Why Scientific Realism might be false?

zorro · August 19, 2012

The "Big Bang" theory and the discovery of the "God Particle" have just confirmed creation (Everything from Nothing).

.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlf9qX1RP2Y

zorro

juanrga · August 19, 2012

1. What is space-time actually made of?

Depend. I gave you the answer for GR and QFT before. Go back and read. There are modern developments where spacetime is not anything fundamental but only emergent.

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

First question answered before. Go back and read. Second question answered by "dynamics of correlations".

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_AI

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

Those are philosophical problems. As you know some philosophers negate the existencxe of such problems. As explained to you before (Go back and read), scientists deal with the real world not with what phylosophers imagine. Cognitive scientists and neuroscientists have already solved several previous philosophers disputes. Science rocks.

These were the challenges which I made earlier and it is irrelevant as to how much knowledge I have about science and nature.

No challenges but your misunderstandings about both science and nature.

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.

You have been explained all this before. Go back and read. Local realism continue being valid, this is the reason for which we continue to use SR, and electrodynamics to solve problems... Moreover, you confound local realism with scientific realism (read the title of your own thread).

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

From the same link that you gave in the past:

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.

As explained to you many times before. Go back and read. Bohr interpretation/philosophy is wrong. Our modern understanding of QM does not rely on observers. QM predicts that the moon is here without any observing it. Experimental data confirms this, including astrophysics and cosmological models.

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.

As explained to you before (Go back and read), the state of the cat is not described by a state vector. There is not paradox, except when you insists on misunderstanding QM.

As explained to you before (Go back and read), the reduction of the state does not need observers. There are dynamical models of the collapse. The infinite regression of observers was already pointed to you before as one of the reasons of why your 'philosophy' is inconsistent and useless.

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

This was already revised/commented before. Go back and read.

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."

Nonsense. You confound religion with science. It is religion which is subjective. This is the reason why science has corrected religion many times, but never the inverse. This was already explained to you. Go back and read.

It is also notable that you call scientists "dishonest", whereas you pretend that Steven Weinberg is supporting your nonsense!!! He was referring to another thing, the old problem of the relation between unitarity and non-unitarity (but this problem has been solved recently via non-unitary extensions of the Schrödinger equation).

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.

Gaps in science are filled by science itself. There is not "God hypothesis" in science by evident reasons stated to you before. Go back and read.

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.

Corrected before. Go back and read.

Edited August 19, 2012 by juanrga

immortal · August 19, 2012

The "Big Bang" theory and the discovery of the "God Particle" have just confirmed creation (Everything from Nothing).

zorro

That's not how the story ends.

"To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it"

This is about what science is and how it should be taught. We need to abandon the notion of an objective reality.

"So does the universe exist independently of measurements? That is a question we will have to face. May be it is time to revisit Einstein’s lost quest, if we are serious about uncovering the basic laws of the universe; the money spent on particle smashers such as the Large Hadron Collider certainly suggests we are. Perhaps we need to move quantum entanglement and the nature of reality to the centre of the quest to find a theory of everything. What was once a quirky side show may yet prove to be the main event."

The answer to the question "where do we come from?" not only lies on particle smashers but also on quantum entanglement and the nature of reality and drastically changes our view on science. Science is not a description of an objective world of things independent of human minds instead it is just a set of predictive rules to predict the possible values that we can assign to a physical system and it cannot in any way claim anything on the nature of the physical objects itself.

Are particles even things? An extreme view of the plasticity of electrons and other particles is expressed in this famous quote of Heisenberg: “The invisible elementary particle of modern physics does not have the property of occupying space any more than it has properties like color or solidity. Fundamentally, it is not a material structure in space and time but only a symbol that allows the laws of nature to be expressed in especially simple form.”

Are you satisfied with viewing science as a set of predictive rules or do you prefer to see science as a description of an objective world of things—in the case of particle physics, tiny, scaled-down things? What problems are associated with each point of view?

- Modern Physics - Serway, Moses and Moyer.

This is what should be taught and there are serious problems or you'll get into lot of troubles if you view science as a description of an objective world of things, physicists don't have an objective account of reality. It is the business of science to explain an objective world as it is independent of a human mind but physicists just don't have it and other branches of philosophy which can give an objective account of reality should be considered very seriously.

This lecture by David Mermin sums it up quite nicely.

Now you replace those Red and Blue color properties with the property of an object called the spin, say spin up and spin down and those A, B and C with the X, Y, Z spin components of an object then as Mermin shows these properties cannot exist in prior to the measurements and the observed correlations are infact instantaneous. Its not that one physicist was right or the other one was wrong but instead their intellectual arguments and facts established from experiments have concluded that we need to abandon the notion of an objective reality. Einsteinian realism or the commonsense view of the world is simply unattainable.

As Bohr says "There is essentially the question of an influence on the very conditions that define the possible types of prediction regarding the future behaviour of the system". According to Bohr the polarisation of a photon is an idealistic concept extrapolated from the results of our observations and no greater reality should be attributed to it. There is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity and Einsteinian objective world or his mathematical realism is just isn't out there. What ever is out there science cannot know what it is.

As Bernard D'Espagnat writes in his paper 'Reality and Physicists' pleading the physics community that there should be a philosophy with in science guiding the debates of physicists and says,

"Unless we discard altogether the very idea of reality that is independent of our knowledge, we have to accept that such a reality cannot be identified with the ensemble of phenomena. This in turn means that we cannot escape what I claim is the fundamental distinction between reality in itself or as such - reality independent of the human minds - and the ensemble of phenomena - or empirical reality. As we shall see, this distinction is not for the use of philosophers alone. Scientists seeking to understand in depth the nature of certain debates internal to the scientific community will also find it useful."

Bernard d'espagnat nicely puts it this way that "what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind".

Some are very much fond of correcting others without realizing that it is they who have to re-define their physical concepts but reality is same for everyone whether you like it or don't like it.

"We have always had a great deal of difficulty

understanding the world view

that quantum mechanics represents.

At least I do,

because I’m an old enough man

that I havent’ got to the point

that this stuff is obvious to me.

Okay, I still get nervous with it….

You know how it always is,

every new idea,

it takes a generation or two

until it becomes obvious

that there’s no real problem.

I cannot define the real problem,

therefore I suspect there’s no real problem,

but I’m not sure

there’s no real problem."

- R.P.Feynman, Int. J. Theor. Phys. 21, 471 (1982)

juanrga · August 21, 2012

As brilliantly emphasized by Albert Einstein:

The Heisenberg-Bohr tranquilizing 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.

Therefore let us left him lie there and focus on what quantum mechanics actually is and says.

First a warning for readers who approach to quantum mechanics by the first time. As I stated in the past many popular expositions of the subject (e.g. in non-academic magazines as "New Scientist") are notoriously wrong. In the words of Robert B. Griffiths [1]:

The result of using classical concepts where they do not belong is to generate contradictions and paradoxes of the sort which, especially in more popular expositions of the subject, make quantum physics seem magical. Magic may be good for entertainment, but the resulting confusion is not very helpful to students trying to understand the subject for the first time, or to more mature scientists who want to apply quantum principles to a new domain where there is not yet a well-established set of principles for carrying out and interpreting calculations, or to philosophers interested in the implications of quantum theory

I have corrected all the misunderstandings of quantum mechanics shared in this thread. Quantum mechanics does not imply that scientific realism has to be abandoned nor anything as that. Science rocks and once again corrects both philosophy and religion.

Those misunderstandings about quantum mechanics are corrected in modern textbooks, therefore instead repeating all the arguments given in a hundred of posts, I will cite the beautiful summary from [1]:

1. Measurements play no fundamental role in quantum mechanics, just as they play no fundamental role in classical mechanics. In both cases, measurement apparatus and the process of measurement are described using the same basic mechanical principles which apply to all other physical objects and physical processes. Quantum measurements, when interpreted using a suitable framework, can be understood as revealing properties of a measured system before the measurement took place, in a manner which was taken for granted in classical physics. See the discussion in Chs. 17 and 18. (It may be worth adding that there is no special role for human consciousness in the quantum measurement process, again in agreement with classical physics.)

