1

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 19/12/2017 17:31:07 »

No Demalk, it's a simple thing I'm directing you too. The main reason for a quantuum entanglement being so mysterious is the fact that in a simplest case the probability for a spin to be up or down is 50/50.  But the 'other side' of a down converted photon, into two, will always 'know' the outcome of the other. And the main thing here isn't even that It's the probability itself that should be interesting. You might even want to argue that both things coexist in this case. 'Free will', as well as a deterministic outcome for the 'other part'.

And HUP is HUP

Thanks for pointing that out. I am aware that I am probably wrong. I just really love these discussions and also they are extremely helpful in gaining a better understanding of things. I will be looking into all the input from yourself and others in this thread more closely over the next period of time, and return with a new post/comment as soon as I have something to say that I haven't said already. Until then, thank you all for your contributions!

2

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 10/12/2017 15:18:47 »

You have to be wrong there Demalk, either that or the physics we define
So, wanting to prove that idea will involve overthrowing physics, which is a slightly bigger task than convincing me.

Hahaha, well, physics is in the process of being overthrown on a daily basis by people much smarter than me so luckily I don't have to Secondly, one should never allow any limitations to one's thoughts based on what is deemed conventional. Thirdly: there is nothing about QM that affects macroscopic determinability. Lastly: Relativity did not overthrow Newton, and QM did not overthrow relativity (or Newton). They are all correct, it just depends how you look at it. That to me is a clear indication that we haven't yet found the most fundamental layer of reality.

Demalk, that's definitely wrong "In that statement you acknowledge my definition of randomness: that it is the absence of information.

If you think of entanglement you will see why.
And HUP.

Quantum randomness and classical randomness are two very different things. They can and should be discussed separately. Quantum randomness evens out to classical predictability. That's why a chair will never disappear or exist in two places at the same time or get 'entangled' with other chairs. None of that stuff matters when you zoom out far enough to see the chair. When we look at larger-than-quantum objects, Newton's laws still stand. So do Einstein's. Those laws are fundamentally deterministic. So in the context of whether a 'star is still there', it is pointless to involve any QM mechanisms in your argument. That star is a classical object. It will not exist in two places at once. It will not disappear and re-appear in a different corner of the universe. The ways in which it can 'disappear' are very well-known in cosmology and there is nothing mysterious or fundamentally random about it.

It's not about a absence of information, it's what modern physics builds on, probabilities. And 'free will' could be seen as an 'conscious' extension of those principles.

If free will is based on fundamentally random events, then where is the freedom of that will?  To me that idea is even more incompatible with free will than mine. Randomness doesn't give you will. It just gives you randomness.

No, we can't even predict a planetary orbit if we calculate far away enough into the future. It's not just about us missing 'information', it's more of a principle.

If the same calculation about the same planetary orbit were made by an alien race much closer in space and time to the orbit than we are, they would be able to make it more accurately. The determining factor here is not that the reality of the orbit is more fundamentally mysterious when we measure it, but rather that we have less information than they do, due to our distance in space and time. There is nothing fundamentally mysterious about the orbit.

We can discuss the fundamentalness of quantum randomness, but to re-introduce fundamental randomness to the classical world based on the existence of QM is to say that all of engineering has become invalid since we know about QM. Engineering is based on fundamentally deterministic Newtonian rules. The macro world still works like that. We know for sure under which circumstances a bridge or a skyscraper will collapse and in so far as we get it wrong, it is due to human error, not any fundamental mysteriousness to the nature of the bridge or the forces acting on it. It will not ever collapse due to quantum entanglement or vacuum jitters.

This universe are built on principles, 'properties' and 'laws', and physics are just the tool(s) we use to understand it. That's what a probability is, a statistical tool for defining possibilities, created from experiences of outcomes and educated guesses finding their proof in reproducibility.

Exactly! But that statement is in favor of my point of view. Statistics is just a tool that we need when we don't have enough information to do any better. If we play a game of cards but I am cheating, the results seem random to you so you need to do statistical calculations in your mind to try and get an edge over me. But the cards are not at all random to me. You just lack the information to know what is going on. Until you figure me out at which point the randomness disappears and you no longer want to play with me. I have cheated by informing myself in a situation that was supposed to remain random. Randomness is a matter of perspective. As long as it pertains to classical physics, there is no science whatsoever that needs to be overthrown to support that statement.

To me that thinking belongs to the Victorian era preferring everything to be deterministic but that one, I would say, is already passed.

Incorrect. Not even Bohr himself would claim that macro objects can exhibit quantum behaviour. I know that we've been able to reproduce quantum experiments with "macroscopic" objects, but these (i.e. buckyballs) are still extremely tiny compared to the world of stars and chairs. The larger you go, the less sense it makes to include quantum effects into the argument. I would accept this Victorian comparison in a discussion about quantum randomness (where, admittedly, I would also argue for fundamental determinism but based on a completely different set of arguments). But when discussing macroscopic objects, there is nothing outdated about determinism. Even relativity is fundamentally deterministic (just ask Albert) and as of yet QM has not been able to account for relativity as far as I am aware (please do correct me if I am wrong).

