Quantum Mechanics Deniers

Originally posted by SwissGambit

Whenever I hear someone mention Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun.
-Stephen Hawking

So what?
Hawking knows that the desperate clinging to a formulation of a single reality as being the so called "absolute truth" does not hold, so he said what he said. For, Hawking is aware of the fact that any formulation of reality is dependent on context and on specific levels of analysis; and all the time he wants to get a specific answer at this specific question: in Schroedinger's equation that provides wavefunctions that give probabilities for quantum events, what were the derived wavefunctions wavefunctions of?

You see, Schroedinger had the feeling that the wave aspect of quantum phenomena was primary and that therefore the wavefunction represented a kind of vibration in an electromagnetic field. However this is not the case: the wavefunction is not real in the sense of a physical system as such a system is conceived in classical physics. So in fact Hawking joins hands with Born and says that the wavefunction is just an abstract mathematical entity that can be used to extract information about nature. In other words, "If one wants to assign to the wavefunction its own independent reality, then one has to solve very crucial problems" is my interpretation of Hawking's quote that you gave. Clear🙂

Leaving Hawking aside, have you an argument that is yours?
😵

Originally posted by RJHinds
Then President George H.W. Bush talked about the "thousand points of Light."
HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord!

As a beauty you are not a star
There are many more handsome by far;
But your face you don't mind it
For you are behind it
It's the people in front get the jar😵

Originally posted by black beetle
So what?
Hawking knows that the desperate clinging to a formulation of a single reality as being the so called "absolute truth" does not hold, so he said what he said. For, Hawking is aware of the fact that any formulation of reality is dependent on context and on specific levels of analysis; and all the time he wants to get a specific answer at this s ...[text shortened]... e that you gave. Clear🙂

Leaving Hawking aside, have you an argument that is yours?
😵

As I see it, Hawking, like Feynman, cares about making calculations that agree with experiment. QM allows us to do this with breathtaking accuracy.

Hypotheticals such as Schrödinger's Cat were appropriate at the time when scientists were struggling with the implications and general weirdness of the new Quantum theory, and seem like an irrelevant distraction to scientists of today.

Feynman said that the Uncertainty Principle was just a warning to people of the time that "your classical ideas are no damn good" at the atomic level. He goes on to say that if you just learn to draw amplitude arrows, you don't need an Uncertainty Principle! Yes, for many laymen fond of UP, that's a bit jarring to hear.

No, I don't have an original argument to offer. Then again, neither do I have any 'original' chess openings. 🙂

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I heard Hugh Ross say in his 1999 debate with Hovind that some Young-Earth Creationists don't believe in Quantum Mechanics.

Dare I ask if there are any such people here?

I believe only in the Quantum part, but not the mechanics. 😛

Originally posted by whodey
I believe only in the Quantum part, but not the mechanics. 😛

Well, it is hard to believe in something one knows nothing about.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Well, it is hard to believe in something one knows nothing about.

Nobody tell him, either. 🙂

Originally posted by SwissGambit
As I see it, Hawking, like Feynman, cares about making calculations that agree with experiment. QM allows us to do this with breathtaking accuracy.

Hypotheticals such as Schrödinger's Cat were appropriate at the time when scientists were struggling with the implications and general weirdness of the new Quantum theory, and seem like an irrelevant distr ...[text shortened]... ginal argument to offer. Then again, neither do I have any 'original' chess openings. 🙂

Very well, SwissGambit😵

Oh, I'm late to the party! Thanks Swiss Gambit.

May I share some great writing by Erwin Schroedinger, probably one of the most mystical of the early quantum physicists. The well known "cat" was never a favorite analogy to me, but some other stuff he wrote, well, I do like indeed....

