Realism is dying :(

[bascule]

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/070416-9.html

 

This doesn't rule out all possible non-local realistic models, but it does exclude an important subset of them. Specifically, it shows that if you have a group of photons that all have independent polarizations, then you can't ascribe specific polarizations to each.

 

Would this include Bohmian mechanics?

[fredrik]

> Realism is dying

 

It was just a matter of time. Cheers to 21th century

 

Here are a quote of someone with what I consider more a modern philosophy of physics.

 

"The point of view that has been prevalent among scientists is that the laws of physics mirror the laws of nature. The reflection might be imperfect, a mere approximation to the real thing, but it is a reflection nonetheless. The connection between physics and nature could, however, be less direct. The laws of physics could be mere rules for processing information about nature. If this second point of view turns out to be correct one would expect many aspects of physics to mirror the structure of theories of inference. Indeed, it should be possible to derive the “laws of physics” appropriate to a certain problem by applying standard rules of inference to the information that happens to be relevant to the problem at hand."

 

from "The information Geometry of Space and Time", Ariel Caticha

 

/Fredrik

[GutZ]

That's nicely stated, wow.

[foodchain]

Does this mean less on experiment and maybe more on just math and theory? or Theory based on math? Or physics based on just math?

[bascule]

It's math and theory confirmed with experiment, in this case several experiments which violate Bell's Inequality and this one which seems to further validate the point.

 

I must admit I find this unsettling...

[fredrik]

Does this mean less on experiment and maybe more on just math and theory? or Theory based on math? Or physics based on just math?

 

The way I see it the connection to experiment will actually gets more tight, and the status of information is given a more fundamental status. There is no way we're replacing "real input" with "theory". The theory just makes sure we _process the given input_ in the (ideally) optimal way, and how to update our predictive models accordingly. The idea is that this concept is deeper than it seems at first. It does not end with human theories! The fundamental interactions of particles might also be reflected by the same logic. Two "particles" interacting, are nothing but two systems exchanging information, and they respond accordingly (dynamics). This also has the potential to eventually lead us to reveal the true nature of the observer-system relation. These ideas may also have a major impact on AI models, since the philosophy considers information to be more fundamental than physical things. The reason is that our knowledge of physical things are always mediated by information exchange.

 

The concept that unknown data has a definite value even though it's beyond our information leads to akward conclusions. A system responds to given information only, nothing else does not make sense, would it? IMO the better way to think of it is that we may get information that was previously beyond us, and then and only then do we respond, not sooner. The desire to want to think of things having a definite nature even when it's beyond our information is IMO almost religious and it leads to weird conclusions.

 

When information is incomplete (as is always the case), our response is not definite, but it's not arbitrary either. It's only arbitrary or chaotic withing the gives constrains/priors. If reality then proves to not agree with our predictions, it means we have received new information, and we will act accordingly and also update our priors for future processing.

 

I think it's as beautiful as I can reasonably expect. The approach just needs work.

 

Constraints/priors means

- current information geometry

- current information of boundary conditions

- current information of various relational patterns such as momentum and energy spectra

 

Howto add to stochastic processing ontop of those constrains combined will be a complex mathematical task, under current work, but it will nontheless result in dynamics.

 

However there is another complexity that will prove nasty and that's the third point. I personally look for the optimal inference mthod of choice of patterns. This is i think the key to proper understanding of structure, and dimensionality. I have not given this hat much thought yet, and I haven't seen much else progress there either. I'm still fighting with the formers steps.

 

/Fredrik

[Royston]

Does this mean less on experiment and maybe more on just math and theory? or Theory based on math? Or physics based on just math?

 

Are you saying, that if the results of the polarization experiment (this is...very basically a vibration that's measured perpendicular to the direction of a photon) mean nature really is as strange as QM dictates, then the only way this can be described is through a purely mathematical theory ?

 

If so, then I don't really see why...to me it just means we have to probe a little deeper, and come up with something more radical to account for the fact indeterminism maybe here to stay. However, it still has to be testable through experiment and observation, so falsifiable. Otherwise, it just isn't a scientific theory.

 

I don't find the results that surprising, but maybe I'm missing something. TBH, I quite welcome the news...realism's boring

[foodchain]

I think I get where the people are going with this which makes sense to me as much as my ability or anything’s ability to reach entanglement if I have my definitions correct, I mean how could we even make a decision really and that the universe or nature/reality has to have some form of a truth to it right? I mean I doubt for the geology of the earth to be what it is if all the iron for instance was removed from it near its beginning. Not to mention what does a donkey or anything for that matter have to do with what this is talking about. My fear is simply just that, we skip experiment and rely purely on math. I know that people in general do not posses an absolute understanding of everything yet and such is a time slowed to little more then a vibration really of an event but I think it would be nothing but a travesty to rely purely on math simply because math can make so much possible, you could probably create an entire physical universe completely different from this one in which planets come together in the shape of a square for instance and make it work, but what about the reality of the one we live in. I can see entropy in my boiling post of noodles in that the path of the energy for instance somewhat is in pattern based on other variables or forces or matter and I still go back to the idea of it all is we don’t know and in many regards I think that drives people crazy and they look for shortcuts.

 

If reality is far more "bizarre" then we can understand it, which I would agree with, such is form, but realism to me is making sure we stick with understanding it, and not solving intensely complicated math problems instead.

 

For instance, what does this have to say about the ability of a human to even recognize a pattern? I mean it exists naturally right? What’s the explanation, and when you get a hypothesis how to you move it to theory, and after that how to you predict, to simply use math alone in my opinion would in the end just lead us to fallacy if we remove the need to experiment or apply.

[foodchain]

"Fundamental Flaws in Mark Steiner's Challenge to Naturalism in The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (2003)

Richard Carrier

 

 

This is a critical rebuttal to Mark Steiner's book The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (1998). Steiner argues that naturalism appears to be false because nature is fundamentally mathematical. Carrier argues otherwise.

 

Steiner's thesis in a nutshell is this: physics can only be described in the language of mathematics, the language of mathematics exists only as an invention of a mind (human or otherwise), therefore the universe (which is what physics describes) must be the invention of a mind (presumably God's). Though Steiner's approach is too humble to actually argue for God's existence (he seems aware that his conclusion would be compatible with certain other worldviews like atheistic Solipsism), he does seem convinced by his own arguments and evidence that Naturalism cannot be true, whatever else may be. As he puts it, there is a "correspondence...between the human brain and the physical world as a whole. The world, in other words, looks 'user friendly.' This is a challenge to naturalism" (176) because it means "the human species has a special place in the scheme of things" (5).

 

Confusing the Tools of Description with the Things Described

But Steiner commits several fundamental blunders that topple his entire thesis from the start. First, his argument is formally invalid. Just because X can only be described with a language it does not follow that X cannot exist or be what it is without a language to describe it. In other words, he confuses the tools of description with the thing described. All languages are obviously the invention of a mind, and they are invented specifically for the task of describing what exists. That a language succeeds very well at that task is indeed due to humans being very clever in perfecting language as a tool of description, but that's all. It is not the result of the universe being 'suspiciously describable.'

