Can Quantum Mechanics Explain the Ideology of Karma?

Singularitarian

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In quantum mechanics, we find that the entire theory turns out to be statistical at best. This means that the entire theory is based upon all the histories and paths it can integrate, and over the possibilities, we can find realities due to amplitude theory.

The possibilities in this universe, such as the tangible possibilities of statistics due to the wave function (a smear of [probabilities] in a field) which can in an enclosed self-contained universe give rise to the likely-hood of any event to happen. This means, strictly obiding by the laws of physics, that events which can happen, will, according to the time it requires for those statistical waves to unfold themselves into real events, whether the tangible events that exist independantly of the observer, or not. Literally speaking, Karma is the universal law or force in which balances the good and bad effects in the world. I refute this as actually being a field which determines only the good and bad dealings. This premise is not exactly a pre-requisite of physics, but from a physical point of view, statistics can easily explain why we may seem to evaluate a force which is synonymous to the human concept of Karma. In this idea, Karma becomes inexorably nothing but a myth of experience, but in a sense, was close to describing the first quantum model of some ''mysterious force'' which does ''deal out events.''

I speculate that what we call Karma is actually just the universe and more locally to us, events which have occured due to statistical reasoning. Given enough time, even within someones lifespan, they will notice perhaps events which seem Karma related. Truth is, statistical analysis will show that the bad events which may turn on someone is just a ''matter of time'' and should not be construded to reason it was an effect from some previous cause, a cause might i add which involves unrelated ties (1) to the original observer who is seeing ''this'' which can be described as being like Karma.

Essentially, this means that Karma is nothing but us mistaking events as some intentional force which balances out the good and evil, to one which is best described under the statistical analysis of wave mechanics. In short, and to end, we will notice uncanny events, but they are nothing more than the statistics mathematicians work on everyday, and on a larger scale, is an emergent property itself of the wave mechanics which has governed the universe since big bang.

So Karma is nothing but a bunch of probabilities, which have high-occurances to happen, expecially from our tiny existences on the planet we call Earth.

(1) - That is it is related under chaotic sytems, which would be in itself a statistical wonder.
 
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The QM police steps in.

Can Quantum Mechanics Explain the Ideology of Karma?
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No. One is a philosophy the other a physical theory. If you want to have some state probability , correlation, and similar interpretation in Karma, do your own explanation. But don#t involve unrelated stuff like QM.

The QM police steps out.
 
Aepervius said:
The QM police steps in.



No. One is a philosophy the other a physical theory. If you want to have some state probability , correlation, and similar interpretation in Karma, do your own explanation. But don#t involve unrelated stuff like QM.

The QM police steps out.
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If you had read what i said, i said quantum mechanics can only explain it from a statistical viewpoint. I never mingled philosophy in here. I am stating that a ''ideology of Karma'' (whether or not it is a philosphy), may still be rooted from a more logical and sensible approach to why we experience something like this.

I haven't implied what you have tried to explaining my question. My question is not addressing to take Karma as a real force which is philosophical, but a reasonable approach to explaining it under a mistaken effect of quantum physics.
 
Karma as a concept long predates any observation related in any way to quantum mechanics. Karma as a force is not observed in reality. On macro scales, quantum mechanics has no observable effects.

In other words, nope.
 
In My Spare Time said:
Karma as a concept long predates any observation related in any way to quantum mechanics. Karma as a force is not observed in reality. On macro scales, quantum mechanics has no observable effects.

In other words, nope.
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Physics has been on the go from the Ancient Greeks.


And by the way, you are absolutely wrong in saying quantum mechanics does not account for macroscales. That is just absurdity.
 
I don't deal.

Also, its obvious you do not know anything about the history of physics. It was the Greeks who first hypothesized the atom.

Also, probabilities run entire evolution of the universe. One which has an unusual approach is the Wheeler-De Witt equation.

Go learn something.
 
Mashuna said:
It's good to see that you're just as knowledgeable about karma as you are about quantum physics.
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Karma is the abstractual force that deals out the morality of good and evil justly to human beings. I understand it quite well, thank you.
 
All right everyone (especially Singularitarian and ~enigma~)...let's stop the bickering and name calling.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar
 
Singularitarian said:
I don't deal.

Also, its obvious you do not know anything about the history of physics. It was the Greeks who first hypothesized the atom.

Also, probabilities run entire evolution of the universe. One which has an unusual approach is the Wheeler-De Witt equation.

Go learn something.
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It's obvious you don't understand the concepts behind this history then. The proposal that there's a finite number of divisions possible in matter (hint: this is the Greek atom part) does not imply that those small parts are governed by the mechanics we discovered thousands of years later.

