Bunyip
pro scapegoat
LOL No I didn't buddy. I argued that they are different, not the same.
Why lie? I said no such thing.
Which is why i said that they are different, not the same.
That's a concept mate.
Well yes, purple dragons do not exist.
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Is mind body duality a simple misconception?
- Thread starter Bunyip
- Start date
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
You argued about running into a door, in order to ridicule the idea of reaching the conclusion courage is there by choosing the conclusion.
It does not matter if you have purple dragons in fantasy or naked women. What is in your fantasy is a matter of fact issue, just the same as what is in the physical universe is a matter of fact issue.
But courage, love, hate, God, soul, good, evil, beauty, are not a matter of fact issue, they are subjective issues.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
No, I made no such argument.
How do you distinguish between facts and fantasies?
That is what I was saying, they are conceptual - not physical.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
....I don't distinguish between fact and fantasy, because it is a fact what is in my fantasy. I distinghuish between real and not real, as in, there is or is not a purple dragon in my fantasy.
Very obviously, bleedingly obviously................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... opinion is the opposite category to fact, not fantasy or concepts.
I was going to go over the difference between matter and energy, when something vastly simpler occurred to me about causal connection between space-like separated systems I have said is non-physical and you have stated it is still a force. I don't know why it didn't occur to me earlier, but if it were a force than it would have a direction. Not just a casual direction (although this is required), but forces act on systems. Here the behavior of the systems is causally connected, but nothing is acting on anything. If something were,even though this would probably mean special relativity is wrong, we could at least say that the behavior of one system is due to a force acting on it that, say, is the result of the other system. Only we can't, because the systems act as if they were interacting (neither one is causing the behavior of the other), only they are interacting instantaneously over arbitrarily long distances via a causal process that (as is now obviously apparent) isn't a force.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
No idea what point you are trying to make, you are still referring to a physical phenomenon not a metaphysical one - which was my point. You lost me the other day when going on about how four quarter dollars does not equal a dollar - which is false of course. It took me a while to figure out that you must have been talking about actual physical currency - as opposed to dollars, which can of course be divided any way in any increment one desires.
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Ok, I'll try to simplify. Let's specify the system: paired photons. As repeated empirical results have shown since 1982, it is possible to set up an experiment to study the behavior of these two photons that are separated by several yards, miles, or light-years (we've only gone as high as several miles). These experiments show that the photons appear to act upon one another (the way that objects do when they come into contact), but they can't possibly be interacting since they are miles away or more. The "interaction" is a link or process which instantaneously (and over arbitrarily long distances) causes the behavior/dynamics of the two photons.
This causal link is non-physical, it cannot be a force because a force acts on a system (a force doesn't connect systems), yet it is clearly real because it causes physical changes in physical systems.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
What on earth made you assume that the causal link was not natural? Not a physical phenomenon?
How did you get from 'we do not yet understand the causal link' to the belief that it is not a natural physical phenomena? "We don't understand 'X', therefore magic!"?
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Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
Referred to as entanglement in physics, and is best described not as 2 photons, but 1 photon with an undecided position (space) parameter.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Yeah, that is an interpretation I am familiar with. The question was, why assume it to be an un-natural phenomena?
Of course it is a natural phenomenon, what I am objecting to is the notion that it is a physical phenomenon. How we conceive of the material/physical world changes as we learn about it, and here we have something that does not fit into our conception of physical phenomena.
If a causal connection that has no material existence, cannot be explained by any law of physics (although it may violate some), and doesn't obey causality is "physical", then we run into a serious problem. This isn't the only kind of non-physical, causal property/entity/process that scientists include in models of physical systems. The difference is that we are able to distinguish when we are describing such a property/process that has no material existence, isn't constrained by physical laws, and determines the system's dynamics in spite of physical laws, we can feel safe that what we are describing is a product of how we are constructing the model. Even when it seems like this isn't so, we can chalk it up to incomplete knowledge.
