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Subatomic Darwinism
blamanj writes "In the beginning was Darwinism, then there arose Social Darwinism, now physicists are proposing Quantum Darwinism. According to the Nature article: "If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?
Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states."."
ertain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism
I don't agree with that.
Free XBox, PS2
... religious Darwinism. IOW, beliefs evolve as previous beliefs are shown to be "unfit," i.e. disproven by observation.
... but, um, see, there's all this little stuff you scientists haven't quite figured out yet about the specifics, and sometimes you argue about it, and THAT'S ABSOLUTE PROOF OF THAT GOD EXISTS AND HE WANTS YOU TO DO EXACTLY AS _____ (insert your preferred version of a frequently mistranslated, politically loaded anthology of folktales here) SAYS!"
"The Earth is flat, because this passage from the Bible talks about God stopping the Sun directly overhead!"
"Um, no, actually, it's a sphere, and here's the proof."
"Okay, okay! But the celestial bodies are little lights in the sky, and perfect and unblemished, and the go around the Earth!"
"Um, no, actually, they've got all kinds of flaws and blemishes, and they all go around the Sun, and here's the proof."
"Oh, damn! But the Earth was created a few thousand years ago, as we can determine from Biblical genealogies!"
"Um, no, actually, it's been around for a lot longer than that, and here's the proof."
"Aaargh! But humans were specially created by God in His image, and are absolutely unique!"
"Um, no, actually, we look an awful lot like other apes, and that's really not a coincidence, and here's the proof."
"*whimper* All right, so the Earth is round, and it and all the other lumpy rocks revolve around the Sun, and it's all really old, and humans are a lot like apes
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
i.e. genetic algorithms.
GA's are used to maximize arbitrary functions by a mixture of random mutation and crossover between the solution candidates with better aptitude.
It's hot stuff, and it comes up with good solutions for analytically untractable problems.
So maybe a First Post really does matter then.
Wow.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
(Below this, on the bumper, is a sticker that says "if you can read this, you are too close or you are trying to see my Darwin deck-lid emblem")
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
the fact that observation changes a system doesn't require everyone sees massively different things, so an explanation of things being not massively different seems unnecessary.
if there is a box containing a red pen and a blue pen and I "observe" it (e.g. shake it about), it will have a different configuration but will still be a box containing a red pen and a blue pen.
So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.
Techno-speak for "rose-tinted-glasses"?
Seriously though, thinking about it makes your brain hurt: Did the scientists working on this create the necessary state "they preferred" inadvertently in order to discover the state they wanted to see?
It's time to Revisualize the universe.
Software Wars
Is that some quantum states are more stable and are more likely to occur at any given moment than others?
I didn't realize this was new. Maybe the news is that they have a "proof" of this now?
What's next... "market darwinism" when the products people buy survive?
/me needs more eggnog
No. "Darwinism" is about replicators, i.e. organisms that reproduce and that compete for resources.
When used for "Social Darwinism", the word implies that societies reproduce and compete for resources. In many ways this is accurate. You could use "darwinism" to describe many kinds of replicating, competing natural systems.
But quantums...? WTF?
Until we have evidence that quantums are actually lifeforms, the word "Darwinism" is simply not valid.
Anyhow, and on a different note, quantum mechanics is easy. Here's Ites' Dummies Guide to Quantum Physics: matter and energy are made of wavelets, a string of energy. Wavelets look like particles when they're compressed by time or distance. Measuring a wavelet changes it. Wavelets do not breed and they do not compete for resources.
The table is not solid because it's an agreed reality. The table is solid because your hand cannot pass through it.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
I'm not a physicist so you can shut me up at any time. But I thought the "observation changes the object" was only true because to observe you you have to toss energy at it and see what happens. Then the act of tossing the energy changed it. How does this mean that "looking at Buckinham Palace" would do anything ever? You just look at it. Being aware of an electron does not make it change. What you do to the electron to know it's there is what changes it. I suppose I don't really know, so I won't claim to.
Oh by the way if we all percieve that the reality of quantum physicists is to disappear, I think they would disappear... or at least make themselves disappear to prove their own points.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.
Sounds a lot like Solipsism which is nothing new at all.
Solipsism is the belief that, because we can only verify our own experiences and no-one elses, only the self is real.
or to put that in Layman's terms: "Go away, you don't exist!"
Schrodinger's cat, it's going to be pissed.
It wasn't a troll until you looked at it. Nice going...
wow. my head hurts from reading that abstract..
I perfer Terry Pratchett's definition of 'quantum' where scientists label anything too confusing for them to understand as being 'quantum'
"What're quantum mechanics?" - "I don't know. People
who repair quantums, I suppose."
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
...by a former physics professor or some other insane person who somehow managed to create a universe.
and now the schools will only teach Quantum Darwinism rather than Quantum creationism.... oh yea of little faith... thinking that something in nature like a Quantum particle is governed by science and not by god. /joke
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
by Stephen Hawking:He goes on to talk about how time curves back on itself as it approaches zero (stuff I'll never understand). So, basically the Catholic Church has conceded the time since the Big Bang to Science, excepting the occasional divine meddling. Of course, such meddling would imply the Great One couldn't design a universe that ran according to The Plan without intervention - such impudence.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
that's the sound of the gears and springs in my brain failing...
can be found in some of Wojciech Zurek's (mentioned in the article) preprints located at http://www.arxiv.org/find/quant-ph/1/au:+Zurek_W/0 /1/0/all/0/1.
Depends on who is looking. Check out this Cyclops guy. There is no uncertainty at all with the "Heisenburg uncertainty principle" when he decides to give something a look.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Any idea gets a "Darwinism" tacked to it. It's virulent.
Looking for Grants? try
-Darwinian database design
-Darwinian history of boygroups
-Darwinian recipy selection by opressive moms
How do they address this:
There's no way to know exactly how similar different people's perception of the same scenes is;
Quantum-level variations resulting from observation and whatever else are not likely to make a noticable difference in these scenes.
The idea that trees are tending to appear the same way because their particles find their way back to the same place after being displaced by observations isn't implausible, but without further establishing the potential for a contrary situation it seems like overkill!
Good thing they "mathematically proved" that they're right, heh heh.
This sort of thing has been a theory with me for years. All 'reality' is based on single and shared observation. Person A views everything a certain way, Person B views it another way. What we 'see' in our reality is the overlapping realms between persons A and B (for instance). In other words, the universe is touched and changed by observation. Humanity as a whole shares and expected result of reality which is the baseline norm.
Quantum physics is just the microcosm if the greater universe. Looking for a particle? Create it. Do the math, theories, etc... Then 'look' at it and there it is! The greater the number of believers that the particle exists, the greater chance the particle will be observed. The big question is "Did the particle exist before, or did it come into existance because shared reality expectations amoung observers cause it to come into existance?"
I know there will be those that totally don't understand, and those that will detract, but quantum physics is where science, philosophy, and religion tend to meet. There are few that feel comfortable with that thought.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
This is sounds like pseudoscience to me and someone feeling the need to invent some new crazy thing to get a PhD thesis going. This all stems from applying different intuitive "explanations" to the results of the quantum physics. The math works out alright but it seems that people have a need to understand and have an intuitive plan or schematics in their head. The computer scientist might imagine an array as a bucket or a counter with items on it. The electrical engineer might think of the current as water flowing through the wires etc. This seems to work up to a point. Quantum physics on the other hand doesn not seem to have any decent intuitive explanation that everyone's mom or uncle can read in a "how stuff works" book and have a clear grasp of what is going on. This hasn't stopped physicists from applying different interpretation to the quantum phenomena based on classical world. The authors from the article in Nature adopted what I believe is called Copenhagen Interpretation, where a state of the system is changed by measuring it. So there is a distinction between the macroworld where the measuring device is and the quantumwold where the system being measured is considered. The problem is that the measuring apparatus itself lives in a quantum world and everthing else is part of a larger quantum world. Check out wiki for Copenhagen interpetation, which the authers seem to adopt and the many-worlds interpretation which might not work out so well for these guys. (look around in here). So take these nice new ideas with a grain of salt. If you want to know that happens go through the math at least 3 times and then all you see is the math which everyone seems to agree on.