Probabilities, though an inportant concept in quantum mechanics, are not the same as quantum mechanics. For a similar example, engines are important concept to cars, but not everything to do with engines is to do with cars. To say that probabilities run the evolution of the universe has nothing whatsoever to do with quantum mechanics.

I would advise you to take your own advice.
 
In My Spare Time said:
It's obvious you don't understand the concepts behind this history then. The proposal that there's a finite number of divisions possible in matter (hint: this is the Greek atom part) does not imply that those small parts are governed by the mechanics we discovered thousands of years later.

Probabilities, though an inportant concept in quantum mechanics, are not the same as quantum mechanics. For a similar example, engines are important concept to cars, but not everything to do with engines is to do with cars. To say that probabilities run the evolution of the universe has nothing whatsoever to do with quantum mechanics.

I would advise you to take your own advice.
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You are being pedantic in your assertions of the roots of physics. I can assure you, essentially, it had rooted from the physicists of the Greek era, no matter how progressed we may seem in comparrison.

Quantum mechanics is universally-known as being a statistical theory at best. The world of atoms and molecules play large part on comological scales, and since the dawn of time, those statistical averages have given rise to the world we see today, so yes, they do have real effects.
 
There is nothing to do with quantum mechanics in Greek physics. Assuring me otherwise will not change that. Even if there were, I don't understand what that would have to do with any kind of root for karma, a concept that comes from the Hindu religion in India and long predates ancient Greek physics anyway.

Find me the point where I said they don't have real effects. I asserted only that "On macro scales, quantum mechanics has no observable effects."
 
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Well that's well known. The wavelength of a car for instance cannot be seen for it is too small in wavelength.

But that doesn't go against the theor suggested, so i don't see the relevence you do?
 
What relevance? How bout where you strawman'd me by claiming that I said there were no real effects? How bout the fact that is was a completely unobserved phenomena when you claim some philosphy was based on a misunderstanding of the phenomena? No relevance? Backpedal much?
 
Singularitarian said:
Well that's well known. The wavelength of a car for instance cannot be seen for it is too small in wavelength.

But that doesn't go against the theor suggested, so i don't see the relevence you do?
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a) People who believe in karma believe that karma-influenced things have actually occurred, within hours or years or human-lifetimes. This doesn't sound like the same theory as one that says "quantum mechanics makes it possible for a dollar to quantum-tunnel into your pocket once every 10^200 years"

b) Any situation without an exact solution is effectively probabalistic. I have no idea whether it will rain tomorrow. How would I respond if it did rain? I'd respond as though there had been an X% chance of rain, and the observed rain is the result of the dice coming up snake eyes. This response is the same whether the uncertainty comes from my own ignorance ("weather.com is down"), someone elses' ignorance ("The radiosonde failed so we don't have humidity data off the coast"), complexity ("we don't run models with that resolution"), classical chaos, or finally---down at the root of some classical-chaotic system that would be chaotic anyway---quantum mechanics.

So if your model for karma is "humans respond oddly to randomness", you have absolutely no excuse for connecting this with quantum mechanics.
 
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Is Singularitarian assuming that, in some way due to QM, the occurrence of a bad thing increases the odds of a good thing as if the universe has a bag full of good and bad events and is taking them out of a bag without replacement? In Borrowing the last of My Spare Time's pot to consider this for a moment..... even if that were the case, the universe must have a quite a large bag of events and removing a lifetime of good events isn't going to alter the odds worth a damn.
 
Singularitarian said:
Can Quantum Mechanics Explain the Ideology of Karma?
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First apply what I like to call Randi's Rule: Before trying to explain a phenomenon, first demonstrate a phenomenon even exists.

Karma has never been demonstrated to exist.

Therefore there's no need to explain how it might work.


It's similar to people interested in psychics and telepathy wondering how, say, electromagnetic waves might be transmitted and picked up by brains. Yet no telepathic abilities have ever been demonstrated to actually exist.


And the corollary: There's a reason the explanations tend to seem bizarre and stretched just to keep within physics as it is known -- because the phenomenon doesn't actually exist.
 
Beerina said:
First apply what I like to call Randi's Rule: Before trying to explain a phenomenon, first demonstrate a phenomenon even exists.

Karma has never been demonstrated to exist.

Therefore there's no need to explain how it might work.


It's similar to people interested in psychics and telepathy wondering how, say, electromagnetic waves might be transmitted and picked up by brains. Yet no telepathic abilities have ever been demonstrated to actually exist.


And the corollary: There's a reason the explanations tend to seem bizarre and stretched just to keep within physics as it is known -- because the phenomenon doesn't actually exist.
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I never said or implied Karma was a real force associated to the moral distribution among events we experience. I am implying that the force is misunderstood as being nothing but statistical mathematics.

