Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
jstan
climber
|
|
Can you say why it happens that way?
Ed's first link avers that "instrumentalists" are not interested in why. They are after only the practical abilities afforded by knowledge. I came along when Bohr's "Shut up and calculate" was pretty much all there was. While we students would talk about deeper understandings I felt it most productive if we focussed first on getting useful knowledge. Later on this knowledge would possibly illuminate more deeply. It has been fifty years since I thought this. I may actually have been right.
If you later meant to imply that the search for practical knowledge is irrevocably just self interest, you go very wrong. That's a very wide brush you use. The computer you are using came directly out of such work. The good things you produce with a computer were in large part due to the work of those who made computers possible.
You also seem to think how we get to something is as important as the result. It isn't. Einstein followed a very singular approach while the first glimmerings of QM came in an attempt to understand blackbody radiation. By all means look up that youtube with Abdus Salam.
Once we have something that seems to work the next task is to find where it does not work.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
He sure did and though Mr. Bloom has taken sharp criticism for some of his views in that work the first chapter should be read seriously by all as an indictment of relativism in education and society in general.
He took sharp criticism because he dared to question the prevailing orthodoxy and its abandonment of open-minded discourse -- an orthodoxy in favor of progressivist group-think and politically-correct indoctrination in vogue on American campi since the 1960s. ( And still in firm control of academia in general nearly thirty years after his book)
Bloom firmly believed democracy was being ill-served and actually ultimately threatened by the absence of countervailing ideas about rationality, history, politics, and social thought .Instead of a balance of ideas being neutrally presented, giving rise to the necessary resultant atmosphere of dialogue and debate ,Bloom correctly saw American higher education as being increasingly dominated by a new intolerance and a collective desire by those in control of these institutions to rigidly and deliberately promote preferential groups of ideas and politically determined social values and ideologies over all others. And as I noted earlier this is a negative process still on-going in 2015.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
"...explanation of Dirac... I have some questions. It seems to me that you are backing into the relationships empirically. You may stipulate the relationships (even with probabilities) but only after the fact. Can you say why it happens that way? Shall we end up at some absolute variable or coefficient that “just is?” Do you think there is a reason for any of it? "
The "flow" of physics thought is not something that happens in a particular way, as if built on some superstructure agreed upon by physicists. It happens as a history, a connection of events in time where those events are fundamental contributions of analysis, and of observation.
Dirac, famously, invented much of the mathematical foundations for quantum mechanics, but not even as a mathematician. Von Neumann and Pauli thought to "clean" these mathematical foundations up after the fact. The ideas, based on Dirac's analysis, were already in play.
jstan mentioned in passing a very important matter which would not have been noticed by people reading this thread: Dirac's magnetic monopole.
The first paper is a marvel, it takes us into Dirac's way of thinking... it is not a paper on magnetic monopoles but on charge quantization. A magnetic monopole would be a particle which has the "magnetic charge" of either the "North" or "South" pole of a magnet... all magnets we observe have both, they are dipoles. No magnetic monopole had ever been seen, and Maxwell famously points out in his "Treatise" on electrodynamics (in the mid 1800's) that it appeared that his theory was broader than nature... as it can describe the dynamics of a particle that doesn't exist in nature.
Dirac was thinking, in the 1930's about explaining the quantization of charge, that is, the fact that the charge of the electron is the smallest observed charge, all other charges being multiples of it...
...the 1931 paper works backwards from that observation to result in the somewhat stunning prediction that the existence of a magnetic monopole would establish charge quantization.
There were flaws in the detailed reasoning in that paper that Dirac corrected in a 1948 paper, which is a tour de force theoretical work that proves an important theorem in algebraic topology, which wouldn't be notable except for the fact that the foundations for algebraic topology were just being laid and the field didn't "exist" at this level until the 1960's.