"....Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see, in a flash, the profound rightness of the basic conviction in Vedanta* :it is not possible that this unity of knowledge, feeling, and choice are essentially eternal and unchangeable and numerically one in all men, nay in all sensitive beings. But not in this sense - that you are a part, a piece, of an eternal infinite being, an aspect or modification of it, as in Spinozas pantheism. For we should then have the same baffling question: which part, which aspect are you? What, objectively, differentiates it from the others? No, but, inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you - and all other conscious beings as such - are all in all. Hence this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance.This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you.

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable, as she - indeed, a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As sure as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely she will bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely, "some day": now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once, but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."

"The Mystic Vision", Erwin Schroedinger

as found in "Quantum Questions - mystical writings of the worlds great physicists", p.95
Edited by Ken Wilbur.

(* as in other expressions of non-duality, so well analogised by the particle/non-particle of quantum discovery.) [Edits typographical]

This is my own idea inspired by the basketball scene from the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?" ,( a very good film about quantum, highly recomended for any one interested in quantum , good for beginners).
In the movie it is postulated that if we are looking towards the hoop, say, and there is someone behind us, we can hear the ball bouncing but we cannot pinpoint it's location. As soon as we turn around the ball (and the person bouncing it) is immediatly "locked in" to a certain position, whereas before we turned around the ball could've existed in a few different positions.


---

I have noticed that more than one person that I have known has been hit by a car while reading a book. It's not like people walk and read that often, for one. Also you can still hear stuff, especially car engines (which you would be wary of and check out immediatly if you heard one). So why do people get hit by cars more often than would be considered normal statistically?(you can check for statistics, but these things are often not reported) It is because their faculties have been changed form looking out ahead of you to looking inside your book. Your attention (visually speaking) is focused on the page and words and by your "non-interference" of the visual world, it becomes like the bouncing ball behind you - you can no longer pinpoint where an engine( and attached car) would be.
It could be in a lot of different places, but to find the exact place you will need to pinpoint it by looking.

You can try this yourself. If you are looking for a bird (for example), even away from your field of vision, you can get a good idea of where it is after you hear it's chirp. This is aided by your eyes, but not by the visual recognition but rather by some mechanism attached to the eyes, which form our view of things. This mechanism contains our biases with what we observe visually whereas no such biases exist in the sound-world.
Now if we stop looking (whether we can see the bird or not), and hence turn off this mechanism and just rely on hearing for our picture of the outside world, then , strangely, the bird can be in a lot of different places. It is a wave of potential.

(I'm going to leave this for now. I have had this idea in my head for a few days and knew it would be a challenge to try to write about it. Now I have given it a shot and put it out there, perhaps in the hope that someone can help me condense this idea into less words. But also for myself so that I may remember this idea when it was still fresh- I had it written much more succinctly and insightfully in my head a couple of days ago- but at least I tried 🙂 )

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is my own idea inspired by the basketball scene from the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?" ,( a very good film about quantum, highly recomended for any one interested in quantum , good for beginners).
In the movie it is postulated that if we are looking towards the hoop, say, and there is someone behind us, we can hear the ball bouncing but we ca ...[text shortened]... uccinctly and insightfully in my head a couple of days ago- but at least I tried 🙂 )

I think this is more to do with the limitations of our own hearing. The quantum 'observer effect' happens not because a human is looking at something or not looking at something, but rather the tools we use to look at something (shining a light, catching a particle in a detector, etc.) affect the behavior of the system.

The guy bouncing the ball behind you is in a specific place even if he is blind and there are no spectators. 🙂

Originally posted by karoly aczel
This is my own idea inspired by the basketball scene from the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know?" ,( a very good film about quantum, highly recomended for any one interested in quantum , good for beginners).
In the movie it is postulated that if we are looking towards the hoop, say, and there is someone behind us, we can hear the ball bouncing but we ca ...[text shortened]... uccinctly and insightfully in my head a couple of days ago- but at least I tried 🙂 )

I have watched the film 'What the bleep do we know' It was really awful.Although I am only an interested amature in physics it was quite clear to me that this film has very little to do with quantum mechanics.It treats the subject in the similar way as some astrologers would have you believe that astrology is based on real science.Dont waste your money or time.Sorry karoly, but it is really bad.

