Which is the true reality?

[William Patterson]

Realizing the conscience world. Now that the 2022 Nobel prize winners seemingly proved there is an abstract or alternate reality due to quantum mechanics, what grounds us in our version of reality? When observing the particles in the slit experiment, they seem to stay in line, yet when not observing they adapt a wave function. It's not so much observing them as it is becoming aware or conscience of them. It's not a function of our eyes but of our brains. In studying Sopolsky,(Robert Sapolsky, American researcher), we know that babies are born with latent imprints in their brains that allow them to learn a language, to age and eventually die from aging, among other imprints such as survival instincts, etc. We also know that dna passes down memories to succeeding generations.  Experiments as mice being zapped by a little electricity every time they smelled almonds, their offspring and the offspring of their offspring would go into a frenzy when they smelled almonds.  It was the Dutch starvation during WW2 that shows the same process in humans.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/science/dutch-famine-genes.html. Because there seems to be no other reason for us living in our physical world as we know it, wouldn't it lead to speculating that the boundaries of our physical world would also be passed down from our dna? There was speculation that our minds created our own and separate realities with Michio Kaku making the joke, I don't exist in your reality, you exist in mine. But this can't be so because we all see the same tree in the same park! So this leads us to Carl Jung's theory of collective unconscious? https://www.wondriumdaily.com/carl-jung-and-the-concept-of-collective-consciousness/. I don't know that this text is covered in the guidelines but would like to get some insight from forum brainiacs before it's trashed. Living in a world of 2 realities, not even knowing which one is the true one and which one is the abstract can be so demoralizing. Thank you!

[studiot]

3 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

Realizing the conscience world. Now that the 2022 Nobel prize winners seemingly proved there is an abstract or alternate reality due to quantum mechanics, what grounds us in our version of reality? When observing the particles in the slit experiment, they seem to stay in line, yet when not observing they adapt a wave function. It's not so much observing them as it is becoming aware or conscience of them. It's not a function of our eyes but of our brains. In studying Sopolsky,(Robert Sapolsky, American researcher), we know that babies are born with latent imprints in their brains that allow them to learn a language, to age and eventually die from aging, among other imprints such as survival instincts, etc. We also know that dna passes down memories to succeeding generations.  Experiments as mice being zapped by a little electricity every time they smelled almonds, their offspring and the offspring of their offspring would go into a frenzy when they smelled almonds.  It was the Dutch starvation during WW2 that shows the same process in humans.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/science/dutch-famine-genes.html. Because there seems to be no other reason for us living in our physical world as we know it, wouldn't it lead to speculating that the boundaries of our physical world would also be passed down from our dna? There was speculation that our minds created our own and separate realities with Michio Kaku making the joke, I don't exist in your reality, you exist in mine. But this can't be so because we all see the same tree in the same park! So this leads us to Carl Jung's theory of collective unconscious? https://www.wondriumdaily.com/carl-jung-and-the-concept-of-collective-consciousness/. I don't know that this text is covered in the guidelines but would like to get some insight from forum brainiacs before it's trashed. Living in a world of 2 realities, not even knowing which one is the true one and which one is the abstract can be so demoralizing. Thank you!

Does this rambling have a point or is it meant to be a question ?

And what exactly is the speculation that you are making, please. ?

[William Patterson]

That reality as we know it is passed down from our dna,, sorry if it rambled.

 

[swansont]

5 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

Now that the 2022 Nobel prize winners seemingly proved there is an abstract or alternate reality due to quantum mechanics, what grounds us in our version of reality? When observing the particles in the slit experiment, they seem to stay in line, yet when not observing they adapt a wave function. It's not so much observing them as it is becoming aware or conscience of them

No, it’s observing them. Consciousness is not involved, and “reality” is not the reality of philosophy 

[studiot]

6 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

That reality as we know it is passed down from our dna,, sorry if it rambled.

What about it and what do you mean by 'reality is passed down by the dna' ?

What happens when there is a mistake in the passing down process ora new trait appears  -  Is that not also reality ?

[William Patterson]

12 minutes ago, studiot said:

What about it and what do you mean by 'reality is passed down by the dna' ?

What happens when there is a mistake in the passing down process ora new trait appears  -  Is that not also reality ?

According to quantum mechanics the reality which we live in is not real, so what makes it real to us? It seems to me it must be real because we are conscience of it. As far as the mistakes in dna, I have never come across a mistake as far as aging and dying. Can we become conscience of it through our dna the same way we aquire other data, such as the latent imprints.

