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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 23, 2018 - 10:24am PT
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healyje: In other words, for the average schmo outside a physics lab, it's a pretty simple proposition in that QM is entirely academic, irrelevant, and unimportant to their daily life.
Ed: I don't quite think I said that. I think what I said was that the separation between classical and quantum mechanics exists, and that they accurately predict the outcome of experiment and our observations accurately and precisely. Yeah, I know, I said that and wasn't reinterpreting what you were saying.
I do understand QM plays a fundamental role in every aspect of the universe and our world, but it just doesn't have any conscious bearing on the average person's life nor need it. I'm certainly glad we have folks like you who are delving into that world for the rest of us.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Mar 23, 2018 - 10:44am PT
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think this is my point. It's your understanding, not your direct experience of quantum mechanics. I'd venture to say that not one of us have a direct physical experience of quantum mechanics.
That last sentence represents a complete disconnection from biophysical knowledge of the universe we live in and the way biological entities function within it.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 23, 2018 - 12:46pm PT
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First, I appreciate Ed weighing in on this. Fact is, I don’t consider this particular discussion a philosophical inquiry involving metaphysics and speculations, rather an effort to bring logical coherence to different positions and statements, while trying to stay on task.
Ed said: Wheeler had no idea what he was asking about, that's why he was asking and not telling...
I'm unclear why you think Wheeler "had no idea" because you have given no clues or evidence or even your own sense of why the man was so entirely in the dark about his own statements. What's more, “asking” refers to “saying something in order to obtain an answer or some information.” There is no “asking” in his two quotes in question:
“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 from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe."
These clearly are not efforts by Wheller to “obtain information or an answer.” These are straight up statements expressing his take, based on his work in QM. If you would have said, “Wheeler is flat out wrong in his statements, and I believe so based on (fill in the blank),” that would be logically coherent.
But clearly, Wheeler was not asking, but stating a position. If you disagree with these statements and believe there IS an objective world that exists ‘out there’ independent of us, and that the physical world DOES NOT have at bottom an immaterial source and explanation, I’d love to hear the QM data that leads you to believe as much.
Ed goes on: “In one sense Wheeler is saying that what we know about the universe is human knowledge, and humans are a physical phenomenon, including awareness (read the extended quote from that chapter).
In what sense is that, Ed? What Wheeler SAID was that the physical world has at bottom “an immaterial source and explanation.” That is, the “source” (a place, person, or thing from which something comes) is “at bottom” (can be reduced no further to deeper fundamentals or causes) immaterial and consists of information.
Is this information undifferentiated, or potential? You tell me. But he is certainly not saying that the “physical world” has a physical source.
The anthropic principle is another story, and a good one.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 23, 2018 - 12:53pm PT
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...participatory universe...
Except that the early universe existed before there was any life in it to participate.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 23, 2018 - 12:56pm PT
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did you read the last quote regarding pregeometry and the calculus of propositions?
Wheeler says "it's not an idea, but an idea for an idea"
you tell me if you think Wheeler knew what he was talking about when he states that...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 23, 2018 - 01:06pm PT
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P.S. Largo has earned the 20k posting...
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 23, 2018 - 01:55pm PT
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It [the entire material manifestation] is also an imperfect reflection of the absolute
I do NOT have it backward MH2.
If it is backward them you would never have your material body taken away (so-called death) .......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 23, 2018 - 07:20pm PT
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Whoa.
Nice demonstration of the effect of an observer on reality.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mar 23, 2018 - 07:54pm PT
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Ed: Do you mean to say that if I wear glasses that I am no longer capable of having a "direct apprehension" of vision?
If you have your eyes open in pitch dark, you are still seeing. Seeing is seeing. The question at hand is always an issue of what’s being seen. What anyone sees is perhaps more accurately referred to as pixels or images. What those images portray to a person is reliant upon their mind.
I question that you perceived rubidium and magnetic fields. I think it’s more the case that the images that you witnessed indicated to you rubidium and magnetic fields. A completely uneducated individual could witness the very same image as you but would not hold the awareness that those images signaled rubidium and magnetic fields.
Meanings—to include object permanence—are reliant upon training, socialization, institutionalization, education, and so on. It is that very training (in so many things) that allows Ed to infer the names of the conceptual entities referred to as rubidium and magnetic fields. Even when a person looks into a mirror, what he or she thinks they see is constructed.
To say *exactly* or indisputably what anyone perceives is impossible, even for the simplest of things. A short course in art history could make that abundantly clear.
Folks tend to believe what their sensations directly portray to them over intellectual interpretations and stories. I grant you that conceptualizations can be very compelling. But, it’s probably impossible to say what anyone sees, hears, tastes, etc. accurately, finally, or completely. At best, it seems, we express ourselves.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Mar 23, 2018 - 08:17pm PT
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A night from my childhood remains crisply etched in my memory. I was standing by a pond before a village somewhere in Luoshan County, Henan Province, where generations of my ancestors had lived. Next to me stood many other people, both adults and children. Together, we gazed up at the clear night sky, where a tiny star slowly glided across the dark firmament.
It was the first satellite China had ever launched: Dongfanghong I (“The East is Red I”). The date was April 25, 1970, and I was seven.
