'Hippie physicist' Nick Herbert on John Stewart Bell and the Nobel Prize

Nick Herbert attended a dinner party in 1988 in California that allowed him to meet physicist John Stewart Bell and Bell's wife, Mary Ross Bell. 

The recent Nobel Prize in physics given to three physicists who helped prove Bell's theorem, which I wrote about in a recent blog post,  has inspired a new blog post from my favorite "hippie physicist," Nick Herbert (as in How the Hippies Saved Physics, the David Kaiser book about the physicists Robert Anton Wilson wrote about in Cosmic Trigger and elsewhere.)

In his post, "The Reality Prize," Herbert provides background on the new Nobel Prize from his own perspective; one of the three winners, John Clauser, had lectured at Esalen (like Herbert) and Herbert apparently knew him quite well.

Herbert's explanation of Bell's theorem and his essay has some mind-blowing paragraphs. After describing what happens with a pair of entangled photons, one observed by "Alice" and one by "Bob," Herbert writes:

So what more does this magnificently useful but utterly mysterious wavefunction say about the Alice and Bob experiment?

First: Quantum theory says that whatever happens is entirely independent of the distance between Alice and Bob. If they are in the same room, as in most practical physics experiments, the results will be exactly the same as if they were ten thousand light years apart, separated by vast interstellar distances.

Second: While unobserved, the wavefunction does not assign any polarization attribute to either Alice's or Bob's photon, but when Alice measures her photon, using a clock direction of her choice, her photon instantly acquires a definite value, AND SO DOES BOB'S PHOTON even though Alice and Bob might be separated by galactic distance. This instantaneous connection, if it is real and not just confined to the theory, violates all the norms of modern physics.

Alice's apparently instant action on Bob's photon has gotta be faster than light (goodbye Einstein) but that's only part of the trouble. This interaction, unlike any we are familiar with in physics, is not diminished by distance. Furthermore, this Alice-Bob intimacy is not transmitted by any field we know of-- it just happens. Alice's action on Bob's photon is, in brief, unmitigated, unmediated and immediate.

Physicists label such alleged behavior, as “non-local”, a tame word that conceals their deep intellectual loathing for an unholy abomination, for a deeply unnatural act.

Reading the whole thing is a worthwhile use of your time. Herbert is the author of Quantum Reality, a popular science book that discusses quantum theory. 

Herbert corresponded with John Stewart Bell and actually met Bell in 1988 at a dinner party: "I recall very few details of that dinner in '88, except that for me it felt like sitting in an extra chair at Jesus's Last Supper. In John Bell's presence, I felt that close to holiness."

Wednesday links

Ancient bridge in China. Photo by Kevin Kelly. Source. 

 Junot Diaz reviews Illuminations, the new story collection by Alan Moore.  That's in the New York Times. And here is Alan Moore's 2016 "By the Book" interview. 

A podcast, ACFM Trip 27: Magic. "Nadia Idle, Jeremy Gilbert and Keir Milburn gather round the cauldron for an episode that will challenge believers and rationalists alike, with music from Siouxsie, Queen and The KLF. Up for discussion: Sigmund Freud, the I Ching, Puritanism, crop circles, Psychic TV, modern macroeconomics, the Pendle Witches, the fake religion of Discordianism and much more."

New book from Steve Fly. "My latest self-published collections of scrawls, poems, and criticism...and anti Tory sentiment."

New Radley Balko Substack. 

Dumb war on drugs policy, British edition. 

War on drugs nonsense in the U.S. 

New John Higgs book event, sounds interesting. 

UFO mystery in Los Angeles.

RAW writes to a Fug

 

Tuli Kupferberg 

Prop Anon, who has written a biography of Robert Anton Wilson that will be published by Strange Attractor,  has been publishing quite a few RAW-related documents at Prop's Chapel Perilous website. 

Prop has now dug into his archives and published three letters that Wilson wrote in the 1980s to Tuli Kupferberg, a poet mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's Howl and also a member of the Fugs. 

I like this line by Wilson in one of the letters: "I don't write many poems, so each one should be treasured, kept in a warm, dry place and watered regularly." 

