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Demystifying Quantum Physics

idav

Being
Premium Member
Did you read this post? In it, I tried to emphasize the following:

(1) Nonlocality in QM is something which "can occur in certain experimentally-constructed situations which are not necessarily typical in Nature". Just like in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (see the OP) when you start dealing with large objects QM effects quickly go away and things become very "local". You could throw two baseballs around at the park for practically eternity, and they will never become entangled or exhibit any significant observable nonlocal effects. That is why when physicists are able to carefully prepare entangled particles and carefully separate them and carefully measure them in a particular way, they get Nobel prizes for it. But Chopra et al. like to suggest, misleadingly, that nonlocality is something which occurs all the time in Nature, at all size scales, and has significant effects at the level of entire human brains and our daily experience. Goswami thinks if two people meditate together in a room, they become telepathically "entangled" and can subsequently affect each other's minds from a great distance.

(2) Nonlocality as a concept was its biggest and strongest in classical "clockwork" physics before Einstein, and became much weaker and smaller as demonstrated in QM; but Chopra et al. want to turn all this on its head. They think if something is "quantum" then that is a license to extrapolate anything they please from it. Furthermore, they want to (incorrectly) imply that nonlocality as a concept was incompatible with pre-Einstein classical physics, which they view as the peak of reductionism/materialism.

(3) Intuition, contrary to the assertions of Godnotgod, plays a mixed role in physics. Sometimes the correct answer is intuitive, other times the correct answer is counter-intuitive. But the correct answers ALWAYS must be logical and must agree with experiment. Logic and evidence thus play a more decisive role than intuitive guessing.
I did see that post originally but you've cleared it for me, thanks.
 

zaybu

Active Member
The only valid way to dismiss Alan's argument is to show that his logic is unsound in some way. If one cannot do that, (either because one doesn't begin to understand the logic, or it actually is sound) then what else is there to do but concede the point? :p

Thanks. At least there are a few sound minds in this thread.

BTW, my argument against non-locality was detailed in another thread:

http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/3315622-post58.html
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Intuition, contrary to the assertions of Godnotgod, plays a mixed role in physics. Sometimes the correct answer is intuitive, other times the correct answer is counter-intuitive.

The issue is not that intuition leads to correct or incorrect answers; it is that it is employed at all by some scientists, which was my original point.

But the correct answers ALWAYS must be logical and must agree with experiment. Logic and evidence thus play a more decisive role than intuitive guessing.

Yet when Goswami's answers agree with experiment you cry foul.

You want to downplay intuition by calling it guessing. Guessing is not the same as seeing. Seeing occurs without thinking. Guessing involves thought. The reason people with intuitive insight spontaneously see and respond with correct answers is because they see directly into the problem, thereby bypassing thought, which is reason, logic, and analysis. IOW, first you would spontaneously see something key you had'nt seen before when you were using reason and logic. THEN you would apply reason, logic, and analysis to verify what you see. So no, the decisive role is played by intuitive insight; logic just verifies it. Without intuitive insight, you would not have been aware of the phenomena you are investigating to begin with.

People on Jeopardy who can incredibly see the answer for a partial word or phrase that only includes a sparse number of letters are using this intuitive insight. If they stopped to 'figure it out', they would lose it. This is the method of Zen and the koan; it short-circuits the rational mind by tricking it via of its own mechanisms. That's when satori happens.


We earlier went round and round about Einstein and intuition, but probably a much better example would be Max Planck, who said:

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."

This is going much further than Einstein, as far as I can see. This statement is truly revolutionary, and in my opinion, enlightened.
 
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The issue is not that intuition leads to correct or incorrect answers; it is that it is employed at all by some scientists, which was my original point.
I agree with you there.
godnotgod said:
Yet when Goswami's answers agree with experiment you cry foul.
I am skeptical about the experiment he cited in Mexico, because it contradicts many other experiments, namely: experiments in parapsychology which have shown that telepathic/telekinetic effects do not exist; experiments in psychology which have shown that people often think they see such effects even when they do not exist; experiments in physics, which don't rule out, but do suggest, that such telepathic effects are impossible. So I will remain open-minded but skeptical about the experiment Goswami cited until many more experiments succeed in reproducing the effect.

Remember a year or two ago, when neutrinos were detected traveling faster than the speed of light? That was one experiment which seemed to contradict many previous experiments. And it ultimately turned out to be wrong. That's why one controversial experiment does not necessarily convincingly demonstrate something in science. Like Big Bird says, everybody makes mistakes. ;)
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Goswami thinks if two people meditate together in a room, they become telepathically "entangled" and can subsequently affect each other's minds from a great distance.


