I don’t think serious scientist has believed that human consciousness is required to collapse the wave function since Roger Penrose was a young man.

 

I don’t think serious scientist has believed that human consciousness is required to collapse the wave function since Roger Penrose was a young man.

Penrose is a very serious scientist though, has worked in theoretical physics all his life. You have to go where the evidence takes you, no matter how unconventional that might be, no matter how bizarre it might seem.

 

Penrose is a very serious scientist though, has worked in theoretical physics all his life.

I know that and have great respect for him. All I am saying is that his statement about QM being wrong because human consciousness is not involved in the process is a strawman, it is mot a position held by anyone today. I believe he is being intellectually dishonest in that video.

 

Hi,

I think maybe he is just trying to make a distinction between what is perfectly right and what is wrong because we are in the era where half-truths are taken as truth just because it looks right for a time. I think this comes from a mind that works with pure logic rather than pseudo logic and at the highest resolution.
It probably starts with our constant desire to simplify things which means we approximate things. In doing so, we tend to start to believe these things are perfect. Who here has not thought of pi as being 3.14 at least for one time in their life. How about 3.14159 ? It does not matter how many digits we go out to, it's always an approximation but in most of math we deal with it as being perfect even when we use it as a number like that.
QM looks so very perfect at first that it's easy to think that it is perfect even though it's not. It answers a lot of questions so we want it to work for everything, and that leads us to believe that it SHOULD work for everything.

You will note that it does refer to QM being "incomplete" as many have said in order to wiggle out of the inevitable, but that means, technically and to be perfectly logical in the ideal sense, it is wrong. It's like having to stop at a traffic light that is red or a stop sign: either you stop or you don't, you can't partially stop. If we call rolling slowly though it a partial stop then it's still not a stop. The motor vehicle laws recognize that fact too.

So I think he is just making that distinction ultra clear so we do not get confused about what it does and what it should be able to do. Maybe to persuade others to look for something else that is not wrong in that sense.

 

Hi,

I think maybe he is just trying to make a distinction between what is perfectly right and what is wrong because we are in the era where half-truths are taken as truth just because it looks right for a time. I think this comes from a mind that works with pure logic rather than pseudo logic and at the highest resolution.
It probably starts with our constant desire to simplify things which means we approximate things. In doing so, we tend to start to believe these things are perfect. Who here has not thought of pi as being 3.14 at least for one time in their life. How about 3.14159 ? It does not matter how many digits we go out to, it's always an approximation but in most of math we deal with it as being perfect even when we use it as a number like that.
QM looks so very perfect at first that it's easy to think that it is perfect even though it's not. It answers a lot of questions so we want it to work for everything, and that leads us to believe that it SHOULD work for everything.

You will note that it does refer to QM being "incomplete" as many have said in order to wiggle out of the inevitable, but that means, technically and to be perfectly logical in the ideal sense, it is wrong. It's like having to stop at a traffic light that is red or a stop sign: either you stop or you don't, you can't partially stop. If we call rolling slowly though it a partial stop then it's still not a stop. The motor vehicle laws recognize that fact too.

So I think he is just making that distinction ultra clear so we do not get confused about what it does and what it should be able to do. Maybe to persuade others to look for something else that is not wrong in that sense.

Yes, I gathered that's a peeve of his here, describing QM as "incomplete" is disingenuous, if we said Newtonian mechanics was once incomplete that would be very misleading, because NM was not "completed" or extended by Einstein it was basically totally replaced.

QM is wrong, that's the reality here.

 

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
The Relativity of Wrong
by Isaac Asimov

 

Yes, I gathered that's a peeve of his here, describing QM as "incomplete" is disingenuous, if we said Newtonian mechanics was once incomplete that would be very misleading, because NM was not "completed" or extended by Einstein it was basically totally replaced.

QM is wrong, that's the reality here.