 

To make Steiner's argument is like being amazed at what a miracle it is that Earth had Oxygen, just what we needed to breathe—forgetting that we evolved to breathe what was here, not the other way around. Half the life on this planet evolved to breathe what was around before Oxygen came along: Carbon Dioxide. And we would have evolved to breathe that, too, if that remained the only breathable gas around. So there is nothing miraculous about the convergence of Oxygen and Oxygen-breathers. Just so, there is nothing miraculous about the convergence of a describable universe and a tool for describing it. There is certainly no reason to expect, even on Naturalism, that any universe would be somehow undescribable.

 

Defining Mathematics

Steiner's error here stems mainly from his failure to properly define "mathematics." He does not acknowledge what many Naturalists see: that math is just a language, no different from any other (like English or German) except in two respects: its component simplicity and lack of ambiguity. This is, in fact, all that distinguishes mathematics from any other language. Component simplicity is a defining attribute because math is a language we created for describing the simplest elements of complex patterns: primarily, quantities and relations. Every "word" in mathematics refers to a very simple pattern (like a number or a function or a simple relationship), unlike English, for example, where most words refer to very complex patterns (like "tree" or "theorem"). Of course, mathematical sentences and paragraphs can be immensely complex, but this does not change the fact that the words are all simple, and that is what makes mathematics what it is, as opposed to English or German. More importantly, the lack of ambiguity defines mathematics as a language because every mathematical word is deliberately defined by humans in an absolutely precise way, leaving no room for optional interpretations or ranges of vagueness. This was what math was invented for: to escape the perils of imprecision and vagueness, which are fundamental to other languages. Thus, while in English "tree" can refer to a plant or a hierarchical list of computer files, and while applying the word "tree" might run into uncertainty when we are looking at something that straddles the properties of a tree and a bush, and so on, in mathematics no such problems arise—because we humans made sure of it. We created a language without ambiguity, and called it mathematics.

 

Some people might restrict the definition of mathematics further, thus distinguishing math from logic, by stating that mathematics is a language dealing solely with quantities, relations, and functions applied thereto, whereas everything that is simple and precise but not a quantity, relation, or function falls into the subject of logic instead. But many mathematicians regard logic as a special subset of mathematics, since anything said in a language of logic can also be described in the language of mathematics. However, in practice, logic is used as a bridge for extending the defining advantages of mathematics (simplicity and precision) to normal language and ordinary human thought. In that respect, logic straddles the spheres of math and ordinary language. Either way, though, mathematics is definable, whether broadly as a language characterized by component simplicity and lack of ambiguity, or narrowed further to quantity, relation, and function.

 

Are Beauty and Convenience Mathematical?

Steiner nowhere at any time shows any awareness of the above definition of mathematics or indeed anything even remotely like it. Nor does he allow that mathematicians would call "mathematical" anything and everything definable by the nine or so basic axioms of mathematics (which have in common the features I describe above, which is why my definition is more fundamental). The closest thing to a definition he ever comes to is as follows:

 

Mathematicians today have adopted internal criteria to decide whether to study a structure as mathematical. Two of these are beauty and convenience. The beauty of the theory of a structure is a powerful reason to call it mathematical...[and] mathematicians...introduce concepts into mathematics to make calculations easier or convenient...[so] relying on mathematics in guessing the laws of nature is relying on human standards of beauty and convenience. (7, cf. 63-70)

 

This means "the concept of mathematics" is "anthropocentric," which means mathematics could only be successful in physics if the universe, too, were anthropocentric. But there are serious flaws in his method here. Is everything that is beautiful and convenient mathematical? No. Is an ugly, inconvenient theorem not mathematical? No. No matter how ugly or inconvenient Ptolemy's planetary theory was, it is still universally admitted by all mathematicians to be entirely mathematical. Thus, neither beauty nor convenience are defining attributes of mathematics. Mathematics must be defined by something else, which is obviously what I defined it as above.

 

Therefore, Steiner's claim that "the concept of mathematics itself is species-specific" (6) is false. It is true only insofar as language is species-specific, but Language is not identical to Being—it is merely a tool for describing it. Instead, the defining concepts of mathematics—component simplicity, lack of ambiguity, quantity, relation, function—are not at all species-specific or even specific to mind. All these things can exist physically in nature without any mind to create or sustain them. Thus, that we find a language (in this case, a language for describing quantity, relation, and function with component simplicity and lack of ambiguity) useful has nothing to do with the universe being human-centered or "anthropocentric." It simply means we live in a universe where there are quantities, relations, and functions that are composed of simple and precise components. Naturalism is not only completely compatible with that, but that is generally part of the very meaning of Naturalism: that there is such a universe, and nothing else.

 

The Heuristic of Beauty and Convenience

But isn't it at least the case that scientists have found a successful scientific method in focusing on 'beautiful' and 'convenient' mathematical theories? Not really. Though that has been an effective heuristic for getting at simple and focused problems in comprehensible ways, this is simply the result of human limitations: we have to start small, and solve simple problems first, in the few ways we know how and are best at. But if we were to rely solely on this heuristic, most of the greatest scientific discoveries would never have been made. Far from a "beautiful and convenient" chemistry of four elements, we discovered in the end an incredibly ugly, messy, and inconvenient Periodic Table of over ninety elements and counting (never mind the mind-boggling complexity of the Standard Model of particle physics); far from the "beautiful and convenient" planetary theory of Copernicus, the paths and velocities of the planets are so ugly and inconvenient that we need supercomputers to handle the messy intersection of Newtonian, Keplerian, Einsteinian, Thermodynamic, and Chaotic effects, and even then they are not always entirely accurate in their predictions on astronomical scales of time (like thousands and millions of years).

 

There are other problems in Steiner's approach. How do humans come upon their concept of mathematical beauty? Steiner never addresses this. But what if it is a learned reaction to a successful heuristic? If so, that would mean we learned to define as beautiful that which fit the truths of the universe, and not the other way around, making "beauty" just like "oxygen," something we adapted to, not something arranged for our convenience. Since Steiner does not even discuss the psychological and philosophical literature on aesthetics, much less mathematical aesthetics, he cannot claim that the universe was geared for us any more than that we geared ourselves for it.

 

Likewise, why do we seek convenient notations and solutions to complex problems? Is it because the universe is convenient for us, or is it simply because we work better with simpler tools rather than complex ones? If a 1000-word description of an apple in English can be rewritten in 100 words, without losing a single iota of information content vis-à-vis the apple, then obviously we will see the advantage in this. And the fact that this could be done would have nothing to do with the apple being suspiciously convenient for short descriptions in English. Rather, it would have everything to do with the natural inefficiency of human language and thought—where it takes effort to analyze our descriptions and locate redundant and unnecessary elements, and discover easier, shorter, better ways of saying the same thing.

 

Applying the Heuristic

Steiner's book consists mainly of long and highly technical discussions of the fringes of 20th century scientific discovery, mainly the as-yet-unexplained oddities of Quantum Mechanics, but in some cases formal maneuvers made in other fields like Relativity Theory. Regarding all these examples he declares:

 

To explain my data away, one must find a natural, or material, property of mathematics as such, and then show how this property accounts for the success of the mathematical discoveries outline [in this book] (8)

 

I have already done this: "mathematics as such" describes the natural, material properties of quantity, relation, and function. In other words, it describes repeating or repeatable patterns in measurable phenomena, in effect describing structure, behavior, and arrangement, in physical observations. In fact, every example he gives concerns observed patterns in empirical and experimental research and the attempt to describe and thus predict those patterns. When scientists find a different mathematical way of describing a pattern, one that says exactly the same thing but in fewer words, they are not discovering a user-friendly universe, but merely improving their ability to understand what they observe.

