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digitalmars.D - Totally OT: Quantum Mechanics proof for the existence of a Supreme Conciousness?

reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
emmanates.

Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
quantum mechanics.

http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

-Craig
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
... and then re-interpreted by a deluded philosopher / religious cult.
 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Sorry, couldn't resist. :-) I really enjoyed the book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" when I read it 10 years ago or so. I think there are a number of books of the same ilk that try to tie quantum mechanics to things like consciousness or mysticism. It's interesting but from what I've seen there isn't anything like a "solid theory of consciousness" that's got any scientific rigor to it. But my data is about 10 years old. Things do change. --bb
Feb 14 2008
parent reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"Bill Baxter" <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote in message 
news:fp1s4l$28uh$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science 
 has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only 
 one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is the result of 
 observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there are only 
 possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual reality.  And that 
 mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially consists of a single 
 Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.
... and then re-interpreted by a deluded philosopher / religious cult.
 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Sorry, couldn't resist. :-) I really enjoyed the book "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" when I read it 10 years ago or so. I think there are a number of books of the same ilk that try to tie quantum mechanics to things like consciousness or mysticism. It's interesting but from what I've seen there isn't anything like a "solid theory of consciousness" that's got any scientific rigor to it. But my data is about 10 years old. Things do change. --bb
I would like to hear more about your perspective on this matter. It is all very new to me. And like I said I am completely agnostic. I have heard that Schrodinger stated that, "The number of minds in the universe is One." What is your take on this? -Craig
Feb 14 2008
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Craig Black:
 What is your take on this?
I suggest you to a library and fetch a book by Antonio Damasio or Gerald Edelman, and later you can read some university manual about neurobiology, so you can start learning something real about such matters. You will find that while the global problem isn't solved yet, there are many things we already know about the underling subsystems. Bye, bearophile
Feb 14 2008
parent reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> wrote in message 
news:fp22l8$2pvm$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black:
 What is your take on this?
I suggest you to a library and fetch a book by Antonio Damasio or Gerald Edelman, and later you can read some university manual about neurobiology, so you can start learning something real about such matters. You will find that while the global problem isn't solved yet, there are many things we already know about the underling subsystems. Bye, bearophile
The fact that there are correlations between neurons firing and consciousness is a profound observation. However, it doesn't really address the ideas presented, unless I am missing something. Furthermore, the assumption that the configuration of matter known as the brain is the cause of consciousness may be fundamentally flawed if the ideas presented in this link are correct. You may be completely right about your assertion that "the global problem isn't solved yet". However, that assertion by itself is not very convincing, at least to me.
Feb 14 2008
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Craig Black:
 The fact that there are correlations between neurons firing and
 consciousness is a profound observation.
It was profound 200-300 years ago, today it's well known, like many other things in science.
 However, it doesn't really address the ideas presented, unless I am missing
something.
You are probably missing some things, that's why reading a big university manual about neurobiology may help you.
 Furthermore, the 
 assumption that the configuration of matter known as the brain is the cause 
 of consciousness may be fundamentally flawed
A very important part is the configuration of the activation patterns too, that the dynamic state too, it includes the electrical fields of the many charges that create that chemistry dance too. I think you are making the phenomenon of consciousness more mysterious and strange than necessary. Learning more about nematode and aplysia nervous systems may help you see that the situation is quite more mundane, despite being really complex anyway. In the end quantum mechanics may have some role in animal brains (but I know no concrete facts about this has being found so far), but surely that's not the most important layer of the reality you have to look at if you want to understand how a living brain works (like a grizzly brain). You have to learn about signal processing, neural dynamics, neural groups, neural networks, neurology, neurobiology, linguistics, sociology... :-) Bye, bearophile
Feb 14 2008
parent "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2arv$dg7$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black:
 The fact that there are correlations between neurons firing and
 consciousness is a profound observation.
It was profound 200-300 years ago, today it's well known, like many other things in science.
 However, it doesn't really address the ideas presented, unless I am 
 missing something.
You are probably missing some things, that's why reading a big university manual about neurobiology may help you.
 Furthermore, the
 assumption that the configuration of matter known as the brain is the 
 cause
 of consciousness may be fundamentally flawed
A very important part is the configuration of the activation patterns too, that the dynamic state too, it includes the electrical fields of the many charges that create that chemistry dance too. I think you are making the phenomenon of consciousness more mysterious and strange than necessary. Learning more about nematode and aplysia nervous systems may help you see that the situation is quite more mundane, despite being really complex anyway. In the end quantum mechanics may have some role in animal brains (but I know no concrete facts about this has being found so far), but surely that's not the most important layer of the reality you have to look at if you want to understand how a living brain works (like a grizzly brain). You have to learn about signal processing, neural dynamics, neural groups, neural networks, neurology, neurobiology, linguistics, sociology... :-) Bye, bearophile
Thanks for your input. I indeed know little about such subjects and am not even aware of the scope of our current understanding of them. BTW, (as I mentioned already to boyd) I think I can agree with you now that this issue is not as conclusive as the link seems to convey. I discovered that this topic (both pros and cons) is discussed on Wikepedia. It basically states that this is one interpretation of quantum mechanics, whereas in the link I provided it is communicated as a conclusion. There are other ideas that attempt to resolve the strangeness of quantum mechanics with the determinism of the macroscopic world. This particular interpretation is not without problems, but it does have the interesting quality that it concurs with some religious world views. -Craig
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent reply BCS <BCS pathlink.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
 
 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
 
 -Craig
 
 
I have not read the link but I did read a short story a week or so ago about someone playing the Schrödinger's cat trick with a super plague and all of humanity. The punch line is that everyone involved decides that if all knowledge about the experiment is destroyed that the world would be saved. So they kill each other. This should remarkably like the "watching dark matter can shorten the life of the universe" buzz from a few months back.
Feb 14 2008
parent "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"BCS" <BCS pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:fp206p$5sv$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science 
 has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only 
 one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is the result of 
 observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there are only 
 possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual reality.  And that 
 mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially consists of a single 
 Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

 -Craig
I have not read the link but I did read a short story a week or so ago about someone playing the Schrödinger's cat trick with a super plague and all of humanity. The punch line is that everyone involved decides that if all knowledge about the experiment is destroyed that the world would be saved. So they kill each other. This should remarkably like the "watching dark matter can shorten the life of the universe" buzz from a few months back.
lol! I know it's easy to moc an idea that is so far removed from our every day experience. However, it would be nice to hear a skeptic that has an cohesive intelligent counterargument to one or more of the ideas presented. These observations do not seem to me to pulled out of thin air. However, I should try to dissect them further to check for inconsistencies. -Craig
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent reply boyd <gaboonviper gmx.net> writes:
It seems to me that quantum physics is just an admittance that we don't  
really know what the heck is going on. It's not science, it's philosophy.  
And the thing about the mind sounds a lot like the main principle of the  
philosopher Descartes: 'there's only one thing that I can be sure about: I  
think, therefore I exist'

This isn't proof of the existence of anything. In fact, it's more a theory  
that nothing can truly be proven. Any proof is based on what we can  
observe, but we can't be sure that anything we observe actually is.

Greetz,
Boyd.

----
On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:47:27 +0100, Craig Black <cblack ara.com> wrote:

 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last  
 night
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally  
 am an
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid  
 theory
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in  
 the
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The  
 universe
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter
 emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?   
 Nope.
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of
 quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

 -Craig
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
boyd:
 It seems to me that quantum physics is just an admittance that we don't  
 really know what the heck is going on. It's not science, it's philosophy.
Well, we aren't sure what a gravity field is (despite there are few theories for that too), still we can use newtonian laws (with a bit of help from relativistic ones when necessary) to predict certain future parameters of certain physical systems. Predicting the future is one of main kinds of science. Quantum physics doesn't know much what's the underlaying metaphysics, but it allows us to make very precise (and very useful in practice) predictions about certain aspects of certain physical systems (sometimes up to 13 digits of precision!) so that's science too ;-) "Science" doesn't imply understanding everything below the level you experiment too, you can have black boxes too. Bye, bearophile
Feb 14 2008
parent boyd <gaboonviper gmx.net> writes:
I've been reading a little bit more about quantum physics, and you're  
right. As far as I can tell it's a bunch of scientific theories for  
calculating...well... I'm not quite sure what it's calculating. Most stuff  
I heard about quantum mechanics before was the kind of philophising that  
occurs in that article. It seems people are mixing these two quite  
different things up. Or maybe just me.