It has been said that, two meditators in the beginning will see Reality differently. As time progresses, and as their personal views drop away via deeper and deeper meditation, at some point they will then see the same Reality. Why? Because they are no longer seeing it via a personal view; the illusory egoic concepts of 'self' and 'I 'have dissolved away. They are now seeing Reality via a kind of consciousness that was already in place. This consciousness has no beginning nor end. It is pure seeing, without a see-er. So the two meditators do not 'become' entangled; it's just that their personal views and their egos create the illusion of separation, where separation was never the case to begin with. When these illusory views dissolve, the true nature of Reality that was always there from the beginning is revealed. We awaken to 'what is', and 'what is' is One.
*****

Interview with Amit Goswami (by Craig Hamilton, Quotes)

Goswami: "From the beginning of the field of Quantum physics in the year 1900, physicists have indicated that we can change our perspective of things. From 1982 came results from a Lab experiment in France where Alain Aspect and his colleagues conducted an experiment that could show the connection between quantums to a higher dimension.

In this experiment, an atom produced two photons which went in opposite directions. Afterwards, these photons still influenced one another without exchanging any type of signals. What is significant here is that these two particles influenced one another after this separation without exchanging signals. When the rotation of one of the two photons was altered, the rotation of the other changed accordingly and in a measurable way.

Einstein proved long ago that two objects in space and time can never influence one another immediately as everything can only function within the maximum speed that is the speed of light. It was thought that every signal is bound to space and only needs a certain amount of time to move itself through space. Photons freed from atoms in the course of an experiment can influence one another in a particular territorial distance within the blink of an eye, quicker than the speed of light. In conclusion, this control element could not have moved itself through space and therefore it must be implied that the influence it had occurred in another dimension of time and space."

God and Quantum Physics - Wikiversity
*****

Zen Story:

A Zen Master and his young student meditated for years together, in silence. One day, the student wondered if his Master could read his thoughts. As he turned to look up into his Master's face, his Master turns and winks back at him.;)

A monk was dozing up in a tree one long, hot summer afternoon when, out of the clear blue, the thought struck him like a bolt of lightning that he knew everything. Excited at his new discovery, and anxious to tell all the other monks, he jumps out of the tree and begins to run back up the path toward the monastery. Halfway up the path, he encounters another monk coming down the path. Before the first monk can open his mouth, the other monk says: "Hey! Aren't you the guy who knows everything?":)

"In the end, you will know nothing"
Carlos Castaneda
 
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godnotgod

Thou art That
I am skeptical about the experiment he cited in Mexico, because it contradicts many other experiments...So I will remain open-minded but skeptical about the experiment Goswami cited until many more experiments succeed in reproducing the effect.

The last I read, Goswami's first experiment has been duplicated and confirmed three more times by separate labs in different locations. I am surprised that you would use experiments done in parapsychology as a reference against Goswami, who just happens to be a bona-fide physicist.

"There’s no contradiction to Einsteinian thinking, once we recognize quantum nonlocality for what it is—a signal-less interconnectedness outside space and time."
Amit Goswami

...and doesn't THAT idea also dovetail with the notion of a holographic universe and with fractals? From the point of view that the universe is an illusion, it does.

AND...this fits: "The universe is the Absolute as seen through the glass of Time, Space, and Causation". Vivikenanda

It is all about what happens to your (conditioned) consciousness when these conceptual overlays are temporarily removed. The scientific view is a result of a highly conditioned and controlled mentality. It is not the natural state of the mind, and it is the natural, unconditioned state of the mind (no-mind) which sees things as they are.
 
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LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
That's not an appeal to authority in the sense the fallacy is named after.
So was this part not clear to you?
The argument from authority developed for a particular reason and continues to mean a particular type of misuse in debate or argumentation. It is an appeal to an authority whose field of experise is irrelevant (historically, this would usually mean a royal or religious figure, such as a king or pope). Even if one simply cites a single scientist whose speciality is in QM, they may not make a good argument but they are not "appealing to authority" in the way that the classical fallacy means.

Perhaps this will add clarity:
Appeal to authority is a fallacy, but what people lable "appeal to authority" is often not what the classical fallacy involves. Appeal to one expert or the church or Jesus is "an appeal to authority." Appeal to academic authority is not a fallacy. It isn't unproblematic, as even the the majority of specialists can be wrong, but it isn't the classical fallacy either.
Appeal to authority is a fallacy only insofar as one relies solely on the claims of some individual's or some institution's statements, views, opinions, etc. rather than actually address the topic. If I had said "you're wrong, because Dr. Izhikevich disagrees" or something like that, and refused to look at the work of other researchers or other research in general, that would be a fallacy. But to appeal to scientific literature when it comes to a scientific topic is what science is all about: using what others have accomplished so that we don't have to continually re-invent the wheel.

But when is an appeal to authority actually a fallacy?
"As we will see, it is sometimes legitimate to appeal to an authority.The fact that an expert makes a claim about something that truly lies within this person’s area of expertise is a reason in favor of believing it...Appealing to authority is a fallacy when a person really isn’t an authority in the area in question." p. 180 of Critical Reasoning: Understanding and Criticizing Arguments and Theories (6th ed.).

Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation (from Cambridge University's series Critical Reason and Argumentation) likewise notes "the legitimacy of the appeal to expert opinion as a form of argument by citing an authoritative source." (p. 35).

