Maartenn100 general theories of physics & philosophy - Part II

Wiki:

American doctor of medicine Robert Lanza, a scientist in the fields of regenerative medicine and biology
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I don't see anything in his background which qualifies him to be taken seriously on quantum mechanics. He has expertise in entirely different fields (medicine, cell biology etc).
 
It's not because you have no official certificate in physics, that you haven't studied it. (f.e. autodidactism)
And: there are other phycisists, with the necessary background in quantummechanics, who have the same ideas about an 'observer-dependent' universe. John Wheeler f.e.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
It's not because you have no official certificate in physics, that you haven't studied it. (f.e. autodidactism)
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You're right, it's spewing utter nonsense like Robert Lanza that shows that you haven't studied physics.

Didn't you have a similar JAQing thread about Lanza and his nonsense a few months ago ?
 
The idea of a wave collapsing without an interaction that "measures" it is nonsense. Plus the idea that the second photon's wave function also collapses would directly contradict an entanglement experiment from 2012, where two entangled photons were explicitly measured at different times.

I ASSUME from the wording that what he actually refers to is precisely entanglement. A.k.a., spooky action at a distance. Although it's incorrect IMHO to describe it as communication between the two particles, and pure nonsense to claim that the particle knew what was in the mind of the researchers.

Let me try to explain entanglement in a kinda preschoolers' colouring book way. It will probably make the physicists cringe, but ah well, they can't have everything ;)

Let's say the Roman Emperor in Constantinople has a big problem with the Germans in the West, and an arguably even bigger one with the Persians in the east. Now the thing is, he doesn't have the manpower or money to just declare war on BOTH at the same time, so he'll have to choose one.

He also has an army of the east and an army of the west, each with its own general. And he writes two letters, one to each general. One general will get the order to stay put and await the other army as reinforcements, the other will get the order to mobilize everything but the border garrisons and move to join with the other army.

But since the Emperor is concerned with spies and treason and all the byzantine intrigue, the two letters are encrypted and sealed, and nobody knows which general will get which order. Just that they are opposite of each other.

So two riders take a letter each and ride to the two generals. And nobody knows who'll get the order to move and which got the letter to stay... until ONE of the letters is opened. Then you instantly know what's in the other too, because it HAS to be the opposite.

You could think of it as, wow, in an age when the maximum communication speed was as fast as a horse could go, now the second letter learned the state of the first one in less than a second! From thousands of miles away! What amazing communication between two inanimate letters!

But it's not. The two letters have been the opposite of each other all along.

And you can't actually use it to communicate faster than the speed of horse. Changing the contents of a letter won't make the contents of the other change.

Well, entanglement is the same. E.g., two photons are emitted that have opposite spin. Except nobody "knows" -- fundamentally, as in, not even the photons themselves know it yet -- which has which spin. Just that the sum must be zero. So when you collapse THAT probability by measuring the spin of one, then you automatically know the spin of the other too. Because the whole time they HAD to be opposites.

As you can probably figure out by now, human consciousness doesn't factor in there at any point and in any way. And the particles' entanglement -- the total spin in my example, but it can be other stuff -- has nothing to do with "knowing" what the researchers want to do. The two simply must have a constant and known sum in some way. WHEN and IF one is "measured" by some interaction, the automatically the other one has the value that preserves that sum. If you delay measuring it, well, it just stays unknown longer. And if you avoid measuring either one for ever, well, then it just stays unknown.

It doesn't matter what you wanted. It doesn't matter whether you planned the experiment in a certain way, or even if it's a planned experiment at all. Just whenever one has to be a defined value instead of a probability, for whatever reason (the majority of possible reasons being completely unrelated to humans), the other has a defined value too.
 
Maartenn100 said:
Robert Lanza wrote a book about biocentrism. He claims that consciousness is been proven the cause of the collapse of the wave function.

He says:

"Of course, physicists also wondered whether this bizarre behavior might be caused by some interaction between the whichway QWP detector or various other devices that have been tried, and the photon. But no. Totally different which-way detectors have been built (reference?), none of which in any way disturb the photon, yet we always lose the interference pattern."

Is this true? Which experiments exclude the idea that the interaction between measuring device and photon caused the collapse of the wavefunction.