What one need to see is that modern physics is a paradigm change.

Agreed, but that doesn't require it to be the final paradigm change. There can and will still be many more to come.

In the Victorian era (as well as some people before) we thought that everything could be calculated, but that's no longer true. Everything becomes 'fuzzy' given enough time.

Of course, because the chain of events becomes increasingly complex over time. The passing of time doesn't change anything about the fundamental reality of the objects in it, it makes everything more "fuzzy" precisely because the amount of information available to us becomes increasingly small in relation to the total amount of information required for a deterministic prediction.

We still have those principles laws and properties though, and we presume those to hold locally where ever we are, which is amazing enough I think, considering the 'fuzzy ness' you meet extrapolating into the future by iterations for example.

Amazing considering the fuzziness you get when extrapolating into the future...not at all once you understand that this fuzziness is created by the mere increase of information required to calculate it accurately compared to the information available to us.
 
It seems to me you are drawing conclusions about classical physics and relativity based on findings in QM, as if QM has overwritten these truths. It has not and I have yet to find a credible source to make such a claim. Certainly Bohr or Heisenberg would never make such claims, they would admit to the truths of relativity (deterministic) and Newton (deterministic) but they would argue that underlying that deterministic world, when you zoom in far enough, what you find is fundamental probability. That is a vastly different line of thought, and much more difficult to argue with, than yours. 

3

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 09/12/2017 15:10:08 »

Random is a concept that is more associated with manmade things, instead of natural things. Dice and cards are manmade things that are designed not to follow natural laws. These inventions were a type of free will thing. For example, a six sided dice is equally weighed on all sides, so the odds of each side appearing, are all equal. This is not how quantum states work in nature. In nature, each quantum state; side of the natural dice, will have a distinct energy level or energy equivalence. It cannot roll in a random way, like the artificial dice, since the natural dice is loaded, based on the free energy differences of each side. The hydrogen atom has distinct quantum energy levels, and will not roll between levels in a random way, like dice. The background energy makes these dice roll a specific way.

The cards in a deck of cards are all the same in terms of size, shape, weight, and heat of combustion. The difference, connected to randomness, is arbitrary based on the decorations decided on by man.

Random and statistic has been so useful in factories and for the casino sciences of manmade things, it has been wrongfully extrapolated to natural; blindman's prophesy. Before the age of enlightenment, its was assumed the universe was ruled by the whim of the gods. This is early random theory. This was put to rest with the dawn of modern science. It was reintroduced when man started playing god; atheism, and making the universe subject to his whims; artificial. 

Take a perfect cube of ivory. Drill holes into each side, so it looks like a dice. Since we have removed different amounts of material from each side, the dice is now loaded and weighs differently in each side. It will no longer follow the expected rules of dice. To make it follow those rules for the casino, we need or tool the dice so random can appear. We can do this by manufacturing a slightly loaded cube, which will become uniform, after we drill out the holes. Now the random universe can appear; manmade. It is willful illusion.

If you look at water and DNA, water is composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element of the universe, while oxygen is number three, behind number two helium. Oxygen is number three, because of its nuclear stability. In terms of chemical reactivity, oxygen and hydrogen are the two most reactive atoms, of the top three, making oxygen and hydrogen; abundance and reactivity, the chemical potential foundation of the universe.

It is not coincidence that life's energy bandwidth is within the range of oxygen and hydrogen. There are only a few species of bacteria that can use the entire bandwidth.This bandwidth was, itself, defined by the extrapolation of elementary particles. It is not random. The number four atom of the universe is carbon. In terms of molecules, the three most abundant molecules in the universe are H2, H2O and CO, which is the foundation of life.

Relative to water and organic life, what makes water special, beyond its prominent place in the universe, is connected to the water and oil affect; hydrogen bonding and van der Waals bonding. Water and oil do not mix. Instead these will phase separate into two layers. The value of this, in terms of carbon based life, is water and organics can induce each other into lower entropy. Water allows the organic system to go from random into order, driven by free energy.

Other solvents tend to dissolve organics better or become more dissolved into organics, meaning they maintain a more random chemistry for carbon, which is not natural to the needs of forming life, beyond the the manmade theory factory.

Fascinating! Thank you! Much to digest, do you have any suggestions for further reading?

The background energy makes these dice roll a specific way.

