to retire!”

Here’s the problem:  neither debator can imagine the other person’s life experiences, and there is no argument that can convince either of the validity of the other’s point of view.

Your identity is your most valuable possession, in every sense of the word “valuable”. At the crudest level, anyone who steals it (i.e. can successfully convince financial and/or governmental institutions that they are you) can empty your bank accounts, put you into unrecoverable debt, commit crimes for which you may be held responsible and trash your credit rating, not to mention your reputation.

So it is not surprising that we invest a lot of effort in protecting and securing our identities. But can we ever succeed? Let’s take a long view:

Any sort of card or other physical device can be stolen. Most such ID is now backed up by passwords, PIN codes or personal questions, all of which can be guessed or extracted by sufficiently ingenious technology. I suggest that each new security technology will be followed quickly by a successful hacking technology; I know of no exceptions so far. Readable tattoos or implanted RFIDs don’t help, although they are a little more difficult to physically steal.

The next level is obviously biometric data: facial features, fingerprint and retinal image scanners are already in use at the “high security” end of the spectrum. Even supposing unhackable software is processing these data, there will soon be ways of simulating the real thing — if there aren’t already. It is not impossible to imagine DNA scanners fast and accurate enough to use for positive ID, but — as always — the ability to fake DNA can’t be far behind the ability to recognize it.

There is also the problem of access to records of whose fingerprints, retinal patters and DNA are whose. We are understandably uncomfortable with entrusting governments and corporations (assuming charitably that there is a difference) with this sort of access to our identity and whereabouts, even if, as they always say, “we have nothing to hide.” Moreover, if the archives exist, they can be accessed and even changed by sufficiently adept hackers. What would you do if DNA scanners suddenly started recognizing you as someone else?

Looking a little further down the technological road, suppose it eventually becomes possible to make a full scan of your brain, neuron by neuron, and that this becomes your ultimate ID? Will any entity that thinks like you, has your memories and believes it is you be considered by law to be you?  And if not, why not?

I believe this is an entirely new class of legal, ethical and philosophical conundrum; but it is already in play.  Best we think it through carefully and (if possible) rationally now, while there is still time to plan.

In Chapter 3 of “Life, The Universe and Everything“, Douglas Adams immortalized the idea of the “Somebody Else’s Problem” field, which makes things invisible. We all tend to look at the world of politics and war through an S.E.P. field.  This has to stop.

Consider the problem of Islamic terrorism: most non-Muslims feel that it is the responsibility of the majority of sensible, peaceful, moderate Muslims to “do something about” those who perform hate crimes against innocent civilians in the name of Islam.  And yet when a Muslim woman is violently attacked by “patriotic Canadians” for the crime of wearing a veil over her face, we dismiss this as an act of deranged idiots — not something we’d do, not something we condone, so not our problem. But it is our problem.

Conversely, when sects of fanatic Christians raise money to bring on Armageddon, or disrupt the funerals of soldiers, most Christians dismiss them as “wingnuts — not real Christians” and hence  S.E.P.  Wrong!  When people who call themselves the same thing you call yourself do something despicable, you have three ethical choices: convince them to stop, have them officially expelled from said tribe, or withdraw from the tribe yourself.  The collective is responsible for the acts of its individual members, and vice versa.  That’s the social contract.

I know, it’s hard enough monitoring our own behavior without worrying about that of others; but in today’s world it is not enough to simply “set a good example”.  Each of us has a responsibility to engage those we regard as “deranged”, find out why they think the way they do, and try to talk them out of it.  We may not succeed, but we must try; otherwise nothing will halt the condensation of a diverse society into mutually hostile pools of like-minded individuals reinforcing each other’s prejudices.

Talk to your enemy.  It’s no one else’s problem.