 

That aside, Steiner's most compelling cases involve situations where one mathematical approach was introduced into the search for an adequate description of certain repeating patterns in empirical observation, simply because there were certain similarities between the new approach and one previously solved. That is, even though the two mathematical descriptions were not identical, they were judged similar, and they were thus tried, and ultimately turned out successful. Steiner says this means human notions of mathematical 'similarity' must correspond to real features of the universe, so the universe is suspiciously built for human notions.

 

There are at least two problems with using his examples in such a way that Steiner never addresses.

 

First, the heuristic of mathematical similarity does not entail any underlying metaphysics. One can use any method one wants for discovering facts—including picking ideas out of a hat. As long as the result bears out in empirical test, it is acceptable. I do not have to "assume" that there is anything mystically efficacious, anything metaphysically rational, about picking ideas out of a hat. I can still do it, simply because it is easy, and I know I don't have to trust any results until they bear out in tests anyway. The fact is, even such a totally random method will produce successes. And only the successes would get published and thus heard of. Steiner would then come along, see that all the scientific discoveries in print came from picking ideas randomly from a hat, and wrongly conclude that there is some mystical power inherent in hats to produce knowledge of the universe. He might say the universe had to be Hatrocentric to explain this phenomenon. But he would be wrong. He would have forgotten to consider the hundreds of hatpicked ideas that fell by the wayside. Thus, even if it is the case that scientists have been using a heuristic that was contrary to the metaphysical assumptions of Naturalism, it would neither follow that they were acting irrationally (since they need not assume their heuristic has a metaphysical basis—we do what is easy and engages us, what we know how to do well, because we're human) nor that the universe was somehow metaphysically linked with that heuristic (since even a totally random method will score hits, and only successes will likely survive in the historical record).

 

Second, there is still a valid Physicalist reasoning behind the heuristic of mathematical similarity. Since a mathematical description of phenomenon A is a description of a pattern of observed behaviors and effects, when phenomenon B shares a similar pattern of observed behaviors and effects, it is reasonable to expect that its mathematical description will be similar to that of phenomenon A. We do not have to know what the physical basis is for this similarity: we observe a similarity, so we know it's a fact. We are fully within our rights as Naturalists to assume there is a physical basis to such a mathematically-described similarity until we can identify exactly what that basis is.

 

Consider it this way: if some underlying physical fact is the cause of phenomenon A, and some other underlying physical fact is the cause of phenomenon B, and phenomena A and B are behaving similarly or have similar external physical features, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the underlying physical facts in both cases also bear certain similar patterns (similar arrangements, similar geometries, similar sequences, etc.), and thus any description of one pattern will have something in common with a description of the other pattern. It is thus still consistent with Physicalism to try out aspects of the mathematical description of phenomenon A on phenomenon B. It might not work out, but the odds of our hitting on something are certainly going to be greater than chance—and as we see it, this is precisely because Physicalism is true. And any heuristic that hits better than chance is reasonable to pursue, especially when we have none better.

 

Example 1: Maxwell's Anticipation of EM Radiation

I will show how this works on one of Steiner's most prized examples: Maxwell's prediction of electromagnetic radiation. This is how Steiner argues the case:

 

Maxwell noted that the experimentally confirmed laws of Faraday, Coulomb, and Ampère, when put in differential form, contradicted the conservation of electrical charge. By tinkering with Ampère's law, adding to it the "displacement current," Maxwell got the laws to be consistent with, indeed to imply, charge conservation. With no other warrant than this (Ampère's law stood up well experimentally; on the other hand, there was "very little experimental evidence" for the reality of a "displacement current"), Maxwell made the indicated changes. Ignoring the empirical basis....This made electromagnetic radiation a mathematical possibility. [As a result] Hertz exclaimed that the mathematical formulas are "wiser than we are." (77)

 

To dismiss Steiner's entire thesis, Naturalists need only answer one question: Why did Maxwell's mathematical tactic work in anticipating physical facts? The answer involves the combination of two facts: the reasonable assumptions that follow from the worldview of Naturalism (especially Physicalism), and the nature of mathematics as a human tool for describing observed patterns in the physical world.

 

The Assumptions of Naturalism: It is reasonable to expect on Naturalism that things don't pop in and out of existence uncaused...that is, that matter, energy, things like that, are conserved. You don't get something from nothing. Thus, it is reasonable on Naturalism to expect that 'charge', like matter and energy, must be conserved. Since the descriptions of various charge-related phenomena extant in Maxwell's day did not allow conservation of charge, obviously any Naturalist should have suspected there was something wrong with those descriptions. That this hunch turned out correct was in fact a vindication of Naturalist assumptions, not a challenge to them.

 

The Function of Math as Description: The basic assumption driving Maxwell's tactic (that charge must be conserved) followed directly from Naturalism. Then he got to work on the descriptions he suspected were flawed. To that end, the 'mathematical' things Maxwell did, from Steiner's own account, were merely two: to put certain laws describing the behaviors of charge "in differential form," and then to add a variable to the equations that corrected the conservation error ("displacement current). The first act is logically necessary on Naturalism: differential equations describe continuities, and Naturalists of the time were well aware that nature works in continuous, not broken, processes (the discovery of Quantum Mechanics changed this, but only after enormous empirical evidence was accumulated), so Maxwell's first mathematical act was totally explicable on Naturalism. He had to make the descriptions conform to the physical facts before he could do anything else with them.

 

The second act is a logically sound hypothetical step: if charge isn't being conserved, then it must be going somewhere. Maxwell rightly picked the simplest imaginable solution first (e.g. that it all went one place, rather than several), which due to human limitations is always the best place to start an investigation, and which statistically is the most likely (simple patterns and behaviors happen far more often then complex ones—since Maxwell's day, again, the discoveries of Chaos Theory have changed that assumption, but again only after vast amounts of empirical evidence confirmed and thus justified the change in our assumptions).

 

That Maxwell's moves anticipated EM radiation was therefore a natural conclusion from entirely Naturalist assumptions. Charge was going somewhere, which we knew because the descriptions of charge behavior that we had, which were empirically well-grounded, left out and thus entailed the disappearance (or spontaneous appearance) of charge, which begged for an explanation. Maxwell hypothesized such an explanation by making some simple and obvious changes to the descriptions that accounted for this discrepancy—changes to the way the pattern of behavior was described that allowed inclusion of another element to that pattern. The changes he made were the simplest ones he could make that didn't invalidate but instead preserved the predictive success of the existing descriptions, while also bringing them into line with conservation laws. And the changes he made were still, in fact, hypothetical. They could have turned out wrong, and many tinkerings with these equations, by him and others, no doubt preceded this success and failed. But on Naturalism, his final guess was a smart one, and one likely to succeed. So we should not be amazed that it did.