Dirac's analysis of physical systems, we refer to it as "physical intuition," took the specifics of observation and provided a quantitative explanation whose scope was much more general than the phenomena being observed. We gained insight from those explanations and were able to motivate experiments to test them... and test the theory.
Dirac's anti-particle ideas coming from the relativistic generalization of quantum mechanics is deeply profound, there was nothing like it imagined or seen before his theory.
How does this all happen?
Physicists generally don't really have an explanation. But you can see examples in all these papers, and when looking back, construct a historic narrative. I don't think Dirac even understood it... he never claimed so the times I saw him talk.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
Wonderful
|
|
jstan
climber
|
|
The delayed choice work was ongoing when Lester still lived. If I had been aware of it I
might have asked him what he thought. The chances we miss out of ignorance.......
On the other hand ignorance can also facilitate opportunity. Even macroscopic bodies such
as people can be dodgy. I present ST as evidence. I can't comprehensively absorb 100
years of delayed choice experimentation overnight. So I am free to ask stupid questions. If
Heisenberg's second uncertainty principle makes time determination imprecise, we cannot
say time does not take advantage of this freedom. The interferometer implementations of
delayed choice insert fiberoptic to lengthen the time interval in which the experiment can be
done. But besides time's freedom to be dodgy we also know the speed of light is lowered
by index of refraction. And who is so bold to claim a fiberoptic's index is perfectly smooth?
Pardon my ignorance here. Many of these experiments blandly claim a single photon. What
happens if photons are created and always travel as pairs? But they are dodgy in time and
do not necessarily stay side by side? Do we make classical assumptions without even
realizing this is what we do?
I still have not parsed the popular report on the ANU paper. I need to go to the paper itself,
actually. But it seems their work hoped to resolve the single photon assumption by doing
the experiment with a more massive missile: a single atom. But does it do this
transparently? If you make a measurement of even an atom, you interfere. Can you kick an
atom like a soccer ball using one of Elling's atomic force microscopes? Maybe slide it
across the line on an accelerating field plate?
Are our assumptions confounding us here? Not to mention our suffocating homo sapiens'
narcissism.
Finally I have to apologize for violating my three sentence rule. I don't measure up to Joe Brown's integrity.
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 8, 2015 - 10:51am PT
|
For the purpose of this thread, it would be most fascinating to see people bust a Diric move (not being obsessed with "understanding" everything) and start contrasting all of this wonderful info to the subject of "mind." While some may consider this a "waste of time," Penrose certainly did not, nor yet others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXTX0IUaOg
That much said, "physicist Victor Stenger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and dragons."
Wonder what Strenger meant by "scientific basis," and if Diric had hard numbers to support all of his thoughts.
JL
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
Ed: Physicists generally don't really have an explanation. But you can see examples in all these papers, and when looking back, construct a historic narrative. I don't think Dirac even understood it...
Wonderful.
Ward:
Excellent review!
Jstan: If you later meant to imply that the search for practical knowledge is irrevocably just self interest, you go very wrong. That's a very wide brush you use. The computer you are using came directly out of such work. The good things you produce with a computer were in large part due to the work of those who made computers possible. You also seem to think how we get to something is as important as the result. It isn't.
That’s Your View. There are others. Many others.
Not everyone sees things as you do. You’ve been socialized and institutionalized by innumerable causes and conditions and experiences that fall outside of your seeming personal control. I question whether any man or woman can truly claim objectivity via their own perceptions, even if they include journal articles or what others have said.
As I tried to write above, different values lead to different worldviews, to different opinions or interpretations, and make different assumptions.
For some of us, “good” or “practicality” are misunderstandings—or at least worth considerable debate. Granted not everyone on the face of the planet understands QM physics or higher mathematics, but what leads to a life worth living and a resonant place in the world may not depend or be influenced considerably by either of them. I question whether we need more computers or Youtube to understand What This Is. (I do understand that these things that I point to may not be the most important things to you.)
