It's perfectly valid. The irrationality of the square root of 2 can be soundly proved by reductio ad absurdum.
Reductio ad absurdum may be abused, like any tool, but that doesn't make it a fallacy - in the same sense that simple maths can be used to "prove" that 1=2 when it is misapplied.
All of this is moot, of course, since my original statement about superpowers wasn't meant to be any form of logical argument or fallacy.
To the remainder, there is no reason to add clarity to what you claimed is false and what I have already shown to be true
You've only claimed it* to be true. To show something to be true requires you to show some evidence.
*To clarify (again, since you seem determined to keep going back to a statement I've already retracted) I am not talking about the statement "We know that trying to measure or detect quantum events changes the outcome quantum events." I already said I was mistaken to call that into question.
What I claim to be false is your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them" which you've provided no evidence for.
Feigning ignorance is not very becoming especially when you tend to quote what you want to see so have read the materials.
What materials? You've supplied one link so far, to an article about a perfectly "ordinary" demonstration of the effect of an observer (an inanimate piece of lab equipment incapable of thought) on quantum effects.
-
TL:DR: What is your evidence for your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them"?
Reductio ad absurdum is an argument from the absurd.
No, it's not, as I've explained before. It's a reduction to the absurd, and it's not a fallacy at all, but a method of reasoning. The common mathematical proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2 is a reductio ad absurdum, for example.
Where for example you claim something absurd like having superpowers
To be able to influence events by thought - which is your claim, not mine - would be regarded as a superpower by most people.
as an answer to someone claiming we know that observation changes the results of experiments.
I wasn't stating it as an "answer" to anything, but if I was it was to your claim that thought can influence events - not the fact that observation (in the quantum mechanics experiment sense, not just "looking at something") can influence events.
Nothing in quantum theory suggests that thought can have any kind of influence over external events. Thought is just electrical impulses bouncing around between neurons. It's nothing special or fundamentally different to the myriad electromagnetic interactions that happen all over the universe, except that a lot of them all happening in one place seems to give rise to something called consciousness.
If you stop and consider how observation and thinking are similar
I've not seen any reason to do so.
and 2 out of 3 in the examples given are easily provable statements.
If you can prove that thought can have a direct influence on the outside world you would change the whole world overnight. If, on the other hand, what you mean by "prove" is "point me to a webpage that makes claims of such effects," well, I can point you to a thousand of those, along with a thousand about alien abductions and the existence of ghosts.
Nobody said we have superpowers except you (reducto ad absurdum)
Could you stop using the phrase reductio ad absurdum until you actually understand what it means? You didn't last time, and you clearly still don't. Hint: it's not a phrase you can trot out just because someone's said something [that you think is] absurd.
Would you not regard the ability to affect the outside world through the use of thought alone to be a superpower? I think most people would.
simply thinking about the quantum state can change the quantum state, just like observing quantum events changes those events (as the linked article states with clarity)
What do you mean "just like"? Those two things are not alike. You can't say "[A], just like [B]!" when A is not like B at all. An observation - which, in this case, did not involve a conscious observer - is nothing like thought. For one thing, observations (measurements) in such experiments have the distinction of an actual physical interaction with the thing being observed, which is why they are able to cause these bizarre effects. There is no such interaction when you just think about something.
You claim that observation and thinking are dissimilar, which is untrue.
The "observer" in the experiment from the article was incapable of thought, being as it was an inanimate object, so there's one dissimilarity.
Name my prize, and I'll go hunting
What, so you just get to make your extraordinary (and vague) claim, but when challenged to defend it - or even provide an anecdote of such an event having occurred - you start demanding prizes? Your "prize" is that, if you can produce even remotely decent scientific evidence that supports your claim, I might start taking it seriously. I'm fairly confident that's not going to happen, though.
What information? What data? Were you expecting to be able to find the interview you were talking about just based on your vague description of it?
The one article you linked to describes an experiment which shows how quantum phenomena can be affected by observation, but I'd already retracted that part of my original post. The article has nothing to say on the subject of thought supposedly being able to change quantum events. In fact, as the article states, "The "observer" in this experiment wasn't human." It was an electron detector. Your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them" has nothing to do with the experiment in the article.
Further, you didn't bother to read the science behind the article I presented or just dismissed it out of ignorance to your own belief system.
The science behind the article is quantum theory. Quantum theory does not mean we might all have latent super powers.
Which "one"? There have been countless claims of psi-like phenomena "because of quantum!!!11!" none of which have stood up to any kind of scrutiny.
There is a fascinating interview with an engineer designing one of the first working quantum computer that points out this very phenomenon.
What phenomenon, exactly?
