Come on guys... I know all about this physics stuff, you don't have to lecture me on it.;-)
I didn't want to outright say it because I thought it'd be fun to see if anyone could figure out what I meant. Particle here is taken to be "free will", and wave equals...? And then the same lesson is applied from the physical debate to this philosophical debate.
Wonder why this debate is still around after hundreds of years of argument? It's because it's nearly an identical analogy to the question: "Is it a particle or a wave?"
The Nobel prize was for Al Gore and the IPCC, what Al Gore chooses to do with his share is his prerogative, and personally I think his choice was an excellent one. There's plenty of research out there already, what is lacking is the connection between that research and the commoner's ear.
This is the IPCC. Did you not even read the summary??
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is currently finalizing its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007", also referred to as AR4. The reports by the three Working Groups provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change. The Synthesis Report integrates the information around six topic areas.
The entire organization is nothing but a group that goes through vast quantities of research and makes conclusions based on that research, this includes discussions of potential solutions.
Let's be clear about one thing - you're an anonymous coward, but primarily a coward, and until I see you doing something other than being a total dick, you can suck my fucking cock.
...you might just win yourself a relationship so 'special' that 90% of all couples in America share. You'll buy her jewelry and allow her to spend your money on frivolous trifles, and she in turn will allow you to stick your penis in her vagina. When all else fails, resort to mediocrity!
Worse still is that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with this maneuver. It's better for their sales if the word "Pod" is on the tips of everyone's tongue; they're just killing of free advertising.
It seems like you are no exception to the countless number of people who have completely misinterpreted what I said.
There is a very large difference between thirst for knowledge and thirst for material satisfaction. See if you can figure out which one I was referring to.
You know what I agree with you 100%. I'm sorry if it sounded to you like I was advocating some interpretation of quantum mechanics and just leaving it at that, no, that's wasn't my intention. I was saying that quantum physicists should borrow a page from Schrödinger and consider using an eastern philosophical approach to understanding it, and thereby perhaps making even more progress in unifying QM and General Relativity.
Thanks, you're absolutely right. It's just very hard for me to constantly think about the way I'm using certain words and how they may be interpreted in different ways. I've noticed that most of the arguments I get into involve some form of misinterpretation or another. I will keep your words in mind the next time I write or say something "out of the ordinary". Thanks again!:-)
No semantic game, I assure you. Matter, material, etc. It must follow certain laws. For example, matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Stephen Hawking lost a bet on that one I think (he thought that matter was destroyed in a black hole). Next, as I have stated previously, matter, i.e. information, cannot travel faster than the speed of light, according to Einstein. This is a very well established law, and it has been tested countless times. So, therefore, if something happens instantaneously, it is obviously happening faster than the speed of light, and therefore it does not fall in the domain of matter. Is that convincing enough to you? Or do you plan on taking this argument up with Einstein?
Hah! I now see what the problem is. You simply don't know much about physics, how else can you make such an uninformed statement?:-)
"Spooky action" is indeed amaterial and has nothing in common with the way gravity and electromagnetism work. Did you know, for example, that gravity does not travel faster than the speed of light? If the sun were to disappear right now, our planet would continue orbiting around it for about 8 minutes. Same goes for E&M. E&M fields propagate at the speed of light. Spooky action, quantum collapse, and quantum jumps, on the other hand, happen instantaneously.
I have no read that, but I do know, from listening to others who have read it, that it was in that very publication that he suggested the idea that consciousness causes quantum collapse. Here's an entry from the wiki:
With the publication of Die Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, it was Von Neumann however who became the first person to hint that Quantum theory may imply an active role for consciousness in the process of reality creation. His followers Fritz London, Edmond Bauer, and Eugene Wigner boldly carried Von Neumann's argument to a claimed logical conclusion that consciousness created reality is the inevitable outcome of Von Neumann's picture of Quantum theory.
This idea falls in line perfectly with what has been said by virtually every single mystic that has ever lived (except of course they did not refer to 'quantum mechanics' because that name did not exist back then).
Now, to drive the final stake into your already disintegrating arguments: to say as you have said, that it is mathematics that describes the ultimate reality, is simply false. That is to say, unless you consider Statistics to be Mathematics. The examples you have brought up, such as differential equations, etc. do not give you answers for where a quantum object is. They cannot, and never will. You can only give probabilities. And, finally, if you think that saying that "there's a 10% chance that the electron will be in this region" is even remotely an explanation for *why* that is so, well, you see that it is not. Mathematics, and even Statistics, does not explain the reasons for why the quantum world works the way it does. Certain ideas from eastern philosophy, on the other hand, provides an explanation that makes it all make sense. There are no more "paradoxes" when viewed in that manner, meaning, when you take the viewpoint that the fundamental "building blocks" of the universe is consciousness, then everything makes sense.
