Chaos theory eliminates quantum uncertainty
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iai.tv
Chaos theory in general states that for some deterministic systems, small changes in the initial conditions can lead to a wildly different deterministic outcome.
A closer metaphor than the butterfly metaphor is a car on a wet road.
Think of driving your car on a wet road. This is a completely deterministic system, there is nothing we don't know about how cars handle on wet roads. When you take that one corner too fast however, your car loses traction on the road, whether your car spins out or just fish tails for a bit before straightening out depends a great deal on the speed and angle that you entered the corner at. If you don't know the speed or angle that you entered the corner accurately, you don't know if you can bring the car back under control again or not.
I don't think anybody in the field of Quantum Mechanics doubts that it is possible for Quantum effects to be entirely deterministic. But it may be so sensitive to small changes in initial conditions (which may be as far back as the birth of the universe), that even if we knew the exact deterministic equations to solve for Quantum Mechanical systems, they would never make an accurate prediction.
That quantum effects cannot be deterministic is not only something people in the field believe, it is the majority position. The alternative goes under the name of "hidden variable" theory, and hidden variable theories aren't doing so well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
All the local ones are dead due to Bell. Except super determinism I guess (both "sides" dont agree on whether it is local or non local)
The nonlocal ones live, but have few real supporters
(The article, unlike the grandparent comment, is closer to superdeterminism)
Also, the hidden variable theories seem to be about practicality; for all intents and purposes, because it would be practically impossible to know that such hidden variables exist, they are deemed as non-existent.
Max Born
Definitely not. Everyone would strongly prefer a model of the universe that was deterministic. Hidden variables don't get ignored just because we don't need them to make predictions. We really really really want them, for their own sake, but we cannot make them work.
Sure we can. Bohmian mechanics showed how back in the 50s.
The so-called "uncertainty" is just a trivial property of the Fourier transform. It is the same property which requires a great frequency bandwidth for transmitting a pulse that is short in time.
The fact that certain quantities that appear in quantum mechanics are related by Fourier transforms is something that is completely orthogonal to the interpretation of the wave function amplitudes as probabilities of intrinsically random phenomena or as interaction efficiencies caused by real angles of rotation of the interacting particles/waves, which are unknown due to unknown initial conditions.
I have refrained from using a phrase like "uncertainty in the initial conditions" and I have said "unknown initial conditions", precisely to not imply any connection with "the uncertainty principle", because no such connection exists.
Moreover, "uncertainty" is typically used about the difference between the true value of a physical quantity and its estimated value, but in quantum mechanics problems there are many cases when a value is completely unknown (i.e. all the possible values are equi-probable at the initial time, like the angular coordinate of the position of an electron bound in an atom) and not only uncertain.
Saying "unknown initial conditions" covers such cases.
That "trivial" property of the Fourier transform fundamentally limits our ability to measure both position and momentum, or time and energy of a particle. Without that aspect of QM we could get effectively unlimited certainty of those various properties. It deeply implies the universe is non-local in nature.
Even if we knew all of the hidden variables. And had the exact deterministic mathematical formula for the universe. The formula may still be so unstable that it would make exactly 0 predictions.
> This is the metaphor used to describe the unpredictability of chaotic systems:tiny uncertainties in the initial conditions of a system grow and grow until they completely destroy the accuracy of any forecast
This doesn't seem too far off from you say.
We think of quantum randomness as truly random because the states are quantized, so it’s easy to initialize a system with the exact same starting conditions and watch it follow unpredictable trajectories.
Is this basically arguing that if we treat the entire universe as some macroscopic quantum state, comprising all the individual states of each discrete quantum, it would evolve deterministically? However, since we are only powered to observe a few quanta at a time, they appear to evolve completely randomly, but only because we are not privy to the states of every other quantum state in the universe?
Not small, zero.
For certain systems, at smaller timescales, merely an absurd amount of precision will suffice [0,1].
If everything shares some weak correlation with the stuff around it, then it might experience 10^-6 or whatever perturbation experiment to experiment, and accordingly the runs deviate according to some statistics about the system. Or the state of the early universe. Or something we don’t understand.
Either the experimenter's choice is an illusion (super-determinism), or somehow partial quantum states can be propagated at fast than light speed.
The correlation in spin measured by the two satellites is dependent upon the difference in angle of the two measurements. Correlation with the local stuff around each satellite isn't enough. Somehow, the choice of measurement angle seems to be non-local (transmitted at large distances and at greater than light speed).
With hidden variables—which by all accounts haven’t been ruled out—it means we cannot do this.
That is to say, there’s no way you can tell you’ve set the same initial conditions.
Local hidden variables have been ruled out. So it's not really like chaotic systems at all, whose development is internal.
I think what the author is trying to say is that we could imagine the universe is a massively hyper-dimensional fractal that we are utterly hopeless to determine the initial starting point on. I can't immediately see a reason that model wouldn't work, but its descriptive power (relative to QM) is basically nil... To be consistent with the observations that demanded a quantum mechanical understanding of the universe, we have to introduce the idea that we can't know where we are on the fractal, so this is more a philosophical pondering than a physical one.
Superdeterminism is a local hidden variable theory, that has not been ruled out. Superdeterminism circumvents the Bell's theorem, by extending determinism not only to the things being measured, but also to the entities doing the measurements.
In this context, "local" means: No spooky action that is faster than light. However spooky you might think the superdeterministec correlations are, superdeterminism implements them entirely without breaking the speed of light, so in the established terminology, it is local.
Remember, Pell's inequality theorem is definitely true, mathematicallly. The only way to disagree with it physically is to say that the premises are not physical on our Universe.
ergo, your: > since it requires drawing two real numbers within some absurdly small epsilon of each other.
just won't do.
Yes, I think in the end he is arguing for Superdeterminism, although for some reason he does not mention that concept in his article.
It explains why we can show that it cannot be hidden variable / immeasurable initial state that causes the randomness.
Basically we can change the probabilities of experiment B, made on particle B, by changing the experiment we do on particle A.
I suppose that entanglement could still live in a deterministic world. E.g, given initial state/variable and interaction with entangled particle A, B will behave so and so. I’m sure you could work out a number of initial states for A and B and how each set of states react to each other, that could give the same proportions as the probabilities mentioned in the video.
But given that initial states cannot be measured, is it really a better explanation?
If we believe reality is non-local, then why would we also believe it’s non-determinate?
I wonder if physicists are so impressed (rightly so) with their precision measurement capabilities that they can't accept nonlocality because it throws a monkey wrench into their whole way of observing things.
To any physicists reading, what's wrong with accepting nonlocality?
tl;dr: Non-locality tends to break causality. Merely relaxing locality is hard (as in nobody who has tried has done it successfully) to reconcile with astrophysical observations (e.g. radiation from periastron advances of binary pulsars, radiation from astrophysical megamasers, JEM-EUSO/Fermi-GLAST observations of gamma and cosmic rays).
A local (relativistic field) theory means that the solution to the field equations is locally Lorentz-invariant and generally covariant. I'll explain these briefly.
Local Lorentz-invariance essentially means evolving systems of matter must obey a fundamental speed limit that applies to all observers and observables. No-one will see matter suddenly appear out of thin vacuum, nor vanish into it without a trace. Everyone can relate certain quantities they observe (e.g. angular momentum), and understand (maybe with some effort) why the observed quantities differ for different observers. We can be rigorous about the immediate "before" and "after" of the arrival of matter at any given choice of here-and-now. This constraint on the fluxes of energy and momentum leads to conservation laws that are for all practical purposes completely accurate in any "small enough" patch of the whole spacetime. (And for particle physicists local Lorentz invariance gives a time-dependent spatial location of a centre of momentum.)
General covariance means that the theory does not require any particular choice of description of "here-and-now". We can solve the field equations if "here-and-now" is at a coordinate origin, and also if one or more of the dimensions is nonzero in some arbitrary system of coordinates. More importantly, the coordinate-dependent quantities in such a solution transform in a precise way as one switches from one system of coordinates to another. It also gives us a clue about what aspects of a system are coordinate-dependent and what are coordinate-independent, and that only the latter are reliably physical.
Locality in this sense gives us the strongest form of causality, which lets us move from solving the field equations for the entire "block universe" spacetime (and then examining pieces of it) to preparing an initial value problem on a single slice of that spacetime, and then extend from there to recovering the entire "block universe". The technical term for this is global hyperbolicity.