Originally posted by Taoman
Oh, I'm late to the party! Thanks Swiss Gambit.

May I share some great writing by Erwin Schroedinger, probably one of the most mystical of the early quantum physicists. The well known "cat" was never a favorite analogy to me, but some other stuff he wrote, well, I do like indeed....

"....Looking and thinking in that manner you may suddenly come to see, ...[text shortened]... analogised by the particle/non-particle of quantum discovery.) [Edits typographical]

I am not sure where he gets the idea that a person is a thousand times firmer/invulnerable than earth. If we are going to buy into this multiple-quantum realities interpretation, it seems there would be far, far more realities where I do not exist than those in which I do. And far, far more realities where earth exists than ANY single human being. And I haven't even considered alternatives where earth is different, to the degree that it can no longer be thought of as our earth anymore.

Just had to response to this: "What the bleep do we know?" has pissed me of more than any other film or documentary has ever done. I payed quite a few euros for it because I was very happy to see a DVD that dealt with QM - which is a fascinating part of physics - and it wasn't until I saw it that I realized what I was truly watching. The blood, sweat and tears of thousands of dedicated physicists who've worked for many decades trying to understand the true nature of the universe being viciously misused by a bunch of moronic nut-jobs desperately trying to attach "scientific credibility" to their idiotic pseudo-religious believes.

Avoid that film like the plague. It is as interesting and insightful as the average religious hogwash Youtube video that gets posted here day after day.

And apparently this monster even spawned a sequel.....

Originally posted by biffo konker
I have watched the film 'What the bleep do we know' It was really awful.Although I am only an interested amature in physics it was quite clear to me that this film has very little to do with quantum mechanics.It treats the subject in the similar way as some astrologers would have you believe that astrology is based on real science.Dont waste your money or time.Sorry karoly, but it is really bad.

I thought it had many ideas in it that were interesting.
It's not a scientific journal, I'll admit 🙂

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I am not sure where he gets the idea that a person is a thousand times firmer/invulnerable than earth. If we are going to buy into this multiple-quantum realities interpretation, it seems there would be far, far more realities where I do not exist than those in which I do. And far, far more realities where earth exists than ANY single human being. And I ...[text shortened]... th is different, to the degree that it can no longer be thought of as our earth anymore.

What I understand him saying is that sense of being and awareness is not limited or confined to any temporary physicality, but like the collapsing particles that 'appear' or 'disappear' or change states in the quantum field, for want of a better term, are emerging or an expression of a greater Ground. The forms are endless (as you have expanded), and in time and space, but this Ground from which there is an arising of manifestation underlies very time and space itself. The whole concept of time, form and space in quantum physic and its sequitors are left in the air, so to speak.

So the invulnerability (a repeated reference in much of Buddhist terminology (Vajra - Diamond- Indestructible) refers to any ultimate nature as never being able to be beyond This and thus - Indestructable. Without a definable, locatable, separable soul or self ultimately there is nothing to be destroyed because such a thing never actually exists unto itself, it is always relatively defined by each birthing, passing, context, yet its essential nature, ever remains the same. We emerge, live and die in form but in essence and at every part we change not, but are That. And the 'essence' is not itself a thing apart from its manifestations.

Vedanta differs a bit from Buddhist expression but it i saying essentially the same. It may refer to a greater 'Self' but when pressed this 'Self' is pretty indefinable too. And Buddhism actually refuses to say there is or there is not, and leaves it hanging in space much as things are left hanging in quantum science.

We enjoy (or, 'there is an enjoying of'😉 all the dramas of being alive, all the awarenesses. Is it not possible that this by which we are aware is itself a field and our physical being is nurtured within it and tuned to it, arising and decreasing like waves of an ocean the waves dance and toss in storms yet the ocean deep is the waves themselves and none ever die, just change.

Getting a bit poetic here. 😉

Away for a few days. Cheers.