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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 19, 2018 - 08:16am PT
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Interesting takes on that article. It would be interesting to hear, specifically and in detail, how people take issue with what was said. And what do folks believe about the observer and measuring.
Note the desperate clinging to a stand-alone world "out there" that supposedly exists just or nearly as we see and experience and measure it.
But what, specifically, are people taking issue with? Consider the following statement from Hoffman:
"On the other side are quantum physicists, marveling at the strange fact that quantum systems don’t seem to be definite objects localized in space until we come along to observe them — whether we are conscious humans or inanimate measuring devices. Experiment after experiment has shown — defying common sense — that if we assume that the particles that make up ordinary objects have an objective, observer-independent existence, we get the wrong answers. The central lesson of quantum physics is clear: There are no public objects sitting out there in some preexisting space. As the physicist John Wheeler put it, “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”
It's not like Wheeler was some fringe scientist, proposing wonky takes on QM.
"Wheeler won numerous prizes and awards, including the Enrico Fermi Award in 1968, the Franklin Medal in 1969, the Einstein Prize in 1969, the National Medal of Science in 1971, the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal in 1982, the Oersted Medal in 1983, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1984 and the Wolf Foundation Prize in 1997.[69] He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Academy, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and the Century Association."
Seems pretty main stream to me. Again, where, specifically, do people take issue with Wheeler in this regards? Do you believe he "didn't understand or misrepresented the data," and if so, how?
More here on the on-going debate:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/05/quantum-word-real-world-thing/
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:25am PT
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JL:
Note the desperate clinging to a stand-alone world "out there" that supposedly exists just or nearly as we see and experience and measure it.
MikeL:
one can try to become fully aware of whatever the hell it is. I mean, it’s all you really got.
It would be inconsiderate to try to settle these issues for a solipsist. However, if I noticed a mountain lion close behind one of these guys, I would feel it necessary to give them a shout.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 19, 2018 - 09:35am PT
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healyje: . . . Hoffman overthinks and oversells the proposition when he extrapolates into the macro world . . . .
I think we’ve seen and heard this complaint for a long time here: what applies to the macro world does not apply to the micro / quantum world, and vice versa. I’m wondering why or how that is, other than “because that’s not what we’ve found.” (Just because you’ve not found something doesn’t mean it or something or another doesn’t exist.)
In my view, I see the same problem as it is found *between* different disciplines (ala, the “incommensurability problem”). The terms, variables, constructs, metrics, and theories from one field (let’s say anthropology) are not the same as are found in other disciplines. Perhaps physicists or mathematicians will claim that at reality’s foundations are quantum phenomena and mathematical expressions. Unfortunately, we don’t find that when we reads the journals from all fields, nor do we talk those ways about what appears to be our experiences.
What law, principle, axiom, or even theory is being appealed to when people say that the micro or quantum world descriptions cannot be applied to the macro world?
(Ed may have an answer for me.)
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 19, 2018 - 10:21am PT
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What law, principle, axiom, or even theory is being appealed to when people say that the micro or quantum world descriptions cannot be applied to the macro world?
What's more, if "reality" is the whole damn shooting match, what is the view of all worlds coexisting in reality?
Also, consider Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ ( listen); from Latin solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self') is the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist.
I don't hear anyone tooting that horn here, though there are some who believe in the opposite, in some form of "what really exists is (fill in the blank). You only think you are conscious."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 19, 2018 - 12:21pm PT
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You guys deny, time and again, that you are NOT looking for truth, but this direction takes us down that path again.
I interpret your question as effectively asking: "what is the 'true' reality?"
and then get diverted into these endless debates about quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, and all that.
My view is operational, (or instrumental, or instrumentalist, whatever) that is, what science DOES is make predictions about physical systems.
It's really just that simple, nothing more, nothing less.
To make those predictions you have to have both a language to express the prediction, including the a description of the steps that lead to the prediction, and a quantitative answer (with estimates on the precision of that answer) so that the prediction can be compared with a measurement, also quantitative and including estimates as to the precision and accuracy of the measurements.
These two things go together, basically there is a "rational" part which takes the current theory and applies it to various phenomenon, and an "empirical" part which not only tests the predictions of the theory but also observers new phenomenon.
