No point here, just babbling...

[wispfox]

Random not yet very well verbalized thought while trying unsuccessfully to sleep last night (the valerian root did finally kick in, thankfully).

I realized that there were no opposites that I could think of where I was not happier with them being thought of as opposite ends of a spectrum, rather than them being the only options with no mixing allowed. I cannot find any cases where a pair of opposites are the only choices, with no middle ground.

I don't know what to do with this idea. I've often suspected that life would be much easier if I *could* believe in clear boundaries between opposites, but I think it would also be very, very uncomfortable for who I am. I like being switchy. And I like to try to see other people's sides of things, of which there are very rarely only two. Hell, I, personally, tend to have multiple mental and emotional states at any given time.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

There are instances in nature where only two states are allowed. Things like the spin state of an electron, for example. Or the difference between protons and neutrons, though it is possible for an inherently unstable neutron to decay into a proton, an electron, and a neutrino there is essentially no chance of a proton becoming a neutron by any decay process. Likewise, no electron will ever become a positron, and there's no other fermion like the electron with an intermediate value of charge or mass or spin.

When we get to systems as complex as human beings, you're correct in seeing that the state function allows for more than two states in just about every case. Sometimes many more than two states are allowed, and sometimes the state function permits a continuum.

Which is all a very convoluted way of saying that in Young's two slit experiment, it's perfectly possible for the photon to pass through both of the slits. If you want to similarly expand your wavefunction to embrace all possibilities, that's fine with me.