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[Xris]

Steve do you recognise, the idea we are looking at a particle, causes a problem? Do you also agree that the proposed dual nature of light has provoked more than scientific reasoning?

[Steve3007]

Xris:

Answer 1: As long as we fully understand what is meant by that, no. No problem. In the same way, it's no problem looking at the Sun and saying that some of its characteristics resemble those of an orange. But if I were to very simplistically and literally say that I am looking at an orange, then admission to some form of clinic would probably be in order.

Answer 2: Dual nature in itself, I don't see as a problem. It's just an expression of the fact that we don't have a single comprehensive analogy for the microscopic world in the more directly accessible macroscopic world. The precise details of that nature are another story.

To contine with the "Sun" analogy:

The Sun is like an orange. The Sun is like a white hot stone. The Sun is the Sun.

[Xris]

Xris:

Answer 1: As long as we fully understand what is meant by that, no. No problem. In the same way, it's no problem looking at the Sun and saying that some of its characteristics resemble those of an orange. But if I were to very simplistically and literally say that I am looking at an orange, then admission to some form of clinic would probably be in order.

Answer 2: Dual nature in itself, I don't see as a problem. It's just an expression of the fact that we don't have a single comprehensive analogy for the microscopic world in the more directly accessible macroscopic world. The precise details of that nature are another story.

To contine with the "Sun" analogy:

The Sun is like an orange. The Sun is like a white hot stone. The Sun is the Sun.

I might ask you what is hot? In the vacuum of space the sun is cold. Does it taste like an orange?

Sorry about that. So you can not conceive of any problems or consequences if the concept of photons as particles happened to be wrong?

[Steve3007]

What do you mean by "wrong"?

Some of the observed aspects of light have been seen to be describable by the particle model. Those observations have already been made. If some future observations turn out to be describable by other models, that won't change the previous observations.

Back to the Sun/Orange analogy: We have already observed that the Sun is round and orangey coloured. (Yes yes, I know, it's yellow. But lemons are the wrong shape.) We have already observed that it shares these characteristics with a certain citrus fruit. If we subsequently observe more characteristics of the Sun, it doesn't change these observations. It doesn't render the Orange analogy useless. It just dilutes it, so to speak.

This is how all these kinds of things progress. This is why Newtonian mechanics didn't turn out to be "wrong" when QM and Relativity came along. Its function as a description of a particular subset of all possible observations with a particular level of accuracy remained unchanged.

[Xris]

What do you mean by "wrong"?

Some of the observed aspects of light have been seen to be describable by the particle model. Those observations have already been made. If some future observations turn out to be describable by other models, that won't change the previous observations.

Back to the Sun/Orange analogy: We have already observed that the Sun is round and orangey coloured. (Yes yes, I know, it's yellow. But lemons are the wrong shape.) We have already observed that it shares these characteristics with a certain citrus fruit. If we subsequently observe more characteristics of the Sun, it doesn't change these observations. It doesn't render the Orange analogy useless. It just dilutes it, so to speak.

This is how all these kinds of things progress. This is why Newtonian mechanics didn't turn out to be "wrong" when QM came along. Its function as a description of a particular subset of all possible observations with a particular level of accuracy remained unchanged.

But I can accept an innocent analogy it has no serious consequences. I have tried before to try and give some kind of alternative perspective.With no other alternative I have to refer to Gaede, what if he has serious point to make. What if your eye when we observe this said particle is not simply observing but is part of the experiment? We are therefor not influencing the experiment.Waves represent the contact points of atoms receiving information, particles are the receptive atoms in our eyes not receiving photon particles but direct information from the transmitting atom.There are no waves, no particles.Simply EM information. It really does not matter if Gaede has it right or wrong but it matters if quantum science has it wrong.

We can not make this assumption that light expresses itself it such a strange manner without considering the consequences. It does make a difference Steve. It creates a completely new subject in metaphysical philosophy.I have just read ten posts on the consequences on this very thread. It has also caused us to believe in an expanding universe and look how that has ballooned into a cosmological industry. You can not just say it would dilutes the concept, it would be catastrophic.

