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Would it be wrong to say that you need the maths to know how to use QM, but that no one actually knows what the maths means - in the sense of fully understanding the implications of the kind of universe that QM seems to be describing?

For example - this idea of measurement is very bothersome. The implication seems to be that something is only measured when it's perceived subjectively.

If I were doing QM for a living, that would give me a lot of sleepless nights. It begs the question - what has the universe been doing all this time without humans to perrceive it?

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat May 27th, 2006 at 06:57:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Sorry Brit... but there is no universe out there..universe exists because we measure it...:)

so the answer to  "what has the universe been doing all this time without humans to perrceive it?" is an easy one: He is being busy non-existing.

reality is the interaction, the measure,.... Kant Reloaded.

And when a movie with Keanu (whatanass in spanish) R. as KanT with weird green numbers all around?

A pleasure


I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 07:17:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
very close to the Edge. Advisable not to look over it if you suffer from vertigo. You can hold on to that big sign that says 'Epistomology' if you feel dizzy.

But it's fun to stand on the Edge and throw words at the epistomological bees as they hover in death-defying grace above the chasm of mortality. None of these thrown words have ever been known to have hit a bee-ing, or indeed to have made contact with anything at all as they plummeted out of site.

Some people claim to have heard melifluous laughter coming from over the Edge. But I think it's probably just some Bhuddist who tripped and managed to grab a causal shrub on his way.


You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 08:41:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]
...are better at convincing that the buddhists.... try them for going over the edge :)

They really are much more nicer...and sound.. much more in the whole.... truthiness...

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 12:02:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

 SO, suppose we stop "measuring"?--which could very easily happen again.  What then?

  Since we exist in the universe rather than it in us, I think that a) the universe cannot be dependent on us or on our "measuring" it and, even more likely, perhaps, b) Surely you are joking, Mr Curie!

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 10:38:12 AM EST
[ Parent ]
b) I am joking and not....maybe I agree with this point of view.. maybe not.. or maybe I am still not sure....

a) but I am indeed sure about this point. the universe depends heavily on how me measure. Measuring changes the world.. this is one of the key of the present consensus in physics. It is dependent on our measuring in its external properties....regarding if there are laws who are independent of us...well I doubt physics can be understood in those terms.. more something like, we measure, we change it and we can extract some informacion about regularities....

The question at the end of the day is.. you believe that science describes reality and then inmediately accepts that reality is mathematics or you just consider that the universe is our metaphor and narrative without us being able to know (or if it even exists) a universe idnependent of us.

QM tells you that there is no middle ground... take one or the other....a ctually before starting QM I had another 2 or 3 possibilites opened in the mind.. one was certainly similar to yours...but experiments did not fit in...so I had to discard them...and my teachers make it sure I discarded them.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 12:08:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]


 "but I am indeed sure about this point. the universe depends heavily on how me measure. Measuring changes the world.. this is one of the key of the present consensus in physics."

  It seems to me that, if your argument means anything in logic, it means that there can be, so far, with present knowledge of physics, no clear and complete certainty about the universe's actual existence and, furthermore, its precise characteristics.

  Now, whether or not I believe that is true, it seems to me that if you believe it is true, then you cannot claim that "Measuring changes the world.. this is one of the key of the present consensus in physics."

  You can claim only that "Measuring changes our perceptions of the nature of the world.. this is one of the key of the present consensus in physics."

 and that is, necessarily, not the same as saying that "Measuring changes the world.. "

Am I mistaken in that?


"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 12:22:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Got me.

Perception of the world, always talking about the perceived universe...but again.. the universe I am interested is in the one I perceived.. one which is farther away which is isolated and which I can  not reach, well it could  be interesting... I am not saying it does not exist.. actually I have no idea...
but the universe I care is the one I perceived...and either this universe is pure mathematics with an existence we are all embedded in or is just a set  of narrative and symbolics we generate to make sense creating it as we speak.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Mon May 29th, 2006 at 10:12:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Max Tegmark [an otherwise serious artrophysics] has a tongue-in-cheek "theory of everything" in which he explores the consequences of taking it seriously that the universe is nothing but mathematics.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 04:46:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I am a Kantian, but I am told that Kant is superseded... Maybe he isn't...

Kant's point is that the world out there [noumenon] probably exists but since the only thing that can be known about it is our perception of it [augmented by technology — let's leave this can of worms unopened for now] little can be said about the world itself.

Kant called the world as perceived phenomenon, and thus there is an interesting parallel between Kantian thought and the philosophical musings of Niels Bohr, namely

"No Phenomenon is a Phenomenon unless it is an observed phenomenon" — Niels Bohr

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 04:46:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I guess I'm a bit of a Kant myself ;.)


You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 08:35:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Kant is king...Kant is the embrio of the present description-theory...actually, it has not changed very much..  present theories just explain in more detail how we develop explanations/construct what "we see"...

