Why Scientific Realism might be false?

[immortal]

This is a repetition of the same flawed argument that you presented to us earlier. The correction is the same now. Universe existed before the first human was born here at Earth. This is a scientific fact.

 

That's not a flawed argument.

 

Those conclusions are from leading quantum physicists working in the field of quantum mechanics. Anthony Leggett, Lee Smolin, Anton Zeilinger, Markus Aspelmeyer, David Deutsch, Caslav Brukner, Vlatko Vedral etc these are all researchers of quantum mechanics and it is they who are saying that Universe only exists when we are looking at it.

 

Remember Bernard d'Espagnat was not even mentioned in the list.

 

P.S.: What says an author whose main award is a prize given by an critiziced pseudo-religious foundation or what says a polemic author in a sensationalist magazine with a record of many mistaken covers does not qualify as evidence. Specially when corrections to 'arguments' are found in basic textbooks.

 

We know that no text on quantum mechanics is perfect because each author embraces his own version of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

 

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm/

 

Quantum Mechanics Textbooks

There are a great many textbooks available for studying quantum mechanics. Here are a few especially important ones with some notes to guide choices among them. It is good to work with two or three texts when learning QM. No text is perfect and differences in approach can illuminate the subject from different angles.

 

 

Why do you want to make things personal? There is no complete accepted consensus on this from the scientific community. If you have any arguments publish it or cite some sources to back up your arguments or call all physicists for a conference like the Solvay Conferences and let physicists put forward their arguments and present their thought experiments and then arrive at an accepted consensus on what is fact and what's not. You physicists might just Shut Up and Calculate the equations without questioning the assumptions of science but philosophers will question the assumptions of science because for them the truth is far more important than anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will go back to my main position, in simple terms. That religion, is wholly subjective and is just as, and logically more so, prostrate to misrepresentation of reality as "scientific realism". Can you not at least recognize the fallacy of your own argument? The scientific method has served us very well and has told us a lot about the world.

 

 

What is subjective and what is objective?

 

DOES THE MOON EXIST ONLY WHEN SOMEONE IS LOOKING AT IT?

 

According to Einstein, the whole purpose of science is to get behind the phenomena of experimental data and their mathematical description to the real world that underlies them. As he put it, "Reality is the business of physics". He believed, to the end, that the goal of science was to discover the way the world really is as opposed to our perceptions and conceptions of it, and that orthodox quantum theory had not only failed to achieve such a goal but had prematurely abandoned any such quest.

 

The thing is not about a hatredness towards physics or the scientific method. The thing is about giving an objective account of reality and if physics can't tell us how nature really is then we have to move beyond physics and that's why Bernard d'Espagnat leaves room for spirituality and says the noumenon can be known by other means and religion is in main contention for giving an objective account of reality which physics can't give. If you can't know what time and space actually is then its not true philosophy at all.

Edited August 10, 2012 by immortal

[akh]

What is subjective and what is objective?

 

Answering a question with another question, nice. Is still does not address my point.

 

 

 

The thing is about giving an objective account of reality and if physics can't tell us how nature really is then we have to move beyond physics and that's why Bernard d'Espagnat leaves room for spirituality and says the noumenon can be known by other means and religion is in main contention for giving an objective account of reality which physics can't give.

 

To take your cue, what do you mean objective? Its still requires the human interaction no matter how you look at it or what you say. You can't divorce the human factor. And I as I have said before, religion at the level of one individual cannot be compared to that of another individual by any measurable means, you cannot prove that they are the same, and it cannot be put to any test. If you cannot put it to a test, then what good is it? Its not of any good, because it could very well be, and is most likely wrong.

Edited August 10, 2012 by akh

[juanrga]

That's not a flawed argument.

 

Those conclusions are from leading quantum physicists working in the field of quantum mechanics. Anthony Leggett, Lee Smolin, Anton Zeilinger, Markus Aspelmeyer, David Deutsch, Caslav Brukner, Vlatko Vedral etc these are all researchers of quantum mechanics and it is they who are saying that Universe only exists when we are looking at it.

 

First, none of them has contradicted the standard cosmological/astrophysical model where atoms and planets existed before the first human was born.

 

Second, you cite people who is known for their work on applications of quantum mechanics (e.g. applications to optics) rather than by some contribution to the foundations. And several of them are notorious by their misunderstanding of some basic aspects of quantum mechanics.

 

Third, you cite people who are not in mutual agreement. E.g., Deutsch is well-known by being a proponent of the many-worlds nonsense, whereas Leggett correctly notice:

 

It seems to me that the many-worlds interpretation is nothing more than a verbal placebo, which gives the superficial impression of solving the problem at the cost of totally devaluing the concepts central to it, in particular, the concept of 'reality'. When it is said that the 'other worlds' are 'equally real', it seems to me that the words have become uprooted from the context which defines their meaning and have been allowed to float freely in interstellar space, so to speak, quite literally meaningless. I believe that our descendants two hundred years from now will have difficulty understanding how a distinguished group of scientists of the late twentieth century, albeit still a minority, could ever for a moment have embraced a solution which is such manifest philosophical nonsense.

 

To add more, there is not a single "many-world interpretation", because Deutch version openly disagrees with Everett version, Hoyle version openly disagrees with Deutch version... To be precise none of those many-world interpretations is a valid interpretation of QM, as a minority believes, but all them are a gross misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

 

We know that no text on quantum mechanics is perfect because each author embraces his own version of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

 

The non-existence of perfect textbooks is not characteristic of quantum mechanics. We know that no text on thermodynamics is perfect, we know that no text on organic chemistry is perfect, we know that no text on cell biology is perfect...

 

What is subjective and what is objective?

 

DOES THE MOON EXIST ONLY WHEN SOMEONE IS LOOKING AT IT?

 

And the same link says:

 

Einstein himself had no doubts as to the answer. In his view the commonsense belief is correct. The moon does exist in objective reality whether or not anyone is observing it.

 

Only people who do not understand quantum mechanics claims otherwise. In that link, a philosopher quotes ancient thoughts by Bohr and Heisenberg. Both were wrong about their interpretations of some aspects of QM that they help to develop, but they were pioneers, and it is much more easy to be wrong when exploring unknown territory than when the territory is covered in textbooks. However, posterior authors quoted in your link, such as Bernard d'Espagnat or David Mermin, have no excuse for saying nonsense once after QM was developed.

 

The same link offer philosophical arguments on why the Moon exists with independence of any human observing it. The same link explains why authors as Mermin are plain wrong (e.g. read point 2 in page 6).

Edited August 11, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

 

And the same link says:

 

Only people who do not understand quantum mechanics claims otherwise. In that link, a philosopher quotes ancient thoughts by Bohr and Heisenberg. Both were wrong about their interpretations of some aspects of QM that they help to develop, but they were pioneers, and it is much more easy to be wrong when exploring unknown territory than when the territory is covered in textbooks. However, posterior authors quoted in your link, such as Bernard d'Espagnat or David Mermin, have no excuse for saying nonsense once after QM was developed.

 

The same link offer philosophical arguments on why the Moon exists with independence of any human observing it. The same link explains why authors as Mermin are plain wrong (e.g. read point 2 in page 6).

 

I don't know to which camp you belong to but you just can't dismiss the claims of the other camp and act as though they doesn't exist and in fact their arguments are quite sound.

 

That commonsense view of Einstein is wrong as experiments violate Bell's Inequality and confirms the completeness of quantum mechanics and therefore we have to give up the classical local realistic worldview, local realism is false. Whatever the objective world might be but it is definitely different from the realism of Einstein. The scientific objects do not have pre-determined attributes (i.e There is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity). Reality is indeed Veiled. We need to abandon the usage of the multitudist language and as Einstein said quantum theory "had prematurely abandoned any such quest" to describe the nature as it really is and hence the need to know the noumenon by other means.

 

John Wheeler tackles those arguments and explains how the past of our universe has been actualized. The Universe just appears to exist to us as though it is billions of years old and I am definitely not sure about the reality which we are living in.

 

Answering a question with another question, nice. Is still does not address my point.

 

To take your cue, what do you mean objective? Its still requires the human interaction no matter how you look at it or what you say. You can't divorce the human factor. And I as I have said before, religion at the level of one individual cannot be compared to that of another individual by any measurable means, you cannot prove that they are the same, and it cannot be put to any test. If you cannot put it to a test, then what good is it? Its not of any good, because it could very well be, and is most likely wrong.

 

The Sankhya philosophy is purely atheistic and it is not entirely subjective. It is the analytic method of studying the constituents of nature(objective) and also the observers in it. It is a philosophy which systematically studies the noumenon of the world and Sankhya is the theory and Sankhya-yoga is the experimental methodology and the methodology works irrespective of whether you believe in a god or not. The noumenal world can be empirically tested.

[juanrga]

That commonsense view of Einstein is wrong as experiments violate Bell's Inequality and confirms the completeness of quantum mechanics and therefore we have to give up the classical local realistic worldview, local realism is false. Whatever the objective world might be but it is definitely different from the realism of Einstein. The scientific objects do not have pre-determined attributes (i.e There is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity). Reality is indeed Veiled. We need to abandon the usage of the multitudist language and as Einstein said quantum theory "had prematurely abandoned any such quest" to describe the nature as it really is and hence the need to know the noumenon by other means.

 

The same link that you gave above explains how Einstein was right and the moon is here when we do not look to it.

 

Contrary to a common myth, Einstein did not reject quantum mechanics but only Bohr/Heisenberg interpretation of it and specially the unphysical and ambiguous role of the observer. Einstein was a strong supporter of the Statistical Interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics is perfectly compatible with the Bell inequalities.

 

Quantum mechanics is a theory of physical reality as any other theory of physics. As Steven Weinberg remarks in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31:

 

All this familiar story is true, but it leaves out an irony. Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed, but not for the reason Einstein thought. The Copenhagen interpretation describes what happens when an observer makes a measurement, but the observer and the act of measurement are themselves treated classically. This is surely wrong: Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe.

 

Only a minor correction, instead of "quantum mechanical rules" I would say "quantum physical rules" or just "quantum rules".