2. Quantum mechanics, like classical mechanics, is a local theory in the sense that the world can be understood without supposing that there are mysterious influences which propagate over long distances more rapidly than the speed of light. See the discussion in Chs. 23–25 of the EPR paradox, Bell's inequalities, and Hardy's paradox. The idea that the quantum world is permeated by superluminal influences has come about because of an inadequate understanding of quantum measurements —in particular, the assumption that wave function collapse is a physical process— or through assuming the existence of hidden variables instead of (or in addition to) the quantum Hilbert space, or by employing counterfactual arguments which do not satisfy the single-framework rule. By contrast, a consistent application of quantum principles provides a positive demonstration of the absence of nonlocal influences, as in the example discussed in Sec. 23.4.

3. Both quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are consistent with the notion of an independent reality, a real world whose properties and fundamental laws do not depend upon what human beings happen to believe, desire, or think. While this real world contains human beings, among other things, it existed long before the human race appeared on the surface of the earth, and our presence is not essential for it to continue. The idea of an independent reality had been challenged by philosophers long before the advent of quantum mechanics. However, the difficulty of interpreting quantum theory has sometimes been interpreted as providing additional reasons for doubting that such a reality exists. In particular, the idea that measurements collapse wave functions can suggest the notion that they thereby bring reality into existence, and if a conscious observer is needed to collapse the wave function (MQS state) of a measuring apparatus, this could mean that consciousness somehow plays a fundamental role in reality. However, once measurements are understood as no more than particular examples of physical processes, and wave function collapse 370 Quantum theory and reality as nothing more than a computational tool, there is no reason to suppose that quantum theory is incompatible with an independent reality, and one is back to the situation which preceded the quantum era. To be sure, neither quantum nor classical mechanics provides watertight arguments in favor of an independent reality. In the final analysis, believing that there is a real world "out there", independent of ourselves, is a matter of faith. The point is that quantum mechanics is just as consistent with this faith as was classical mechanics. On the other hand, quantum theory indicates that the nature of this independent reality is in some respects quite different from what was earlier thought to be the case.

[1] Consistent Quantum Theory. Robert B. Griffiths. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Edited August 21, 2012 by juanrga

akh · August 21, 2012

^Even the Hagfish knows this and agrees.

Immortal, as I stated many posts ago, your argument is nothing new or novel. I know it is a defensive mechanism to hide the truth from oneself, but I really cannot understand your need for willful ignorance. You seem to have gone to some effort to understand some of the basics of physics, but you did not go far enough! You stopped looking as soon as you found what you wanted or found something disagreeable. Your argument may seem sound enough to fool the naive, but you are doing a great disservice to humanity by spreading half truths.

Please go back to those physics books and pick up where you left off. Set aside your ideology and continue to learn beyond it. If you get stuck or have questions, there is a great physics sub-forum here for your use. I am sure there will be more than a few people happy to help.

immortal · August 22, 2012

^Even the Hagfish knows this and agrees.

Immortal, as I stated many posts ago, your argument is nothing new or novel.

I know that its nothing new and I myself said that before you stated it.

We already know from the wisdom of the ancient masters that the empirical world is brought into existence by an entanglement between the metaphysical mind and the metaphysical senses(not biological organs), its nothing new, its old, its ancient. Its only recently that Bernard D'Espagnat has arrived at the same conclusion coming from a different approach into the nature of reality.

I know it is a defensive mechanism to hide the truth from oneself, but I really cannot understand your need for willful ignorance. You seem to have gone to some effort to understand some of the basics of physics, but you did not go far enough!

I learn both physics as well as religion.

You stopped looking as soon as you found what you wanted or found something disagreeable. Your argument may seem sound enough to fool the naive, but you are doing a great disservice to humanity by spreading half truths.

I am doing a disservice to humanity? If you have read the work of Jonathon Duqette which I given to you in my OP you wouldn't have said that. The work of Jonathon Duqette is not apologetic and that paper is mainly concerned with the problems and differences in epistemology between science and religion.

Don't make me do this again so that I have to make you read and instead you can easily do that by following a link and reading the full paper.

Richard H. Jones notices how Eastern thinkers can sometimes put Western thought on a pedestal to justify their own views, and how problematic such attempt can be:

[When making parallels] it could be that Western thought is unconsciously or consciously being taken as the supreme standard, with a corresponding lack of sensitivity to other interests: Asian thought must be shown to be positivistic in a time when positivism was in vogue, or existential for those who value existentialism. . .Or it must share our moral values, if not our beliefs. The various traditions cannot stand on their own terms but must be related to a Western standard. The danger here is in distorting the fundamental nature of these traditions in order to fulfill this demand rather than in understanding them in their own milieu.

Jones also identifies other difficulties related to the practice of parallelism. For instance, parallelists often overlook the diversity among and within Eastern schools of thought, and disregard the fact that each school has its own historical and interpretive issues.93 As a consequence, parallels remain at a superficial level not taking into account the complexity behind the different Eastern traditions. Similarly, when discussing quantum physics, parallelists rarely address the different interpretations that exist in literature. In Modern Physics and Vedanta, Jitatmananda refers indistinctly to Copenhagen and Everett's multiworld interpretations, without taking note of their basic differences. A related issue is that parallelists, especially those from the spiritual or religious side, often quote scientists with enormous respect as if they had discovered an unshakable truth. Any scientific theory presented becomes a ready-made worldview. Not surprisingly, then, some parallelists barely consider the scientific arguments raised against the theory or interpretation they promote. This attitude perhaps reflects a purely religious background, or an unfamiliarity with the process of scientific progress. Anyhow, these problems are reminders that a certain expertise in the compared disciplines, as well as a fair knowledge of their historical and theoretical issues, are indispensable.

Eric Scerri considers a major problem that "parallelists seem to imply not mere analogies, but a meaningful identity between the findings of physics and Eastern mysticism."Claims that disregard the richness and complexity of both disciplines, and especially their differences in terms of aims and methods are indeed improper. Barbour complains that Capra says little about differences in the goals and methods of physics and mysticism. In Barbour's view, the intent behind mysticism is not only to expound a metaphysical system but to transform one's personal life and guide one toward enlightenment. In contrast, science is about explaining the physical world around us, not about living a better and wiser life. Considering that the two disciplines also involve different methods or means of knowledge, it is highly improbable that their claims about reality will be identical in terms of content. The terms may be the same (notwithstanding the translation issue) but the concepts they stand for disagree. Another prob em in pushing parallelism to its extreme is the confusion between the ephemeral nature of scientific discoveries and the perennial truths of mysticism. Scientific discoveries ceaselessly change and alter; it is inadequate to make them equivalent with the "timeless" truths conveyed by mysticism. As Jeremy Bernstein said: "If I were an Eastern mystic the last thing in the world that I would want would be a reconciliation with modern science." In his opinion, since "the most valuable commodity that we have in science is doubt. . . ," "to hitch a religious philosophy to a contemporary science is a sure route to its obsolescence."97 Conversely, to elevate a scientific theory to the rank of a metaphysical system takes us beyond the realm of science. We have seen such an example with Goswami's interpretation of quantum physics. Although metaphysical assumptions intervene in the scientific theoretical process, the practice of physics must be kept within the defined boundaries of scientific epistemology. Otherwise, there is no way to differentiate between pseudo-science and scientific facts.

All things considered, is it even meaningful to draw parallels between modern physics and Eastern spiritual traditions? Certainly, one cannot overlook the ideological, cultural and political factors involved in those parallels. In particular, the colonial history linking Western countries with Asia over the last centuries, and the immense impact it had on their mutual cultural and intellectual exchanges, is a most important factor to consider. However, as Clarke rightly points out, power constitutes only one of the numerous factors in the East-West equation. Regardless of the numerous problems related to the practice, consistent parallelism might have the capacity to elucidate aspects and presuppositions not immediately perceived from the perspective of a single culture or discipline.