Greetz,
Boyd.
----
On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:20:39 +0100, bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com>  
wrote:

 boyd:
 It seems to me that quantum physics is just an admittance that we don't
 really know what the heck is going on. It's not science, it's  
 philosophy.
Well, we aren't sure what a gravity field is (despite there are few theories for that too), still we can use newtonian laws (with a bit of help from relativistic ones when necessary) to predict certain future parameters of certain physical systems. Predicting the future is one of main kinds of science. Quantum physics doesn't know much what's the underlaying metaphysics, but it allows us to make very precise (and very useful in practice) predictions about certain aspects of certain physical systems (sometimes up to 13 digits of precision!) so that's science too ;-) "Science" doesn't imply understanding everything below the level you experiment too, you can have black boxes too. Bye, bearophile
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling parent reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"boyd" <gaboonviper gmx.net> wrote in message 
news:op.t6i7hhrc1auoiy company-3328781.home.nl...
 It seems to me that quantum physics is just an admittance that we don't 
 really know what the heck is going on. It's not science, it's philosophy. 
 And the thing about the mind sounds a lot like the main principle of the 
 philosopher Descartes: 'there's only one thing that I can be sure about: I 
 think, therefore I exist'

 This isn't proof of the existence of anything. In fact, it's more a theory 
 that nothing can truly be proven. Any proof is based on what we can 
 observe, but we can't be sure that anything we observe actually is.

 Greetz,
 Boyd.
You may be right ...but there's no harm in trying then is there? BTW, since posting this I have discovered that this topic (both pros and cons) is discussed on Wikepedia. It basically states that this is one interpretation of quantum mechanics, whereas in the link I provided it is communicated as a conclusion. There are other ideas that attempt to resolve the strangeness of quantum mechanics with the determinism of the macroscopic world. This particular interpretation is not without problems, but it does have the interesting quality that it concurs with some religious world views. -Craig
Feb 14 2008
parent "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2c33$fnp$1 digitalmars.com...
 "boyd" <gaboonviper gmx.net> wrote in message 
 news:op.t6i7hhrc1auoiy company-3328781.home.nl...
 It seems to me that quantum physics is just an admittance that we don't 
 really know what the heck is going on. It's not science, it's philosophy. 
 And the thing about the mind sounds a lot like the main principle of the 
 philosopher Descartes: 'there's only one thing that I can be sure about: 
 I think, therefore I exist'

 This isn't proof of the existence of anything. In fact, it's more a 
 theory that nothing can truly be proven. Any proof is based on what we 
 can observe, but we can't be sure that anything we observe actually is.

 Greetz,
 Boyd.
You may be right ...but there's no harm in trying then is there? BTW, since posting this I have discovered that this topic (both pros and cons) is discussed on Wikepedia. It basically states that this is one interpretation of quantum mechanics, whereas in the link I provided it is communicated as a conclusion. There are other ideas that attempt to resolve the strangeness of quantum mechanics with the determinism of the macroscopic world. This particular interpretation is not without problems, but it does have the interesting quality that it concurs with some religious world views.
You might find this interesting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind I actualy strugled my way through the book Shadows of The Mind, mentioned in the page, and tbh i can remember very little from it. It was mostly way over my head at the time, and no doubt still is. That said I did find the idea quite engaging. But I also remind myself that the science of conciousness / mind / brain is still very young. We are still poking the brain with electrodes, or at best replaying recorded electical signals to it. It's still a naive poke it and see what happens kind of science as far as I can see. You just have to look at our utter ineptitude at treating mental disorders to see how little we understand it. So i think anyone who claims we know more than a little about what conciousness is and how it comes about is seriously mistaken. It also reminds me of how in the late 19th centuary scientists were starting to think there wasnt much left to discover. Newton had sorted physics out, the earth was mostly mapped. All the interesting stuff had been done. Then we got relativity, then quantum mechanics, and physics has got weirder and ever more complicated ever since. I suspect we are in for that kind of ride with conciousness & mind.
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
I haven't read the link but my view on such issues (as an atheist)  is
as follows:
science deals only with certain questions, namely ones he can find an
answer to, other questions are just left to philosophy.
from your description that links falls under the realm of the latter
more than the former.
the Schrödinger cat experiment for example is a way to illustrate
Heisenberg's uncertainty law. It's a way to explain statistics.
science uses math as a language to express concepts, for example we use
fields to explain magnetism but that does not mean that there's such a
thing as a magnetic field, cause a field is just another mathematical
entity, nothing more.
trying to extract any philosophical ideas out of those ideas and math
concepts is wrong as it violates Okham's razor principal and is not science.
As I've stated already, those are my views only, and I of course do not
want to insult anyone's beliefs. I just prefer the science continue
expanding our understanding of the universe while our philosophy
continues to debate other questions and those remain separated.

--Yigal

PS - http://digg.com/comedy/Atheist_Sees_Image_of_Big_Bang_in_Piece_of_Toast



Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

 -Craig


   
Feb 14 2008
parent reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fp29k3$adk$1 digitalmars.com...
I haven't read the link but my view on such issues (as an atheist)  is
 as follows:
 science deals only with certain questions, namely ones he can find an
 answer to, other questions are just left to philosophy.
 from your description that links falls under the realm of the latter
 more than the former.
 the Schrödinger cat experiment for example is a way to illustrate
 Heisenberg's uncertainty law. It's a way to explain statistics.
 science uses math as a language to express concepts, for example we use
 fields to explain magnetism but that does not mean that there's such a
 thing as a magnetic field, cause a field is just another mathematical
 entity, nothing more.
 trying to extract any philosophical ideas out of those ideas and math
 concepts is wrong as it violates Okham's razor principal and is not 
 science.
 As I've stated already, those are my views only, and I of course do not
 want to insult anyone's beliefs. I just prefer the science continue
 expanding our understanding of the universe while our philosophy
 continues to debate other questions and those remain separated.

 --Yigal

 PS - 
 http://digg.com/comedy/Atheist_Sees_Image_of_Big_Bang_in_Piece_of_Toast
Yep. That's generally a good approach to science. However, considering how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a definitive answer to the big questions. -Craig
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering 
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the 
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical 
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a 
 definitive answer to the big questions.
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
Feb 14 2008
parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...
   
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering 
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the 
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical 
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a 
 definitive answer to the big questions.
     