Science shouldn't/doesn't do that, except as an approximation.
I clarified in two seperate posts what I meant by "appeal to authority" when I argued that the use of scientific literature is not a fallacy. Which part or parts of these posts were unclear to you?
 
godnotgod said:
The last I read, Goswami's first experiment has been duplicated and confirmed three more times by separate labs in different locations. I am surprised that you would use experiments done in parapsychology as a reference against Goswami, who just happens to be a bona-fide physicist.
Yep. Most physicists are bona-fide physicists, too, and they do not agree with Goswami.

If experiments have been done please cite them. I'll get the Nobel people on the phone.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
If experiments have been done please cite them. I'll get the Nobel people on the phone.

Here. Watch this video. Goswami explains how the Mexico experiment was set up and run, and then cites the three follow-up identical experiments that verify the first one.

Contrary to what you and Legion had earlier claimed, that the EEG technology is inaccurate, rendering the experiment flawed, accuracy is not what is required for the experiment to be valid. You will understand this if you listen carefully.



[youtube]2V6SaBflpiM[/youtube]
Present! - Amit Goswami (Part One) a Quantum View of God - YouTube
 
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godnotgod said:
Here. Watch this video. Goswami explains how the Mexico experiment was set up and run, and then cites the three follow-up identical experiments that verify the first one.
That's not a citation, that's a video of a guy telling a story. Journal name, volume, and date where the studies were published, please.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
That's not a citation, that's a video of a guy telling a story. Journal name, volume, and date where the studies were published, please.

I am not a scientist, and am afraid you will have to go fetch if you need to know more. I am quite satisfied with his word.

There are various meanings of 'cite' and 'citation'. I am using the word with the following meaning:

Citation: Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source.
Wikipedia

Cite: to mention in support, proof, or confirmation; refer to as an example: He cited many instances of abuse of power.
dictionary.com

(again, you try to discredit a view you know nothing about by calling Goswami 'a guy', like he's just some Joe Blo off the street, implying that YOUR view is the valid one)

update: Here is a bit of info you should be able to utilize. The first is the original Mexico experiment. I don't currently have the info re: the 4th:

Jacobo Grinberg, neurophysiologist, University of Mexico, 1993
Peter Fenwick, neuropsychiatrist, London, 1998
Leana Standish, Bastyr University, 2004
 
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George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
I am not a scientist, and am afraid you will have to go fetch if you need to know more. I am quite satisfied with his word.

I sympathize with you. The materialists are not fair in the manner of what evidence they consider. Naturally, they have quite different standards regarding the credibility of people on 'their' side versus people on the 'other' side.

I've concluded that materialists/skeptics can obfuscate forever if they need to. It's really a prejudice passed off as rigor.

I'm not a scientist either and am always asked for peer-reviewed papers, etc.. Our friend in this debate came back at me one time with a discussion from the Skeptics Dictionary (for crying out loud).

My choices are to stop debating committed skeptics/materialists or return to my high blood pressure medication!! :D
 
George ananda said:
The materialists are not fair in the manner of what evidence they consider.
I see. Asking for the info. I need to look up the studies, so I can read them myself, is "unfair" now? Apparently the "fair" response is to accept implausible claims on a YouTube video, without question.

For the record: I'm fair. I will consider the experiments which claim to find evidence of psychic phenomena, and weigh them against the experiments which claim to find evidence against psychic phenomena. I would subject any field plagued by the same problems of non-reproducibility to the same skepticism. There's nothing unfair about it.

Speaking of fairness, "physicalist" is a fairer term than "materialist".
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
I see. Asking for the info. I need to look up the studies, so I can read them myself, is "unfair" now? Apparently the "fair" response is to accept implausible claims on a YouTube video, without question.

For the record: I'm fair. I will consider the experiments which claim to find evidence of psychic phenomena, and weigh them against the experiments which claim to find evidence against psychic phenomena. I would subject any field plagued by the same problems of non-reproducibility to the same skepticism. There's nothing unfair about it.

Speaking of fairness, "physicalist" is a fairer term than "materialist".

No, you don't understand. You're not fair because you're simply supposed to accept other peoples' nonsense without question. I mean, it's hardly fair to ask them to provide a rational basis for something when there isn't one, now is it?
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Excuse me, folks: Goswami is a bona-fide PHYSICIST! I think his credentials speak for themselves, having taught Quantum Physics for over 10 years. He's not some Joe Blow off the streets doing experiments in his garage. When he says there exist several supporting experiments and gives names, there is no reason to doubt him, even if you are a scientist. Since I am not a scientist, I do not have access to peer reviewed papers, but Sprinkles, being a scientist, does. You guys are making a big deal out of nothing. As for 'nonsense' and 'rational basis', the 1st experiment is without question, documented, and was set up in accordance with scientific principles in mind. You're just not agreeing with the notion they are trying to validate, but agreement is not the issue here. The validity of the outcome of the experiment is. A 'rational basis' does not exist for entanglement of matter, but experiments demonstrate that it is a real phenomena, as Goswami's experiment demonstrates entanglement in consciousness.

A consciousness conditioned via the current paradigm does not want to accept ideas that seem to contradict that paradigm. That consciousness is already entangled by paradigm but it does'nt know it!
 
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