Further in his book, he says:

"In 2002, scientists showed that particles of light “photons” knew – in advance – what their distant twins would do in the future. They tested the communication between pairs of photons. They let one photon finish its journey – it had to decide whether to be either a wave or a particle. Researchers stretched the distance the other photon took to reach its own detector. However, they could add a scrambler to prevent it from collapsing into a particle. Somehow, the first particle knew what the researcher was going to do before it happened – and across distances instantaneously as if there were no space or time between them. They decide not to become particles before their twin even encounters the scrambler. It doesn’t matter how we set up the experiment. Our mind and its knowledge is the only thing that determines how they behave. Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects."

Is it true that scientists came to that conclusion, based on that experiment? Which other experiments confirmed these observer-dependent effects?
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Hi,
As explained to you before Maartenn,
The wave form does not collapse, it is a wave form before, throughout and after all interactions.
The wave/particle duality is an artifact of pretending that they are not particles and waveforms all the time.

Carry on
 
HansMustermann said:
Let me try to explain entanglement in a kinda preschoolers' colouring book way. It will probably make the physicists cringe, but ah well, they can't have everything ;)
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Cringe, and subtly disagree. What you've described by analogy is a local hidden variable theoryWP - the two letters (entangled electrons) carry additional information prior to the opening of the letters (measurement of the spin) that determines the message in each (their final state) but cannot be accessed prior to opening (measurement) - and this has been shown by experiment to be an incorrect description. There isn't a better description, because non-local hidden variable theories seem to violate causality, but it seems very likely that local hidden variable theories are incorrect.

Dave
 
Well, that's why I said that even the photons don't know that information yet.

But yeah, the analogy is imperfect. No doubt about that. But that's what we get when all our experiences are fundamentally from a domain that's nothing even remotely like the quantum mechanics realm. You're not going to find very good analogies.
 
Some arguments are very good.

F.e: an argument to show the nonsense called "the weak anthropic principle (WAP)" which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing and reflecting upon fine tuning.

The beautiful counterargument from the book:

"The Weak Anthropic Principle is no more than a piece of circular reasoning or a facile way of squirming.
out of explaining the enormous peculiarities of the physical universe. Philosopher John Leslie, in his 1989 book Universes (there is a 1996 reprint edition), says, “A man in front of a firing squad of one hundred riflemen is going to be pretty surprised if every bullet misses him. Sure he could say to himself, ‘Of course they all missed; that makes perfect sense, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to wonder why they all missed.’ But anyone in his or her right mind is going to want to know how such an unlikely event occurred.”

Beautiful answer.
 
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I really recommand the book.

Physicist Andrei Linde seemed to have the same thoughts about the universe as me.

My idea is that you need at least one observer (consciousness) to have a determined state of an observed universe in space and time. That's exactly what Andrei Linde, an eminent physicist, thinks about consciousness and our world.

Linde believes that Wheeler's intuition of the participatory nature of reality is probably right. But he differs with Wheeler on one crucial point. Linde believes that conscious observers are an essential component of the universe and cannot be replaced by inanimate objects.

"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 think that physicist Andrei Linde is right.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
... "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."
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In one sense he is correct: our models are all we have, and our models are in our heads. In them, we are always a part, so there is no conceiving without us in the picture. And when we go, so do the models, so the depiction dies with us. In that sense, reality as we know and experience it is definitely participatory.

But the above is otherwise extremely anthropomorphic, apart from arguing (as quoted at any rate) something contrary to science; viz, known physical history prior to observers. And why for humans, and not, say, splrur4fcs (hard to spell bioluminescent words) on planet Zipdeedo.
 
In my opinion: any observer. Even a microbe. The moment that the first amoeba comes into being and it experiences the world: all the objects in the universe get their time-space-coördinates (with this amoeba-observer's position as a reference frame).
Immediately a reference frame for time- and space-coördinates of objects in the universe is been settled.

Before that: the universe is in a state of 'undetermined' in time and space. No reference frame for the objects in the universe been defined.

In my theory: a reference frame is the state of an object, which give it its time- and spacecoördinates, because of the existence of an observer.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
In my opinion: any observer. Even a microbe. The moment that a amoeba comes into being and it experiences the world: all the objects in the universe get their time-space-coördinates (with this amoeba-observer's position as a reference frame).
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How does that mesh with chemical->prebiotic->biotic-> etc? That is, there is a physical history prior to all life. And in the case of the amoeba, why should sensing provide more external change rather than internal? Isn't that effect and cause?

ETA: Unless we are speaking of the rise of a model, i.e., a reference, and not the rise of the stimulus, the referent.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
I really recommand the book.