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math). you can think of it this way: say we all are 2D living on the surface of a balloon that keeps expanding. in such a surface the geometry tells us that although there is no edge/border to the surface the area of it is finite. our universe behaves exactly the same, only the "surface" of it is 3D. -- Yigal
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
 Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> writes:
Jb wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
 Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
"Ours goes up to infinity plus one. It's one louder." - Nigel Tufnel But you're right I don't think theres any pure math that says "infinite" implies "cannot expand" -- consider the mapping of the real numbers to the real numbers: x <- 2*x Infinite? Yes. Expanding? Yes. So probably the OP left out a few details. :-) --bb
Feb 14 2008
parent reply boyd <gaboonviper gmx.net> writes:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:06:52 +0100, Bill Baxter  
<dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote:

 Jb wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message  
 news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
 Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However,  
 considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have  
 the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
"Ours goes up to infinity plus one. It's one louder." - Nigel Tufnel But you're right I don't think theres any pure math that says "infinite" implies "cannot expand" -- consider the mapping of the real numbers to the real numbers: x <- 2*x Infinite? Yes. Expanding? Yes. So probably the OP left out a few details. :-) --bb
Actually infinite means exactly that it can't expand. That's the whole point of infinity. It's not a number, not a real one anyway, because a real number is always smaller than infinite. x <- 2*x is only expanding if the mapping takes time. And if it takes time, it'll never be infinite because at any point in time x will be an actual number. A very large number perhaps, but not infinite.
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"boyd" <gaboonviper gmx.net> wrote in message 
news:op.t6ji59yp1auoiy company-3328781.home.nl...
 On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:06:52 +0100, Bill Baxter 
 <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote:

 Actually infinite means exactly that it can't expand. That's the whole 
 point of infinity. It's not a number, not a real one anyway, because a 
 real number is always smaller than infinite.
Infinity is a set. if x = the set -inf .. +inf the set 2*x is infinite, as is 4*x. 4*x is an exactly like 2*x just spread out by a factor of 2. Infinity can expand because it is infinte. It just becomes a different but still infinite set of numbers.
Feb 14 2008
parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Jb wrote:
 "boyd" <gaboonviper gmx.net> wrote in message 
 news:op.t6ji59yp1auoiy company-3328781.home.nl...
   
 On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:06:52 +0100, Bill Baxter 
 <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote:

 Actually infinite means exactly that it can't expand. That's the whole 
 point of infinity. It's not a number, not a real one anyway, because a 
 real number is always smaller than infinite.
     
Infinity is a set. if x = the set -inf .. +inf the set 2*x is infinite, as is 4*x. 4*x is an exactly like 2*x just spread out by a factor of 2. Infinity can expand because it is infinte. It just becomes a different but still infinite set of numbers.
Nope. as you said yourself we are talking sets here. in order to compare infinite sets you cannot just count the elements (that would take forever). math uses cardinality for that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinality basically, |{0, 1, 2, ...}| = |{0, 2, 4, ...}| that maybe doesn't sound right, but both sets do in fact have the same cardinality (there's a trivial function that maps each member of the left set to a unique member of the right set). so in a matter of speaking both sets have the same amount of elements, thus you didn't expand infinity. --Yigal
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"boyd" <gaboonviper gmx.net> wrote in message 
news:op.t6ji59yp1auoiy company-3328781.home.nl...
 On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:06:52 +0100, Bill Baxter 
 <dnewsgroup billbaxter.com> wrote:

 Jb wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
 Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, 
 considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have 
 the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
"Ours goes up to infinity plus one. It's one louder." - Nigel Tufnel But you're right I don't think theres any pure math that says "infinite" implies "cannot expand" -- consider the mapping of the real numbers to the real numbers: x <- 2*x Infinite? Yes. Expanding? Yes. So probably the OP left out a few details. :-) --bb
Actually infinite means exactly that it can't expand. That's the whole point of infinity. It's not a number, not a real one anyway, because a real number is always smaller than infinite.
But to get back to the point regarding the Universe, space can be infinite and the galaxys finite. So a finite collection of galaxys can expand into infinite space even if the infinite space itself couldn't expand.
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Jb wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
   
 Jb wrote:
     
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

       
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.

         
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
well mathematically speaking [as Bill said] infinite can expand. However, the universe is indeed finite due to various outcomes from the big bang theory, and of course, it's much more complicated than how I put it in my previous reply. you can read about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
Feb 14 2008
parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Yigal Chripun wrote:
 Jb wrote:
   
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2gtu$qcp$1 digitalmars.com...
   
     
 Jb wrote:
     
       
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...

       
         
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a
 definitive answer to the big questions.

         
           
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math).
Why cant somthing infinite expand?
well mathematically speaking [as Bill said] infinite can expand. However, the universe is indeed finite due to various outcomes from the big bang theory, and of course, it's much more complicated than how I put it in my previous reply. you can read about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
apparently i was wrong with the math as pointed also by boyd, however, I found my ill-explained analogy (much better phrased) on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space in my reply i tried to explain "Ant on a balloon model" which you can search for on that page. Sorry, for not getting the explanation right the first time. I guess wikipedia does a much better job explaining that subject. --Yigal
Feb 14 2008
parent "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2oej$1asq$1 digitalmars.com...
 Yigal Chripun wrote:
 well mathematically speaking [as Bill said] infinite can expand.
 However, the universe is indeed finite due to various outcomes from the
 big bang theory, and of course, it's much more complicated than how I
 put it in my previous reply.
 you can read about it on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang
apparently i was wrong with the math as pointed also by boyd, however, I found my ill-explained analogy (much better phrased) on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space in my reply i tried to explain "Ant on a balloon model" which you can search for on that page. Sorry, for not getting the explanation right the first time. I guess wikipedia does a much better job explaining that subject.
I think the problem comes in that they are just models for the expansion / warping of space. None of these are proven, or even have much evidence to support them. Hence the 3 different models. One of which "the rubber sheet" model, is in fact infinite if I understand correctly. I mean "expansion" has plenty of evidence yes, but we dont know what kind of spacial expansion it is. We dont know if we are expanding in infinite space, or expanding in a finate mobius type space. That said.. i still think it's equaly incomprehensible / insensible whichever turns out to be true, if we ever do find out for sure.
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling parent reply Daniel Lewis <murpsoft hotmail.com> writes:
Yigal Chripun Wrote:

 Jb wrote:
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...
   
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering 
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the 
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical 
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a 
 definitive answer to the big questions.
     
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math). you can think of it this way: say we all are 2D living on the surface of a balloon that keeps expanding. in such a surface the geometry tells us that although there is no edge/border to the surface the area of it is finite. our universe behaves exactly the same, only the "surface" of it is 3D. -- Yigal
Any infinite form can expand too. Add a few digits to the end of Pi. Did nobody understand Limits Theorum?
Feb 14 2008
parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Daniel Lewis wrote:
 Yigal Chripun Wrote:

   
 Jb wrote:
     
 "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp2cu3$hcc$1 digitalmars.com...
   
       
 Yep.  That's generally a good approach to science.  However, considering 
 how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the 
 hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical 
 questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a 
 definitive answer to the big questions.
     
         
As soon as science provides an answer it stops being a philosophical question. ;-) But tbh, you just have to accept that some stuff is and always will be beyond our understanding. Is the universe infinate or finite? Either answer is utterly perplexing and uncomprehendable. Anyone who claims otherwise doesnt understand the question. Why does anything exist at all? Why is there not just nothing? Again what possible answer could there be that makes any sense to a human?
well, actually the universe is finite. there is a lot of evidence that our universe is expanding (big bang and all) and thus it must be finite (according to math). you can think of it this way: say we all are 2D living on the surface of a balloon that keeps expanding. in such a surface the geometry tells us that although there is no edge/border to the surface the area of it is finite. our universe behaves exactly the same, only the "surface" of it is 3D. -- Yigal
Any infinite form can expand too. Add a few digits to the end of Pi. Did nobody understand Limits Theorum?
You are wrong in you're reasoning. from wikipedia: "[Pi] represents the ratio of any circle <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle>'s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean geometry <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry>, which is the same as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius." the number Pi is just a representation of said ratio, and any decimal representation of it is _not_ Pi itself but an approximation of it. 3.14 is not Pi but a number that is close to Pi, that's all.
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 gmail.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp29k3$adk$1 digitalmars.com...
   
 I haven't read the link but my view on such issues (as an atheist)  is
 as follows:
 science deals only with certain questions, namely ones he can find an
 answer to, other questions are just left to philosophy.
 from your description that links falls under the realm of the latter
 more than the former.
 the Schrödinger cat experiment for example is a way to illustrate
 Heisenberg's uncertainty law. It's a way to explain statistics.
 science uses math as a language to express concepts, for example we use
 fields to explain magnetism but that does not mean that there's such a
 thing as a magnetic field, cause a field is just another mathematical
 entity, nothing more.
 trying to extract any philosophical ideas out of those ideas and math
 concepts is wrong as it violates Okham's razor principal and is not 
 science.
 As I've stated already, those are my views only, and I of course do not
 want to insult anyone's beliefs. I just prefer the science continue
 expanding our understanding of the universe while our philosophy
 continues to debate other questions and those remain separated.