It's amazing that we can find such interesting theories that only work most of the time and not all the time.
It probably means we just have not discovered enough about the universe yet in order to figure it all out.

 

It's amazing that we can find such interesting theories that only work most of the time and not all the time.
It probably means we just have not discovered enough about the universe yet in order to figure it all out.

Its easy to see - at least it is to me now - that we can never "figure it all out". Like Gödel's incompleteness theorems, there's always a limit to what we can "know".

Unless we assume things, we can never theorize, we must always accept some basic thing as "it just is" and any attempt to prove those assumptions always requires us to postulate new, different assumptions.

 

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
The Relativity of Wrong
by Isaac Asimov

Ahh Asimov, someone I always admired as a teenager, I enjoyed his science books as much as his science fiction. It is noteworthy that he refers to the literature student so haughtily, because Asimov once wrote a book named Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.

Of course the fact a person is a student of English Literature has no bearing on the efficacy of any scientific or philosophical arguments he might put forward, and I note too that the student's position is in fact a philosophical one not scientific. He doesn't so far as I can see, even quote a single paragraph or sentence from the writer's letter, preferring instead to paraphrase him and that always carries the risk of making strawman arguments which I suspect Asimov does here.

The gradualistic refinement that Asimov dwells on in that article is misleading I think. Of course quantitatively science has given us ever finer granularity but only in the quantitative sense, not the qualitative.

GR is a more accurate refinement of Newton numerically, but not epistemologically. The non-Euclidean 4D geometry of GR is utterly incomparable to Newtonian mechanics, they are completely different ways of perceiving nature, space and time.

The fact (as Asimov should have known) is that we can often only obtain finer and finer precision of our predictions by sometimes abandoning entire bodies of "knowledge" and replacing it with something completely new, a review of the various depictions of the solar system over the ages demonstrates this simple truth.

Asimov's science fiction was "hard" like Clarke and EE Smith and others, all of whom were scientifically trained, so it's no surprise that their science is also "hard", overly simplistic and dogmatic.

 

This is what I mean by 'boring'. Redundant posting of the same 'wrong' BS on a different day.

https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/the-case-against-quantum-computing.154610/post-1780128

 

Has anybody here read/studied Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, seemingly regarded as a milestone at the beginning of quantum theory?

 

Ahh Asimov, someone I always admired as a teenager, I enjoyed his science books as much as his science fiction. It is noteworthy that he refers to the literature student so haughtily, because Asimov once wrote a book named Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare.

Of course the fact a person is a student of English Literature has no bearing on the efficacy of any scientific or philosophical arguments he might put forward, and I note too that the student's position is in fact a philosophical one not scientific. He doesn't so far as I can see, even quote a single paragraph or sentence from the writer's letter, preferring instead to paraphrase him and that always carries the risk of making strawman arguments which I suspect Asimov does here.

The gradualistic refinement that Asimov dwells on in that article is misleading I think. Of course quantitatively science has given us ever finer granularity but only in the quantitative sense, not the qualitative.

GR is a more accurate refinement of Newton numerically, but not epistemologically. The non-Euclidean 4D geometry of GR is utterly incomparable to Newtonian mechanics, they are completely different ways of perceiving nature, space and time.

The fact (as Asimov should have known) is that we can often only obtain finer and finer precision of our predictions by sometimes abandoning entire bodies of "knowledge" and replacing it with something completely new, a review of the various depictions of the solar system over the ages demonstrates this simple truth.

Asimov's science fiction was "hard" like Clarke and EE Smith and others, all of whom were scientifically trained, so it's no surprise that their science is also "hard", overly simplistic and dogmatic.

Hi,

The way I like to describe it is that science is recursive. It keeps going over and over things until it comes up with better and better solutions, at least in principle. There's no way we can know for sure that we are actually getting better as time goes on. It just 'looks' like it is getting better so we go with it. Then we run into problems, and we have to question everything all over again

 

Has anybody here read/studied Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, seemingly regarded as a milestone at the beginning of quantum theory?