When I took physics, it was pretty clear that quantum effects are negligible at large scale. For instance, I have a wave form as I'm sitting in this chair at my office. I don't really notice my oscillation all that much.
So, for observation of the macroscopic environment it would follow that quantum effects can be ignored. But then again, I'm arguing against quantum physicists from Los Alamos, so maybe they're just explaining why quantum effects can be ignored at a large scale.
Yet it would seem as simple as "observation of the individual particles of the windows at Buckingham Palace are affected by observation, but statistically speaking, each change is just as likely as the next, so at a macroscopic level the odds of a visible change are infinitesimal." Sure, there's a chance that a window could move but it's so unlikely as to never happen during the life of the universe. I RRTFA and don't see this.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...having sex with a quark?
IANAP (I am not a physicists) but cutting edge physics is getting more and more surreal. Some of these new theories are just wild, though not necessarily incorrect. Sometimes it seems that we're coming up with new theories to explain something but have no good way of verifying them. Isn't physics suppose to boil everything down to the fundamental levels where everything is simple and elegant? It seems to be getting more complicated everytime someone comes up with a new theory and observation. As someone interested in physics, I can keep up with and buy into these theories up to the quarks, etc. Hopefully, someday it will all boil down to something elegant and credible.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Yes, there are "facts": the Earth is round (more or less), and it orbits the Sun.
But "facts" are based on observations - and observations either support or - more importantly - do not support any particular theory.
Basically, all we have are a bunch of theories we use to describe the world around us. And those theories fit all our observed "facts" as well as we can force the fit.
In other words, all our scientific theories rest on negative evidence: they're "true" until they're disproved. Then we have to come up with something "better".
So theories are what we think the "rules of the universe" are. They describe how things act. They don't and can't touch the why - which is left to philsophy and religion.
The term "quantum darwinism" is really an unnecessary buzzword. There is a certain analogy about states which create many records of themselves surviving a robust pointer states where others are "selected against", but the analogy is really pretty limited and not very useful. It's better to stay away from using terms like darwinism for effect. I should note that I didn't see the word "quantum darwinism" in the title or abstract of either of the actual journal articles this news item references. For the lazy, the two papers in question seem to be this preprint and this article from the Nov 26 issue of Physical Review Letters.
This sounds like an interesting result and Zurek is a premenent figure in the field of quantum decoherence, but this looks like the tying up of some (important) details rather than the revolutionary developement the news article makes it out to be. Even as far back as the work of Everett we had an idea of why two observers who compared notes would always agree on the objective facts. In the many worlds interpretation, this comes down to the fact that if observer A measures system S, there will be many different possible results. So there will be many branches of the wavefunction with A observing each possible result. When observer B measures system S, he becomes entangled with S and A, and there are many possible outcomes, but in each branch of the wave function A and B agree on the outcome. Not sure if that clears anything up. :-) If you're talking about purely quantum systems, the same thing happens in the Copenhagen interpretation. The only tricky part is how to think about it when A and B are "classical observers". Still, I haven't read these papers yet and now I'm eager to.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
http://qso.lanl.gov/qc/graphics/whz.GIF.
So maybe a First Post really does matter then.
Not if you get modded down.
You can't take the sky from me...
I suspect that somewhere it went wrong. Modern physicists are much like the ancient astronomers.
These astronomers, believing that planetary orbits were circular, developed much arcane math and explanation as to why they couldn't completely account for the observed data. They could not imagine such a thing as an elliptical orbit.
Modern physicists, believing that wavelets acted a particular way under certain observation arrangements, developed much arcane math and explanation as to why they couldn't completely account for the observed data. They could not imagine such a thing as a (insert reason here).
I believe that somewhere along the way, a key piece of information may have been missed that would make all of this very simple. Lord knows, I could be wrong...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
...what the fuck (the people at) ServiceLighting.com are whining about.
It's not wrong to use a company name or other group name as though it were plural. After all, ServiceLighting.com is not a person, it can't "whine", only the people who run it can.
ie; What are the NAACP bitching about now?
I find it intresting that quantum people ignore the presence of chaos in classical systems when doing there analysis. Since these same states are the regular trajectories in a purely classical chaotic system.
Maybe one day we will find a mathamatical link between quantum mechanics and chaos.
it's funny, laught
it's a fitting example of darwinism taking place in the religious memesphere, each time the study of nature and reality shows that some silly religiously based idea can't be backed up, well then the idea gets appropriately modified to fit reality.
Religions claiming to have special knowledge eventually get challenged and many get shown out the door. It's a sad testimony for some religions. And upsetting for the stringent by-the-letter followers.
A fit religion will be one that sticks to the basics: faith, how to live with oneself, how to live with the world and other men. It will not made silly unnecessary assumptions about a reality that cares nothing for how we on the thin surface of a small planet see it.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
It is dead wrong if it is a single company.
"After all, ServiceLighting.com is not a person"
Neither is the planet Pluto. But we don't go around saying "Pluto are cold". By the way, didn't you mean to say "ServiceLighting.com are not a person?"
"What are the NAACP bitching about now?"
The NAACP is one association, so it IS bitching. There are similar constructs with plurals, such as the NIH (National Institutes of Health... a plural). You can say that the "NIH are bitching....").
Whatever you says.
"> or will it be both pissed and pleased?"
"Only if you don't look at it."
I wish that worked with my girlfriend. It would be great if I could resolve her into one state or the other and finally be done with it.
Now, you have to repeat this process enough times to "amplify" the original data about Particle X into something readable at a macroscopic level.
BFD.
The fact that a single photon may or may not have bounced off a specific electron of the myriads of particles making up a the Florida license plate won't make a damn bit of difference at the macroscopic level of the 18-wheeler squishing your Cooper Mini into an instant coffin.
So yeah, it's an answer looking for a problem.
Its similar to natural selection.
The more stable the configuration, the more likely it is to form and stay for long periods of time.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
"Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?"
Some friends of ours recently had their house robbed while they were at work. The lowlife took a crap in the toilet and didn't flush it; a calling card of sorts.
Does this count?
you're telling me that physical systems stabilize? Think about Hopfield nets where you can start with different inputs and it'll always come to the same stable state. Am I supposed to be surprised to find that slight changes several orders of magnitude smaller than anything I can perceive approach insignificance as a result of _everything_ else continuing as it normally would? Seems like common sense..
Troll??
is there a idiot-test for mods?
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Like every other part of academia, the name of the game is money so you'll get more recognition for being creative rather than being right.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Sure glad we avoided that problem.
Play Command HQ online
This sounds very interesting, but is it just simply a strange twist on words? Mathematics can work out to many wonderful things, but the challenge is how and why the mathematics is applied. Methinks (and remembers as a physics undergrad) that conceptual theories such as quantum and relativity are very different from everyday life because they are special cases. Whereas in biology we learned that Darwin's theory of evolution was a general case.
