The underlying idea here is that in situations where we can’t predict precisely what’s going to happen next, it’s because there are aspects of the current situation that we haven’t taken into account. Very small changes in the initial conditions can alter the results. We can evade the diagnosis by arguing that in practice one never throws the dice in precisely the same way. Is it really insane to play dice? If so, it’s a very common form of madness! Of course Einstein, famously, did not believe in the inherent unpredictability of the world, saying “God does not play dice.” Yet in playing dice, we act out Einstein Insanity: We do the same thing over and over-namely, roll the dice-and we correctly anticipate different results. Are they all insane to do so? It would seem they are not, since they have garnered a stupendous variety of results.

In those colliders, physicists bash together the same particles in precisely the same way, trillions upon trillions of times. Indeed, that is the premise underlying great high-energy particle colliders. In quantum mechanics you can do the same thing many times and get different results. And I’m happy to give him the credit, because doing so takes us in interesting directions.įirst of all, note that what Einstein describes as insanity is, according to quantum theory, the way the world actually works.

Though the Matthew effect may be operating here, it is undeniably the sort of clever, memorable one-liner that Einstein often tossed off.

That witticism-I’ll call it “Einstein Insanity”-is usually attributed to Albert Einstein. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” From Quanta Magazine ( find original story here ).

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