Quantum Physics and philosophy about God

by rawe 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  rawe

  Hi Yadda yadda 2 & Seraphim23,

  I re-read my mini-essay this morning. I see lots of grammatical errors, sorry about that.

  I don't have time at the moment to watch the entire video clip, but it makes a similar point I make about. Black holes might be nasty concepts to think about at first, but since General Relativity predicted they should exist, likely they do, and now we know they do. Yes, Seraphim23, I think posting back your original post about QM would add a bit more context to this thread -- otherwise it looks like this thread popped into existence out of nothing ;-)

  Off-topic: The Chandler, AZ Ex-JW meetup is tonight at 7:00pm at the Hungry Monk in Chandler. If you're in the area, and would like to meet with fellow Ex-JWs feel free to come out!

  Cheers, -Randy
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  Bart Belteshassur

  Hi Rawe Mind blowing stuff. Just 2 quick points:- It was always my limited understanding of the Schrodinger Cat experiment that the answer could only be determined by opening the box and observing the Cat's state at the time of the observation, and thus concluding that the cat's state whilst the box is shut can not be predicted. Schrodinger's equation,for 2D only which can be determined for the single electron hydrogen atom give a probability of whether or not the electron is in the box or not, but not a specific location. Heisenberg came to similar conclusions in his uncertainty principle, that determination in this case of life or death or even whether the cat was in the box or not was not possible. I believe this is also the case in the electron twin slit experiment, Young's experiment, were when a single electron is observed passing through one of the 2 slits, it acts as a single wave and the resulting image on the target measures this and agrees. However when the single electron is not observed passing through the slit, the target image measures and records an interference pattern clearly indicating that the single electron had in fact passed through both slits at same time and interfered with its own wave pattern. Therefore observed evidence must not be confused with measurement which is a purely material concept, and that Human observation has the effect of altering the natural all states existence and therefore the evidence. I can not help but conclude that this directs us towards a Duelist view point in which the existence of a God or Gods is possible. Hope this make a little sense, it is a long time since I studied QP the Cat and Heisenberg Uncertainty Compensators (had to get the Treky reference in somewhere).
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  Seraphim23

  THIS IS A REPOST FROM A DIFFERENT THREAD IN REPLY TO RAWES REPLY ON THAT OTHER THREAD:

  Interesting comments again rawe.

  I guess I am wondering about the true nature of randomness because it seems like a paradox in logic. Digital verses randomness type of thing. Trying to think how to articulate it! For instance if the universe is built on laws then everything is subject to those laws, which wouldn’t seem to allow for randomness, but if that’s the case, how is mentality and consciousness accounted for? because a digital predetermined universe should mean we are more like computers that simply carry out instructions, albeit complex ones, without awareness or control. Some might argue that computers have a low level of consciousness but I don’t buy that idea plus it seems to ignore the particularly of what being conscious feels like. Roger Penrose seemed to express a related idea in terms of mathematics, in that some mathematics is non-computable, which reminds me of your point about Pi.

  I agree with you that the universe is not digital in this sense of non-computability but the nature of what is really going with randomness seems as far away as understanding what infinity is as with Pi. The measurement problem seems to have relevance here as well.

  I agree as well with you point about caution regarding being careful in asking God to fill in these knowledge gaps. The God of the gaps argument is a valid one, but in a way my position is that God may lie in infinity. Why does mathematics or some mathematics correspond to physical reality? It could be said that the only way to understand the workings of the physical world is in terms of precise mathematics and the evidence for that is demonstrated by science. However philosophically speaking, mathematics is not physical reality. It is as if there are two worlds that both exist in different ways but relate to one another though mentality, which might be yet another world. Apparently there are mathematical problems that a digital deterministic computer cannot solve but we can, which lends support for the idea of such worlds being real, as opposed to abstractions. If true the question is why all this anyway? In the unknown gap that isn’t about how things work but why anyway? I insert God! Here he doesn’t interfere with knowledge because it is the why not how domain as it were.

