No clear solution to differential equation that plagues the US

In a televised address on Saturday after the presidential election had been called in his favor, Joe Biden spoke of securing a victory for "We the people" and said the nation stands at "an inflection point".

While the United States may have come to a point of change, the extent of the makeover and who identifies themselves as part of the national "we" remains to be seen.

In some ways, the US election should have been like collapsing the wave function of a quantum system, whereby the supposition of the many possible states of the system existing at the same time collapses into just one when the system is subject to measurement.

Like the rolling of a dice such that only one of the possible numbers will be face up when it comes to a standstill. The supposition of the possibilities inherent in a quantum system cannot actually be observed; what is seen is the consequences of the collapse. Like the outcome of an election.

Yet in the case of the US presidential election, even after the voting determined an outcome from the entanglement of disparate hopes and fears, other potentialities－h(huán)owever unlikely－can still be discerned.

While the most visible of these revenant possibilities is a flipped result－with the Donald Trump campaign issuing a statement on Saturday in which he declared, "The simple fact is this election is far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone the highly contested states headed for mandatory recounts, or states where our campaign has valid and legitimate legal challenges that could determine the ultimate victor." That would simply transpose the outcome rather than modifying the supposition of sentiments that exists in the US, and that has proved so damaging to it.

While Biden said that, "I've always believed we can define America in one word: Possibilities" his upbeat interpretation of those possibilities maybe a tad overoptimistic.

Although he spoke of seeking unity and that part of the mandate given by the American people was "They want us to cooperate". The vote tallies for the two candidates and their respective makeup show that the unity he spoke of is likely to prove more easily said than realized. But achieving both stability and the effective control is vital in the development of useable quantum systems.

It takes very little environmental interference to disturb a quantum state and therefore cause a catastrophic loss of information.

The same is true of the US, where the supposition of all the different demands is not just a grouping of abstract yearnings, but rather the premise for the behavior of the system.

The supposition in effect stores and processes information about the future functioning of the system.

With Trump's supporters gathering in state capitals at the weekend echoing his unsubstantiated accusations of election fraud, with chants of "Stop the steal" and "This isn't over", if the nation is to secure some stability, the "coalition" that the Biden campaign put together against Trump campaign's opposing forces, "the broadest and most diverse in history", is going to have to become even broader and more diverse.

Biden will probably have to do something similar to scientists wanting to prolong the stability of quantum systems. To do so, they get the systems to tune out the noise.

As postdoctoral researcher Kevin Miao of the University of Chicago explained of a recent breakthrough that prolongs their stability up to 10,000 times, "It's like sitting on a merry-go-round with people yelling all around you. When the ride is still, you can hear them perfectly, but if you're rapidly spinning, the noise blurs into the background."

The US is going to have to get more people onto the merry-go-round and keep it turning if it is to solve its differential equation.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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