In general it is safe to conjecture that as one weakens the causality on a spacetime (i.e., from global hyperbolicity to one of the other choices at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_conditions#The_hiera...>), the less likely the spacetime is to model any part of our universe with useful accuracy. I'd sloganize it as "anything not forbidden by causality conditions is mandatory in a large enough patch of spacetime". Local Lorentz invariance turns out to forbid a surprisingly large number of possibilities (including lots of weird stuff that we have never seen).
The Standard Model of Particle Physics is a local theory, and it is updated as new experimental and observational evidence piles up. Despite many searches for LIV (Lorentz-invariance violation), it remains fully locally Lorentz-invariant. See <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-Model_Extension> for some details.
I think one should be careful not to confuse locality with local realism. That imports the idea of "scientific realism" in the sense that at a point p there are definite properties which exist -- whether measured or not -- and that those properties can only transform locally as above.
One can get to a non-realistic theory which is still local by (for example) pursuing a (I think pretty metaphysical) claim that "what you don't measure isn't there", or perhaps more weakly, "if you don't measure it, you can't assume the value". Such a theory can still be local without having to philosophize much: "if you do measure a value at spacetime point p, then measure a value at timelike-separated spacetime point p', the values will turn out to be related by a representation of the Lorentz group; but you may not be able to predict p' only from the measurement of p". (The realistic position is that you don't have to measure p' -- by measuring p you already know what p' is. [1])
(The local constraint is interesting in the paragraph above in that it implies that quantities must be combinations of only four-tensors (and four-vectors and scalars) and spinors; c.f. my paragraph beginning with "General covariance").
- --
[1] Einstein is frequently alleged to have sloganized this as "I like to think that the moon is there even if I’m not looking at it." This comes from a broken-telephone-effect upon A. Pais, Rev. Mod. Phys. 51, 863 (1979), near bottom of first column p.907, <https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.51.863>, which you can feed into sci hub): 'We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it. The rest of this walk was devoted to a discussion of what a physicist should mean by the term "to exist."' I think that's an excellent topic for discussion and that it is not yet resolved.
>> Despite many searches for LIV (Lorentz-invariance violation), it remains fully locally Lorentz-invariant.
Are bell inequality violations Lorentz-invariant? In other words, is the answer staring people straight in the face and they can't see it? If that's the wrong concept to be violated, substitute whatever one belongs in there. I completely admit to being lightyears out of my depth here, so I apologize if this is way off base.
Bell tests are tests of local realism, so no, not exactly.
Local Lorentz invariance guarantees local causality, which means that objects can non-negligibly influence each other only when they are in close proximity in spacetime. If we slice up spacetime into space and time, then objects together in a small test apparatus may give evidence of a certain interaction, whereas an object in the apparatus is not going to give similar evidence of interaction with an object in a laboratory across town. Likewise, if we put object one into the apparatus, then remove it, wait some time (minutes, months) and put object two into the apparatus, we won't expect evidence of interaction between the two to be registered by the apparatus.
Local realism is that concept of local causality combined with realism in the sense that objects can have persisting properties (over time) and that objects too far away to measure nevertheless "do" have persisting properties. The first is a "timelike" separation, the second can be "spacelike separation" at spatial distances so large that the travel time of light becomes impossible to ignore.
Achieving and proving spacelike separation is a frequent goal of Bell test experimenters. Usually this means that two objects interact and acquire a special property which persists as the objects are moved apart (in space and/or time) whereupon this property of each is examined by an apparatus that is forbidden to communicate the result of one examination to the apparatus doing the other examination. The apparatus or apparatuses must have no memory of whichever result happened first. The property is special in that the objects, when examined, show "opposite" values.
The intriguing issue is that results of the examinations of the entangled objects looks a lot like there is some memory or communication involved. If one apparatus, maybe the apparatus is somehow changed by the first examination in a way that determines the second examination; if two apparatuses, perhaps the first apparatus communicates its result to the second; if the two apparatuses are too far apart to communicate the result of the first examination before the second examination is made ("too far" limited by the speed of light), then perhaps it's the objects that have the memory, perhaps the entire universe somehow remembers, or perhaps the speed of light is not universal (which would be a clear Lorentz invariance violation). (There are other options available).
Clearly pinning down just a violation of local realism is hard enough -- over the past four decades there have been hundreds of different types of experiments attempting to prove local realism violation. One weakness is that entanglement decays with exposure to the environment, and isolating each entangled object during transport (or storage, if doing a separated-by-a-long-time experiment) is very difficult. The workarounds for this often muddy understanding of the results. But even as experiments are strengthened, they might not prove a violation of the principle of locality rather than that the combination of that principle and the principle of realism don't fit together in all circumstances. So while a Bell inequality violation is suggestive of a Lorentz-invariance violation (LIV), taking that to proof of LIV is tricky. (For example, the states, the Bell operator and the Bell observable do not need to be individually Lorentz-invariant when predicting a measurement outcome probability, and proving whether they individually are or are not is much harder than proving that the combination of these states and operators is (or isn't) Lorentz-invariant).
Semi-jokingly, perhaps the best way to prove a LIV with a Bell test is to have the scientist and half the entangled objects step into a faster-than-light (FTL) transporter which whisks them to a laboratory on Mars before the scientist and her collaborators can blink their eyes, then Earthbound-collaborators and on-Mars experimenter promptly perform the tests knowing they can prove the tests were at a spacelike-separation through e.g. during-experiment astrophysical observations (but that confidence arises because of the performs-measurement-while-on-Mars scientist's explicit FTL travel, and FTL travel is LIV in itself).
That doesn’t seem right. Position, velocity and momentum etc. are not discrete values in quantum mechanics. It is not practically possible to repeatedly put particles into the same exact state.
The COM frame is available thanks to the Lorentz group's boosts. The <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_group> at every point defines flat spacetime (General Relativity guarantees a small patch of flat spacetime around every point in a general curved spacetime), and relativistic quantum theories (of which the Standard Model is an example) have the Lorentz group fundamentally "baked in".
Further detail: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center-of-momentum_frame> and in a somewhat scattered usenet thread <https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/boosts.html>.
Experimentally one could set up a careful filtering mechanism (polarizers, traps, and so on). Each such particle will be in the measurement basis with 100% probability. We can attach a COM frame to each, and relate the COM frame and the laboratory frame to one another through a transform.
By definition, chaotic systems "are" deterministic, but it does not necessarily follow that all systems that have had a label of "chaotic" attached to them are necessarily deterministic. It can certainly cause them to take on that appearance from certain frames of reference though.
Testing this is also impossible, correct? Either way we couldn’t set up the experiment precisely enough to rule out determinism. So, is this science or philosophy?
Possibly, I do not know, but the burden of proof lies with the one making the assertion, or writing the definitions that describe reality as it is (as opposed to reality as it is hypothesized).
> Either way we couldn’t set up the experiment precisely enough to rule out determinism.
Guessing when one reaches the limits of our epistemological limits and stating the guesses as facts (if(!) that is what has happened) does not seem very scientific.
> So, is this science or philosophy?
If science is not resilient to valid epistemic challenges, it should perhaps adjust its marketing message accordingly...although the genie seems to be well out of the bottle on that front, and I sense little intention or desire to put it back in (quite the opposite, if anything).
Yes. From your link: Physicists Sabine Hossenfelder and Tim Palmer have argued that superdeterminism "is a promising approach not only to solve the measurement problem, but also to understand the apparent non-locality of quantum physics".
(Tim Palmer is the author of the posted article.)
Layman here. This smells like handwaving all the complexity away with "This quantum particle when measured collapsed into state X because that was its destiny."
I struggle to see how "everything has already been decided since the Big Bang" is conceptually any different than saying it's fate we get an outcome instead of the other.
As long as everything was in causal contact at the start of the big bang, it can let every particle have machinery inside that resimulates everything else to decide whether a given measurements randomness is correlated with another's, without invoking non-locality. With non-locality allowed it can just do it superliminally with threads of entanglement. Both are equivalent unless something can leak out of the resimulation other than how correlated a measurement should be with another, xor if info can be sent through entanglement other than the degree of correlation, or if the numbers turn out to be truely random or at least not be algorithmically random, like maybe Chaitin's constant.
I agree, nobody likes any of the current explanations.
> But to understand this, we have to think big, very big indeed. We have to suppose that the whole universe, and literally everything there is in it, is collectively a chaotic system evolving precisely on some cosmic fractal geometry. In this picture, there is no guarantee that hypothetical counterfactual worlds that you simply cooked up in your head, will lie on this fractal geometry. If they don’t, then these counterfactual worlds will be inconsistent with the assumed geometric laws of physics.