RAW Semantics on RAW and political correctness

Apparently inspired by a recent comment thread for a post at this blog, Brian Dean has written two blog posts to sort out Robert Anton Wilson's opposition to sexist and racist prejudice of all kinds and to study how RAW also spoke out against "political correctness." Brian argues, correctly I think, that RAW was opposed to hate trips and to language that denied the individuality of people and lumped them into groups targeted to be hated. Or as RAW put it, "The argument between Left and Right now consists only of debates about which groups we should hate."

What is interesting is that Brian took two bites at the (golden) apple. First he penned "Provoc #2 -- Bride of Provoking."   Then after getting a bit of feedback, he reworked it, including with a new title and art, as "Wilson on PC and Feminism."  As a bonus, if you read Brian's posts, you get to see some of his experiments in reworking photos of RAW (I've posted one above). 

Richard Waterloo's online book group

Announcement from Dr. Richard Waterloo:

"I'll be hosting a reading group for @alieninsect 's [Andrew Gallimore] new book, Reality Switch Technologies: Psychedelics as Tools for the Discovery and Exploration of New Worlds. 

We'll be meeting in the Reality Tunnels Discord Workshop e/o Thur from 8-9pm EST."

The first session is Oct. 20. Full schedule and many other details here. 

Follow Dr. Richard Waterloo on Twitter.  And you can read his Substack newsletter, Dank Philosophy. 

Jesse Walker reviews Antero Alli's movies [UPDATED]

Antero Alli (image from Alli's Twitter account)

Antero Alli is well known to hardcore RAW fans as someone who has studied Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness and written books about the topic.

But he's also a filmmaker, and Jesse Walker (of Reason magazine, also an author and pundit) has reviewed quite a few of them.

Jesse's latest review appears in the latest issue of Reason magazine, i.e., the November issue, which arrived at my house a few days ago, but it's also now available online. It's a review of the movie Tracer. "At their best, his movies achieve a psychedelic naturalism: stories where ordinary human struggles confront intrusions from a more occult dimension," Jesse says.

Jesse also has a recent posting on his blog, "The Mindjack Files," which link to video reviews Jesse wrote from 2004 to 2006 for the Mindjack website; included are reviews of two Alli flicks, Hysteria and The Greater Circulation. 

Also, this 1996 Jesse Walker article for Reason, "Independents' Day," about how technology was allowing independent movies to be made very cheaply, discusses Alli's film The Drivetime. And this 2001 feature by Jesse, also about independent filmmaking, discusses Alli's movie Tragos. 

Update: One more, review of The Invisible Forest.

Lionel Snell (aka Ramsey Dukes) on Hilaritas podcast

Thursday I listened to the Hilaritas podcast featuring Lionel Snell on magickal thinking and I thought it was quite good, one of the better podcasts. Snell was a big fan of Illuminatus! back in the day, and his discussions of how to approach magickal thinking was quite interesting. Pressed for time today and can't do a long blog post, but I suggest giving it a listen. 

Apuleius gave me a copy of SSOTBME Revised – an essay on magic, so that's a book that can be recommended. The link above will hook you up with Snell's website, etc. 

About "23," the German movie that features RAW

Scene from the movie; RAW has just finished autographing books for fans. 

Thanks to the kind efforts of Martin Wagner, I now know quite a bit about the German movie 23 Nichts ist so wie es scheint (in English, ""23 - Nothing is what it seems,") a 1998 German film about hacker Karl Koch. The film is available at the Internet Archive. 

Martin points out that RAW appears in the movie, playing himself.

At RAW's Wikipedia entry you'll find an actor section, which says

Robert Anton Wilson appeared in the 1998 German film 23 Nichts ist so wie es scheint. He has approximately two minutes featured as himself, with the main actor, portraying hacker Karl Koch, meeting Wilson at the annual German Computer Hackers Convention in 1985. The film is a biographical piece about Germany's infamous computer hackers, and the 1985 meeting in Germany between Wilson and Koch is authentic. Wilson spoke at the 1985 German Computer Hackers Convention, warning of a future in which governments would have total digital control over the citizen. He signed one of his books for Koch. These events are depicted in the film.