Hi,

Why, is there some point you would like to make about it?

 

Hi,

Why, is there some point you would like to make about it?

I never read it (and I'm not equipped to really follow the mathematics, it would take some effort) I was wondering if anyone here had read it and had an opinion, it is widely regarded as the beginning of proper mathematical QM theory.

Dirac it seems was very highly regarded even by peers like Einstein and apparently contributed more than anyone else to QM.

Many years ago I studied general relativity and was able to follow it to a large degree, but I did not rely on pop-science books, I went directly to Einstein himself and began by reading his actual work, I'd like to do the same with Dirac.

Unlike Einstein few laymen have heard of Dirac yet his impact on QM was as great as Einstein's was on classical mechanics, everything I read about Dirac indicates we was up there with Einstein.

 

Unlike Einstein few laymen have heard of Dirac yet his impact on QM was as great as Einstein's was on classical mechanics, everything I read about Dirac indicates we was up there with Einstein.

By combining special relativity with QM, and predicting antimatter, he certainly left his mark.

 

I never read it (and I'm not equipped to really follow the mathematics, it would take some effort) I was wondering if anyone here had read it and had an opinion, it is widely regarded as the beginning of proper mathematical QM theory.

Dirac it seems was very highly regarded even by peers like Einstein and apparently contributed more than anyone else to QM.

Many years ago I studied general relativity and was able to follow it to a large degree, but I did not rely on pop-science books, I went directly to Einstein himself and began by reading his actual work, I'd like to do the same with Dirac.

Unlike Einstein few laymen have heard of Dirac yet his impact on QM was as great as Einstein's was on classical mechanics, everything I read about Dirac indicates we was up there with Einstein.

Yeah Dirac is all over the web.

I learned some really cool things about QM but it was a little too long ago for me to remember, and currently I don't have to actually use that for anything. It might not make sense for me to go over all that stuff again. Some of it was really interesting though like infinite frequency, or maybe that was with string theory

 

Its easy to see - at least it is to me now - that we can never "figure it all out". Like Gödel's incompleteness theorems, there's always a limit to what we can "know".

Unless we assume things, we can never theorize, we must always accept some basic thing as "it just is" and any attempt to prove those assumptions always requires us to postulate new, different assumptions.

Hi there,

I know it's been a while since we talked about this, but I am starting to think about some of this stuff again due to some recent discoveries.

For example, why does it seem like there is a limit to what we can know.
Is it because some things cannot be discovered, or is it that the total amount of knowledge that there can ever be is infinite.

There are also those questions like how big the universe is. We'd have to figure out how to see places that we believe we cannot see presently.

For now though, I am sticking to the things that can be known and trying to explain them in simpler ways. Some of the stuff is complicated, but a lot of it isn't.

 

Hi there,

I know it's been a while since we talked about this, but I am starting to think about some of this stuff again due to some recent discoveries.

For example, why does it seem like there is a limit to what we can know.
Is it because some things cannot be discovered, or is it that the total amount of knowledge that there can ever be is infinite.

There are also those questions like how big the universe is. We'd have to figure out how to see places that we believe we cannot see presently.

For now though, I am sticking to the things that can be known and trying to explain them in simpler ways. Some of the stuff is complicated, but a lot of it isn't.

This is why philosophy should be taught in schools, your question is a philosophical one and its answer must therefore be philosophical too.

The only thing I can honestly say I know, is that I exist, the famous Descartes quote.

Everything else I claim to know is supported only by additional assumptions, beliefs.

But a belief, isn't "knowing" something so we are left with the very harsh reality that theres not only a limit, but in fact we can never know anything.

Take your strongest belief and try to prove it to yourself it isn't a belief but knowledge, you'll not succeed (well I believe you won't).

