Quantum Baseball

Lovely, faintly dotty US piece by Dennis Overbye in the New York Times, on why he believes in 'Quantum Baseball' - meaning that the act of observing a game can crucially change what will actually happen in it. After a bad experience - turning on the tv in the belief his beloved Red Sox had surely won the series, to see them instantly lose it as his eyes fell on the screen - he's become "the biggest sports fan I know who hardly ever watches a game". All of which gives rise to some sublime ludicity (yes, that's spelt right):

Most of us, I suspect, would rather believe that the devil is running things than that no one is in charge, that our lives, our loves, World Series victories, hang on the whims of fate and chains of coincidences, on God throwing dice, as Einstein once referred to quantum randomness. I've had my moments of looking back with a kind of vertigo realizing how contingent on chance my life has been, how if I'd gotten to the art gallery earlier or later or if the friend I was supposed to have dinner with had showed up, I might not have met my wife that night, and our daughter would still in be an orphanage in Kazakhstan.

Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the "mystery tramp," as Bob Dylan put it, putting our lucky caps on, turning our bracelets, refusing to look.

And yet life too seems robust, buoyed by zillions of chance interactions reinforcing and contradicting each other. We are people, with desires and memories and a sense of humor - not Ping-Pong balls.

It seems that Westerners are still as anxious as Einstein ever was about God the gambler.