So the proposal is even worse. There are some universes that are possible and some universes that are impossible in spite they locally look good and you changed just a tiny thing from a possible universe. It's even more unintuitive and horrible that all the current proposals. It looks like a hidden global variable theory, but I'm, not sure.
I don't understand all the digression about chaos and fractals. If you assume that the possible universes is a dense subset of the imaginable universes (like the rational numbers in the real numbers), it will make the trick. Also any manifold would be probably fine.
Or a more entanglement-like example, you randomly pick a pair of red socks or green socks from your drawer but don't know what you picked. Then put the socks you picked into two boxes and give one box to your friend. If you go a trillion miles away and look at your sock then your friend is guaranteed to have the same color. This isn't quite entanglement or the Bell pair since it's a mixed state, but the same idea of classical correlation holds and so these kinds of "action at a distance" scenarios aren't impossible from a classical perspective.
Let's continue with your experiment about the pair of red or green socks. If you and your friend measure if they are red-or-green, both will get the same results. This can be explained with a classical theory. Nobody disagree with that.
The weird part is that you can measure if they are 50%red and 50%green! Can I call it yellow? This makes no sense with classical socks and colors, but it makes sense for quantum particles and other properties.
But there are two ways to combine 50%red and 50%green, the technical notation is (R+G)/sqrt(2) and (R-G)/sqrt(2), one with a plus and one with a minus. Can I call them good-yellow and bad-yellow? Or you prefer yellow and blue? In one of the experiments, red means vertical and green horizontal, so one of the combinations is a 45° diagonal like this / and the other is a 45° diagonal like this \. You don't need fancy equipment to measure the combinations, it's just a polarizer rotated 45°. Can I call them yellow and backyelow? I prefer good-yellow and bad-yellow because it's more clear that something weird is happening.
If you measure red-or-green and your friends measures good-yellow-or-bad-yellow, then the results will not be correlated. If you got "red", your friend has a 50% probability of getting good-yellow and a 50% probability of getting bad-yellow. There is nothing to explain here.
If you and your friend measure if they are good-yello or bad-yellow, both will get again the same results. This can be again explained with a hidden variable theory. Both socks "know" what to say if they are asked if they are red-or-green and what to say if they are asked if the are good-yellow-or-bad-yellow.
It get's more interesting when you pick more combinations, like 90%red and 10%green. Can I all it orange? And you can pick 10%red and 90%green. Can I call it lemon? If you measure red-or-green and your friends measures orange-or-lemon, then if you got red, your friend will get orange 90% of the time.
And there are good-orange, bad-orange, good-lemmon and bad-lemmon. And there are many more shades of orange-yellow-lemon. But this is getting too long.
You can have very smart socks that know what to answer for every possible combination of colors. So if you and your friend ask for the same color, whatever it is, both get the same result.
The problem is when you and your friend measure many times using the correct shades of orange and lemon. So the results don't agree 0% neither 100%. You can count how many times you get each combination of results, like (red-vs-dark-orange, or green-vs-bright-yellow), and then add and subtract some of them.
If you assume the socks can's communicate with the other socks before answering, then the result of the calculation is smaller then some number. But in the experiments disagree.
There are some videos with all of this, with a better and longer explanation by MinutePhysics and 3Blue1Brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzRCDLre1b4&t=0s
(there is a statement that 3 is the minimum, 2 lights won't work)
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhold_Bertlmann#Bertlmann...
But rather, they typically speak like this (from the article):
"Quantum mechanics is usually described as a theory of atoms and sub-atomic particles, but in truth it is believed to be a theory that underpins everything in the world, including the weather and the galaxies – all of reality."
Based on my observations, there seems to be a set of topics whereby most instances of human mind lose their ability to desire to know what is true. It if often easy to see this flaw in others (for example: non-theists observing theists), but seeing similar flaws in oneself is far trickier (say: materialists contemplating metaphysical ideas).
(Note: this phenomenon applies to me as well, although I suspect not to the same degree as most.)
It's actually thermodynamics. As it turns out there is a selection for information-processing structures due to the connection between energy efficiency and prediction. Any system interacting with it's environment has a state that's changed by the interaction, and some of that state happens to be predictive of the future. Turns out how much of that state is predictive is exactly how energy efficient the system is. It's called the thermodynamics of prediction.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3271
But wait, there is more. Thermodynamics actually favors the creation of a hierarchy of dissipating structures. Lightning and fire and both such structures, and also stars that feed other dissipative structures, which feed other structures and so on, as entropy keeps increasing from minimum to maximum. Dissipating a star's energy all at once, going straight to heat death is not possible, instead dissipative structures help the system move from one meta-stable state to another. There is however a minimal cost to maintaining a dissipative structure, it's not free, so the feeding stops at structures that are barely left with enough potential energy to take care of themselves. In fact the cost increases the further away the structure is from the initial disequilibria, the star in this case. And yet these bottom feeders are still thermodynamically favored, there is free energy left to do something. Now however things are different, because the bottom feeders that are thermodynamically efficient, structures that only create a minimum amount of entropy tend to survive and dissipate another day, however slowly. These bottom feeders then tend to evolve toward information-processing, because they wouldn't be able to be efficient without predictive inference. Biology from molecular machines to the human brain are all such bottom feeders, their central tenet is efficiency, in energy and information processing.
Information itself is physical, it's like heat, in fact it has the same properties, it requires a medium to propagate and so on, and you can use the same statistical mechanics to describe it. In fact we are capable of experimentally demonstrating an information engine, an engine that converts information instead of energy to work. Physics now can be used to understand information-processing too.
Metaphysics is only interesting if you are a philosopher and you are trying to speculate about things we don't understand yet. But it's not an excuse for dismissing reality, which is much more interesting than any metaphysical nonsense. Yes, physics can create minds, but that doesn't mean that minds are mundane, material things, it means that physics is more awesome and powerful than we thought. It creates black holes, stars, planets, human brains and all thoughts and dreams we have in them. What's not to like?
An opinion, stated in (and perhaps perceived as) a fact.
And as the saying goes: you may not be interested in metaphysics, but metaphysics may be interested in you (the poor folks in Ukraine are getting a lesson in this as we speak).
> You don't need anything else to create consciousness, it's 100% physics, and would work quite differently if it wouldn't be.
...the instance of human consciousness confidently exclaimed.
> It's actually thermodynamics.
Consciousness "is" thermodynamics? (And also 100% physics?)
It isn't only that physics is known to be involved (necessary), but it is known[1] to be sufficient[2]?
> As it turns out there is a selection for information-processing structures due to the connection between energy efficiency and prediction. Any system interacting with it's environment has a state that's changed by the interaction, and some of that state happens to be predictive of the future. Turns out how much of that state is predictive is exactly how energy efficient the system is. It's called the thermodynamics of prediction.
And you're saying that it is scientific consensus that this is the solution to The Hard Problem of Consciousness[3]?
> But wait, there is more. Thermodynamics actually favors the creation of a hierarchy of dissipating structures. Lightning and fire and both such structures, and also stars...
If the topic of discussion was stars, this would be more convincing.
> Information itself is physical, it's like heat, in fact it has the same properties, it requires a medium to propagate and so on, and you can use the same statistical mechanics to describe it.
It can be stored physically, but whether this is the only way in which it manifests is another matter.
> Physics now can be used to understand information-processing too.
In 2022, can physics perfectly reverse engineer and emulate the human mind?
> Metaphysics is only interesting if you are a philosopher...
Why do people complain about metaphyscal phenomena then, constantly? COVID, Iraq, religion, wealth inequality, Trump supporters, etc etc etc - the whining never ends.
>...and you are trying to think about things we don't understand yet.
It may seem like you have knowledge of what myself and others have knowledge of, but science suggests that this is an illusory side effect of consciousness[4], and on that particular matter I tend to agree with science.
> But it's not an excuse for dismissing reality...
Agreed - that responsibility tends to fall to culture, The Science, and consciousness, and I strongly recommend against it.
> ...which is much more interesting than any metaphysical nonsense.
Said the instance of consciousness, describing the flawed model of something within his mind, thinking he is talking about the thing itself[5].
> Yes, physics can create minds...
It certainly plays a role, but is it sufficient? [1][2]
> ...but that doesn't mean that minds became mundane, material things...
Culture is what does that, imho. Culture, propaganda, non-democratic power structures, etc - lots of things.
> ...it means that physics is astonishingly awesome and powerful.
And, perhaps, misleading. So impressive that it blots out other subtleties that we are surrounded by.
> It creates black holes, stars, planets, human brains and all thoughts and dreams we have in them. What's not to like?
The harm that comes when people come to believe that it is the answer to all, due to growing up in a culture that abhors logic and epistemology, while simultaneously worshipping disciplines that derive their power from these skills.
