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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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And need I point out that no one answered my questions directed at Moose.
What's "real" to them is only what they can see with their eyes. Be it their body, or a cell through a microscope, or the dial on a gauge.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Moose: After all it is not an observer's eye that "creates" reality. It is a screen, or CCD, or other detector that creates that reality.
And this is not even more crazy than the idea that a sentient being does not create reality? Now it can be a detector?
(Oh, Lordy.)
P.S. Moose, your so-called “Options” are highly limited. Try, “that which cannot be defined or explained.” How many options can you come up with now?
Jgill:
It seems to me that everything in your post relies upon the following that you wrote,: “Suppose . . . .”
Ward: . . . how much is this whole thing costing?
You kill me, dude! You really do. (How can you come up with that Question?) I laughed until I cried.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2015 - 08:49am PT
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I chose to believe what could be verified by observation.
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Can any of us observe our experience of qualia (of reading this thread, for example)? We can conflate certain brain activity with the reading but the objective and subjective are not the same "things." Is the observable electrochemical activity (an abstraction requiring all manner of tests and instruments etc) more "real" to you than your own direct experience?
JL
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jstan
climber
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Somehow we think it productive to argue about things never carefully defined.
After John's fall he was arguing the fully narcissistic position that what he perceived or was
even thinking was the only reality. Well I felt pretty sure what he was feeling was not the only
reality for the rest of us. This is an intellectual stretch for me because I am told I have no
imagination. But I was able to manage it. Saving his leg had to have cost someone a couple
of million dollars so I knew there was at least one person out there who also could make the
intellectual stretch required to know what we personally perceive is often not cosmic reality.
Now he says he never took that position. Further discussion is therefore not now possible.
I will also call attention to our experience that we macroscopic bodies do not react to two
slits the way an electron or atom does. Lester Germer, a climber, was very prominent in the
elucidation of this topic in physics around 1926. As an aside, Rgold and I helped get Lester
down from the climb on which he died. Personally I felt an acute wave of sorrow and loss
that has never left me. When his skin turned yellow I knew a very important person had just
left us and we would have to carry on alone.
I have read but am unable uniquely to parse the report on the ANU delayed decision
experiment. I don't know exact;y what they did, so I am unwilling to speculate here. To do
so would not be productive.
Evolution has achieved a very difficult engineering trade -off as regards brain function. I
have seen a lot of high technology systems engineered by humans. When humans try to
engineer these they do exactly what evolution does. They end up building a series of
designs that get improved performance. The claim that a being constructed in our image
can do this at one stroke, needs much more support than it has received. Even after 2000
years of determined effort.
Some twenty percent of our energy budget is devoted to supporting brain function. If it were
increased further our specie would be threatened by increased starvation. Just being
mammals is a huge challenge! If our response times were as short as a microsecond our
energy requirements would be prohibitive. But since we are not electrons going through slits
in a femtosecond we don't need such short reaction times.
cf. Davisson Germer
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2015 - 09:51am PT
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Moose, you make the most fantastic statements given where this conversation has gone over the last few days. We see new experiments from Down Under confirming that the form taken by your vaunted physical reality is observer created. Can you measure "observation?" And who is a "spiritual" person, and how do you know one when you see one? Bust out the slide rule? Do you only acknowledge physical facts? When all things reduce down to that with no physical extent or dimension, what, in the end, is it that you are measuring?
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Moose:
I wouldn’t make too much of experiments.
You run an experiment, and you “choose” a variable or specific condition, and then you say THAT is the causal force. A detector (rather than consciousness) creates the universe. Why not the photon, or the table where the detector was placed, or the researcher who thought-up the experiment, or the day of the week (those darned Tuesdays are always making things confusing), or the NSF funds that enabled the experiment to be run, or . . . .? Why the detector? In the last analysis, the choice is arbitrary.
Although statistical theory and measurements can seemingly tease out what has the greatest influence on outcomes, those methods are highly reliant upon a long list of assumptions (e.g., normal populations, causality). I’d say statistical methods and their underlying assumptions look like fiat. If you’ve done some research studies trying to pin down what causes what (causal modeling), you’ll know that it’s fraught with technical problems that do not lead to certainty. Perhaps what we can do best is to run correlations; but moving from correlations to causal models is major and difficult.
This issue is similar to the seemingly apparent necessity of logic. Hegel wrote a small article long ago claiming that the only real logical principal that mattered had to be that of non-contradiction of self-identity. . . and then he showed how that precept could also be wrong. “A” could also be “not-A.” Simply consider the lowly acorn and just how it ends up to be an oak tree.
Here is an addition to your short list: pink elephants have come down in a flying saucer on the rooftop of this building I live in and have made the reality what it is. You may not perceive them, but they are there.
There is no limit to interpretations of any set of data that can be generated. “Fit” is the technical issue, but what constitutes “fit” is where the rubber meets the road. WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR **ALL* THE DATA, EVERYWHERE? Where is R-square 1.0? Where is all the variance accounted for?