 

John Wheeler tackles those arguments and explains how the past of our universe has been actualized. The Universe just appears to exist to us as though it is billions of years old and I am definitely not sure about the reality which we are living in.

 

Wheeler speculated about such matters, but he never offered a scientific argument and still less evidence of any kind. No known cosmology uses his invalid speculations.

[immortal]

The same link that you gave above explains how Einstein was right and the moon is here when we do not look to it.

 

Contrary to a common myth, Einstein did not reject quantum mechanics but only Bohr/Heisenberg interpretation of it and specially the unphysical and ambiguous role of the observer. Einstein was a strong supporter of the Statistical Interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum mechanics is perfectly compatible with the Bell inequalities.

 

Quantum mechanics is a theory of physical reality as any other theory of physics. As Steven Weinberg remarks in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31:

 

 

Only a minor correction, instead of "quantum mechanical rules" I would say "quantum physical rules" or just "quantum rules".

 

 

Wheeler speculated about such matters, but he never offered a scientific argument and still less evidence of any kind. No known cosmology uses his invalid speculations.

 

For the process of objectification of the nature or to build a concrete model of the world we need two important features,

 

1. Separability or spatial separation

2. Hidden variables or an element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity.

 

The violation of Bell's Inequality implies,

 

1. Nonseparability is a fact of nature which means two entangled quantum objects at the opposite ends of the universe should be treated as a single quantum system.

 

2. Physical quantities do not have pre-determined values and hence the universe cannot be described as made into individual parts and we have to abandon the multitudinous language of clasically describing the nature.

 

These two above points shows that physics cannot in any way model the objective world and those correlations demands explanations and to give an objective account of the physical system and not just merely predicting the probabilities that a system can exist in.

 

No one can deny the role of the observer or the choice of the experimenter in a quantum measurement.

 

Can a Future Choice Affect a Past Measurement's Outcome?

 

If experiments confirms this then we have to abandon our notion of free will. We don't have free will. Elitzur, one of the researcher says, "Aharonov's view is somewhat Talmudic: everything you're going to do is already known to God, but you still have the choice."

 

Our lives have been already shaped there is no point in shaping our own lives.

 

Not only the properties of physical objects does not exist prior to measurements its outcome too is actually constrained by both past and future.

[juanrga]

For the process of objectification of the nature or to build a concrete model of the world we need two important features,

 

1. Separability or spatial separation

2. Hidden variables or an element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity.

 

Physicists/astronomers do not need 1 nor 2 to build a model of the Moon for instance.

 

The violation of Bell's Inequality implies,

 

1. Nonseparability is a fact of nature which means two entangled quantum objects at the opposite ends of the universe should be treated as a single quantum system.

 

2. Physical quantities do not have pre-determined values and hence the universe cannot be described as made into individual parts and we have to abandon the multitudinous language of clasically describing the nature.

 

These two above points shows that physics cannot in any way model the objective world and those correlations demands explanations and to give an objective account of the physical system and not just merely predicting the probabilities that a system can exist in.

 

1 is false, even if two quantum systems were to be 'entangled' forever, we can study each one of them. Somewhat as we can study the Moon although it is not an isolated system.

 

2 is false as well, even if we were to accept the first part (which is a much) we already know that quantum mechanics is not a classical theory!

 

No one can deny the role of the observer or the choice of the experimenter in a quantum measurement.

 

Observers play absolute no role in quantum measurements. This is why models of quantum measurement do not even mention observers. I repeat this once again: Bohr/Heisenberg ancient philosophical ruminations about observers was completely incorrect.

 

Can a Future Choice Affect a Past Measurement's Outcome?

 

If experiments confirms this then we have to abandon our notion of free will. We don't have free will. Elitzur, one of the researcher says, "Aharonov's view is somewhat Talmudic: everything you're going to do is already known to God, but you still have the choice."

 

This is all incorrect. E.g. (3) and (4) do not apply.

[immortal]

Physicists/astronomers do not need 1 nor 2 to build a model of the Moon for instance.

 

Quantum mechanics is an universal theory and that's what the correspondance priniciple of Bohr says, as n=>infinity, quantum mechanics => classical mechanics.

 

1 is false, even if two quantum systems were to be 'entangled' forever, we can study each one of them. Somewhat as we can study the Moon although it is not an isolated system.

 

2 is false as well, even if we were to accept the first part (which is a much) we already know that quantum mechanics is not a classical theory!

 

This is not your personal blog, every paper on Bell experiments assert that nonseparability is a fact of nature and local realism is false. If you think otherwise then back up your assertions if not no one should take your claims seriously.

 

Observers play absolute no role in quantum measurements. This is why models of quantum measurement do not even mention observers. I repeat this once again: Bohr/Heisenberg ancient philosophical ruminations about observers was completely incorrect.

 

Its a consensus which you have not yet won. The camp of Bohr and Heisenberg is very much alive and active.

 

This is all incorrect. E.g. (3) and (4) do not apply.

 

It is Nature who decides what's correct and what's not. Not you.

Edited August 13, 2012 by immortal

[Ben Banana]

It is Nature who decides what's correct and what's not. Not you.

 

Oh well then! Nature appears by juanrga to have decided it was incorrect. But wait, its all an illusion!

 

I decide whats correct, not nature. Nature is not real.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Ben Bowen

[juanrga]

Quantum mechanics is an universal theory and that's what the correspondance priniciple of Bohr says, as n=>infinity, quantum mechanics => classical mechanics.

 

There are quantum systems for which n=>infinity, a well-known example is a quantum field, which is not describable by classical theory albeit n=infinity.

 

This is not your personal blog, every paper on Bell experiments assert that nonseparability is a fact of nature and local realism is false. If you think otherwise then back up your assertions if not no one should take your claims seriously.

 

Separability of quantum systems is a fundamental principle behind high-precision tests of the Standard Model. And any textbook explains that the model is local, although you insist (incorrectly) that locality is forbidden in nature...

 

Its a consensus which you have not yet won. The camp of Bohr and Heisenberg is very much alive and active.

 

What part of Weinberg's quote ("Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed") in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31 do you think support your belief?

 

It is Nature who decides what's correct and what's not. Not you.

 

It is ironic that a person (you) who has decided he alone that all the physicists of the world are wrong and would not be named physicists anymore make the above claim.

Edited August 14, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

Oh well then! Nature appears by juanrga to have decided it was incorrect. But wait, its all an illusion!

 

I decide whats correct, not nature. Nature is not real.

 

Nature is not an illusion, Nature is real, Nature is not what you think it is. That's your misunderstanding.

 

It is physicists themselves who are saying that the universe doesn't exist when no one is looking at it and say what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind. Not me. Quantum physicists working on optics are preparing to test Aharonov's paper and that would tell us whether a future choice affects a past measurement, you can't run away from the truth.

 

One needs to differentiate between the empirical nature and the physical nature. The empirical reality is produced by the physical nature and Religion gives a possible explanation as to how the empirical reality is generated because religion deals with nature as it is and not how it appears to us.

 

Separability of quantum systems is a fundamental principle behind high-precision tests of the Standard Model. And any textbook explains that the model is local, although you insist (incorrectly) that locality is forbidden in nature...

 

The correlations of particles under Bell experiments demands explanations and we need to abandon local realitsic models to explain those correlations which means nonseparability of nature is a fact.

 

To those physicists working in field theory the world is made of fields.

For those working on the standard model the world is made of particles.

To those working on quantum information theory the world is made of information.

 

Each one is right from their own point of view.

 

What part of Weinberg's quote ("Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed") in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31 do you think support your belief?

 

Steven Weinberg is a proponent of Many world interpretation and its not surprising to hear this from him.

 

You don't win a consensus by quoting physicists, you win it by providing evidence and by giving reasonable explanations to the questions which were posed to you earlier.

 

It is ironic that a person (you) who has decided he alone that all the physicists of the world are wrong and would not be named physicists anymore make the above claim.

 

I didn't said all physicists are wrong. I said that to those who want to use science as a dogma and to those who make wrong consensus. I have mutual respect for physicists, scholars, philosophers and psychologists working in their own respective fields.

[juanrga]

The correlations of particles under Bell experiments demands explanations and we need to abandon local realitsic models to explain those correlations which means nonseparability of nature is a fact.

 

That correlation of particles is explained by quantum theory. There is similar correlations in classical physics. Correlations have nothing to do with your nonsensical claims about the non-existence of systems or the end of scientific realism.

 

Furthermore, what part of "Separability of quantum systems is a fundamental principle behind high-precision tests of the Standard Model" do you believe that supports your claim that nature is not separable?

 

To those physicists working in field theory the world is made of fields.

For those working on the standard model the world is made of particles.

To those working on quantum information theory the world is made of information.

 

Each one is right from their own point of view.

 

You are wrong on the three!

 

The Standard Model is based on quantum field theory. Moreover, anyone who has studied quantum field theory knows that the fields are unobservable, by definition.

 

The assertion that the world is made of particles is an experimental claim:

 

everything in the Universe is found to be made from twelve basic building blocks called fundamental particles, governed by four fundamental forces.

 

Finally, contrary to what you believe, information requires a physical substrate. There are lots of information in this forum, but it is stored in servers made of known particles.

 

Steven Weinberg is a proponent of Many world interpretation and its not surprising to hear this from him.

 

You don't win a consensus by quoting physicists, you win it by providing evidence and by giving reasonable explanations to the questions which were posed to you earlier.

 

In the Physics Today article he does not even mention the "Many world interpretation". He merely reports why Born's version of quantum mechanics is wrong. The argument is very simple: physicists and their apparatus are made of atoms and those atoms follow the quantum rules.

 

It is ironic that you appeal to "evidence", when you systematically ignore the evidence given to you whereas appeal to quotes from people who is known by not understanding such matters.

 

I didn't said all physicists are wrong.

 

Some quotes from you in this funny thread:

 

This kind of stupid arguments won't give you the label as true physicists.

 

If this is true physicists will never know the real reality and hence they don't deserve to be called as physicists anymore because the science of physics deals with real as it is and not with abstract models.