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 8, 2015 - 12:37pm PT
|
I can understand John putting currency only in a result - the climbing version of not caring about the process, only the summit. Here, the result in the end game. Fair enough. Tastes differ.
But the comment: "The good things you produce with a computer were in large part due to the work of those who made computers possible."
I must be missing John's point on this one. A lot of very skilled and creative people use a computer as a tool and their output, from art to literature to music to (fill in the blank) is not particularly beholden to computer engineering. This is attributing far too much to technology, in my opinion.
Meanwhile at CERN: http://www.dw.de/collisions-again-at-cerns-large-hadron-collider/a-18309912
JL
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Thanks ever again Ed,
we refer to it as "physical intuition
I guess the intuition comes from what's catalogued within our memory banks? And like what Einstein said,"what i propose are just steping stones for thenext generation". The bending of Space recently became apparent to me after I saw the latest pics of mars with the Suns rays bending around the planet. I know that's not the bending of space, but it prolly looks the same?
What I can't find in your link, and what I wonder,
When the rays of light are "bending"(maybe bending doesn't work in regards to AE's discrete wave packets?) in their travels around a planet. Are they speeding up? And would that mean their going faster then the speed of light? We do know in the case air flowing around a wing, the air on top speeds up and causes lift. What I'm really trying to get at. In the case of light bending around an object, and you could take anything, a tree for instance. When that light is bending around and possibly speeding up. What would be the adverse reaction? It certainly wouldn't be causing lift. But in the case of light going around Mars, IF some light is going faster then the speed of light based on time, "Some where in there is there Light going backwards in time as to maybe keep some sorta equalibrehm?"
Or do Photons only ever go in one direction?
I'm prolly imagining them to be like AC current. Where they travel back and forth when there's a reversal in their dipole?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
I am curious about summation of divergent series in physics. Going back a couple of centuries mathematicians have explored how to "sum up" series that were more or less defined as "divergent" - for example, how to "sum" the infinite series S=1-1+1-1+1-1+..., which diverges according to the generally accepted (and natural) definition where one looks at the partial sums and sees if they approach a limiting value as one adds more and more terms. For the series S the partial sums oscillate between 0 and 1; but one early summation procedure gives the "value" of the series as 1/2.
This relates somewhat to "mind" since for a number of years mathematicians tried to understand the meaning of these seemingly artificial processes, before concluding that the way forward was to simply ask "how should we define these summations?" And there are a number of such processes these days.
My question is How do physicists decide which process to use since different processes yield different values. I assume the answer is obvious: use the process that provides an answer consistent with experimentation.
Weird. These summation procedures are quite unnatural, i.e., go against common sense interpretations of infinite addition.
|
|
MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
|
|
not everyone on the face of the planet understands QM physics or higher mathematics, but what leads to a life worth living and a resonant place in the world may not depend or be influenced considerably by either of them
Look beyond appearances, MikeL. Look past your playbook. We got here from God as mathematician versus Laplace's God is not a necessary hypothesis. You chose to see that as a choice between two possibilities:
The wont to see any issue or question as a choice between only two things is something that you might want to reconsider. Why must there be only two options or choices or interpretations likely?
QM physics and higher mathematics are ways to expand your view, not restrict it. The choice is yours and it may make no difference to your own life but you are too quick to convict others of black-or-white thinking.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
That much said, "physicist Victor Stenger characterized quantum consciousness as a "myth" having "no scientific basis" that "should take its place along with gods, unicorns and dragons."
Wonder what Strenger meant by "scientific basis," and if Diric had hard numbers to support all of his thoughts.
Dirac had hard numbers, they were the observations of phenomena he wished to understand. Many of his conjectures are interesting, but await more work, (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_large_numbers_hypothesis);. His goal was understanding the physics that lead to the observations.
If you are talking about a quantum mechanical model for mind that is physically meaningful (as I believe Penrose and others have described) you have to associate mind phenomena with quantum states, describe the state-space, whether it is a linear state space, associate the states, explain the dynamical operators of the space, etc, etc.
