If Quantum Physics is Queer, What Does it Mean for Quantum Technologies?
How the operations of quantum mechanics disrupt the rules of ‘normal’ for its derivative technologies
Emergence
All that we think is obvious in the physical world is, in reality, merely the physical traits that we can see, and which we then measure against the standards we are familiar with. For instance, our ‘common sense’ would appear to tell us that a big system (such as a forest ecosystem) could only be made up of subsystems (the trees, herbage, animals, water etc) that create a set of rules that linearly correlate with the overall workings of the big system (the forest). But what if we break down the subsystems further. For instance, let’s take a leaf from a tree and photosynthesis. Photosynthesis, as we should have learnt by middle school (if the school is doing its job), is the process by which a plant uses carbon dioxide, water, and the sun in combination to produce energy in the form of glucose, with the aid of a machinery known as chlorophyll.
All of these are explained using biological and chemical logic that do not, for instance, explain why the energy production of the leaf must work in such combination to produce the chemical kinetics that would then lead to the intricate production of the different energy compounds needed to power the life of the tree. Rather, what we get is the expected: every base component (water + carbon dioxide + sunlight (with the aid of chlorophyll) = ATP and NADPH (the energy molecules).
Admittedly, I am taking shortcuts around the steps needed to get to the final product, but even if you were to lay out all the steps, there is still a missing answer to the question of how the photons and neutrinos from the sun ‘cooperate’ with an even more complex range of particles found in carbon dioxide and water through the absorption of sunlight through the chloroplasts where the chlorophyll are located? This is even after we take into account the breaking down of those complex entities into subatomic particles found in hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. For some scientists, the answers lie in the quantum systems within each of these component subsystems, one represented by quantum biology.
If quantum biology is supposed to provide the explanatory gap, it is then the emergent answer to a combination of the base properties that do not give rise to an outcome that could easily be reducible back into said properties. Some physicists have suggested that new laws have to be created when we move from a macroscopic mechanical world (any physical object that is in a scale upwards of the size of an atom) to the microscopic world (of subatomic scale). In other words, what appears to make complete normative sense macroscopically requires a different interpretation of what is ‘normal’ when measured within the laws of the microscopic quantum mechanical world.
What does that have to do with queerness? Well first, let us start with what is quantum mechanics. While there are many textbook and historical definitions, and I have even attempted a version of it elsewhere, to serve the present purpose, I define quantum mechanics as a system of probabilistic physical states operating both discretely and in a continuum, between the range of 0 and 1 (and, if you are interested in quantum computing, in qubits).
Quantum mechanics is very focused on energy systems and pretty much develops both its interpretative and predictive prowess through the mathematical deliberation of energetic systems. If we are used to interacting in a world where you can predict how the initial setup could lead to a singular determinate end, quantum mechanics pretty much throws that out the window. If we were to live in a quantum mechanical world, we have to live with a kind of indeterminacy where the outcomes are dual, and even within each branch of the duality, one cannot precisely ascertain that each individual branch would come to a linearly predictable outcome. In other words, normativity is no longer fixed on a static standard, but is determined by an array of probabilities emerging from particular physical setups.
In a classical (philosophical) theory of emergence, there is a preference for a cause-and-effect that evolves over time, where we move in a ‘downward motion’ (downward causation) from higher order of existence to a lower order of existence (diachronic), rather than for a cause-and-effect where the higher orders of evolution co-exist with lower orders of evolution (synchronic). But when a queer interpretation is put into practice, both become indispensable.
Queerness
While we tend to think that queerness primarily belongs to how one theorizes the spectrum of human sexuality, which is not a wrong assumption, queerness is much more than a descriptor for a human quality because queerness stems from a foundational concept of agency when it comes to deciding on what constitute the ‘normal’ and ‘expected’ — the normal distribution and expectation values are incidentally part of our foundational understanding into the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics.
Theoretical physicist turn feminist philosopher, Karen Barad, is one of the earliest to provoke the community (who reads her) with the idea that quantum physics could be queer through how she reads Bohr’s original interpretation of quantum mechanics (often attributed as the Copenhagen intepretation, rightly or wrongly). In the chapter of her book titled Agential Realism, she proposes that Bohr’s theoretical concepts (position and momentum) are not ideational, but rather, “specific physical arrangements.”
In other words, she is suggesting that a position exists not because we have named it and given it meaning independent of a physical phenomenon, but because there is a device used to give it a quantitative quality. Therefore, she argues that the reason position and momentum in the Uncertainty Principle could not be simultaneously derived is because of how the measuring device, and material (tangible) arrangement of both of these physical attributes, preclude their simultaneous determination. But of interest to the purpose of this article, when it comes to Barad’s idea of agential realism, is what was how one could unravel the indeterminate features associated with quantum physics if we were to focus on its intra-acting, rather than interacting feature. For Barad, the intra-acting does not presuppose the pre-existence of independent entities or relationships governing a physical phenomena, but of an existing entanglement between the subject and object.