 

As Einstein said the goal of science was to discover the way the world really is and not how it appears to us. If physicists can't give an objective account of reality then they no longer deserve to be called as physicists because it will be an insult to the term "physicist". A better term to assign to them would be empiricists because there are competing philosophers out there who want to take over that term as "true physicists" because they are discovering the world as it really is.

 

As I witnessed by arguing in the quantum physics forum it is self-evident that I think some physicists are intellectually dishonest and are using science as a dogma when they never really have a complete account of the nature of reality which are living in.

[immortal]

That correlation of particles is explained by quantum theory. There is similar correlations in classical physics. Correlations have nothing to do with your nonsensical claims about the non-existence of systems or the end of scientific realism.

 

Furthermore, what part of "Separability of quantum systems is a fundamental principle behind high-precision tests of the Standard Model" do you believe that supports your claim that nature is not separable?

 

 

An experimental test of non-local realism

 

"Therefore it is reasonable to consider the violation of local realism a well established fact."

 

No matter how many times you keep denying the evidence, nonseparability is a well established fact of nature.

 

Holism and Nonseparability in Physics

 

 

You are wrong on the three!

 

The Standard Model is based on quantum field theory. Moreover, anyone who has studied quantum field theory knows that the fields are unobservable, by definition.

 

The assertion that the world is made of particles is an experimental claim:

 

Even my claim of the nonseparability of nature is based on a experimental claim.

 

Finally, contrary to what you believe, information requires a physical substrate. There are lots of information in this forum, but it is stored in servers made of known particles.

 

Those were not my claims, it is quantum information theorists who say that the world is made of information. Go and ask them.

 

 

In the Physics Today article he does not even mention the "Many world interpretation". He merely reports why Born's version of quantum mechanics is wrong. The argument is very simple: physicists and their apparatus are made of atoms and those atoms follow the quantum rules.

 

Bell's theorem and the tests conducted to verify the EPR thought experiment conclusively prove that the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr was correct and Einstein's criticism of it was wrong. It was settled that Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong with regard to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics in 1982.

 

It is ironic that you appeal to "evidence", when you systematically ignore the evidence given to you whereas appeal to quotes from people who is known by not understanding such matters.

 

You didn't give any evidence to questions which were posed to the scientific community earlier in this thread.

 

Some quotes from you in this funny thread:

 

There is a lot of difference between saying all physicists are wrong and saying the consensus of some physicists are wrong.

[juanrga]

An experimental test of non-local realism

 

"Therefore it is reasonable to consider the violation of local realism a well established fact."

 

No matter how many times you keep denying the evidence, nonseparability is a well established fact of nature.

 

Holism and Nonseparability in Physics

 

First, the authors already show their lack of rigour when they define 'locality' and 'realism' in the first page. Starting from 'special' definitions you can prove anything. If I (re)define a cat to be a house, then I can claim that there are red cats that are 20 metres high, and I can even give you experiments confirming the existence of those giant cats.

 

Second, their experiment worked because the separation principle works: the system under study is disentangled from the surrounds. This is the reason why they can write something as (4) or something as the polarization singlet state of two photons.

 

Third, the other link is a philosophers article which is full of typical misleading statements.

 

Even my claim of the nonseparability of nature is based on a experimental claim.

 

Nope, as shown above. Such experiments are not possible if nature was not separable.

 

Those were not my claims, it is quantum information theorists who say that the world is made of information. Go and ask them.

 

After saying us what the said, you added that they were right. Therefore you were so wrong as them.

 

Bell's theorem and the tests conducted to verify the EPR thought experiment conclusively prove that the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr was correct and Einstein's criticism of it was wrong. It was settled that Bohr was right and Einstein was wrong with regard to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics in 1982.

 

The history is different. An accurate presentation of the facts is given by Steven Weinberg in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31 (emphasis mine):

 

All this familiar story is true, but it leaves out an irony. Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed, but not for the reason Einstein thought. The Copenhagen interpretation describes what happens when an observer makes a measurement, but the observer and the act of measurement are themselves treated classically. This is surely wrong: Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe.

 

There is a lot of difference between saying all physicists are wrong and saying the consensus of some physicists are wrong.

 

You wrote "some physicists" only in one the quotes, your other quotes refer to "physicists", and the term physicists denote the whole community.

Edited August 14, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

First, the authors already show their lack of rigour when they define 'locality' and 'realism' in the first page. Starting from 'special' definitions you can prove anything. If I (re)define a cat to be a house, then I can claim that there are red cats that are 20 metres high, and I can even give you experiments confirming the existence of those giant cats.

 

 

The authors very well know what local realism is.

 

"Understanding entanglement means understanding a great deal about the principles upon which physical theories are based," Aspelmeyer says.

 

"We need to rethink and radically revise our basic physical concepts before we can make the next big breakthrough in physics," Caslav Brukner says.

 

"According to Deutsch, we are blocked by something even more fundamental than that. Entanglement is real, he says, but it tells us more about how information can be extracted from quantum systems than the nature of the physical universe."

 

"This local realism stuff is all to do with whether it is possible to have a classical world view," Deutsch says. "It's a completely pointless controversy that should have ended in the 1950s."

 

We need to abandon local realism and we need to radically revise the way we teach basic physical concepts.

 

 

 

Second, their experiment worked because the separation principle works: the system under study is disentangled from the surrounds. This is the reason why they can write something as (4) or something as the polarization singlet state of two photons.

 

The system is decomposed or disentangled after a measurement is made by an observer before that the system exists as an unbroken whole and it is nonseparable. The violation of local realism means that the separability principle is violated in Bell experiments and quantum theory is inherently nonseparable. It is the end of scientific realism.

 

The new term is "Active scientific realism" where we actively create reality rather than passively observing it as Vedral says. It is we who make a holistic compound system to decompose into localised states.

 

Forms of Quantum Nonseparability and Related Philosophical Consequences

 

Separability Principle: The states of any spatio-temporally separated subsystems S1, S2, ..., SN of a compound system S are individually well defined and the states of the compound system are wholly and completely determined by them and their physical interactions including their spatio-temporal relations (cf. Howard, 1989; Healey,1991)

 

Since on the state vector ascription of states, neither subsystem S1 nor subsystem S2 has a state vector in S, it is apparent that the state W of the compound system cannot be reproduced on the basis that neither part has a state. Thus, the separability principle of Section 1 is flagrantly violated. In this respect, the entangled state W establishes a certain kind of quantum nonseparability that we call strong nonseparability.

 

By means of a maxim, strong nonseparability may be described by saying that 'there exists only the 'whole' and not the 'parts'' or 'the 'parts' are devoid of their individuality'. Strong nonseparability casts severe doubts on the existence of isolated (sub)systems and the applicability of the notion of atomism, in the sense that the parts of a quantum whole no longer exist as precisely defined individual entities (in this connection, see also the ending of Section 4.1)

 

 

 

Third, the other link is a philosophers article which is full of typical misleading statements.

 

The article was well cited with sources backing up his claims and if you have got problems with it then cite some sources for it if not why should anyone take you seriously.

 

Nope, as shown above. Such experiments are not possible if nature was not separable.

 

Those experiments are possible based on context-dependent description of physical reality and the experience of empirical reality arises due to the functional role of the observer and in the absence of such measurements or interactions nature is nonseparable.

 

 

According to the conception of active scientific realism, the experienced or empirical reality is a functional category. Functional to the engaging role of the knowing subject, so that the outer reality is perceived as not something given a-priori, a 'ready-made' objective truth dictated allegedly by an external point of reference, but as something affected by the subject's action. The nonseparable structure of quantum mechanics, the experimentally well-confirmed holistic features arising out of it, and the subsequent context-dependent description of physical reality conflict with the rather comfortable view that the world's contents enjoy an intrinsic and absolute meaning of existence, independent of any involvement of the knowing subject, only to be 'discovered' progressively by him.

 

After saying us what the said, you added that they were right. Therefore you were so wrong as them.

 

 

Its speculative but as Vedral says it is not surprising if everything is explained in terms of an information concept in the near future. Everything is information, genomics, proteomics, metabolimics, cognitive information processing, game theory applied to evolutionary biology, Maxwell's Demon, Origin of Life, Quantum information processing etc and these all are connected. We are information. However Sir Roger Penrose thinks that human teleportation is impossible because one would have model the states of human consciousness to completely teleport a human and he thinks there is nothing in current physics which can model the non-computable nature of human consciousness.

 

Religion does give an answer to our origins and answers where did all this come from and it can reach where science cannot reach.

 

The history is different. An accurate presentation of the facts is given by Steven Weinberg in Physics Today, November 2005, page 31 (emphasis mine):

 

That's why I requested a model to model consciousness. QM doesn't apply to me (observer), I'm not in a super-position of states, when the information reaches my mind I know what has occured the cat is either dead or alive. If Steven Weinberg thinks that QM applies to observers, the classical appratus and the universe as a whole then he is wrong because we have not yet modeled conscious thought.

 

You wrote "some physicists" only in one the quotes, your other quotes refer to "physicists", and the term physicists denote the whole community.

 

The challenge is for the whole scientific community and if physicists cannot give an objective account of reality then they are mere empiricists and that doesn't mean that all of physics and their experiments are wrong.

[juanrga]

The authors very well know what local realism is.

 

"Understanding entanglement means understanding a great deal about the principles upon which physical theories are based," Aspelmeyer says.

 

"We need to rethink and radically revise our basic physical concepts before we can make the next big breakthrough in physics," Caslav Brukner says.

 

"According to Deutsch, we are blocked by something even more fundamental than that. Entanglement is real, he says, but it tells us more about how information can be extracted from quantum systems than the nature of the physical universe."

 

"This local realism stuff is all to do with whether it is possible to have a classical world view," Deutsch says. "It's a completely pointless controversy that should have ended in the 1950s."

 

We need to abandon local realism and we need to radically revise the way we teach basic physical concepts.

 

There is no reason for abandoning local realism neither for radically revising what has been taught during the last century. E.g. special relativity will continue to work so well as it does today.