Let me explain: Quantum mechanics takes place in the realm of the extremely super small. Einstein's relativity takes place in the realm of extremely large values of velocity. There is a disconnect there in reconciling these two theories, thus the epic hunt for TOE, The Theory of Everything. The Holy Grail of physics is to find this super theory that unites relativity, quantum mechanics, electricity and magnetism, gravity, mechanics. Although relativity is used in quantum for calculations, there are some contradictions in reconciling the two theories, thus Einstein's famous quote (during his hunt to reconcile relativity with quantum), "God does not play dice with the universe!"
It is my understanding that Darwinism, whether social, economic or of natural selection, takes place in all biological situations. Look around, and everyone will see that quantum mechanics is not something that happens around us! Do you see quantum wells on your computer screen? As you observe the movement of the train, does the Heisenberg uncertainty principle come into play? No! This uncertainty principle does not conflict with everyday life chiefly because it only applies to the special case of extremely small and extremely fast particles.
So this comparison, extension and exercise of extending quantum mechanics to Darwinian proportions appears to me to be more than anything a philosophical exercise.
Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find? perceptual relativity.
how will you then know the colors of the pens?
Quantum Field Theory already explains why macroscopic observations yield a single answer to every observer. The path integral sums over all possible complex-valued histories and it is those histories that constructively interfere that survive. Any graduate level QFT course will carry out the famous single particle example that yields Newton's law of motion. Its the reason while particles macroscopically travel a single path whereas quantum mechanics would suggest it actually travels every single path possible with some probability (in theory yielding different answers to different observers).
To us physicists, there is no mystery at all. The why part is left to philosophers.
but she can cold roll them anytime.
... according to quantum mechanics we do all percieve things slightly differently. The effect is only 'noticable' on a quantum scale because Plancks constant is so 'small' as compared to say Avogadros number.
Seriously, IANAP but
>> "The environment is modified so that it contains an imprint of the pointer state," he says.
Which means that the photons (say) coming from one area and reaching another will statistically be similier at a level of accuracy attainable by the receptors(?)
Or are they implying that some 'resonance' (my word) is conserving information that should, according to Copenhagen, be lost. I'm trying to read the paper but I'm charitably near the bottom of the slashdot education graph so someone please explain. The phrase 'Environment monitors certain observables' sounds like a macroscopic pov in a microscopic (quantum) discussion.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
They have no mechanism, just an observation of preferred states.
Hmm. Could it be that there is physics we haven't yet figured out that make these states more likely?
Could it be that an omniscient, omnipresent observer collapses the waveform?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wasn't Newtonian physics the most ridiculously accurate system until general relativity came along? And now QM is the most ridiculously accurate system. Doesn't every generation think the current view is ridiculously accurate?
Quantum Physics is a mathematical construct created by physicists to explain what they observe.
'reality' is a linquistic concept created by people to explain that they think that they have a handle on what they think that they observe.
I wish that more people would read and study Ludwig Wittgenstein. He understood a lot more about the way that we use language to explain and categorize than these folks who toy with language because they have a psycological need to try and show that they have a better handle on 'reality' than the rest of us.
We use language and science to explain what we observe. That is it. 'reality' is a word that we use, it is a concept in the human mind.
I do believe that there is another definition of reality that is 'all that exisits'. Unfortunately this, too, is just a concept in my mind.
None of this bothers me because I read a lot of Mr. Wittgensteins work. Words have many different uses. They should not be used as nooses.
The article is muddy and confusing, and makes a number of problematic claims, the most important of which is the claim that measurement changes the system measured. Within the orthodox (Copenhagen) interpretation of QM this is exactly the type of claim we want to avoid: prior to measurement, we can't say much about the system. We certainly can't say it "is" in any particular state or superposition--only that the outcomes of various possible experiments will follow the predicted probability distributions. To say the system "is" something prior to measurement is to load it with ontological baggage that just isn't justified.
The article also makes a hash of the relation between collapse and decoherence, which are quite different things. Decoherence theory doesn't explain collapse--it replaces it by making it unnecessary. I'm a bit out of date on this stuff, but as near as I can tell decoherence theory is treading down the path to many worlds, and it's still an open question as to whether it will be able to avoid the well-known problems that await its arrival.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If I had mod points I'd use them.
You're exactly right that people are interpreting analogies of quantum physics instead of actual quantum physics.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Are they saying this isn't the case? Surely they don't think a person can leave exactly the same version of the world for the next to find. That would be exceedingly bizarre - and stagnant.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Does anyone else read an article like this and think that it's just a load of bullshit? I mean... the whole thing. It sounds like people are making up excuses to describe things that they theorize or observed, but don't understand. Honestly, the whole field of quantum physics smells of a bad description of observed behavior that we don't truly understand.
How about instead of coming up with some lame excuse like "quantum darwinism", y'all just say you don't know? It's really not that hard.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
If you believe prophesy is hard, predicting random events in the future is impossible and only God could do it, then the bible is proven.
God spoke to me.
Nobody has welcomed our Subatomic Darwinian Overlords yet!
And don't expect me to do it for you.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Seriously people. If you haven't taken a Quantum Mechanics class of some sort (or had some other real, solid exposure to the mathematics behind it) then don't even attempt to talk about it. Basically, 100% of all attempts I have ever seen to explain QM "conceptually" are complete and utter $hite, and have virtually no relationship to what the math really says. As far as I can tell, there is no good way to conceptually describe quantum mechanics. There are no good analogies. There are gillions of mediocre analogies, but if you really try to understand QM by means of these analogies, you're screwed. Because the analogies work for a small part of QM, and then break down if you try to get at all outside their range. So don't try to extrapolate anything from a conceptual discussion of QM. Don't try to take anything from it other than face value, because you will get it wrong. And in many cases, (such as this one) you will not even get it right from face value.
Case in point: TFA talks a lot about observations. But they also talk about people looking at trees and buildings. You looking at something really doesn't constitute an observation (Quantum mechanically). The photon interacting with the tree (building, etc) is the observation. The photon entering you eye, interacting with your cornea, your lense, and finally your retina is another "observation." But you looking at a tree does not change the tree.
Go read the actual papers referenced by the article, these will actually contain science, and not some journalist's misunderstanding of it.
BTW- IANA physicist... yet. I am halfway through my third year of undergrad physics work. One of the classes I just finished was Intro to Quantum Mechanics I. Just to establish my credentials. If anyone who is a physicist with more education in the subject disagrees with what I have said, I would be glad to talk to him. But if you haven't had any QM class.... shut up. Please. Trust me, unless you have had exposure to infinite dimensional linear algebra and partial differential equations, you do not know what you are talking about.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Those cars were smaller than my tool.
Errr...
This bible is disproven when it contradicts physical evidence.
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old.
Sure, he might've. He might've created the universe three seconds ago. But why would he do that? Just to fool us into thinking he doesn't exist?
Then there's the question of the bible itself. Admit it -- you have never read the bible. Most people haven't. Even if you have the read bible (in the original language, of course, which is the only one that matters), that's probably not the original words, either.
So it's absurd to argue that the bible is the word of god when people don't even know what the bible actually says, or used to say. People don't even agree on what books comprise the bible!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There are a host of comments to the effect that Quantum Physics is ad hoc a la Ptolemaic epicycles, or that the research described is pseudo-science etc. First of all Quantum Physics is not ad hoc, nor does it have any relationship to Ptolemaic epicycles. It is grounded in well established axioms and which have proved themselves spectacularly successful in describing physical reality up to and including the physics of the semiconductor devices which commenters used to demonstrate their astounding ignorance and pride therein.
