It seems appropriate to close this chapter with an intellectual health warning. Quantum theory is certainly strange and surprising, but it is not so odd that according to it ‘anything goes’. Of course, no one would actually argue with such crudity, but there is a kind of discourse that can come perilously close to adopting that caricature attitude. One might call it ‘quantum hype’. I want to suggest that sobriety is in order when making an appeal to quantum insight.
We have seen that the EPR effect does not offer an explanation of telepathy, for its degree of mutual entanglement is not one that could facilitate the transfer of information. Quantum processes in the brain may possibly have some connection with the existence of the human conscious mind, but random subatomic uncertainty is very different indeed from the exercise of the free will of an agent. Wave/particle duality is a highly surprising and instructive phenomenon, whose seemingly paradoxical character has been resolved for us by the insights of quantum field theory. It does not, however, afford us a licence to indulge in embracing any pair of apparently contradictory notions that take our fancy. Like a powerful drug, quantum theory is wonderful when applied correctly, disastrous when abused and misapplied.
© excerpted from Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction, chapter 6 Lessons and meanings