 

Deutsch et al. works on the foundations of quantum mechanics have been corrected in the literature many times and his metaphysical claims are "nonsensical philosophy" (read the Legget quote given before in this thread)

 

The system is decomposed or disentangled after a measurement is made by an observer before that the system exists as an unbroken whole and it is nonseparable.

 

Nope. In fact the term "measurement" was not even mentioned.

 

The new term is "Active scientific realism" where we actively create reality rather than passively observing it as Vedral says. It is we who make a holistic compound system to decompose into localised states.

 

Human observers plays absolute no fundamental role in quantum mechanics as we know today.

 

Forms of Quantum Nonseparability and Related Philosophical Consequences

 

Separability Principle: The states of any spatio-temporally separated subsystems S1, S2, ..., SN of a compound system S are individually well defined and the states of the compound system are wholly and completely determined by them and their physical interactions including their spatio-temporal relations (cf. Howard, 1989; Healey,1991)

 

Since on the state vector ascription of states, neither subsystem S1 nor subsystem S2 has a state vector in S, it is apparent that the state W of the compound system cannot be reproduced on the basis that neither part has a state. Thus, the separability principle of Section 1 is flagrantly violated. In this respect, the entangled state W establishes a certain kind of quantum nonseparability that we call strong nonseparability.

 

By means of a maxim, strong nonseparability may be described by saying that 'there exists only the 'whole' and not the 'parts'' or 'the 'parts' are devoid of their individuality'. Strong nonseparability casts severe doubts on the existence of isolated (sub)systems and the applicability of the notion of atomism, in the sense that the parts of a quantum whole no longer exist as precisely defined individual entities (in this connection, see also the ending of Section 4.1)

 

There are many mistakes there.

 

First, the separability principle does not apply to "spatio-temporally separated subsystems". In fact, it applies to a time-slice.

 

Second, the states of compound states are defined by the individual subsystem states through functional dependence. The principle only introduces a special kind of product states for uncorrelated subsystems.

 

Third, the state of correlated subsystem is in general not given by a state vector. The claim that "the state W of the compound system cannot be reproduced on the basis that neither part has a state" is completely wrong. Typical example? An electron in a water molecule is in a quantum state which cannot be represented by any state vector, but (i) the electron state is given by [math]\hat{\rho}[/math] and (ii) the state of the molecule is known and given by a state vector [math]|\Psi\rangle[/math], with the well-known relationship [math]\hat{\rho} = \mathrm{Tr}(| \Psi \rangle \langle \Psi |)[/math], with "Tr" the partial trace.

 

Claiming that parts of a whole system do not exist is a so nonsensical claim as saying that the Moon does not exist because it is not isolated.

 

The article was well cited with sources backing up his claims and if you have got problems with it then cite some sources for it if not why should anyone take you seriously.

 

There is no reason to repeat the corrections to mistakes exposed in previous posts.

 

Those experiments are possible based on context-dependent description of physical reality and the experience of empirical reality arises due to the functional role of the observer and in the absence of such measurements or interactions nature is nonseparable.

 

Idem. Corrected before.

 

Its speculative but as Vedral says it is not surprising if everything is explained in terms of an information concept in the near future. Everything is information, genomics, proteomics, metabolimics, cognitive information processing, game theory applied to evolutionary biology, Maxwell's Demon, Origin of Life, Quantum information processing etc and these all are connected. We are information. However Sir Roger Penrose thinks that human teleportation is impossible because one would have model the states of human consciousness to completely teleport a human and he thinks there is nothing in current physics which can model the non-computable nature of human consciousness.

 

As stated before information needs a physical substratum. We are not information, but a kind of biophysicochemical systems named "dissipative structures".

 

Religion does give an answer to our origins and answers where did all this come from and it can reach where science cannot reach.

 

The next quote is relevant:

 

The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them.

Sidney Hook, Philosopher (1902-1989)

 

As many anti-scientific people you want scientific facts to be substituted by myths.

 

That's why I requested a model to model consciousness. QM doesn't apply to me (observer), I'm not in a super-position of states, when the information reaches my mind I know what has occured the cat is either dead or alive. If Steven Weinberg thinks that QM applies to observers, the classical appratus and the universe as a whole then he is wrong because we have not yet modeled conscious thought.

 

Steven Weinberg is right when affirms that "Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe". You are not in a superposition of states because you are not an isolated system; the decay rate of a macroscopic superposition is of the order of Planck time, as predicted by QM.

 

Finally, your claim that QM does not apply to observers if does not model "conscious thought" is so wrong as claiming that thermodynamics or Newtonian mechanics do not apply to humans if do not model "conscious thought".

 

The challenge is for the whole scientific community and if physicists cannot give an objective account of reality then they are mere empiricists and that doesn't mean that all of physics and their experiments are wrong.

 

You did not challenge the "whole scientific community", you are only posting your misconceptions about science in an internet forum where some people is replying you for fun because he is on vacations.

Edited August 15, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

There is no reason for abandoning local realism neither for radically revising what has been taught during the last century. E.g. special relativity will continue to work so well as it does today.

 

That's where the problem lies in order to reconcile QM with GR one has to inevitably accept the fact that the Universe doesn't exist when no one is looking at it. Evidence for this was given earlier. It is you who needs to be corrected.

 

"While quantum researchers may find this satisfying, it raises deep concerns for anyone attempting to unify the universe. General relativity, Einstein’s theory of gravity, is fully realistic – it relies on things existing independent of measurements. So the search for a theory of everything, which involves uniting quantum physics with general relativity, may be even more difficult than we thought. “It is not at all clear how to construct a theory of gravity that is not real, which is what we need to do if we want to quantise gravity,” Vedral says."

 

Experiments violate local realism and we need to abandon it and physicists still holding on to old beliefs of local realism which is fundamentally flawed need to get over those beliefs.

 

 

Deutsch et al. works on the foundations of quantum mechanics have been corrected in the literature many times and his metaphysical claims are "nonsensical philosophy" (read the Legget quote given before in this thread)

 

Quoting something else for some other point doesn't refute the point which was being made.

 

Nope. In fact the term "measurement" was not even mentioned.

 

Human observers plays absolute no fundamental role in quantum mechanics as we know today.

 

The act of measurement changing the state of a quantum system is something any student of quantum mechanics knows. The evidence on how the choice of the experimenter affects the outcomes of measurements in the past were given earlier in this same thread.

 

There are many mistakes there.

 

First, the separability principle does not apply to "spatio-temporally separated subsystems". In fact, it applies to a time-slice.

 

Second, the states of compound states are defined by the individual subsystem states through functional dependence. The principle only introduces a special kind of product states for uncorrelated subsystems.

 

Third, the state of correlated subsystem is in general not given by a state vector. The claim that "the state W of the compound system cannot be reproduced on the basis that neither part has a state" is completely wrong. Typical example? An electron in a water molecule is in a quantum state which cannot be represented by any state vector, but (i) the electron state is given by [math]\hat{\rho}[/math] and (ii) the state of the molecule is known and given by a state vector [math]|\Psi\rangle[/math], with the well-known relationship [math]\hat{\rho} = \mathrm{Tr}(| \Psi \rangle \langle \Psi |)[/math], with "Tr" the partial trace.

 

Claiming that parts of a whole system do not exist is a so nonsensical claim as saying that the Moon does not exist because it is not isolated.

 

There is nothing special about a water molecule, even molecules like Buckminster Fullerene have been shown to exhibit quantum properties. The whole compound system should be treated as a single quantum system even if the parts or the subsystems exists in opposite ends of the universe. The single quantum system is in an entangled state and its spin-pair states are anti-correlated to make the spin of the whole system to be zero. This is what entanglement is and this is what needs to be explained as to how the whole system is correlated in an instantaneous way violating locality and realism since such a system do not possess any pre-determined values. Without locality and realism objectification of a system is impossible and hence nonseparability is a fact of nature.

 

 

 

There is no reason to repeat the corrections to mistakes exposed in previous posts.

 

Idem. Corrected before.

 

When you start with a wrong premise then everything which you follow and say is wrong. You're exposing your own misconceptions. Local realism is fundamentally flawed.

 

As stated before information needs a physical substratum. We are not information, but a kind of biophysicochemical systems named "dissipative structures".

 

In quantum teleportation and in quantum entanglement you're not changing the photon physically, you're only changing the allowed values of a quantum system. Nature is fuzzy. Empirical reality is purely abstract and we need to abandon the usage of objectivist language when explaining physical concepts. Physicists don't know the nature of the physical universe.

 

The next quote is relevant:

 

As many anti-scientific people you want scientific facts to be substituted by myths.

 

I said religion can explain things which science cannot explain. When science don't even have an explanation for a phenomena then there are no scientific facts and in such a case any viable explanation for that phenomena is equivalent irrespective of whether it comes from religion or science.

 

BTW, myths are possibly as real as scientific facts and they are testable and falsifiable.

 

Steven Weinberg is right when affirms that "Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe". You are not in a superposition of states because you are not an isolated system; the decay rate of a macroscopic superposition is of the order of Planck time, as predicted by QM.

 

Finally, your claim that QM does not apply to observers if does not model "conscious thought" is so wrong as claiming that thermodynamics or Newtonian mechanics do not apply to humans if do not model "conscious thought".

 

 

When I mean QM doesn't apply to observers I am resorting into metaphysical anti-realism. The above argument leads to the Shroedinger's Cat paradox and according to the strict formalism of Copenhagen interpretation the quantum equation representing the macroscopic states of being alive and being dead should not be treated real and only the axioms of standard measurement gives a definite result. We cannot be sure that the cat already exists in a definite state due to decoherence before the measurement is being made.

 

Ofcourse QM applies to everything and as experiments on superconductivity and diffraction of large biomolecules shows that the interference pattern can be observed for macroscopic objects too and either QM breaks down at some point and there exists a sharp dividing line between the classical and the quantum realm and there by establishes that QM doesn't apply to classical objects and detectors or QM applies to everything and discards all objective realistic theories at all levels and only an irreversible measurement ensures the actualization of physical reality. Which means the universe as a whole does not exist when we are not looking at it.