Quantum mechanics is calculated in a space which has NO physical existence, the complex linear space (Hilbert space) in which we calculate the amplitude of the wave functions as they are operated on by the various physical transformations that describe them.
We take those amplitudes and turn them into probabilities, which are real numbers and correspond to experimental observables.
This is a fundamentally different picture to that of classical mechanics, where the linear space describing the phenomenon can be made to correspond to "physical" things. Though this approach is not unique, and the picture is one of many.
How we view these things as "reality" is quite another matter, however. From a science point of view, if we can make predictions we have understanding, we can manipulate the physical systems and perhaps generate new technologies from that understanding.
Physicists are quite able to deal with paradoxical "pictures of reality," a long standing one being the self-energy of the electron. As far as our measurements are concerned, the electron is a particle with no extent, a "point particle." But it also has an electric field associated with its electric charge. The problem is that the field energy must become infinite as we move towards that point. This contradicts the measurement of the electron mass, which is finite.
Feynman was unhappy with the solution to this problem, which devised a calculational work around to defeat the infinity. But he felt that there was something more fundamental going on that our current, highly successful theory, side stepped.
This "paradox" has been around a very long time, and is yet to be resolved. Many people have ideas on how to resolve it, but measurements so far resist.
Is the electron real? they're bouncing in front of your eyes right now, exactly as we would predict them to do.
Are they quantum mechanical?
are they classical?
are they something else?
are they?
why would it matter to you?
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 19, 2018 - 01:07pm PT
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which devised a calculational work around to defeat the infinity.
It's never been done (defeat infinity), nor will it ever be done!
The living entity is always part parcel and subordinate to infinity.
The living entities have all the qualities of infinity but never the full quantity.
The gross materialists are always ultimately in poor fund of knowledge due to their independent attempts at truth itself ......
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 19, 2018 - 02:41pm PT
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6. "I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation."
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 19, 2018 - 02:58pm PT
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You guys deny, time and again, that you are NOT looking for truth
I agree with Ed.
MikeL tells us that nothing is fully finally accurate.
Largo tells us that no one can have exactly the same experience as another person.
They set conditions for truth that rule out ever finding any.
Those conditions are no barrier to anyone curious about physical reality or the human mind.
MikeL and Largo should relax their conditions and look for truth that may be provisional and temporary.
Or they should study math.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Mar 19, 2018 - 03:45pm PT
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Bottom line is all observers could be wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow and El Cap would still be there in as an objective, physical reality that very much matches the internal maps of those who have climbed it.
Couldn't have said it better meself, healyje. There are two primary crossroads that you can take it your worldview with respect to mind; Rationalism vs. Empiricism, and then mind as result of evolution vs. everything else (on the Empiricist's side). In my reading, I have found John Dewey as the best philosopher to advocate for empiricism. Richard Dawkins is my go-to guy for evolution.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Mar 19, 2018 - 07:42pm PT
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Note the desperate clinging to a stand-alone world "out there"
A bit over-dramatic, don't you think?
What law, principle, axiom, or even theory is being appealed to when people say that the micro or quantum world descriptions cannot be applied to the macro world?
Au contraire, what is your justification for generalizing in the macro world, with its relative ease of measurement, mysterious properties that may exist in the quantum world, with its veiled and indeterminate nature?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 19, 2018 - 07:42pm PT
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Ed, I understand that you are only interested in the mechanics of physical systems, but you shouldn't fault other physicists who are made curious by broader questions -- not so much for the "truth," which will be defined differently by different people.
More then arriving at some "truth," most of us are satisfied to get some idea per what things, phenomenon, and concepts mean. And I don't mention "mean" as an abstraction or philosophical idea, rater starting at the level of observation - of both 3rd and 1st person vantages - and with the most basic, fundamental levels one can work at.
For the 1st person that refers to phenomenon such as awareness, attention, focus, content. What do these words actually mean, as in, what do they refer to, really? How might we know? What exactly does "we" mean in this regard?
And when trusted and proven people make evaluations or blanket, categorical statements about the foci of their study, we are right to want to know what that evaluation means, so far as we can. And again, not in any remote, esoteric way, but in the most basic way possible.
