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geordief

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Everything posted by geordief

  1. Are we all indoctrinated because we listen to an advert on the radio or see a billboard by the road?
  2. Don't see the relevance to my posts. Maybe the OP might find it relevant . I don't know. (not looking for rabbit holes today)
  3. You may be right.I was once buttonholed by Scientologists in the street with the psychology profile questionnaire they used to entrap the incautious . Anyway the result/interpretation of it was apparently that I see the/my world as better than it is. "Frightened of living" is how I see myself but that is way off topic .....
  4. How would you feel if death was not associated directly with illness but that our consciousness was programmed to "blink out" painlessly at a random time as we were going about our daily existence? Would it seem more likely that the conciousness would be somehow recycled if that happened without all the drama we and our fellow sentient beings undergo towards the end of our lives? People often say that they don't mind dying but don't want to be there when it happens
  5. I assume the OP may have been implying that 2 "identical" people might exist and that an observer might , in principle be able to ascertain that they were in fact the same. Memory would not come into it ,but they would of course have to have the same ongoing memories and that would be impossible unless their entire espective universes were also identical in every respect
  6. If you could find a way past @swansont 's obstacles (which I agree with) what consequences might follow? Also are there any ways one might ascertain whether in the past or in the future two systems - living or non living - had separately evolved to be (and continued to be) identical? What if one restricted oneself to the timespan and location of the solar system? Is there an infinitesimal chance that two or more systems of any size could have evolved to be ,and continued to be identical?
  7. Thanks for the suggestion.I will look into it.Books are another approach for sure.A pity I now find them so hard to use.Even so they can be very pleasurable.
  8. I like that description.Would that be the consensus view,or are there other widely held interpretations?
  9. This is completely new to me . It seems to be very important. It counts as an interaction ,doesn't it? Again I was blissfully unaware of plane waves ;even polarized light I have not too well assimilated as a phenomenon
  10. As in "does the wave interact with them" (their edges) ?Does it cause decoherence (am just learning to use that word)? ps I don't think I have any hangups about human or sentient observers -they are all just interactors to me at my present stage of understanding.
  11. I have been told that the consensus has for some time been that the universe should be flat (because it should be infinite) This measurement of a lack of observable curvature in the triangle drawn between us and the edge of the observable universe is just a confirmation of this "bias". We think the universe should be infinite and this measurement apparently lends real credence ,though not proof to this view.
  12. No,just trying to keep up with the conversation as much as I can.
  13. I would like to hear what Studiot has to say about the book ,whether specific examples or just how it illustrates the point he was making.
  14. What does it say about the way quantum phenomena transition to classical phenomena ?(if I have caught the gist of what you are saying)
  15. I am learning the coherence of a quantum system can be maintained over very great distances and this leads me to ask the question in the Title of the thread. In that example distance is less important than the number of potential or actual interactions with an entangled system? Could that be considered as a kind of "distance" in quantum physics? If not ,what is the concept of distance in quantum physics ? Just the same as in classical physics?
  16. Thanks,I think I get it now.My (OP) question implied a distinction that isn't really there.
  17. Yes. a behaviour that could be classed as quantum that would be solely responsible for (or would metamorphose into) a behaviour that could only be classed as classical. I don't think entanglement would do that. There seems no limit ,outside practicalities to how extensive it can be made to behave. I expect it would be possible to find classical behaviour that would be analagous to quantum behaviour but that would likely mean very little.
  18. Just what I can't do.It feels to me that I may be "arguing" from the general rather than to advance from anything specific. As @studiot says ,there could be different ways in which the macro operates differently from the micro. At present my feeling is that the macro could be the statistical outcome of the micro but that seems to be just a part of the picture,if correct. If entanglement can operate on millions of particles then that might argue against my "statistical" idea.
  19. Could it be said that there is a causal relationship between the way things work at the quantum level and the way they work at the macro level? Would it be something of a one way street?(ie is the quantum more fundamental and the classical more derivative?) Is causal the wrong word, might "emerge from" be closer? I am fishing here, but are there any (maybe many?) phenomena that could be described as both quantum and classical or is that just a bad way to look at it in the first place?
  20. Are we saying the same thing here? (from a recent post of mine on another forum) https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=83313.0 I asked there whether the global gravity field may have originated around the time of the BB and has been gradually metamorphosing ever since.
  21. Are you saying that ,far from any mass it is possible for there to be an object with the independent means to rotate about itself and to create an artificial gravity? (I have not read very much about Mach's Principle or the significance attached by Einstein to Mach's ideas.)
  22. Thanks. Words (=ideas) are hard for me (but yes I did read it and will try again) The question ,though I am asking is whether ,if Einstein had not existed would a physicist have found it a lot easier to understand the Equivalence Principle once he or she became familiar with the concept of weightlessness ,as was the general public once astronauts started floating around in their cabins a la Gagarin. I know Einstein's mind's eye showed him the workman falling off his ladder and so being weightless for a very short time.... (I wasn't sure whether to post this thread in the hard science section as my question was maybe as much historical as involving the nitty gritty of the theory) Edit:top of page 376 is that a misprint: "mb=K superscript1"? Does "mk=K superscript1" make more sense?
  23. Einstein describes how an accelerating sealed chamber is indistinguishable from a gravitational field to an observer in the chamber. I have learned and read a little about this in the past 5 years or so and also that Einstein described this as his happiest idea. It seems to be possibly the kernel of General Relativity and yet I wonder whether his appreciation was any different or more profound than the appreciation of weightlessness and artificial gravity that became common knowledge as soon as astronauts went into space in the 60s. True ,Einstein realized this without seeing astronauts floating around the spacecraft but what I want to ask is whether the common or garden appreciation of weightlessness and artificial gravity that is really second nature to most people (well I hope so) is equally enlightening as Einstein's Equivalence Principle or is there more to it than that(I appreciate that astronauts do not accelerate to the extent of causing light rays to bend in front of their eyes😀 )
  24. Reported for non-attribution of quotation😇

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