 

 

You did not challenge the "whole scientific community", you are only posting your misconceptions about science in an internet forum where some people is replying you for fun because he is on vacations.

 

So anyone who challenges the scientific community is funny to you so that you can make any damn wrong consensus you want hiding the truth and keeping the people of the world in darkness. I didn't knew that some people in the scientific community are intellectually dishonest. The universe doesn't exist when no one is looking at it and people should be made aware of that fact.

 

You didn't give any evidence to my challenges and you keep proving again and again that physicists don't have an objective account of reality.

[juanrga]

That's where the problem lies in order to reconcile QM with GR one has to inevitably accept the fact that the Universe doesn't exist when no one is looking at it. Evidence for this was given earlier. It is you who needs to be corrected.

 

"While quantum researchers may find this satisfying, it raises deep concerns for anyone attempting to unify the universe. General relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, is fully realistic – it relies on things existing independent of measurements. So the search for a theory of everything, which involves uniting quantum physics with general relativity, may be even more difficult than we thought. "It is not at all clear how to construct a theory of gravity that is not real, which is what we need to do if we want to quantise gravity," Vedral says."

 

I wrote about SR not GR, but in any case the problem is not "to reconcile QM with GR", but to quantize gravity. The problem here is that GR has been traditionally confused with an ordinary field theory and people tried to quantize it using methods that work, for instance for electrodynamics, without any success for GR. We now know why. GR is a geometric theory and trying to quantize GR is as trying to quantize geometry. However, we can develop the quantum theory of gravitons from which GR emerges, somewhat as geometrical optics emerges from a quantum theory of photons.

 

Evidently universe exists and it is described by theories such as QM, GR, and others.

 

Experiments violate local realism and we need to abandon it and physicists still holding on to old beliefs of local realism which is fundamentally flawed need to get over those beliefs.

 

That is a so nonsensical claim as saying that we must abandon SR or electrodynamics. You do not understand how science works.

 

Quoting something else for some other point doesn't refute the point which was being made.

 

I was merely stating how even the own authors that you cited before know that Deutch's ideas are not only scientifically incorrect but even (his own words) "nonsensical philosophy".

 

The act of measurement changing the state of a quantum system is something any student of quantum mechanics knows.

 

And any student of QM knows that the observer plays no fundamental role, but that the change is due to the interaction between the system and the measurement apparatus.

 

The evidence on how the choice of the experimenter affects the outcomes of measurements in the past were given earlier in this same thread.

 

No evidence was given, as discussed in the past.

 

There is nothing special about a water molecule, even molecules like Buckminster Fullerene have been shown to exhibit quantum properties.

 

Nobody said that a a water molecule was something special. A simple water molecule was used as example of why the author who you quoted was plain wrong when he said: "the state W of the compound system cannot be reproduced on the basis that neither part has a state".

 

The whole compound system should be treated as a single quantum system even if the parts or the subsystems exists in opposite ends of the universe. The single quantum system is in an entangled state and its spin-pair states are anti-correlated to make the spin of the whole system to be zero. This is what entanglement is and this is what needs to be explained as to how the whole system is correlated in an instantaneous way violating locality and realism since such a system do not possess any pre-determined values. Without locality and realism objectification of a system is impossible and hence nonseparability is a fact of nature.

 

This part was corrected before, explaining that nature is separable, that separability is a fundamental principle behind the high precision tests of the Standard Model, repeating that separability is the reason which we can made experiments with correlated pairs of particles (ignoring the rest of particles), emphasizing how subsystems of entangled whole systems exist and have quantum states and even giving you the physical relation between the subsystem state and the whole system state. What part you do not understood?

 

When you start with a wrong premise then everything which you follow and say is wrong. You're exposing your own misconceptions.

 

As several posters have noted you are not even close to show that scientific realism is false, but merely exposing your misconceptions about science and nature.

 

In quantum teleportation and in quantum entanglement you're not changing the photon physically, you're only changing the allowed values of a quantum system.

 

Photons, as any other elementary quantum particle, do not change. Photons are always photons. What changes is the physical state of a quantum system.

 

Empirical reality is purely abstract and we need to abandon the usage of objectivist language when explaining physical concepts. Physicists don't know the nature of the physical universe.

 

I already recommended you the Feynman lectures. He discusses in a brilliant way the difference between physical reality and abstract models. He also discusses how people outside the science (he mention philosophers) are often confused about such matters.

 

I said religion can explain things which science cannot explain. When science don't even have an explanation for a phenomena then there are no scientific facts and in such a case any viable explanation for that phenomena is equivalent irrespective of whether it comes from religion or science.

 

You said that, but it is not true.

 

800 years ago science and the scientific method did not exist. Religion already existed, but religion never explained anything about Nature. It was science who discovered all that we know today. What is more, religion has been corrected by science in many occasions when religion has tried to say something about Nature, but the inverse (religion correcting science) never happened since that science was born.

 

Those are the facts, although you ignore them...

 

BTW, myths are possibly as real as scientific facts and they are testable and falsifiable.

 

The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn show the contrary.

 

When I mean QM doesn't apply to observers I am resorting into metaphysical anti-realism.

 

As stated before observers are a kind of biophysicochemical systems. They are made of atoms and other quantum particles and those quantum particles follow quantum laws.

 

The above argument leads to the Shroedinger's Cat paradox and according to the strict formalism of Copenhagen interpretation the quantum equation representing the macroscopic states of being alive and being dead should not be treated real and only the axioms of standard measurement gives a definite result. We cannot be sure that the cat already exists in a definite state due to decoherence before the measurement is being made.

 

As we know today a cat is an open system and its quantum state is not given by a superposition |alive>+|dead>. This happens even without measurements. It was also noted before (Weinberg's quote in Physics Today) that Bohr's interpretation of quantum measurements "was deeply flawed".

 

Ofcourse QM applies to everything and as experiments on superconductivity and diffraction of large biomolecules shows that the interference pattern can be observed for macroscopic objects too and either QM breaks down at some point and there exists a sharp dividing line between the classical and the quantum realm and there by establishes that QM doesn't apply to classical objects and detectors or QM applies to everything and discards all objective realistic theories at all levels and only an irreversible measurement ensures the actualization of physical reality. Which means the universe as a whole does not exist when we are not looking at it.

 

You start saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", next you claim that either it "breaks down at some point" and "does not apply to classical objects" or that "applies to everything". No problem with sharing your infinite misconceptions with us, but try to not post contradictory statements in the same paragraph.

 

So anyone who challenges the scientific community is funny to you so that you can make any damn wrong consensus you want hiding the truth and keeping the people of the world in darkness. I didn't knew that some people in the scientific community are intellectually dishonest. The universe doesn't exist when no one is looking at it and people should be made aware of that fact.

 

You didn't give any evidence to my challenges and you keep proving again and again that physicists don't have an objective account of reality.

 

If you read what I have been writing for several days now, you would discover that I find funny people who (i) "challenges the scientific community", (ii) insults its members calling them "intellectually dishonest", (iii) claims that religion reveals the "truth" that scientists cannot discover, because "physicists don't have an objective account of reality" and, without any blush, (iv) shows a complete ignorance of the most elementary aspects of science and physics. So typical in anti-science people!

Edited August 16, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

Evidently universe exists and it is described by theories such as QM, GR, and others.

 

Everyone knows that the universe exists but the question is whether it exists independent of the human mind or not. As experiments in quantum mechanics shows researchers have concluded that the universe doesn't exist independent of the mind. If its hard for you to accept it because it contradicts with your personal beliefs then that's not my problem.

 

That is a so nonsensical claim as saying that we must abandon SR or electrodynamics. You do not understand how science works.

 

Spooky action at a distance is a fact and it needs an explanation and explaining quantum entanglement holds the key to the puzzles in physics and on the fate of how other theories and their physical concepts will be explained. Stop pointing out on what I don't understand and instead give a mechanism of how quantum entanglement works if not accept you don't know. I very well know relativity is one of the well established physical theories in science.

 

And any student of QM knows that the observer plays no fundamental role, but that the change is due to the interaction between the system and the measurement apparatus.

 

What's so special about the measurement apparatus even they can be treated as a quantum system and its the observer who always makes the final observation.

 

No evidence was given, as discussed in the past.

 

That's why I call you intellectually dishonest for you ignore facts established by experiments.

 

This part was corrected before, explaining that nature is separable, that separability is a fundamental principle behind the high precision tests of the Standard Model, repeating that separability is the reason which we can made experiments with correlated pairs of particles (ignoring the rest of particles), emphasizing how subsystems of entangled whole systems exist and have quantum states and even giving you the physical relation between the subsystem state and the whole system state. What part you do not understood?

 

If a system cannot have pre-determined values or counterfactual definiteness i.e. no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity then we cannot assign these attributes to an object and hence we cannot forever know the nature of the quantum system and this is what Einstein meant that "that the goal of science was to discover the way the world really is as opposed to our perceptions and conceptions of it, and that orthodox quantum theory had not only failed to achieve such a goal but had prematurely abandoned any such quest."

 

Its not that I do not understand the problem is you have a distaste for philosophy and its you who are not understanding the philosophical consequences of the violation of Bell Inequality.

 

 

As several posters have noted you are not even close to show that scientific realism is false, but merely exposing your misconceptions about science and nature.

 

For your kind information the violation of local realism is already a well established fact. The evidence for it was given numerous times already. Objective local theories have to be excluded for further advancements in physics. In which world are you in.

 

Photons, as any other elementary quantum particle, do not change. Photons are always photons. What changes is the physical state of a quantum system.

 

You're not physically changing the quantum system, the nature of the quantum system eludes us, what we can actually do is just predict the possible values we can assign to a quantum system.

 

I already recommended you the Feynman lectures. He discusses in a brilliant way the difference between physical reality and abstract models. He also discusses how people outside the science (he mention philosophers) are often confused about such matters.

 

Thanks for that.

 

You said that, but it is not true.