 

There was even more background to this account that confirmed the Naturalistic assumptions driving Maxwell that Steiner includes but unreasonably dismisses (77-78). Steiner also argues absurd things like "differential equations have many solutions, and there is no reason to believe...that we can produce something just because it solves an equation" (79). Steiner is wrong. Of the solutions to equations that successfully describe physical phenomena Naturalists can rest assured at least one of them must correspond to the truth, to the actual underlying physical facts, and that other results, which are not solutions, will not. Thus, even on Naturalism it is a reasonable heuristic to test only the few solutions available to accurate descriptions, since any other notions would not accord with observation and thus would have to be false.

 

So when Steiner claims:

 

Maxwell's reasoning was Pythagorean [i.e. not Naturalistic, because] once he had a mathematical structure which described many different phenomena of electricity and magnetism, the mathematical structure itself, rather than anything underlying it, defined the analogy between the different phenomena. (79)

 

He is twice wrong. First, the existence of charge defined the analogy between the different phenomena, not the mathematical descriptions of charge's behavior. Since they all described behaviors involving charge, it was a reasonable Naturalistic assumption that all the behaviors were physically related, and therefore could be described with one description rather than several. And so long as that one description made all the same predictions of the behavior of charge, it would be semantically identical, i.e. describe exactly the same thing, because that is the way humans made mathematics—nothing about the universe makes a three-sentence description of an apple reducible to one sentence. Only the way humans invented language makes that so. The apple remains the same no matter what.

 

Second, the "mathematical structure" of the equations involved corresponded to the physical structure of the observed behavior of charge. Thus, any manipulation of the description entailed physical differences in the thing described. So if the thing described must conserve charge, and the description of that thing does not conserve charge, it is reasonable to refine the description to resolve the discrepancy. No other description is likely to come close to the physical facts, whereas we know at least one such description must do so. By making our revisions to the description as few and as simple as possible, we would import only one hypothetical solution to the discrepancy (in this case, Maxwell's "displacement current"). That is fully in accord with Naturalist assumptions, and is logically always the first place to start looking. Thus, everything Maxwell did mathematically has a corresponding physical significance. And he surely knew that. It had that significance even if Maxwell did not yet know what physical facts underlie the physical difference between the two descriptions (the one that described a world without conservation of charge, and the one that described it with conservation of charge). It was a valid, Naturalistic hypothesis all the same, leading to fruitful inquiry.

 

Example 2: Matrix Mechanics

And all this should alert us in the fringe cases Steiner uses, too, such as his repeated discussions of the efficacy of applying matrix mathematics to quantum phenomena. For the same things follow: (1) The mathematical models are adopted because they successfully describe observed physical phenomena, not because the universe is magically 'beautiful' and 'convenient'; (2) the features and elements of those descriptions that are redundant and unnecessary are not likely to correspond to physical facts but are probably the product of the human inefficiency of our tools of description, and since, also, no physical facts support their retention, it is Naturalistically plausible to revise the descriptions (i.e. the equations) so as to eliminate what has no empirical support or plausible physical basis, and thus to make our descriptions convenient for us; and finally, (3) when the phenomena show patterns of observed behavior that match other patterns of behavior (real or imagined, such as when quantum phenomena show patterns of behavior matching patterns described by matrices) it is Naturalistically reasonable to employ the same description, suitably modified to fit the generic description to the particular cases, because (a) they both make the same predictions, but the old description was flawed by human inefficiency while the new description is more convenient for us, yet either way the universe remains the same; and (b) the same observed pattern in each case is likely due to the same pattern of underlying structure. That is, it is improbable that a totally different internal structure would produce an identical external structure—not impossible, but it is a reasonable heuristic to test first what is physically probable. Just as Maxwell did. This is especially justified when the descriptions we have we know must be wrong, because they exclude something we otherwise know is going on (like the conservation of charge).

 

And, last but not least, we might even be wrong. Matrix mathematics might be a convenient way for us to predict quantum phenomena and yet be incorrect descriptions after all, just like the erroneous equations Maxwell faced that didn't conserve charge as they ought. We may be awaiting a new Maxwell to find a better description that is more complete and more successful in inspiring inquiry into the physical facts that underlie the observations, which so far we have not found—possibly because we have distracted ourselves with mathematically convenient but not entirely correct representations, but more likely because we lack the tools to observe the facts we need, like a miraculous 'microscope' that could see quantum particles in all their physical structure. It is likely we will never have such means and so will never be in a position to really know what is going on at that level, but human limitations are not limitations on nature. Just because we can never go into a cave does not mean that cave is empty.

 

Another Worry

Most of Steiner's examples fall to one or more of the above observations and are thus to be rejected. Some examples used by Steiner are also suspicious. For example, he claims (by citing Peirce as his authority) that there is no physical explanation for the applicability of inverse square laws to physical phenomena, but he rests this on the undefended and unexplained rejection of obvious geometrical explanations (36). Since geometry is certainly the reason for inverse square phenomena, it seems most disturbing that he doesn't even try to refute this, but assumes the reader will ignorantly accept his assertions to the contrary. This put me on guard: how many other of his examples are scientifically incorrect? Why is he citing a single scientist from forty years ago as his sole authority? One wonders what, say, Hawking would say about the matter today—or, indeed, what your average college textbook says.

 

As a result of this tendency, I was left uncomfortable trusting many of his claims. For example, he often asserts that certain scientists (like Einstein) used no physical reasoning in their choice to apply a particular mathematical solution to a problem, and he bases this on the fact that the relevant published papers state no such reasoning. But they don't have to—indeed, the principle of parsimony generally requires that one not include unproven assumptions in a scientific paper. What a brief and empirically rigorous paper says does not tell us what was in the mind of the actual scientist during his process of hypothesis abduction—and I find it highly suspicious that a man like Einstein would disregard physical reasoning in advancing an idea, a man who was so committed to physical reasoning that he refused for the longest time to accept many of the claims of Quantum Theory of his day because they lacked such reasoning. The only way to check Steiner's claims, then, is to redo all his research—to discover what Einstein actually was thinking at the time, from all his notes and papers and memoires—and any writer who puts you in such a suspicious state of mind is hard to trust generally.

 

Covert God of the Gaps Argumentation

In the end, when we wipe away every argument in Steiner's book that is based on the false assumptions outlined earlier, his book stands with only one formally valid but still incorrect argument left: scientists have not been able as yet to provide a physical explanation of certain observations in areas like Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics, therefore there is probably no such explanation, ergo Naturalism (or at least Physicalism) is false. He pushes for the falsity of Naturalism generally by arguing that the only explanation left is anthropocentric: the universe simply behaves according to complex mathematical rules that have no physical basis and therefore it must have a super-mental basis anticipating the human species. He does not even seem aware of Platonic Naturalists like Paul Davies who see no incompatibility between non-physical entities and Naturalism. Davies would add a middle solution, I imagine: that though the complex mathematical behaviors of the universe may not be based in anything physical, they are not based in anything uniquely intelligent or mental either, but are simply brute facts of the nature of the universe, which we humans have evolved an adept skill at spying out and describing. As a Physicalist, I disagree with this idea, but if one wants to take on Naturalism, one has to be able to refute all forms of Naturalism, not just Physicalism.