Physicist Andrei Linde seemed to have the same thoughts about the universe as me.
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And he is equally wrong, not to mention equally silly.

Waveform collapse simply requires interaction, not observation. The recording device absolutely performs identically whether anyone views the results are not.
 
Hlafordlaes said:
How does that mesh with chemical->prebiotic->biotic-> etc? That is, there is a physical history prior to all life. And in the case of the amoeba, why should sensing provide more external change rather than internal? Isn't that effect and cause?
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Does the scientific concept of the relativity of simultaniouty/the order of events not violate cause and effect?

Yes, a past with a specific order of events unfoldes, when an experiencing being comes into being.
(time)
 
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Maartenn100 said:
Does the scientific concept of the relativity of simultaniouty/the order of events not violate cause and effect?
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No, relativity of simultaneity does not violate cause and effect. All events within a light cone have objective ordering; only events separated by more space than time have subjective ordering, and causality is disconnected there.
 
Maartenn100 said:
... Yes, a past with a specific order of events unfoldes, when an experiencing being comes into being.
(time)
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What does that mean, exactly, apart from it being a head trip? I am not being flippant. What I mean is, you implied earlier that spacetime manifests upon the first sensing by a lifeform, regardless of neural capacity or information processing capability. That is an assertion we simply cannot observe, not having been there, but it seems contrary to current theory. What we can do is note that in our case, we do seem to play a role in observations, but this owes equally, I argue, to the fact that all we work with, in the end, are models.

Not to dispute the science. Peer reviewed and repeated results are a form of consensus, as is objective reality. Science needs no more to proceed with success. And what science does is create models of what observations mean, what relations hold.

But because they are mental models, we are there. This may introduce an illusion that we are a necessary part. I do not think we are. (Apart from interactions being all that is needed, not observers, as AdamSK pointed out.)

Dinner alert-interrupt-shall continue...
 
Hlafordlaes,

It's a thoughtexperiment. I like to play with this idea. I don't claim it's true,

In the beginning there was spacetime.
An entity with all events of all times in the past, the present and the future together. (I don't know how to imagine spacetime). All possible events already exist in spacetime. There is non-locality and there is no timeline.

Then there is The First Observer.
He, she, it is an object which can only experience 'the actual moment'.
The fact that he, she, it can only experience 'the actual moment' estabishes a timeline.
A reference frame for all the objects and events in the universe in space and time.

More observers, more reference frames for the same objects and events in the universe.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
First, there is spacetime. An entity with all events of all times in the past, the present and the future together.
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That is the opposite of what spacetime is. Spacetime is the framework by which events are separated. It is literally the distance and duration between events.
 
Maartenn100 said:
Hlafordlaes,

It's a thoughtexperiment. I like to play with this idea. I don't claim it's true,

In the beginning there was spacetime.
An entity with all events of all times in the past, the present and the future together. (I don't know how to imagine spacetime). All possible events already exist in spacetime. There is non-locality and there is no timeline.

Then there is The First Observer.
He, she, it is an object which can only experience 'the actual moment'.
The fact that he, she, it can only experience 'the actual moment' estabishes a timeline.
A reference frame for all the objects and events in the universe in space and time.

More observers, more reference frames for the same objects and events in the universe.
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In that case, I shall bow out now. I find self-aware observers (eg, us) are mostly boring in actual experience, quite different from the lofty heights of being masters of eigenstates as their role would seem to have it.

AdamSK said:
That is the opposite of what spacetime is. Spacetime is the framework by which events are separated. It is literally the distance and duration between events.
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Yup. The fabric-less fabric that yet has shape, no boundaries, and bugs me every time I think about it. Oh, and hosts virtual particles, had early inflation, and now runaway expansion. And a one-way arrow. Spacetime spaces me, every time.
 
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AdamSK said:
No, it's not. And posting an article to a book by a philosophy professor doesn't change what spacetime is.
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Physicist Brian Greene believes in the philosophical concept of the block universe.
In his book "The Fabric of the Cosmos", from page 49, Brian Greene develops the model of space-time being a block of slices of 2D space. In this block universe model, the third dimension is time, the two dimensions of the page are space, and the entity as a whole is space-time which exists as one whole in reality.

Brian Greene is not 'just' a philosopher.
 
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I will leave you, for the moment, with an intruiging logical deduced idea to think about:

How big is 'the actual moment'?
It cannot have a duration, because, once it has a duration, it has a past.
And when it has a past, it's not 'the actual moment'anymore.
So, 'the actual moment' cannot have any 'period of time'.
The actual moment is timeless= t = zero.