 

800 years ago science and the scientific method did not exist. Religion already existed, but religion never explained anything about Nature. It was science who discovered all that we know today. What is more, religion has been corrected by science in many occasions when religion has tried to say something about Nature, but the inverse (religion correcting science) never happened since that science was born.

 

Those are the facts, although you ignore them...

 

What counts now is evidence and not history.

 

As stated before observers are a kind of biophysicochemical systems. They are made of atoms and other quantum particles and those quantum particles follow quantum laws.

 

If your definition of observers was true then your observers don't exist independent of an observer.

 

As we know today a cat is an open system and its quantum state is not given by a superposition |alive>+|dead>. This happens even without measurements. It was also noted before (Weinberg's quote in Physics Today) that Bohr's interpretation of quantum measurements "was deeply flawed".

 

When Steven Weinberg states that the Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed he is referring to the fact that physicists and the measurement apparatus are not treated as quantum systems in the copenhagen interpretation and no one is saying that they should not be treated as quantum systems.

 

He goes further and writes in the same quote that "It is enough to say that neither Bohr nor Einstein had focused on the real problem with quantum mechanics."

 

We know today that a far more fundamental problem is at work with quantum mechanics and that is entanglement.

 

You start saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", next you claim that either it "breaks down at some point" and "does not apply to classical objects" or that "applies to everything". No problem with sharing your infinite misconceptions with us, but try to not post contradictory statements in the same paragraph.

 

As Anthony Leggett says "We have seen that recent experiments push tests of QM to the level of 10³–10⁶ in the case of molecular diffraction, biomagnetic and quantum-optical systems, and to the level of 10¹⁰ in the case of Josephson devices; thus, we can say that on a logarithmic scale we have come about 40% of the way from the atomic level to that of the everyday world. "

 

So we are not far away from testing QM on objects of the everyday world which is of the order 10²⁴ so we actually don't know whether QM applies for all sizes or it fails at some classical level. I hope that clears up your misconceptions about my statements.

 

If you read what I have been writing for several days now, you would discover that I find funny people who (i) "challenges the scientific community", (ii) insults its members calling them "intellectually dishonest", (iii) claims that religion reveals the "truth" that scientists cannot discover, because "physicists don't have an objective account of reality" and, without any blush, (iv) shows a complete ignorance of the most elementary aspects of science and physics. So typical in anti-science people!

 

1. So according to you anyone who makes arguments to challenge the scientific community are typical anti-science people. I would say that's so anti-scientific of you because you're not putting the assumptions of science to test and there by refining our theories. Science is done by criticizing of ideas and accepted theories and if you don't do it then you're on a road to scientific dogma.

 

2. When there is a crisis accept there is a crisis or when there is a problem accept there is a problem or accept we don't know. There is no clear scientific consensus on these topics and if you don't argue in good spirit then inevitably that's what I have to call you, that you're Intellectually dishonest.

 

3. This thread is in a religion forum and the main aim of this thread was to explain what those traditions actually say which is often misrepresented by scholars and from the perspective of tradition that's actually true and if they are right then physicists cannot have an objective account of reality and they cannot know what space-time actually is.

 

4. I am not doing a personal rant here, my claims were well supported by scientific papers from peer reviewed journals and its you who actually is not able to swallow these scientific facts.

[juanrga]

Everyone knows that the universe exists but the question is whether it exists independent of the human mind or not. As experiments in quantum mechanics shows researchers have concluded that the universe doesn't exist independent of the mind. If its hard for you to accept it because it contradicts with your personal beliefs then that's not my problem.

 

I already recommended you to open a textbook on cosmology (*) and learn what we know about how the Universe was when the first human was not born yet. Concretely I invited you to learn something about the "quark epoch".

 

When Galileo used his telescope to discover Jupiter's satellites and commented his discovery to the Pope. The Pope rejected Galileo observation (because contradicted his traditions), ordered to burn Galileo's books, and started the inquisition against Galileo, who was finally condemned for life.

 

It is fascinating that the Pope refused even to look through the telescope. It seems that the Pope believed that if he did not look the satellites then them could not exist...

 

Spooky action at a distance is a fact and it needs an explanation and explaining quantum entanglement holds the key to the puzzles in physics and on the fate of how other theories and their physical concepts will be explained. Stop pointing out on what I don't understand and instead give a mechanism of how quantum entanglement works if not accept you don't know. I very well know relativity is one of the well established physical theories in science.

 

Quantum entanglement is understood and it does not involve any "spooky action at a distance". In the ancient times, when quantum mechanics was being developed, it was believed that entanglement and collapse violate relativity because some mysterious signal would be instantaneously sent from one particle to the other, but today we know that this is not true. E.g. there are relativistic models of collapse and are discussed in textbooks (*).

 

What's so special about the measurement apparatus even they can be treated as a quantum system and its the observer who always makes the final observation.

 

Measurements do not need observers as modern textbooks explain (*).

 

That's why I call you intellectually dishonest for you ignore facts established by experiments.

 

You already said that the scientific community is intellectually dishonest and that physicists would be substituted by philosophers because are not objective people... therefore no new insult here.

 

If a system cannot have pre-determined values or counterfactual definiteness i.e. no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity then we cannot assign these attributes to an object and hence we cannot forever know the nature of the quantum system and this is what Einstein meant that "that the goal of science was to discover the way the world really is as opposed to our perceptions and conceptions of it, and that orthodox quantum theory had not only failed to achieve such a goal but had prematurely abandoned any such quest."

 

Its not that I do not understand the problem is you have a distaste for philosophy and its you who are not understanding the philosophical consequences of the violation of Bell Inequality.

 

Contrary to a common misconception, Einstein did not reject QM, but only the Copenhagen interpretation by Bohr and Heisenberg. It is curious that Einstein already meet with religious people as you and his advice was:

 

The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquillizing philosophy - or religion? - is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot very easily be aroused. So let him lie there.

 

For your kind information the violation of local realism is already a well established fact. The evidence for it was given numerous times already. Objective local theories have to be excluded for further advancements in physics. In which world are you in.

 

You did not observe me. Did you? Why do you violate your own religion and believe that I exist?

 

Photons, as any other elementary quantum particle, do not change. Photons are always photons. What changes is the physical state of a quantum system.

 

You're not physically changing the quantum system [...] what we can actually do is just predict the possible values we can assign to a quantum system.

 

You do not need to repeat what has been said to you for showing us that you did learn it finally. Do not repeating the same mistake is enough for us, thanks!

 

What counts now is evidence and not history.

 

First, history is based in evidence. Second, learning history is an excellent tool for not repeating the mistakes that others made in the past.

 

As stated before observers are a kind of biophysicochemical systems. They are made of atoms and other quantum particles and those quantum particles follow quantum laws.

If your definition of observers was true then your observers don't exist independent of an observer.

 

Ha ha! You got trapped in your own nonsense. According to your religion, the universe does not exist if it is not observed by an observer. Therefore according to you an observer does not exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this second observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this third observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this fourth observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer...

 

When Steven Weinberg states that the Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed he is referring to the fact that physicists and the measurement apparatus are not treated as quantum systems in the copenhagen interpretation and no one is saying that they should not be treated as quantum systems.

 

As said above you do not need to repeat what we said to you before.

 

You start saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", next you claim that either it "breaks down at some point" and "does not apply to classical objects" or that "applies to everything". No problem with sharing your infinite misconceptions with us, but try to not post contradictory statements in the same paragraph.

 

As Anthony Leggett says "We have seen that recent experiments push tests of QM to the level of 10³–10⁶ in the case of molecular diffraction, biomagnetic and quantum-optical systems, and to the level of 10¹⁰ in the case of Josephson devices; thus, we can say that on a logarithmic scale we have come about 40% of the way from the atomic level to that of the everyday world. "

 

So we are not far away from testing QM on objects of the everyday world which is of the order 10²⁴ so we actually don't know whether QM applies for all sizes or it fails at some classical level. I hope that clears up your misconceptions about my statements.

 

You started saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", and now you claim "so we actually don't know whether QM applies for all sizes or it fails at some classical level". Your mutual contradictory statements are not the result of someone's misconceptions. Try another excuse...

 

If you read what I have been writing for several days now, you would discover that I find funny people who (i) "challenges the scientific community", (ii) insults its members calling them "intellectually dishonest", (iii) claims that religion reveals the "truth" that scientists cannot discover, because "physicists don't have an objective account of reality" and, without any blush, (iv) shows a complete ignorance of the most elementary aspects of science and physics. So typical in anti-science people!

 

1. So according to you anyone who makes arguments to challenge the scientific community are typical anti-science people. I would say that's so anti-scientific of you because you're not putting the assumptions of science to test and there by refining our theories. Science is done by criticizing of ideas and accepted theories and if you don't do it then you're on a road to scientific dogma.

 

2. When there is a crisis accept there is a crisis or when there is a problem accept there is a problem or accept we don't know. There is no clear scientific consensus on these topics and if you don't argue in good spirit then inevitably that's what I have to call you, that you're Intellectually dishonest.

 

3. This thread is in a religion forum and the main aim of this thread was to explain what those traditions actually say which is often misrepresented by scholars and from the perspective of tradition that's actually true and if they are right then physicists cannot have an objective account of reality and they cannot know what space-time actually is.

 

4. I am not doing a personal rant here, my claims were well supported by scientific papers from peer reviewed journals and its you who actually is not able to swallow these scientific facts.

 

If you read what I wrote, you would discover that I was not referring to "anyone who makes arguments to challenge the scientific community", but to people who verifies the points (i--iv).

 

Maybe I would add a fifth point to the above llst: (v) people who tries to win by basing his arguments on flagrant misinterpretation of the other's position.

 

Yes, you already stated your personal desire to substitute science and its scientific method by religion and its traditions, but as stated before "The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them" .

 

You would not repeatedly insult and accuse people and next pretend that you are "not doing a personal rant here". We do not care if you are a hypocrite or not, we are here to correct your blatant ignorance of science and nature.

 

 

(*) I'm sorry but textbooks on religion and traditions are not valid.

Edited August 17, 2012 by juanrga

[immortal]

I already recommended you to open a textbook on cosmology (*) and learn what we know about how the Universe was when the first human was not born yet. Concretely I invited you to learn something about the "quark epoch".