 

But Physicalism is not actually in danger from Steiner's only valid argument. Why? Because it is met with another valid argument that carries greater weight: scientists have consistently found physical explanations for every phenomenon they have been able to thoroughly examine, constantly and without exception, for millions of physical facts and attributes of our universe, and have not found such explanations only where they have not been able to thoroughly examine the facts (and as it happens, though still hypothetical, Superstring theory now offers a complete physical basis for the success of matrix mechanics, something Steiner seems to think is impossible). Therefore, that scientists have yet to explain such facts has much more probably to do with their inability to "get to" those facts than with those facts somehow being fundamentally different than all the millions and billions of other facts scientists have gotten to in the past three thousand years.

 

In other words, the trend of history is entirely against Steiner, and offers no support whatever for his conclusion. There is not a single instance on record of any fact that has been thoroughly examined by scientists that turned out to have no identifiable physical origin. That is why almost all of Steiner's examples are on the fringes of science, not the settled facts of science: he can only find his "failures" where scientists have been unable to make the needed observations to resolve the matter. And as a matter of fact, scientists all remain committed to finding physical causes of the very observations Steiner uses as his examples. No physicist has thrown up his hands and said "Hey! We're wasting our time! There is no physical basis to these effects, it's just a mathematical fact of the universe!" Indeed, all physicists would find such an approach, entailed by Steiner's argument, to be quite absurd, even antiscientific. You can say "I can't get into that cave, so there must be nothing in it" if you want to, but you would be betraying the very principles of science if you did. And going against all the evidence and precedent of history as well: scientists have always found things in the caves they've gotten into. Why lose confidence in their tactics now?

 

Conclusion

The bottom line: any universe composed of conserved and discrete objects arranged into patterns in a multidimensional space will always be describable by mathematics. We invented mathematics just for that purpose: to describe such things. But are patterns of conserved and discrete objects in a multidimensional space at all anthropocentric? Do they anticipate or assume in any way the eventual arrival of Homo sapiens? No. And that is the ruinous end of Steiner's thesis. The mathematization of nature does not require or even imply anything anthropocentric about the universe and thus offers no challenge at all to Naturalism."

 

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/steiner.html

 

Not to mention just that article, here is another one about inference in particular, I think anyone interested in this subject should read this link actually.

 

http://www.designinference.com/desinf.htm

 

 

Not to mention that physics in this case attempting to use the human organism lack the understanding of that organism to apply such. The reason symmetry and beauty appear to us may have more to do with evolution then anything else. Its a marker of fitness or health really for reproduction, many studies have been done to find this out. Not to mention the function of the brain organ for instance, pinkerton probably has more to say on this with truth to it then anything the physics people are talking about. That’s the trouble, its like a bunch of people all looking a single parts of a puzzle with different directions really. I dont know if we would have evolved to use CO2 though, or if evolution would have at all had the same outcome in the absence of oxygen, thats purely speculative really.

[fredrik]

I'm not sure I got your point in those long posts, but I don't understand why you keep fearing that we don't need experiments? Exepriements is nothing but observations, input. Without that we don't even have anything to discuss or disagree about. I think the question here is understanding howto interpret, and respond to, the input. We are looking for a invariant pattern here - as we always do, and the suggestion I talked about was that this pattern may in fact be rules of optimal inference in a world of information exchange. Physical exchanges can be loosely thought of as different flavours of information exhange, because there are clearly different types of information statements.

 

Mathematics isn't physics, it's a language derived from logic we use to desribe things that would otherwise be hard to quantify. Mathematics is the study for this language and it's properties. Mathematics has an interesting philosophy and logical foundations of it's ow that IMO aren't quite the same as the philosophical and logical foundations of physics.

 

Physics is the study of the workings of reality or abstractions thereof, rather than the mathematical study of arbitrary abstractions. But a physicists that knows no mathematics would be crippled because it's a tool we use. Of course, especially theoretical physics tend to be more abstract, but a physicists that work on a theory because it has nice geometric properties or because it corresponds to nice mathematical formalism has IMO lost the focus. We must be able to use mathematics and abstract thinking but without loosing the focus on reality, and there I think a grain of philosophy is needed to paste it all together. And this is also where I think it's possible to gain some basic grasp without math, but to apply the ideas in a real situations one needs to actually process data, and computer predictions.

 

But this doesn't mean reality breaks down with human understanding. If anything I think the human is a result of these rules, applied through evolution.

 

/Fredrik

[foodchain]

I'm not sure I got your point in those long posts, but I don't understand why you keep fearing that we don't need experiments? Exepriements is nothing but observations, input. Without that we don't even have anything to discuss or disagree about. I think the question here is understanding howto interpret, and respond to, the input. We are looking for a invariant pattern here - as we always do, and the suggestion I talked about was that this pattern may in fact be rules of optimal inference in a world of information exchange. Physical exchanges can be loosely thought of as different flavours of information exhange, because there are clearly different types of information statements.

 

Mathematics isn't physics, it's a language derived from logic we use to desribe things that would otherwise be hard to quantify. Mathematics is the study for this language and it's properties. Mathematics has an interesting philosophy and logical foundations of it's ow that IMO aren't quite the same as the philosophical and logical foundations of physics.

 

Physics is the study of the workings of reality or abstractions thereof, rather than the mathematical study of arbitrary abstractions. But a physicists that knows no mathematics would be crippled because it's a tool we use. Of course, especially theoretical physics tend to be more abstract, but a physicists that work on a theory because it has nice geometric properties or because it corresponds to nice mathematical formalism has IMO lost the focus. We must be able to use mathematics and abstract thinking but without loosing the focus on reality, and there I think a grain of philosophy is needed to paste it all together. And this is also where I think it's possible to gain some basic grasp without math, but to apply the ideas in a real situations one needs to actually process data, and computer predictions.

 

But this doesn't mean reality breaks down with human understanding. If anything I think the human is a result of these rules, applied through evolution.

 

/Fredrik

 

If I am right most of this goes back to quantum mechanics, or all the work around it right?

[fredrik]

If I am right most of this goes back to quantum mechanics, or all the work around it right?

 

Some of it, but far from all of it. Alot of it is not really resolved and belongs to the future So if you feel bothered about certain things I think you're not alone, it's not settled yet.

 

The philosophy of the original minimalistic copenhagen interpretation is compatible with the lineout above. Either one gets a basic standard understanding (including the math) and then formulate your own opinion, or you can try to dig up some of the old philosophy books. There is one non-mathematical book by one of the QM founders,

 

"Physics and philosophy - the revolution in modern science" by Werner Heisenberg, it's a book which in plain english tries to elaborate the original philosophical considerations made back when QM was founded. Of course it's not that awfully modern anyway as the book is from 1958. But beeing written by one of the founders of QM it's a nice introductory books and it contains from what I recall not a single formula.

 

However it does not treat the new things and "optimal inference" methods... this is far more modern than QM. But take the QM foundations, combine then with the foundations of thermodynamics and bayesian logic and do some further abstractions and I think what I tried to write above will make sense.

 

/Fredrik

[foodchain]

Some of it, but far from all of it. Alot of it is not really resolved and belongs to the future So if you feel bothered about certain things I think you're not alone, it's not settled yet.