Edited December 17, 2022 by William Patterson

[Genady]

13 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

According to quantum mechanics the reality which we live in is not real...

They lied to you.

[studiot]

18 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

According to quantum mechanics the reality which we live in is not real, so what makes it real to us? It seems to me it must be real because we are conscience of it. As far as the mistakes in dna, I have never come across a mistake as far as aging and dying. Can we become conscience of it through our dna the same way we aquire other data, such as the latent imprints.

You were talking about passing down dna, that presumably occurs at the beginning of life, not the end.

I still don't see you have made a connection for either quantum mechanics or dna to reality, whatever reality is.

Here is a non quantum question for you to think about as I am going to bed and you have only two posts left in the next 24 hours.

 

I have a blue ball in a dark room.
I illuminate it with a sodium lamp.

What colour is it ?

What is the reality of the colour of the ball ?

 

Good night for now.

Edited December 17, 2022 by studiot

[Lorentz Jr]

53 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

Living in a world of 2 realities, not even knowing which one is the true one and which one is the abstract can be so demoralizing.

Yep. You can't be faulted for feeling that way. In physics, there's a longstanding debate about whether there's such a thing as "absolute space" or whether space is only relative. The relativists have dominated for the last century or so, but not all theorists are convinced.

Beyond physics, there's the dominance of social issues in most people's lives. It's said that we only use 10-20 percent of our brains, but I think what's really going on is that we're using the other 80-90 percent unconsciously, for dealing with intuitive issues in the social world.

So physicists tell you we live in a physical universe (or at least they used to!), but most people's daily lives are dominated by subjective issues of politics (both public politics and "micropolitics" with our friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers), religion, and other issues that have no obvious connection to physics. It feels like we live in two completely different worlds, and it's hard to say what is the best way of dealing with them.

Edited December 17, 2022 by Lorentz Jr

[Genady]

The truth is that according to quantum mechanics all observed values are real. This is because these values are eigenvalues of Hermitian operators, and there is a theorem in mathematics that all eigenvalues of a Hermitian operator are real.

[Phi for All]

9 minutes ago, Lorentz Jr said:

It's said that we only use 10-20 percent of our brains, but I think what's really going on is that we're using the other 80-90 percent unconsciously, for dealing with intuitive issues in the social world.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-really-use-only-10/

This was a myth before the internet. Before TV even. We use the whole brain, but not all at once, unless we're having a seizure.

[TheVat]

Always liked John Wheeler's line:  Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

Reality is what's out there.  Language and math are mental operations to approximate that.  Hopefully in a useful and predictive way.  

[Genady]

10 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Always liked John Wheeler's line:  Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

Reality is what's out there.  Language and math are mental operations to approximate that.  Hopefully in a useful and predictive way.  

We can use math to describe aspects of reality, i.e., of what is out there. But math itself does not depend on what is out there. As somebody said, e.g., a number of prime numbers would be infinite even if Universe were never created. 

Edited December 17, 2022 by Genady

[swansont]

52 minutes ago, William Patterson said:

According to quantum mechanics the reality which we live in is not real

Can you give a reference for this?

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, William Patterson said:

There was speculation that our minds created our own and separate realities with Michio Kaku making the joke, I don't exist in your reality, you exist in mine.

He was not joking. You don't know how other people, animals or plants feel and interpret what they see, hear and receive stimuli through their organs. You just think that others see the same thing as you, which may be true, or may be just an illusion.

[William Patterson]

Ok, I sincerely thank you all. I didn't get the answer I wanted, but after reading my text and all the responses over and over I got the answer I needed.  I absolutely have know grasp on reality and it scares the crap out of me. Studiot my background is wave theory and electricity.  You probably would have a hard time finding that ball, I can't answer the second half of the question, which was very revealing to me.

[studiot]

10 hours ago, William Patterson said:

According to quantum mechanics the reality which we live in is not real, so what makes it real to us? It seems to me it must be real because we are conscience of it. As far as the mistakes in dna, I have never come across a mistake as far as aging and dying. Can we become conscience of it through our dna the same way we aquire other data, such as the latent imprints.

 

9 hours ago, Sensei said:

He was not joking. You don't know how other people, animals or plants feel and interpret what they see, hear and receive stimuli through their organs. You just think that others see the same thing as you, which may be true, or may be just an illusion.

I hope you have now got the idea that reality is not 'fixed' whatever it is it depends on the conditions or circumstances and also the observer (Thanks Sensei +1 for pointing out the differentobservers experience different realities).