To Barad, agential intra-actions within a realist physical world makes clear what is the subject and what is the object (hence the aforementioned determinacy). Agential realism is less about a human being the gatekeeper of what is observed, but more about being a cog in the wheel of a larger material system that includes non-humans. Barad would go on to expand this discussion on “apparatuses of bodily production” to cover all range of bodies (from instruments making measurement to the bodies of the environment making up the boundaries of matter to the bodies of human observers) so that the reader is clear that her agential ‘cut’ (the intentional making of boundaries that is more expansive than exclusive) is different from the Cartesian ‘cut’ (where the manner of separation between mind and matter is already decided beforehand). The chapter is fairly dense in the theories it tries to build around agential realism (as a queer reading of scientific realism), but a motivated reader interested in the intersection between queer theory and the history and philosophy of physics could still get something out of it.
Besides Barad, other more conventional queer theories around identity are relevant to framing a queer reading of quantum physics, if only because within the discourse in quantum physics vis-à-vis classical (Newtonian-type) physics, there is also the idea of particle identities, such as whether the particles could be distinguishable from one another (a staple discussion even in classical statistical mechanics). While there is an entire philosophical treatise on identity in physics, which focuses on how we could distinguish between particles through a metaphysical lens, I ground back the question of queer quantum physics to a different kind of identity theory, one which suggests that queerness performs the identity and category of an entity that pushes against a defined identity since identities or behaviors will always be unstable and deviant.
If we were to turn the question back tothe complexity and predictability in quantum mechanics, it could then be suggested that a queer re-interpretation of quantum mechanics requires us to consider the borders of the subject-object boundary, and the location of its normalcy could shift depending on what forms both the material and discursive choice for establishing the expectation value. Therefore, prediction is anchored on how we intend the relationship between an object and its subject to be measured and quantified. How do all of these translate to technological emergence for quantum physics?
The Social Future of Quantum Technologies
As retired physicist-turn-historian Karoly Simonyi observed in the Cultural History of Physics,
All of human activity is inextricably linked to natural phenomena such as geography and weather. In this interplay of influences, physics stands in close relationship with technology on one side, to mathematics and philosophy on another, and, a little bit further, to religious ideology. Physics is inseparable from the foundations of every social order through its connection with technology and methods of production. Yet philosophy and religious ideology bind it to the superstructure. If we consider as well that in the course of history the individuals who have taken part in the development of physics have each taken their places in the given political systems by virtue of being members of particular social classes or institutions, we may then begin to appreciate with [sic] how many strands physics is linked to other social processes that determine the history of mankind. It is Marxism’s contribution to have emphasized economic factors, which have frequently been disregarded.
While theoretical physics has latent use-value embedded in the superstructure of the knowledge economy, it could also be co-opted for mobilizing social changes through deployment in technology and the transformative practices of scientific labor.
Through the three views to be described below, I am presenting a way for thinking about quantum futures through a queer reading of quantum physics that could unlock another way for understanding technological emergence. None of these views are particularly novel.
- Disrupting Status Quo and Challenging Orthodoxy
When quantum mechanics was launched into the world, what came out was a description of reality that bordered on the unreal, if only because the mathematical formalism for quantum physics seemed more tractable and material than the tracks and traces left behind by an electromagnetic ray. The emergence of quantum mechanics in the first quarter of the twentieth century was a consequence of its probabilistic, or statistical quality, of quantum physics, with the latter quality attributed to von Neumann’s view regarding the measurability of the quantum system. Present knowledge of quantum mechanics has gone through multiple shifts, starting with attempts at understanding the intricacies underpinning the irreconcilable qualities of classical and quantum physics respectively.
The first instance of quantum emergence appears less intuitive than the more directly accessible deterministic world of meso- and macroscale physics; even so, certain determinate qualities could become indeterminate when a quantity being measured moves back and forth between the scales which classical and quantum mechanics operate. Philosopher of physics/physicist Dennis Dieks and Science Studies scholar/mathematician Arkady Plotnitsky respectively argue that quantum mechanical laws do not merely disappear because we enter the macrophysical world. In fact, what we observe of the quantum world is from the perspective of measuring instruments set to follow the rules of classical determinism; the macroscopically observable aspects of quantum behaviour are the result of measuring instruments defined by classical logic. The measurement of a quantum-level entity does not preclude the non-observability of quantum effects — the effects are not part of the conversation due to the lack of language for providing reasonably satisfactory explanation. However, entanglement involving quantum states means that the superposition of many-particle waves could not return to its single-wave origins. In other words, an already superposed wave has no chance of being decomposable into separable waves after the fact.