 

The philosophy of the original minimalistic copenhagen interpretation is compatible with the lineout above. Either one gets a basic standard understanding (including the math) and then formulate your own opinion, or you can try to dig up some of the old philosophy books. There is one non-mathematical book by one of the QM founders,

 

"Physics and philosophy - the revolution in modern science" by Werner Heisenberg, it's a book which in plain english tries to elaborate the original philosophical considerations made back when QM was founded. Of course it's not that awfully modern anyway as the book is from 1958. But beeing written by one of the founders of QM it's a nice introductory books and it contains from what I recall not a single formula.

 

However it does not treat the new things and "optimal inference" methods... this is far more modern than QM. But take the QM foundations, combine then with the foundations of thermodynamics and bayesian logic and do some further abstractions and I think what I tried to write above will make sense.

 

/Fredrik

 

This means experiment right, in the real world for instance. In more then just calculations on a blackboard on a computer for instance right? Don’t get me wrong on the math part, its just that I think I know what’s going on a little bit. Think of biology for example, a great deal of biology can be understood via evolution, it magically makes a lot of what ecology studies make sense, such is physically possible to study, in experiment. Now talking the philosophy of it into consideration, it took such a long span of time, millions upon millions of years for an animal to sit in a tree and through fecal matter.

 

Now all the possible abstractions of evolution in human thought happen to be numerous, and in turn the only thing that’s able to stop all of the madness really is the ability to actually produce a hypothesis about something and then test it really. Advances in the ways in which this can be done ranges from the molecular scale to the ecological scale, but it all provides physical truths about the reality of life. In terms of people simply using math, evolution has been proven false, to never have occurred, to having occurred, to so many possibilities because that is math. There is a slight separation of the two, the math and reality is all. Simply using just one probably is not healthy, as math allows for a logical framework to conceptualize and work with reality, but the point being that you can model so much with math, and then how to you refine the math back to explaining the natural world, or reality.

 

Such as for example the random chance in math that earth could support life, well how would you model what with math, do we know what’s needed absolutely for life to exist, or what forms life can take, do we know how many planets happen to exist that can suit this? I think with the missing or gaps in such knowledge the math of such could never represent truth really.

 

So with QM or really the atom, we lack in a great deal of ways to directly physically study so much of this, this in turn leads to problems if you will. For instance in our past, with what the moon was, or what lived on it. You can find so much or so many ideas really, but we learned about the moon really when we were finally able to physically study it. For instance the idea of spacetime and it being curved by gravity which you can see via light, I am still a bit confused if the effect on light by masses in space is not the product of photons interacting with any electromagnetic lines for instance the body may produce. TO the idea that blackholes could "move" in space, or is it the fabric that’s moving. You can model all of this with math, but I think its a fallacy to say ok, we made it work with numbers, so that must be the truth. In reality I don’t think such statistically works out, so mathematically is that false?

[fredrik]

I agree that there are problems/imperfections interfacing reality and any mathematical model. I think it's even in the very nature of everything that this is so. It IS fuzzy, and it is not perfect. But the amazing part is that in despite of the fuzz we can be amazingly successfull. Lack of perfection, does not, and never did inhibit substantial progress. Asking for perfection is asking too much. Our only reasonable request is for optimal progress constraint to the obvious incompleteness. Progress is also the key in evolution as well as learning. Progress is just another word for "preferred change". An evolutionary process does not know exactly where it's coming from, or where it's going. But it knows the way forward, relative to current.

 

I have no principal problems to merge evolution within the suggested abstract logic. Physical, cosmological and biological evolution can be thought of as "learning" or just "natural evolutions" are different views of the same thing. Of course this is partly cloudy and noone to my knowledge has so far claimed to have this crystal clear and nailed down, and proven. But I would expect that "natural evolution" would follow from the dynamics implied by the ideas.

 

I could well be way wrong. But I will walk in the direction of what I currently judge to be preferred change.

 

Such as for example the random chance in math that earth could support life, well how would you model what with math, do we know what’s needed absolutely for life to exist, or what forms life can take, do we know how many planets happen to exist that can suit this? I think with the missing or gaps in such knowledge the math of such could never represent truth really.

 

To speculate: Suppose our models can eventually show that there is a natural evolution, based on probability theory. And perhaps we could describe the logic of this evolution. Perhaps we can also show that the odds are that patterns appears spontaneously evenetually. And this complexity may increase, and eventually I figure it would be a matter of definition what we label "life"? I see this withing reach. It's IMO not unexplainable. I think that all life needs to begin is the tendency of "natural evolution". Whatever the strange lifeforms looks like after 13 billion years I have no clue. And this "natural evolution" and it's logic is exactly what I have in mind. But first of all formulated in a generic and abstract setting. But I would expect that it's the SAME underlying logical or physical principles if you want, that is ultimately responsible for cosmic evolution as well as biological evolution.

 

But this is definitely way off from "standard QM". It's speculative and not a working theory yet. But it's one of the possible ways forward for science, along with other candidates. But this IMO at least, has the potential to possibly bridge the gap I think you are thinking about?

 

People talke about fractals in some other thread, and I can picture loosely that the ruels of inference are "fractal like". Look at cosmic evolution, and look at biological evolution, learning sessions.. do we find anything similar in the logic? Is it a conincidence? I don't think so at least.

 

/Fredrik

[foodchain]

I agree that there are problems/imperfections interfacing reality and any mathematical model. I think it's even in the very nature of everything that this is so. It IS fuzzy, and it is not perfect. But the amazing part is that in despite of the fuzz we can be amazingly successfull. Lack of perfection, does not, and never did inhibit substantial progress. Asking for perfection is asking too much. Our only reasonable request is for optimal progress constraint to the obvious incompleteness. Progress is also the key in evolution as well as learning. Progress is just another word for "preferred change". An evolutionary process does not know exactly where it's coming from, or where it's going. But it knows the way forward, relative to current.

 

I have no principal problems to merge evolution within the suggested abstract logic. Physical, cosmological and biological evolution can be thought of as "learning" or just "natural evolutions" are different views of the same thing. Of course this is partly cloudy and noone to my knowledge has so far claimed to have this crystal clear and nailed down, and proven. But I would expect that "natural evolution" would follow from the dynamics implied by the ideas.

 

I could well be way wrong. But I will walk in the direction of what I currently judge to be preferred change.

 

 

 

To speculate: Suppose our models can eventually show that there is a natural evolution, based on probability theory. And perhaps we could describe the logic of this evolution. Perhaps we can also show that the odds are that patterns appears spontaneously evenetually. And this complexity may increase, and eventually I figure it would be a matter of definition what we label "life"? I see this withing reach. It's IMO not unexplainable. I think that all life needs to begin is the tendency of "natural evolution". Whatever the strange lifeforms looks like after 13 billion years I have no clue. And this "natural evolution" and it's logic is exactly what I have in mind. But first of all formulated in a generic and abstract setting. But I would expect that it's the SAME underlying logical or physical principles if you want, that is ultimately responsible for cosmic evolution as well as biological evolution.

 

But this is definitely way off from "standard QM". It's speculative and not a working theory yet. But it's one of the possible ways forward for science, along with other candidates. But this IMO at least, has the potential to possibly bridge the gap I think you are thinking about?

 

People talke about fractals in some other thread, and I can picture loosely that the ruels of inference are "fractal like". Look at cosmic evolution, and look at biological evolution, learning sessions.. do we find anything similar in the logic? Is it a conincidence? I don't think so at least.