That isn't the case here. About two decades before the first empirical realization of this phenomenon, Bell created his famous mathematical proof (an inequality) that could show once we were to perform these experiments whether or not there could be any "unknown" explanation that was consistent with causality (i.e., he showed under what conditions we could say that this phenomenon was caused by something else and we just didn't know what).. The proof wasn't purely mathematical, of course, so certain assumptions were involved. Namely, if we assume that whatever this causal link is there is some force or something causing it, we have to give up a certain other assumption: realism. If we assume that we can't say anything about reality, then we can explain this phenomenon by something like a force. Of course, we can also explain it by saying it is caused when an angel gets his wings or when a butterfly stamps its foot, because we've thrown realism out the window.
It isn't that we don't understand it or that it is magic. It's that it forced us to make choices about the nature of reality (for example, almost all physicists accept that nonlocality is a intrinsic property of the universe, as the alternative is again giving up realism). This particular phenomenon isn't like some weird effect that we stumbled upon. It was shown to follow from quantum mechanics in 1935 by EPR (a paper so famous it's referred to by the names of the authors: Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen). By the time Bell developed his inequality, almost 30 years of back-and-forth discussion on this "spooky action at a distance" had passed. After Bell, almost 2 decades passed before we finally were able to empirically test whether EPR was correct and able to use Bell's work to determine what this meant for the various explanations that had been around for what is now ~80 years.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
In this context 'physical' and 'natural' are synonymous. So you are objecting to a purely semantic difference.
So what? It is as yet not fully understood.
I don't see the relevance to the question of mind-body duality. What you described is still a physical phenomenon.
And the relevance to the OP is?
It isn't. First because the experiment need not be done with photons. Second, because when it was it wasn't "best described not as 2 photons, but 1 photon with an undecided position (space) parameter". From Aspect et al.
Actually a good way to describe it is as it was described by the guys who first showed it to follow logically from QM, namely EPR. Here's the abstract:
If you want the entire paper I can provide it.
For something recent and more formal, the following is scanned from Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Jaegger:
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
It isn't. First because the experiment need not be done with photons. Second, because when it was it wasn't "best described not as 2 photons, but 1 photon with an undecided position (space) parameter". From Aspect et al.
Actually a good way to describe it is as it was described by the guys who first showed it to follow logically from QM, namely EPR. Here's the abstract:
If you want the entire paper I can provide it.
For something recent and more formal, the following is scanned from Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Jaegger:
With the collapse, you end up with 1 photon again, that's why I say it is best described as a single photon with an undecided position parameter.
If you could tell me that there is more difference than just position, maybe I would reconsider.
And I never read any physics book, but I know what I know.
Which is a problem. Such a restrictive paradigm doesn't allow us too explain many important phenomena, and even worse creates a problem when it comes to understanding the descriptions of phenomena, system properties, or system processes in terms of "natural".
You are insisting you are correct on a purely semantic basis. It happens that semantics is important here. Much of modern physics involves words like "system", "state", "momentum", etc., that don't involve anything physical but are purely mathematical. In QM, this just makes it difficult to understand what we are describing as a quantum system that we then "measure". In particle physics, it's much worse, because:
1) the same aspects of particle physics, such as fields, have to exist in some cases or, if they don't, then this effects whether or not particular particles and/or properties are real.
2) We cannot simply relate experimental outcomes to how we prepared and transcribed the system as in QM. This is one reason why after 2 years we still don't know if the HIggs we "found' was the Higgs. What we measure is highly dependent upon theory and mathematics. In fact depending upon how one treats certain particles mathematically and experimentally determines which particles they are. Basically, a great deal of what we describe in the literature using terms from classical physics that described physical systems actually describe mathematical entities, and for a great deal more we aren't sure whether what we describe mathematically exists or not (or its nature), and for the rest that we can say are "real" they are affected in fundamental ways by the first two categories.
Basically, it quickly becomes problematic to assume that something is natural or physical when in many cases it might be just part of the mathematical structure and in many more it isn't yet we still can't know what we are dealing with independently of mathematical descriptions that are not real.
In this case, luckily, that isn't true. Even though we don't know exactly how our mathematical representations of the quantum systems correspond to reality before measurement, we are able to measure a real, physical system and obtain actual information about it. And that information tells us that this causal connection can't be explained except by positing that there are things in reality that aren't physical but are real (or we can just decide "physical" is meaningless).
What makes an invisible causal link that doesn't depend upon anything in the physical world as exists only as a causal relationship a physical phenomenon?