I suspect it is unlikely that you and I will see eye to eye on any of this, but I am ever curious and always enjoy such conversations.
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_and_sufficiency
[3] https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Consciousness is a tower of practical lies hiding the machinery, which is basically an information-processing machine capable of manipulating information. All we are privy to is the manipulated information. Our brain is in control of the entire process, our subjective experiences feel real, because we are made to believe that they feel real. We have no choice in the matter. When you are seeing a red door you are processing information, you are not seeing a red door, the information is just manipulated that way. And of course if you are seeing a red door, there is a door in reality, since brains evolved to be practical. It wouldn't lie you about a door being there, though it may lie about the the size for practical reasons. Objects with saturated colors look larger for example. See color psychology.
https://www.nickkolenda.com/color-psychology/
Physics is not only sufficient to create minds, it's why they work this way, otherwise I would imagine God could have done better.
Is this proposition subject to all the unreliability you note?
Is this proposition 100% unanimous scientific consensus?
As for the theories for consciousness science is dealing with the details of it, not whether it's information-processing or not, It's kind of a given that no magic is involved, because of how the brain works and because of how thermodynamics works, but also because of computers. A red door in a video game is also manipulated information. But the great thing about science is that it's not set on excluding magic, or rather some weird new science if it's required to explain things, but there is also no reason to speculate about it when it's not needed.
Science can try, but can a correct answer necessarily be reached?
Has a correct answer been reached, or might you be engaged in some speculation, perhaps unintentionally?
> We ourselves are unreliable observers, but you can work with it if you manage to eliminate the biases.
Have you eliminated your biases?
> The classic double blind used widely in experiments would be an example of that. Airline pilots using checklists is another example.
Some techniques work on some problems, but not all techniques work on all problems.
Do these techniques work on this problem?
> As for the theories for consciousness science is dealing with the details of it...
They are certainly working on some details of it, but "the" details is an ontological claim that implies a comprehensive understanding.
Also, there are known aspects like phenomenology and causality that it is a bit of a stretch to say that science is "working on the details" of (as compared to the level of quality and magnitude they are reputed and perceived to work on things at).
> ...not whether it's information-processing or not, It's kind of a given that no magic is involved...
Does "kind of a given" mean "it is conclusively known, in an epistemically flawless manner"?
> ...because of how the brain works and because of how thermodynamics works, but also because of computers.
It is not known how the brain works, comprehensively. Only some things are known, and one of which is that most brains are not able to skilfully identify the boundaries of their knowledge, and what lies beyond - in such cases, "reality" is generated on the fly and injected into the stream, typically with no indication that it is a simulated reality.
> But the great thing about science is that it's not set on excluding magic...
Science itself, in that it has no volition - scientists on the other hand, they do have volition, as well as not well constrained or understood imaginations.
> ...or rather some weird new science if it's required to explain things, but there is also no reason to speculate about it when it's not needed.
And yet, speculation (not realized as such) is extremely common, particularly among the fan base.
When religious people do this they get mocked relentlessly, it's an interesting double standard.
I don't think religious people are mocked for speculating, they are mocked for being dogmatic, but at the same time completely changing the interpretation of their dogma to serve their purposes, for power no less.
The scientific method does not have volition, it must be implemented by humans.
> ...and you won't find a better tool to get to the bottom of things.
It's an extremely popular meme, but how did you go about determining that it is comprehensively true?
> You don't need a comprehensive understanding to find objective truth either.
You do of variables that have causal influence on the problem space you're making claims of fact about.
> Newton's theory of gravitation is a really crude approximation to general relativity, and yet it's all true.
It is true that it exists, but the results that it produces are not necessarily true.
> Unfortunately for us the world doesn't exactly work like our intuitions suggests, so relying on them is not enough to understand it.
But is that not what you are doing here today? Your ability to provide proof of your claims may shed some light, let's wait and see.
> I don't think religious people are mocked for speculating...
They are. Perhaps you've never witnessed it, or perhaps your biases do not allow you to see it.
> ...they are mocked for being dogmatic, but at the same time completely changing the interpretation of their dogma to serve their purposes, for power no less.
Indeed - a lot like Scientific Materialists! My interest is in why there is such a substantial double standard when it comes to people discussing the flaws of the different people. Does it not seem weird that people will criticize their outgroup members for flaws that they themselves suffer from, while representing that they have superior intellectual capabilities?
I don't really see the double standard, because scientific research must be substantiated and falsifiable. People still cheat, there is fraud, but there is a process to control it. Individual volition can only do so much damage, the truth always ends up winning, even if it takes years, because the truth is irremovable. Even if we forget it we will keep rediscovering it.
This is the difference between a shaman and a doctor. The shaman takes your money and pretends to be doing something, the doctor works hard using tools, techniques and theories people worked hard on inventing and discovering. Truth pays dividends there, it can heal your sick child, because the truth is real power, not cultural power like a Shaman might have, but actual power against diseases, hunger, death itself one day.
I also don't think it's right to call it materialism, matter is just a small part of the picture, an important one as far as we are concerned, but it's only 5% of the Universe, and if you go deeper quantum physics is more fundamental and nothing about that is materialist. The normal, intuitive concepts of space and time or causality don't even affect it, because it is also responsible for those as well. And yet despite how disturbingly weird it is scientists can still deal with it, and find applications for it. This year's Nobel Prize was given to people that made an entire quantum industry possible.
This seems more intended to persuade than inform, in that it is orthogonal to the point of contention.
> It's not a perfect process, but it's the best one we have to date.
Repeated claims of superiority do not grant superiority - they can certainly cause appearances to take on that form though.
> You get the best picture by reading papers, following the references in them, or the other way around, the papers that cited them.
Within science. I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior - this is necessarily true, because it is a tautology.
>>> ...or rather some weird new science if it's required to explain things, but there is also no reason to speculate about it when it's not needed.
>> And yet, speculation (not realized as such) is extremely common, particularly among the fan base.
>> When religious people do this they get mocked relentlessly, it's an interesting double standard.
> I don't really see the double standard, because scientific research must be substantiated and falsifiable.
I think our wires must be crossed - I was complaining about speculation where it is not necessary (among scientists and their fanbase), not speculation within the scientific process.
> People still cheat, there is fraud, but there is a process to control it.
The quality of that process is a function of its performance. Memes to the contrary aside, that there is a replication "crisis" in science is old news.
> Individual volition can only do so much damage....
This excuse applies to everyone.
> ...the truth always ends up winning, even if it takes years...
Memes are not evidence.
> ...because the truth is irremovable. Even if we forget it we will keep rediscovering it.
This seems to assert that science discovers all truth - again, where's the evidence supporting the claim?
> This is the difference between a shaman and a doctor.
This is one difference, and the degree to which it is actually different varies per shaman and per doctor - information that you do not have access to.
Are doctors more structured and thorough than shamans? Surely.
Are doctors superior to shamans for all problems? I would like to see evidence if such a claim is made, implicitly or explicitly.
> The shaman takes your money and pretends to be doing something...
Here you DEMONSTRATE your lack of knowledge (and, the nature of what you consider "knowledge").
> ...the doctor works hard using tools, techniques and theories people worked hard on inventing and discovering.
TIL: there is zero incompetence among doctors.
And then there's this:
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...
"Analyzing medical death rate data over an eight-year period, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their figure, published May 3 in The BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) third leading cause of death — respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year."
> Truth pays dividends there, it can heal your sick child, because the truth is real power, not cultural power like a Shaman might have, but actual power against diseases, hunger, death itself one day.
Is "truth" what we're dealing with here today?
> I also don't think it's right to call it materialism, matter is just a small part of the picture, an important one as far as we are concerned, but it's only 5% of the Universe, and if you go deeper quantum physics is more fundamental and nothing about that is materialist.
"Materialist" has many meanings - in my case, I am using it to refer to people who deny metaphysics, or believe that materialist approaches are adequate to understand it (take your literally incorrect shaman example above as a half decent example).
> The normal, intuitive concepts of space and time or causality don't even affect it, because it is also responsible for those as well.
Yet another claim.
> And yet despite how disturbingly weird it is scientists can still deal with it, and find applications for it.
Is "deal with it" a scientific term? Regardless: what is its precise meaning, with respect to the context of this conversation?
> This year's Nobel Prize was given to people that made an entire quantum industry possible.
Impressive, but again: orthogonal to the point of contention.