Oh, and to quote myself from another branch in this thread:
We both agree that matter behaves according to certain rules right? Such as, matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Well, quantum collapse, quantum jumps, and spook action at a distance, all happen instantaneously. The "spooky action" between entangled particles is perhaps the best example that the world is not make *purely* of matter. How do you explain it in material terms? You can't! Two entangled electrons, separated by several light years, will affect each other instantaneously. Are you convinced yet?
Not really. QM effects already figure into a vast array of engineering and scientific disciplines. QM is definitely making itself felt in electronics, nanotechnology, instrumentation, cryptography, chemistry, materials science, and many many others.
Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about the success of classical physics.
Incidentally, just what sort of people discovered and worked out QM in the first place?
Well, I'm having a discussion that touches on this in another branch of this thread. I show there that many of the pioneers of QM, especially Schrödinger, were deeply influenced by eastern philosophy, and that their knowledge of those philosophy's allowed them to depart from the classical view of the world, and in Schrödinger's case, come up with the Schrödinger equation.
Nothing you say here rules out the world being purely material. You ruled out a deterministic world, but not a material one.
How can you say that when I clearly showed the contrary? I'll try again.
We both agree that matter behaves according to certain rules right? Such as, matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Well, quantum collapse, quantum jumps, and spook action at a distance, all happen instantaneously. The "spooky action" between entangled particles is perhaps the best example that the world is not make *purely* of matter. How do you explain it in material terms? You can't! Two entangled electrons, separated by several light years, will affect each other instantaneously. Are you convinced yet?
You don't seem to have fully understood what I said. Schrödinger was not merely inspired by eastern philosophy, it played a great role in his ability to come up with the idea at all! Why, I bet if you were to hear some of the stuff the guy said you'd be certain he was a kook-mystic. Here are some of the things he said:
Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents-- their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.
In itself, the insight is not new. The earliest records, to my knowledge, date back some 2500 years or more... the recognition ATMAN = BRAHMAN (the personal self equals the omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self) was in Indian thought considered, far from being blasphemous, to represent the quintessence of deepest insight into the happenings of the world. The striving of all the scholars of Vedanta was after having learnt to pronounce with their lips, really assimilate in their minds this grandest of all thoughts.
Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...
I guess one could easily say the if it were not for the eastern ideas that he studied, he would never have come up with that equation!
Niels Bohr had the yin-yang symbol on his coat of arms (he was knighted).
And finally, how appropriate it is that you mention John von Neumann, for coincidentally I have just finished reading that it was in fact he who originally proposed the idea in the 1930s that consciousness collapses quantum waves.
Looks like many of these highly intelligent and respected scientists that you so adore saw something in eastern philosophy that you do not...
Is it just me or do I detect a hint of bitterness in that response? I never said you needed a Harvard professor (heh), nor did I suggest that you in particular were unhappy, rather instead those people that adhered to a certain mindset. As to me? I read his stuff not because it makes me happy, but because I find it incredibly insightful and informative. Forgive me for trying to recommend it to you, I hope you weren't too offended.:-)
Feynman was a great man, I have a deep admiration towards him.
However. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but eastern ideas played a great role in the development of Quantum Mechanics. Take, for example, one of QM's greatest contributors, Erwin Schrödinger:
Advaita Vedanta has influenced a number of modern western scientists, philosphers and authors. Nikola Tesla was influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of Swami Vivekananda. Erwin Schrödinger claimed to have been inspired by Vedanta in his discovery of quantum theory. According to his biographer Walter Moore: "The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed, inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One.".
Among other prominent Western figures who have been influenced by and commented on Vedanta are Max Muller, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Romain Rolland, Eugene Wigner, Arnold Toynbee, and Will Durant.
This was taken from the wiki on the Vedanta. And with regards to modern contributions, the author that I have cited, Amit Goswami, is a Ph.D. and though I think he recently retired, he worked for the Institute for Theoretical Sciences at the University of Oregon. He published the book I'm currently reading (The Self-Aware Universe), and is the author of numerous scientific papers and two physics texts.