 

/Fredrik

 

If I understand you I agree with you. Physics being a fundamental science in many regards seeks to explain the basis for physical reality, such as gravity. Be it chemistry or biology what is studied in physics for example, like thermodynamics, still apply. This is evident in study and research of course, and of course even the ability to see that hey, look its matter and energy right.

 

The problem I guess would be how you look at it in some regards if I follow your words correctly, the philosophy aspect. Now not to get into anything heavy, I am an agnostic, but not in a western monotheistic point of view, its in the point of view that no truth, or a yes or a no exists to make a decision on, to me that’s also naturalism or realism. People though of course differ in perception of such, and as such who knows what people mean when they are working on issues. Personally the philosophy aspect just as much as anything can produce fallacy as it can produce the need to study such as removed as possible from corruption via human thought. Such as any field, which is why I think the scientific method exists, and why math was defined to be somewhat inhuman in terms of the ability to interpret such, as 1+1=2, or at least it should right?

 

Still it goes back to the reality that exists, people can make so much possible in numbers, stuff that simply does not exist in reality for instance. Its also historical that math does not automatically reduce a problem to some form of absolute understanding and the concept of infinite precision in observation I guess. Like string theory, so much so fast, and no real way to experiment to test any of it currently, save for what cern might make possible.

 

If reality or nature is far more "bizarre" then humans can currently grasp I would agree, back in the past in terms of western culture at one point the earth was flat and the center of the universe, so yes we do learn and progress, but to say that something is impossible to understand, or that infinite precision cannot be reached is simply speculation, if something could not reach infinite precision how could anything in reality actually work, how could evolution take place or the orbit of a planet come to be? Science in my opinion, more so the natural sciences, such as chemistry, physics and biology and the rest like geology need to study purely fro truth, simply having the math part is not enough in all reality, and to simply rely on it is fallacy in my opinion and will derail progression into subterfuges of sorts that really only progress away from truth. This is then compounded with problems that humans generate, such as because of organic evolution, that such means x in some many ways without the need to actually apply, test or experiment. Its that getting physical with reality and with scientific rigor that something like a computer is able to exist, to being able to understand that human behavior is destroying the environment that gave rise to life as we know it. Fuzzy is a product of evolving in my opinion, as a steam engine was probably a fuzzy concept on its way to being something realized or usable. So much hypothetically, but what’s real and how do we know this or find such out?

[fredrik]

I sense we are discussing different things at a time here which is confusing.

 

"Corrupted" or not, the human brain follows the laws of nature as much as anything else. So I am not sure in what sense you think the brain is corrupting. It's probably not corrupting anything more than the electric field "corrupts" free electrons, or that black holes "corrupts" spacetime?

 

I think what you refer to as corruption is that fact that we make models that later prove to not stand up to the tests. But at that point we adapt. We run into conflicts, and we resolve them. I would not personally call that "diversion" a corruption. I'd call it evolution or learning or equilibration and it's really part of the concept. Instead of focusing on the apparent corruption, I focus on the way nature *resolves* the "corruption". Because it does, and the idea is that we can describe a consistent logic to this! But by the same token, this we can of course we misaken on this logic as well.... but I can live with that, because regardless of the chance of transient failure, progress with time is unavoidable.

 

The human mind is clearly not perfect. We make mistakes, and wrong guesses. But that doesn't mean we are useless - it's part of the game. Regardless of all the mistakes we make, we do make progress. The proof is in that the successes dominate over the mistakes.

 

Imperfections, does not prevent us from progress, it's rather a requirement. I'm not sure if I understand you, but I defeinitely agree that somehow we always find details that bug us, something is missing and is imperfect. This used to bug me too but I kept thinking about it and have reached a resolution and can move on. That does not mean I have resolved the imperfection, but I have found a (for me) consistent way of handling it. I've turned it into an opportunity rather than a problem.

 

if something could not reach infinite precision how could anything in reality actually work, how could evolution take place or the orbit of a planet come to be?

 

I see no problem here. The changes we all "live" are powered by the imperfections themselves. So what you suggest to be a problem, I consider to be they key to understanding.

 

The ideas is tat this will be quanfied by models of course. How imperfections power change, can be given probabilistic interpretations.

 

So the human brain need not be perfect, and we do not need to be almighty, for this approache to make sense:

 

Upon receiving conflicting information, a human will revise their opinions as per certain logic. We evaluate the confidence in the conflicting parties and thus find some "best" update. We are not very likely to revise our opinion based on poor evidence of low reliability. Such things is all accounted for by our brains.

 

But what about stuff that has no brain?

 

A particles or subsystems "opinion" is just it's state. Unless it receives conflicting information it will stay in this state. State includes all qualities, including relative motion etc. If a particle is exposed to a force that is in conflict with the current state, the state must be updated and respond to the force. Even a particle has various "evaluations". Gravity and intertia for example. The gravity force from a small mass on a large mass will leave a minor impact only, because the relative significance of the small disturbance relative to the current state.

 

I think we may understand alot of this by focusing on the logic of "decision making", or the logic of resolving conflicting evidence, and I see how this can lead us also to the logic of physical interactions, but originating from more fundamental first principles. At least more fundamental than present.

 

In essence all we can do is guess. And howto be scientific when nothing is perfect? The method would be optimal inference. Howto define optimal when we don't know that truth? That is optimum relative to what we know. This is no more weird than when someone can argue in cases where their decisions have proven unlucky, and they can still argue that it was the correct decision given the information that was at hand. What is the "best guess" is relative to your prior. And deviations are used for corrections.

 

I've tried to describe the principles in words... so the concept exists as is, but in order to tell what is the probability of a given electron transition in an atom... we need math to find the number. But it's a tool. No need to confuse the equations with reality? The equations is how we, to our knowledge, can best describe this. But math is alive too. If we need new mathematical or logical formalisms nothing stops us from creating it. No need to try to squeeze everything into old given mathematical frameworks at all cost.

 

/Fredrik

[foodchain]

I sense we are discussing different things at a time here which is confusing.

 

"Corrupted" or not, the human brain follows the laws of nature as much as anything else. So I am not sure in what sense you think the brain is corrupting. It's probably not corrupting anything more than the electric field "corrupts" free electrons, or that black holes "corrupts" spacetime?

 

I think what you refer to as corruption is that fact that we make models that later prove to not stand up to the tests. But at that point we adapt. We run into conflicts, and we resolve them. I would not personally call that "diversion" a corruption. I'd call it evolution or learning or equilibration and it's really part of the concept. Instead of focusing on the apparent corruption, I focus on the way nature *resolves* the "corruption". Because it does, and the idea is that we can describe a consistent logic to this! But by the same token, this we can of course we misaken on this logic as well.... but I can live with that, because regardless of the chance of transient failure, progress with time is unavoidable.

 

The human mind is clearly not perfect. We make mistakes, and wrong guesses. But that doesn't mean we are useless - it's part of the game. Regardless of all the mistakes we make, we do make progress. The proof is in that the successes dominate over the mistakes.