 

 

Why do you just assume that I haven't read about the Standard Model?

 

Let me tweet the arguments of the cosmoslogist Andrei Linde here.

 

"You may ask whether the universe really existed before you start looking at it," he says. "That's the same Schrödinger cat question. And my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When you open the cat's box after a week, you're going to find either a live cat or a smelly piece of meat. You can say that the cat looks as if it were dead or as if it were alive during the whole week. Likewise, when we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago."

 

"The universe and the observer exist as a pair," Linde says. "You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words— it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead."

 

I also want you to learn that we cannot be sure of the kind of reality which we are living in unless if you give sufficient evidence for my challenges posted earlier.

 

When Galileo used his telescope to discover Jupiter's satellites and commented his discovery to the Pope. The Pope rejected Galileo observation (because contradicted his traditions), ordered to burn Galileo's books, and started the inquisition against Galileo, who was finally condemned for life.

 

It is fascinating that the Pope refused even to look through the telescope. It seems that the Pope believed that if he did not look the satellites then them could not exist...

 

Don't you realize for one moment that the same thing applies to the scientific community that they refuse to step out of the scientific method and investigate on something else and assume prima facie that nothing exists outside the scientific method and it is you who is playing the role of Pope here because you neither gave any evidence which contradicted those traditions and rejected all evidence supporting those traditions.

 

Quantum entanglement is understood and it does not involve any "spooky action at a distance". In the ancient times, when quantum mechanics was being developed, it was believed that entanglement and collapse violate relativity because some mysterious signal would be instantaneously sent from one particle to the other, but today we know that this is not true. E.g. there are relativistic models of collapse and are discussed in textbooks (*).

 

I very well know relativity is not violated and what I am demanding is an explanation or a mechanism to explain the correlations seen in these Bell experiments. If you think physicists have an objective account of reality then there shouldn't be any problem in explaining those correlations but the fact of the matter is you don't have any explanation or mechanism for quantum entanglement even after over 50 years have passed and physicists still don't have it and the reason is quite simple physicists don't have an objective account of reality and if they are really struck by something far more fundamental then they cannot ever have it.

 

Measurements do not need observers as modern textbooks explain (*).

 

You already said that the scientific community is intellectually dishonest and that physicists would be substituted by philosophers because are not objective people... therefore no new insult here.

 

You do not need to repeat what has been said to you for showing us that you did learn it finally. Do not repeating the same mistake is enough for us, thanks!

 

As said above you do not need to repeat what we said to you before.

 

 

These are all cop-outs to simply escape from addressing the arguments.

 

Contrary to a common misconception, Einstein did not reject QM, but only the Copenhagen interpretation by Bohr and Heisenberg. It is curious that Einstein already meet with religious people as you and his advice was:

 

And the advice to Einstein by Bohr was "Einstein, don't tell God what to do".

 

And as experiments have confirmed “Maybe Bohr and Heisenberg were right after all,” Aspelmeyer says.

 

Your personal distaste and bias against the tenets of copenhagen interpretation has no bearing in reality whatsoever.

 

 

You did not observe me. Did you? Why do you violate your own religion and believe that I exist?

 

I believe that your body exist but I don't believe that it exists independent of my mind.

 

Ha ha! You got trapped in your own nonsense. According to your religion, the universe does not exist if it is not observed by an observer. Therefore according to you an observer does not exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this second observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this third observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer. But this fourth observer cannot exist if it is not observed by another observer...

 

That's your nonsense, not mine. You think that the Observer is represented by the states of his brain and body and therefore you think QM applies to the observer and it leads to an infinite regression as to who the ultimate observer is. When I say QM doesn't apply to Observers I am not referring to Physicists's brain or their bodies but I am referring to their metaphysical mind(metaphysical anti-realism) and it is the mind which is absolute and the thing which exists out there in the external world. All your physical laws and theories along with brain and matter are a result of this metaphysical mind and yes it is not subjected to the laws of physics, in fact it is other way round the laws of physics are a result of this metaphysical mind.

 

 

You started saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", and now you claim "so we actually don't know whether QM applies for all sizes or it fails at some classical level". Your mutual contradictory statements are not the result of someone's misconceptions. Try another excuse...

 

There is still a small possibility that QM might break down at some classical point and a honest person accepts that he might be wrong something which you haven't learnt.

 

If you read what I wrote, you would discover that I was not referring to "anyone who makes arguments to challenge the scientific community", but to people who verifies the points (i--iv).

 

Maybe I would add a fifth point to the above llst: (v) people who tries to win by basing his arguments on flagrant misinterpretation of the other's position.

 

Your previous statements verifies that it is you who is very much fond of misrepresenting other's position and argue that they are wrong. That's so typical of you something which whoever had argued with you knows it very well.

 

Yes, you already stated your personal desire to substitute science and its scientific method by religion and its traditions, but as stated before "The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them" .

 

You would not repeatedly insult and accuse people and next pretend that you are "not doing a personal rant here". We do not care if you are a hypocrite or not, we are here to correct your blatant ignorance of science and nature.

 

You frequently insulted those traditions by equating them with your made up entities assuming prima facie that they are false so I just made you aware what the fact of the situation is, physicists are mere empiricists and they don't have an objective account of reality, if you think that was an insult then what was yours?

 

I just showed why the consensus of the scientific community is not correct and that has nothing to do with how much I know about science and nature.

 

(*) I'm sorry but textbooks on religion and traditions are not valid.

 

I'm sorry to tell you that a God hypothesis has not yet been falsified and we don't know whether it is valid or invalid. That's how you do science? Without differentiating between a rejected hypothesis and a falsified hypothesis?

 

 

 

[akh]

I'm sorry to tell you that a God hypothesis has not yet been falsified and we don't know whether it is valid or invalid.

 

 

 

Sorry, but the God hypothesis in your terms is not a hypothesis, it is a belief. Why is this so confounding to you? So, of course one cannot falsify a belief.

 

We have ample evidence of reality in the past, the same reality we experience today, as existing independent of humans. There is an entire fossil record of animals that have morphology which evolved to interact with the environment in the same way we do. There are insects trapped in amber, with wings, that allow them to fly. These insects are 95 million years old. They existed 94.5 million years before the earliest archaic humans appeared in the fossil record. That is pretty good evidence for a reality independent of the mind. Are you going to tell me that fossils are not real? That they are constructs of our minds too?

 

What about the hag fish? Its a 300 million year old species. It has a mouth with a structure that protracts and retracts to take bites of reality to feed itself. What is truly impressive is that this mouth, which eats up yummy little pieces of reality today, is the same mouth that ate up yummy little pieces of reality 299.5 million years before "mind". What a truly transcendent creature, it has managed to exist in its own reality and also in ours!

 

Obviously the real question is whether humans and reality exists independent of the hag fishes' mind.

Edited August 17, 2012 by akh

[immortal]

Sorry, but the God hypothesis in your terms is not a hypothesis, it is a belief. Why is this so confounding to you? So, of course one cannot falsify a belief.

 

The God hypothesis is both testifiable and falsifiable. The God hypothesis is a reasonable explanation for the origins of our cosmos, what the world is made of, what the nature of space and time is, what is intelligence, what is mind, explaining every damn unsolved puzzles of mankind. It is quite a reasonable one supported along with facts established from experiments and it makes the existence of God very likely and such a hypothesis should be considered seriously if anyone ever wish to give an objective account of reality.

 

 

The world is going to retain an element of mystery in it and religion indeed is going to give an objective account of reality which science cannot give.

 

 

 

 

 

Physicalism is false, physical objects don't exist out there in the external physical world. Substance dualism is quite necessary and the mind and brain are two different things and in fact brain and matter as such don't exist independent of the mind. The empirical reality is only a state of mind brought into existence by the inter play of a metaphysical mind along with metaphysical sense organs and five elements as espoused in major world religions. Physicists don't know the true nature of the physical universe. Reality is not been given to us as it is and therefore your hag fish don't exist out there as it is made of atoms, our bodies and therefore the whole empirical reality do not exist independent of a metaphysical mind. Your hag fish is actually made of only five elements but it appears as though it is made of various tissues only when you interact with the world through the metaphysical sense organs which is entangled to a metaphysical mind. Disentangle yourself then you will see the actual reality as it is.

 

 

 

Physicists will never know the nature of time because time is an anthropomorphic God which exists out there in the external physical world. You can talk with time and you can also talk with your own mind because these are anthropomorphic entities which exists and are very much alive and these gods are pervaded everywhere.

 

Physicists will never be able to explain the asymmetric flow of time while all their physical laws are time symmetric. The only reason we cannot see all of time from past to future is that our metaphysical mind is entangled to our metaphysical sense organs making us experience a flow of time and if you can disentangle your mind from those metaphysical sense organs then you can actually see the past, present and the future. Time exists out there and past, present and future already exists. Divinity exists in human beings and we are truly made in the image of God.

 

"He who practices and becomes proficient in Samyama can go beyond time and space. He will be enabled to perceive everything everywhere. He can understand whatever has happened in the past and whatever is going to happen in the future. If the mind learns to work without being entangled by the senses, then it becomes all powerful and very potent. He who practices this technique of Samyama will be able to know what happens where, why and how".

 

-Devudu

 

 

One thing is very certain we can definitely be not sure of the kind of reality which we are living in. The Real has not been given to us as it is and only God can give an objective account of reality.

Edited August 18, 2012 by immortal

[juanrga]

Why do you just assume that I haven't read about the Standard Model?

 

I did not assume what you pretend. I never wrote "read" because I do not know if you read and not understood or if did not read at all. I invited you to "learn" something concrete about the "quark epoch", because the observations blatantly contradict your claims.

 

Let me tweet the arguments of the cosmoslogist Andrei Linde here.

 

I did not know and was curious to search it. Google returns 9 results and none is an academic site. Alternatively a search of quark epoch returns 761000 results, including academic sites and encyclopedias.