Also in your posts and those of others we note that lots of great thinkers, down the millenia have wrestled with this question without coming up with any definitive result.

But rather than being weighed down by all this, look on the bright side.

Perhaps that famous phrase "I think therefore I am" is a good start.

Once you accept something along those lines, you can proceed to "I am not alone" or "There are other things out there and they interact".

So you can't separate things in isolation (as Science often tries to do for simplicity) you have to consider the whole totality of 'things and their interactions.
Or even their possible or potential interactions because not all such necessarily actually happen.

But here is a further development of my blue ball question.

Perhaps you have seen the images from the Hubble and more recently the James Webb telescopes ?

But we cannot see them ! 

The light the telescopes are observing are in the infra red - wavelengths we cannot see ourselves.
So those wonderful pictures are rendered in 'false colour' by computer.

That gives us something to process when attempting to understand the reality of it.

[Markus Hanke]

27 minutes ago, studiot said:

Perhaps that famous phrase "I think therefore I am" is a good start.

Except that it should be “There are thoughts, thus there is thinking”. The “I” is not part of the phenomenology here.

[studiot]

I should have added to my thoughts that modern Science has developed some neww pragmatic approaches to this.

Firstly Science seeks reproducibility so that we can observe that if I poke my surroundings in a certain way I will observe certain responses that are reproducible.

But we have progressed further because Science has discovered that there are responses that an not definitely reproducible yet it has developed ways and means to handle this situation via statistics and probability.

So we now realise that the are some aspects of reality that may occur one way or may respond in a different way and put hard figures to this.
Quantum Mechanics is part of this modern modern thinking and you computer depends upon such statistical figuring to work as the electrons in the circuits obey statistical rules, not deterministic ones.

Take switching on a light switch. 99.99% of the time the light will come on.
But the remaining 0.01% will lead to a bulb or electricity failure.
So even this prettur regular part of our world is slightly probabilistic.
Yet we easily accept this and don't worry about it.

Perhaps QM seems more like mystical woo than science sometimes but it does work.

So take heart, we have progressed and we are still progressing, but we are not fully there yet.

Perhaps there is an unachievable goal but still....the story goes on.

Edited December 18, 2022 by studiot

[William Patterson]

Thanks guys. I answered your question incorrectly. The blue ball would be black and cast a black shadow. The problem I have is I seemed detached from reality. Great book sense but a lack of understanding such things as social awareness. And this lack of understanding reaches into other specific areas such as reality and gravity. But anyway, I'm picking up some good pointers. 

[geordief]

5 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Except that it should be “There are thoughts, thus there is thinking”. The “I” is not part of the phenomenology here.

"Should"as in that is what Descartes was actually  saying ,or "should" as in that he misspoke and said the wrong thing?

I have heard it said quite often that the saying has been misinterpreted  but am not clear  on what this means.

 

Did he say/write this the one time only ?Was it "Je pense donc  je suis" or  was it some variant of that?

Edited December 18, 2022 by geordief

[mistermack]

1 hour ago, William Patterson said:

The blue ball would be black and cast a black shadow.

I don't get it ?   A blue ball means a ball  that is blue when lit with white light. And in a dark room, it won't cast any shadow. 

[Markus Hanke]

9 minutes ago, geordief said:

"Should"as in that is what Descartes was actually  saying ,or "should" as in that he miss poke and said the wrong thing?

I don’t know an awful lot about philosophy, so I’m not qualified to comment on any “rights” or “wrongs”. It just seems obvious that in terms of phenomenology, all that is ever directly experienced is the presence of interconnected thoughts, thus we can safely conclude that there is a thinking process going on. The existence of an “I”-agent that is somehow “doing the thinking” is only inferred, but never empirically observed. Thus it seems suspect to state its presence as if it was an empirical fact. But that’s purely my own two cents about this topic.

[MigL]

We only ever get information about 'reality' by interacting with it.
Whether by touch, sight, or our other senses, or, by the use of instruments to augment our senses.
This is especially true of Quantum Mechanics, which tells us that there is no 'reality' until an interaction/observation defines or fixes a state.

IOW, we can never know what 'reality' is, only how it is affected, and responds, to our prodding interactions.

[Sensei]

5 hours ago, studiot said:

Perhaps that famous phrase "I think therefore I am" is a good start.

What is the difference between "thinking" and "performing heavy calculations by an algorithm/A.I." ?