In your view, is this statement compatible with Copenhagen's notion that the nature of the quantum world is fundamentally probabilistic? If the quantum dice are rolled by something that is contained within our universe and behaves according to its laws, i.e. background energy, isn't it then fundamentally knowable how the dice will land, i.e. isn't the information to calculate it present in the universe, and isn't it then only due to our inability to calculate it that it seems fundamentally probabilistic?

4

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 09/12/2017 14:47:51 »

Regarding DNA, its origin is the inevitable consequence of carbon chemistry and the hydrogen bond, which are universal, and the particular temperature and mass of one planet being suitable for the self-replication of the molecule. It's entirely possible though very unlikely that other selfreplicating molecules have evolved on planets without liquid water, and both probable and rather more likely that something very similar to DNA has evolved on planets like ours.

Flawless victory!

The fact that casinos make a profit is entirely due to the existence of free will. In a wholly deterministic universe we would all bet on the right number every time and the joint would go bust in one evening. "Faites vos jeux" and "rien ne va plus" determines the sequence of events and hence the irreversibility of time.

Far from flawless sir!

First of all, assuming a fundamentally probabilistic reality, could you clarify the implied analogy in your words between free will and randomness?

Secondly: all we would need to predict with 100% accuracy which number the ball will land on in a roulette spin, is a complete picture of all the classical elements influencing the ball's behaviour. This does not require any quantum effects to be included in the calculation and therefore the energy required to make the calculation can be contained within our universe. In principle, it is possible to build a system capable of such complex calculations. The only reason why the house always wins, is because the gamblers do not possess such a device. The issue here lies in our ability to create such a device, not in the fundamental randomness of the casino results.

Consider a highly advanced robot rolling a perfectly weighted dice. The robot knows exactly the properties of the materials comprising the dice, the atmospheric pressure and molecular motion in the room, the exact properties and distribution of the materials comprising the surface the dice will land on, etc. In short: the robot has complete information about the classical elements that will affect the behaviour of the dice. This robot can predict 100% accurately which number it will roll because it knows the exact angle and velocity it will give the dice when rolling it, the exact trajectory of the dice, the subsequent bounce it makes, the exact angle of its spin, etc. The randomness disappears as soon as complete classical information has been collected. Therefore randomness exists (in a classical sense) only in the eye of the beholder, by the sheer absence of complete classical information to determine the actual deterministic reality. Perhaps we will one day create an AI capable of such trickery. Maybe not. But in any case we must concede that the information is present in the universe and is therefore fundamentally knowable.

The reason casinos are so successful is that they have deliberately programmed the minds of their susceptible victims to return on a regular basis and mindlessly jam their hard-earned cash into a slot. There are people who drive to the casino every day swearing and cursing themselves for their inability to get out of this vicious cycle. They know they will always lose on the long run but they still have to go because who knows, they may win 200 bucks and experience a 10 minute high because of it. There is no free will in this. There is no free will in addiction. You can't just tell someone with a compulsive urge to 'just not do it'. If it were that simple, addiction wouldn't exist. These people have a condition which they did not choose. They exert behaviour based on that condition, which they do not choose.

But this doesn't just go for the addicted brain. Nobody chooses their brain. Nobody chooses their thoughts and if you just look one level deeper, you will find that the same goes for the ability to convert thoughts to actions or to refrain from doing so. You did not choose your ability to resist an impulsive urge, just like you did not choose your ability to create red blood cells.

If you persist in something difficult, apparently your brain was in the right mode to persist. You may have consciously contributed to that performance by focusing, by telling yourself not to quit, by forcing yourself to set very high standards, all that stuff is deliberate on your part and meaningful. But the only reason you have those tools at your disposal is because you happen to have the brain that you do, and that is not something you can take credit for. Your brain happened to you just like your height and your heart did.

5

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 09/12/2017 00:10:23 »

Ah, intelligent design is what you're after. I'm sorry, I didn't catch on to that earlier. A bit slow on my part.

Look, there are replicated studies where the measuring device already shows what the participant's decision will be seconds before the decision is made, that is, while the participant still feels like he is exerting his freedom of choice. You still feel like you're weighing your options, but the machine measuring your brain activity has already produced accurately the result of your decision. This should pretty much end the discussion, no?

All our choices are made in our unconscious mind. We merely witness them and then make up a story to make it fit our sense of free will. That too, has been elaborately studied. For example you can manipulate people's decisions by giving them a warm cup to hold rather than a cold one. Afterwards, all participants produce rationalisations as to why they behaved as they did. Of course none of these stories have anything to do with the actual reason: the temperature of the cup they were holding. There is no way around it, this is really how it works and it has been shown in labs all over the world in all kinds of different experimental setups over and over again.