There is a lot of BS written about quantum mechanics and mysticism everywhere and most thinkers don't really know about these religions and its leading to all sorts of confusion. Why? It is because they are lacking wisdom, I am not here to push an ideology. I am here to clearly establish the relationship with science and religion and save the time of many who study these things.

Its very unlikely that God had used Big Bang or DNA to create the universe or life on earth. If one wants to accept Religion accept it as it is otherwise be a strong atheist. I did not pushed this as a scientific hypothesis. I did not opened this thread in the speculation forum because this is definitely not science. I pushed it as a God hypothesis and one cannot study God based on the scientific method.

This might not have any importance for you but it does for these people.

You see to what extent Bernard d'Espagnat's thought is of primary importance for all those individuals who wish to reconcile the world's rational knowledge with the basic intuitions of some of the great religious traditions, that is to say to reconcile Faith with Reason. This is why Bernard d'Espagnat's thought is destined for a great future in the XXIst Century, as one of the significant steps of the conceptual revolution we are experiencing and which gets us from a world where science and religion would be separated to a world where they may be in dialogue, and this is the reason why attributing the Templeton Prize to Bernard d'Espagnat is very important and may fill us all with joy to night.

Please go back to those physics books and pick up where you left off. Set aside your ideology and continue to learn beyond it. If you get stuck or have questions, there is a great physics sub-forum here for your use. I am sure there will be more than a few people happy to help.

Well thanks to this forum and I have learnt a lot from here and this wouldn't have been possible without the help of the members of this forum. I do learn and follow the advancements made in science and something bothers me and that's the pleroma of God. Carl Jung and Devudu were not goat herders, they were highly intellectual people and most people are not aware of their works and they give some valuable insights into the nature of reality and I want to know whether these half truths are really true or false.

Edited August 22, 2012 by immortal

Ben Banana · August 22, 2012

Carl Jung and Devudu were not goat herders, they were highly intellectual people and most people are not aware of their works

I would like to point out, this is the exact same case as with Adolf Hitler. Also, Jung's manner of approach to 'scientific' and 'philosophical' matters has many similarities to Hitler's.

Edited August 22, 2012 by Ben Bowen

**imatfaal** · August 22, 2012

!

Moderator Note

Can we avoid Godwin please.

immortal · August 22, 2012

I would like to point out, this is the exact same case as with Adolf Hitler. Also, Jung's manner of approach to 'scientific' and 'philosophical' matters has many similarities to Hitler's.

Read the Seven Sermons to the Dead by Carl Jung. Did Hitler ever talked about the pleroma of God? Jung's summary of his Red Book has nothing to do with this world at all.

immortal · August 23, 2012

Jung was not anti-semitic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

In an interview with Carol Baumann in 1948, Jung denied rumors regarding any sympathy for the Nazi movement, saying:

It must be clear to anyone who has read any of my books that I have never been a Nazi sympathizer and I never have been anti-Semitic, and no amount of misquotation, mistranslation, or rearrangement of what I have written can alter the record of my true point of view. Nearly every one of these passages has been tampered with, either by malice or by ignorance. Furthermore, my friendly relations with a large group of Jewish colleagues and patients over a period of many years in itself disproves the charge of anti-Semitism.

Spirituality

Jung's work on himself and his patients convinced him that life has a spiritual purpose beyond material goals. Our main task, he believed, is to discover and fulfill our deep innate potential. Based on his study of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Taoism, and other traditions, Jung believed that this journey of transformation, which he called individuation, is at the mystical heart of all religions. It is a journey to meet the self and at the same time to meet the Divine. Unlike Sigmund Freud, Jung thought spiritual experience was essential to our well-being.^[35]

Jung's works can be backed up by verses from the scriptures of all religions. One need to differentiate pseudoscience from Science and pseudo-religion from Religion. Jung's work should be taken seriously because that's how our ancients viewed the world and scriptures are evidence of it.

Edited August 23, 2012 by immortal

juanrga · August 23, 2012

I learn both physics as well as religion.

Reading a New Scientist article is not "to learn physics". If you had studied quantum physics, for instance from the last textbook cited above, you would not be making and repeating the same mistakes again and again, as for instance your incorrect claim that quantum mechanics implies that reality is created by human observers through measurements.

I repeat: quantum mechanics does not support your "traditions".

I am doing a disservice to humanity?

Spreading myths and repeating old mistakes has never benefit anyone.

If one wants to accept Religion accept it as it is otherwise be a strong atheist. I did not pushed this as a scientific hypothesis. I did not opened this thread in the speculation forum because this is definitely not science. I pushed it as a God hypothesis and one cannot study God based on the scientific method.

You opened this thread to show us why scientific realism must be false and why both science and physicists must be substituted by philosophers and religions. You have failed to back up your claims.

Edited August 23, 2012 by juanrga

immortal · August 23, 2012

I have corrected all the misunderstandings of quantum mechanics shared in this thread. Quantum mechanics does not imply that scientific realism has to be abandoned nor anything as that. Science rocks and once again corrects both philosophy and religion.

No one said Science sucks. Philosophy keeps an eye on both Science and Religion and that's why there is a philosophy of Religion and a philosophy of Science. The day you said that Science is not a branch of philosophy you lost your intellectual honesty and you started pushing science as a dogma. The assumptions of Science can be questioned and it will be questioned.

I never said Quantum mechanics implies that scientific realism has to be abandoned, I said the observed correlations in Bell experiments, a natural phenomena questions scientific realism and should be abandoned. Either give an objective explanation to those correlations or accept that science is positivism and physicists are mere empiricists with no real knowledge of the nature of the Universe. The day you scientists accepted the existence of this empirical reality independent of the human mind as a matter of faith at that point Science and Religion were on equal footing and philosophy has to come in to keep an eye on both.

Scientific Realism is indeed in trouble. Scientists might just shut up and calculate equations with out questioning these basic assumptions but philosophers will question it.

The Quantum Theory and Reality - Bernard d'Espagnat

"As far as the issue of “reality” in philosophy of physics is concerned, emphasis is laid on the views of the French theoretical physicist and philosopher of science Bernard d’Espagnat. D’Espagnat is widely recognized as a leading authority in the field of interpretation of quantum physics and particularly renown for his works on realism in physics. His recent book On Physics and Philosophy was described by the physicist Roland Omn`es as “surely the most complete book to have been written on this subject [philosophy of quantum physics] and one likely to last a long time. . . ”23

- Jonathon Duqette

juanrga · August 24, 2012

Philosophy keeps an eye on both Science and Religion and that's why there is a philosophy of Religion and a philosophy of Science. The day you said that Science is not a branch of philosophy you lost your intellectual honesty and you started pushing science as a dogma.

Insulting others will not change the fact that science is not a branch of philosophy. There exist one branch of history named history of philosophy and another branch named history of science, but neither science nor philosophy are branches of history.

I never said Quantum mechanics implies that scientific realism has to be abandoned

Already in #20 you wrote (quoting the old Scientific American magazine):

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.

But as kindly explained to you many many times, this is just untrue. The textbook cited in #104 explains why all what you have been saying here is based in a serious misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

You can repeat the same mistakes forever, that it will change nothing.

Edited August 24, 2012 by juanrga

immortal · August 24, 2012

Reading a New Scientist article is not "to learn physics". If you had studied quantum physics, for instance from the last textbook cited above, you would not be making and repeating the same mistakes again and again, as for instance your incorrect claim that quantum mechanics implies that reality is created by human observers through measurements.

How do you know what I have read and what I haven't?

I love science more than you do. Take back the things that you've charged on me.

Cell and Molecular Biology, E.D.P De Robertis and E.M.F De Robertis - The last chapter of this book deals with Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology. There is nothing in the chemistry of Brain which can explain the processing of qualia like sweetness and redness. Just because I didn't go into detailed arguments in this thread doesn't mean that you ask questions like Do you even know this? and Do you even know that?

A Beginner's guide to Quantum Mechanics, Alastair I.M Rae, 2007.