Our point of contention is whether you need something supernatural to have interesting things like consciousness, and although my concise, crude generalizations are certainly not proof in any sense of the world, they should still give you a new look on the possibility. Your supernatural is intentionally not well-defined or falsifiable, so I cannot refute it, but you can refute my arguments. I didn't meant to convince you as much as I wanted to delight you with a new perspective, to make you think about the problem.
The perspective is that the hard problem of consciousness can be trivially made easy once you realize that a being experiencing things is an unreliable witness, because their entire experience is manufactured by an organ that evolved to manipulate information, and this evolution is actually supported by physics, namely thermodynamics.
> I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior
It is superior in all the problem spaces. It's the best approach we have, the only legitimate one. You aren't going to be able to sit on a couch with a bunch of crystals and conjure the truth out of the Universe, you have to work for it, and you have to have a way to filter out your biases, and that's science. The one and only. It doesn't mean that you cannot have things like spirituality, because guess what, science is the way to understand that as well, and it can even help creating practices that enhances those experiences. I myself enjoy spirituality. It's a nice brain thing, everyone should have a spiritual life, just not via organized religion.
What is the source of your omniscience?
> Our point of contention is whether you need something supernatural to have interesting things like consciousness
That's part of it - another part is that you have no evidence for most of your claims.
> Your supernatural is intentionally not well-defined or falsifiable
My supernatural what?, so I cannot refute it, but you can refute my arguments.
> I didn't meant to convince you as much as I wanted to delight you with a new perspective, to make you think about the problem.
I suspect I've done a bit more thinking on the matter than you.
> The perspective is that the hard problem of consciousness can be trivially made easy once you realize that a being experiencing things is an unreliable witness, because their entire experience is manufactured by an organ that evolved to manipulate information, and this evolution is actually supported by physics, namely thermodynamics.
If you have no concern for, or perhaps knowledge of, logic (ternary) and epistemology.
>> I am not disputing that science is the superior methodology for problems spaces where it is superior
> It is superior in all the problem spaces.
What is the source of your omniscience?
> It's the best approach we have, the only legitimate one.
What is the source of your omniscience?
> You aren't going to be able to sit on a couch with a bunch of crystals and conjure the truth out of the Universe, you have to work for it
Demonstrating your ignorance/delusion on the matter.
> and you have to have a way to filter out your biases, and that's science.
It seems to have done the opposite for you, like many others I've talked with.
> The one and only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_have_no_other_gods_...
> It doesn't mean that you cannot have things like spirituality, because guess what, science is the way to understand that as well
What is the source of your omniscience?
> everyone should have a spiritual life, just not via organized religion.
The religion of wild guesses might catch on.
> logic (ternary) and epistemology
How do they relate to the problem of consciousness?
a) Says the person who just finished saying "Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it"
b) "is productive" is yet another claim, and once again I disagree (it is a subjective claim after all, though it may appear objective depending on the frame of reference on is viewing from) - this conversation offers great insight into the behavior of the human mind in general, and the behavior of (an instance of) a mind "captured" by Scientific Materialist Fundamentalism in particular (speaking of "throwing shade", amirite?). I would say that if you observe the behavior of religious fundamentalist compared to what you have demonstrated here, from a perspective of higher abstraction, the two thinking styles are eerily similar (specifically: lack of curiosity about what is true, inability to substantiate ones claims, etc).
> I never claimed to be omniscient, I offered my piece.
Your claim requires omniscient knowledge.
For example:
"Shamans can't have a medical error, or any error, since they don't do anything, they are scam artists and they know it"
Since you have not used qualifying terms to constrain your set, you are thus making an assertion about ALL shamans.
There is not database of all shamans, and even if there was, it could not possibly contain an accurate representation of the entirety of the behavior of each shaman. Thus, you are speculating, necessarily.
One might think that a "scientific thinker" (or, an arbitrary user on Hacker News) would immediately realize the fundamental logical flaw in such a claim, but as the saying goes: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine".
Here I will try an experimental technique: are you able to, within your mind, take a strictly third person perspective on this conversation...can you imagine yourself rising into the air, and the higher you go your mental "connection" to this reality (and yourself as a person living within that reality) gradually separates, until eventually you reach an altitude where you no longer have any connection to yourself or this conversation...as if you had come upon it randomly, rather than being an active participant in it. From this perspective, are you able to see and appreciate the substantial silliness, "the folly of humans" you might say, that is going on here? And thinking more broadly: is this phenomenon not true of a substantial majority of arguments that take place on this planet?
Or another we of putting it might be: do you think it is possible that humanity, on Planet Earth in the year 2022, might be "doing it wrong", at least to a "substantial" degree?
> humanity, on Planet Earth in the year 2022, might be "doing it wrong",
We are doing everything wrong to a substantial degree, ever since the industrial revolution, destroying the biosphere of the only planet we have. We are evolved to thrive in a specific environment, and we are ruining it. How science is being used is very often questionable, just think of the Nazis or the Russians, but this only makes the case of the usefulness of science to all problem spaces stronger. We are also talking right now because of science.
> There is not database of all shamans
I will keep choosing doctors for my medical needs. I haven't tried all the doctors or any of the shamans, and yet I still know that a doctor is the right choice, even though there are incompetent doctors, even serial killer doctors out there. You can tell why, right?
You are welcome to offer your opinions, and where I believe them to be incorrect, I make note of it. It seems to me that you've done a fair amount of that yourself in this conversation, although with a distinctly different level of quality imho.
> I admitted that there is a fair bit of generalization going on with me, but your requirement of being infinitely exhaustive is not exactly how you create knowledge either.
Third party observers may now have some greater insight into how actually true the "true" stories people tell about their religious beliefs (The Science, in this case).
Besides: laughing at Christians and religious people in general seems to have become a bit of a sport on the internet (including often here on HN), I think it is fair that Scientific Materialists get ribbed a little for their bizarre beliefs now and then. Jesus you people are sensitive - grow a sense of humour ffs!!
> I don't have to fall off from every bicycle on Earth to know that it hurts.
Figures of speech and rhetoric are a double edged sword, and they are also not very scientific.
> We are doing everything wrong to a substantial degree, ever since the industrial revolution, destroying the biosphere of the only planet we have. We are evolved to thrive in a specific environment, and we are ruining it. How science is being used is very often questionable, just think of the Nazis or the Russians....
Ah yes, of course: those other people. What about us? What about the scientists who brought forth these powerful but dangerous tools.
If scientists are so smart, and are the sole source of knowledge on the planet, why don't they lead us out of the mess they've so substantially contributed to getting us into?
> ...but this only makes the case of the usefulness of science to all problem spaces stronger.
Perhaps, if you ignore the role science played in creating the problem in the first place.
> We are also talking right now because of science.
In part, but not entirely because of science.
>> There is not database of all shamans
> I will keep choosing doctors for my medical needs. I haven't tried all the doctors or any of the shamans, and yet I still know that a doctor is the right choice....
For all people, for all ailments, without exception?
Also: is it safe to presume that you are using the word "know" (as opposed to believe) colloquially?
> ...even though there are incompetent doctors, even serial killer doctors out there. You can tell why, right?
For the vast majority of ailments, a doctor is the superior choice.
Question: would you mind commenting on these two points from my prior message (for the second, I'm interested if you think you could execute the technique, literally):
> One might think that a "scientific thinker" (or, an arbitrary user on Hacker News) would immediately realize the fundamental logical flaw in such a claim, but as the saying goes: "Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we CAN imagine".
> Here I will try an experimental technique: are you able to, within your mind, take a strictly third person perspective on this conversation...can you imagine yourself rising into the air, and the higher you go your mental "connection" to this reality (and yourself as a person living within that reality) gradually separates, until eventually you reach an altitude where you no longer have any connection to yourself or this conversation...as if you had come upon it randomly, rather than being an active participant in it. From this perspective, are you able to see and appreciate the substantial silliness, "the folly of humans" you might say, that is going on here? And thinking more broadly: is this phenomenon not true of a substantial majority of arguments that take place on this planet?
For the second one my ego is not especially involved in this one, neither of us is an expert here, so the stakes are not high. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but you haven't been able to provide a coherent debate. I was curious about your argument, but you never really presented more than your default opinion, that there is more to reality than physical reality, namely metaphysical reality. You think that a thought or belief is not entirely physical, but there is nothing to suggest that. In fact the very existence of software elegantly demonstrates how seemingly metaphysical things are part of the physical reality. You wouldn't be able to find a red door in a video game with a microscope inside your computer either, it's still part of our physical reality. Computers keep advancing in their ability to see, hear and think, and yet nothing suggests that you would need anything, but physical reality to accomplish this.
Incorrect again.