If the model is an analogy to quantum mechanics, then there need be no actual correspondence between the "mind quantum mechanics" and actual quantum mechanics, but you still have to define all that other stuff... and then you have to describe how we become inhabited by that stuff.
The mind as an actual quantum mechanical state seems to be very unlikely. The reason is that such a system works on a coherent combination of quantum states... like the photon being described as going around the star one way or the other, which is two states...
what happens if, as the photon propagates along one of those paths it encounters a dust particle and scatters?
the coherence of the state described as the two possible path ways is lost.
Now take our quantum mind to be operating on states of many (perhaps infinite) number of such "paths" if the state "scatters" off of something that is external to it then we loose the coherence of the state and the quantum mechanical description erodes away.
The problem with the quantum mind is that it has to communicate with the "real world" and all the noise (thermal motion) and such, estimating the lifetime of the coherent states, such lifetimes are short at room temperature, which is where you're body is, roughly... 280 K.
This is a major problem in the development of quantum computers, which have to be isolated and connected...
...there are not an arbitrary number of ways to do that... so you'd think the physical signature would be apparent in the mind. I don't think it is...
However, we have little understanding of quantum systems at finite temperature. That is a specific statement meaning that the states of our system are not just the "ground state" of the systems we are interested in, but also the states excited by the thermal bath, finite in that the thermal energy is of the same order as the energy levels of that state.
For most molecules we can consider the temperature to be zero, that was Schrodinger's insight regarding DNA (which he didn't know about, but the stability of which he knew had to exist).
For some molecular, or material states the energy levels are so small that the thermal energies do influence the system. This might even happen for chlorophyll as it transforms light into chemical energy. It's hard to see how such a "delicate" system has such a robust instantiation to exhibit the attributes of "mind."
Continuing down that rabbit hole, one might consider a matrix of such systems (in analogy to the Light Harvesting Complex that has evolved in "higher plants") that has an essentially 100% light collection efficiency.
But know we're being mechanical again... and quantum mechanics is only playing a small part.
playing the "what if" game is something physicists do, laying a trail of assumptions to get to the next step and the next step... assumptions are just that, and when we find our path cliffs out (an experimentalist produces a result that disagrees with our chain of assumptions) we walk back examining which of the assumptions led us to the cliff.
it's problem solving.
sometimes the path get's us to a wonderful place.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
How could one claim that anything exists without some observation being made?
This is essentially tied to Lago not understanding the notion of metaphor in the interpretation of the ANU experiment.
Pretty simple, we observe the Sun, we do not observe the chemical / physical transactions at it's core - do you believe the Sun is hollow because you can't observe what's going on in its interior? Ditto the Earth. When a particle decays at the boundary of the inner and outer cores of our planet you do not observe it; does that imply to you the Earth doesn't have an interior?
The idea the universe requires conscious observers to exist might make for entertaining philosophy and inspiring evenings of anthropic musings, but I seriously doubt the the ANU crew share Lago's opinions on the subject and perhaps Lago himself should ask his ride-shares where they lean on all things anthropic to know where they're coming from.
|
|
zBrown
Ice climber
|
|
I admit to enjoying reading this thread, so if y'all ever get it nailed down, when is "nevemind" going to be tackled.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
what happens if, as the photon propagates along one of those paths it encounters a dust particle and scatters?
the coherence of the state described as the two possible path ways is lost.
Now take our quantum mind to be operating on states of many (perhaps infinite) number of such "paths" if the state "scatters" off of something that is external to it then we loose the coherence of the state and the quantum mechanical description erodes away.
So when a photon "scatters", we see something, like ElCap. So scattering of the photon would be, instead of choosing to go on the left side or the right side of "The Big Stone", it takes the direct path right smack into it?
