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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jul 31, 2015 - 01:01pm PT
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I've wondered how experimentalists design and construct the apparatus with which they can work down there where "there is no physical extent," so thanks for allowing a glimpse into that process.
I get the strange sensation at times that we are all characters in a novel JL is writing and that occasionally he has to clarify our perceptions by explaining what we "really mean."
I haven't been able to read Hoffman's article in its entirety as I burn out in of all things the mathematical details, but I am curious how his ideas could be placed in a predictive mode.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jul 31, 2015 - 07:36pm PT
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So I take it nobody here caught the Paul Bloom interview on the Sam Harris Waking Up podcast?
http://www.samharris.org/blog
Gee that's really too bad because it had a lot of interesting back and forth concerning empathy - its downside! - and morality - and also our human aversion amongst many to even talking or hearing about this modern psychology stuff (as opposed to physics stuff) - esp as it contravenes our innate intuitions, customs and traditions.
....
Hey remember this one?
"Newton's Third Law: The only way humans have ever figured out of getting somewhere is to leave something behind." -TARS
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jul 31, 2015 - 08:40pm PT
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"...like the square root of negative one...useful in equations, and is used to solve problems."
well, not exactly, but it is true the existence of complex numbers is an essential part of quantum mechanics.
The mathematics though is wonderful, you start by asking the question: what is the solution to the equation x²+1=0? and end with something a bit deeper. Extending the things you know about "real numbers," and ending up with a symbol, √-1 ≡ i, for the "imaginary unit."
At the very beginning of quantum mechanics there was the need to explain it in terms of "the regular world." But it takes place in a space that is not a part of our usual world, in a complex Hilbert space that is not directly accessible to us. This, of course, causes no end to confusion.
The various "interpretations" of quantum mechanics seek to try to explain it in terms of our "regular world" but for the most part fail to provide any comprehensive explanation. This is a large part of Largo's "nothing there" claim... it is entirely possible that the putative "Hilbert Space" isn't there, but a very good schema for calculating. We know it is a bit more than that, and it is certain that we won't "pull the cloak" off the mechanism to see how it really works, but that's just my opinion.
Getting back to matter, here is an article that will be a bit of a challenge, even though the author states it is written for someone who has "no physics background."
THE STABILITY OF MATTER: FROM ATOMS TO STARS by Elliott Lieb.
his conclusion:
"Quantum mechanics is a bizarre theory, invented to explain atoms. As far as we know today it is capable of explaining everything about ordinary matter (chemistry, biology, superconductivity), sometimes with stunning numerical accuracy. But it also says something about the occurrence of the most spectacular event in the cosmos—the supernova. The range is 57 orders of magnitude!
not bad for "nothing". And not bad for a theory that we are still grappling with in terms of its meaning.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ed: If science is anything, it is about "problem solving" where we take the vernacular (at least by scientist) meaning of "problem" to be something we don't understand.
Without invoking a bevy of postmodern criticisms, I’ll disagree. Science can also be seen as problem formulation. It’s been my experience in traditional research studies that once a situation / problem has been fully understood (or so it’s believed), then the answer falls out of the bottom—for a while at least.
In statistics there are Type I errors and Type II errors, which I’m sure everyone knows here. There are also Type III errors, which is “solving the wrong g*ddamn problem.”
In a (non dual) universe where everything is interdependent, One, and impermanent, there is no problem to be found. Hence, there are no solutions / answers, either. So-called problems and answers are based upon the perceptions that there is a self and objects. Collapse those into a singularity, and there is nothing that could be pinned down within the system.
This is nothing that can be definitively articulated and proved. It’s only something that can be seen / experienced. It’s not a conceptualization.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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I think I’ve too quickly mis-read what Ed meant in the phrase.
Look, let me put it this way. If “problem solving” is reliant upon not knowing what a problem is, then quite simply, don’t you think you’re creating problems out of nothing?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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absolutely, formulating the problem to solve is a part of solving the problem...
and it is also true that one can solve "the wrong problem" but in another sense, solving any problem is an accomplishment, where as failing to solve a problem might be due to many things: the problem is not posed in a way that is solvable, the solver has insufficient foundations to accomplish the solution, the problem is one that is impossible to solve, (and others).