 --Yigal

 PS - 
 http://digg.com/comedy/Atheist_Sees_Image_of_Big_Bang_in_Piece_of_Toast
     
Yep. That's generally a good approach to science. However, considering how much ground has been covered by science in recent times, I have the hope that ultimately science will be able to answer philosophical questions too. Being a curious person, it would be nice to have a definitive answer to the big questions. -Craig
there are various proofs in math [for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems] which place limitations one what science can do. thus hope is irrelevant, and fact is that some questions simply has no scientific answer. --Yigal
Feb 14 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Gregor Richards <Richards codu.org> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
 
 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
 
 -Craig
 
 
I've seen this sort of argument a thousand times, and as per usual, it's veiled in extremely long and complicated prose which completely ignores one fact: There is a competing theory of quantum waveform collapse that does not require one to hold the ridiculous belief that certain complicated chemical reactions are endowed with the magical property of consciousness. Better yet, this theory is extremely simple, and Occam's Razor always likes simplicity. It is the many-worlds hypothesis. Essentially, the hypothesis this page (and so many others) professes as proven truth is that the consciousness of a being causes the quantum state of things that being observes to collapse. It requires that you believe that certain beings are endowed with this mystical power of causing collapse, which is contrary to hundreds of years of science suggesting that humans (and all other forms of life) are physical/chemical/electrical reactions (albeit extremely complicated ones). One property of quantum mechanics that has been observed and proven fairly well is quantum entanglement. Put simply, one quantum state can be defined with another quantum state as variables. A simplified example: 1) You have a cat in a box. For simplicity, we will say that it has a 50% probability of being alive and a 50% probability of being dead. 2) You shoot the box. The bullet has a 99.99% probability of passing through the box and the cat (killing it), and a 0.01% probability of jumping spontaneously and missing the cat entirely. 3) Because the bullet affects the cat, the quantum state of the cat is now defined with the bullet as a variable: The 50% chance that the cat was alive now becomes a 49.995% chance that the cat is dead and a 0.005% chance the cat is dead. The 50% chance that the cat was dead is still a 50% chance that the cat is dead (no use shooting a dead cat :P ) So: The cat's state is now 99.995% dead and 0.005% alive. 4) You observe the cat. By the theory on this page (observation causes waveform collapse), your observing the cat causes it to resolve to either 100% dead or 100% alive, with a 0.005% probability and 99.995% probability respectively. However, there is no explanation for why you, the observer, are not entangled just like everything else is. Here's a simple explanation: You ARE entangled. Your state becomes 99.995% the-cat-is-dead, 0.005% the-cat-is-alive. What does this mean? This means that you exist simultaneously in two worlds, one with a living cat and one with a dead cat. Your consciousness is entangled, and so becomes divided into two universes (in a matter of speaking). What do you observe? Well, you can't simultaneously observer both universes (they are two separate streams of consciousness), so it appears that the state has collapsed. In reality, you've just become part of it. This is called the many-worlds hypothesis. It makes sense and doesn't require a philosophical definition of "observer". It's compatible with the well-supported notion that humans are NOT special, merely complicated. And, sci-fi loves it :P - Gregor Richards
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"Gregor Richards" <Richards codu.org> wrote in message 
news:fp2e2k$jvj$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science 
 has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only 
 one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is the result of 
 observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there are only 
 possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual reality.  And that 
 mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially consists of a single 
 Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

 -Craig
I've seen this sort of argument a thousand times, and as per usual, it's veiled in extremely long and complicated prose which completely ignores one fact: There is a competing theory of quantum waveform collapse that does not require one to hold the ridiculous belief that certain complicated chemical reactions are endowed with the magical property of consciousness. Better yet, this theory is extremely simple, and Occam's Razor always likes simplicity. It is the many-worlds hypothesis. Essentially, the hypothesis this page (and so many others) professes as proven truth is that the consciousness of a being causes the quantum state of things that being observes to collapse. It requires that you believe that certain beings are endowed with this mystical power of causing collapse, which is contrary to hundreds of years of science suggesting that humans (and all other forms of life) are physical/chemical/electrical reactions (albeit extremely complicated ones). One property of quantum mechanics that has been observed and proven fairly well is quantum entanglement. Put simply, one quantum state can be defined with another quantum state as variables. A simplified example: 1) You have a cat in a box. For simplicity, we will say that it has a 50% probability of being alive and a 50% probability of being dead. 2) You shoot the box. The bullet has a 99.99% probability of passing through the box and the cat (killing it), and a 0.01% probability of jumping spontaneously and missing the cat entirely. 3) Because the bullet affects the cat, the quantum state of the cat is now defined with the bullet as a variable: The 50% chance that the cat was alive now becomes a 49.995% chance that the cat is dead and a 0.005% chance the cat is dead. The 50% chance that the cat was dead is still a 50% chance that the cat is dead (no use shooting a dead cat :P ) So: The cat's state is now 99.995% dead and 0.005% alive. 4) You observe the cat. By the theory on this page (observation causes waveform collapse), your observing the cat causes it to resolve to either 100% dead or 100% alive, with a 0.005% probability and 99.995% probability respectively. However, there is no explanation for why you, the observer, are not entangled just like everything else is. Here's a simple explanation: You ARE entangled. Your state becomes 99.995% the-cat-is-dead, 0.005% the-cat-is-alive. What does this mean? This means that you exist simultaneously in two worlds, one with a living cat and one with a dead cat. Your consciousness is entangled, and so becomes divided into two universes (in a matter of speaking). What do you observe? Well, you can't simultaneously observer both universes (they are two separate streams of consciousness), so it appears that the state has collapsed. In reality, you've just become part of it. This is called the many-worlds hypothesis. It makes sense and doesn't require a philosophical definition of "observer". It's compatible with the well-supported notion that humans are NOT special, merely complicated. And, sci-fi loves it :P - Gregor Richards
Yeah. I have just been on Wikipedia reading about this. The article I read originally incorrectly promoted the "Continuous infinity of minds" hypothesis as a conclusion. It's hard because I can barely follow the logic of the that hypothesis, let alone try to digest this one too. It's very interesting that both of these hypothetical ideas have huge and quite strange implications. Either you believe in God or you believe in parallel universes. It's nuts. -Craig
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent reply Don Clugston <dac nospam.com.au> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 "Gregor Richards" <Richards codu.org> wrote in message 
 news:fp2e2k$jvj$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science 
 has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only 
 one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is the result of 
 observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there are only 
 possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual reality.  And that 
 mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially consists of a single 
 Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html