If we were to extend the foundational arguments to our present understanding of quantum computing and its simulators, then we could already say that quantum laws still exist in non-quantum computers, but are not activated (even if the activation is only partial since the hardware are foundationally still operating on bits rather than qubits) until these computers decided to use quantum simulators as quantum system emulators.
2. A Multivalent Approach to Ontology
Until now, I have avoided mentioning the word ‘ontology’ so as not to flummox the reader with too many concepts at once. But now is the time to bring that in, because ontology, in this instance, represents the foundational properties shared by extant and emergent objects, even if they might differ in terms of their operative and functional approaches.
Ontology is primordial by nature and pre-exists systematic determination of its qualities; an incomplete knowledge of a systemic ontology produces realities that may appear contradictory in their logics, such as in the case of quantum mechanics. At the same time, the ontological is also focused on the core value, the fundamental identifier, that informs all aggregated data used as evidence for supporting ontological arguments.
Emergent knowledge does not merely disrupt the dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion when it comes to dealing with measurable information, be they situated in quantum or non-quantum worlds, but also allows for more ambivalent and indeterminate interstices to be part of that consideration. Just as it was in the case of agential realism, intentionality is involved as mathematical formalisms are merely giving meaning to the content of physical shapes, and therefore physical objects. At least, that appears to be part of philosopher Edmund Husserl’s conception of geometry in shaping and making material physical phenomena.
The multivalence of ontologies could be used to explain the multivalent possibilities of non-quantized information that become quantized as that information is broken down and rebuilt through quantum processes. This is something that had been indirectly studied in high-energy particle physics as the reading of information in quantum states transforms and translates between ordinary (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics and relativistic quantum field theories. I wrote a fairly accessible dissertation on the topic, for those interested, and am now writing a book inspired by the topic but not exactly the same topic. Moreover, in that dissertation, I had suggested that the quantum interference experiment, which I discussed at length here, is relevant to understanding the clashes and collisions of high-energy particles in gigantic colliders.
3. Emerging Techno-Labour: Or the Beginnings of Technologization
Scientific labor is intertwined with technological production. One finds parallels between the process of emergence and Marxist conception of the labor structure and process. For instance, the theoretical framework underpinning the arguments of the aforementioned downward causation (see section on Emergence) and decomposition of parts informing ontological emergence could also be applied to the negotiation of labor power, surplus value, and capital. The production of scientific knowledge is applied towards technological control where science is commoditized for the purpose of producing a technological superstructure dressed up as progress. In Marx’s characterization of the labor process, the end product never leaves the mark of the social involved in its production in a way that an emergent product does not show signs of prior properties out of which that product emerges.
The labor-process, resolved as above into its simple elementary factors, is human action with a view to the production of use values, appropriation of natural substances to human requirements. It is the necessary condition for effecting exchange of matter between man and nature. It is the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of the existence of every social phase, or rather, is common to every such phase. To quote Marx in chapter seven of the first volume of his Das Kapital.
It was, therefore, not necessary to represent our labourer in connexion with other labourers; man and his labour on one side, Nature and its materials on the other, sufficed. As the taste of the porridge does not tell you who grew the oats, no more does this simple process tell you of itself what are the social conditions under which it is taking place, whether under the slave-owner’s brutal lash, or the anxious eye of the capitalist, whether Cincinnatus carries it on in tilling his modest farm or a savage in killing wild animals with stones.
However, what appears as invisible labor in the process of production, including technological production, is in fact, inscribed on the laborer’s body and is evident in how the product is presented, transmitted and received, from producer to beneficiary/recipient through a non-linear and iterative flow.
As the labor and laborers of future quantum technological manufacturing will flow from top-level cognitive labor to ‘low’ skilled precision labor to be performed by AI, and the human drudges whose job it would be to expand the ‘smart’ capabilities of the AI, could that door for subverting a new form of orthodoxy remain open, and if so, to whom would the door be open for? This third view could be unpacked to explore whether the combination of algorithmic AI, and quantum computing, would allow for a yet-to-be known queer reading of quantum physics. However, if the emergent (algorithmic quantum AI) and its basal properties made out of quantum physical systems, are no longer correlated, this might be the start for developing a queer system for predicting a not-yet-conceivable future of informational infrastructures running on quantum rules.
Finally
I have been thinking about these questions for awhile, and originally, I had developed my inquiry into this through a narrative-based exploration on how physics and mathematics, and their identities, were depicted in three works of science fiction, with no mention of quantum technologies. However, the scenarios discussed and explicated through these work actually formed the theoretical basis for future work into the foundational mediation of quantum technologies. A version of that work is presently still undergoing review, so when it finally comes out, I will post information on it under my Rapid Communication of Research publication. Later, I might write a piece about a feminist philosophical reading of quantum mechanics for re-interpreting the labor and materiality of quantum technologies. In the meantime, I solicit all responses, challenges, disagreements, and even call for collaborations.