Getting to the point where you understand whether or not a problem can be solved is also making progress if you achieve even that.
For instance the initial forays into computation algorithms almost immediately ran into problems what "couldn't" be solved. While this was understood by a small fraction of the researchers, a large amount of work was generated characterizing the algorithmic solvability of a particular problem. This field has expanded to include the concepts of complexity, see for instance
http://complexityzoo.uwaterloo.ca/Complexity_Zoo
As "complexity" is often invoked to explain why we cannot provide a scientific explanation to things ("the brain is too complex...", "organisms are too complex...", "the universe is to complex...") it is at least interesting to note that complexity can be (and should be) a much more rigorously defined concept.
Interestingly, all this high powered work on complexity came about from a relatively humble beginning, e.g. how would I solve the "traveling salesman" problem on a high powered computer (e.g. the ENIAC)?
We obtain understanding.
Now MikeL has rightly pointed out that our original selection of a problem, and the solution may be related. And understanding that relationship is important. Are the current concepts of complexity sufficiently sophisticated to be able to understand whether or not quantum computers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing
might fall into different classes of complexity theory?
How about the computational processes that occur in living organisms? or perhaps taking the Earth's ecology as a "computational system." What level of understanding might we achieve in addressing such problems?
And maybe they don't seem like they're so interesting. Most people are interested in what the "jet set" is doing... and how to achieve such notoriety... of course using the technical means made possible from just the same "computation problems" mentioned above.
Now this can seem so much a purely academic exercise, but many of the "problems" have important societal consequences. How the brain affects our behavior has a great deal to do with how we view the actions of individuals. The rather high concept of "free will" itself is the foundation for a legal system that attempts to determine the intent of an individual's action.
What is the role of mental health (the brain is an organ, it is susceptible to disease, it is not a stretch to infer that these diseases may affect individual behavior beyond the concept of "free will") in our constitution and execution of our legal system?
These ideas collide with concepts of individual liberties, and in the US the assertion that "all men are created equal." Yet if these metrics of equality have a physical origin, then it is possible that not all are equal... I may never climb 5.14 (probably should say I will "never" climb 5.14).
While we accept our physical limitations, the interesting question is how does, or how should, our other limitations affect our social interactions and our capability to interact in a group of people?
I don't know the answer to this question. But certainly it isn't a simple, academic exercise.
One can create fictions of the way things "should be." And perhaps science is just one other fiction. Certainly the " bevy of postmodern criticisms" would be interesting, and the verb, "invoking" unfortunate... one might try to make the arguments. But once again, these arguments are not based on a confirmatory process at all. And I am aware that one can suspect such a confirmatory process, I do myself, it is hard to make the argument that no process is better. On what does the "postmodern criticism" rest, and further, while a "criticism" does not produce, what is "postmodern science" and how does it address these issues.
As far as I know, there is no postmodern science. But maybe MikeL can correct me.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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For those confused by complex numbers and Hilbert spaces, here is a relatively simple example of the latter: Largo's Hilbert Space
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 1, 2015 - 12:54pm PT
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The various "interpretations" of quantum mechanics seek to try to explain it in terms of our "regular world" but for the most part fail to provide any comprehensive explanation. This is a large part of Largo's "nothing there" claim...
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Not so, Ed. My nothingness comments are not claims but trip reports - and the same data has been reported for centuries throughout the experiential literature and is commonly misconstrued as A) being discursive evaluations that are prone to be "wrong," and B), are attempts to do science without instruments and numerical representation.
What's more these comments are not drawn from QM, which is not my interest or field, but from the empirical (i.e., em·pir·i·cal adjective, based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation) study of mind.