 -Craig
I've seen this sort of argument a thousand times, and as per usual, it's veiled in extremely long and complicated prose which completely ignores one fact: There is a competing theory of quantum waveform collapse that does not require one to hold the ridiculous belief that certain complicated chemical reactions are endowed with the magical property of consciousness. Better yet, this theory is extremely simple, and Occam's Razor always likes simplicity. It is the many-worlds hypothesis. Essentially, the hypothesis this page (and so many others) professes as proven truth is that the consciousness of a being causes the quantum state of things that being observes to collapse. It requires that you believe that certain beings are endowed with this mystical power of causing collapse, which is contrary to hundreds of years of science suggesting that humans (and all other forms of life) are physical/chemical/electrical reactions (albeit extremely complicated ones). One property of quantum mechanics that has been observed and proven fairly well is quantum entanglement. Put simply, one quantum state can be defined with another quantum state as variables. A simplified example: 1) You have a cat in a box. For simplicity, we will say that it has a 50% probability of being alive and a 50% probability of being dead. 2) You shoot the box. The bullet has a 99.99% probability of passing through the box and the cat (killing it), and a 0.01% probability of jumping spontaneously and missing the cat entirely. 3) Because the bullet affects the cat, the quantum state of the cat is now defined with the bullet as a variable: The 50% chance that the cat was alive now becomes a 49.995% chance that the cat is dead and a 0.005% chance the cat is dead. The 50% chance that the cat was dead is still a 50% chance that the cat is dead (no use shooting a dead cat :P ) So: The cat's state is now 99.995% dead and 0.005% alive. 4) You observe the cat. By the theory on this page (observation causes waveform collapse), your observing the cat causes it to resolve to either 100% dead or 100% alive, with a 0.005% probability and 99.995% probability respectively. However, there is no explanation for why you, the observer, are not entangled just like everything else is. Here's a simple explanation: You ARE entangled. Your state becomes 99.995% the-cat-is-dead, 0.005% the-cat-is-alive. What does this mean? This means that you exist simultaneously in two worlds, one with a living cat and one with a dead cat. Your consciousness is entangled, and so becomes divided into two universes (in a matter of speaking). What do you observe? Well, you can't simultaneously observer both universes (they are two separate streams of consciousness), so it appears that the state has collapsed. In reality, you've just become part of it. This is called the many-worlds hypothesis. It makes sense and doesn't require a philosophical definition of "observer". It's compatible with the well-supported notion that humans are NOT special, merely complicated. And, sci-fi loves it :P - Gregor Richards
Yeah. I have just been on Wikipedia reading about this. The article I read originally incorrectly promoted the "Continuous infinity of minds" hypothesis as a conclusion. It's hard because I can barely follow the logic of the that hypothesis, let alone try to digest this one too. It's very interesting that both of these hypothetical ideas have huge and quite strange implications. Either you believe in God or you believe in parallel universes. It's nuts.
There was a wonderful article in New Scientist a few years ago called "Anything Goes" by Marcus Chown which 'proves' that there are an infinite number of universes: "This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe was designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude of universes—a "multiverse". " http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15821375.100-anything-goes.html I love the way he dismisses the first option as absurd, regardless of the consequences which follow when choosing the second option.
Feb 15 2008
next sibling parent reply Aarti_pl <aarti interia.pl> writes:
 "This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe was 
 designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude of 
 universes—a "multiverse". "
 
 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15821375.100-anything-goes.html 
 
 
 I love the way he dismisses the first option as absurd, regardless of 
 the consequences which follow when choosing the second option.
That's why finding God based only on science IMHO is not possible. As Yigal Chripun already mentioned science is based on set of assumptions which don't allow scientists to explore some of possible explanations. I don't think it is so bad for scientists, as you never knows before what you will find just beyond the corner: another physical law or God himself. But what is good for scientists is not necessary so good for human being. If scientists are missing something very important (as God :-) ), a lot of people can be misleaded by believing in scientists theories... Another drawback of these basic scientists assumptions is that they can lead scientists to accept very strange and improbable theories as truth. So in some sense it cause scientists to accept theories which are more complicated than necessary, what is kind of paradox, taking Ockham's razor principle into account. In article mentioned above author noticed that universe seems to be precisely fine-tuned for humans to live, but it led author to conclusion that there are infinite number of different universes. In such a high level abstract, unverifiable thinking, the existence of God should be taken into consideration on the same level as such theories. The more: there IS some evidence of God's existence. And this IS fully scientific evidence. It's not evidence of kind which physicians and mathematicians would look for, as you can not reproduce in controlled environment your experiment to prove something. But it is evidence which will be gladly accepted by historicians. I mean here simplest evidence available: testimony of different people experiencing God in their life. If anyone wants to know my exact opinion on that matter you can contact me through my web page: www.zapytajmnie.com BR Marcin Kuszczak (aarti_pl)
Feb 15 2008
parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
Aarti_pl wrote:
 "This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe
 was designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude
 of universes—a "multiverse". "

 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15821375.100-anything-goes.html


 I love the way he dismisses the first option as absurd, regardless of
 the consequences which follow when choosing the second option.
That's why finding God based only on science IMHO is not possible. As Yigal Chripun already mentioned science is based on set of assumptions which don't allow scientists to explore some of possible explanations. I don't think it is so bad for scientists, as you never knows before what you will find just beyond the corner: another physical law or God himself. But what is good for scientists is not necessary so good for human being. If scientists are missing something very important (as God :-) ), a lot of people can be misleaded by believing in scientists theories... Another drawback of these basic scientists assumptions is that they can lead scientists to accept very strange and improbable theories as truth. So in some sense it cause scientists to accept theories which are more complicated than necessary, what is kind of paradox, taking Ockham's razor principle into account. In article mentioned above author noticed that universe seems to be precisely fine-tuned for humans to live, but it led author to conclusion that there are infinite number of different universes. In such a high level abstract, unverifiable thinking, the existence of God should be taken into consideration on the same level as such theories. The more: there IS some evidence of God's existence. And this IS fully scientific evidence. It's not evidence of kind which physicians and mathematicians would look for, as you can not reproduce in controlled environment your experiment to prove something. But it is evidence which will be gladly accepted by historicians. I mean here simplest evidence available: testimony of different people experiencing God in their life. If anyone wants to know my exact opinion on that matter you can contact me through my web page: www.zapytajmnie.com BR Marcin Kuszczak (aarti_pl)
science operates based on a set of axioms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom) which basically means that science is limited in what it can deduce. what you imply with the word "assumptions" is basically that if the assumption is wrong everything derived from it would also be wrong, so all our knowledge is just a pile of assumptions that can be wrong. that's different from using axioms as your starting point. There are cases where a scientific theory is based on an assumption but science tries very hard to minimize this as much as possible and to remain with ideally no assumptions at all. that's what ocham's razor is all about. regarding god, it is true that science doesn't/shouldn't deal with the question of god, as a belief system relies on people accepting it _without_ any formal proof. if you provide such a proof that god exists (or not) you make the answer a fact, and it stops being a belief. that said (and without insulting anyone religion/faith/belief system), my opinion is as follows: 1) the question of god cannot be answered by science so it's irrelevant and my view of the world does not depend on its answer. 2) I can reason logically and show that logically god doesn't exist but as i said, god isn't supposed to be logical or scientific so even if i could prove that he/she/it didn't exist it's irrelevant to my view of the world as stated in (1). if god is almighty and can do anything, he can create a rock no one can lift, so he either cannot lift it or he can't create it, both ways show a logical contradiction to the idea of an all powerful god. --Yigal (just another atheist..)
Feb 15 2008
next sibling parent Aarti_pl <aarti interia.pl> writes:
Yigal Chripun pisze:
 Aarti_pl wrote:
 "This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe
 was designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude
 of universes—a "multiverse". "

 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15821375.100-anything-goes.html