As I gazed at that tiny, gliding star, my heart was filled with indescribable curiosity and yearning. And etched in my memory just as deeply as these feelings was the sensation of hunger. At that time, the region around my village was extremely poor.
I’ve always felt that the greatest and most beautiful stories in the history of humanity were not sung by wandering bards or written by playwrights and novelists, but told by science. The stories of science are far more magnificent, grand, involved, profound, thrilling, strange, terrifying, mysterious, and even emotional, compared to the stories told by literature. Only, these stories are locked in cold equations that most do not know how to read.
The creation myths of the various peoples and religions of the world pale when compared to the glory of the Big Bang. The three-billion year history of life’s evolution from self-reproducing molecules to civilization contains twists and romances that cannot be matched by any myth or epic. There is also the poetic vision of space and time in relativity, the weird subatomic world of quantum mechanics… these wondrous stories of science all possess an irresistible attraction.
But I cannot escape and leave behind reality, just like I cannot leave behind my shadow. Reality brands each of us with an indelible mark. Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.
Cixin Liu
from author's postscript for American edition
The Three-Body Problem
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 23, 2018 - 08:57pm PT
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I question that you perceived rubidium and magnetic fields.
I think this is a very out-of-character challenge, MikeL. You are questioning my experience, which you state in that same post, is something no one else could know.
I could presume that you are questioning my intellectual honesty.
But if you have never worked intensely with an apparatus (I wasn't "looking" at the Rubidium, or the magnetic fields) you would have not experienced the very real sense that the apparatus has become a true extension of your senses, and that you have a "direct apprehension from a sensation" where the source of the sensation is the apparatus, as if it were truly an extension of your "natural" senses.
That has been my experience, if you would like more examples I can give them to you.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 23, 2018 - 09:05pm PT
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Well I made through here before I decided you couldn't pay me to try to decipher this stuff
No single proposal for pregeometry has gained wide consensus support in the physics community. Some notions related to pregeometry predate Wheeler, other notions depart considerably from his outline of pregeometry but are still associated with it. A 2006 paper[1] provided a survey and critique of pregeometry or near-pregeometry proposals up to that time. A summary of these is given below:
Keep the change
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 23, 2018 - 09:16pm PT
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^^^pretty cool, huh!
This article explores the overall geometric manner in which human beings make sense of the world around them by means of their physical theories; in particular, in what are nowadays called pregeometric pictures of Nature. In these, the pseudo-Riemannian manifold of general relativity is considered a flawed description of spacetime and it is attempted to replace it by theoretical constructs of a different character, ontologically prior to it. However, despite its claims to the contrary, pregeometry is found to surreptitiously and unavoidably fall prey to the very mode of description it endeavours to evade, as evidenced in its all-pervading geometric understanding of the world. The question remains as to the deeper reasons for this human, geometric predilection—present, as a matter of fact, in all of physics—and as to whether it might need to be superseded in order to achieve the goals that frontier theoretical physics sets itself at the dawn of a new century: a sounder comprehension of the physical meaning of empty spacetime.
Abstract of "Geometry, pregeometry and beyond"
Diego Meschini, Markku Lehto, Johanna Piilonen
https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0411053.pdf
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Mar 23, 2018 - 09:34pm PT
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^^
That actually helped significantly. Though over mine (and apparently Gill's) head{s} I may wade in a little deeper
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Mar 23, 2018 - 11:04pm PT
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Maybe a painter or a writer has more knowledge about curing cancer or developing a vaccine that saves people's lives but nothing offered from that side of the brain has happened yet.
Really? If your cancer is cured how long will you then live? You will die no matter what science does for you. That's a fact. Science can't save you period. Your death is as sure as any truth you can conjure. Art and religion on the other hand can reconcile you to that inevitable demise and that's something science is grossly incapable of.
Integritas, consonontia and claritas, you've got to love Thomas Aquinas!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 23, 2018 - 11:14pm PT
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"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
-G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (1940),
reprinted 1969, Cambridge U. Press, p. 84
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Mar 23, 2018 - 11:46pm PT
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"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
"A painter's patterns are rooted in geometry just as sure as a mathematician's but they are gleamed from a place of intuition so integrated into the common experience that they touch the psyche beyond the limitation of ideas and confront us with the eternal."
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 24, 2018 - 06:51am PT
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Not all paintings are "ideas".
Ideas are man-made.
Some paintings are the actual absolute truth completely manifested.
It takes transcendental consciousness to see and be revealed ......
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Mar 24, 2018 - 07:04am PT
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Clairaut avait vu ce règne brillant de la géométrie, où toutes nos
femmes brillantes de la cour et de la ville voulaient avoir un géomètre
à leur suite.
Edit to add: taken from the book "Mathematics without Apologies" by Michael Harris, where he gives the reference: Notice on Clairaut, Diderot and Grimm, 1 juin 1765. In his 1748 novel Les bijoux indiscrets, Diderot expressed skepticism regarding the erotic potential of mathematics. The novel concerns a magic ring that endows a woman's bijou with the gift of speech, and the secrets revealed in this way. The bijou of a woman who had studied geometry was incomprehensible: "Ce n'était que lignes droites, surfaces concaves, quantités données, longueur, largeur, profondeur, solides, forces vives, forces mortes, cône, cylindre, sections coniques, courbes, courbes élastiques, courbe rentrant en elle-même, avec son point conjugué..."
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