| Author | Message | ||
     Blake |
I've bumped into a well-produced, very interesting presentation that purports to explain how "Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism" and proves theism. First an intro to quantum mechanics, then the heavy stuff... http://youtu.be/zKdoE1vX7k4 http://youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM | ||
| Pwnzor |
Take that, atheists. | ||
| Sifo |
They lost me on the final "proof". I may have to watch that again. As for if the cat in the box is dead or alive, is the cat not an observer of the atomic decay, therefore forcing a material reality? The cat must either be dead or alive at that point. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Great videos Blake, thank you. Lots of new food for thought. Quantum field theory also has some interesting aspects, though I havent wrapped my head around how it could explain the dual split observations. It would be incredibly cool to come up with some home quantum physics experiment kits.... I wonder if anything exists. | ||
| Hootowl |
"I wonder if anything exists" Cute. | ||
| Hootowl |
"is the cat not an observer of the atomic decay" Perhaps the observer must have consciousness, I.E. an extension of God's observational abilities (according to the assertions in the video). | ||
| Reepicheep |
Still looking (and really need to get back to work, lunch is over) but here is one slick one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-6St1rDbzo The key to keeping it spooky is understanding that the "undo" at the end of it shouldn't be able to turn it back into the interference pattern, only two more slits ought to do that. Not conclusive because of the detector being used (polarizing filters). But pretty cool nonetheless. | ||
| Sifo |
"is the cat not an observer of the atomic decay" Perhaps the observer must have consciousness, I.E. an extension of God's observational abilities (according to the assertions in the video). Was the cat not conscious? It looked conscious. Or are you saying that humans have been given a special order of consciousness? By whom exactly? You said God's. This is heading toward circular logic. The cat observes and interacts with the physical world. According to theory, that is enough to alter the world. Personally, it seems to me that some leaps of logic have been made to create a proof. Beyond that, the "proof" is based on theories. At best, we have a proposed theory, not proof. I am not arguing against God here at all. I count myself as a believer. I don't see God and science being at odds as some do. I've never understood that. I do see this as an interesting theory, as I also do the Intelligent Design Theory. | ||
| Hootowl |
"Or are you saying that humans have been given a special order of consciousness?" I'm not saying that, but the folks in the video sure seem to be doing so. Their theory, if I understood it correctly, is that God sees the universe through our observations. Things we don't observe do not require His attention. And when we do observe them, the effect of our observation ripples back in time so that the object appears to have existed in the past, when in fact it was just a wave function before it was observed and collapsed into particles. Deep stuff. I studied QM a long time ago, so the information in the videos sort of rhymes with the dusty information in my head, but I'm certainly no expert. In fact, I've got a bit of a headache. | ||
| Sifo |
Interesting video Reepicheep, about erasing the observed state. Gives me hope about unseeing what has been seen. The internet is a dangerous place! I'm not saying that, but the folks in the video sure seem to be doing so. Exactly. I didn't mean you specifically. There is a problem with the proof when you point out that God set the conditions that make it so, so God must exist. This is a bit more involved than that, but it's still circular logic. Even if true, it's not a proof. Very interesting stuff though. It does bring on a headache. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I've got to noodle for a while on some interesting hacks to experiment with. Like something involving a digital camera (to observe, but without consciousness). If it worked, it could lead to a really freaky experiment. Especially with the "backwards in time" aspect to it. | ||
| Redbuelljunkie |
Makes perfect sense to me, and is actually reassuring. But make no mistake- human participation in a world of QM idealism made possible by an omniscient intelligence is not the same as religion. I have no issues with QM idealism, but human-created religions clambering over who's right and who's wrong and willing to denounce, abuse, and murder those with whom they disagree- I have a problem with. QM idealism makes logical, comforting sense- just don't start in with how it supports "your" religion and not any of the blasphemous others. Let it be. | ||
| Hootowl |
When you view the photos taken by the camera, you collapse the wave function, so it matters not that the camera has no consciousness. I have no idea what I'm talking about. | ||
| Aesquire |
A bunch of circular logic in that second video. I'm not going to knock, mock, or deny your deity of choice. Your God(s), your choice. ( I'll feel free to mock certain religions as human organized structures ) What Quantum mechanics, a relatively new and immature science says, is that reality is in part subjective. Your observation changes reality. There is a lot of experimental evidence for that, some of it really weird. There's an ongoing experiment in random numbers. Random numbers have a very practical application in cryptography, as a basis for codes. There are a lot of different ways to generate random numbers, and most of them just aren't random enough. If I have the Ronco pocket random number generator, and you have one too, you can feed it's output into a computer and have it find the unrandom bits, and use that to decode my secret messages. Current high end random generators use some natural phenomena to generate the numbers, like cosmic ray flux counts or radioactive decay, or pachinko machines... But when they study how to make random numbers, they found that certain researchers "ruin" the experiment, just by being there. As in "it only does that when Bob is in the room" and even weirder, "it does that before Bob walks in the room". Which reminds me of psionics research, where they found that a certain percentage of researchers seem to be "jammers" who change the ability of the test subjects, just by their presence. If Ted runs the experiment, you get this small but real statistical indication that ( for example ) there is a telepathic effect. But if Fred runs the experiment, you don't. The