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1./ Here's some more comedy gold from the LGBTQ+ world of woohoo. In this hilarious interview @Glamrou presses theoretical physics into service to support the notion of the 'gender spectrum'. But does physics back non-binary voodoo any more than biology does (i.e not at all)? https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1279057757166014464
2./ The performer compares belief in the binary sexes of male and female with "old" Newtonian physics. Forget for a moment that Newtonian physics remains so useful you can cheerfully use it to travel around the solar system. It really is rocket science. Here's @NASA saying that
3./ Amrou argues the new non-binary gender spectrum is like Quantum Mechanics. Two sexes can exist at the same time ..duhh..because the famous Double Slit experiment shows electrons can go through two slits at the same time. Here's the wave interference pattern that results.
4./ That's almost the least interesting thing about the Double Slit experiment which dates back to 1820 (when it showed light behaves as a wave). If you add a detector electrons will go back to behaving like particles and go through only one of the slits. https://physicsworld.com/a/do-atoms-going-through-a-double-slit-know-if-they-are-being-observed/
5./ I suppose you could argue the "Observer Effect" proves non-binary weirdness only exists until you put in a weirdness detector and the simple binary returns. But that's as ridiculous a claim as Amrou's. Discoveries about particles do not shed light on human behaviour.
6./ And that's because the deep nature of the universe is so fundamentally strange our human brains struggle to understand it. Here's the wonderful @michiokaku in a film I made for the BBC reminding us our common sense is useless as a guide to the universe.
7./ And that's never more true than when talking about Quantum Mechanics. The great physicist Richard Feynman once famously said no one really understands Quantum Mechanics. Here he is we have to stretch our imagination to begin to comprehend it.
8./ All this isn't to say because the universe at the quantum scale is utterly weird we should dispense with common sense in everyday life. After all, physics also tells us solid objects aren't actually solid. But no one goes around worrying about that. https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/07/398008378/why-doesn-t-your-butt-fall-through-the-chair
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/04/07/398008378/why-doesn-t-your-butt-fall-through-the-chair
9./ There remain inescapable facts including that every person alive on the planet is the result of the combination of male and female. That's 9 billion reasons to take the binary reality of sex seriously. This is my favourite TV celebration of that.
10./ Why does it matter that Amrou is talking utter BS about sex and using theoretical physics to justify it? What it proves is that gender identity activists are willing to use any old mishmash of pseudo-science to baffle the public (and themselves). You know who else does that?
11./ An almost infinite number of nutjobs, conspiracy theorists and cranks are drawn to the strangeness of quantum mechanics and use it to back their own wonky notions. Here's someone arguing that Quantum mechanics helps prove the paranormal exists.
12. Here's someone else arguing Quantum Mechanics and the Double Slit Experiment in particular proves death is an illusion https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2503370/Quantum-physics-proves-IS-afterlife-claims-scientist.html?fbclid=IwAR3M5nIqn3GfopHvjoasKn1VJKM2a6dsBBSjPxCyoVHhwERvn2uTVSqbOjY
13./ And who could forget that David Icke loves to riff on Quantum Mechanics and how quantum tunneling allows our lizard alien rulers to travel around the universe unseen? Here he is doing just what Amrou did...having a pseudo science woohoo moment.
14./ From ghosts and aliens to poltergeists quantum mechanics has been roped in for decades by people to justify their crackpot ideas. The link between the Double Slit and the gender spectrum is no more real than any of those. But thanks for the giggle, Amrou.