RAW can be seen about 13 minutes into the film. There are scenes of the protagonist reading Illuminatus!

A clip which shows RAW speaking has been circulating on Twitter.  Brian Dean (of RAW Semantics) noted it and wrote, "The embedded video here looks well-produced, but since I don't speak German, I don't know what they're saying (it's about RAW/Illuminatus, etc):"

I called Martin's attention to it on Twitter, and he has kindly supplied a translation:

00:08:59,500 --> 00:09:01,980

Something I want to show you...

93

00:09:03,300 --> 00:09:06,500

His associates found it in his desk.

94

00:09:10,500 --> 00:09:12,900

- 'National Research Award'...

 Great haircut!

95

00:09:13,100 --> 00:09:14,900

- I won it when I turned 14.

96

00:09:15,100 --> 00:09:16,500

That's the author...

97

00:09:16,700 --> 00:09:17,900

Robert Anton Wilson

98

00:09:18,100 --> 00:09:19,500

- He looks strange.

99

00:09:19,700 --> 00:09:20,700

- Dad made a mistake...

100

00:09:20,900 --> 00:09:22,100

thought it was a kid's book.

101

00:09:22,300 --> 00:09:25,700

When he knew the truth, he confiscated it.

102

00:09:27,700 --> 00:09:29,700

Now it's all mine again.

103

00:09:30,300 --> 00:09:33,100

- "Nothing is true. Everything's permitted.

104

00:09:33,300 --> 00:09:36,300

World history is war between secret societies."

105

00:09:36,500 --> 00:09:39,100

- Wilson says the world isn't what it seems.

106

00:09:39,300 --> 00:09:41,100

A secret society controls all

107

00:09:41,300 --> 00:09:43,100

the Illuminati.

108

00:09:43,300 --> 00:09:45,300

But Hagbard Celine is a rebel,

109

00:09:45,500 --> 00:09:47,700

an anarchist on a submarine.

110

00:09:47,900 --> 00:09:50,500

From there he fights Illuminati.

111

00:09:55,100 --> 00:09:57,500

He has a computer on the a sub

112

00:09:57,700 --> 00:10:00,500

computing risk of World War III with simulations.

113

00:10:00,700 --> 00:10:01,700

- Mmmhm

114

00:10:01,900 --> 00:10:03,700

- Computer's named, "Fuck Up".

115

00:10:03,900 --> 00:10:04,900

- What?

116

00:10:05,100 --> 00:10:09,300

- Fuckup: First Universal Cybernetic Kinetic Ultra-micro Programmable

117

00:10:09,500 --> 00:10:11,500

If you want, I'll lend it to you.

118

00:10:11,700 --> 00:10:12,900

- I guess.

119

00:10:13,900 --> 00:10:22,100

"Reality at last, Ten bottles of wine, all empty too fast!"

120

00:10:22,500 --> 00:10:26,900

Pizza anyone?

121

00:10:33,820 --> 00:10:36,100

- End this now or I'll call the cops

122

00:10:36,420 --> 00:10:37,700

Alex

123

00:10:37,900 --> 00:10:41,500

- Who pissed on the mailboxes? What a mess!

124

00:10:41,900 --> 00:10:43,300

- Who's that whiner?

125

00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:46,500

- My landlord.

126

00:10:50,500 --> 00:10:54,300

My landlord says he'll call the cops. It's over. Go home.

127

00:11:02,100 --> 00:11:05,300

"Beate didn't take 'Illuminatus,'

128

00:11:05,700 --> 00:11:07,700

Alex only read parts on sex and drugs.

129

00:11:08,300 --> 00:11:10,300

He plain, 'didn't get it.'

130

00:11:11,300 --> 00:11:13,620

What Wilson's wrote about assassinations was riveting.

131

00:11:13,820 --> 00:11:18,100

I repeatedly read it, and sought other believers.

132

00:11:18,380 --> 00:11:21,660

BBS were populated by people like me.

