Quantum state is nonsense- too vague

(Andrew W., PoliSci@Madison, Our place in the universe: Alexander Wendt and

quantum mechanics International Theory (2022), 14 (1), 130–145 doi:10.1017/S1752971921000063)

Chapter 14 tackles the state. Beyond its status as a social institution, and hence social waveform, Wendt makes two claims. First, ‘the state is a kind of hologram’. 27 Holograms have the interesting property that you can destroy parts of them but still reconstruct the image, with some sacrifice in sharpness, from the remaining parts. Similarly, (some) individuals know a lot about their states, so, like a hologram, if a lot of individuals are killed, the state can be reconstituted from the information present in the remaining individuals. Second, states are organisms with consciousness, not metaphorically, but really. An analogy is made to ant colonies and other social insects, where the colony does seem to act as a unit. Once again, we are in the land of metaphor, and far from science. What it means for the state to be a hologram is unclear to me. In contrast, I can see a case for the state as an organism with consciousness, but I don’t see any need for a quantum theory of the brain to underwrite it. States perceive their environments, process information, have mental models of their surroundings, and act in the world. Experience, cognition and will seem to be all there. In the conclusion, Wendt offers some thoughts on epistemology, and a final defense of the claim that this theory is ontologically true, not just useful in making predictions. He defends it on grounds of explanatory breadth, unifying disparate observations, and its coherence and simplicity. He claims that it is ‘too elegant not to be true’. 28 I would suggest a different metaphor. Wendt would build for us an elegant Greek temple, a structure of many columns with an underlying simple design. Unfortunately, the design only really specifies the first few columns you can see from the front, and after that gets vague as to how many columns there are and how they are attached. Even more problematic, the first few columns appear to be built on sand, and so won’t actually support the roof, and it’s not even clear that the remaining columns have anything to stand on at all. Wendt wants us to believe it will be a great temple, but it’s not finished and it’s not well supported.