How then does conventional quantum theory treat a situation such as the measurement of the polarization of photon pairs? Shortly after Einstein’s paper came out, Bohr published a response, the key phrase of which was ‘There is essentially the question of an influence on the very conditions that define the possible types of prediction regarding the future behaviour of the system’ (Bohr’s italics). Applying this to the two-photon case, Bohr is saying that if we alter the orientation of one of the polarizers, we are not affecting the photons physically, but are only changing the attributes (i.e. the allowed values of the polarization) that we can assign to the system. Returning to our map-book analogy, we must turn to a different page to find the appropriate map to describe the changed situation; this does not have a direct effect on the quantum system, but only on the language we use to describe it. Whether or not we find this satisfactory depends strongly on our own ideas and prejudices. It certainly did not satisfy Einstein, whose reaction was that Bohr’s position was logically possible, but ‘so very contrary to my scientific instinct that I cannot forego my search for a more complete conception’. No such ‘complete conception’ has yet emerged to command a consensus in the scientific community

Why is that only your biased textbooks are valid and mine aren't? This is what happens when scientists start doing philosophy rather than science. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is a philosophical topic and it clearly shows that physicists don't have a complete common consensus on the nature of reality and the nature of this physical universe. This book is latest compared to that text book of yours.

I repeat: quantum mechanics does not support your "traditions".

I never said quantum mechanics supports those traditions. Those traditions stands on its own and it doesn't need any justification from science. I said Bernard d'Espagnat's work support those traditions and Bernard was not afraid to state the obvious which many physicists hesitated to say it.

Spreading myths and repeating old mistakes has never benefit anyone.

But as kindly explained to you many many times, this is just untrue. The textbook cited in #104 explains why all what you have been saying here is based in a serious misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

You can repeat the same mistakes forever, that it will change nothing.

Yes I have exposed the mistakes that some scientists have made while making the consensus on the nature of physical reality.

You opened this thread to show us why scientific realism must be false and why both science and physicists must be substituted by philosophers and religions. You have failed to back up your claims.

Already in #20 you wrote (quoting the old Scientific American magazine):

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.

Saying that Bell experiments confirms the predictions of Quantum mechanics is same as saying local realism is violated and also non-local realism (considering the experiments on Anthony Leggett's theorem which extends Bell theorem to test for non-local realism), which part of this that you don't understand?

juanrga · August 24, 2012

How do you know what I have read and what I haven't?

The word "read" was used only once time and it was in the phrase: "Reading a New Scientist article is not 'to learn physics'." Ironically you are not even mentioned in that phrase :rolleyes: .

I love science more than you do.

You know the song: "I killed her because I loved her".

Cell and Molecular Biology, E.D.P De Robertis and E.M.F De Robertis - The last chapter of this book deals with Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology. There is nothing in the chemistry of Brain which can explain the processing of qualia like sweetness and redness.

Chemists know enough of the chemistry of the Brain to create substances that modify the perception, consciousness, personality, and behaviour.

A Beginner's guide to Quantum Mechanics, Alastair I.M Rae, 2007.

Why is that only your biased textbooks are valid and mine aren't?

Not all the references have the same validity/status. A pseudo-recreational article in a popular magazine (with accusations of sensationalism) has not the same scientific status than a research paper in a top specialised scientific journal; A beginner's guide has not he same status than an advanced textbook (specially when the authors are recognized expertises in the topic who have advanced the field).

Of course, the above is valid for any branch of knowledge. Reading a sensationalist article about chemistry in a popular magazine is not the same than reading a chemistry research article in JACS.

I never said quantum mechanics supports those traditions. Those traditions stands on its own and it doesn't need any justification from science. I said Bernard d'Espagnat's work support those traditions and Bernard was not afraid to state the obvious which many physicists hesitated to say it.

You have quoted him saying that

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment.

but he is wrong, because neither quantum mechanics nor experiments are in conflict with reality. Those misunderstandings about quantum mechanics and experiments are corrected in modern textbooks [1]:

1. Measurements play no fundamental role in quantum mechanics, just as they play no fundamental role in classical mechanics. In both cases, measurement apparatus and the process of measurement are described using the same basic mechanical principles which apply to all other physical objects and physical processes. Quantum measurements, when interpreted using a suitable framework, can be understood as revealing properties of a measured system before the measurement took place, in a manner which was taken for granted in classical physics. See the discussion in Chs. 17 and 18. (It may be worth adding that there is no special role for human consciousness in the quantum measurement process, again in agreement with classical physics.)

[...]

3. Both quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are consistent with the notion of an independent reality, a real world whose properties and fundamental laws do not depend upon what human beings happen to believe, desire, or think. While this real world contains human beings, among other things, it existed long before the human race appeared on the surface of the earth, and our presence is not essential for it to continue. The idea of an independent reality had been challenged by philosophers long before the advent of quantum mechanics. However, the difficulty of interpreting quantum theory has sometimes been interpreted as providing additional reasons for doubting that such a reality exists. In particular, the idea that measurements collapse wave functions can suggest the notion that they thereby bring reality into existence, and if a conscious observer is needed to collapse the wave function (MQS state) of a measuring apparatus, this could mean that consciousness somehow plays a fundamental role in reality. However, once measurements are understood as no more than particular examples of physical processes, and wave function collapse 370 Quantum theory and reality as nothing more than a computational tool, there is no reason to suppose that quantum theory is incompatible with an independent reality, and one is back to the situation which preceded the quantum era. To be sure, neither quantum nor classical mechanics provides watertight arguments in favor of an independent reality. In the final analysis, believing that there is a real world "out there", independent of ourselves, is a matter of faith. The point is that quantum mechanics is just as consistent with this faith as was classical mechanics. On the other hand, quantum theory indicates that the nature of this independent reality is in some respects quite different from what was earlier thought to be the case.

In short: Your traditions have not any basis... and are useless.

Saying that Bell experiments confirms the predictions of Quantum mechanics is same as saying local realism is violated and also non-local realism (considering the experiments on Anthony Leggett's theorem which extends Bell theorem to test for non-local realism), which part of this that you don't understand?

Those misunderstandings about quantum mechanics are corrected in modern textbooks [1]:

2. Quantum mechanics, like classical mechanics, is a local theory in the sense that the world can be understood without supposing that there are mysterious influences which propagate over long distances more rapidly than the speed of light. See the discussion in Chs. 23–25 of the EPR paradox, Bell's inequalities, and Hardy's paradox. The idea that the quantum world is permeated by superluminal influences has come about because of an inadequate understanding of quantum measurements —in particular, the assumption that wave function collapse is a physical process— or through assuming the existence of hidden variables instead of (or in addition to) the quantum Hilbert space, or by employing counterfactual arguments which do not satisfy the single-framework rule. By contrast, a consistent application of quantum principles provides a positive demonstration of the absence of nonlocal influences, as in the example discussed in Sec. 23.4.

[1] Consistent Quantum Theory. Robert B. Griffiths. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Edited August 24, 2012 by juanrga

immortal · August 25, 2012

The word "read" was used only once time and it was in the phrase: "Reading a New Scientist article is not 'to learn physics'." Ironically you are not even mentioned in that phrase .

juanrga, on 23 August 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

Reading a New Scientist article is not "to learn physics". If you had studied quantum physics, for instance from the last textbook cited above, you would not be making and repeating the same mistakes again and again, as for instance your incorrect claim that quantum mechanics implies that reality is created by human observers through measurements.

Lies!

You know the song: "I killed her because I loved her".

You know what love really means?

http://www.myspace.c...72368911&ac=now

J.J Heller - We are truly made in the image of God.

Chemists know enough of the chemistry of the Brain to create substances that modify the perception, consciousness, personality, and behaviour.

Zombies!!

Not all the references have the same validity/status. A pseudo-recreational article in a popular magazine (with accusations of sensationalism) has not the same scientific status than a research paper in a top specialised scientific journal; A beginner's guide has not he same status than an advanced textbook (specially when the authors are recognized expertises in the topic who have advanced the field).

Of course, the above is valid for any branch of knowledge. Reading a sensationalist article about chemistry in a popular magazine is not the same than reading a chemistry research article in JACS.

