This is a follow up to my previous OP Is Cosmic Consciousness responsible for reality?
There seems to be some confusion regarding the causes of collapse of wave function(which seems to creates reality) whether a conscious observer can collapse the wave function ONLY or can a designed robot/computer perform the same role. Instead of pointing out the facts, I’d like “the seekers of truth” to do it for themselves. Since apparently ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’, I attach 2 videos that cover 2 breakthrough experiments in the understanding of well known double-slit experiment and the implications of collapse of wave function by an observer on the nature of reality…
Things to watch for in the second video: At 13 min and 15 min mark the experiment identifies the difference between robot/Linux systems and humans’ effect on the double-slit experiment. At 32 min mark we can see the implications of the experiments on reductive materialism and materialistic philosophy as well as why the obvious change is necessary that resisted by the scientific community…
Things to watch for in the first video: At 2:30 min mark it is explained what exactly causes the collapse of wave function. Does an act of observing alone cause the collapse of wave function? Or rather, does the knowledge of which path determined by a conscious observer or knower do that?
The last part of the second video talks about implications of the experiment that are so mind boggling that I’m going to leave them out for another OP. For those who have curious minds, please pay a close attention to “behavior” of 2 entangled particles which either involves their knowledge of the future or we fully do not understand the concept of time…
I have pessimism bias but that’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about here.
Perhaps we should investigate superposition in falling sparrows?
OMagain,
You reminded me of this exchange.
Reply:
[The first verse, at least, is by Ronald Knox.]
E4link
DNA_Jock,
Yep. It’s all just Berkeley’s idealism, slightly warmed-over and dressed up with a lot of quantum woo. Underneath all that, it’s still Berkeley — the same old view and vulnerable to all of the same problems that Hume and Kant identified hundreds of years ago. Those who forget the history of philosophy are doomed to repeat it.
I don’t feel like getting into it here, but I’ll just add that, in addition to getting the science (i.e., physical aspects wrong) as has been pointed out in detail by several posts above, experiments of this type also get intentionality wrong. It’s a fundamental point about the latter that awareness of some object doesn’t DO anything to the object. The whole ‘theory’ is a big pile not only of bad experimental methodology, but confusion.
Nevertheless, there is this, from FMM:
So what the hell is the difference? They want to believe, so they believe. They don’t care what makes sense or good science.
In a way, that’s the problem with this site generally (and contemporary politics too). Truth isn’t even a little bit of a factor. Interestingly, James’s “Will to Believe” may have been part of the problem here. Russell was right; James wrong. But again–Who will care?
Right.
What assumption of Gordon’s are you talking about, and how does this claim contradict it?
It seems to me that, in fact, the assertion that the paradox of entanglement is resolved by this “catalog of knowledge” picture is really the unsupported assumption here.
That is, there’s something we can’t explain with traditional mechanics and a variety of theories are propounded that seem to explain it. How is it evidence for one of them to simply say it again? If the catalog theory were coherent–which I don’t think it is–you’d need good experimental support for it (which again as a non-expert) I don’t think you have.
But one thing is abundantly clear: stating the theory one likes isn’t evidence either for its coherence or the empirical results claimed to be behind it. And it’s not an assumption of anybody’s to give arguments as to why one of the proposed solutions to the paradox is either incoherent or poorly supported by empirical evidence.
Thank you for pointing that out. I’d put more as follows: it’s not part of the concept of intentional awareness that intentional awareness is a causal power.
I don’t think that James (or even Nietzsche, for that matter) has had any influence on the death of expertise and the rise of a ‘post-truth’ culture. And I say that even though I also think that James was basically right in that essay, though it’s sloppier than most of his stuff. The contempt for expertise that we see at TSZ, and the general anti-intellectualism behind it, has much more proximal and material causes.
Well, I agree with you that nobody is reading James on the cuckoo-nut cloud, but not that his picture had no effect on the ethics of belief. Also I disagree with you about him being “basically right.” I’d say he was basically wrong.
I read James as being much closer to Clifford than the standard reading has it. I read James as effectively saying, “there’s nothing epistemically problematic about having one’s affective disposition cause one to adopt a certain worldview, if you’ve taken the time to make sure that the epistemic criteria don’t by themselves require any specific worldview (or rule any out)”
I’d also point out that what James means by “the religious hypothesis” is extremely deflationary and thin: by his lights, the religious hypothesis consists of exactly two claims: (1) “the best things are the eternal things” and (2) “we are better off even now to accept (1)”.