What you actually said: "The physical realm as you call it is the entire reality, it's the only thing you can interact with in an empirical manner. You don't need anything else to create consciousness, it's 100% physics, and would work quite differently if it wouldn't be."
"don't necessarily need a hidden variable or supernatural for consciousness" and "it's 100% physics" are very different claims.
> I didn't offer exhaustive proof, but I linked a paper, and that paper is built on solving Maxwell's demon. Maxwell's demon used to provoke a substantial debate on the philosophy of science, until it was solved, and solved experimentally later. Reality is strange, but there is a way to figure it out.
Try this: can you acknowledge that you stated your opinion as if it was a fact? When Christians or Shamans do this (real or imagined, in your case with Shamans) it's not ok, so why is it ok for Scientific Materialists, who describe their not-a-religion as the uncontested framework for the discovery of truth, IN FACT?
> For the second one my ego is not especially involved in this one...
Speculative, necessarily.
> ...neither of us is an expert here, so the stakes are not high. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong....
I don't think you've once acknowledged that you're wrong (and look at all the unforced(?) errors you've made), and here you only speak abstractly as a hypothetical - if no ego is involved as you say, a demonstration would be more impressive (you know, like they do in science).
> ...but you haven't been able to provide a coherent debate.
The coherence of a debate is a function of both the sender and the receiver, and your error rate is suggestive that there is a fairly substantial issue on your side.
Besides, I'm not promoting a position, I am mainly fact checking your numerous claims, made in the name of science.
> I was curious about your argument, but you never really presented more than your default opinion, that there is more to reality than physical reality, namely metaphysical reality.
I don't have much more specific to say, other than I believe that science and its fan base has perhaps grown a little too big for its britches, like a teenager entering puberty and getting prideful at their newly acquired powers.
> You think that a thought or belief is not entirely physical, but there is nothing to suggest that.
It may emerge 100% from the material realm, but whether thought "is" material (what, precisely, is the meaning of the word in this context - perhaps we should call a physicist?), or actually emerges 100% from the material realm, is complicated - and unknown.
> In fact the very existence of software elegantly demonstrates how seemingly metaphysical things are part of the physical reality. You wouldn't be able to find a red door in a video game with a microscope inside your computer either, it's still part of our physical reality. Computers keep advancing in their ability to see, hear and think, and yet nothing suggests that you would need anything, but physical reality to accomplish this.
A problem: "nothing suggests that you would need anything, but physical reality to accomplish this" passes through the hard problem of consciousness again. Also, "nothing suggests" is yet another subjective opinion, stated in the form of a fact.
Observe (or at least, try) how at the abstract level (abstract away the object level content of your claims) your thinking (and arguably, your honesty) is indistinguishable from that of a strawman representation of a religious fundamentalist. Is it not substantially true?
My opinion is that the hard problem of consciousness is not so hard. I think it's a form of magical thinking to even presume it, and there is an intuitive appeal to do that. The solution however is to not take your intuition at face value, and presume instead that you are an unreliable witness of your own consciousness.
I don't think you are a smart man to put it bluntly, but I think you like playing one. You keep creating word salads. I admire your confidence, but this wasn't an interesting debate.
But once again: from what source have you acquired your epistemically flawless and ontologically comprehensive knowledge of reality?
> My opinion is that the hard problem of consciousness is not so hard.
As the saying goes: "We're each entitled to our opinion, but not to our own facts" (I love that saying, it was very popular during Donald Trump's presidency, for obvious reasons).
But regardless, I'm under the impression that we're discussing reality itself, not our respective opinions of it. I hope I haven't made an incorrect presumption on that, because that would kind of nullify the conversation (since we're coming at it from two very fundamentally different perspectives).
> I think it's a form of magical thinking to even presume it, and there is an intuitive appeal to do that. The solution however is to not take your intuition at face value, and presume instead that you are an unreliable witness of your own consciousness.
Wait a minute though: how does it work such that certain presumptions are "magical thinking", and others are not?
Is there even a single source of Truth on such things (a single, authoritative, guaranteed correct classification algorithm)?
> I don't think you are a smart man to put it bluntly, but I think you like playing one. You keep creating word salads. I admire your confidence, but this wasn't an interesting debate.
Say what? Is there something in particular I said that caused you to form this belief? I can assure you, I am indeed extremely smart, and I suspect you are at least as smart as me (I'd even wager: much, much smarter, considering your encyclopedic-like knowledge), so surely there must be some sort of a misunderstanding.
There is such a thing as truth, regardless of the source, even if there is always a deeper truth. Newton's theory of gravity is true, and if you only care about skiing down a mountain slope it will serve you well, but if you would like to build a satellite you would need Einstein's theory of relativity, even quantum physics. To draw a circle around consciousness, to understand it's boundaries you may not need a new physics at all beyond a generalized form of thermodynamics, but of course for the details you need a lot of specialized knowledge, but those details are all found within the established boundaries. It's like watching Pluto with a telescope, and later flying a spacecraft to it, the spacecraft is going to reveal a lot of details, but we already figured out a lot, even before the telescope.
a) How would one test these two propositions:
- a fundamentalist wouldn't budge on his dogma and would lack the intellectual curiosity (in a way that covers all instances)
- I'm interested in how things work, and I'm not married to my arguably subjective opinions
b) Did you test them, and if so: how?
> They also pass the smell test that is Occam's razor.
Occam's Razor is not even intended to determine truth.
> Despite what you claim I'm not a cheerleader for an ideology, I just want to know how things work.
I'd find this more convincing if you were able to try to answer my numerous unanswered questions.
> I don't mind being surprised. I was very surprised by the thermodynamics of prediction, I always imagined biology, especially life to be it's own separate thing, I was surprised that it's not that special.
Ok this is interesting: at that point in time (prior to your increase in knowledge), did you believe that biology WAS NOT special?
> There is such a thing as truth, regardless of the source, even if there is always a deeper truth.
a) Is the truth always accessible?
b) Have there be any instances where consensus opinion on Truth turned out to be incorrect?
c) Have there been any instances where your belief of Truth turned out to be incorrect?
> Newton's theory of gravity is true, and if you only care about skiing down a mountain slope it will serve you well, but if you would like to build a satellite you would need Einstein's theory of relativity, even quantum physics.
In this case, what is the data type of "True" - is it a binary (True/False)?
> To draw a circle around consciousness, to understand it's boundaries you may not need a new physics at all beyond a generalized form of thermodynamics....
"May not" tends to imply uncertainty - are you uncertain on this topic?
> ...but of course for the details you need a lot of specialized knowledge, but those details are all found within the established boundaries.
If one does not have a perfect understanding, how would one necessarily know where details reside?
> It's like watching Pluto with a telescope, and later flying a spacecraft to it, the spacecraft is going to reveal a lot of details, but we already figured out a lot, even before the telescope.
If this is possible, does it logically follow that all(!) other problems resolve this easily, using the same technique?
The Nobel Prize in Physics was just given to three people who contributed to proving that hidden variables are pretty much ruled out. As uncomfortable as it is for some people, reality is inherently probabilistic on the smallest scales.
So no, this title is just wrong.
I assume you read the part in the article where he talked about that result and Bell's Theorem and the extra assumption in that theorem which is where he believes the loophole lies.
To quote:
> That is to say, Bell’s Theorem assumes counterfactual quantum measurements are necessarily consistent with the laws of physics. This is the assumption that physicists don’t like to think might be wrong. If these counterfactual worlds turn out to be inconsistent with the laws of physics, then our intuitive ideas about causality will also turn out to be wrong.
> Chaos theory provides a simple way to understand situations where counterfactual worlds are indeed inconsistent with the laws of physics.
It's an interesting idea and not one that can be dismissed as easily as you seem to think.
If I'm reading this correctly, the author is describing a model of superdeterminism — although it's not clear where fractal geometry comes into play.
My (limited) understanding was that the fractal geometry was part of the hidden variable system which is limiting the possible universes. The idea being that if a potential universe needs to correspond to a point in a fractal, then making a small change (via a counterfactual) could easily result in a universe which is not a point in the fractal.
The motivation for the question is that in quantum physics there are two phases:
1. The phase where everything is quantum, and things evolve according to Dirac or Schroedinger. The state of a system at any given time then determines its state at all times in the future and in the past. Everything is in all possible classical states at once.
2. Some measurement happens that is irreversible. The quantum state collapses, and information about the quantum state before the collapse is lost. The result is a single classical state.
I haven't read TFA, but having something like phase 2 be emergent from phase 1 seems like a major breakthrough. Phase 2 is then an illusion. This seems better than the status quo. (I am not a physicist).
