Reality combines information on itself, making it perceptually unified and objective

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Spellbound, Jul 15, 2015.

  1. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Wolpert's work didn't necessarily involve or center around quantum affairs. The end result just had unintended resemblances to the latter that, as a side effect and additional pursuit, could help with understanding QM. Accordingly it was also Wolpert's work which Philippe Binder praised(?) as "closing the door on scientific determinism". Rather than a feature of quantum physics directly.

    But just for the heck of providing one example of a physicist endorsing what Yazata mentioned...

    Max Tegmark: In the early 20th century the theory of quantum mechanics revolutionized physics by explaining the atomic realm, which does not abide by the classical rules of Newtonian mechanics. Despite the obvious successes of the theory, a heated debate rages about what it really means. The theory specifies the state of the universe not in classical terms, such as the positions and velocities of all particles, but in terms of a mathematical object called a wave function. According to the Schrödinger equation, this state evolves over time in a fashion that mathematicians term "unitary," meaning that the wave function rotates in an abstract infinite-dimensional space called Hilbert space.

    Although quantum mechanics is often described as inherently random and uncertain, the wave function evolves in a deterministic way. There is nothing random or uncertain about it. The sticky part is how to connect this wave function with what we observe. Many legitimate wave functions correspond to counterintuitive situations, such as a cat being dead and alive at the same time in a so-called superposition. In the 1920s physicists explained away this weirdness by postulating that the wave function "collapsed" into some definite classical outcome whenever someone made an observation. This add-on had the virtue of explaining observations, but it turned an elegant, unitary theory into a kludgy, nonunitary one. The intrinsic randomness commonly ascribed to quantum mechanics is the result of this postulate. Over the years many physicists have abandoned this view in favor of [...others where...] the collapse postulate is unnecessary. Unadulterated quantum theory does not, in fact, pose any contradictions
    --Scientific American; April 14, 2003
     
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  3. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    CC has already expanded on what I was thinking very well. I'll just add this:

    "The Fundamental law at the heart of non-relativistic Quantum Mechanics is the Schroedinger equation. The evolution of a wave-function describing a physical system under this equation is normally taken to be perfectly deterministic."

    "The collapse process is usually postulated to be indeterministic, with probabilities for various outcomes, via Born's rule, calculable on the basis of a system's wave-function. The once-standard Copenhagen interpretation of QM posits such a collapse."

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2015
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  5. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    According to what I know, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that there is a limit/ barrier to the amount of information/ knowledge we can determine about the state of certain pairs of properties of a particle in its reality. The information is said not to exist and it therefore equates to uncertainty and indeterminacy. As to the logic behind why, beats me at the moment.

    Edit: I just read CC's post. Now I know why.

    When I think of the Quantum Physics vs. the Classical Physics of a person's being I tend to think of their awareness vs. their physical existence. Then again, awareness is brain action so we can collapse the dichotomy to just one of the two "realities". We evolved as 2-sided/ dualistic beings; savage vs. moral, animal vs. compassionate/ loving, physical vs. spiritual. In my experience, both are equally valid.

    One thing I would like to mention is that information equates to mind. Which equates to reality.

    When I wrote that I was attempting to envision how and why the sciences and our search for knowledge comes about. I think humanity requires a Theory of Everything to unite itself through the fundamental substrate of love.
     
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