 I love the way he dismisses the first option as absurd, regardless of
 the consequences which follow when choosing the second option.
That's why finding God based only on science IMHO is not possible. As Yigal Chripun already mentioned science is based on set of assumptions which don't allow scientists to explore some of possible explanations. I don't think it is so bad for scientists, as you never knows before what you will find just beyond the corner: another physical law or God himself. But what is good for scientists is not necessary so good for human being. If scientists are missing something very important (as God :-) ), a lot of people can be misleaded by believing in scientists theories... Another drawback of these basic scientists assumptions is that they can lead scientists to accept very strange and improbable theories as truth. So in some sense it cause scientists to accept theories which are more complicated than necessary, what is kind of paradox, taking Ockham's razor principle into account. In article mentioned above author noticed that universe seems to be precisely fine-tuned for humans to live, but it led author to conclusion that there are infinite number of different universes. In such a high level abstract, unverifiable thinking, the existence of God should be taken into consideration on the same level as such theories. The more: there IS some evidence of God's existence. And this IS fully scientific evidence. It's not evidence of kind which physicians and mathematicians would look for, as you can not reproduce in controlled environment your experiment to prove something. But it is evidence which will be gladly accepted by historicians. I mean here simplest evidence available: testimony of different people experiencing God in their life. If anyone wants to know my exact opinion on that matter you can contact me through my web page: www.zapytajmnie.com BR Marcin Kuszczak (aarti_pl)
science operates based on a set of axioms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom) which basically means that science is limited in what it can deduce. what you imply with the word "assumptions" is basically that if the assumption is wrong everything derived from it would also be wrong, so all our knowledge is just a pile of assumptions that can be wrong. that's different from using axioms as your starting point. There are cases where a scientific theory is based on an assumption but science tries very hard to minimize this as much as possible and to remain with ideally no assumptions at all. that's what ocham's razor is all about.
I did not imply anything with word assumption. I just couldn't remind the word 'axiom' and used 'assumption' as replacement. It was probably not very perfect match :-). I completely agree with you about scope of scientific method: it is limited with basic axioms. But unfortunately I can also observe that many scientists have specific "assumptions" about existence of God. So they are not very objective in their statements.
 regarding god, it is true that science doesn't/shouldn't deal with the
 question of god, as a belief system relies on people accepting it
 _without_ any formal proof. if you provide such a proof that god exists
 (or not) you make the answer a fact, and it stops being a belief.
 that said (and without insulting anyone religion/faith/belief system),
 my opinion is as follows:
 1) the question of god cannot be answered by science so it's irrelevant
 and my view of the world does not depend on its answer.
...yup...
 2) I can reason logically and show that logically god doesn't exist but
 as i said, god isn't supposed to be logical or scientific so even if i
 could prove that he/she/it didn't exist it's irrelevant to my view of
 the world  as stated in (1).
 
 if god is almighty and can do anything, he can create a rock no one can
 lift, so he either cannot lift it or he can't create it, both ways show
 a logical contradiction to the idea of an all powerful god.
 
This is just logical antinomy. You can prepare lot of similar statements e.g.: 1. If god is almighty he could create quadratic circle. 2. If god is almighty he can exists and not exists in the same time. But please notice that no one ever claimed that because God is almighty he should be internally inconsistent. or he can do things that are logically not possible... :-)
 --Yigal (just another atheist..)
 
 
BR Marcin Kuszczak (aarti_pl)
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent Don Clugston <dac nospam.com.au> writes:
Yigal Chripun wrote:
 Aarti_pl wrote:
 "This fine-tuning has two possible explanations. Either the Universe
 was designed specifically for us by a creator or there is a multitude
 of universes—a "multiverse". "

 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg15821375.100-anything-goes.html


 I love the way he dismisses the first option as absurd, regardless of
 the consequences which follow when choosing the second option.
That's why finding God based only on science IMHO is not possible. As Yigal Chripun already mentioned science is based on set of assumptions which don't allow scientists to explore some of possible explanations. I don't think it is so bad for scientists, as you never knows before what you will find just beyond the corner: another physical law or God himself. But what is good for scientists is not necessary so good for human being. If scientists are missing something very important (as God :-) ), a lot of people can be misleaded by believing in scientists theories... Another drawback of these basic scientists assumptions is that they can lead scientists to accept very strange and improbable theories as truth. So in some sense it cause scientists to accept theories which are more complicated than necessary, what is kind of paradox, taking Ockham's razor principle into account. In article mentioned above author noticed that universe seems to be precisely fine-tuned for humans to live, but it led author to conclusion that there are infinite number of different universes. In such a high level abstract, unverifiable thinking, the existence of God should be taken into consideration on the same level as such theories. The more: there IS some evidence of God's existence. And this IS fully scientific evidence. It's not evidence of kind which physicians and mathematicians would look for, as you can not reproduce in controlled environment your experiment to prove something. But it is evidence which will be gladly accepted by historicians. I mean here simplest evidence available: testimony of different people experiencing God in their life. If anyone wants to know my exact opinion on that matter you can contact me through my web page: www.zapytajmnie.com BR Marcin Kuszczak (aarti_pl)
science operates based on a set of axioms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom) which basically means that science is limited in what it can deduce. what you imply with the word "assumptions" is basically that if the assumption is wrong everything derived from it would also be wrong, so all our knowledge is just a pile of assumptions that can be wrong. that's different from using axioms as your starting point. There are cases where a scientific theory is based on an assumption but science tries very hard to minimize this as much as possible and to remain with ideally no assumptions at all. that's what ocham's razor is all about. regarding god, it is true that science doesn't/shouldn't deal with the question of god, as a belief system relies on people accepting it _without_ any formal proof. if you provide such a proof that god exists (or not) you make the answer a fact, and it stops being a belief.
Life isn't that binary. There's very few things we can be certain about. In reality, we have varying degrees of confidence about everything. 'Fact' just means 'very high confidence'. Recently, in the mathematical community, there has been discussion about what 'proof' means (particularly with regard to computer-generated proofs). How can you be confident that there are no errors in your proof? (Oops, there was a bug in the gc -- Fermat's last theorem wasn't true after all). Instead, the question is how convincing you find the evidence to be. And since science does aid our understanding of the world, it does provide some evidence both for and against the existence of God (or gods).
 that said (and without insulting anyone religion/faith/belief system),
 my opinion is as follows:
 1) the question of god cannot be answered by science so it's irrelevant
 and my view of the world does not depend on its answer.
 2) I can reason logically and show that logically god doesn't exist but
 as i said, god isn't supposed to be logical or scientific so even if i
 could prove that he/she/it didn't exist it's irrelevant to my view of
 the world  as stated in (1).
 
 if god is almighty and can do anything, he can create a rock no one can
 lift, so he either cannot lift it or he can't create it, both ways show
 a logical contradiction to the idea of an all powerful god.
That does indeed rule out certain categories of god, and says interesting things about what 'all powerful' can mean, but my guess is that such arguments haven't had any effect on the development of your views <g>. Curiously, it is an example of a contribution from logic towards theology! Historically, science has done a pretty decent job of rendering a fair number of religious world views untenable.
 --Yigal (just another atheist..)
-- Don (just another Christian..) Unfortunately, one of the few things we can be sure about is that (at least) one of us is wrong. Bummer.
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent reply "Jb" <jb nowhere.com> writes:
"Don Clugston" <dac nospam.com.au> wrote in message 
news:fp3hvu$88p$1 digitalmars.com...
 There was a wonderful article in New Scientist a few years ago called 
 "Anything Goes" by Marcus Chown which 'proves' that there are an infinite 
 number of universes:
I read New Scientist pretty regulary, and tbh the amount of weird and incomprehensible theories of physics seems never ending. A recent one was predicting that future affects past, that causality works backwards as well as forwards. 17 dimensions, multiverses, time doesnt exist, boltzman brains (that was really weird) ect... I wonder if our ability to test theorys at the cutting edge, at the subatomic level, is getting so limited that we might just be stuck with an endless stream crackpot incomprehensible theorys for a fairly long time.
Feb 15 2008
parent user domain.invalid writes:
Jb wrote:
 
 I wonder if our ability to test theorys at the cutting edge, at the 
 subatomic level, is getting so limited that we might just be stuck with an 
 endless stream crackpot incomprehensible theorys for a fairly long time.
 
Lee Smolin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin), another first rate physicist, published a book that deals with this very subject. It's called "The Trouble with Physics", and discusses how we got into this mess and what science can do to help get us out. It's somewhat controversial, but he makes some very good points. Dennis Cote
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 Yeah.  I have just been on Wikipedia reading about this.  The article I read 
 originally incorrectly promoted the "Continuous infinity of minds" 
 hypothesis as a conclusion.  It's hard because I can barely follow the logic 
 of the that hypothesis, let alone try to digest this one too.  It's very 
 interesting that both of these hypothetical ideas have huge and quite 
 strange implications.  Either you believe in God or you believe in parallel 
 universes.  It's nuts.
 