The paper was also cited from arXiv.

You have quoted him saying that

but he is wrong, because neither quantum mechanics nor experiments are in conflict with reality. Those misunderstandings about quantum mechanics and experiments are corrected in modern textbooks [1]:

You did not refuted his arguments. What you're doing here is an appeal to authority. How do you decide someone else has more authority on this subject than Bernard D'Espagnat?

In short: Your traditions have not any basis... and are useless.

The uses of these traditions in solving ontological, philosophical and scientific problems were explicitly stated through out the thread.

juanrga · August 25, 2012

Lies!

The phrase that you emphasized in bold does not contain the word "read" and the phrase that contains the word "read" does not mention you...

Calling the scientific community (either in whole or in part) dishonest and liars is not going to help you to correct your multiple misunderstandings.

You know what love really means?

Yes, and this is why I was ironic regarding your self-professed 'love' for science.

J.J Heller - We are truly made in the image of God.

Nope, as this well-known religious scene shows

Zombies!!

:blink:

The paper was also cited from arXiv.

Which is merely a repository of papers, magazine articles, books and book's chapters, conference proceedings...

Posted in ArXiv does not mean "peer-reviewed" neither "correct".

You did not refuted his arguments. What you're doing here is an appeal to authority. How do you decide someone else has more authority on this subject than Bernard D'Espagnat?

This is all wrong. You are not going to correct your multiple misunderstandings if you do not read what others say.

I refuted D'Espagnat's arguments when I read his nonsensical magazine article. I can do it because I studied quantum mechanics. When I cited Griffiths' textbook I said that I was doing it because of the next motive: "instead repeating all the arguments given in a hundred of posts, I will cite the beautiful summary from [...]". I did never appeal to authority. I know what he is rigth because I have studied quantum mechanics.

Ironically, you are who continuously appeal to authority. But it can be still more ironic and laughable, because you wrote by "these reasons the John Templeton foundation recognizes the importance of the work of Bernard D'espagnat".

Yes! D'Espagnat only won one award from an obscure pseudo-religious Foundation, because his contributions to quantum mechanics are easily summarized: zero. At the other hand Griffiths has made many contributions to quantum mechanics including a new formulation (together Murray Gell-Mann, Omnes and others) that improves the older and flawed Copenhagen version. For his work, Griffiths has been awarded several physical and mathematical awards from scientific bodies including this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dannie_Heineman_Prize_for_Mathematical_Physics

For the sake of comparison, check what D'Espagnat has won:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize

The uses of these traditions in solving ontological, philosophical and scientific problems were explicitly stated through out the thread.

It was already pointed that those traditions are completely wrong and useless.

immortal · August 25, 2012

This is all wrong. You are not going to correct your multiple misunderstandings if you do not read what others say.

I refuted D'Espagnat's arguments when I read his nonsensical magazine article. I can do it because I studied quantum mechanics. When I cited Griffiths' textbook I said that I was doing it because of the next motive: "instead repeating all the arguments given in a hundred of posts, I will cite the beautiful summary from [...]". I did never appeal to authority. I know what he is rigth because I have studied quantum mechanics.

Ironically, you are who continuously appeal to authority. But it can be still more ironic and laughable, because you wrote by "these reasons the John Templeton foundation recognizes the importance of the work of Bernard D'espagnat".

Yes! D'Espagnat only won one award from an obscure pseudo-religious Foundation, because his contributions to quantum mechanics are easily summarized: zero. At the other hand Griffiths has made many contributions to quantum mechanics including a new formulation (together Murray Gell-Mann, Omnes and others) that improves the older and flawed Copenhagen version. For his work, Griffiths has been awarded several physical and mathematical awards from scientific bodies including this

http://en.wikipedia....matical_Physics

For the sake of comparison, check what D'Espagnat has won:

http://en.wikipedia....Templeton_Prize

People should laugh at you. When there is a problem honestly acknowledge there is a problem, don't try to evade it. Philosophers and physicists have considered Bernard D'Espagnat's work because he is the leading authority in this subject and his work is rock solid. You're not the only one who have studied quantum mechanics, there are many out there who are far more experienced and also those who apply quantum mechanics in the empirical world and the consensus should be made considering both theoretical physicists and experimental physicists who actually develop quantum applications. Don't single out Bernard D'espagnat and make scornful statements about him.

Vladko Vedral - "Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality"

It is you who are deliberately adding misinformation into this thread and evading fact claims established from experiments. There are many quantum physicists out there who disagree with you and experiments have concluded that they are right. Its you who is wrong not Bernard.

This is from the same New Scientist article which was cited earlier.

All these researchers contradict your claims and you did not made any arguments to refute it but only repeated statements from an outdated textbook.

It was already pointed that those traditions are completely wrong and useless.

That's not a scientific attitude at all, prior to any investigation assuming that they are wrong. You did not gave any evidence to my challenges and all evidence shows that realism sinks in the bottomless ocean.

juanrga · August 25, 2012

People should laugh at you. When there is a problem honestly acknowledge there is a problem, don't try to evade it.

This explains why half dozen of people has said to you what you are writing nonsense and that you do not understand science.

Philosophers and physicists have considered Bernard D'Espagnat's work because he is the leading authority in this subject and his work is rock solid.

The only award which D'Espagnat's "rock solid" work has won is the Templeton Prize. I agree on that he must be the "leading authority" in bridging "the gap between sense and nonsense" (the 1999 Nobel laureate in physics own words about this prize).

Vladko Vedral - "Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality"

You already cited this guy before and I already commented on that, but since you do not read I will repeat. He is plain wrong. In fact his book about 'reality' has received bad reviews. Next I add some quotes from reviewers of his book

I did read the whole book. I do have a college degree and some knowledge of both physics and information theory. The author circles incoherently and by the end is just spewing words. The "Key Points" at the end of each chapter sum it up, they reek of an editor trying to bring sense and progress to amorphous blobs of essays. You will learn nothing from this at all.

Would that he had! This book is nearly devoid of any (meaningful) information. Instead it reads like first drafts of several disconnected lectures pompously strung together with little stories about how great and wonderful the author is. Save your money.

Such a great title and promise, and yet offers zero insight and significance. If you already know about quantum and information theories, you won't learn anything new (worse you get frustrated by inconsistencies, misrepresentations, ungrounded conclusions, etc). And if you don't know these theories, you would be misguided.

Things get worse. When the author moves on to discuss the issue of environmental change, he treats the Earth as though it were a closed system. Thus he accounts for energy conversion into heat, but totally forgets that the Earth radiates most of its heat into space. Instead of an intelligent discussion about the tremendous complexity of environmental systems, we get a schoolboy exegesis that is utterly facile and just silly, and which has nothing whatsoever to do with the central thesis of the book.

So all in all this is a curiosity of a book - intended as a thesis about information and reality but in fact being a record of one man's curious obsession through which everything is distorted. By the half-way point I was ready to toss the book into the nearest bin, but persevered in the (alas vain) hope that it would redeem itself at some point. So if you are a connoisseur of oddities and obsessions, this is very much the book for you. But if you are looking for a serious contribution to our knowledge of the universe, you won't find much of help within these pages.

With almost reckless abandon he tosses off a few references to support his idea. Unfortunately in at least one case, his facts are either wrong or poorly stated. For example p 148: "Biological plant efficiency is super-high, around 98% of the radiation that hits teh leaf does get stored efficiently." This nonsense, as the plant would be almost non-reflective and appear quite dark, an obvious error that defies common sense and albedo measurements. Perhaps he meant 98% of the absorbed visible radiation that is trapped by chlorophyll?

The last part just goes off into la-la land as speculative philosophy. It may be that the universe is a quantum computer and it may be that information is fundamental to the universe, but the evidence presented is effectively non-existant. The edifice, like much of philosophy is built on logic, not on experimental data, without obvious testable hypotheses (at least as presented to the reader). The end result reads like mysticism, much like Fritjof Capra's works.