So, the link is not a far away link... it is basically one of the present positions on epistemology

Kant was that good...

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 08:58:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]
A problem - this contradicts the Principle of Mediocrity which suggests there's nothing special about the human point of view.

We don't live at the centre of the solar system, or of the galaxy, or the universe. So it seems unlikely that the universe only exists because we perceive it. (Of course it only exists for us because we perceive it. But that's not quite the same thing.)

I might be convinced by the idea that our own unique perception exists because of us. The universe is out there as a extended haze of possibles, and our unique probability mix is personal.

But then the question becomes - how sentient do you have to become before this process starts happening for you?

So I'm not sure that's any more convincing as a point of view.

Penrose has suggested there's some kind of feedback loop between QM and gravity/local geometry, so effectively there's a trade off between mass and uncertainty. Small light things have a much wider range of uncertainty than big heavy ones - partly because it's impossible to maintain the ambiguity of pristine probabilistic virginity in a complex system, and partly because he likes the idea that geometry underlies everything and so it ought to be in the equations somewhere.

(I'm paraphrasing a little there, but I think that's more or less what he was trying to say. :) )

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 10:57:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]
This is an endless circular argument. But assuming that your ONLY contact (which you have come to understand as real) is via your sense interface - with all its attendant distortions (though you don't know that ;-)) - then there can be no direct experience of the Universe and thus no way of knowing that it exists.

Sense data is organized into a map - it is not the territory itself.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 12:17:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Lovely!!!

But it does not contradict the principle of Mediocitry.. our universe does not have to be unique..and the fact that it is personal doe snot make it special... actually I can not know anything about a universe beyond the one a I perceive.. so this is the one we ca deal with...

SO either you think it has some existence independent of us and maths exists (our description exists independently...and we will eventually get to discover the maths that really describe the stuff out there... description and reality are the same...and both maths).. or we just describe what we see...wnever knowing really waht is going on....being among the many possible unvierses...our universe.. our description... our myths...existence is myths...our narrative of the world and ourselves exists...because they are narratives.. not because they are maths...

So time is a math variable or a myth....lately I ahve been thinking...and I can not join them in a single entity...time is out there or time is in the interface...a reality or a description...

a quark.. a real quantum field....or narrative that behaves as a quantum field.... the never ending question.....

reality is out there or at the interface...I do not see any other option....which one? I do not take bets.

A pleasure

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 12:19:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
lol, you sound like you eat the wrong mushrooms!

seriously, i think your post was lovely...it left everything in a deliciously aesthetic soft focus....myth and/or math, observer and/event....

peering over the edge of consensus reality has this enchanting effect on people sometimes, powerfully endearing...

like we're realising we may never know the answers to the so-called ultimate questions, that it's profoundly ok not to know everything, and may possibly be a blessing sometimes...

the best plots develop slowly

the mind tickles for knowledge like lungs breathe for air, and just like in permaculture, the most interesting and productive zones are at the edges.

great reply from sven below, as well.

well done migeru, for creating such a great tit of a thread.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 01:24:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]
 these are not logically mutually exclusive:


 "SO either

 you think it has some existence independent of us and maths exists (our description exists independently...and we will eventually get to discover the maths that really describe the stuff out there... description and reality are the same...and both maths)..

or

we just describe what we see...never knowing really what is going on....

 We can at the same time hold that

existence is independent of "us"

and also

that "we just describe what we see...never knowing really what is going on...."

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Sun May 28th, 2006 at 01:34:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
PRoximity.. love it.

I exactly thought this way for a long time...

but when I finished physics I realized that there was a strong connection... we change whatever we perceive as we measure. The universe .. the way we describe takes a loop form ..we can not explain what we see without making reference to someone measuring and something measured...physics links extremelly one with the other...universe can not be independent form us..so only the two options remained.

I came to the conclusion that if our present narrative of the world indeed is right and it has no self-contradictions.. then it is purely a narrative or is purely the reality...

So I convinced myself that independence+description  was not possible...may be I am wrong...I could certainly be wrong..Actually, new discoveries could change the narrative indeed.. and we could come back to have an independent universe and a narrative about it...As you may know some people are trying hard.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

by kcurie on Mon May 29th, 2006 at 10:03:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

  "...So I convinced myself ..."

  Precisely.

  I remain to be convinced, however.

  By the way, your restatment of my views and your rebuttals offered show me that despite your claim:

  "I exactly thought this way for a long time..."

  you haven't in fact understood my point.

   To understand just how and why you've missed my point, I can only refer you to either ThatBritGuy or Migeru, who shall be better able to explain it than I.

"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge

by proximity1 on Mon May 29th, 2006 at 10:21:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You're going to have to explain it to me first, before I can relay it to kcurie. We need another ET meetup pronto! [Sorry, really can't make it to Toulouse]

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 30th, 2006 at 04:51:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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