 -Craig 
Or you view the Schroedinger's cat problem from the perspective of the Geiger counter, and any quantum nastiness is dealt with on a quantum level. As for calling that 'single universal consciousness' idea a theory, I take issue with that. Theories are not only testable, they are well tested. This idea is neither.
Feb 16 2008
prev sibling parent reply Daniel Lewis <murpsoft hotmail.com> writes:
 Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  
No offense, but that's a load of shit. The human mind is roughly the equivalent to pudding or a potato. It just happens to be configured in such a way that it's electrical signals form a massively parallel signal infrastructure. Hence why we continue to expend about 10% of our body energy supporting our pudding.
 The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.
Hippy. More correctly, if you take two magnets and pull them apart, at what distance does the magnetic force completely stop; or is it a function of limits? Likewise for gravity? Can you therefore consider that when I move my finger, then entire universe feels both electrical and gravitational change? I would argue that that is how one might interpolate that everything is connected.
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
Wow. 3 people are so at a loss as to why the universe acts a certain way, that we're all going to talk about how the human mind controls the fundamental physics of the universe. Talk about egocentric.
 I've seen this sort of argument a thousand times, and as per usual, it's 
 veiled in extremely long and complicated prose which completely ignores 
 one fact: There is a competing theory of quantum waveform collapse that 
 does not require one to hold the ridiculous belief that certain 
 complicated chemical reactions are endowed with the magical property of 
 consciousness. Better yet, this theory is extremely simple, and Occam's 
 Razor always likes simplicity. It is the many-worlds hypothesis.
*cough* Right. On one of those worlds, I'm dating three hot supermodels and my sister is the president of the United States. *cough* Back to reality, the universe isn't a statistics game. We are noticing that wave forms are arbitrarily collapsing to discrete forms immediately before interacting with one another, and slowly diffusing back into wave forms afterwards. This can be demonstrated quite clearly with the double-slit experiment. We have no idea why this happens.
 
 Essentially, the hypothesis this page (and so many others) professes as 
 proven truth is that the consciousness of a being causes the quantum 
 state of things that being observes to collapse.
Either that, or it's because in order to observe a particle for the double-slit experiment, we need to hit it with something, causing an interaction and thus collapsing the wave - and not really because the particle knows we're out there... watching...
 It requires that you 
 believe that certain beings are endowed with this mystical power of 
 causing collapse, which is contrary to hundreds of years of science 
 suggesting that humans (and all other forms of life) are 
 physical/chemical/electrical reactions (albeit extremely complicated ones).
Aww, but human history is replete with mystical beings.
 
 One property of quantum mechanics that has been observed and proven 
 fairly well is quantum entanglement. Put simply, one quantum state can 
 be defined with another quantum state as variables. A simplified example:
 
 1) You have a cat in a box. For simplicity, we will say that it has a 
 50% probability of being alive and a 50% probability of being dead.
 
 2) You shoot the box. The bullet has a 99.99% probability of passing 
 through the box and the cat (killing it), and a 0.01% probability of 
 jumping spontaneously and missing the cat entirely.
This is not an example of quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement, in layman's terms is when one wave is directly affected by another wave in a position possibly quite remote from it by a means not apparent to us.
 Here's a simple explanation: You ARE entangled. Your state becomes 
 99.995% the-cat-is-dead, 0.005% the-cat-is-alive. What does this mean? 
This means that when you haul out a calculator, you don't know without opening the box, so you calculate a probability, even though the cat really is either dead or alive. The problem quantum physicists face is that they're trying to calculate position and mass of a wave form for which the boundary is defined by a limit. Where you draw the limit changes where the calculated center of mass and center of position are; but the particle exists everywhere.
 This means that you exist simultaneously in two worlds, one with a 
 living cat and one with a dead cat. Your consciousness is entangled, and 
 so becomes divided into two universes (in a matter of speaking). 
*cough*
 What do 
 you observe? Well, you can't simultaneously observer both universes 
 (they are two separate streams of consciousness), so it appears that the 
 state has collapsed. In reality, you've just become part of it.
If one takes any given system of information such that along a single dimension the state of that dimension at any given plane can be calculated by the state in a previous plane, one can continuously calculate all possible states along that dimension. Cellular automata are a simple example. The problem is that we cannot possibly comprehend the entire state of the universe along a plane. At best, we can see tiny cone expanding back in time outwards from our current position. For this reason, we cannot determine the gravitational affect, electrical affect, nuclear-strong affecting, position, or mass of any given wave. We simply can't see all of it.
 This is called the many-worlds hypothesis. It makes sense and doesn't
Makes sense?
 require a philosophical definition of "observer". It's compatible with 
 the well-supported notion that humans are NOT special, merely 
 complicated. And, sci-fi loves it :P
I'm sure they do. Best Regards, Dan
Feb 14 2008
next sibling parent downs <default_357-line yahoo.de> writes:
Daniel Lewis wrote:
 *cough*  Right.  On one of those worlds, I'm dating three hot supermodels and
my sister is the president of the United States.  *cough*
 
Even better example. On one of those worlds GWB was reelected. Clearly, this demonstrates the impossibility of the Many Worlds model. No parallel universe could conceivably be so moronic. --downs
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling parent "Craig Black" <cblack ara.com> writes:
"Daniel Lewis" <murpsoft hotmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fp2se7$1is4$1 digitalmars.com...
 Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind. 
 At
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind 
 to
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.
No offense, but that's a load of shit. The human mind is roughly the equivalent to pudding or a potato. It just happens to be configured in such a way that it's electrical signals form a massively parallel signal infrastructure. Hence why we continue to expend about 10% of our body energy supporting our pudding.
 The universe
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter
 emmanates.
Hippy. More correctly, if you take two magnets and pull them apart, at what distance does the magnetic force completely stop; or is it a function of limits? Likewise for gravity? Can you therefore consider that when I move my finger, then entire universe feels both electrical and gravitational change? I would argue that that is how one might interpolate that everything is connected.
You can call people names all day long, but I am simply an agnostic with an open mind mind. This, I find is something that is exceptionally rare and something that I am proud to be. Some people get off on being mean to people with different opinions. If you would have read a couple more of my posts would have noticed that I've changed my mind on the matter you asshole. It's people like you that makes learning so damn annoying. -Craig
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent user domain.invalid writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
 
For the ramblings of a first rate physicist, Roger Penrose, on this and related topics, you might want to read his book "The Emperors New Mind". Both Roger and his book are discussed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose. If nothing else, the book is a good introduction to the physics of quantum mechanics. Dennis Cote
Feb 15 2008
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Edward Diener <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
 agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I thought this was very 
 interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science has such a solid theory 
 about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only one conscious mind in the 
 universe, and that matter is the result of observations of that mind.  At 
 the subatomic level, there are only possibilities that require a mind to 
 bring into actual reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.
 
 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult?  Nope. 
 The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries made by 
 Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all pioneers of 
 quantum mechanics.
 