If you consider that observation changes results, this is not so far fetched.
Yes it is. It's a massive leap to go from "carefully placed polarising filter causes some weird counter-intuitive results when looking at individual photons" to "people can detect porn from the future" or "you can affect an RNG just by concentrating." (or whatever specific phenomenon it is you're referring to above).
Not that that has stopped a global industry in bullshit quantum marketing from separating suckers from their money all over the world.
a) I don't think I ever have b) I used to be around on the JREF forums and heard plenty about his own special brand of crazy science from there c) What difference does it make, since I was only making a dumb joke to get a cheap laugh?
you'd quickly have realised that Snapchat's promises of "disappearing images" were fanciful.' For those who no longer trust Snapchat, but want that same vaporizing-message functionality, some alternatives exist
Great. And how do those alternatives stop any of the work-arounds mentioned in the summary?
Or did you mean "alternatives which are just as bad"?
VNC is not easier than Teamviewer. If you've got internet access, Teamviewer will just work from anywhere to anywhere, and it gives you all the information you need to establish the connection. VNC is not that simple.
In fact, Teamviewer can be too easy. I had to completely lock a computer down so it could only access anything off the local network through a VPN - but Teamviewer still worked, even when the VPN was off. It either discovered, or remembered, a proxy server on the LAN and used that to make itself available.
Slashdot Mirror
No it's an "invalid" method of reasoning.
It's perfectly valid. The irrationality of the square root of 2 can be soundly proved by reductio ad absurdum.
Reductio ad absurdum may be abused, like any tool, but that doesn't make it a fallacy - in the same sense that simple maths can be used to "prove" that 1=2 when it is misapplied.
All of this is moot, of course, since my original statement about superpowers wasn't meant to be any form of logical argument or fallacy.
To the remainder, there is no reason to add clarity to what you claimed is false and what I have already shown to be true
You've only claimed it* to be true. To show something to be true requires you to show some evidence.
*To clarify (again, since you seem determined to keep going back to a statement I've already retracted) I am not talking about the statement "We know that trying to measure or detect quantum events changes the outcome quantum events." I already said I was mistaken to call that into question.
What I claim to be false is your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them" which you've provided no evidence for.
Feigning ignorance is not very becoming especially when you tend to quote what you want to see so have read the materials.
What materials? You've supplied one link so far, to an article about a perfectly "ordinary" demonstration of the effect of an observer (an inanimate piece of lab equipment incapable of thought) on quantum effects.
-
TL:DR: What is your evidence for your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them"?
And the NSA's response was:
"Uh... nooooooo?"
So now we'll get idiots uploading cellphone footage of clips from Family Guy (dubbed into Spanish) scaled up to 4K instead of 1080p...
Reductio ad absurdum is an argument from the absurd.
No, it's not, as I've explained before. It's a reduction to the absurd, and it's not a fallacy at all, but a method of reasoning. The common mathematical proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2 is a reductio ad absurdum, for example.
Where for example you claim something absurd like having superpowers
To be able to influence events by thought - which is your claim, not mine - would be regarded as a superpower by most people.
as an answer to someone claiming we know that observation changes the results of experiments.
I wasn't stating it as an "answer" to anything, but if I was it was to your claim that thought can influence events - not the fact that observation (in the quantum mechanics experiment sense, not just "looking at something") can influence events.
Nothing in quantum theory suggests that thought can have any kind of influence over external events. Thought is just electrical impulses bouncing around between neurons. It's nothing special or fundamentally different to the myriad electromagnetic interactions that happen all over the universe, except that a lot of them all happening in one place seems to give rise to something called consciousness.
If you stop and consider how observation and thinking are similar
I've not seen any reason to do so.
and 2 out of 3 in the examples given are easily provable statements.
Which examples are you referring to?
And when I dig up that quote what do I win?
Nothing at all. Why do you have to win anything?
and can prove you wrong again
If you can prove that thought can have a direct influence on the outside world you would change the whole world overnight. If, on the other hand, what you mean by "prove" is "point me to a webpage that makes claims of such effects," well, I can point you to a thousand of those, along with a thousand about alien abductions and the existence of ghosts.
Nobody said we have superpowers except you (reducto ad absurdum)
Could you stop using the phrase reductio ad absurdum until you actually understand what it means? You didn't last time, and you clearly still don't. Hint: it's not a phrase you can trot out just because someone's said something [that you think is] absurd.