The past does not exist (anymore).
The future isn't there (yet).
And the actual moment cannot have any period of time.

logical conclusion: time is an illusion.


(sometimes a simple logic deduction can reveal the unconvenient truth)
 
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Maartenn100 said:
Robert Lanza wrote a book about biocentrism.
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Who cares about a doctor's biased thoughts about the universe in a book, Maartenn100? Science is published in the scientific literature :eye-poppi.

What you quote shows how bad the book is with no citation to the actual experiments. He fantasizes: "Experiments consistently confirm these observer-dependent effects." has nothing to do with "Our mind and its knowledge". All an observer does is make measurements.
 
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Maartenn100 said:
It's not because you have no official certificate in physics, that you haven't studied it. (f.e. autodidactism).
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The point is that an expert in a subject writing about a different subject is less reliable than an expert in a subject writing about that subject.
Who would you trust more to be reliable: a plumber who studies brain surgery in their spare time or a brain surgeon :D?

What also makes someone less reliable is the "I have a hammer so everything is a nail" bias. A doctor with the opinion that the universe is "biocentric" is expressing his bias.
 
Maartenn100 said:
In my opinion: any observer. Even a microbe. ...
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That contradicts your assertion that you idea is supported by Andrei Linde opinion about consciousness - microbes are not conscious!

Some ignorance in that post.
All the objects in the universe always have their time-space-coordinates. That is what the wave function contains - all of the possible positions and momentums of an object :eye-poppi! That includes a wave function for the entire universe.
There is no guarantee that we are the only life in the universe so a "microbe" is inappropriate.

And:
We have detected QM events that happened 379,000 years after the Big Bang (cosmic microwave background radiation) - where was the conscious observer to observe those events?
We have recently detected QM events that happened one second after the Big Bang (cosmic neutrino background radiation) - where was the conscious observer to observe those events?
 
Maartenn100 said:
Does the scientific concept of the relativity of simultaniouty/the order of events not violate cause and effect?
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No since "relativity of simultaniouty" does not change the order of events for causally connected events, Maartenn100.
Relativity of simultaneity
However, if the two events could be causally connected (i.e. the time between event A and event B is greater than the distance between them divided by the speed of light), the order is preserved (i.e., "event A precedes event B") in all frames of reference.
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Maartenn100 said:
Physicist Brian Greene believes in the philosophical concept of the block universe.
In his book "The Fabric of the Cosmos", from page 49, Brian Greene develops the model of space-time being a block of slices of 2D space. In this block universe model, the third dimension is time, the two dimensions of the page are space, and the entity as a whole is space-time which exists as one whole in reality.
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Sorry, Maartenn100, but ignorance of physics and what the block universe is has lead to a misrepresentation of what Brian Greene wrote.
The block universe is not "a block of slices of 2D space" with a third dimension of time.
What you are describing looks like normal space time.
 
Maartenn100 said:
I will leave you, for the moment, with an intruiging logical deduced idea to think about:
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Followed by no "logical deduced idea", Maartenn100 :jaw-dropp!

Sometimes not learning about thousands of years of philosophical, mathematical and physical reasoning can lead to obvious fantasies.
 
Reality Check said:
Sorry, Maartenn100, but ignorance of physics and what the block universe is has lead to a misrepresentation of what Brian Greene wrote.
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What is the right interpretation of the idea of a block universe, according to you, Reality-Check?
 
We have recently detected QM events that happened one second after the Big Bang (cosmic neutrino background radiation) - where was the conscious observer to observe those events?
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I do not believe in a Big Bang model. The socalled observations are actually interpretations of observations.
You just observe radiation and you interprete it as QM events one second after the BB.

I believe in a timeless non-local universe of objects and events (block universe, spacetime) which need at least one existing conscious observer to establish a timescale and localisation of the objects and the events.
(=a reference frame)

That doesn't make the timescale or the spatial properties unreal. It only makes time (and space) and temporal and spatial properties of objects relative and consciousness-dependent.

(I know I said earlier that 'time is an illusion'. I correct myself: time is relative, observer-dependent, like I said before).

The problem with your Big Bang model is that it doesn't explain the most important variable in the universe: your own existence as a conscious being. You must put 'consciousness' or 'observers' into the equations. Otherwise, your theory is not a description of the whole reality.
 
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