For example, take this statement by John Wheeler: “Useful as it is under ordinary circumstances to say that the world exists ‘out there’ independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld.”
What do you think Wheeler means by this, and more importantly, what was his thinking and evidence that led him to say as much? And if you disagree, what is the evidence that leads you to believe otherwise? The methods by which you arrive at your conclusions is your own business and is a different affair.
My interest in Wheeler is not to pillage QM for "proof" of some New Age balogna, rather because my experience with the subjective adventures squares - somewhat - with what Wheeler is driving at. Not HOW he got there, but in the conclusion itself.
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Flip Flop
climber
Earth Planet, Universe
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Mar 19, 2018 - 07:47pm PT
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Do
Be
Do
Be
Do
You didn't write it
It's written on you
(It exists outside your mind in the sense that we outlived Zeus, Nefertiti, Michael Jackson and Prince. Whatever life you get beyond your mind, it won't be you. Which is nice)
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feralfae
Boulder climber
Almost solving the metaphysical mystery
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Mar 19, 2018 - 07:51pm PT
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Largo, excuse me for butting for a moment.
I want to think about what you have postulated here, based on recent developments in some fields of thought, study and research.
And while I don't have the time to address this area of thinking at present, I did want to sort of reserve this space to come back to later, but wanted to say I think you—and Wheeler—offer a more realistic perception than a strictly narrow mechanistic one which is, even today, based on our exceedingly limited ability to measure all aspects of existence.
It is not that long ago that humans as a species began to utilize measurement more than shared observation to explain much of causality. We are a young species.
I'll stop there.
Thank you.
feralfae
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:13pm PT
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you can interpret Wheeler any way you want, you pluck a line out of a very long lifetime of work and make it support your own ideas.
I know a lot of what Wheeler did in his life as a physicist, through his work, that's what is left. What he was wondering about could have been anything we want to make of it, he's not around to explain himself anymore.
Let me say also that our understanding of quantum mechanics has changed greatly since 1914, which you might mark down as the the beginning, it was the year Millikan reported on his experiment to measure the photoelectric effect and the Planck's constant.
What did Millikan make of quantum mechanics?
"It was in 1905 that Einstein made the first coupling of photo effects and with any form of quantum theory by bringing forward the bold, not to say the reckless, hypothesis of an electromagnetic light corpuscle of energy hν, which energy was transferred upon absorption to an electron. This hypothesis may well be called reckless first because an electromagnetic disturbance which remains localized in space seems a violation of the very conception of an electromagnetic disturbance, and second because it flies in the face of the thoroughly established facts of interference."
he wrote in 1916, A DIRECT PHOTOELECTRIC DETERMINATION OF PLANCK'S "h."
In the end, that would be the 1950s, Millikan was convinced that the theory was correct, because of it's ability to predict the outcome of experiment.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work in 1923.
What Millikan wondered about as he mused over the implications of quantum theory, which his amazingly strong statement that "it flies in the face of the thoroughly established facts of interference," might be odd for someone who is not a scientist to understand.
Perhaps the JM Keynes quote is pertinent: “When the facts change, I change my opinions. Pray, sir, what do you do?”
I am curious about the same things that you infer Wheeler was, I am curious about the mind, I don't see a role for deus ex machina in an explanation, I'm not writing a script for Hollywood that has to have the story wrapped up in 1:45.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:26pm PT
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Funny thing; whether Keynes actually said that is disputed.
I can assure you it wasn't Albert Hofmann. It might have been Abbie.
Harold Garfinkel?
Semantic clarity and distinctness: "Reference is often made to a person's attempt to treat the semantic clarity of a construction as a variable with a maximum value which must be approximated as a required step in solving the problem of constructing a credible definition of a situation
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:30pm PT
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funny thing is I can't find a citation for the Wheeler quote, either... got one?
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:34pm PT
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Well just because it is disputed, doesn't mean it's not true, eh
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 19, 2018 - 08:36pm PT
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perhaps, but if I'm going to be asked to explain what Wheeler meant, I might want to find the context in which he expressed his thought.
If he didn't actually say it, then, game-set-match.
Whether or not the Keynes quote is from Keynes, it is a bit more difficult to dispute the sentiment.
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