Therefore, whether is has been proven or not, it really does not matter. It addresses the personal belief of the reader.
 
ben m said:
a) People who believe in karma believe that karma-influenced things have actually occurred, within hours or years or human-lifetimes. This doesn't sound like the same theory as one that says "quantum mechanics makes it possible for a dollar to quantum-tunnel into your pocket once every 10^200 years"

b) Any situation without an exact solution is effectively probabalistic. I have no idea whether it will rain tomorrow. How would I respond if it did rain? I'd respond as though there had been an X% chance of rain, and the observed rain is the result of the dice coming up snake eyes. This response is the same whether the uncertainty comes from my own ignorance ("weather.com is down"), someone elses' ignorance ("The radiosonde failed so we don't have humidity data off the coast"), complexity ("we don't run models with that resolution"), classical chaos, or finally---down at the root of some classical-chaotic system that would be chaotic anyway---quantum mechanics.

So if your model for karma is "humans respond oddly to randomness", you have absolutely no excuse for connecting this with quantum mechanics.
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Can i address a) first, and come back later, i have things to do.

In response, it seems very likely, and incontrivertible as to say that statistics have played the evolution of events since the primal appearance of time and space itself.

If you have a large void/vacuum, with about 10^80 particles, most of them grouped together in bundles but paraoxically covering only 1% of that entire vacuum, then you have something similar to the universe. Then give it approximately 14 billion years to evolve - the groups of statistical averages are massive, in number, and given the appropriate time, events which seem coincidental are nothing but statistics at play for macroscopic matter. Since macroscopic matter is constituated by particles where statistics are rife one then can see that these smaller statistics give rise to the events we may all experience, because, i don't know about anyone elses social groups, but from my experience of life, everyone gets there just-deserts one way or another and sometimes within close proximity of each other.

Pure concidence, or for a better description,pure probability.
 
Singularitarian said:
Since macroscopic matter is constituated by particles where statistics are rife one then can see that these smaller statistics give rise to the events we may all experience, because, i don't know about anyone elses social groups, but from my experience of life, everyone gets there just-deserts one way or another and sometimes within close proximity of each other.
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Explain Aids babies?
 
What an utterly bizarre hypothesis...

So basically if you redefine karma as something else than it actually means, and handwave something about QM that is fully irrelevant or grossly misunderstood, then they are somehow related...
 
Singularitarian said:
In response, it seems very likely, and incontrivertible as to say that statistics have played the evolution of events since the primal appearance of time and space itself.
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Probability plays a role in quantum mechanics, yes, and also in stat mech, and cryptography, and also in poker, baseball, demography, and college admissions. (So does algebra. So does energy conservation. So does Lorentz invariance.) Insofar as probability also plays a role in the coincidences which get labeled "karma", probability plays a role in karma---I think that would be considered uncontroversial.

Your statement was that quantum mechanics "explains" karma. This has exactly the same truth value as "quantum mechanics explains poker" or "algebra explains karma" or "Lorentz invariance explains baseball". They don't.
 
Singularitarian said:
I don't deal.

Also, its obvious you do not know anything about the history of physics. It was the Greeks who first hypothesized the atom.

Also, probabilities run entire evolution of the universe. One which has an unusual approach is the Wheeler-De Witt equation.

Go learn something.
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QM is probabilistic, but not all probabilities are related to QM.
 
godless dave said:
"Good" and "evil" have no meaning from a physics point of view, so I fail to see how quantum mechanics could be involved in Karma.
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Damn. You beat me to it. I was going to ask how the Universe knew what was good or bad and thus balance them out. But now I don't have to. :o
 
ben m said:
Probability plays a role in quantum mechanics, yes, and also in stat mech, and cryptography, and also in poker, baseball, demography, and college admissions. (So does algebra. So does energy conservation. So does Lorentz invariance.) Insofar as probability also plays a role in the coincidences which get labeled "karma", probability plays a role in karma---I think that would be considered uncontroversial.

Your statement was that quantum mechanics "explains" karma. This has exactly the same truth value as "quantum mechanics explains poker" or "algebra explains karma" or "Lorentz invariance explains baseball". They don't.
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Before i start (not directed at you Ben) - keep all stupid questions for someone who can be bothered, for asking absolutely irrelevent issues into the example i gave, you are now defining people, more or less babies born with aids, and that obviously is a shame. If anyone decharacterizes the words i have used, then you've done so by chopping your own heads off.

I was talking about my social group, and how Karma can just be mistaken for the great statistical unfold.