You mentioned Hilbert spaces, and that QM takes place somewhere we don't normally have access to. The same can be said for no-mind meditation, in so far that the rational/evaluating mind cannot go there because our focus has to narrow for discursive processing to take place - no exceptions to this law of mind, and anyone can verify it. For example, try and recite a poem when your focus is fully open and your attention is cranked open to infinity.
But again, I don't want to ever insinuate that any my comments about no-thing or mind or any of it were derived from attempts to quantify things (narrow focus), and the beliefs generated from same. The science angle is simply something interesting I discuss with friends who are both serious scientists and meditators, and who quite naturally look to make contrasts between the two.
But I need to read your earlier post and make a few comments about that. Once I have a little more time.
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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All good points, Ed.
And, no, I was not saying that there is a postmodern science, per se. It might be more proper to say that there are, rather, postmodern criticisms of how traditional science makes exclusive claims.
If one were to look at typical postmodern approaches to investigation, they would tend to read tentatively, admit to an author’s biases, more often than not qualitative (rather than quantitative), inclusionary and respectful of other viewpoints, and probably never suggest a final truth.
(I don’t know . . . maybe that could be considered a kind of science, after all.)
My comment about postmodern criticisms was a way to say that there were other concerns than the one I was bringing up. I did not mean to actually call up the spirit of postmodernism or to start a conversation about it.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I don't get it, Largo, so perhaps you can help educate me...
my first person experience is mine and mine alone... yet you state that your reports of the experience are "...trip reports - and the same data has been reported for centuries throughout the experiential literature." Yet TRs are a description necessarily written with a narrative that makes them accessible to other people. That is, not first person experience...
To the extent that there may be an agreement on such reports, that is objectifying the experience, something you said is not possible.
Yet you just invoked the "experiential literature" to validate your own reports.
What am I missing?... is the experience objective or subjective? If subjective, what am I to make of the "objectivization" of the experience, be it a scientific one or one from "traditional literature?" Why would one be more valid than the other?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Because of the science wars with post modernism, many departments of anthropology have formed two departments. Cultural Anthropology is in the Social Sciences as always and Biological Anthropology has separated and joined the biology department. Now after some years of separation, they are reuniting in some institutions, signifying perhaps that the science wars are over, Personally, I don't think that Cultural Anthropology is a subgroup in the post modern camp as Wikipedia lists it. For me, post modern thought has finally caught up to the ambiguities and relativism that has already confronted Cultural Anthropologists for more than 150 years.
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WBraun
climber
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You people are like children arguing that sitting in a chair and eating on a table with knives and forks is advancement over sitting on the floor eating with fingers.
Without knowledge of the soul itself you remain ultimately completely blind of life whether it's religion, science or just plain eating ......
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Interesting article in the Sunday Review NYT today (8/2) on page ten. Couldn't help thinking of this thread while reading.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Crankster: Beware anyone who claims knowledge of the soul.
Why?
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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We're all just guessing, Mike.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Sitting this morning brought up the idea that Ed and I were talking about: science and research as problem formulation and / or problem solving. Memories of conversations with my advisors came up about finding or developing great databases, the idea being that if one stumbled or created a unique database, one could mine it for a decade or more and develop a bevy of publications to fuel one’s career.
At the time, when I first heard these ideas, I thought that they suggested an improper process for studies. “Problems —> research study design —> data collection —> testing —> reports / papers” was how I thought the process was supposed to be (positivism). The more I looked around, however, the more I began to distrust the institution. This is not to say that the people involved or were bad or wrong.
It simply opened my eyes to other viewpoints and diminished the confidence that I had in the process. Along the way, it encouraged me to look closely at my own abilities to see things clearly and unbiasedly. I don’t think it is possible to see any thing without bias. That’s the very issue with “things.”
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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The more I looked around, however, the more I began to distrust the institution. This is not to say that the people involved or were bad or wrong. (MikeL)
I suspect most people who do any research beyond a PhD thesis are to a degree disillusioned with the process at some point, but many if not most labor on, inspired by the discovery and creativity involved. It's like finding that your climbing idol cheated by placing a bolt where none had existed. You continue climbing because it's exciting and challenging and you love the exploration.
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