The only reason it hasn't been completely accepted even in the scientific community, is because it doesn't feel pleasant. It feels like something is being taken away from you. Like suddenly nothing matters anymore, as if you can't make a difference in people's lives anymore. But this isn't the case. Determinism isn't fatalism. You still matter. Your love still matters. Your actions still matter. You are still accountable for them. There are still very important distinctions to be made between a premeditated crime and one of passion or self-defence, between lucid people and those who aren't aware of their actions. These things still carry as much meaning and weight as they did before we acknowledged that free will is ultimately illusory. It is simply the admission that you are as much an integral part of the chain of causes that is our world, as is anything else. The sense that you are somehow special, that your 'self' somehow stands above the causal chain of events and manipulates parts of it at will, from a purely empirical point of view (and in my opinion from a philosophical point of view as well) is wrong.

Since in your previous post you made the bold, well, utterly ignorant but still bold statement that motivation cannot be studied scientifically, I strongly recommend you dig a little deeper on the subject. Unless you feel comfortable digging around in scientific papers, a great starting point, and I know you weren't impressed with the 2.5 minute excerpt, but still I maintain that a great starting point would be Harris' 1 hour talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g

6

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 07/12/2017 01:07:26 »

The only statement I can agree with in all that verboseness.

Thanks for your feedback. I've been working on a more succinct way of expressing myself, but I still have a long way to go. Thank you for being my sketch pad though

Unless you know a person, as it pertains to habits and preferences. human choice is random. That's why marketing spends millions of dollars monitoring personal buying habits.

In that statement you acknowledge my definition of randomness: that it is the absence of information. What you are saying is: if something is random (like consumer behaviour), just do some research, gather some information, and the randomness disappears. Suddenly google can predict with 100% accuracy that I want to go to Timbuktu, and now is able to present me with relevant ads. If you agree that randomness can be solved by 'getting to know someone', i.e. by gathering information, and you agree that free will and randomness are the same thing in essence you have agreed that free will is fundamentally predetermined. Either your internal logic is failing or you agree with a wee bit more of my previous statement than you care to admit

Given two persons, both hungry. One eats to maintain their health. The other fasts believing it improves their health. Why doesn't the 'law' of hunger produce the same results?

Because prior causes.

In your effort to explain human behavior in mechanical terms, physical states, you omit the key factor, motivation. An intangible something science can't examine or measure.

Motivation has been and continues to be widely examined, measured, described and documented from the perspective of at least five difference sciences - psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology and neurology. We know roughly which areas of the brain are involved, we are starting to understand the chemical interactions of neurotransmitters involved, and we are moving so fast that over 90% of what we know on this front has been discovered in the last 10 years. This is because discoveries in the field of neurology are so closely linked to the rate of technological advancement (measuring devices, computing power, etc.). In short: there is a lifetime worth of scientific reading on the subject of motivation.

Science is philosophy augmented with a system of measurement, its verification tool.
If it can't measure it, it can't study it (in any meaningful way). Eg. science can't tell us how much love a liter can hold.

That is the first thing you've said that I can fully agree with.

Observing a distant star, there is no certainty that it's still there.

That is besides the point. We are talking fundamental randomness. So the question here would be 'is whether it still exists or not determined by prior causes or could there be some fundamental randomness to its existence leaving a percentage of chance for it having disappeared without cause. If we admit that no, a macroscopic object like a star needs cause to disappear, then we are back to lacking information about the system. Which was my point about what randomness, and therefore free will are, to begin with.

A person buys a gun and kills someone. You say he had no choice since the outcome results from a series of prior conditions beyond his control.
The deceased's family wants to hold someone accountable. The gun salesman, the gun manufacturer, the killers mother, (for giving birth)...and where does it end?
With the person with the gun! The person makes a choice, good or bad. The victim is alive prior to the choice, but not after.
The news media reports; a person was killed, the innocent victim of circumstances, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That fits your description of circumstances beyond their control, i.e. for the victim, but not for the assailant.

The apparent dilemma you point to here, is a very logical and easy mistake to make. Someone did you wrong, you want retribution. But you are right to point out that from this determinist perspective, or rather preterminist perspective, there should be no room for retribution in our judiciary systems. The murderer should be put in jail but only for safety purposes, only so he can't do it again. Not for retribution. Not to 'punish' him. He shouldn't be tortured. He shouldn't be raped by other inmates. He shouldn't be put to work like a modern-day slave. He should be removed from society for the purpose of being removed from society. Period.

I just posted a link to a 2.5 minute video on the subject. Sam Harris, the speaker, a cognitive neuroscientist and philosopher, explains it very well. Here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfHpXuUWGQ

7

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 07/12/2017 00:13:27 »

Would you post a link to the 2.5 minute summary. I can search out the Youtube video. The book is for sale on line, but let me start slow.

There you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfHpXuUWGQ

8

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 07/12/2017 00:11:11 »

The fluctuations of the vacuum could be the basis of what we determine as free will. For any two apparently identical actions the state of the vacuum at the time of occurrence could produce different outcomes. So the vacuum chooses.