The problem modern physicists face is that the mathematics of Quantum Physics does not obviously lend itself to description in terms of everyday experience. Most people do not have every day experience with superpositions of states nor do they navigate their existence using that model which leads to a disconnect between the mathematics of Quantum Physics and "common sense". That doesn't make the math wrong, it merely indicates that we have adapted to living in a world in which quantum effects can be safely ignored, unless one is trying to make 0.6 micron scale transistors for Slashdotters to abuse.
The research in question actually goes a long way to explaining why it's OK to ignore the quantum nature of reality above certain scales. In short, among the states that a large ensemble of subatomic particles, like Buckingham Palace, can be in there are states which are relatively resistant to large perturbations by observation. Fortunately for the occupants of Buckingham Palace those states tend to describe a palace comoving with the Earth's surface in London, England, and not a palace hurtling towards the sun at a significant fraction of the speed of light. This is a brutally oversimplified plain English explanation of the results, which can only be precisely stated mathematically, and thus likely to lead to significant misunderstanding. Ironically, the research goes a long way to explaining why another reader and I can both agree on the form of the letters of this message.
You can use earthly logic to understand God.
According to the Bible, not completely. 1 Corinthians Chapter 2 says that spritual things cannot be understood with the natural mind. In order to know spiritual things, you must have the Holy Ghost. Of course, this doesn't mean the Bible is indecipherable by the human mind. It just means it can't get beyond the surface. Which, I'd posit, is exactly why so many people have so many problems with understanding, or "interpreting" the scripture.
I would also like to note that, having read much of your "write up", that your logic is quite good for defending your faith against attackers. But, as I said above, there is much beyond the surface of scripture. Though the most important part is knowing that Jesus died for us, and how to get saved and be part of that, there are many other things to learn, and innumerable things to know that we can use to improve ourselves.
Sure, this is a problem. But the problem of taking "objective measurements" is recognized throughout the empirical sciences.
Say, for example, that you want to establish an "objective" measurement of the weight of a quantity of sodium. Repeated measurements will not result in the same quantity each time. How do you account for random error? How do you account for any systematic error in the measuring process? How do you even [i]detect[/i] these things? And how do you determine what the real weight is, after all is said and done?
In truth, empiricism is limited. Bohr was forced to criticize empiricism because of new information we learned at the dawn of the era of quantum mechanics, and from this we have robust statistical analysis, information theory, and all kinds of other goodies that have made science "better"--but we still have the same old problems to deal with.
Science is still unable to tell us everything (it cannot access all truths).
You fail to realise that you may just be hearing voices which aren't there.
You're right, that's what they mean by "preferred states". In general, "preferred" in physics means some state singled out by the laws of physics in some way -- either built explicitly into the laws, or dynamically constructed (as in spontaneous symmetry breaking). For instance, in aether theory, there is a "preferred" reference frame, the rest frame of the aether, as opposed to in relativity, where no frame is preferred by the laws of physics over any other. A dynamical example would be how the spins in a ferromagnet spontaneously line up in some "preferred" direction, despite the fact that the laws of physics themselves do not single out one direction over another as "special".
Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
God, 1200 AD: "Big guy created the whole thing 5200 years ago."
God, 1800 AD: "Clever big guy created the whole thing 5800 years ago. And had to plunk some planets and set up an inverse square law for gravitation. And bury a bunch of weird lizard fossils to confuse us. Either that, or he's been doing some really weird tricks with biology that we're only beginning to guess at."
God, 1950 AD: "Really clever guy (way cleverer than us) created the whole thing out of, umm, something, we don't really know when, but it was a hell of a long time ago, and made particles that behaved like, umm, waves. It's weird and violates common sense, but we can use the math to make televisions. And BTW, now we know how the Sun works."
God, 2004 AD: "Supremely clever dude, existing completely outside of what we perceive as spacetime, may have tweaked an m-brane collision (the math for which only a few hundred of us on the planet can even begin to understand) that resulted in the setting of a few universal constants for the physics engine and the creation of a little bubble of spacetime. Sat back and watched the resulting fireworks for 13.8 billion years to see if sentient life would evolve in a little pocket of it and recognize Him."
Without taking a position either way on the existence or non-existence of God, I humbly submit that the more science we do, the smarter the "God of the Gaps" has to be.
I understand that Heisenberg says you can't know both the direction *and* velocity of a particle at any given time and my understanding is that quantum physics/mechanics derives (at least in large part) from the Uncertainty Principal. To my mind, not being able to determine precise velocity and precise direction at the same time doesn't mean that a particle doesn't have both qualities. In which case much of quantum physics/mechanics is moot, including subatomic darwinism.
:)
Please explain the holes in my understanding, but be gentle please
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Many-worlds is not intrinsically in opposition to this work, and the authors are not adopting the Copenhagen interpretation. Decoherence, an attempt to explain "measurement" in physical terms, is compatible with the MWI. You imply that the authors are working in a framework that neglects the fact that the measuring apparatus itself lives in a quantum world, but that's the whole point of decoherence: to explain how an apparent dichotomy between "quantum particle" and "classical environment" arises from a "holistic" quantum environment in which there is no hard distinction between "observer" and "observed".
In short, you don't know what you're talking about. This is not pseudoscience, and Zurek is one of the top researchers in this field.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0275 95904X/104-8458105-6263935?v=glance
Inventing the Flat Earth.
You have to admit that it is just a tad ironic that out of ignorance some people claim others are ignorant.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
i am not saying that the argument for quantum darwinism is as crackpot as the timecube guy, what i am saying is that both the timecube guy and the argument for quantum darnwinism are way over my head
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're using narrowmindedness and faulty logic...
Bud...you're one to talk about faulty logic. You're making an awful leap to think that because some said that the Earth is really less then 10,000 years old then all evidence to the contrary is wrong. So rather then thinking critically and saying "We have evidence that points to the Earth being much older then 10,000...", you simply dismiss the idea completely because it doesn't mesh with what you've already been told.
And if...and this is a *BIG* if...the Earth really is less then 10,000 years old, then why is there so much evidence to the contrary? Why do we have these dinosaur bones from millions of years ago? Why did we develop tests to check the age on things? Why do we find civilizations in all parts of the world dating back much longer then 10,000 years? If this is all fake, who put it there? Was it God? Why would God want to deceive us? Is it the Devil? Why would God allow the Devil to do this? If God is all-powerful, wouldn't he clean up these things and make everything sensible so that we wouldn't have questions?
I'm not telling you what to believe. I'm telling you that by not thinking critically, you show yourself to be an ignorant fool who dismissing anything that doesn't fit into his perfect little world. But yes...you can now go on and tell everyone about the foolish people who don't understand your logic...
You're right. The problem is that nowadays the mention of God immediately draws the image of Christian Fundamentalism, which people are immediately turned off to. Religious or not, each one of us has much to gain by re-establishing our relationship with God.
Unfortunately so many people are arguing about these little details in the book and missing the religious concepts in them.
Again, this is correct. Many of the most popular religions suffer from biased priests, skewed teachings, warped concepts that go against, etc. Because of this, they become godless, nescient, or impersonalist.
But Just as there are many theories concerning scientific observations, there are also other ways of explaining God. Specifically, the Bhagavad-Gita will open your eyes back to the science of loving God. God is everywhere around people, but they are so unfortunate that they have no attraction for Him.
People initially think: "I am this body." They say "This is my house, my car, my family." They understand "my", but not the "I". The body is constantly changing, it is the soul within us that is staying the same. (consciousness is the symptom). That's why an old man feels like the same person in spirit as he did when he was a young man, and a boy.