Ben,

Hi. Anyway, yes, quantum mechanics can ''explain'' Karma. It does not justify however the traditional meaning, so it explains Karma with a scientific mechanism which ultimately shows that its all just probability. In a way, Karma is a description of a more mythical approach, where some kind of ''hidden scales'' determine the dealings of morality. Making it as personal as this, would be wrong, and construded there is some almighty force which cares for our morality and the dealings of events due to those moral.

As i said, quantum mechanics could help ''explain'' the reason why things seem uncannily like the Karma, explained in traditions stemming thousands of years.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Damn. You beat me to it. I was going to ask how the Universe knew what was good or bad and thus balance them out. But now I don't have to. :o
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Is my work misunderstood again?

I am not dictating that the universe ''knows'' anything. What part of ''random statistical averages at the fundamental level'' indicates that there is anything which balances out good and evil?
 
when working up from subatomic energy and matter, we find atoms, molecules, groups of molecules, cells. Our entire bodies for instance is made up of nothing but the statistical actions of particles whizzing about inside of my body. The statistics are too much for us to ever calculate, because there are so many of them, and the uncertainty principle forbids us from knowing the whole statistical picture. But, events which happen to people ''which seems like a Karmic force'' is nothing but a misunderstanding. Events are dealt out due to the statistics of the universe. They will collapse or decohere to make valuable information. In fact, the wave function of the universe (which is the statistical field over all ''happenings'' in the universe) governs the probabilities and ultimately, us. Being intelligent beings, we relate events together in hope to find some meaning in life, perhaps even some kind of pattern. Bad things happen to people all over the world all the time, and not necesserily people who may be evil. Even a person dies every second, from a vast array of conditions. Even aids, as someone smugly invited.

The world is a place of sadness, this much is true, but there is no confined force to our experiences and moral dealings - just unfortunately, our time comes just because that's how the world works. Cause and effect, but not by any mysterious Karmic force.

Fundamentally, one can even show that the universe itself is fundamentally governed by a field of probabilities [latex]\psi[/latex]. It ultimately governs entire objects, and even galaxies (see Michio Kaku's Hyperspace for confirmation). So in essence, we mix up totally unrelated events (again unless connected by some chaotic system) to something which is considered as some all-pervading force dedicated purely to the subliminal mind. Quantum mechanics does not work this way, so it can only deal with Karma as a theory itself describing fundamental statistical averages, and this is what truely governs why anything happens in one shape or form.
 
godless dave said:
"Good" and "evil" have no meaning from a physics point of view, so I fail to see how quantum mechanics could be involved in Karma.
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Because Karma is explained as being nothing but statistical averages, and a statistical field appropriately. It does not dictate there is any force in the universe which governs a specific balance between good an evil.
 
Singularitarian said:
Before i start (not directed at you Ben) - keep all stupid questions for someone who can be bothered, for asking absolutely irrelevent issues into the example i gave, you are now defining people, more or less babies born with aids, and that obviously is a shame.
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You are not the arbiter of what is relevant or irrelevant.

I was talking about my social group, and how Karma can just be mistaken for the great statistical unfold.
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I thought you meant the opposite---statistics can be mistaken for karma.

Hi. Anyway, yes, quantum mechanics can ''explain'' Karma. It does not justify however the traditional meaning, so it explains Karma with a scientific mechanism which ultimately shows that its all just probability. ...
As i said, quantum mechanics could help ''explain'' the reason why things seem uncannily like the Karma, explained in traditions stemming thousands of years.
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Did you read my post? Read it again. There are practical uncertainties that make daily life "statistical", but they have nothing to do with quantum mechanical uncertainty. Nothing whatsoever.

Consider the world as known to Pierre-Simon Laplace (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon)---atoms obey Newton's Laws, light is a wave, etc. You seem to claim that if the universe were like this, coincidences would not occur and thus no-one would believe in karma. This is obviously nonsense, so its contrapositive, i.e. your hypothesis, is also nonsense.
 
ben m said:
You are not the arbiter of what is relevant or irrelevant.



I thought you meant the opposite---statistics can be mistaken for karma.



Did you read my post? Read it again. There are practical uncertainties that make daily life "statistical", but they have nothing to do with quantum mechanical uncertainty. Nothing whatsoever.

Consider the world as known to Pierre-Simon Laplace (read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon)---atoms obey Newton's Laws, light is a wave, etc. You seem to claim that if the universe were like this, coincidences would not occur and thus no-one would believe in karma. This is obviously nonsense, so its contrapositive, i.e. your hypothesis, is also nonsense.
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I am the arbiter in this case ben. It's my thread, and they argued against something which was actually irrelevent at the time being, for i had not included those subjects in what i was discussing.

Also, i never said that Karma would not be believed if coincidences would not occur. That's something you've added yourself mate.

In which case, it would be ridiculous.

Please tell me where i said this?
 
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