Would you not regard the ability to affect the outside world through the use of thought alone to be a superpower? I think most people would.
simply thinking about the quantum state can change the quantum state, just like observing quantum events changes those events (as the linked article states with clarity)
What do you mean "just like"? Those two things are not alike. You can't say "[A], just like [B]!" when A is not like B at all. An observation - which, in this case, did not involve a conscious observer - is nothing like thought. For one thing, observations (measurements) in such experiments have the distinction of an actual physical interaction with the thing being observed, which is why they are able to cause these bizarre effects. There is no such interaction when you just think about something.
You claim that observation and thinking are dissimilar, which is untrue.
The "observer" in the experiment from the article was incapable of thought, being as it was an inanimate object, so there's one dissimilarity.
Name my prize, and I'll go hunting
What, so you just get to make your extraordinary (and vague) claim, but when challenged to defend it - or even provide an anecdote of such an event having occurred - you start demanding prizes? Your "prize" is that, if you can produce even remotely decent scientific evidence that supports your claim, I might start taking it seriously. I'm fairly confident that's not going to happen, though.
the information I provided to find the data
What information? What data? Were you expecting to be able to find the interview you were talking about just based on your vague description of it?
The one article you linked to describes an experiment which shows how quantum phenomena can be affected by observation, but I'd already retracted that part of my original post. The article has nothing to say on the subject of thought supposedly being able to change quantum events. In fact, as the article states, "The "observer" in this experiment wasn't human." It was an electron detector. Your claim that "we can change quantum events by thinking about them" has nothing to do with the experiment in the article.
Further, you didn't bother to read the science behind the article I presented or just dismissed it out of ignorance to your own belief system.
The science behind the article is quantum theory. Quantum theory does not mean we might all have latent super powers.
For a less sensational take on it: http://www.livescience.com/41075-coral-castle.html
Sorry, but why is everyone opening their posts by saying "sorry"?
Do I really need to Google that one for you too?
Which "one"? There have been countless claims of psi-like phenomena "because of quantum!!!11!" none of which have stood up to any kind of scrutiny.
There is a fascinating interview with an engineer designing one of the first working quantum computer that points out this very phenomenon.
What phenomenon, exactly?
If you consider that observation changes results, this is not so far fetched.
Yes it is. It's a massive leap to go from "carefully placed polarising filter causes some weird counter-intuitive results when looking at individual photons" to "people can detect porn from the future" or "you can affect an RNG just by concentrating." (or whatever specific phenomenon it is you're referring to above).
Not that that has stopped a global industry in bullshit quantum marketing from separating suckers from their money all over the world.
You can have an apology, because I was clearly having some kind of senior moment over the first half of my reply. So:
We know that trying to measure or detect quantum events changes the outcome quantum events.
Yes, we do.
As we can change quantum events by thinking about them
No, we really can't, that's complete and utter bullshit.
Or perhaps one can't travel back further than the moment the time machine was first made operational.
Your mere presence in a past time would alter it such it will be forked from our own time line.
What if your presence in the past was already an intrinsic part of the timeline that included your "present"?
You cannot go backwards in time. Once you do, your alteration of that timeline is permanent.
That's assuming any alteration could be made.
The mere existence of time travelers immediately and irrevocably inflicts an alteration of that timeline which is cosmic in scale
Why? They could have always been there, contributing to but not altering in any way the events of the timeline.
We know that trying to measure or detect quantum events changes the outcome quantum events.
No, we don't.
As we can change quantum events by thinking about them
No, we can't.
a) I don't think I ever have
b) I used to be around on the JREF forums and heard plenty about his own special brand of crazy science from there
c) What difference does it make, since I was only making a dumb joke to get a cheap laugh?
But if it was to do with the sun, they'd poop randomly at night. The effect due to the sun during day poops would still be evident.
A rhododendron bush is qualified to make Ken Ham look like an idiot.
you'd quickly have realised that Snapchat's promises of "disappearing images" were fanciful.' For those who no longer trust Snapchat, but want that same vaporizing-message functionality, some alternatives exist
Great. And how do those alternatives stop any of the work-arounds mentioned in the summary?
Or did you mean "alternatives which are just as bad"?
VNC is not easier than Teamviewer. If you've got internet access, Teamviewer will just work from anywhere to anywhere, and it gives you all the information you need to establish the connection. VNC is not that simple.
In fact, Teamviewer can be too easy. I had to completely lock a computer down so it could only access anything off the local network through a VPN - but Teamviewer still worked, even when the VPN was off. It either discovered, or remembered, a proxy server on the LAN and used that to make itself available.
I think it's free if you only want to store one connection. though I've migrated to 2X these days.
My only annoyance with it is that I can't use the keyboard of my choice. I do like how they do the mouse, though.
It's not as easy as Teamviewer.
NSA: The new Number Two.
American: *snigger*
NSA: Stop that.
Yeah, right.
...to you.
And quite probably only you.