Does the photon's "coherence of the state described as the two possible path ways" coincide with Stannard's remark about "photons traveling in pairs"? I can imagine "a pair", one each of a Negative, and a Positive monopole separating/stretching out around both paths of travel. Maybe being tethered by a tiny fiber optic type deal. Ineffect, being in both places at the same time? Seems like they/it could stretch "forever" IF it didn't hit something?
Getting back to "scatter". At noon we can see ElCap because the Sun's rays are beaming on it. The by-product of the photon which crashes into it, we call "Light", correct? A photon when it collides with dust/metal emmits light, and also causes a vibration. Or I should say, a vibration "change". Which then gets dissipated by heat.
In the initial scatter, the photon breaks apart. One part stays in the rock, and makes it glow. The other part ricochet's off. Could this be considered the "splitting" of the "photon pair"?
We should be able to say that for a select few photons, ElCap is their truth.
Ed-it; )
(in analogy to the Light Harvesting Complex that has evolved in "higher plants") that has an essentially 100% light collection efficiency
What would elcaps collection effiency be? Does a "100% light collection effiecncy" means there's NO scattering?
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
MH2:
My playbook tends to be “no playbook.” I sense an infinite set of possibilities in everything. I tend to see everything as just one thing. Ultimately, there is no “two.”
The thread is “what is mind?” I’ve said I cannot find mind.
On this and other threads, I DO see a great deal of “either-or thinking” when it comes to (i) what is scientifically / materially / mathematically explained and (ii) everything-else-which-is-not (gets relegated to “woo”)—be it artistic approaches (e.g., metaphors), religious approaches (dogma), anthropological approaches (cultures are realities), psychological approaches (subjectivity), things that are readily measurable vs. those that are not, etc.
I’m saying, “One cannot really say” in regards to everything being said. I look like a solipsist and a nihilist. The act of saying, “A thing is This” implies “A thing is Not That.”
Choice, causality, things / objects are the results of retrospective sensemaking. They are social constructions. To me, every thing looks empty, wide-open, spontaneous, and unified (One).
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 9, 2015 - 10:29am PT
|
Healje, "metaphor" is a type of analogy and is "closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech which achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance - including allegory, hyperbole, and simile."
Ergo your use of metaphor to explain QM - that what is being said is "like" something else, is of the mark by a few light years. If your understanding is that the experiments Down Under did not serve up literal truths, then the task is yours to explain what is literally meant by what was said.
Perhaps what you are driving at with your use of "metaphor" is some version of deductive reasoning (top-down logic), or perhaps inductive reasoning (bottom-up logic).
But again, a simple question was put to you: "What do you think they meant by the words: "Reality does not exist if you are not looking at it."
You are presuming incorectly that I subscribe to that idea. I was simply asking for your take on what you believe they mean.
And per the link Fruity provided, this clearly underscores the fact that what most people are calling "AI" pertains entirely to new and ingenious ways to process data and to develop stimulus responses (tasking) relative to said data. This process is the "intelligence" in AI, and quite clearly has nothing to do with "mind," self-consciousness, awareness, or sentience. I believe that the most enduring myth in all of this is that sentience is some kind of mechanical blowback or emergent function that like a Jack-In-The-Box, springs from "intelligent" data management and learned stimulus responses.
The video states that "human-level" AGI is decades away, but surely they are referring to human-level objective functioning, per memory and learning and creative responses (which can all be carried out by a machine) and NOT to consciousness. Even an hour of quiet self-observation makes it clear that the two are not selfsame.
The subject, in general, falls under "artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness ... "a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The aim of the theory of artificial consciousness is to "define that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artifact."
This is an entirely different angle than that sought and persued by those hunting down AI. The one constant in all consciousness entities is that each is biologically "alive."
JL
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
That machine beat Space Invaders with nothing more than "if-then's"
Now ask the machine Why it's playing. Or if the game was good or bad.
HeHe, Jus Be'in Me ; )
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!