[Steve3007]

Hold on there. I'd rather this didn't balloon again just yet into Bill Gaede, big bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, God particle, 80 billion dollars, big science, "it's all a religion", "I'm a heretic".

You've used that word "wrong" again twice. I still don't know what it means. How can a pattern that has already been seen in some observations that have already been made turn out to be "wrong"? By making future observations and finding newer perhaps more subtle patterns, how are you doing anything other than adding something? How can you be subtracting something?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

----

An aside:


A posteriori:

Your conversation with Quotidian is interesting. I don't have time to say much about it, but I just want to pick you up on one point. You said in post #55:

...What I imagine instead is that empirical science will eventually replace direct observation with a new paradigm of validation. I suspect the replacement to observation will be computation. Theoretical physics (M-theory) has already embraced computation in place of observation, and the entire discipline of complexity theory cannot exist without ever-increasing computational power. Complexity theorists already accept as a given that inherent unpredictability is the new norm for research, and this discipline works with "normal" macroscopic phenomena, not exotic subatomic particles.

I don't see how computation can in any sense take over from observation. Surely computation is just an extension of other ways of analyzing empirical data.

It's true that complex systems, or even quite simple ones in fact, cannot be measured with 100% accuracy even in the absence of QM.

There is no such thing as a measurement with 0% error. In classical physics we talk about being able to get "arbitrarily close" to 0% error. In other words, for any given level of error you can think of, it's always possible, at least in principle, to improve the measurement process and reduce the error. But this is not the same as saying that the error can be reduced to 0. The error "tends towards 0". It would take infinite time and resources to actually reach it. If you add to this the concept of sensitive dependance on initial conditions or, in other words, leverage, you get the situation where any level of error, no matter how small, is quickly blown up into a very significant error. The result is a chaotic system. Randomness in practice and, given what I've said above, it could be argued, also in principle.

So that's a failure of reductionism.

We can add to this the failure of analytical mathematical methods. The differential equations that describe physical systems are, on the whole, unsolvable analytically. They have to be solved by various approximate numerical methods. So, for a typical non-trival system, we cannot write an equation of the form S = F(t). where F is some function, t is time and S is some kind of multidimensional matrix of numbers which completely describe the state of the system - its "position in phase space" as it's sometimes called. In other words, we cannot exactly define the theoretical state of the system at a particular time. We have to do things like stepping forward through time from a known state in finite, non-zero, time steps.

These are reasons why, even in a classical world, we would not be able to either exactly measure or exactly predict the state of the world.

My point is that computation doesn't fundamentally change any of that. It changes the degree of accuracy/time it takes to work it all out/complexity of the systems that can be analyzed. It can improve the accuracy of the numerical methods but it can't make them 100% accurate. It can only approach 100% accuracy assymptotically, as before.

Given the above, that's why we find that no matter the huge amount of computing power that is thrown at the business of weather forecasting these days we still don't know for sure if it will rain next Wednesday. And the returns we get from each order-of-magnitude increase in computing power diminish very very rapidly.

Those are my thoughts on that subject! After saying all of that I will probably now discover that you were perfectly well aware of all this already and I just misunderstood your comments!

[Xris]

Hold on there. I'd rather this didn't balloon again just yet into Bill Gaede, big bang, black holes, dark matter, dark energy, God particle, 80 billion dollars, big science, "it's all a religion", "I'm a heretic".

You've used that word "wrong" again twice. I still don't know what it means. How can a pattern that has already been seen in some observations that have already been made turn out to be "wrong"? By making future observations and finding newer perhaps more subtle patterns, how are you doing anything other than adding something? How can you be subtracting something?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

Not really. I am not being controversial to make friends. I get enough stick to whip a herd of buffalo. If Bill Gaede serves my purpose I will use him. Nutter or not. Have you actually considered his answer to the split screen experiment.The experiment that most of quantum relies on. If I disappear it's because the pub calleth.

[Steve3007]

Can't remember. I did that thread about him, so probably read something about it.

Have a good evening.