The atheists believe, "There is no God," and they have made their decision to deny God, thus he will never reveal himself to them.
The nescients believe, "There might be a God, but we can't be sure" and this reflects their dissatisfaction with the material world and their hope for a solid science of loving God. (What, if they would read the Bhagavad-Gita!)
The impersonalists / voidists believe, "God cannot have a personality, it is an all pervading force." But god is unlimited, they are artifically placing a restriction on him. I invite all readers of this to check out the link in this post. Don't worry--it's not some fundamentalist attitude, it's compatible with other religions, and you just might find yourself thinking more than, "Well, the universe just randomly happened, I'm just a random combination of chemicals and nothing will happen after I die, so let me party it up now while I still can, trying to find temporary happiness in this materialistic world!"
The Bible is 100% true, eh? Then explain all these inconsistancies please...
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old.
Sure, he might've. He might've created the universe three seconds ago. But why would he do that? Just to fool us into thinking he doesn't exist?
This argument is overblown. In Hebrew, the word used in Genesis 1 for the times periods of creation was not literally "day" as in 24 hours. It was a word that meant roughly, "a period of time in which God performs a work". Not so hard to accept, once you note that in English, we do use "day" in a similar way: "back in my day, we used to walk 10 miles to school, through 2 feet of snow, uphill both ways".
Most big conflicts between science and religion can be resolved by examing scripture and seeing if it might mean something else. Evolution is the biggie. My personal feeling on that is that macro-evolution as a means of life devloping to what we see now from molecules in the beginning, is a theory (though "generally accepted"), not a proven fact or law, and so I should be free to disbelieve it, even within the confines of science. And in any case, the Bible doesn't say how God created plants, animals, and man. If we accept it took more than 24 hours, it could have been evolution. Who knows? We can't say anything for sure, so why worry so much? Ultimately, focusing on such things that are unimportant compared to the message of salvation is, as Jesus called it, "straining at a gnat, while swallowing a camel."
All I really want to know is if we are any closer to the day when I can alter reality. Without drugs.
...
Almost all of these are extremely superficial items. Most of the scriptures are taken completely out of context. I could give you an item by item refutation, if I took a few days to do it.
No. I'm not making a leap of any sort, and you don't understand what logic means. Other readers will get this. The bible is truthful in all parts and once you use worldly understanding to know it as truth, you can take the hard parts on faith. Read my link below, I go into all the truths with logic.
You claim I'm a fool, I claim you're a fool.
The bible even says,"Argue with a fool, and you make yourself look out to be a fool." So I'm done with you. If you can think for yourself, you could read the bible and understand its truths.
God spoke to me.
Just do a few and we'll see how you do.
Without all the hocus pocus.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
And here I thought he was making a clever pun.
I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
Curious, this is how I experienced the US election last November. I'll blame it on TV.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old. You also fail to realise that a day of God's time isn't the same as a day in man's time.
But this makes no sense even from a biblical perspective. Sure god could have made the world look old - but why? Either the bible is wrong and therefore a work of man, or "God is deceitful" (what else would you call making something look like what its not) and the whole notion of "choice" a facade.
"Hey have faith and believe in what I've said through my 'faulty creations' (remember, only 'god' is perfect, Moses et al are not) despite my also creating a world in which I've gone to great lengths to not just 'hide the truths' that I'm telling but also making it appear that the oppostite of what I say is true! Bwahahahaha!".
If the bible is fact, then one must come to the conclusion that God has created a system whereby only the deaf, blind, and ignorant are admitted to heaven. The "smart" ones who try to interpet what they "see" and "feel" in the world he created and get "suckered in" by God's own illusions, are denied admittance. Sounds pretty inane to me, and thus following the principle of "Occam's Razor" I reject this interpretation for the simpler one: The creation story given in the bible is 'wrong'.
Hell, even the Vatican (arguably the institution with the greatest vested interest in literal biblical interpretation) doesn't accept creationism anymore.
But if people insist on believeing in God then perhaps this explanation will suffice: God realized his creation at that moment in history was too primitive to grasp the truth and made up a "child-like" explanations just too satisfy their curiosity until they progressed enough to explore the truth for themselves.
I call bullshit! Either I'm right, or because I'm observing it at bullshit, it will become bullshit;-)
thought of it first!
http://www.sheldrake.org/papers/Morphic/
How many other people thought of White Wolf's Mage: The Ascension RPG when they read this? Start working now to make your preferred paradigm the consensus!
Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same 'preferred' states.
I don't know about you all, but I'm going to use that as a pickup line
http://www.darwinawards.com/
See here.
Ok...tell me this then...if the Bible is 100% true, why would there be such inconsistancies? It's not like the actual scripture isn't there to check out. So if you say the Bible is 100% true, then that means all of the stuff that contradicts the other stuff is true. But what do you believe? Do you believe that God is a peaceful god, or is God a vengeful and spiteful god. You can't have it both ways...
Even without the Bible, I can refute Christianity. If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, etc...and God is loving and peaceful...then why is there so much bad in the world? Is it the Devil? Why would God allow the Devil to exist if he causes so many problems? He doesn't have to kill the Devil, just lock him away and don't let him contact us. If God chooses who will be born, and if they will be born blind, deaf, lame, etc...why would he place such painful existances on people? Wouldn't he want everyone to have the best chance to live a good life? If God only made the Earth 10,000 years ago, why is there so much evidence to the contrary? Why are there dinosaur bones everywhere? Why are there so many bones of creatures that look part-human, part-ape? Why do we find evidence of homo-erectus, homo-habilis, australopithecus, etc? And speaking of homo...why are there so many homosexual people? And before you say what I know you'll say it is *NOT* a choice. Homosexuals have been talked about as far back as history records and further. And it is not a purely human thing either. There have been several studies into animal homosexuality. I even think there was something on penguin homosexuality either on here or FARK.com recently. If homosexuals are not a part of God's plan, then why are they here?
So...tell me...if the God that wrote the Bible is real, and the Bible is 100% true...why is there so much evidence around that is contradictory to much of what has been attributed to him? Either God is flawed, or the Bible is flawed. Which is it?
There is an excellent novel by Australian Science Fiction author Greg Egan called Quarantine (Wikipedia entry/Amazon) on this subject. I cannot claim to understand even half the theories in there, but it is a fascinating read and a mindbender similar to what Stephenson's "Snow Crash" had to offer twelve years ago.
-kgj
Someone quoted from Hawkin's "A Brief History of Time" to ridicule the Pope. He could have quoted from the introduction, where Hawkins states that the Einstein Metric requires an "admixture" of philosophy, which he then goes on to describe. Basically, you have to accept some of the Metric's terms on Faith, because they can't be proven. Then there is Godell's Law.
Over the years I've observed some things:
1) Physicists at the top of the theoretical latter, like Hawkins, readily admit to the strenghts AND weakness of their models, but those at the bottom don't seem to understand the weakenss. They often speak in term os absolute knowledge, usually displaying lots of arrogance and insulting those who hold different views. No smear seems to be beneath them. The NTY science writer who ridiculed Goddard for believing man could fly to the Moon and said rockets couldn't fly in space because there was nothing to 'push against'. But, sometimes the 'expert' is not above arrogantly ridiculing the less trained. Prof. Langley denounced the Wright brothers efforts to build a flying machine as mis-guided, while crashing into the sea on both of his efforts.