I like that thought Reminds me of how transistors can glitch due to quantum fluctuations sometimes and therefore computers need to contain error correction to make sure we don't notice it when it happens. The comparison works because just like computers, our brain is a binary system. A neuron either fires, or it doesn't. 1 or 0. Our entire consciousness and everything that isn't conscious but happens anyway, emerges from that binary system.

However, the comparison fails when it comes to quantum fluctuations affecting the system. The transistors in a computer are in the nanometer range. They are so tiny that every now and then a 1 can appear where there should be a 0 due to quantum randomness. Neurons however are in the micron range. They get as wide as 0.1mm and as long as several feet. Are there any known objects of that size that are subject to quantum fluctuations? Isn't the whole idea that at that scale, all these random jitters average out to a classical, predictable world?

Look at a system with 2 neurons, and you'll find nothing random about their activity. Stimulate one, it will stimulate the other. Period. The fact that our brain consists of hundreds of billions of these neurons, just makes it a lot more complex. Not fundamentally different and suddenly subject to quantum effects, randomness or free will. It is all just an extremely complex reflex.

9

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 05/12/2017 01:28:53 »

I respect your belief.

And I yours

The fact that there is logic behind the idea that the laws of nature are invariant, supports determinism. But there is known science and there is “as yet” unknown science, and in my view, somewhere in the as yet unknown is a law that precludes determinism from being the ultimate expression of nature. Maybe that law is what lets my freewill govern that tiny portion of the events which I might consciously wish to influence.

You can consciously influence a great deal. In fact, you can change the world single-handedly as many have done before you. I am by no means preaching fatalism. Go and change the world! All I am saying is that whether you make one conscious choice or another, is ultimately determined by prior causes outside of your control. Even that tiny portion of 'freedom' you are referring to.
   

As I predicted early in our discussion, neither of us seems to be swayed by the objections of the other . It may be true that everything is predetermined, and I can’t falsify that belief, but on the other hand, I don’t think the existence of freewill can be falsified either.

I believe it can and has been falsified I strongly recommend Sam Harris' account of free will. If that doesn't convince you, I certainly never will. There's a fascinating 1,5 hour talk on youtube, in case you are behind on any ironing work or, say, embroidering There's also a 2,5 minute version in case you're more of a sweatpants and t-shirt kinda guy.

I stand on the conviction that the logic of freewill supersedes the logic of determinism, and an okay it I am wrong, as long as I am free to believe I am right.

Haha nice.

You have the right to believe that you are right. But the fact that you do, is still due to prior causes

10

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 04/12/2017 18:47:42 »

For example, I can think about moving my arm, or not moving my arm, without moving my arm, i.e., independent of the different set of invariant nature laws that would come into play if I do or do not move my arm. The fly is bussing around and I am thinking of swatting it. I decide to swat it in real time. I swat it and he fly dies. If I decide not to swat it, the fly lives. My decision takes place before the action of swatting, but causes the act of swatting, and so I have affected the various mix or set of invariant natural laws that come into play at the time of the physical event of swatting or not swatting.

Ok. Let’s try to dissect that situation and see if we can find any evidence of free will there.

So, you’re sitting in a room and notice a fly. The thought appears in your mind that you could swat it. You make a decision whether or not to act on that thought. The first important thing to note here is that you did not choose to observe the fly. The conscious observation of the fly arose based on a gigantic network of non-conscious processes, including your sensory input being converted to a specific pattern of neural activity, which passed the ‘test’ of something that requires your attention thereby entering your consciousness as an observation. This process is just as non-conscious as the heart beating or your DNA replicating. "You", as in that which is reading these words, have no choice in the matter.

Once the observation has entered your conscious mind, you instantly think of the possibility of swatting the fly. But you did not choose to have that thought either. It emerged because the concepts of ‘fly’ and ‘swatting’ are very closely related in the neural networks of your brain. You did not choose to organise your neurons in such a way. It happened because you grew up in a world where flies are abundant, and in a culture where swatting them is a very natural thing to do. Had you grown up in an isolated society which considers flies holy, the relationship between the concepts of ‘fly’ and ‘swatting’ would not exist in your brain and the thought of swatting it would not emerge. Furthermore, to choose our own thoughts would require us to think what we think before we think it. We can do something like that when we try to focus on something or retrieve something from memory. These are exercises of consciously steering our own thoughts, but it takes a lot of effort. 99% of our thoughts emerge to us without our conscious self having any part in that whatsoever. As Sam Harris puts it: "you author your next thought as much as you author my next word".

So if neither the observation nor the subsequent thought were the result of your free choice, what about the decision whether or not to act on that thought. Surely that is up to you?