133

00:11:22,220 --> 00:11:24,500

I got a computer and joined my peers.

134

00:11:24,900 --> 00:11:26,500

Just a simple computer.

135

00:11:27,100 --> 00:11:30,100

Only a Commodore, but it served my needs.

136

00:11:46,300 --> 00:11:49,180

I felt I discovered a new continent.

137

00:11:49,380 --> 00:11:54,100

I visited my global neighbors.

138

00:11:55,900 --> 00:11:58,900

It didn't take long to choose a name

139

00:12:21,860 --> 00:12:25,500

On a BBS where 'Illuminatus' was argued,

140

00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:29,900

I read Wilson would visit a Hamburg Chaos Computer Club meeting.

141

00:12:38,500 --> 00:12:40,900

Many computer freaks attended from all over Germany.

142

00:12:41,300 --> 00:12:45,300

Many were inert but some had skills.

143

00:12:45,700 --> 00:12:50,100

It's like converting a harmless child's toy into a bomb.

144

00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:54,500

'Scarabeus' hacked Frankfurt airport's flight arrival board

145

00:12:54,700 --> 00:12:57,700

'Conan' took-over Luxemburg's power grid.

146

00:12:57,500 --> 00:13:01,500

'Fishball' had an illegal mail server at GAC.

147

00:13:02,420 --> 00:13:04,100

Then there was 'David' from Hannover.

148

00:13:04,300 --> 00:13:06,100

His net-name was 'Goliath'.

149

00:13:08,820 --> 00:13:11,100

- We're now discovering that the true source of wealth

150

00:13:11,300 --> 00:13:14,500

is information, and it increases as it's shared.

151

00:13:14,900 --> 00:13:19,700

"Wilson said computers will revolutionize society.

152

00:13:20,300 --> 00:13:23,700

Information will be more important than money.

153

00:13:24,100 --> 00:13:28,500

Knowledge is power and will be controlled by few.

Nobel Prize for Bell's Theorem science RAW wrote about

John Stewart Bell

Faithful readers of Robert Anton Wilson will be familiar with Bell's theorem, the idea that under quantum mechanics, two particles can influence each other, no matter how far apart they are. 

On Tuesday, a Nobel Prize in physics was announced for three scientists who ran experiments that found hard evidence for the theorem. You can read the New York Times story, which even quotes David Kaiser, author of How the Hippies Saved Physics, the book about scientists such as Nick Herbert whom RAW wrote about. Michael Johnson, who emailed me about the news, sent me a link to an also really good Washington Post article. 

Here is the lead for the Times' article:

"Three physicists whose works each showed that nature is even weirder than Einstein had dared to imagine have been named winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.

"John Clauser, of J.F. Clauser and Associates in Walnut Creek, Calif.; Alain Aspect of the Institut d’Optique in Palaiseau, France; and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria, will split a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor."

No response yet from Nick Herbert on his blog. 

RAW's evolving views on gay people

Photo by Teddy O on Unsplash

In Saturday's blog post, I mentioned Martin Wagner's publication of a 1962 letter by Robert Anton Wilson, including this claim: "How will anarchism handle psychopaths? The same way the Zuni handle Suicides, the Trobrianders handle homosexuals, and Summerhill handles bullies. It will not produce them."

It might be worth taking a few moments to go back and read the post, and the comments, which discuss the evolution of RAW's views on gay people. Several comments so far, including from Bobby Campbell, Michael Johnson and Jesse Walker.

Michael, by the way, apologizes for misspelling the name of Lewis Shiner, the excellent science fiction and literary fiction writer who did an excellent interview with RAW.

Michael also says,  "Long Live Martin Wagner!" Yes. 

Eric Wagner's letter to RAW

 

Sopdet, the Egyptian goddess of Sirius. (Creative Commons 3.0 photo by Colin). 

[When we finished up the Prometheus Rising reading group, Eric Wagner, author of An Inside's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson, asked if he could write a final post for the group. Here is is. -- The Management.]