ultimate ( AFAIK ) result of the whole psionics research program was an actual working telepathic communication device. The US Navy was quite interested, since the current tech for communication with Subs hiding in deep water uses Ultra Long Frequency radio. There were ( last I checked ) 2 main transmitters, west & east, and they take up entire valleys. The problem with ULF is it can't send complex messages fast. It's pretty much slow motion morse code, and it's limited by real physical limitations. So Subs ( used to ) get 3 digit code groups, and messages have to be from a book. ( HGK means "come to base" HGF means "nuke Detroit" etc. ) the problem being that if the order is not in the pre-written book, you have to spell it out, in code, one letter at a time. So orders to launch all nukes at the alien landing site in Grovers Mills NJ may come too late to be useful. The bad news, and the funny part, is the telepathy communicator, which needed one person at each end, was actually slower than the ELF. So they gave up on that stuff. It may come in handy some day. Besides, a Jesuit would tell you that you cannot prove God. It's against some kind of rules. It's been way too long since I argued with a Jesuit on matters of religious philosophy, ( not quite a century since grade school, but it feels like it ) so I'm not the best reference. I thought the "you can't prove God" reasoning was rationalization as to why they didn't have the Ark of the Covenant on display.  I've been told that it's in New Jersey. | ||
| Midknyte |
>...As for if the cat in the box is dead or alive... with cat's having 9 lives and us 1, who can purport to watching an experiment to the end to know any outcome anyway? | ||
| Hootowl |
Prove that you exist, says man No, says God, for to prove my existence denies faith and without faith I am nothing. Ah, says man. The babel fish proves you exist, so by your own admission, you don't. Hmm, says God, I hadn't thought of that, and promptly vanished in a puff of logic. Paraphrased from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. | ||
| Blake |
>>> There is a problem with the proof when you point out that God set the conditions that make it so, so God must exist. I don't think that's the intended logic set forth. Lets try to lay out the premise(s) and conclusion and see if the argument holds logically. 1. Absent an observing consciousness, material does not exist. 2. Before the existence of any conscious contingent inhabitant of the universe, material comprising the universe existed and continues to exist. 3. Some consciousness must have causally pre-existed the beginning of the universe. If the premises are true, the logic appears rock solid to me. There is no circularity. Consciousness is not material. Premise one follows from the quantum experiment results. Premise two is almost universally accepted except by idealists, those who hold that all material is mere illusion. The conclusion follows logically. We might debate the plausibility of the premises, but the argument sure isn't circular, it is logically sound. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
god, otherwise known as Morgan Freeman, explained this on Through the Wormhole. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Is it the same cat in the box as in the hat? Are all cats intrinsically connected? Is there just one CAT & we're seeing individual manifestations of it? Do you have a cat? Can it fly? Does it wish to learn? My boots give free lessons. If a cat lover looks in Schrodinger's box, is there a greater chance of the cat being alive than if someone like myself, who thinks of them as malevolent vindictive pests, looks in the box? I'll ask my neighbour who works at CERN. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
To me it's stunning that matter changes behavior based upon observation. It does beg the question. Are there stars, planets, galaxies that have yet to be observed. Do they materially exist or not? The light we see from distant stars is millions of years old. If we aren't actually seeing those stars but instead are seeing the waves/energy of those stars, so they materially exist? | ||
| Torquehd |
If a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, there is no spoon. In Isaac Asimov's book, "The End of Eternity", the main character travels to a time when material is made from energy, and as such, all forms of material are kinetic rather than static. So when you cover up with a blanket, the blanket literally wraps you up in itself. I always thought that was a neat idea, to make material out of energy. I would like to think that the key to this type of technology lies at the subatomic level and can someday be "hacked". I guess that would open the door for Gene Roddenberry's Replicator. "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot". | ||
| Reepicheep |
Exactly. Me too!  | ||
| Rick_a |
Meh. People tend to believe and follow whatever is palatable, popular, and includes them in their group/groups of How many times in history has man claimed to have decoded existence? | ||
| Aesquire |
I don't know about existence, but there is a biblical money code on sale today! | ||
| Midknyte |
> It does beg the question. Are there stars, planets, galaxies that have yet to be observed. Do they materially exist or not? If I followed correctly, they will have through [our] observation. But also, will we find forms of life there as well, or likewise cause it to collapse into being. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I wonder if we can use it to see what planets (from a distance) have been observed? This stuff is still messing with my head. I was OK with all of it until I watched the double slit experiment. That made it a little too real for comfort. | ||
| Sifo |
There's an odd thing in that not all matter behaves this way. In short, and assuming this theory to be true... Are there stars, planets, galaxies that have yet to be observed. Do they materially exist or not? The answer would have to be... Mostly. That's kind of an odd thing when entertaining the question of God and creation IMO. | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
There's an odd thing in that not all matter behaves this way. Maybe not... http://science.howstuffworks.com/48141-through-the -wormhole-quantum-rules-all-video.htm | ||
| Sifo |
Well that pushes things a step further then. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to observe it, does the tree exhibit particle or wave behavior? How do you "insure" an object isn't being measured or observed? I would like to know if the experiment was replicated with intermittent observation to see how it altered the behavior of the tested matter. |