That’s far too thin to satisfy the vast majority of people of faith. But that’s the most James gives them. Even less than Kierkegaard!
Kantian Naturalist,
FWIW, this quote from “Varieties of Religious Experience” is my favorite remark of James’ on religion.
That (wonderful) book, the stuff on Fechner in “Pluralistic Worlds” and a few passages from his massive “Psychology” are the only things by James that appeal to me.
Ah, as we learn from many theists, the knowability of the universe is evidence of God.
And now we learn that the unknowability of aspects of the universe is just more of God’s awesomeness.
It’s ID all over again, anything is evidence for “design” and the Designer (at least if it’s complex, regardless of the fact that (real) design is very obvious in non-complex items), no matter how much it looks like something evolutionary processes with no foresight or peripheral vision actually did it.
Glen Davidson
They want to disbelieve, so they disbelieve. They don’t care what makes sense or good science.
The knowability of anything at all is evidence of God, just as the existence of anything at all is evidence of God.
And I certainly wouldn’t go to atheists to find out about God.
Except there is a obvious difference. One side let’s actual scientists decide what is good science and the other substitutes it’s own judgments oe depends on authorities that the community of science laughs at. Why should we care about that difference? Because both sides depend on the accomplishments of the real scientists to get through everyday of their lives. They only turn away from the acknowledge experts when it suits them.
That’s the difference, mung.
You just go to them when your thermostat breaks. When it comes to ghostly creatures, you figure you know best. There is an actual scientific method: if you want to use it only when it suits you, you should expect to be ridiculed: you deserve just that treatment.
I wouldn’t go to theists to find out about God, any more than I’d go to ancient alien “theorists” to learn about extraterrestrial life. Or to atheists, for that matter.
If one were serious about learning about God, one would go to the evidence, or come to recognize the lack thereof. That’s not the principle exactly driving ID and other apologetics, however.
Glen Davidson
walto,
Who are the “real scientists”?
Who are the “experts”?
What do you do when “experts” disagree with the results as in the QM experiments we are discussing?
Do you claim that the “real scientists” and “experts” have their own bias they are dealing with? 4 years ago I did not realize the intense bias that exists in the scientific community.
Where do you think you fit against a bias meter where 0 is completely objective and 10 is your head buried in the sand?
And now you do, because, instead of carefully learning the empirical nature of science and sound judgment, you listened to people with an axe to grind, and biases to share with you.
That’s such an eye-opener.
Glen Davidson
J-Mac,
Here is a presentation at Google that is a bridge between the quantum eraser experiments and Tegmark’s work. The interesting assumption is that measurement and entanglement are the same.
Sorry, but both the epistemological and metaphysical claims here are false. The intelligibility of objects neither presupposes God nor entails God, and adding God to the epistemological analysis doesn’t give us anything that we can’t get from phenomenology (taken liberally to include ordinary language philosophy) and the cognitive sciences. Likewise we don’t get any deeper understanding in metaphysics by adding “and therefore God” to any speculation.
Kantian Naturalist,
This is not his argument.
Evidence of God is different then therefore God.
Those who publish in peer-reviewed journals. Those who send rockets to Mars. Those who teach in top research institutions.
Same answer. Now you answer those.
Well, if there is no consensus and there are two equally expert groups giving different answers–which is certainly not the case in the stuff being discussed on this thread–where you have consensual science on one side and cranksville on the other–I withhold my judgment. What would you do?
Everybody has biases. That’s why it’s important to utilize things like double blind review and depend on the abstract methodologies used in sciences that have actually produced things like rockets to Mars, cures of diseases, weather forecasting, etc. Biases will always sneak in, but science (unlike cranks) do their best to keep them out. You fall on the crank side every time.
I have no idea, and it’s inappropriate to ask ME that question. That’s exactly the point. That’s what you’re missing–and miss on every single thread at TSZ.
Which God?
Actually, Mung didn’t offer any argument at all. He offered an assertion with no argument to back it up. An assertion made without argument can be dismissed without argument.
walto,
So Max Tegmark and John Wheeler are cranks ville. It seems you don’t understand the arguments that are going on. Your superficial methodology is keeping you in the dark.