2) Science seems like a spiny sea urchin, with the spines representing specific areas of 'advancement' in knowledge. Some of those spines have only a handful of scientists at the tip, some only one, speaking in mathematical terms few others, if any, can understand. Are they right, or are they merely building castles out of clouds? Who can say?
3) Biology has made advancements in direct proportion to its utilization of chemisty, then physics, then math. But even now, I have yet to read of any Evolutionist making a non-trivial prediction about some future event in the same way that Einstein precticed the bending of light grazing the eclipsed Sun and making a specific star appear to move a specific distance from its normal position relative to nearby stars. Claddists still hold to successive minute changes occuring over long stretches of time (gradualism) even though other Evolutionists don't believe the geologic record support gradualism, something Dawkin's called "Evolution's dirty little secret" in order to advance a theory he and Gould called "Puncuated Equilibrium". Punk Eek states that life forms are static for LONG periods of time then explode in a burst of new forms for a short (50K years) period of time because, they think, that is more in tune with what they think the geologic record is showing them. Both camps still argue about whose interpretation of the geologic record is right but always come together to fight those with divergent views. It seems that either view is preferable when compared to one which includes the actions of a Supreme Being, suggesting that the common element in both theories is that God is not.
History is littered with the carcases of "missing Links" which turned out to be distortions of fact, mis-identified or even faked. It seems to me that if supporters of Evolution are so sure of its being factual one of its members could devise a sophisticated hypothesis that would predict specific facts of a non-trivial future event, something on the order of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativeity prediction.
Well, I am going to suprise a few readers and state that such a prediction will soon be made (not by me!) and will prove overwhelmingly, by the best science we have today (DNA?), that Evolution is true and God is not. Those that witnessed for God will be destroyed, certainly in influence if not physically. Atheists and others who favored the demise of God will exchange gifts with one another in celebration of their achievement. These celebrations will go on for a few years. Very few people will continue to cling to Faith in God, and religious Faith might even cease to exist. Then the celebrations will cease. Then we shall know.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Quantum mechanics is just a series of mathematical abstract methods to formulize what we observe in the subatomic. It does not explain why we observe what we do. Besides, you can derive the classical dynamics equations from the quantum mechanical ones only under certain circumstances, not all the time. So there is no guarrantee that quantum mechanics is not going to falter once CERN (biggest, meanest) particle accelerator being built in switzerland is operational. Seriously, we have no idea what we observe is. We don't even know what we call matter is. We just define a particle as energy which that is spread in space-time continuum (which by the way could be 11 or even 22 dimentional according to string theories) that acts as a wave or a particle under certain conditions.
I can think for myself. I have read the Bible. Mostly I think, at best, it's a nice collection of morality tales. And that is a bit of a stretch for me to say. But you show you're fault by saying that I don't understand logic, then saying that the Bible is truthful in parts and by accepting those truths then you can accept the whole Bible as truth. Now if that isn't faulty logic, I don't know what is. Just because one part might be true doesn't make it all true. Faith may make you feel better about accepting something as true, but because you have faith doesn't *actually* make it true.
As for you're "Logical Bible Analysis", even you make mistakes. Truth point 8: Since God is a perfect deity, he doesn't have to lie to cover up imperfections. If God is a perfect deity, how could he have made the mistake of creating an imperfect man? Sure...he admitted that he made an imperfect man, but as a perfect deity how could be so careless as to make man wicked?
Genesis 6:5-6: And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Which is in stark contrast to what he said earlier in Genesis 1:31 which says:
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
How an it be good to create something wicked? Something so wicked that it grieved him at his heart? So either you're logic is flawed, the Bible is flawed, or God is flawed. At the end of your "analysis", you state that the original scripture still exists. But have you ever read them yourself? Or have you only gone by the English translations? If you've only read the English translations, then you cannot say that you know the Bible is 100% true because you have never actually read the Bible...only the translations. And as always, something will get lost in the translation. What does your logic say about that?
But survival of the fittest??
Do you believe that God is a peaceful god, or is God a vengeful and spiteful god. You can't have it both ways
You can if you believe that God is not a simple, 1-dimensional personality. I believe God is peaceful among his believers. But those who knew God existed, such as Cain, and the Jews who witnessed the words of his prophets come true, and yet denied him, there is no mercy for, because they have chosen flat out that they do not respect their creator.
then why is there so much bad in the world
Because some people choose/chose to go against God. If man had no choice, then we would all be puppets and slaves, and God wants people who want to be with Him.
why are there so many homosexual people
See the response above. And also, it doesn't matter whether the sexual attraction of a man to a man is "not a choice". It is still a choice to act on these desires. And even further, it is a choice to entertain the fantasies or thoughts of such actions, just as it is to do so in a heterosexual manner. The Bible says "he who looks on a woman in lust has committed adultry in his heart". So, I do my best not to lust, not to entertain thoughts or fantasies of lust. That's my choice. My body may cause me to want to have sex, but I want to be with God when I die more than I want to have sex. So I don't think about it.
If God only made the Earth 10,000 years ago, why is there so much evidence to the contrary?
The 6000-year-old-earth idea is not the only interpretation of Gensis chapter 1. And the Bible doesn't say how he created plants, animals, and man, except that it was out of the dust/dirt (sounds reminiscent of the "primordial mud" idea). Doesn't rule out evolution explicitly. But even so, evolution is a theory. Widely accepted, but still a theory. And so, it shouldn't be a crime against scientific methods to disbelieve it before it is proven.
Maybe we *can* get laid just by observing her tits afterall.
Table-ized A.I.
Oberving the macrocosm (Einstein, Newton) doesn't change it. This only applies to the sub-atomic microcosm (Bohr, Heisenberg). This creates a lack of symmetry and mirroring that drives some people crazy. Micro doesn't mirror macro; future doesn't mirror past. Where's a body to get his/her/its eternal verities?
If it wasn't for quantum darwinism, the researchers suggest... the world would be very unpredictable: different people might see very different versions of it. Life itself would then be hard to conduct, because we would not be able to obtain reliable information about our surroundings... it would typically conflict with what others were experiencing.
Sounds like the actual world to me. Perhaps it *is* all out of quantum kilter. OOP really is great in your universe and really does suck in mine.
Table-ized A.I.
But God would never create illusions to tempt or confuse!
1 Corinthians 14:33 (King James Version): For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
James 1:13 (King James Version): Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
Power off before disconnecting connecting connector. Seen on a cash register
Genesis 1:31:
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
Genesis 6:5-6:
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
It was good to create wickedness? Remember, according to Christian mythology, we were created in God image. Therefore we must have also gained that wickedness from God. But God is perfect, and therefore cannot be wicked. But where didn't the wickedness come from? If God created all, then God created wickedness. But God is perfect. Why would God create wickedness? Why would God allow his creation to be wicked?
There are just too many things in this world that contradicts what has been attributed to God. If God is perfect, and man was created in God's image, then why does God consider man evil? As I've said before, either the Bible is flawed, or God is flawed. Which is it? If the Bible is flawed, then these ideals that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that homosexuality is wrong could also be flawed. If God is flawed, then God cannot exist in perfection. It's either the words or the person that is flawed. And if either are flawed, then you cannot fully believe in either. On the other hand, I don't believe in either and can ask these questions. It must be difficult for someone like you who is told to accept everything on faith and not question. You may feel that I am in the one with the sad existance. But I at least know what my existance is...
Hmmm. Maybe I'm thinking too hard about it...
The observe effect at the micro level does not translate to the macro level being open to observer determination. The odd way the quantum level operates is used to justify all matter of nutty beliefs and ideas. Those who responded with some darwinian (at the quantum level yet) justification bordering on "consensus reality" should have their credentials as scientists lifted.