Turns out that no matter how you look at it, if you look closely enough every free choice can be ultimately reduced to prior causes. There is the specific situation you’re in. If your infant is in the room, you may be more inclined to kill (the fly, not the baby) than if it were just you and your dog. Or if the room were smaller, you may be more inclined to kill than if were bigger (just because the fly is more annoying in a smaller room).

But even if we would consider all those external circumstances equal, there is still nothing free about your decision. Consider your mood of the moment. Did you choose that? Did you choose whether or not someone said something nasty that really got to you that morning? Or whether you slept well that night? What is the state of your hormonal and microbial balance? Digestive cycle? Menstrual? How has your personality and thought-structure developed over the years? In what cultural context? What was your environment like when you were growing up? What were your influencers like? Classmates, teachers, idols, siblings, parents?

All your choices are ultimately determined by prior causes one way or another. The network of these prior causes is just much too complex for us to predict, and so we attribute terms like ‘free will’ and ‘random’. In reality, these two concepts are directly opposed to the notion that every effect has prior cause.

We lack the computing power to process all the information required to make deterministic predictions (i.e. know for sure that tomorrow at 4:12 PM you will bump into that friend you haven’t seen for 20 years). Hypothetically speaking one could unravel all the prior causes of both of you being there at the same time and predict 100% accurately that you will meet there tomorrow at that time. The only reason we can’t do that is because we can’t unravel all causes and all effects to the smallest detail throughout the entire universe all the way down to 20 years ago when you last saw each other, or in fact all the way down to the beginning of time. We could never do that of course, but in principle in a universe where everything is the effect of prior causes there can be no such thing as free will or fundamental randomness.

‘Random’ means we don’t have enough information/computing power to predict deterministically an event of which the lead cause is not assumed to be the intent of a conscious being/a ”self”.
‘Free will’ means we don’t have enough information/computer power to predict deterministically an event of which the lead cause is assumed to be the intent of a conscious being/a ”self”.

A conscious being/a “self” is an illusory static entity which in fact is ever changing in structure, function, health, age, process, knowledge, experience, thoughts, personality and even (sub)atomic content (in the sense that the individual electrons and atoms in your body today are different ones than those that comprised you when you were born).

If the difference between randomness and free will is the involvement of a self, and the self or at least its static nature (static in the sense that you feel like the same person today as you were yesterday), is in itself illusory, then randomness and free will are one and the same thing: the absence of enough information/computing power to predict something deterministically. This leaves no room for fundamental “self”, fundamental “freedom of choice” or fundamental “randomness” whatsoever.

11

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 04/12/2017 18:12:58 »

Thank you Colin!

A viewpoint. One fundamental aspect of physics is measurement. If we look at the dimensions required to define all other measurements we find that length, mass and time are fundamental measurements, so in that respect I would say time is fundamental.

Agreed, time is a fundamental aspect of measurement and therefore fundamental to our science of physics. However, I am interested in the foundations of reality, not those of the sciences. More about this later.

I would also say that spacetime is a very fundamental concept.

Again, fundamental to science, but not necessarily to reality. The idea of an underlying informational reality seems to be gaining traction among an increasingly credible scientific audience (Erik Verlinde, Leonard Susskind, Max Tegmark to name a few). We should at least entertain the possibility that such a thing might be true, and when we do, we cannot do without reconsidering everything we thought to be fundamental. And yes, that should include the photon as well. More about that later.

Here you are using a different definition of fundamental. The photon is not a dimension or a measurement, so in that way is not comparable to time or space.

This is the definition I intended all along. Fundamental to reality, not science, measurement, observation or anything else. The fact that the photon is not comparable to anything else, is my point exactly. It is the only thing that actually experiences the world objectively.

I agree that understanding the photon is important to understanding much of our universe, but is it more fundamental that say quarks?

Complexity arises from simplicity. Therefore the deeper into reality you peer, the simpler things should become. The incredibly complex structure of the human psyche for example arises from much simpler processes of neurobiology, which emerge from yet simpler processes of chemistry, etc. Get to the periodic table and you're left with 118 (for now) items to describe all of matter. And when we get all the way down to quarks; all of psychology, all of biology, all of chemistry and all of nuclear physics is reduced to six flavours of one and the same particle. Now, we haven't been able to peer any deeper than the quark so from a scientific point of view there is no other option but to assume that this it is the most fundamental particle. And perhaps it will turn out that yes, when it comes to matter, the quark is indeed the most fundamental thing we'll ever find. But...does that also mean it is just as fundamental to reality as the photon? Let's see.

Photons do not interact with the Higgs mechanism. However, high-energy photons can be converted into fermions which do. Quarks are fermions. So once the photon has converted into something with mass, that which it has become is less fundamental in its nature. It has jumped up a level of interactional and existential complexity, from where it is then able to give emergence to atomic nuclei, electrons, all the 118 atoms we know of, all of chemistry, biology and ultimately what we call 'consciousness'. But for any of that to arise, photon-like energy had to be infused with the Higgs field so to say, before it could materialise. IF we define fundamentalness as the deepest level of simplicity that underlies everything else, for now the photon seems to be far ahead of the quark.