Consciousness.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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jgill: It seems to me that everything in your post relies upon the following that you wrote,: “Suppose . . . .”
Astute observation, Mike.
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jstan
climber
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I apologize in advance. I can't figure out why there is any discussion on physical extent.
In the standard model no provision is made for the physical extent( whatever that means in
QM) of particles. They are assumed to be point particles just as we assume all of the
universe had a Planck length at its inception. This assumption is an assumption that is well
supported by experiment.
That does not prove particles are points. It proves we can well predict experiment without
assuming they have physical extent. We each have enough imagination to understand this
seminal point.
And that is where String Theory comes in. If we assume particles are oscillating strings with
some small extent we get an immediate mathematical break through. We are no longer
doing integrals whose arguments blow up to infinity at the particle. (Go to Jgill to
understand better the implications of this.) This is huge! Over the last forty years the string
presumption has allowed such things as the unification of all four forces across huge scales
and allowed us to unify theories of gravity with those of QM.
There has, as yet, been no experimental confirmation so the building is not yet completed.
But all manner of leading particle physicists who were initially dismissive of string theory,
are now hedging their positions.
Exciting!
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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I like this thread, I wish I started following before there were 6000 posts
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2015 - 11:15am PT
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Moose, you are missing the key point in the experiment down under by "selectively hearing" what you want to hear, which supports your old and now untenable position. Your vaunted "detector" is a misinterpretation that allows you to posit objective reality existing separate from consciousness - the classical materialsist position now junked by all.
What the man said was this:
"At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
In other words, the "detector" is your own sentience.
JL
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jstan
climber
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but what constitutes “fit” is where the rubber meets the road.
This statement is not where the rubber hits the road.
If you give me the option to have 100 adjustable parameters using least squares I can fit just
about anything and it means very little. On the other hand if I can come up with a model
having no adjustable parameters but which does fit the data well, I have something. Even
that something, however, does not prove what is happening. If I can then take that model
and predict the results of two or three other experiments I have more.
But, mind you, this still does not prove absolutely, what is happening. Tomorrow someone
will invent a more precise method of measurement and its data will not fit my model's
prediction exactly. So we go around again, each time learning a bit more.
I know this evolutionary process does not satisfy those who think they must possess the myth
called " absolute truth".
Those people really need to go find a different universe in which to live.
In this universe absolute truth is something popularly called "unobtainium".
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WBraun
climber
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those who think they must possess the myth called " absolute truth".
jstan just made an absolute truth statement saying there's no such thing as "Absolute Truth"
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jstan
climber
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If I were injured and there was a 3000 foot deep hole beneath me, and I had to choose which duck would save me, I would go for a duck who was pretty sure of what had to be done.
Everything has a price.
And Werner is correct above. I worded it poorly.
"We have no data indicating an absolute truth has been found."
Edit:
Have we all noticed this Braun character is pretty smart?
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WBraun
climber
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You can't use "We" either.
You haven't met everyone on this planet and what to speak of the entire cosmic manifestation.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Why the detector? In the last analysis, the choice is arbitrary.
Nonsense. Some folks though are wary and skeptical of any form of conclusion - sure, it could be rainbow-colored unicorns guarding the slits which are responsible - but I wouldn't be betting heavily against the detector.
In other words, the "detector" is your own sentience.
More nonsense. You keep emphatically proselytizing you beliefs, but they are not born out or supported by this or any other experiment. And quantum collapse happens every time a photon strikes a leaf and catalyzes the production of sugar - no observer or sentience required - merely a 'detector' in the form of a leaf. Overall this is where adherents of panpsychism can easily stray from that basic premise to the absurd 'I-create-reality' mantra while at the same time broaching unbelievable levels of self-absorption, self-importance, and arrogance. Dude, you're a climber, a good one I'll grant you, and a decent writer; but let's agree to keep the god-factor down to a dull roar.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2015 - 04:49pm PT
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Healyje, you flatter me by attributing quotes and information to me that I never authored, calling it poetry or some such bosh. You will be better served to stick closer to the empirical data zand leave of speculation per what I am saying.
For the record:
"At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
Kindly note that I did not say this, nor yet conduct the experiment. Truscott did. What does it mean to you when he says "reality does not exist if YOU are not looking at it?"
You might consider putting down the bong pipe before answering, lest you go off on another of your poetical rants and once more butcher "the English."
JL
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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lest you go off on another of your poetical rants and once more butcher "the English."
Better to butcher "the English" than drown rationality at the altar of the absurd.
And you might want to check with Andrew, who is speaking metaphorically even though you take it literally.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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I need to walk into class in a minute:
Jstan: . . . which does fit the data well, . . .
Tell me what you mean by this. It's a question of degree that leads to a belief, right?
(Tell me what you know without a doubt. It's a simple request, isn't it?)
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Tell me what you know without a doubt. It's a simple request, isn't it?
Yes, it is a simple request.
Here is one response:
"There is only one ordered domain whose positive elements are well-ordered, and it is Z."
Note that this statement should be preceded by, "In this sense,"
If you wish more detail, Google the statement.
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