Incidentally, the track record of the materialist empiricists is pretty damn good; they've explained in verifiable detail one hell of a lot more than the mystical philosphers
Perhaps their track record is so good because the effects of QM on the visible world are negligible? Thus obviously they have a good track record at explaining where a ball will go. But both "mystical" philosophers and real QM physicists realize that they're not dealing with just the visible world, but rather the true reality of how everything works. And as I have shown in other posts, it's very interesting to see how well certain eastern ideas fit in with QM. Materialism simply does not work on the quantum scale, meaning reality is not made of the "matter" that we once thought it was.
I suspect "suggests" means that what you meant can be cast into any suitable terms. I've spent quite a bit of time around New Agers who speak using the exact type of language and ideas you were expressing. When I pinned them down with what science and physics actually meant, they too insisted that I "had it all wrong".
It's easy to try and dismiss me as a "New Ager" isn't it? Too bad this time you're talking to someone who actually knows something about QM. Now, the part that you misinterpreted was not in the "suggests", but rather in the word "conscious", for the outlook that I'm proposing is that, in the words of Amit Goswami, the world is made of consciousness. Now, before you flip out upon reading that, please realize that if anything is true, the world is *not* made out of "material" or "particles". QM shows that discrete, independent particles do not exist, instead we have "wavicles", who only exhibit particle-like behavior when they are observed. It would be difficult for me to explain to you what exactly is meant by consciousness, and I've yet to finish reading Goswami's book, but needless to say I think it makes a whole lot of sense, especially after reading Watts' stuff. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to word this better, until then all I can offer you is the fact that we do not live in a material world.
How do you go and make the leap of "the existence of quantum effects" to saying that "this world is not purely a material one"?
Very simple. Matter behaves according to certain laws. It cannot travel faster than the speed of light for example. Matter, in the classical sense, also obeys locality. QM shows that matter is really not particles, but wavicles, with both the properties of waves and particles. So, with the example I gave, of an electron, when nothing observes it, it is a wave that is spread over a certain region. This wave represents the probability of being found at any one of those points. Therefore one can think of it as being in multiple places at the same time. When you observe it, you "collapse the wave" and you see it as a particle. Afterwards it goes back into its wave-like state. Oh, another thing you should read that will make this clear to you is the Double Slit Experiment. So, continuing, small particles like electrons also make what is called "quantum jumps". This means they instantaneously go from one position to another. It is impossible to know exactly when this will happen and where they will arrive, you can only know the probabilities. Finally, perhaps the best example of the world not being a material one, is the so-called Spooky action at a distance". In this, two or more particles are in an entangled state. A change on one brings about an instantaneous change in the other, no matter how far they are separated.
Personally, I've always believed that the human brain, and hence, the human conciousness, is nothing more than an extremely elaborate computer.
I'm certainly open to the possibility that quantum physicists may learn more and unravel something to suggest to me that I am wrong, but as of yet they have not.
Well again you are wrong. QM has proved you wrong, and this is because the universe, on a quantum scale, is undeterministic. This means that things do not follow an exact sequential order. In other words, a change in an electron, like firing it at another, will not give you the same result each time the experiment is perfectly duplicated. This is not the case in computers; they follow an algorithm--a direct sequence of events. Furthermore, the brain and computers and fundamentally different in their design. The brain is massively parallel; you can cut off half of it and it will still work. Things happen simultaneously in different locations. This is not the case in CPUs, and no amount of multi-threading will save you. Perhaps if you had a computer whose CPU consisted of several billions of cores, and they all had the ability to physically change their orientations, then *maybe* you could have an AI.
Noted, but I could not think of a better term, for it is indeed western culture that holds these notions. Should I just give a disclaimer or do you have a suggestion for some other word?
Slashdot Mirror
Come on guys... I know all about this physics stuff, you don't have to lecture me on it. ;-)
I didn't want to outright say it because I thought it'd be fun to see if anyone could figure out what I meant. Particle here is taken to be "free will", and wave equals...? And then the same lesson is applied from the physical debate to this philosophical debate.
Wonder why this debate is still around after hundreds of years of argument? It's because it's nearly an identical analogy to the question: "Is it a particle or a wave?"
The Nobel prize was for Al Gore and the IPCC, what Al Gore chooses to do with his share is his prerogative, and personally I think his choice was an excellent one. There's plenty of research out there already, what is lacking is the connection between that research and the commoner's ear.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is currently finalizing its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007", also referred to as AR4. The reports by the three Working Groups provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change. The Synthesis Report integrates the information around six topic areas.