--Because, you see, it's very important to establish a pecking order. That is, to make sure there is a strong base to the pyramid (or cube), peopled with the most foolish, the most easily ridiculed, most easily scorned, and then to populate the structure upwardly until we reach the top, where of course the builder of the structure (the narcissist) tries to place his or herself in the seat of power.
Mean-spirited humor designed to cause pain -of the spirit- is the prime tool, and it is very effective in so far as it works. Truncheons and guns have also proven effective over the ages. Just as long as there is a victim and a bully.
And so the feeding goes. -And it is feeding. You meet these types all the damned time. --At parties, in politics, in business structures. Such people are simply not comfortable unless somebody is hurting beneath them. The Pecking Order represents one of the two fundamental structures for making a world as we know it function. And in my opinion, it is the wrong one; self-destructive and limiting.
The alternative is that of the Network where communal growth is encouraged, where there is no top of the pyramid and energy doesn't move in a single direction, but rather is distributed where needed and where asked for by those who are not out only for themselves.
That is. . . Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing more than informed opinion accumulated for no other purpose than social climbing.
-FL
He pointed out that because of the predominance of sight in our habitual way of perceiving the world, the shamans of ancient Mexico described the act of directly apprehending energy as seeing. For them to perceive energy as it flowed in the universe meant that energy adopted nonidiosyncratic, specific configurations that repeated themselves consistently, and that those configurations could be perceived in the same terms by anyone who saw.
The most important example don Juan Matus could give of this consistency of energy in adopting specific configurations was the perception of the human body when it was seen directly as energy. As it was already said, shamans like don Juan perceive a human being as a conglomerate of energy fields that gives the total impression of a clear-cut sphere of luminosity. Taken in this sense, energy is described by shamans as a vibration that agglutinates itself into cohesive units. Shamans describe the entire universe as being composed of energy configurations that appear to the seeing eye as filaments, or luminous fibers that are strung in every which way without ever being entangled. This is an incomprehensible proposition for the linear mind. It has a built-in contradiction that can't be resolved: How could those fibers extend themselves every which way and yet not be entangled?
Don Juan emphasized the point that shamans were able only to describe events, and that if their terms of description seemed inadequate and contradictory, it was because of the limitations of syntax. Yet their descriptions were as strict as anything could be.
The shamans of ancient Mexico, according to don Juan, described intent as a perennial force that permeates the entire universe -- a force that is aware of itself to the point of responding to the beckoning or to the command of shamans. By means of intent, those shamans were capable of unleashing not only all the human possibilities of perceiving, but all the human possibilities of action. Through intent, they realized the most far-fetched formulations.
http://www.uazone.org/naph/ccarlos/books/cc10/tens egrity40.html
You have been trolled, you stupid homo. You must relate to the morons you work for.
/. Darwinism - the 1st post survives!
it would all be so clear.
look up the two-slit experiments... the particle, until it impacts, is in both states. The cat is an observer... so the cat will experience one state or the other... from it's perspective.
But from our perspective, the cat is in both states superimposed. These states, while separated in probability space are nearby in real space... and can actually interact with each other... at least if you draw on the two-slit experiments as your analog. In those experiments the particles travel through BOTH slits and actually create an interference pattern in the probability waves which affects the probabilities of striking different locations on the target, a pattern only explained by a wave going through two paths and interfering with itself. If you observe which slit the particle goes through, the interference pattern goes away.
iow, it's fucking mind bending... what luck!!!
-pyrrho
is that you8 are made of matter.
It's not just "being observed" it's having a physical IMPACT.
To observe is to manage these impacts delicately... to collect the impact in the eye or ear, etc... so... a simple rock also "observes" the ocean wave, it "records" the event by shedding a few molecules in a certain pattern. The event is recorded and the probabilities collapsed.
The weird thing is the way these collapses are isolated... in other words, it's not that the wave collapses at all, but merely that material becomes isolated from other parts of the probability wave.
-pyrrho
no, it does not have to be intelligent, just matter.
the confusion on this comes back to the model of humans as spiritual being, and as the senses are direct connections to the world.
Observation requires electro-chemical reactions, these reactions are the "observation"... it's not really about observation so much as interactions of probable states. If a reaction occurs, the wave is committed to a particular physical state.
Also, consider that physicists were trying, and succeeding, in getting lighter and lighter in their touch, as experimentation got more advanced scientists found more and better ways to get out of the way of the reaction and just watch. Finally they got good enough to realize there is a limit, in the end, you must interact with the experiment to observe it. And this was proved mathematically as well.
-pyrrho
"Look around, and everyone will see that quantum mechanics is not something that happens around us! Do you see quantum wells on your computer screen?"
explain the transparency of glass.
-pyrrho
Impudence is only impudence when it gets in the Church's way: For instance: It's impudence to imagine that a prayer makes a rats ass of difference - a God-dude would have anticipated the possibility of your needs and provided for their fullfillment or not according to His plan regardless of whether you articulated them or not. As if the RULER OF THE UNIVERSE is going to Tilt the cosmos for you!
As if GOD wants your money! As if Miracles are for sale. God could just miracle a printing press and make his own dough, or just poof it out of thin air.
And a Diet Coke.
Well..according to this new theory everybody is experiencing a system (for example a tree) in a particular configuration because quantum darwinism opted this configuration over other possible configurations. But there is one more perk with darwin theory, which is evolution/change. So my obvious question would be will we ever see a system (like a tree) in some other configuration because of the change/evoultion? If so how are these changes guided? This theory seems interesting, but there are lot of things that needed to be ironed out before anybody can belive this.
Hell, even the Vatican (arguably the institution with the greatest vested interest in literal biblical interpretation) doesn't accept creationism anymore.
A literal interpretation is at odds with the concept of raising people to sainthood, or of having a pontiff at all in the first place, or of having ancient relic iconography. I don't think the Vatican has the greatest vested interest in literal biblical interpretation.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
What's next... "market darwinism" when the products people buy survive? Actually, thanks to the recent medication marketing done, I think we can consider market darwinism those that survive the products they purchase.
Any idea gets a "Darwinism" tacked to it. It's virulent.
This implies then that ideas which can be superficially linked to darwinian theory are more fit for the current academic environment, thus more likely to survive, and thus more likely to propigate their superficially darwinian aspects to the successive research projects which cite them. In the darwinian theory of grants and the origins of research projects, this is a key observation.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Race track announcer: "And it's a dead heat. They're checking the electron microscope and the winner is... number three, in a quantum finish."
Prof. Farnsworth: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it." [Crumples his ticket]
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
and all G*d could do was slip a little book in. Damn!
Why doesn't each person leave a slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?
Because there is such a thing as absolute truth. We may not like it. We may comfort ourselves (temporarily) with the reality we construct. This manufactured reality ultimately disappoints though.
According to the hypothesis, this would apply to complex systems on every level, from the formation of galaxies down to quantum mechanics, and everything in between. So Quantum Darwinism, if you want to call it that, would be a special case of the hypothesis.
I strongly recommend his book "The Presence of the Past" to anybody with half an interest these kinds on philosophical questions. If nothing else, it's a relief to read a book that verges on the metaphysical, but is still argued in a calm and scientific manner.
Extract from an interwiew with Dr. Sheldrake:
More links available through Google, unsurprisingly enough.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
A related area that may be of interest:
There is a deterministic interpretation of QM, known as de Broglie-Bohm Theory (dBB Theory) (or Bohmian Mechanics, pilot-wave theory), which was first proposed in 1927 and is currently an active area of research.