If you are a person that, like me, religiously follows the recommendations of the Books Section in The Economist, you may be tempted to purchase this book. Don't. This book is a complete disappointment from beginning to end. All examples are either oversimplified or too confusing to follow. Sometimes they are just plain inaccurate, as some of the other reviewers have already outlined.

Try again :rolleyes:

It is you who are deliberately adding misinformation into this thread and evading fact claims established from experiments. There are many quantum physicists out there who disagree with you and experiments have concluded that they are right. Its you who is wrong not Bernard.

This is from the same New Scientist article which was cited earlier.

All these researchers contradict your claims and you did not made any arguments to refute it but only repeated statements from an outdated textbook.

What part of the New scientists article you cite is plain wrong you do not still understand? What part of New scientists is a bad-fame popular magazine (not a reputable scientific journal) you do not understand?

What part of Griffiths textbook provides a consistent presentation of quantum mechanics that avoids the mistakes and nonsense shared by the authord that you ctie, you do not understand?

That's not a scientific attitude at all, prior to any investigation assuming that they are wrong. You did not gave any evidence to my challenges and all evidence shows that realism sinks in the bottomless ocean.

And finally, what part of your traditions were analysed and the conclusion is that they are nonsense you do not understand?

immortal · August 26, 2012

This explains why half dozen of people has said to you what you are writing nonsense and that you do not understand science.

I understand how science works better than you do. The fact that you don't acknowledge that science falls under Philosophy shows that you want to push science as a dogma. I did not pushed this God hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis and I very well know that the scientific method is not suited to test a God hypothesis. This is more of a battle between two different philosophical disciplines(Science and Religions) who are competing to explain the same natural phenomena and competing to give answers to the same questions which science asks such as,

1. What is the world made of?

2. Where do we come from?

3. Can we understand the underlying principles on how this universe works?

4. How did this cosmos originated?

Scientists have no right to call a different philosophical doctrine as nonsense when there is considerable doubt with in the scientific community has to what constitute as objective and what is subjective. I am not forcing you to accept those traditions as true but instead I want you to accept the work of Richard H. Jones where he concludes that,

"After a long and well-informed discussion, he concludes that "neither science nor mysticism [alone] provides self-evident insights into the actual nature of reality" [213]

The ones who understand this cosmos control this cosmos and there is considerable doubt as to who controls this universe. Scientific research is as equivalent as research into God and Religion and they are on same footing. Its a consensus which scientists haven't won yet.

The only award which D'Espagnat's "rock solid" work has won is the Templeton Prize. I agree on that he must be the "leading authority" in bridging "the gap between sense and nonsense" (the 1999 Nobel laureate in physics own words about this prize).

Don't be cheap, for true philosophers the truth is far more important than any Prize, the more you're going to call those traditions as nonsense the more is that people are going to laugh at you. Earlier you made scornful statements about Bernard saying "for a man to whom only prize is important" and here is what Bernard says,

"The message would be that the purpose of life is not to eat and drink, watch television and so on. Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life. There is a superior entity, a divinity, le divin as we say in French that is worth thinking about, as are our feelings of wholeness, respect and love, if we can. A society in which these feelings are widespread would be more reasonable than the society the West presently lives in."

- Bernard D'Espagnat

Yajnavalkya, one of the important philosophers of those traditions had won thousand cows with gold on the horns of each cow and he gave all his wealth to his wife and went to know something which was worth knowing. He is the one who developed the 95 year cycle to synchronize the motions of sun and the moon around 1800 B.C and it differs by just 6 minutes from modern calculations. Those people knew that the cosmos is differentiated into a microcosm and a macrocosm, what are suns, planets, stars in the macrocosm of this empirical reality they are gods in the reality of microcosm which exists in every living being and Yajnavalkya got all this knowledge from the gods.

Its you who don't understand religious values and religious principles and as I told the more you're going to call those traditions as nonsense the more is that people are going to laugh at you because all evidence is in favour of these religious traditions.

You already cited this guy before and I already commented on that, but since you do not read I will repeat. He is plain wrong. In fact his book about 'reality' has received bad reviews. Next I add some quotes from reviewers of his book

Try again

Try this with someone else not with me, his claim that "Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality" is irrelevant to what he wrote in his book.

What part of the New scientists article you cite is plain wrong you do not still understand? What part of New scientists is a bad-fame popular magazine (not a reputable scientific journal) you do not understand?

What part of Griffiths textbook provides a consistent presentation of quantum mechanics that avoids the mistakes and nonsense shared by the authord that you ctie, you do not understand?

The magazine is not important, what is important is the content and the arguments and evidence is what is important.

Griffith didn't give an objective explanation for the observed correlations in Bell Experiments and it demands explanations. Did you understand?

And finally, what part of your traditions were analysed and the conclusion is that they are nonsense you do not understand?

You don't decide what makes sense and what doesn't. It is nature which does. It is evidence which decides what is nonsense and what's not.

Edited August 26, 2012 by immortal

juanrga · August 26, 2012

I understand how science works better than you do. The fact that you don't acknowledge that science falls under Philosophy shows that you want to push science as a dogma. I did not pushed this God hypothesis as a scientific hypothesis and I very well know that the scientific method is not suited to test a God hypothesis. This is more of a battle between two different philosophical disciplines(Science and Religions) who are competing to explain the same natural phenomena and competing to give answers to the same questions which science asks such as,

1. What is the world made of?

2. Where do we come from?

3. Can we understand the underlying principles on how this universe works?

4. How did this cosmos originated?

The difference between science and philosophy is taught at the kindergarten. :doh:

Moreover, as Hawking emphasizes in a recent conference:

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

I would say that philosophy is dead regarding the understanding of reality, but it can continue as independent field regarding other matters.

Scientists have no right to call a different philosophical doctrine as nonsense

No. Scientists are saying something different.

I am not forcing you to accept those traditions as true but instead I want you to accept the work of Richard H. Jones where he concludes that,

"After a long and well-informed discussion, he concludes that "neither science nor mysticism [alone] provides self-evident insights into the actual nature of reality" [213]

Of both disciplines only science provides an objective (testable) insight about the nature of reality.

The ones who understand this cosmos control this cosmos and there is considerable doubt as to who controls this universe. Scientific research is as equivalent as research into God and Religion and they are on same footing. Its a consensus which scientists haven't won yet.

Scientific research is not equivalent to religious research. Neither both are "on the same footing". I will repeat the famous quote about the difference between religion and science:

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

It is very interesting that you follow the same pattern than anti-scientific creationists and intelligent design zealots. They also misrepresent science and pretend to blur the sharp distinction between science and religion for selling their mystical nonsense as if it was "on the same footing" than reliable scientific knowledge.

Don't be cheap, for true philosophers the truth is far more important than any Prize, the more you're going to call those traditions as nonsense the more is that people are going to laugh at you. Earlier you made scornful statements about Bernard saying "for a man to whom only prize is important"

I do not recall saying that. Link please. :blink:

"The message would be that the purpose of life is not to eat and drink, watch television and so on. Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life. There is a superior entity, a divinity, le divin as we say in French that is worth thinking about, as are our feelings of wholeness, respect and love, if we can. A society in which these feelings are widespread would be more reasonable than the society the West presently lives in."

- Bernard D'Espagnat

I already said to you, several dozens of posts ago, that the superior divinity is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read the Holy Book!

Its you who don't understand religious values and religious principles and as I told the more you're going to call those traditions as nonsense the more is that people are going to laugh at you because all evidence is in favour of these religious traditions.

All of science is made without any need of those. Open a textbook on chemistry, physics, biology... and check it by yourself. Moreover, it is well-known that science has corrected religion in multiple occasions, whereas it never happened in the opposite. I offered you details of the ancient Galileo-Pope episode but there is more, just open a textbook on history of science.

Try this with someone else not with me, his claim that "Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality" is irrelevant to what he wrote in his book.

His book was presented to us as giving a new and deep understanding of reality but, as many reviewers have noted, your 'expert' does not know even elementary aspects of reality (I already said to you that he does not understand quantum mechanical reality). Read the reviews of his book and you will find a striking parallelism with the nonsense that you write here. I add bold face.