The entire organization is nothing but a group that goes through vast quantities of research and makes conclusions based on that research, this includes discussions of potential solutions.
"No research", "No solutions"?!?
Who the hell modded you up?
Let's be clear about one thing - you're an anonymous coward, but primarily a coward, and until I see you doing something other than being a total dick, you can suck my fucking cock.
...you might just win yourself a relationship so 'special' that 90% of all couples in America share. You'll buy her jewelry and allow her to spend your money on frivolous trifles, and she in turn will allow you to stick your penis in her vagina. When all else fails, resort to mediocrity!
Worse still is that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with this maneuver. It's better for their sales if the word "Pod" is on the tips of everyone's tongue; they're just killing of free advertising.
It seems like you are no exception to the countless number of people who have completely misinterpreted what I said.
There is a very large difference between thirst for knowledge and thirst for material satisfaction. See if you can figure out which one I was referring to.
You know what I agree with you 100%. I'm sorry if it sounded to you like I was advocating some interpretation of quantum mechanics and just leaving it at that, no, that's wasn't my intention. I was saying that quantum physicists should borrow a page from Schrödinger and consider using an eastern philosophical approach to understanding it, and thereby perhaps making even more progress in unifying QM and General Relativity.
:-)
Kudos.
Thanks, you're absolutely right. It's just very hard for me to constantly think about the way I'm using certain words and how they may be interpreted in different ways. I've noticed that most of the arguments I get into involve some form of misinterpretation or another. I will keep your words in mind the next time I write or say something "out of the ordinary". Thanks again! :-)
No semantic game, I assure you. Matter, material, etc. It must follow certain laws. For example, matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Stephen Hawking lost a bet on that one I think (he thought that matter was destroyed in a black hole). Next, as I have stated previously, matter, i.e. information, cannot travel faster than the speed of light, according to Einstein. This is a very well established law, and it has been tested countless times. So, therefore, if something happens instantaneously, it is obviously happening faster than the speed of light, and therefore it does not fall in the domain of matter. Is that convincing enough to you? Or do you plan on taking this argument up with Einstein?
Hah! I now see what the problem is. You simply don't know much about physics, how else can you make such an uninformed statement? :-)
"Spooky action" is indeed amaterial and has nothing in common with the way gravity and electromagnetism work. Did you know, for example, that gravity does not travel faster than the speed of light? If the sun were to disappear right now, our planet would continue orbiting around it for about 8 minutes. Same goes for E&M. E&M fields propagate at the speed of light. Spooky action, quantum collapse, and quantum jumps, on the other hand, happen instantaneously.
Come back when you learn some more physics. ^_^
Please, don't bring Christianity into this. I'm not a big fan of it. ;-)
This idea falls in line perfectly with what has been said by virtually every single mystic that has ever lived (except of course they did not refer to 'quantum mechanics' because that name did not exist back then).
Now, to drive the final stake into your already disintegrating arguments: to say as you have said, that it is mathematics that describes the ultimate reality, is simply false. That is to say, unless you consider Statistics to be Mathematics. The examples you have brought up, such as differential equations, etc. do not give you answers for where a quantum object is. They cannot, and never will. You can only give probabilities. And, finally, if you think that saying that "there's a 10% chance that the electron will be in this region" is even remotely an explanation for *why* that is so, well, you see that it is not. Mathematics, and even Statistics, does not explain the reasons for why the quantum world works the way it does. Certain ideas from eastern philosophy, on the other hand, provides an explanation that makes it all make sense. There are no more "paradoxes" when viewed in that manner, meaning, when you take the viewpoint that the fundamental "building blocks" of the universe is consciousness, then everything makes sense.
Oh, and to quote myself from another branch in this thread:
Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about the success of classical physics.
Well, I'm having a discussion that touches on this in another branch of this thread. I show there that many of the pioneers of QM, especially Schrödinger, were deeply influenced by eastern philosophy, and that their knowledge of those philosophy's allowed them to depart from the classical view of the world, and in Schrödinger's case, come up with the Schrödinger equation.
How can you say that when I clearly showed the contrary? I'll try again.
We both agree that matter behaves according to certain rules right? Such as, matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Well, quantum collapse, quantum jumps, and spook action at a distance, all happen instantaneously. The "spooky action" between entangled particles is perhaps the best example that the world is not make *purely* of matter. How do you explain it in material terms? You can't! Two entangled electrons, separated by several light years, will affect each other instantaneously. Are you convinced yet?