This theory maintains causality. However, it requires the existence of non-local effects (effects that propagate at faster than the speed of light).
More about it here:
...the apple...the apple The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, that's where the wickedness came from. Now that Adam knew about evil, and he had free will, he committed wickedness.
Migraine.mp3??
If the bible is fact, then one must come to the conclusion that God has created a system whereby only the deaf, blind, and ignorant are admitted to heaven. The "smart" ones who try to interpet what they "see" and "feel" in the world he created and get "suckered in" by God's own illusions, are denied admittance.
Technically, all that is required for "admittance" is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You need not be "suckered in" to gain admittance. It's all right there in the New Testament. I don't have to come to the conclusion that you must be deaf, blind or ignorant to get in. On the contrary, I feel those who don't see the Bible as fact are blinded to the truth.
Hell, even the Vatican (arguably the institution with the greatest vested interest in literal biblical interpretation) doesn't accept creationism anymore.
I don't agree with this, either. There is an awful lot of Mary worship (including from the Pope) that happens under Catholicism. That's necromancy. So if they don't accept creationism any longer (I haven't heard this, by the way - is there a link I can read on for this?), then they are in direct opposition to the Bible. Of course, the whole Mary worship thing is in direct opposition to the Bible as well.
I don't know how old the Earth is. I do know it was created by God (and therefore was a product of an intelligent design) - much like the computer you're working on or the chair you're sitting in - a product of an intelligent design.
I'd like some of your inputs on what you consider in the Bible to be easily disproven.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
Quite. Indeed, there is precisely nobody who has a vested interest in literal interpretation of the entire Bible, though there are some people/groups who arguably have a vested interest in the literal interpretation of certain portions.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
This is Migraine.mp3
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
These boys have got to get a grip. If their theory held any truth the perception of maniacs would be contagious.
... Stoned??
In other words if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, YES, it still makes noise and to insist otherwise is not intellectualism, it's called
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
And it's true. However, there are still goofballs out there who still belive 15th century Astronomy.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Anyone else remember Rupert Sheldrake's "Seven Experiments that could change the world"? Sheldrake has a lot of odd probably crackpot theories, but one of his better ones was the idea of a morphogenetic field theory, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphogenetic_field to explain both the shapes and behaviors of organisms, a sort of subatomic field effect that worked in conjunction with DNA. The best evidence he had involved the creation of new synthetic compounds that would be extremely unlikely to ever occur naturally. It turned out that the more often people created the compounds over time the molecules would appear to form more quickly. Most people had written this off as anomolous, or just a side effect of more experience in creating the compound. Sheldrake made the conclusion that the universe was building a "memory" of the atomic state of the new compound and was more prone to falling into such a state after it had been observed previously as it had "learned" the shape previously. Now this subatomic darwinism business is sure sounding a lot like these people are inferring a "memory" to the universe, so maybe the morphogenetic field theory isn't quite so odd as it sounds.
I was under the impression that it wasn't so much about 'observing' something than it was about altering it - and why can't the universe just be a probability distribution, anyway? We'd never notice the difference.
Nah...just like a good religious debate. Besides, like the ultra-religious holy-rollers, even trolls come up with intelligent arguments sometimes.
Why do we have a rainbow? (Noah's Ark)
Why are there so many languages? (Tower of Babel)
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Can Wayne Gretzky create a goalkeeper so good even Wayne Gretzky cannot score a goal on him?
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Do you believe that God is a peaceful god, or is God a vengeful and spiteful god. You can't have it both ways...
Sure you can. Unless you are limiting God to be less complex than human beings. You seem to be choosing the most restrictive, most limited interpretation possible of the Bible, and then refuting that interpretation. That's a pretty weak straw-man.
God is loving and peaceful...then why is there so much bad in the world?
Duh. Free will. If God removes all temptation and all opportunities for evil from the world, then we don't really have free will, do we? For us to truly be given free will -- in the most complete sense of the word -- we have to be provided the opportunity to make a choice and choose good or evil.
If God chooses who will be born, [snip]
Huh, where did that come from?
If God only made the Earth 10,000 years ago, why is there so much evidence to the contrary?
Assuming you believe the "young Earth" interpretation. The Bible itself does not necessarily say the Earth is young. The Bible does not give an explicit age to the Earth.
I have yet to read of any Evolutionist making a non-trivial prediction about some future event in the same way that Einstein precticed the bending of light grazing the eclipsed Sun and making a specific star appear to move a specific distance from its normal position relative to nearby stars.
You mean, aside from the commonality of the genetic code, the high degree of genetic sequence similarity of closely related species (only recently being entirely confirmed by large-scale sequencing projects) or the fact that all genetic differences among species are of the sort created by mutation?
If it can't be proved, then it really doesn't matter at all if a god exists or not.
It all depends on what you need one belief or the other for.
Religion is just the most elaborated form of rationalization.
It was good to create wickedness?
Sounds like a quote from that infidels.org site that someone was touting around here earlier. I responded to it then as well. When God "saw that it was very good" man had not yet chosen to go against God and eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. God created man with free will, the ability to chose to serve God or not to. When Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, they lost their innocence, and sin entered the world. By Noah's time, all but he and his family were choosing to deny God. That's the wickedness that He lamented.
Religiously neutral to all faiths just to keep it fair.
Cheers!
- Brian
Root canal tratment.mp3
I have yet to read of any Evolutionist making a non-trivial prediction about some future event in the same way that Einstein precticed the bending of light grazing the eclipsed Sun and making a specific star appear to move a specific distance from its normal position relative to nearby stars. How about this one: I predict that Evolution will product a virus that will defeat your immune system and make you sick some time in the next two years.
You know, I was thinking that when the genome record of different species are compared, one can think that the similarity is a proof of evolution, yet if you compare two different programs, and you find code reuse, nobody would conclude that one program 'evolved' into another one, no?
It's incorrect to think that evolution requires God to be missing. It just doesn't say anything regarding the WHO, only the HOW. There is also the Intelligent Design argument, which has to be considered too.
I don't think much about your prediction. There have been many failed predictions, so what's another one?
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
And luckily, it's already been busted. "I reject your reality, and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Isn't this "Quantum Darwinism" nonsense? I'm sure the idea can be put to good use, despite of being nonsense or at least blatantly obvious. I believe at least in the way that it is put forward it is nothing new:
:)
It doesn't really explain anything about quantum mechanics. It just explains that multiple overservers can obtain measurement on a "big" quantum system like a gold bar. These measurements will just agree enough so that observers can agree on a reality. But this doesn't mean that suddenly the measurement become more "accurate" than quantum theory accounts for. There still will be in inaccuracies in time and in which part of the object is measured.
It would be more accurate to view it from the point of view of the many-worlds-interpretation: only if two observers acquire measurements from an object that the laws of physics allow for, then these two observers share the same universe. No "darwinism", just good old selection which already has a name "collapse of the quantum wave".
Clearly, if a "big" object is observed often enough by two different observers, then the state of the object will to 99.999999% be collapsed, but will immediately become a wave state again when there are no measurements (like no heat, no exchange of photons). There is an equivalent in some programming languages, it is called "lazy evaluation": a wave is only collapsed when the information needs to be fixed.
This would make a very cool feature for a stratey game/chess analysis engine. But I digress.
IMHO "lazy evaluation" is a much better name than the halfbodyparted mixing of two catchwords, which will only result in misunderstandings. And of course, discussion. Discussion is good. I guess
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.