Doesn't the many-worlds interpretation fit your description? It of course has it's own weirdness.
My preferred version is something-something-decoherence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence The people that work in that are call it "Decoherence", but it's not finished, there are still a lot of details to fix, and perhaps it will need still like 50 or 100 years of hard work before it's completed. So it's too green and I prefer a funny name like "something-something-decoherence" to avoid confusion. And perhaps it's the wrong explanation.
Compare this model: We have to suppose that the whole universe, and literally everything there is in it, is collectively a chaotic system evolving precisely on some cosmic fractal geometry.
and the Wolfram model: From the multiway causal graph, one can project out the specific causal graph for each possible evolution history
I don't think Stephan Wolfram has gone so far as to claim the universe is physically made of his "causal graph of rules" idea, but he does argue that you can model both quantum physics and relativity using this model with no "special cases".
We’re talking about the map, not reality.
Given that after quite a bit of time we have almost reached scientific consensus, but not quite, I think humility is required.
There are a few hints showing that QM is not the end game.
We have two perfectly good and internally consistent theories: Quantum mechanics and general relativity. But they are inconsistent with each other.
I think it's still possible that the entire standard model might still be uprooted in favour of something simpler.
You object to it allegedly including those things (it doesn’t), despite apparently not knowing what those phrases refer to? As, dark energy and dark matter are both ideas relating to gravity. So, why would you think that the standard model includes those things, given that the purpose of those ideas is to describe/explain some observations about gravity, and that the standard model does not attempt to describe gravity?
Or... possibly it is more that you don’t know what “the standard model” refers to?
Yeah, that seems to be it.
there is an inherent uncertainty
about what happens to a quantum
system when we attempt to observe it
I'm not sure if with "quantum uncertainty", they refer to the same thing as Wikipedias "uncertainty principle" page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
The Wikipedia page sounds somewhat different (and harder to grasp) to me. It talks about predicting future states of pairs of physical quantities after knowing the initial conditions.
Unless we're talking subjective uncertainty, in which case yeah, not literally everyone has landed on many-worlds yet.
Actually, it would tell us something very important, namely that at the quantum level measurements are not statistically independent.
> shift the question about ontological determinism back to metaphysics and outside of the reach of empirical knowledge
Assuming by "ontological determinism", you mean to what extent we can truly discover natural laws, I don't know why anyone thinks this is a problem. Turing machines are simple and deterministic and yet have undecidable problems; and yet we can create a Turing machine that can enumerate the space of all possible programs. It trivially follows that humans obviously have enough degrees of freedom to enumerate all possible theories that can explain some set of observations, so this objection is a total nothingburger.
But counterfactuals and foundations don't mix easily, especially in QM where "what if I had measured X" isn't a really valid question in the standard view (the quantum zeno effect is an example of how hypothetical measurements and actual measurements aren't the same in QM).
Nature is self-similar. If we observe epistemological uncertainty in the macro world, the same will be true for the micro world.
This is an example of physicists appropriating a philosophical question and trying to solve it by data analysis.
Used to be but not anymore. The difference is, natural philosophers, like Henry Cavendish, were amateurs, physicists are professionals. They are "Doctors of Philosophy", the professional offsprings of Scholastic Doctors of Philosophy. The switch from amateur to professional occurred with the advance of the science of electricity. Physicists were seen as the experts and they built the foundation of electrical industrial applications. But there is academic physics, which is like fine arts with no rules and restrictions and there is applied physics with strict rules.
So in that sense, isn't uncertainty baked into our reality (and thus still ontological)? Even ignoring all the weird stuff that happens with entangled particles, spooky action at a distance, and all that. I literally cannot measure both the momentum and the position of a particle to an arbitrary position simultaneously.
> We have to suppose that the whole universe, and literally everything there is in it, is collectively a chaotic system evolving precisely on some cosmic fractal geometry. "
I guess one way of trying to make it make sense is that he believes in global hidden variables (non-locality), which reduces physics to "things are exactly this kind of weird because all the complexity of the universe is encoded in one giant number present at the big bang that is available to every particle forever.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00139...
* Hossenfelder's own toy model, https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.01327v5
* Gerard 't Hooft's cellular automata model: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/gthpub/FFP11_2010.p...
* https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/714819
Models that violate Bell's theorem are in fact simple to construct. Everyone agrees that superdeterminism can evade Bell's theorem, the key is making this evasion as plausible or more plausible than accepting many worlds or the absence of counterfactual definiteness.
Given so little effort has been expended in this direction because of incorrect assumptions of superdeterminism, it's not surprising that these models are still rudimentary proofs of concept, but the notion that Bells' theorem is some insurmountable obstacle is just incorrect.
Palmer has nevertheless done a lot of interesting work in atmospheric and oceanic systems. Here's one, which also explains why current warming trends would persist for decades even if we halted all fossil fuel use tomorrow, something many seem to not have grasped:
"Uncertainty in Weather and Climate Prediction", Slingo & Palmer (2011)
> "In terms of seasonal to decadal prediction, the predictability of the system resides primarily in the oceans, where the greater thermal capacity and the much longer dynamical time scales for adjustment impart a memory to the coupled ocean–atmosphere system, which exceeds that for the atmosphere alone by several orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, the ocean, like the atmosphere, is a chaotic, nonlinear system, and so an ensemble approach to seasonal to decadal prediction is fundamental to forecasting on these time scales also."
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...
Anyone wanting a solid introduction to the notion of chaos in fluid dynamics should look at work of the original researcher who discovered the phenomenon, Ed Lorenz (1995) The Essence of Chaos.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154291.The_Essence_of_Ch...
Indeed.
The question of whether quantum uncertainty is epistemological or ontological is formally undecidable (on the assumption that quantum mechanics is actually true). For starters, there already exists a quantum interpretation where uncertainty is ontological: Bohmian mechanics. But you don't even need that. All you need is to hypothesize a "cosmic Turing machine" computing the digits of pi or some other normal number and the stipulation that every time you do a quantum experiment the result is the next digit that the TM writes to its tape. That is an ontologicical interpretation of QM that is every bit as valid as Bohmian mechanics, and every bit as useless.
It doesn't matter whether quantum uncertainty is ontological or epistemological. What matters is that the outcomes of quantum measurements are fundamentally unpredictable for the entity conducting the experiment. It doesn't matter whether the information generated by the experiment was pre-existing or somehow magically came into existence by wave function collapse or whatever, what matters is that the outcome is not predictable even in principle. And so it doesn't matter what mathematical model you put underneath this unpredictability. It can be axiomatic, it can be chaotic, or it can be a cosmic Turing machine computing the digits of pi. It doesn't matter because one of the things we cannot know, even in principle, is which of these hypotheses are correct. It's a non-scientific question.
[UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information which cannot be predicted from the finite information available to any observer before those observations are made, so there has to be an unbounded amount of "hidden" information "out there" somewhere that in inaccessible except by performing quantum experiments. Different interpretations hide this inaccessible information in different places. Copenhagen hides it in wave function collapse. Bohm hides it in the particle positions, which are posited to be real numbers, every one of which contains an infinite amount of information. Chaotic dynamics hides it in the initial conditions which, like Bohmian positions, are real numbers which contain an infinite amount of information. If you look at how the math plays out, they are literally reading out digits of real numbers as if they were written on a TM tape.
I think physics would benefit from the study of information theory.
Thanks. That was actually really insightful. I never thought about it like that. It's beyond the scope of science and what models are for. We'd be switching purposes at that point. The tools only do what they are meant to: predict; it doesn't make sense to them for to do something else (unless we specify that new purpose), especially when we do so as if we're not.
I don't think this is correct. Each formal model will allow you degrees of freedom that are ruled out by other models because the axioms differ. This is why a quantum field theory for Bohmian mechanics has been much harder to formulate than it was for Copenhagen, for example.
Unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity could actually be easier under a "fractal model" of quantum mechanics than it is with Copenhagen.
Edit on your [update]:
> [UPDATE] The general principle is that quantum experiments produce an unbounded amount of information
That doesn't sound correct either. No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information. I'm not sure where you're getting this idea.
Nope. All QM interpretations produce the same predictions. They are formally equivalent in the same sense that lambda calculus and TMs are equivalent.
The reason it is hard to unify Bohm and relativity to produce a Bohmian quantum field theory is that Bohm is committed to an intuitionistic metaphysics that requires there to be an answer to which measurement of an entangled system was performed first, and so it requires the imposition of an arbitrary foliation of space-time. This is a metaphysical requirement, not a physical one. That is what makes it hard to extend Bohm to a field theory.