There are different degrees of "truth" in our world, many people regard scientific truth as the pinnacle of truths, but its less truthful than mathematics because it includes assumptions and interpretations. This is why I abandoned atheism, scientism 45 years ago, its a vacuous intellectual position that appears to be rational but is based on a misunderstanding of what science is .

Atheism (specifically scientism) actually has nothing to do with science, it is a superstition, this is a sad reality, a result of not teaching our children philosophy.

There's also (sadly) a disdain shown for philosophy by some scientists (Lawrence Krauss for example) which is (in my opinion) a form of anti-intellectualism, by people who claim to be intellectual, people who should know better, and this has been picked up by young minds, which can only be bad.

 

This is why philosophy should be taught in schools, your question is a philosophical one and its answer must therefore be philosophical too.

The only thing I can honestly say I know, is that I exist, the famous Descartes quote.

Everything else I claim to know is supported only by additional assumptions, beliefs.

But a belief, isn't "knowing" something so we are left with the very harsh reality that theres not only a limit, but in fact we can never know anything.

Take your strongest belief and try to prove it to yourself it isn't a belief but knowledge, you'll not succeed (well I believe you won't).

There are different degrees of "truth" in our world, many people regard scientific truth as the pinnacle of truths, but its less truthful than mathematics because it includes assumptions and interpretations. This is why I abandoned atheism, scientism 45 years ago, its a vacuous intellectual position that appears to be rational but is based on a misunderstanding of what science is .

Atheism (specifically scientism) actually has nothing to do with science, it is a superstition, this is a sad reality, a result of not teaching our children philosophy.

There's also (sadly) a disdain shown for philosophy by some scientists (Lawrence Krauss for example) which is (in my opinion) a form of anti-intellectualism, by people who claim to be intellectual, people who should know better, and this has been picked up by young minds, which can only be bad.

Hi,

You are correct on most of that if not all of it, I'm sure. But let me add a little here.

You say you know you exist (that can be questioned too I believe, but let's not go there), and you say nothing else is really known, and all you need to know is that you exist.

However, does knowing you exist get you down the road when you have to go to the store to buy food?
No. Why not? Because you have to 'know' other things. It may not be the bottom line philosophical 'knowing', but it functions for you.
This functioning is necessary for survival and other things. Therefore, there is a sub philosophy that we deal with in everyday life.
But more to the point, knowing that you (or I) exist does not get us anywhere. It does not do anything for us. In fact, even though it might be the rock bottom truth, it is almost the same thing as 'lumping', except that it seems to have the opposite effect.
When we lump some things together, we lose the identity of the pieces. This can be very good, but only when we do not ever have to consider the pieces. But we do not arbitrarily lump things together for a non-functional reason.
For example, in circuit theory we have the lumped element model. It makes things EXTRAORDINARILY simple, and we'd be in trouble if we didn't do that because we'd spend a lot more time on simple circuits like RC low pass filters. It serves a great purpose to do that.
However, when we are dealing with frequencies with wave lengths comparable to the size of the components themselves, we can't use the lumped element model, we have to pay much more attention to the detail of the components themselves. We don't just chuck in the lumped element model for the heck of it, because if we did that, we would not be able to calculate what is really happening in the circuit. We'd lose functionality.

In other words, we might consider what they call Bayesian Reasoning and Fuzzy Logic.
It's not too hard to 'believe' that 70 degrees F is cooler than 80 degrees F, and depending on what we are doing, we might rate them in terms of Fuzzy Logic. 70 might be 0.2, and 80 might be 0.3, or whatever, highly dependent on the application of course.

I think this falls under practical philosophy. It's the philosophy of everyday life. We are actually forced into believing this kind of thing, because without it we can't function in an intelligent way. If the only thing we believed as "I exist" then everything else would come by pure chance, flip a coin to see which way we turn on the way to the store, roll the dice to see what move we make on the game board.

Another way to think about it maybe is that "I exist" is only needed in philosophical discussions, and everyday life almost never has to go there. Everyday life runs on working assumptions.