 

In any case... First, Linde is not an expert in quantum theory. Second, I already explained why the cat is never in a superposition dead plus live and the paradox is gone. Third, I find Linde claims too near the borderline of scientific method (similar claims are used by anti-science zealots to attack evolution). Fourth, his answer is "the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it." That is a different claim than yours: you said us that universe did not exist before the first human was born.

 

I also want you to learn that we cannot be sure of the kind of reality which we are living in unless if you give sufficient evidence for my challenges posted earlier.

 

You have not given any challenge, only exposed your misconceptions about both science and nature.

 

Don't you realize for one moment that the same thing applies to the scientific community that they refuse to step out of the scientific method and investigate on something else and assume prima facie that nothing exists outside the scientific method and it is you who is playing the role of Pope here because you neither gave any evidence which contradicted those traditions and rejected all evidence supporting those traditions.

 

No. Scientific community has not condemned anyone by her/his religious ideas (the inverse is not true as you know). Scientific community does not claim that "nothing exists outside the scientific method": scientists accept the existence of religion, philosophy, art, music,...

 

What you pretend is that traditions are a substitute for the scientific method and this is plain false as logic and history show. E.g., I already said to you that science has corrected traditions and religions many times (just open a textbook on history), but never science has been corrected by those. Galileo and scientific method were right, not the Pope and his traditions.

 

You pretend to substitute something that works very well by something that does not work.

 

Quantum entanglement is understood and it does not involve any "spooky action at a distance".

I very well know relativity is not violated and what I am demanding is an explanation or a mechanism to explain the correlations seen in these Bell experiments.

 

Therefore you wait a physical mechanism for something that does not exist. I repeat, no mysterious signal is being sent faster than light from Bob to Alice.

 

If you think physicists have an objective account of reality

 

Physics is a branch of science and uses the scientific method. The scientific method gives objective knowledge. Your traditions are subjective and/or wrong.

 

And the advice to Einstein by Bohr was "Einstein, don't tell God what to do".

 

That is supposed to be Bohr's answer to Einstein's "God does not play dice". It has nothing to do with Einstein's quote given above:

 

The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquillizing philosophy - or religion? - is so delicately contrived that, for the time being, it provides a gentle pillow for the true believer from which he cannot very easily be aroused. So let him lie there.

 

 

And as experiments have confirmed "Maybe Bohr and Heisenberg were right after all," Aspelmeyer says.

 

A Google search returns only five results for that quote; none is an academic resource and one is a link to your posts here. In any case you pretend that experiments "have confirmed" something, whereas the quote only says "Maybe"...

 

I believe that your body exist but I don't believe that it exists independent of my mind.

 

I am sure that if tomorrow you pass away, I will continue to exist, but in any case your answer does not address my question.

 

You think that the Observer is represented by the states of his brain and body

 

No. You repeat the same mistake. I already explained to you the difference between a system and the state of that system. Go and read.

 

When I say QM doesn't apply to Observers I am not referring to Physicists's brain or their bodies but I am referring to their metaphysical mind(metaphysical anti-realism) and it is the mind which is absolute and the thing which exists out there in the external world.

 

QM is a physical theory. By definition a metaphysical mind (even if we accept its existence) does not exist in the world.

 

All your physical laws and theories along with brain and matter are a result of this metaphysical mind and yes it is not subjected to the laws of physics, in fact it is other way round the laws of physics are a result of this metaphysical mind.

 

We already discuss this before. Everything was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Your traditions are not needed.

 

You started saying that "Of course QM applies to everything", and now you claim "so we actually don't know whether QM applies for all sizes or it fails at some classical level". Your mutual contradictory statements are not the result of someone's misconceptions. Try another excuse...

There is still a small possibility that QM might break down at some classical point and a honest person accepts that he might be wrong something which you haven't learnt.

 

This continue without solving your contradictions. You say us that "Of course QM applies to everything", and that it does not.

 

You frequently insulted those traditions by equating them with your made up entities assuming prima facie that they are false so I just made you aware what the fact of the situation is, physicists are mere empiricists and they don't have an objective account of reality, if you think that was an insult then what was yours?

 

No tradition was insulted here. Correcting your mistakes is not an insult. An insult is, for instance, when you call others "dishonest", as you did.

 

I just showed why the consensus of the scientific community is not correct and that has nothing to do with how much I know about science and nature.

 

As shown by several poster during the last days, you only showed your misconceptions about elementary aspects of both science and nature.

 

I'm sorry to tell you that a God hypothesis has not yet been falsified and we don't know whether it is valid or invalid. That's how you do science? Without differentiating between a rejected hypothesis and a falsified hypothesis?

 

You would not be sorry by making mistakes. The "God hypothesis" must be a philosophical hypothesis (religions take the existence of God as a dogma), but it is not a scientific hypothesis and cannot be falsified and/or verified in the real world, maintaining the hypothesis in a safe place. I already explained to you the difference between religion and science. I repeat it once again:

 

The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them.

 

The God hypothesis is both testifiable and falsifiable. The God hypothesis is a reasonable explanation for the origins of our cosmos, what the world is made of, what the nature of space and time is, what is intelligence, what is mind, explaining every damn unsolved puzzles of mankind. It is quite a reasonable one supported along with facts established from experiments and it makes the existence of God very likely and such a hypothesis should be considered seriously if anyone ever wish to give an objective account of reality.

 

Nonsense. The God hypothesis is so serious as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

You say us that the hag fish is not made of atoms, but "is actually made of only five elements but it appears as though it is made of various tissues only when you interact with the world through the metaphysical sense organs which is entangled to a metaphysical mind".

 

This is all completely incorrect, as anyone know the hag fish is made of little Invisible Pink Unicorns

[immortal]

You have not given any challenge, only exposed your misconceptions about both science and nature.

 

1. What is space-time actually made of?

2. What is the mechanism for quantum entangelemnt? How can one give explanations for the correlations observed?

3. A machine capable of strong AI - Those traditions already seem to know that "intelligence" exists in platonic realms so this is an important test.

4. Cognitive scientists solving the problem of qualia and the problem of universals.

 

These were the challenges which I made earlier and it is irrelevant as to how much knowledge I have about science and nature. You didn't gave any evidence for these challenges and we'll see as to who has misconceptions about the formalisms of quantum mechanics and its implications.

 

 

Therefore you wait a physical mechanism for something that does not exist. I repeat, no mysterious signal is being sent faster than light from Bob to Alice.

 

That didn't explained the observed correlations seen in Bell experiments. So you don't have it then? Non-local realism is also violated and we very well know now that no mysterious signal faster than light explains the correlations seen in Bell experiments. We need to abandon the notion of an objective reality. Its funny how you don't give an explanation and at the same time argue that local realism is maintained in nature.

 

No local or non-local causes can explain the correlations seen in Bell experiments and the only viable option is to give up our notions of realism.

 

 

That is supposed to be Bohr's answer to Einstein's "God does not play dice". It has nothing to do with Einstein's quote given above:

 

Einstein asked his friend Abraham Pais that "Do you really think the moon isn't there if you aren't looking at it?" to know whether he was on his side or on the side of anti-realists and I don't think that the response from Bohr to this question by Einstein would have been any more different than what he had answered to him to Einstein's earlier statement that "God does not play dice" and Bohr replied, "Einstein, don't tell God what to do".

 

 

Physics is a branch of science and uses the scientific method. The scientific method gives objective knowledge. Your traditions are subjective and/or wrong.

 

QM is a physical theory. By definition a metaphysical mind (even if we accept its existence) does not exist in the world.

 

We already discuss this before. Everything was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Your traditions are not needed.

 

The Ballentine paper rigourously addresses the Theory of Measurement in the formalism of Quantum Mechanics. As Ballentine himself states,

 

"But if one assumes that the state vector completely describes an individual system, then the dispersion of pointer positions must somehow be a property of the individual system, but it is nonsensical to suppose that a macroscopic pointer has no definite position. None of the attempts to solve this problem using some form of reduction of the state vector are satisfactory"

 

It was Von Neumann who introduced that concept of a conscious observer reducing the state vector and introduced the projection postulate and as Ballentine argues that if this is taken to its logical extreme then this third observer apart from the observed object and the measuring apparatus requires a fourth observer and a fifth and so on leading to an infinite regression.

 

Can wave–particle duality be based on the uncertainty relation?

 

We now know from the above paper that the reason interference pattern vanishes is because of the very act of knowing which way the quantum object has passed between two slits and its entanglement or correlations between the measuring apparatus and the observed object is the main reason for the loss of interference pattern in a double slit experiment. Since we don't have a mechanism of how entanglement works we don't have an explanation as to why the fringe pattern vanishes when we try to know which-way an object is gone. If one assumes that the state vector completely describes an individual system then the observed object is in entanglement with the measuring apparatus and as Von Neumann argues it makes no difference whether the measuring apparatus is considered to be a part of the observer or part of the object being observed. Therefore the observed object, the measuring apparatus and the mind of the observer are in entanglement with each other and there is deep mechanism which is at work. It is not due to the reduction of the state vector or due to the uncertainty principle but in fact there is a mechanism which gives us an actuality from a range of potentialities.

 

Entanglement is the key and I think the mind of the observer is albiet necessary because even the classical apparatus can be in a superposition of states and its inevitable. It is science which deals with subjective knowledge not Religion. Religion deals with the reality as it is and not with how it appears to us.

 

This is what Steven Weinberg means that "Niether Bohr nor Einstein had actually dealt with the real problem in quantum mechanics."

 

Those traditions are necessary for they give possible explanations and fill gaps in science and they are the alternative competing God hypothesis wanting to explain a wide range of physical phenomena.

 

Nonsense. The God hypothesis is so serious as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

You say us that the hag fish is not made of atoms, but "is actually made of only five elements but it appears as though it is made of various tissues only when you interact with the world through the metaphysical sense organs which is entangled to a metaphysical mind".

 

This is all completely incorrect, as anyone know the hag fish is made of little Invisible Pink Unicorns

 

Well, I am afraid that this God hypothesis is actually very serious because those philosophers investigating the pleroma of God might take over as true physicists.

Edited August 18, 2012 by immortal