Philosophical and methodological naturalism designs a clear bias into science.
It fortunately does not surface until you hit roadblocks that are hard to explain solely with materialist explanations like DNA and the behavior of photons.
In every day science like semiconductor research and cancer research this problem does not exist and the scientific method works well.
To you I am sure I seem like a crank. To me you seem to be highly biased based on you worldview but thats what makes a market. Your stick about listening to experts appears to be about your desire to indoctrinate others into your worldview. I know that you said you don’t care about others worldview so I will take this at face value but your arguments seem inconsistent.
Fair enough.
No I don’t think they are cranks. But Ron Garret is, apparently.
And, if you didn’t know, Wheeler is famous for laughing at parapsychology and its advocates.
walto,
I see lots of laughing and mocking but little detailed criticism of the experiment J-Mac posted.
You just told me I should like Wheeler. Now it turns out you don’t, whenever he disagrees with you, anyhow. Furthermore, you’ve completely ignored every criticism made of those “experiments.”
That’s what I’m talking about. It’s what you always do. You’re like intensified bias baked into a person.
Atoms are designed.
walto,
I think Wheeler is top notch. I attended many classes in a building named after him.
He died 10 years ago so I think he is not around to critique the experiment that J-Mac referenced.
So your conclusion is Wheeler laughed at parapsychology so we should ignore all experimental findings in this area going forward.
How did you come up with this conclusion?
Let me be clear. I think you’re “relying on the experts” comments as evidence for something we cannot experimentally verify is extremely misguided.
Especially when the evidence is forced into the same box (materialism) that failed to verify the findings in the first place.
I love that you think that you are the unbiased party here. It’s classic. Have you responded to the criticisms in this thread, other than to make ad hominem attacks on the partiality of the critics? You have not. Not a single word. Wheeler is a distinguished physicist. You are not in a position to cherrypick his stuff. But, again, that’s just what you do. Little else.
True and false are evidence for God.
It pains me to see that you cannot tell how just how unbiased I am. 🙂
That’s the spirit!
🙂
I was mimicking walto, in case you failed to notice.
Any assertion can be dismissed without argument.
Say you, making an assertion without any supporting argument. I say you are mistaken. I say that to make an assertion is to make an argument.
walto,
I am trying to understand the experiments and I am reading all comments not just J-Macs. There has been very little critique
When the critics make high level ad hominem attacks, I do ignore them. So should you, as you are a trained philosopher.
I do not consider pointing out bias ad hominem but correct me if I am wrong about this.
So far the only technical answer I have seen is from Gordon and he did not have any detail to his answer on the parapsychology experiment.
That’s just not true. At least three posters have provided significant critiques. All there has been in response is proud ear-plugging by J-Mac and bias sniffing by you.
You are wrong about this. Dismissing arguments on the basis that the person who makes them is biased, rather than on the virtue of the arguments themselves, is an ad hominem attack.
FMM,
I’m sure both myself and the Vatican physicists would love to hear how the trinity explains quantum collapse phenomena. Perhaps you could even start an OP on it.
I think so.
😉
peace
Actually I care deeply what makes good sense. I also am a fan of good science. I want what I believe to correspond to good sense and good science. because I believe God is Truth.
And of course “actual” scientists are the folks who agree with folks like walto.
How do we decide what counts as evidence?
peace
I’m a little busy with another project right now having to do with patterns and weather forecasts.
But the gist is that if the quantum collapse exists the Trinity explains it because the Trinity explains existence in general. 😉
peace
I have no doubt this is the case.
What has been the response of the “scientific community” to these critiques? Have they changed their position on the wave collapse and observers?
peace
“God is truth” makes as much sense as “boogers are happiness”, but at least boogers exist
I find our different perspectives on what makes “good sense” to be fascinating.
I think that “God is Truth” makes perfect sense and “boogers are happiness” to be adolescent and nonsensical.
What specifically makes your understanding more valid than mine?
More importantly how can people with such radically different understandings on the nature of reality coexist and perhaps cooperate from time to time?
peace
The hilarious fact that you “support” that shit with bible quotes
What is wrong with quoting the word of God?
God’s word should have extra added weight when discussing God’s nature don’t you agree?
I would certainly take your words in to account when discussing your nature.
peace
No. I’ve already responded to that.