Quantum Duplicity:
running with the hares, hunting with the hounds
Einstein famously decried quantum mechanics by claiming that
God does not play dice – and an exasperated Bohr is said to have replied to
Einstein: “Stop telling God what to do.”
The conventional way to visualize quantum mechanics has been
a Schrodinger’s Cat: a mixture of a dead and a live cat.
Instead, let us look at the phrase ‘hunting with the hounds while
running with the hares’.
a a).
To support or attempt to placate both sides of a conflict or dispute.
“Many have criticized the government of runningwith the hare and hunting with the hounds regarding the territorial dispute between the two nations.”.
2 b) To act duplicitously or hypocritically; to speak or act out against something while engaging or
taking part in it.
“Howcan you be taken seriously as a reformer when you have continued to accept gifts? You
can't run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds, Senator”.
3 c) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cbbjaWlo4M
: ‘You can’t run with the hares and hunt with the hounds’: means: ‘you
can’t have it both ways’.
Some people phrase it differently, as a moral
imperative: ‘You shouldn’t run with the hares and hunt with the hounds’.
That is: you can, but you shouldn’t.
Other dictionary explanations of this phrase (similar to a) & b) above) :
a) keeping an equal distance from two parties in a conflict
b) duplicitous behavior of talking up relations with one
party, while secretly supporting the other.
The perfect real-life – or realpolitik – example of this
phrase is the almost seamless relationship between Pakistan's ISI/Army and the bevy of terrorist groups that
they harbor.
The question is: can this phrase be taken as an example of
‘quantum duplicity’? This directly contradicts the simple-minded explanation #3: sometimes you can have it both ways.
A similar phrase is: ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it
too’. Well, if it’s a quantum cake,
maybe you can. Although David Bohm didn’t agree (he was closer to Einstein’s
camp):
See also, the many worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics (i.e. you can have your cake or not in parallel universes, to simplify a bit):
and the more conventional (‘You can’t have your cake and eat it – unless you happen to be a quantum
physicist…’):
Explanation (a), maintaining equidistance between two
opposing parties in a conflict, is uninteresting. The second explanation, (b), is
more promising, but there is a problem: it seems to be asymmetric: the party
indulging in this behavior is actually supporting one party while merely
pretending to support the other.
In quantum mechanics this behavior may be (but does not have to be) symmetric: the
duplicitous party really supports both groups simultaneously. Pakistan provides
men and money to jehadis, but has also - at times - attacked them, with the Pakistan
Army indeed suffering many casualties and deaths. Pakistanis quote this fact to
support their contention that they are ‘taking action against terrorist groups’. Maybe
Pakistan is actually a real Quantum State (because it does seem to do both!)?
Perhaps it helps that there are many groups of jehadis (hounds?). Also, not everyone
agrees about an answer to the question: who are the hares, and who are the
hounds?
Implicit in duplicity is the idea of ‘plausible deniability’:
You can get away with anything as long as you don’t get caught red-handed.
A parallel can be made to the quantum world: as long as no
measurement is made, the quantum state exists in a superposition of both states
(support group A/support Group B or live cat/dead cat). But as soon as a
measurement is made the mask of quantum duplicity is torn off: the Quantum
State collapses into one of two mutual orthogonal states. Similarly, you can
look at a quantum cake (no measurement), but when it reaches your tongue, either it’s there or
it isn’t (measurement).
Einstein would not be happy with this analogy either. Nor
are the victims of real-politik. But that’s life.
Another word which captures the shape-shifting nature of
reality is the word ‘frenemy’. Clearly, the word frenemy needs only one
person in addition to yourself, while ‘hunting with hounds and running with the
hares’ needs at least three.
However, one should clarify that one needs to invoke a
quantum nature only when one entity is being discussed. If there are many
entities then the more appropriate classical analog is the word ‘mixed
strategy’ from game theory. A Hawk always follows a strategy of aggression,
while a Dove always acts according to non-violent means. A mixed strategy is
(say) 50% Hawk and 50% Dove, and can happen in two ways: a) 50% of the
population is Hawk and 50% is always Dove, or b) each member of the population
is Hawk 50% of the time and Dove 50% of the time. Alternative a) works well if
the population contains an even number of individuals, where n ³ 2 (only in the 50%/50%
case). But if n Is odd, then the only way to go is alternative b). If n is 1,
the only possibility is quantum.
So it would be more accurate to describe Pakistan's game plan as mixed strategy, rather than quanum duplicity.