I did read the whole book. I do have a college degree and some knowledge of both physics and information theory. The author circles incoherently and by the end is just spewing words. The "Key Points" at the end of each chapter sum it up, they reek of an editor trying to bring sense and progress to amorphous blobs of essays. You will learn nothing from this at all.

Would that he had! This book is nearly devoid of any (meaningful) information. Instead it reads like first drafts of several disconnected lectures pompously strung together with little stories about how great and wonderful the author is. Save your money.

Such a great title and promise, and yet offers zero insight and significance. If you already know about quantum and information theories, you won't learn anything new (worse you get frustrated by inconsistencies, misrepresentations, ungrounded conclusions, etc). And if you don't know these theories, you would be misguided.

Things get worse. When the author moves on to discuss the issue of environmental change, he treats the Earth as though it were a closed system. Thus he accounts for energy conversion into heat, but totally forgets that the Earth radiates most of its heat into space. Instead of an intelligent discussion about the tremendous complexity of environmental systems, we get a schoolboy exegesis that is utterly facile and just silly, and which has nothing whatsoever to do with the central thesis of the book.

So all in all this is a curiosity of a book - intended as a thesis about information and reality but in fact being a record of one man's curious obsession through which everything is distorted. By the half-way point I was ready to toss the book into the nearest bin, but persevered in the (alas vain) hope that it would redeem itself at some point. So if you are a connoisseur of oddities and obsessions, this is very much the book for you. But if you are looking for a serious contribution to our knowledge of the universe, you won't find much of help within these pages.

With almost reckless abandon he tosses off a few references to support his idea. Unfortunately in at least one case, his facts are either wrong or poorly stated. For example p 148: "Biological plant efficiency is super-high, around 98% of the radiation that hits teh leaf does get stored efficiently." This nonsense, as the plant would be almost non-reflective and appear quite dark, an obvious error that defies common sense and albedo measurements. Perhaps he meant 98% of the absorbed visible radiation that is trapped by chlorophyll?

The last part just goes off into la-la land as speculative philosophy. It may be that the universe is a quantum computer and it may be that information is fundamental to the universe, but the evidence presented is effectively non-existant. The edifice, like much of philosophy is built on logic, not on experimental data, without obvious testable hypotheses (at least as presented to the reader). The end result reads like mysticism, much like Fritjof Capra's works.

If you are a person that, like me, religiously follows the recommendations of the Books Section in The Economist, you may be tempted to purchase this book. Don't. This book is a complete disappointment from beginning to end. All examples are either oversimplified or too confusing to follow. Sometimes they are just plain inaccurate, as some of the other reviewers have already outlined.

Try again.

The magazine is not important, what is important is the content and the arguments and evidence is what is important.

I wrote about the content! I will repeat: "What part of the New scientists article you cite is plain wrong you do not still understand?"

Griffith didn't give an objective explanation for the observed correlations in Bell Experiments and it demands explanations. Did you understand?

He gave explanation and even gave the link with the observed correlations in classical mechanics.

2. Quantum mechanics, like classical mechanics, is a local theory in the sense that the world can be understood without supposing that there are mysterious influences which propagate over long distances more rapidly than the speed of light. See the discussion in Chs. 23–25 of the EPR paradox, Bell's inequalities, and Hardy's paradox. The idea that the quantum world is permeated by superluminal influences has come about because of an inadequate understanding of quantum measurements —in particular, the assumption that wave function collapse is a physical process— or through assuming the existence of hidden variables instead of (or in addition to) the quantum Hilbert space, or by employing counterfactual arguments which do not satisfy the single-framework rule. By contrast, a consistent application of quantum principles provides a positive demonstration of the absence of nonlocal influences, as in the example discussed in Sec. 23.4.

After reading your posts, I find very ironic that you make accusations of lying and dishonesty against the scientific community.

You don't decide what makes sense and what doesn't. It is nature which does. It is evidence which decides what is nonsense and what's not.

I do not know what is more ironic here: the fact that nature agrees with us and disproves your traditions or the fact you are who is here preaching us about how you decide what is the Truth and what is not, using your 'traditions'.

Edited August 26, 2012 by juanrga

immortal · August 26, 2012

The difference between science and philosophy is taught at the kindergarten.

Moreover, as Hawking emphasizes in a recent conference:

I would say that philosophy is dead regarding the understanding of reality, but it can continue as independent field regarding other matters.

Stephen Hawking has an habit of changing his mind and I don't know what he is going to say after 10 years.

Stephen Hawking - Gödel and The End of Physics

Stephen Hawking himself is a strong proponent of the positivism of science and positivism is a branch of philosophy.

Stephen Hawking is a recent high profile advocate of positivism, at least in the physical sciences. In The Universe in a Nutshell (p. 31) he writes:

Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by
Karl Popper
and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested…
If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is
. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.

Physicists will never be able to know what time, space etc actually is and without knowing that physicists will be mere empiricists caught up in the cave and its true philosophers who are going to investigate the pleroma of God who might have control over nature.

Of both disciplines only science provides an objective (testable) insight about the nature of reality.

All evidence shows that one cannot make a distinction between what is objective and what is subjective.

Most physicists view the experimental confirmation of the quantum predictions as evidence for nonlocality. But I think that the concept of reality itself is at stake, a view that is supported by the Kochen–Specker paradox. This observes that even for single particles it is not always possible to assign definite measurement outcomes, independently of and prior to the selection of specific measurement apparatus in the specific experiment.

So, what is the message of the quantum? I suggest we look at the situation from a new angle. We have learned in the history of physics that it is important not to make distinctions that have no basis — such as the pre-newtonian distinction between the laws on Earth and those that govern the motion of heavenly bodies. I suggest that in a similar way, the distinction between reality and our knowledge of reality, between reality and information, cannot be made. There is no way to refer to reality without using the information we have about it. Maybe this suggests that reality and information are two sides of the same coin, that they are in a deep sense indistinguishable. If that is true, then what can be said in a given situation must, in some way, define, or at least put serious limitations on what can exist.

- Anthony Zeilinger, The message of the quantum.

Scientific research is not equivalent to religious research. Neither both are "on the same footing". I will repeat the famous quote about the difference between religion and science:

When there is absence of evidence from both science as well as religion then they both are equivalent. Both have not accurately explained the origin of the cosmos.

It is very interesting that you follow the same pattern than anti-scientific creationists and intelligent design zealots. They also misrepresent science and pretend to blur the sharp distinction between science and religion for selling their mystical nonsense as if it was "on the same footing" than reliable scientific knowledge.

No, creation scientists and the proponents of Intelligent Design call their ideas as scientific and want to introduce this in schools but I have explicitly stated that this is not science and I don't want this to be introduced in schools. You can accept those traditions once irrefutable evidence exists for them. My point is that science is not all what there is and research into God can be has fruitful has doing science and that neither science nor religion currently have enough evidence to conclude the nature of reality.

I do not recall saying that. Link please.

You did not specifically said that but that's what this statement by you implies "P.S.: What says an author whose main award is a prize given by an critiziced pseudo-religious foundation" why are you so obsessed with prize and making personal attacks on Bernard?

I already said to you, several dozens of posts ago, that the superior divinity is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read the Holy Book!

Unfortunately those traditions have not described a Flying Spaghetti Monster has their supreme deity in their works.

All of science is made without any need of those. Open a textbook on chemistry, physics, biology... and check it by yourself. Moreover, it is well-known that science has corrected religion in multiple occasions, whereas it never happened in the opposite. I offered you details of the ancient Galileo-Pope episode but there is more, just open a textbook on history of science.

This time it will be religion which is going to correct the scientific consensus.

His book was presented to us as giving a new and deep understanding of reality but, as many reviewers have noted, your 'expert' does not know even elementary aspects of reality (I already said to you that he does not understand quantum mechanical reality). Read the reviews of his book and you will find a striking parallelism with the nonsense that you write here. I add bold face.

Try again.