Over the past few years an increasing number of experiments have started to investigate the wave/particle nature of atoms and molecules. Have a look at this one from 2015 which indicates that helium atoms can also display delayed choice behaviour. Note the comment near the end which picks up the evolving view of wave/particle behaviour.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/may/26/do-atoms-going-through-a-double-slit-know-if-they-are-being-observed

Thanks so much, will look into that right now

12

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 29/11/2017 03:53:20 »

How time emerges from quantum entanglement:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.4691

How quantum entanglement = informational bits

http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

13

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 29/11/2017 03:35:23 »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation

14

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 29/11/2017 01:35:03 »

Let's look at the original question.

Things happen, and the universe changes. If there is a detectable difference between "before and "after" then the concept of time has meaning, and if there are consistent differences between different systems, its meaning must be universal. If we count sunrises and the grass gets a bit taller as the count increases, there is a common dimension for astronomy and horticulture, which we call time.

At the quantum level I think a lot of confusion is caused by the word "uncertainty", which colloquially implies some involvement of an observer or arbiter. A better translation is "indeterminacy", which doesn't. It's the difference between guessing the position of a raindrop (uncertainty) and knowing you are in fog. Wave mechanics is simply a mathematical model that helps us predict how the universe evolves: it doesn't imply that electrons are waves any more than your income tax code implies that you are a number on paper, but both can be used to predict the probable evolution of something in time.

Thank you for your well-put and thoughtful contribution. I will try to reciprocate as thoughtfully as I can

I agree with you, of course, that time has meaning. One should even argue it has more than just meaning. The concept of 'time' is implied in that of 'prediction' and prediction is arguably what all of physics and most other sciences are all about: creating models that are as accurate as possible at predicting how the world behaves. So needless to say, 'time' has tremendous meaning.

The question here however is not whether time is meaningful, but whether it is fundamental. There are a lot of things that are very meaningful but nowhere near fundamental. Love. Chair. Internet. Child. Understanding. Drums. Elephant. All extremely meaningful. But the fact that I can pick up the chair, hold it over my head and throw it straight through the window, doesn't make the chair or my head or the window the least bit fundamental. All these things either exist as concepts stored in our neural networks or as macroscopic objects or both, but none of them are fundamental in any way. 'Gold' means nothing to an electron, let alone 'wood' or 'chair'. So these things can never be fundamental.

So what is fundamental? Well, the photon seems pretty fundamental to me. It has no mass, its speed equals the maximum speed of causality, it interacts sub-atomically as well as macroscopically and we need it by definition to observe anything. Seems like a great starting point. If we can figure out how a photon experiences the world, perhaps we can get a step closer to what the world really is like fundamentally.

So what does the universe look like from the perspective of a photon? How is its perspective different from ours? Well, according to special relativity a photon doesn't experience time. If you would travel at the speed of light, everything would seem to happen at once. Of course this seems like a theoretical quirk because a) mass could never travel at that speed, and b) clearly everything doesn't happen all at once. Time actually passes. Right? But why wouldn't we assume that the photon may be right? Clearly it interacts with the world in a much more fundamental way than we do? With the whole being absorbed and emitted by individual electrons at the speed of causality and all, perhaps we should take its 'theoretical' perspective a bit more seriously? Maybe we can find some experimental evidence that this theoretical timelessness of photons might actually be a more accurate representation of the fundamental universe than the timefulness of mass?

Turns out, yes, we can. In the quantum eraser experiment we are affecting the behaviour of photons in hindsight. After the photon has already travelled through the slit(s), and has already been absorbed by one of the atoms in the screen, we are able to modify its past behaviour. We could even set up the experiment so that the choice would be delayed for billions of years after the photons have completed their paths. And still somehow they will have incorporated that distant future event into their behaviour. No matter how hard we try, we cannot fool the system.

How much more proof could we want? Isn't it obvious that the concepts  'time' and 'random' mean nothing to these photons? Isn't that exactly what we'd expect if the idea that a photon experiences no time weren't theoretical at all? If time and future and random are emerging phenomena carrying meaning only to that which has mass, then what is left at the fundamental level, the level that a photon 'sees', is a static, timeless, informational, pre-determined layer. Just like the software of a computer program being executed by a processor. The causal relations are "real", but only from the internal perspective of that which is being executed. At the most basic fundamental layer of it all lies a static, timeless 'hard drive' containing all the predetermined code - informational bits which dictate everything that will ever happen throughout the duration of the program. In other words: a fundamentally deterministic "reality".