  The why anything anyway question seems to end up with an infinity when one walks through the steps of logic in various ways, and then another paradox becomes evident because one wants to ask when did infinity begin. Of course the answer is best answered as another question. The answer question is how can infinity begin when it is infinite? Logic then runs out at this point but logic does seem to be akin to digital computers and their limitations. Mathematics is infinite also and relates to what is seen to exist, which is not. So it seems to me that there will always be a place to put God in that box called infinity. It’s a way of avoiding the God of the gaps argument on the grounds that this gap is infinite, and therefore not a finite problem at all, as the other gaps people place God tend to be.

  I liked your point:

  “An almighty God who interacts with the material universe in violation of the laws of nature, means, that any knowledge gained by trusting the laws of nature is suspect.”

  I guess that makes sense, but one can remove God and replace it by infinity itself, which logically has to exist. Infinity includes the laws of nature in some sense but in another are finite instances of infinity, which is a mystery of course because how does the finite and infinite relate. Anyhow it could be said that the natural laws are part of God and so avoid the problem of trusting nature to trusting God. If God is trustworthy then so in nature, as they are parts of the same thing, kind of.

  I can see why some think I take drugs after reading this back to myself; I almost do myself after deep chats like this. The bottom line is that I respect your view a lot because you’re not closed minded, even though you are an atheist or I am assuming you are. We are in this boat called the universe together. I think the idea of a God makes sense to me and I might be wrong and perhaps God can be replaced with infinity without mentality, I don’t know. I am open-minded but if we all thought the same life would be boring. What an excellent discussion this turned out to be. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, that some theists and atheists have more in common and to talk about than some atheists and atheists, and theists and theists have. It helps that you write in a down to earth and clear way.
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  Seraphim23

  Rawe ill reply to your reply later if that’s ok.
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  DATA-DOG

  You are all a bunch of Quiff poppers. This blows my mind. If we are not observing a basketball, it exists in multiple locations until we observe it. So if you and I observe it together and walk up to it and touch it, what does that say about our minds? We are individuals, yet somehow we see the same thing?! Or do we?...
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  OnTheWayOut

  RAWE: Because experts admit to a knowledge gap, you should accept all the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses as if they a channeling special knowledge from God.

  They are that way with everything:
  "Christendom doesn't stay neutral. You should accept all the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses."
  "A few scientists faked fossils. You should accept all the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses."

  "There was a scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. You should accept all the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses."

  I am no nuclear physicist, but my brother is an actual "experimental high energy particle physicist." That doesn't give me any particular insight, it's just one of those things a person might want to brag about (like saying "When I attended Harvard..."). All I can really tell you is that the God of the Gaps is now and continuing to be shrinking.
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  bohm

  reposting on request of saraphim

  Seraphim:

  I wasn’t suggesting that Penrose didn’t accept the wave function description, only that he thinks it collapses, or some other term in large scales stuff.

  That is entirely correct; however wave-functions "collapse" into other wave-functions (the details here are technical but have very well-defined meaning; it is this "collapse" which in all ways seem to behave randomly. Check out wikipedia for more) that look very much like classical physics -- but its still a wave function!. The point is large, hot objects (like cats) can be shown to exhibit rapid collapse to wave-functions that are very well-defined; thats why we do not "see" large-scale quantum phenomena, and why for all intents and purposes the cat will behave as if it is either alive or dead.

  There is no "breakdown". It is just that the world, even though it is governed by the same laws, can look different at different scales.

  Perhaps he doesn’t think this now, I’ll have to check. Bohm, He certainly seems like a genius.

  he is, but be aware he has an interpretation of QM that is very speculative, and some other speculative ideas about gravity which are unproven.

  Out of interest and don’t take this the wrong way, as I am assuming you’re an atheist, but is their a framework in Bohms work that could explain so called psychic phenomena? I.e premonition’s of future states of information?