No, I cited his works to explain how quantum information theorists view the world and that they actually claim that the "universe is made of information" I cited his works to show that for particle physicists the world is made of particles and for field theorists the world is made of fields and for information theorists the world is made of information. So each one says different thing as to what the universe is made of from their own perspective proving that the empirical reality is quite fuzzy.

I wrote about the content! I will repeat: "What part of the New scientists article you cite is plain wrong you do not still understand?"

The New Scientist article by Michael Brooks who himself holds a PhD in quantum physics is based on the works of these researchers.

Simon Groblacher,1, 2 Tomasz Paterek,3, 4 Rainer Kaltenbaek,1 Caslav Brukner,1, 2 Marek Z_ ukowski,1, 3 Markus Aspelmeyer,1, 2, and Anton Zeilinger1, 2, y

1 Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

2 Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

3 Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdansk, ul. Wita Stwosza 57, PL-08-952 Gdansk, Poland

4 The Erwin Schrodinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics (ESI), Boltzmanngasse 9, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

You're claiming that all these quantum researchers are wrong?

The conclusion of these researchers is that "Therefore it is reasonable to consider the violation of local realism a well established fact."

Realism - that the outcome of a measurement on a physical system is determined by physical properties of the system prior to and independent of the measurement.

Local - independent of the measurement (realism), and that the outcome cannot depend on any actions in space-like separated regions (Einstein locality).

Einstein's mathematical realism is fundamentally flawed, there is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity.

Which part of this that you don't understand?

He gave explanation and even gave the link with the observed correlations in classical mechanics.

Griffith's textbook is outdated and those researchers seriously contradict his claims.

After reading your posts, I find very ironic that you make accusations of lying and dishonesty against the scientific community.

Even I find it very ironic that you argue with a stubborn mind even after providing much evidence which contradicts your world-view and you don't even want to acknowledge that there is a problem that's why I think that yours is an intellectually dishonest position.

I do not know what is more ironic here: the fact that nature agrees with us and disproves your traditions or the fact you are who is here preaching us about how you decide what is the Truth and what is not, using your 'traditions'.

The nature agrees with you? hmm?

http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/aspect.html

Alain Aspect is the physicist who performed the key experiment that established that if you want a real universe, it must be non-local (Einstein's "spooky action at a distance"). Aspect comments on new work by his successor in conducting such experiments, Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues, who have now performed an experiment that suggests that "giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned."

Be clear what is going on here. Quantum mechanics itself is not crying out for such experiments! Quantum mechanics is doing just fine, thank you, having performed flawlessly since inception. No, it is people whose cherished philosophical beliefs are being threatened that cry out for such experiments, exactly as Einstein used to do, and with exactly the same hope (we think in vain): that quantum mechanics can be refined to the point where it requires (or at least allows) belief in the independent reality of the natural world it describes.

Quantum mechanics makes no mention of reality (Figure 1). Indeed, quantum mechanics proclaims, "We have no need of that hypothesis." Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality⎯and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: "it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked"). Non-local causality is a concept that had never played any role in physics, other than in rejection ("action-at-a-distance"), until Aspect showed in 1981 that the alternative would be the abandonment of the cherished belief in mind-independent reality; suddenly, spooky-action-at-a-distance became the lesser of two evils, in the minds of the materialists.

Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.

RICHARD CONN HENRY

STEPHEN R. PALMQUIST

Our traditional scholars especially Devudu Narasimha Shastry, a traditional scholar based on his knowledge of the mandalas of the Vedas very well knew what mind is and the evidence for his works was cited earlier. It inevitably leads to an esoteric world-view. God is not dead yet and neither is philosophy.

"Man here, god there.

Weakness and nothingness here, there eternally creative power.

Here nothing but darkness and chilling moisture.

There wholly sun."

- Carl Jung, Seven Sermons to the Dead.

Actual experiments confirming John Wheeler's delayed choice experiment

John Wheeler's participatory universe is probably right and with all this evidence you really think that your statement that quarks, protons, photons etc etc existed prior to Humans is a scientific fact?

I think otherwise and I have serious doubts about the nature of reality which we are living in.

akh · August 26, 2012

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

Here is a fairly new paper that explains that wave function offers a complete explanation of reality. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.6597.pdf

And another work from November of 2011 that approaches the subject from a completely different angle by arguing that the subjective interpretation of wave function violates the assumptions of quantum mechanics. http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1111.3328v2.pdf

These are very recent studies, and if you look at the citations of the articles, you will find that they build upon previous (and also very recent) work that supports these findings.

In other words, you don't need any ancient, or modern, religious meditations to explain or "find" reality. Wave function is the best explanation of reality. The wave function of a quantum system fully describes reality itself.

Edited August 27, 2012 by akh

immortal · August 27, 2012

Here is a fairly new paper that explains that wave function offers a complete explanation of reality. http://arxiv.org/pdf/1111.6597.pdf

And another work from November of 2011 that approaches the subject from a completely different angle by arguing that the subjective interpretation of wave function violates the assumptions of quantum mechanics. http://lanl.arxiv.org/pdf/1111.3328v2.pdf

These are very recent studies, and if you look at the citations of the articles, you will find that they build upon previous (and also very recent) work that supports these findings.

Oops let's not go there, that paper is surrounded with controversies and its a crap paper, those physicists don't even know that the Kochen-specker theorem seriously states that any hidden variable theory consisting of "elements of reality" is excluded by quantum mechanics, there is enough proofs for that, someone who is not a physicist like me I myself can figure out that it is a very bad paper and they don't even conclude the paper very well.

Nature hypes anti-QM crackpot paper by Pusey et al.

I really doesn't want to discuss about that paper in this thread.

In other words, you don't need any ancient, or modern, religious meditations to explain or "find" reality. Wave function is the best explanation of reality. The wave function of a quantum system fully describes reality itself.

Meditations don't produce any physical effects which are interesting for the empirical science, there are other methods which can generate indirect effects on the empirical world for example St. Theresa of Avila almost shattered the whole room so much that the nuns came running to see what happened to her. We all are gods, sons of the Most high - Psalms. Each one has enough power hidden in us.

As Einstein states some physicists don't know with what they are playing with and this very well applies to those above physicists.

akh · August 27, 2012

Oops let's not go there, that paper is surrounded with controversies and its a crap paper, those physicists don't even know that the Kochen-specker theorem seriously states that any hidden variable theory consisting of "elements of reality" is excluded by quantum mechanics, there is enough proofs for that, someone who is not a physicist like me I myself can figure out that it is a very bad paper and they don't even conclude the paper very well.

Nature hypes anti-QM crackpot paper by Pusey et al.

I really doesn't want to discuss about that paper in this thread.

Meditations don't produce any physical effects which are interesting for the empirical science, there are other methods which can generate indirect effects on the empirical world for example St. Theresa of Avila almost shattered the whole room so much that the nuns came running to see what happened to her. We all are gods, sons of the Most high - Psalms. Each one has enough power hidden in us.

As Einstein states some physicists don't know with what they are playing with and this very well applies to those above physicists.

You may not want to discuss this paper, but it goes very far to illustrates the fact that you only see what you want to see and only go so far to understand something to make your point. So, I give you two published articles that deal with the notion of reality that is independent of our knowledge of it. And you attack it by calling it a "crap paper"? You say that it is a "very bad paper"? And your only evidence to this is a blog post? Really, a blog post? What is even more egregious, is that the blog that you linked to has been shown by others to be in error in that the author misinterprets the argument made by the paper (and so did you!). Your evidence for a crap paper, is a link to a crap blog! The irony! I would like to say that your disposition is becoming ever clearer, except that it has been all too evident from the first page of this thread. But you seem to want to give more examples, so I guess I am obliged to point them out to you.

So, in case you have hidden it from yourself.

Try some other blogs where the authors actually understand the argument. I'll take your blog link, and raise you three more.

http://mattleifer.in...-statistically/

http://infoproc.blog...ction-real.html

http://www.scottaaro...com/blog/?p=822

And sorry, blogs are not at the same level as a published article. You have missed that point again, for the 1000th time. There are other scientists who would completely disagree with your "crap paper" comment.

Edited August 28, 2012 by akh

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