15

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 26/11/2017 22:49:15 »

Both quantum mechanics and relativity agree with observation. If they didn't then you may have a point. They agree do therefore you don't.

The fact that they agree is central to my whole point. Which apparently you've missed completely.

Disputing something for the sake of it is not the best way to learn.

Agreed.

16

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 26/11/2017 18:40:53 »

Read here about the fundamental nature of the uncertainty principle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Heisenberg himself misinterpreted this.

I am not disputing the math, what I am questioning is its interpretation. The contradiction here is quite obvious: the 'fundamental' uncertainty is attributed to wave-like systems. But every child understands that a wave is caused by something. If nothing acts on the water, it sits still. Any wave has to have a cause. As soon as there is cause, then there is mechanism, and as soon as there is mechanism, fundamental unknowability evaporates. The only thing left to be fundamental here, perhaps, is our inability to include the cause in our formulas. That is already a vastly different proposition than that of Copenhagen.

By stating that the foundations of reality are probabilistic, Copenhagen essentially claims that there is no cause. There is no mechanism. That is directly perpendicular to the concept of a wave-like system which according to the very same model underlies everything. It simply cannot be true that what underlies everything fundamentally, is causeless waves. It is an inherently internally inconsist claim. Furthermore, as long as QM and relativity haven't been married while both seem to be ultimately true, and fundamental mysteries remain such as dark matter and dark energy, then it seems a little premature to make any definitive claims about fundamentalness based on any existing math whatsoever.

17

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 26/11/2017 17:20:51 »

The matrices P and Q are both infinite. From these it can be determined that energy comes in set discreet amounts. There is not an energy continuum. That is as fundamental as it gets.

There is of course a good chance that these equations do indeed say something about their own fundamentalness which I am currently missing due to my lack of understanding and if so, I am keen to find out about them. But any argument to be taken seriously will certainly have to entail a bit more logic than the above. Your statement that discrete amounts = fundamentalness is a fallacy. By that reasoning, the first person to have discovered that all living tissue consists of discrete cells could have said the same thing: look, all life consists of discrete amounts, I must have hit the fundamental level of reality. Whereas the cel of course consists of molecules which consist of atoms, which we now know have their own special inner workings and their elementary bits can be broken up further yet if we apply enough energy like in the LHC. In other words: there is nothing about finding discrete amounts in itself that guarantees fundamentalness. It just means you've hit a deeper layer of reality than before. Nothing more, nothing less.

18

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 25/11/2017 21:23:01 »

Now above it should be noted that P is the momentum matrix and Q is the position matrix. This can be used to derive the uncertainty relationship.

I understand that everything about QM implies time. I am not proposing to just erase time from the equations. That wouldn't make any sense. Of course the equations are right to include time. They are describing what we see and so we need it represented in our formulas if we want to make predictions. All I am saying is that this is what they do: they describe the world we live in. They don't describe the underlying layer, if any, and if it were a static informational layer, there would be no way to prove or disprove that through QM's equations just like a pre-QM argument about QM could never have been proven or disproven using any of Newton's equations.

Now, I understand you firmly disagree with this, so please, explain to me how What is so certainly fundamental about QM that absolutely nothing more fundamental could possibly exist?

19

New Theories / Re: If there was one Big Bang event, why not multiple big bangs?

« on: 25/11/2017 19:45:07 »

My points is that unless there is a path from both slits, there cannot be an interference pattern, so the “which path” information denial automatically eliminates the possibility of that interference showing up (by closing out needed information from each of the paths). It is not the knowledge of which slit the particle passed through, it is the information from both slits about both the wave state and the particle state, individually and combined, that is necessary for the interference to show up.

Thank you so much. I checked the links and will need a bit more than an hour to get a grip on it all I'm going to take some time to process. But before and while I do, I have one question (and a comment) about the above. If I understand correctly you are saying: by storing the which path information we are eliminating the possibility of the other result. Only if the particle/wave could have travelled through both, will the interference pattern show up. So when we store the information, we thereby exclude the possibility of it going through the other slit, and so have destroyed the interference pattern. Is that correct?

If so, what I'm finding here could possibly lead to an explanation of why it matters to the particle/wave whether or not it could have travelled through either slit. For that reason I'd be interested in reading more about your model. However, it still doesn't tell me why this effect would even remain if it was only decided millions of years into the future whether both slits would remain a possible path. Right now, at the time of the experiment, at the time of going through the slits, there is no which path information so the interference should show up, according to your model. But it turns out that a future random event will in retrospect affect the results and I do not see (yet) how your model would be consistent with that.

20

Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Is 'time' fundamental?

« on: 22/11/2017 02:51:38 »

I hope this is not an inconvenience to you. Go to that post using this ”link”. which I will edit tomorrow to actually contain the link that I haven’t written yet

Not at all, looking forward to it