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger

In his Afterword to the Hilaritas edition of Prometheus Rising, Richard Rasa relates how Bob Wilson told him in 1994, “Don’t channel me.” I sit here in 2022, fifteen years after Bob’s death. I have not had a sense of connection with Bob’s spirit since his passing, and I have not tried to “channel” him, but I have tried to understand his books and maps of reality. 

Dear Bob,

I hope all goes well. I almost wrote, “Dear Dr. Wilson.” From 1982 to 1988 I thought of you as Dr. Wilson. We began corresponding in 1986, and I first met you in 1987. In 1988 you spent a week in in the Phoenix, Arizona, area where you gave a talk and a seminar. I got to know you better that week, and I began to think of you as “Bob”.

You told Rasa, “Don’t channel me.” I have mixed feeling about the survival of the individual after death. I have had some vague sense of connection to you since your death fifteen years ago but nothing overwhelming. I do want to thank you for your books and your friendship. One review of my first book said I wanted to “be” you. That has some truth to it. You seemed to have a deeper understanding of life than anyone else I had encountered, and your writings and your outlook made a lot of sense to me. Reading Nabokov’s Pale Fire proved educational and a little painful to me when contemplating the character of Kinbote. Wikipedia says Kinbote’s “writing reveals a comic melange of narcissism and megalomania”.My obsession with your thought and writing led me to become a bit zealous in my pursuit of understanding E-Prime, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Aleister Crowley, Beethoven, etc., etc. I fear I strove too much to become your disciple which I know you never wanted. I feel grateful for all I learned in the process, but I feel a little lost. For decades I thought, “Bob said X; that seems like a good working model.” I didn’t always agree with you, but I thought you provided a good working model.

I tried to follow the lines of research which you found most fruitful. You had your Sirius experiences at the age of 41. I hoped that I might have a profound transformational experience around that age as well after my years of work on the exercises in Prometheus Rising and other lines of research you had outlined. I haven’t really had that transformational experience yet.

I turned 48 in 2010, two years after you died. I decided I wanted to read Proust’s long seven volume novel before I turned fifty. I did, and that turned into a bit of an obsession as well. I read it two more times and started it again. I continue to love James Joyce’s writing, but I find that I prefer Proust these days. I have devoted a ton of time to studying Joyce over the past 39 years. I had Finnegans Wake study groups for 36 of those years. I still do weekly readings for an online Finnegans Wake study groups, and during the Pandemic I finished reading ten books by and about Joyce. I will continue to participate in Robert Anton Wilson study groups for the rest of my life I suspect.

Anyway, I hope all goes well on your continuing journey, and thank you for everything.

Your friend,

Eric Wagner

P.S. Two mornings this week I looked up at Sirius as I took out the trash. I remember looking up at Sirius the morning after you died. Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of your Sirius experience. I wonder what the future holds for us all.

Bobby Campbell's 'Weird Comix'

The Kindle version of Bobby Campbell's new comic book, Weird Comix #2, is still just 99 cents on Amazon,  less than the price of a cup of coffee, and in my opinion everyone should fork over the 99 pennies and pick up a copy, although of course you can buy the paper copy for $7.77 if you prefer. In my review for Amazon, I gave it five stars and wrote, "Moving, funny, inspirational and wise, Weird Comic #2 collects many of my favorite recent comics by Bobby Campbell. They really show his range." 

If you are reading it on the Kindle app, double click a panel to fill your screen. This works well with my Android cell phone, a bit bigger than most phones, although I suspect it would work even better on a tablet.

See also Bobby's official site. 

1962 letter by Robert Anton Wilson on psychopaths and anarchism

Another Martin Wagner discovery: A 1962 letter to the editor by Robert Anton Wilson, asserting that a libertarian society would not produce psychopaths. Here is the claim: "How will anarchism handle psychopaths? The same way the Zuni handle Suicides, the Trobrianders handle homosexuals, and Summerhill handles bullies. It will not produce them."

This seems a bit naive to me and an early formulation of ideas that RAW developed later on in more depth. But see what you think. 

Published in Volume 23, issue 23 of Freedom, apparently an anarchist publication.