 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Utter rubbish ! For a person in a mathematical/scientific field such as computer programming buying such hogwash is pathetic. Try studying the great physicists, even a little, to understand that they were not in the business of supporting mystagogues of any type.
Feb 15 2008
parent reply "Craig Black" <craigblack2 cox.net> writes:
"Edward Diener" <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> wrote in message 
news:fp50mt$v2o$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern science 
 has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that there is only 
 one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is the result of 
 observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there are only 
 possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual reality.  And that 
 mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially consists of a single 
 Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Utter rubbish ! For a person in a mathematical/scientific field such as computer programming buying such hogwash is pathetic. Try studying the great physicists, even a little, to understand that they were not in the business of supporting mystagogues of any type.
Actually after reading more on the topic, this is actually not the "conclusion" that the author here states. But it is one hypothesis that unless I misunderstand was posed by Schrodinger himself. This quote is from Shrodinger on Wikipedia: * Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind... o "The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber It may be the case that the author here takes this idea further than Schrodinger did. However, because this particular hypothesis violates the Ockham's Razor principle, it gets less attention from mainstream science than the other alternatives. -Craig
Feb 16 2008
next sibling parent "Craig Black" <craigblack2 cox.net> writes:
 It may be the case that the author here takes this idea further than 
 Schrodinger did.
Actually, after reading more of Shrodinger's quotes, I take this back. He was quite esoteric, and quoted the writings of ancient mystics. -Craig
Feb 16 2008
prev sibling parent reply Edward Diener <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> writes:
Craig Black wrote:
 
 "Edward Diener" <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp50mt$v2o$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern 
 science has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that 
 there is only one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is 
 the result of observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, 
 there are only possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual 
 reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe 
 essentially consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter 
 emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Utter rubbish ! For a person in a mathematical/scientific field such as computer programming buying such hogwash is pathetic. Try studying the great physicists, even a little, to understand that they were not in the business of supporting mystagogues of any type.
Actually after reading more on the topic, this is actually not the "conclusion" that the author here states. But it is one hypothesis that unless I misunderstand was posed by Schrodinger himself. This quote is from Shrodinger on Wikipedia: * Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind... o "The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Because Schrodinger, or any other person, happens to write something, does not make it true in any sense. Do you really believe that science, and in particular quantum mechanics, has attempted to measure "consciousness", or even define it in scientific terms ? Furthermore the author of that tract is oblivious to some 70 years or more of quantum mechanics, which post-dates the theories and science of the three scientists on which he focuses. During that period enormous strides have been make in attempting to understand the quantum nature of physical reality. The challenges are still so enormous that it is doubtful the leading scientists in the field have any time to waste on a notion which belongs clearly outside their science and how that science is defined. Physical reality is quite complex enough without worrying about a notion that has the vaguest of meanings outside of science. By attempting to subvert serious, challenging, and fascinating science to mystico-religious belief the author of the tract is doing a great disservice to actual scientists in the field ( I am not one but as a layman, and someone who studied a good deal of physics in college, I have done some reading and further learning in the area ).
 
 It may be the case that the author here takes this idea further than 
 Schrodinger did.  However, because this particular hypothesis violates 
 the Ockham's Razor principle, it gets less attention from mainstream 
 science than the other alternatives.
It gets no attention because there is no way to measure "consciousness" in scientific terms, or even define it. This has nothing to do with Ockham's Razor or mainstream science, but everything to do with what science is.
Feb 16 2008
parent "Craig Black" <craigblack2 cox.net> writes:
"Edward Diener" <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> wrote in message 
news:fp7sft$21bl$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 "Edward Diener" <eddielee_no_spam_here tropicsoft.com> wrote in message 
 news:fp50mt$v2o$1 digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I 
 personally am an agnostic, so not trying to preach anything, but I 
 thought this was very interesting.  I didn't realize that modern 
 science has such a solid theory about consciousness.  Namely, that 
 there is only one conscious mind in the universe, and that matter is 
 the result of observations of that mind.  At the subatomic level, there 
 are only possibilities that require a mind to bring into actual 
 reality.  And that mind is not Many but One.  The universe essentially 
 consists of a single Indivisible Mind from which matter emmanates.

 Are these the ramblings of a deluded philosopher or religious cult? 
 Nope. The conclusions that result due to observations and discoveries 
 made by Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Niels Bohr, all 
 pioneers of quantum mechanics.

 http://www.integralscience.org/ConsciousQM.html
Utter rubbish ! For a person in a mathematical/scientific field such as computer programming buying such hogwash is pathetic. Try studying the great physicists, even a little, to understand that they were not in the business of supporting mystagogues of any type.
Actually after reading more on the topic, this is actually not the "conclusion" that the author here states. But it is one hypothesis that unless I misunderstand was posed by Schrodinger himself. This quote is from Shrodinger on Wikipedia: * Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind... o "The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Because Schrodinger, or any other person, happens to write something, does not make it true in any sense. Do you really believe that science, and in particular quantum mechanics, has attempted to measure "consciousness", or even define it in scientific terms ?
Unfortunately, you are questioning me about someone else's idea that I really don't fully understand. Like I said I'm not trying to preach anything, just trying to learn. I find it interesting that Shrodinger held this belief. Just because he was a smart guy doesn't make everything he believes true. But I think it's interesting and would like to better understand what line of thinking led him to that "conclusion". Probably both you and Shrodinger know much more than me about quantum mechanics, so I'm not the best one to defend his idea, at least yet.
 Furthermore the author of that tract is oblivious to some 70 years or more 
 of quantum mechanics, which post-dates the theories and science of the 
 three scientists on which he focuses. During that period enormous strides 
 have been make in attempting to understand the quantum nature of physical 
 reality. The challenges are still so enormous that it is doubtful the 
 leading scientists in the field have any time to waste on a notion which 
 belongs clearly outside their science and how that science is defined. 
 Physical reality is quite complex enough without worrying about a notion 
 that has the vaguest of meanings outside of science.

 By attempting to subvert serious, challenging, and fascinating science to 
 mystico-religious belief the author of the tract is doing a great 
 disservice to actual scientists in the field ( I am not one but as a 
 layman, and someone who studied a good deal of physics in college, I have 
 done some reading and further learning in the area ).

 It may be the case that the author here takes this idea further than 
 Schrodinger did.  However, because this particular hypothesis violates 
 the Ockham's Razor principle, it gets less attention from mainstream 
 science than the other alternatives.
It gets no attention because there is no way to measure "consciousness" in scientific terms, or even define it. This has nothing to do with Ockham's Razor or mainstream science, but everything to do with what science is.
Perhaps I was incorrect to call it a hypothesis. Beyond that, I think we are both saying the same thing here just in different ways. The bottom line is that scientific community disregards the idea. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "In general, physicists regard this theory as a non-scientific or pseudoscientific concept, pointing out that it is experimentally unfalsifiable and that it introduces unnecessary elements into physics, rather than simplifying." And I would interject that this unnecessary complexity violates Ockham's Razor. Does that make sense? However, even if it's not science and just philosophy, it's still interesting. Further, just because something isn't science doesn't make it untrue, just unprovable. Don't expect me to become a Buddhist monk any time soon though. ;) -Craig
Feb 17 2008
prev sibling parent reply Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:
Craig Black <cblack ara.com> wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last night 
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am an 
I had a funny idea for some time already, that the weird laws of quantum mechanics could be a consequence of a finite precision of hardware running our Universe. I'm not a math geek at all, but it could be interesting to try and figure out which pecularities would a digital mind observe while trying to measure distances less than real.epsilon, or to measure time less than frame duration. Would they possibly formulate an uncertainty principle ? And, most importantly, this is much closer to the topic than The Ultimate Mind Hypothesis. :D -- SnakE
Feb 16 2008
parent "Craig Black" <craigblack2 cox.net> writes:
"Sergey Gromov" <snake.scaly gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:MPG.222149caa85aab41989696 news.digitalmars.com...
 Craig Black <cblack ara.com> wrote:
 I apologize for the inappropriate post, but I read this material last 
 night
 and am still buzzing about it.  I just have to share it.  I personally am 
 an
I had a funny idea for some time already, that the weird laws of quantum mechanics could be a consequence of a finite precision of hardware running our Universe. I'm not a math geek at all, but it could be interesting to try and figure out which pecularities would a digital mind observe while trying to measure distances less than real.epsilon, or to measure time less than frame duration. Would they possibly formulate an uncertainty principle ? And, most importantly, this is much closer to the topic than The Ultimate Mind Hypothesis. :D -- SnakE
Interseting idea. There's not much more I can comment on this because I don't think it's ever been proposed as a serious hypothesis for quantum mechanics. I think you would have a lot of work on your hands if you really wanted to develop this idea further. -Craig
Feb 16 2008