[Quotidian]

I am not being controversial to make friends

Well, that part is working perfectly.

[Xris]

(Nested quote removed.)


Well, that part is working perfectly.

What do you expect a jolly party where we all agree? I am not here to make friends or enemies.I try to be polite, respectful and understand the opposition to my argument. If my views or beliefs oppose yours what did you expect? No advances in understanding of our universe came from accepting the past as sacrosanct.

[Steve3007]

Xris: I've been thinking about the interesting subject of how different people think, and why it is that the communication of ideas is often apparently impossible. I think one of the strongest themes running through all of your comments on this forum is an objection to all forms of abstraction. You've expressed scepticism about what you call "concepts", to models, to analogies and to the use of mathematics to understand the world. All abstractions. You like Bill Gaede because he ridicules such abstractions and insists on immediacy. He insists that for a thing to be considered real it must be possible to draw a picture of it. And he doesn't accept that a mathematical equation is a form of picture. It's basically attempting to understand the world through art.

I don't know if you've ever read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". In that book the author divides the world into what he calls Classical and Romantic people. In that context, you seem to be a Romantic.

Abstraction, in the broadest possible sense, is a way of understanding the parts of the world that are not immediately accessible to the senses - going beyond the empirical. You stressed the importance of empiricism in a recent post. Romantic people tend to like things to be sensible! They're often artistic. They often prefer asthetic beauty to functional beauty.

The interesting conclusion that I take away from all of these discussions is that it seems to be literally impossible for communication of certain types of ideas to happen between certain types of people. It perhaps indicates that there are all sorts of other ideas that are literally impossible for all of us to understand.

[Xris]

Xris: I've been thinking about the interesting subject of how different people think, and why it is that the communication of ideas is often apparently impossible. I think one of the strongest themes running through all of your comments on this forum is an objection to all forms of abstraction. You've expressed scepticism about what you call "concepts", to models, to analogies and to the use of mathematics to understand the world. All abstractions. You like Bill Gaede because he ridicules such abstractions and insists on immediacy. He insists that for a thing to be considered real it must be possible to draw a picture of it. And he doesn't accept that a mathematical equation is a form of picture. It's basically attempting to understand the world through art.

I don't know if you've ever read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". In that book the author divides the world into what he calls Classical and Romantic people. In that context, you seem to be a Romantic.

Abstraction, in the broadest possible sense, is a way of understanding the parts of the world that are not immediately accessible to the senses - going beyond the empirical. You stressed the importance of empiricism in a recent post. Romantic people tend to like things to be sensible! They're often artistic. They often prefer asthetic beauty to functional beauty.

The interesting conclusion that I take away from all of these discussions is that it seems to be literally impossible for communication of certain types of ideas to happen between certain types of people. It perhaps indicates that there are all sorts of other ideas that are literally impossible for all of us to understand.

Your insight into human characteristics are excellent. A god description of me in many ways but no one fits the slot completely. I have no respect for anything that does not sounds logical. I can believe in a god if he sounds logical. Logic is the greatest asset man can have in my opinion. I want to believe in UFOs aliens, the soul but to believe we must demonstrate a real logic and examine our desires with objective reasoning. Gaede and his madness does not disturb me it encourages me to listen to his views. Something that certain individuals find outrageous. Before I came upon him I had my doubts about theoretical science. The simple facts that I was taught about electronics and the actions of electrons never sounded logical. The concept of electrons works but so to did the concept of Earth as the centre of the universe for practical purposes. The big bang as a concept is almost impossible to argue for with any amount of examination. So when I read that plasma cosmologists disagree with logical and valid alternative, I listen intently. If someone then comes along with a mystical view of the universe born from an ardent belief in the BB I can not indulge them. If someone muses on how the universe only exists because they believe the split screen experiment and how our observation alters reality. I can not take them seriously. It is a bit like arguing about free will with someone who believes in god. Their logic is beyond argument or logical reasoning. So you are right in one way. Theists and atheists come from a perspective that can never be reconciled.

I would like to add Steve, that strangely enough a practicing Buddhist brought Gaede to my attention.