 

Imperfections, does not prevent us from progress, it's rather a requirement. I'm not sure if I understand you, but I defeinitely agree that somehow we always find details that bug us, something is missing and is imperfect. This used to bug me too but I kept thinking about it and have reached a resolution and can move on. That does not mean I have resolved the imperfection, but I have found a (for me) consistent way of handling it. I've turned it into an opportunity rather than a problem.

 

 

 

I see no problem here. The changes we all "live" are powered by the imperfections themselves. So what you suggest to be a problem, I consider to be they key to understanding.

 

The ideas is tat this will be quanfied by models of course. How imperfections power change, can be given probabilistic interpretations.

 

So the human brain need not be perfect, and we do not need to be almighty, for this approache to make sense:

 

Upon receiving conflicting information, a human will revise their opinions as per certain logic. We evaluate the confidence in the conflicting parties and thus find some "best" update. We are not very likely to revise our opinion based on poor evidence of low reliability. Such things is all accounted for by our brains.

 

But what about stuff that has no brain?

 

A particles or subsystems "opinion" is just it's state. Unless it receives conflicting information it will stay in this state. State includes all qualities, including relative motion etc. If a particle is exposed to a force that is in conflict with the current state, the state must be updated and respond to the force. Even a particle has various "evaluations". Gravity and intertia for example. The gravity force from a small mass on a large mass will leave a minor impact only, because the relative significance of the small disturbance relative to the current state.

 

I think we may understand alot of this by focusing on the logic of "decision making", or the logic of resolving conflicting evidence, and I see how this can lead us also to the logic of physical interactions, but originating from more fundamental first principles. At least more fundamental than present.

 

In essence all we can do is guess. And howto be scientific when nothing is perfect? The method would be optimal inference. Howto define optimal when we don't know that truth? That is optimum relative to what we know. This is no more weird than when someone can argue in cases where their decisions have proven unlucky, and they can still argue that it was the correct decision given the information that was at hand. What is the "best guess" is relative to your prior. And deviations are used for corrections.

 

I've tried to describe the principles in words... so the concept exists as is, but in order to tell what is the probability of a given electron transition in an atom... we need math to find the number. But it's a tool. No need to confuse the equations with reality? The equations is how we, to our knowledge, can best describe this. But math is alive too. If we need new mathematical or logical formalisms nothing stops us from creating it. No need to try to squeeze everything into old given mathematical frameworks at all cost.

 

/Fredrik

 

Right, such as when I am standing in a large store for instance, ripe with activity. Now I am at the checkout stand, and from where I sit would it be possible for me to ever know really what’s going on where I cant directly see really? Would it be possible to derive via what’s known about the store probabilities of what’s occurring, I would think so, but those probabilities don’t ever really sum up to being much more then that, or no accurate precision is ever gained really. Now I know for instance probability is used in many sciences, but they are used in the format for testing the hypothetical really. Such as going over 100 square miles of ocean, what’s the probability that genetic variation will exist in regards to bacteria, then from that what’s the probability that for every 100 miles square of ocean this will hold true, and does that say anything for instance. Personally I think you could quickly get lost in the numbers is all, and stop taking samples of bacteria to notice what may be really going on with bacteria for instance. Though from a probability landscape, the difference in say type of bees or why the change exists in them could be some probability on the side of biological life forms trying to gain precision for survival in a giving environment really, or something less then absolutely stable overall frozen in time.

 

This is where I could agree with the mathematical tool you subscribe as being useful, as something of a probe really, but it would have to derive from what we do know, or think we know, and of course the outcome to me in my opinion would have to reveal something at least testable, or I would never really consider it more then being hypothetical really. I understand that things are in flux, or happen to be dynamic, the universe is a fine example from what I know, and that probability would be a powerful tool for studying such like it happens to be in regards to psychology and individuals for instance. The problem to me comes in where you simply just use the math, and no longer care for the experiment, or the attempt to falsify the data provided by the math, or the thoughts on any particular subject provided by the math. I mean one last example on evolution, it being such a highly contested subject really, there is no room for air in regards to study in such. What I mean by this is how many people would buy the idea of evolution if at a point blank state it existed as nothing more then a hypothesis provided by some statistical framework, and had no other evidence to support it? Just as the same could be said of global climate change or anything really.

[Royston]

Such as going over 100 square miles of ocean, what’s the probability that genetic variation will exist in regards to bacteria, then from that what’s the probability that for every 100 miles square of ocean this will hold true, and does that say anything for instance. Personally I think you could quickly get lost in the numbers is all, and stop taking samples of bacteria to notice what may be really going on with bacteria for instance.

 

I was studying modelling population changes a while ago, and it's really not that big a deal when an approximation is clearly out, and it's just a case of gathering some data to make the model more accurate...why would that change. You have to gather data to find out why the model would be out, you don't just guess...so I don't understand your point here. This really, has nothing to do with the OP, AFAICS Bascule was just highlighting the possible implications of the findings.

[bascule]

Would this include Bohmian mechanics?

 

I'm still quite interested in the answer to this question. Do these experiments violate Bohm's interpretation of waveform collapse? (Bohm created a deterministic non-local hidden variable theory)

[fredrik]

I'm still quite interested in the answer to this question. Do these experiments violate Bohm's interpretation of waveform collapse? (Bohm created a deterministic non-local hidden variable theory)

 

I never liked the Bohm interpretation for various reasons and thus didn't spend that much energy to defend it so to speak.

 

In the orignal QM treatise I always like the copenhagen interpretaton best, for the basic reason that it's seem least speculative. That said I don't think it's complete by any means. For example, one major problem I see is that just because we can't tell, does not imply that we can't learn to tell. And IMO, the potential for this, is clearly immersed in the chaos.

 

Some people look for "hidden structures" sort of in line with what I imagine was Bohm's desire... and I do not see that anything currently excludes this. They way I see it, looking for hidden structures is simply learning... the problem/mistake is IMO to think that you can make use of information that you do not possess, or that you can be influenced by information that has not reached you.

 

I think we will come to understand this more in the future. This is aspects where I think QM is incomplete, and probably also responsible for some of the complications with regards to unification with general relativity.

 

OTOH, a mistake of the copenhagen-style thinking is that information we have is somehow static. And the only way to incorporate information leads to jerks or collapses of the functions - this is IMO unsatisfactory and going against intuition and the reason I think is related to the mentioned issues. But if information is (for some reasons) quantized then at some levels there may be an irreducible jerking going on.

 

I personally think the truth is somewhere in between.

 

I'd expect nature to act on each new evidnce continously and thus there is no need for collapses or jerks, except for possible sample to sample fluctuations, but which would probably be smoothed out quickly for many significant systems. Our current model IMO does not fully reflect this.

 

/Fredrik

[fredrik]

QM models the evolution, relative to your original initial information, all along. It does not take into account the fact that information may in fact change dynamically as part of the dynamical evolution. I see this as a logical reference problem.

 

This problem is IMO quite analogous to the problem that lead to general relativity. One can not define a local reference and assume that it will have any universal validity as you move away from the conditions that defined it. The relation has to be transported along with your description.

 

I think the same can be said with probability theory. As things evolve, so does actually our event spaces. And we must model also our own reference. This is how it gets spooky and everything floats. But this is no news, it was the same in GR. But GR constrained itself to basically spacetime stuff.

 

I see it as a possible logical extension of the principles of relativity.

 

/Fredrik