I guess one could easily say the if it were not for the eastern ideas that he studied, he would never have come up with that equation!
Niels Bohr had the yin-yang symbol on his coat of arms (he was knighted).
And finally, how appropriate it is that you mention John von Neumann, for coincidentally I have just finished reading that it was in fact he who originally proposed the idea in the 1930s that consciousness collapses quantum waves.
Looks like many of these highly intelligent and respected scientists that you so adore saw something in eastern philosophy that you do not...
Is it just me or do I detect a hint of bitterness in that response? I never said you needed a Harvard professor (heh), nor did I suggest that you in particular were unhappy, rather instead those people that adhered to a certain mindset. As to me? I read his stuff not because it makes me happy, but because I find it incredibly insightful and informative. Forgive me for trying to recommend it to you, I hope you weren't too offended. :-)
Well then you'd do well to read my reply to him.
However. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but eastern ideas played a great role in the development of Quantum Mechanics. Take, for example, one of QM's greatest contributors, Erwin Schrödinger:
This was taken from the wiki on the Vedanta. And with regards to modern contributions, the author that I have cited, Amit Goswami, is a Ph.D. and though I think he recently retired, he worked for the Institute for Theoretical Sciences at the University of Oregon. He published the book I'm currently reading (The Self-Aware Universe), and is the author of numerous scientific papers and two physics texts.
:-)
Perhaps their track record is so good because the effects of QM on the visible world are negligible? Thus obviously they have a good track record at explaining where a ball will go. But both "mystical" philosophers and real QM physicists realize that they're not dealing with just the visible world, but rather the true reality of how everything works. And as I have shown in other posts, it's very interesting to see how well certain eastern ideas fit in with QM. Materialism simply does not work on the quantum scale, meaning reality is not made of the "matter" that we once thought it was.
It's easy to try and dismiss me as a "New Ager" isn't it? Too bad this time you're talking to someone who actually knows something about QM. Now, the part that you misinterpreted was not in the "suggests", but rather in the word "conscious", for the outlook that I'm proposing is that, in the words of Amit Goswami, the world is made of consciousness. Now, before you flip out upon reading that, please realize that if anything is true, the world is *not* made out of "material" or "particles". QM shows that discrete, independent particles do not exist, instead we have "wavicles", who only exhibit particle-like behavior when they are observed. It would be difficult for me to explain to you what exactly is meant by consciousness, and I've yet to finish reading Goswami's book, but needless to say I think it makes a whole lot of sense, especially after reading Watts' stuff. Hopefully in the future I'll be able to word this better, until then all I can offer you is the fact that we do not live in a material world.
Very simple. Matter behaves according to certain laws. It cannot travel faster than the speed of light for example. Matter, in the classical sense, also obeys locality. QM shows that matter is really not particles, but wavicles, with both the properties of waves and particles. So, with the example I gave, of an electron, when nothing observes it, it is a wave that is spread over a certain region. This wave represents the probability of being found at any one of those points. Therefore one can think of it as being in multiple places at the same time. When you observe it, you "collapse the wave" and you see it as a particle. Afterwards it goes back into its wave-like state. Oh, another thing you should read that will make this clear to you is the Double Slit Experiment. So, continuing, small particles like electrons also make what is called "quantum jumps". This means they instantaneously go from one position to another. It is impossible to know exactly when this will happen and where they will arrive, you can only know the probabilities. Finally, perhaps the best example of the world not being a material one, is the so-called Spooky action at a distance". In this, two or more particles are in an entangled state. A change on one brings about an instantaneous change in the other, no matter how far they are separated.
Well again you are wrong. QM has proved you wrong, and this is because the universe, on a quantum scale, is undeterministic. This means that things do not follow an exact sequential order. In other words, a change in an electron, like firing it at another, will not give you the same result each time the experiment is perfectly duplicated. This is not the case in computers; they follow an algorithm--a direct sequence of events. Furthermore, the brain and computers and fundamentally different in their design. The brain is massively parallel; you can cut off half of it and it will still work. Things happen simultaneously in different locations. This is not the case in CPUs, and no amount of multi-threading will save you. Perhaps if you had a computer whose CPU consisted of several billions of cores, and they all had the ability to physically change their orientations, then *maybe* you could have an AI.
By the way, you might be surprised to know that the Dali Lama is a big fan of yours; he really likes neuroscientists.
Noted, but I could not think of a better term, for it is indeed western culture that holds these notions. Should I just give a disclaimer or do you have a suggestion for some other word?