[Steve3007]

The concept of electrons works but so to did the concept of Earth as the centre of the universe for practical purposes.

One point of interest that I will note:

Earth as the centre of the Universe still works. For someone who lives on Earth, it's much more intuitively correct that this modern heliocentric business. That's why it took so long to make that enormous leap of abstract thought and propose the crazy idea that when the Sun rises it's an illusion and it's actually the Earth that is turning. Of course it doesn't seem so crazy to us now because we grew up with it. We were taught to accept it at an early age and we live in a world where everybody else also believes it. We now think it crazy to believe anything else. That's the power of abstract thought followed by conditioning and peer pressure: it can even convince you that the Sun doesn't rise!

The most recent theories that I know of say that it's perfectly valid to regard the Earth as standing still and the entire Universe as revolving around it. It's just that, for most purposes, the heliocentric view makes the maths a whole lot easier.

So first Ptolemy is right. Then Copernicus is right. Then they're both right. How can that be? Maybe it really is all about what works and not who is right?

[Xris]

I would trust one to get me to Australia but not Mars. So do we simply agree with the accepted concept of light because it works in practical terms or do we search for a more enlightened view? A view that performs in a logical and less controversial way.

[Marina000]

(Nested quote removed.)


One point of interest that I will note:

Earth as the centre of the Universe still works. For someone who lives on Earth, it's much more intuitively correct that this modern heliocentric business. That's why it took so long to make that enormous leap of abstract thought and propose the crazy idea that when the Sun rises it's an illusion and it's actually the Earth that is turning. Of course it doesn't seem so crazy to us now because we grew up with it. We were taught to accept it at an early age and we live in a world where everybody else also believes it. We now think it crazy to believe anything else. That's the power of abstract thought followed by conditioning and peer pressure: it can even convince you that the Sun doesn't rise!

The most recent theories that I know of say that it's perfectly valid to regard the Earth as standing still and the entire Universe as revolving around it. It's just that, for most purposes, the heliocentric view makes the maths a whole lot easier.

So first Ptolemy is right. Then Copernicus is right. Then they're both right. How can that be? Maybe it really is all about what works and not who is right?

I agree. I know of a wave theory that places the earth at the centre or near the centre of the universe and has no need for dark energy or matter.

http://wallacegsmith.wordpress.com/2010 ... -universe/

"Either it (the microwave background) isn't coming from behind the clusters, which means the Big Bang is blown away, or ... there is something else going on," said Lieu. "One possibility is to say the clusters themselves are microwave emitting sources, either from an embedded point source or from a halo of microwave-emitting material that is part of the cluster environment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 104549.htm

In fact the only thing 'wrong' with it is that this theory does place earth at the universal centre and goes against the Copernican theory of the earth not being special in any way. The other concern is that current 'big bang' predicts an 'afterglow' and scientists believe they have found same. However have they? Yes galactic shadows appear in some cases and these herald huge claims of 'we are right', totally ignoring the fact that in many case they don't, and there are other hypothesis that equally address this cosmic radiation.

I find the initial post intersting. It suggests our 'information' is not lost. However I do not think the suggestion is we have a soul that is an entity with reasoning ability. Here is another link to information that suggests we have a soul.

Importantly, this has a direct bearing on the question of whether humans and other living creatures have souls. As Kant pointed out over 200 years ago, everything we experience – including all the colors, sensations and objects we perceive – are nothing but representations in our mind. Space and time are simply the mind's tools for putting it all together. Now, to the amusement of idealists, scientists are beginning dimly to recognize that those rules make existence itself possible. Indeed, the experiments above suggest that objects only exist with real properties if they are observed. The results not only defy our classical intuition, but suggest that a part of the mind – the soul – is immortal and exists outside of space and time

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bio ... e-says-yes

As much as I also would like to believe there is evidence of a soul, this article is also based on theory.

So we can believe we are not special and follow big bang based on theory, we can believe we are special with wave theory and earth central, now there is some theoretical evidence to offer the possibility that we do have a soul. That is better than none.