  Many have suggested there is a link between QM and consciousness, but there is no evidence this is the case and it is not at all a maintream view. The basic problem is the brain is also quite large and hot (like the cat) and therefore it is hard to see how it could be strongly influenced by effects that are predominantly quantum in nature. A second problem is QM does not, in my oppinion, explain consciousness, however Penrose would disagree.

  in my oppinion, the most serious problem in terms of explaining psychic phenomena with QM is there is no proovable psychic phenomena.
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  bohm

  Rawe: In my QP for Dummies book there is only a one paragraph mention of Schrödinger's Cat. So far in my reading about this again this evening, I'm left with the impression that in terms of real cats it is an abstraction.

  The thought experiment was crafted to show a possible macro-world implication of quantum superposition. To quote the Wikipedia article on this...

  Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, the paradox is a classic reductio ad absurdum.[2]

  Thus the conclusion I have reached for the moment is while Schrödinger's cat idea is in the cat-size world absurd, it has not removed in reality the conclusions of QM in regards to superposition and entanglement. The reality of superposition and entanglement at the quantum level has been demonstrated. Yet, I don't understand why it does not scale up, or if it does, why we can't readily detect such.

  Sorry for the late reply. See also my respond to seraphim. The idea of a cat-sized entangled object is not absurd, however a careful analysis of QM for an object the size (and importantly, temperature) of a cat show it will quickly loose its entangled state. This is called decoherence (see wikipedia; the details are technical and relate to the distribution of the eigenspectrum of the hamiltonian of a cat-sized object). To state it more precisely, the cat will still be in a quantum state, just like you and I are in a quantum state right now, the quantum states are just such they behave almost (as in crazy small unmeasurable deviations) exactly like classical physics and not entangled. QM is truly the more general theory, and the fact the cat behave like classical physics is yet another (confirmed) prediction of QM.
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  rawe

  Hi Bohm,

  Please help me see if I understand this correctly. Perhaps the important qualifier in the Wikipedia sentence that contains the word "absurd" is "serious possibility?" I imagine this converstation between Alice who argues for objective reality based on classical physics and Bob who understand quantum physics, goes something like this...

  Alice: Bob, are you telling me that all you can get out fo QM is probabilities?

  Bob: Yes.

  Alice: Okay, Bob, but when you make a measurement you get a specific number right?

  Bob: Yes, but that is only because by taking the measurement I've caused the wave function to collaspe into a definite state.

  Alice: What was the wave function before you took the measurement then?

  Bob: All the possiblities existed at once, we call this quantum superposition.

  Alice: How do you know that, if every time you measure you get a definite value?

  Bob: Well certain measurements we can and have make show this must be true, but it is also the nature of linear equations we use.

  Alice: Bob, that can't be right, if I put a cat in a box and arranged for a quantum event to trigger the death of the cat, you would have to say the cat was both alive and dead at the same time!

  Bob: Alice, your argument is reductio ad absurbdum, but... (insert various explantions for why this is true in reality, or the paradox is avoided somehow)

  Alice wants to complain that the act of measuring to resolve the alive or dead state of the cat must be wrong and that the cat in objective reality cannot be in both states simulteneously. You seem to be suggesting size and temperature matters in resolving the state? As well as the nature of QM tends to make big things appear classical even while not violating QM?

  Cheers,

  -Randy
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  bohm

  Rawe:

  I think Bob would say that since the cat is very large and hot, it will automatically experience decoherence even though the mechanism responsible for its (possible) dead is quantum, and it will converge to the dead or alive state and not a superposition.

  If the cat on the other hand was an electron or atom, then yes, it would (could) be in a superimposed state, if the experiment was set up correct.

  Alice wants to complain that the act of measuring to resolve the alive or dead state of the cat must be wrong and that the cat in objective reality cannot be in both states simulteneously.

  Bob could simply show alice she is false, for instance by performing the double-slit experiment with a single-electron source. According to Alice, the electrons will go through one of the slits, according to bob, they will go through both and interact. This has a predictive value and bob will be shown to be correct.

  Also bob could ask alice how she would make sence of any physics at the atomic scale. Nothing will make sence to alice, starting with why there are atoms.