Herb Mertz Interview: Quantum Tunneling and the Question of Intent
Eric opened by asking about the source of the quantum events driving the device. He had read about hardware built around the radioactive decay of an isotope, and he wanted to know whether this one worked the same way, pulling its randomness from electrons.
Herb explained that decay is only one route. Plenty of methods exist for generating genuine uncertainty, and the approach he relies on is common in its own right. It goes by the name quantum tunneling. You start with a semiconductor component, a diode, and you push voltage across it the wrong way. Run backwards like that, the diode is supposed to block electrons from crossing from one side to the other.
What complicates that neat picture is the behavior of matter at very small scales. An electron doesn't sit in a fixed spot; it has a probability of being found in any given location. So an electron parked on one face of the diode can, in a way that defies ordinary intuition, vanish from where it was and show up on the opposite side. It never really traveled across the barrier. Quantum rules simply leave room for it to turn up elsewhere. Counting how often these crossings happen is what lets the device register a high or a low, a one or a zero.
Eric wanted to pin down the claim. As he understood it, when a person concentrates on the device and holds the intention for a one or a zero, that focus somehow nudges the electron toward appearing on one part of the hardware rather than another.
Herb called that a fair way to put it. Nobody can peer inside and watch it happen, he admitted, but given how the thing is constructed, it's a sound assumption. The effect reads as though more electrons are ending up on the wrong side of the diode than chance alone would produce.
And the pull works in both directions, he added. These events happen at some baseline rate, a handful per second. Someone aiming for zeros can hold the count below that handful; someone aiming for ones can drive it above. The mind appears to have a kind of flexibility here, able to tip the result either way.
Eric's next question turned to the conditions around the effect. Had Herb looked into whether distance matters, whether a person sitting right beside the device gets different results than one far off? And does it change anything if they watch the device directly versus sitting with their eyes shut, unable to see it at all?