> No experiment can produce an unbounded amount of information.
No single experiment can, but over time you can do an unbounded number of experiments. Note that I am deliberately using the term "unbounded" rather than "infinite". These are not the same. An unbounded quantity is finite at any given time, but it can keep growing without an upper bound.
(In actual fact all of these numbers are probably finite and bounded because the observable universe is finite and the second law of thermodynamics puts a limit on how many experiments you can do.)
Correction: the same observable predictions in the domains we've tested. They all have different metaphysical implications which impact the plausibility.
> They are formally equivalent in the same sense that lambda calculus and TMs are equivalent.
No, that's not strictly correct. Bohmian mechanics allows the existence of quantum non-equilibrium, as but one example. Isomorphism is fine as an informal analogy, but it's not strictly true.
> This is a metaphysical requirement, not a physical one. That is what makes it hard to extend Bohm to a field theory.
The axioms of every interpretation are metaphysical. The axioms are what let you make certain steps in one interpretation that cannot be done in another. This is why unifying GR with Bohmian mechanics is hard but isn't with Copenhagen, which is exactly what I said.
"Observable" is redundant. A prediction in science is understood to mean a prediction about the outcome of an experiment, i.e. a prediction about an observation.
> in the domains we've tested.
No. The predictions of all QM interpretations are the same, full stop. If this were not the case we would not be having this conversation at all, we could determine which interpretation was correct by doing an experiment.
(There is one exception to this, and that is GRW collapse, which predicts that there is some macroscopic scale at which systems stop exhibiting quantum behavior because of internal spontaneous collapse. But so far all experiments have falsified this.)
> The axioms of every interpretation are metaphysical.
No, that's not true. Bohmian positions are physical. Collapse is physical. Multiple worlds are physical.
The thing that makes Bohmian foliations metaphysical is not that they are unmeasurable, it is that they are arbitrary. You cannot tell which foliation is correct even in principle.
No, that's not correct. Again, Bohmian mechanics allows for quantum non-equilibrium, but we're not yet sure how to create such a state. So it is does make observably different prediction, in principle. This prediction is just not within experimental reach at the moment.
Most interpretations make equivalent predictions, but not all. Those predictions that differ are outside of domains we've tested.
> No, that's not true. Bohmian positions are physical. Collapse is physical. Multiple worlds are physical.
They are physical by virtue of metaphysical assertions about what does and does not exist, ie. the axioms.
> The thing that makes Bohmian foliations metaphysical is not that they are unmeasurable, it is that they are arbitrary. You cannot tell which foliation is correct even in principle.
A preferred foliation can be derived from the wave function in Bohmian mechanics. You can arguably do without one. Both references are cited here:
Yes, of course. In Bohmian mechanics, particles have actual locations, and so of course those locations cannot be required to obey the Born rule except by hypothesis. But it does not follow that...
> it ... does make observably different prediction, in principle
> but we're not yet sure how to create such a state
> This prediction is just not within experimental reach at the moment
It is not just that we "don't know" how to create these non-Born states, it is that creating such a state would falsify quantum mechanics. Creating such a state would necessarily involve some physical process that violates the Schroedinger equation. No such process has ever been observed. It is possible that this could change, but it's extremely unlikely. And there is absolutely no reason to believe that such a new process, were it to ever be discovered, would have anything to do with Bohmian mechanics. It is as likely that we will discover a violation of conservation of energy or the second law of thermodynamics as we are to discover a violation of QM.
> They are physical by virtue of metaphysical assertions about what does and does not exist, ie. the axioms.
Well, yeah. The whole idea of "physical" is itself a metaphysical assertion. We could be living in a simulation.
> A preferred foliation can be derived from the wave function in Bohmian mechanics. You can arguably do without one.
OK, that's news to me, but I don't have time to read that paper right now. I'll put it on my reading list.
[UPDATE] They want $40 to access that paper. If you want to send me a copy I'll read it, but I won't pay that much for access to one paper. Sorry.
Logic and epistemology seem to often take a backseat when the mind comes in close contact with the unknown.
> Well, yeah. The whole idea of "physical" is itself a metaphysical assertion. We could be living in a simulation.
Similarly, when it finds itself in these circumstances, it can often be observed flipping between 100% certainty and 100% uncertainty (the middle ground, the unknown, seems a "highly undesirable" place to be). On one hand, you might say this is "just people being people", but I am suspicious whether it is actually that simple.
It's called the Hard Problem of Consciousness for good reason, I think.
It matters for a lot of people, they want to know und understand. And maybe somebody comes up with an experiment.
"What Bell’s Theorem really shows us is that the foundations of quantum theory is a bona fide field of physics, in which questions are to be resolved by rigor- ous argument and experiment, rather than remaining the subject of open-ended debate.
In other words, it is a mistake to crudely divide quantum theory into its practical part and its interpretation, and to think of the latter as metaphysics, experimental or otherwise."
Matt Leifer: "Is the Quantum State Real?..."
Yes, it all turns on that. But the point is that coming up with an experiment would in and of itself falsify QM. To call that a major breakthrough would be quite the understatement, and so I predict with great confidence that it is not going to happen any time soon.
> it is a mistake to crudely divide quantum theory into its practical part and its interpretation
That's true, but I am not dividing it crudely. I am simply pointing out things that are logically implied by the mathematical structure of the theory, and one of those things is that quantum measurements bring new information into the world. If anyone figures out a way to access the source of that information, that information would no longer be new, and that would falsify the theory. That is, of course, possible. But again, I'll give long odds against.
I don't think anyone can be an that much of an expert in quantum foundations. It's a research topic full of questions and not much answers, so you don't need deep expertise to grasp the current situation and the limits of current knowledge. In that sense, it should be a free game for almost anyone with a PhD in physics.
People are so quick to dismiss without any evidence. Why not look at his actual publications:
https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/palmer/publications
Some choice excerpts:
* Bell's theorem, non-computability and conformal cyclic cosmology: A top-down approach to quantum gravity, https://avs.scitation.org/doi/10.1116/5.0060680
* Supermeasured: Violating Bell-Statistical Independence Without Violating Physical Statistical Independence, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-022-00602-9
* Discretization of the Bloch sphere, fractal invariant sets and Bell’s theorem, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.035...
* The Invariant Set Postulate: a new geometric framework for the foundations of quantum theory and the role played by gravity, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2009.008...
The last is when he first started publishing about quantum mechanics back in 2009, in which he described "invariant set theory" as a new approach to quantum foundations that was well received. He actually worked with Stephen Hawking on developing supergravity before he switched to climate modelling.
(2005) "Quantum Reality, Complex Numbers, and the Meteorological Butterfly Effect "
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/86/4/bams-86...
> "By considering an idealization of the upscale cascade (which provides a novel representation of complex numbers and quaternions), a case is made for reinterpreting the quantum wave function as a set of intricately encoded binary sequences. In this reinterpretation, it is argued that the quantum world has no need for dice-playing deities, undead cats, multiple universes, or “spooky action at a distance.”"
At this point, I think anyone pushing this view of how QM works without experimental results to back it up is just tilting at windmills.
I don't understand this objection. Palmer's theory would have to be consistent with all existing evidence for quantum mechanics. There's a rich unexplored area in quantum foundations (superdeterminism), and he's found a novel, plausible model for how it could work, so why wouldn't he explore it fully until it's been contradicted?
A different interpretation on QM might also imply some new experiments that orthodox QM wouldn't consider interesting. For instance, Hossenfelder has suggested that there might be some unusual regularities in repeated low temperature experiments if superdeterminism is true, regularities that would be implausible if reality is actually indeterministic. Palmer's theory has testable predictions for large-scale cosmology, so it's not like his ideas are unfalsifiable in principle.
Furthermore, Palmer is a theoretician not an experimentalist. Bell created his theorem but experimentalists designed and ran the actual experiment.
The whole crux of QM, as shown by actual experiments in lab, is that it really is different from just really complicated classical mechanics.
He's a mathematical physicist [1] that happens to work on non-linear dynamical systems that apply to climate models. You know, like the non-linear dynamics seen in a quantum measurement. Maybe don't be so dismissive. He won the Dirac gold medal for theoretical physics in 2014, for instance.
As far as I understand, and even though the article doesn't call it by name, he is making a case for superdeterminism. Which hasn't been missed, but has it's own Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
In fact, Bell (of Bell's theorem fame) himself discussed (super)determinism as a way to escape Bell's theorem.
Actually he's published extensively in quantum physics: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=TN+P...
> A little humility is in order.
Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose both cited him on quantum theory:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP05(2017)161
https://i-share-ctu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openur...