That strict dichotomies like physical vs. non-physical or dualism vs. materialism are no longer adequate and part of the problem with understanding the "hard problem of consciousness" is an outdated conception of what is "real", "natural", and/or "physical."
Simply put, the entire logic behind the original set up was that measurement ("collapse") in one location/lab can tell you what a measurement will be in a lab 16 kilometers away (or 6 feet, or 6 light-years). In other words, before more exotic types of entanglement were discovered and in the type of experiment Aspect did with photons, the most basic, fundamental aspect of the experimental design is to perform a measurement on one system and determine whether or not doing so can tell you about another system miles away.
But, if you still think entanglement collapses quantum systems into one system:
Lee, K. C., Sprague, M. R., Sussman, B. J., Nunn, J., Langford, N. K., Jin, X. M., ... & Walmsley, I. A. (2011). Entangling macroscopic diamonds at room temperature. Science, 334(6060), 1253-1256.
I've uploaded/attached the study.
Mohammad Nur Syamsu
Well-Known Member
You will simply have a photon in one place and nothing in the other place. And entangling macro objects, it just means that the objects contain elements which are entangled. You are falsely suggesting with 2 diamonds, at least it appears to me that way, that collapse...doesn't exist.
The more interesting question is if upon many collapsed photons, the photons ending up in place 1 instead of place 2, are they any different from each other besides being in a different position?
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
They are synonyms regardless of weather that is inconvenient for you or not.
The context here is the distinction between concept/abstract and real/physical. Math is conceptual.
Indeed, there is a distinction between concepts like math and objects. Which is the point here - objects are real, actual, material, existent whilst concepts are abstract, conceptual and immaterial.
No, that is a contradiction in terms - 'real' is a synonym for 'physical', you can not be both non-physical and real.
We do not know what the causal link is, science works on the assumption it is physical as science IS the study of the physical/material/real universe.
Yes, and that is why I have been exploring it. I believe both the 'hard problem' and dualism to be incoherrant. There is no science in regard to non-physical 'substance' ('substance' also being a synonym for matter/physical), science is the study of the natural (physical) universe.
Metaphysics is not physics.
I keep trying to find a description so clear that you can't possibly continue to think the above true. Here's one:
"Our experiment demonstrates a violation of Bell inequalities with photons more than 10 km apart"
Tittel, W., Brendel, J., Zbinden, H., & Gisin, N. (1998). Violation of Bell inequalities by photons more than 10 km apart. Physical Review Letters, 81(17), 3563.
Now, again I have the paper if you want it, but think about this. First, the word is photons, plural, not photon. Second, what is the point of having two labs 10+ km apart if you only collapse one photon?
"Using a telecommunications fiber network, the photons are then analyzed by all-fiber interferometers located 10.9 km apart from one another in the small villages of Bellevue and Bernex, respectively"
(ibid)
To play it safe, here's another quote that should be so obvious that it becomes impossible to assert that your description is accurate:
"an entangled state of two photons can be created such that each single photon is unpolarized...Such effects are not only interesting from a fundamental point of view: If the two entangled particles are shared between two distant parties, the perfect quantum correlations can be used to realize a so-called quantum channel over which quantum information can be transmitted."
Volz, J. & Rauschenbeutel, A. (2012). Two Atoms Announce Their Long-Distance Relationship. Science, 337(40), 40-41.
And finally:
"The key concept is quantum entanglement, where two systems (which may be well-separated in space) are described by a quantum state that, loosely speaking, cannot be “broken down” into two separated quantum states for each individual system. Entangled states encapsulate quantum correlations between the two systems. Such correlations often embody entirely new physical properties for the composite system that are not present in any of the two individual subsystems. We may say that these subsystems have lost their individuality, in the sense that physical properties are now at least partially encapsulated in the nonlocal quantum correlations and therefore cannot be attributed to only one of the subsystems. Broadly speaking, we may thus conclude that quantum entanglement represents a situation where the quantum-mechanical whole is different from the sum of its parts." (emphasis added)
Schlosshauer, M. A. (2007). Decoherence: and the quantum-to-classical transition. Springer.
"Here, “macroscopic entanglement” should be intended as the entanglement between macroscopically distinguishable states"
Lim, Y., Paternostro, M., Kang, M., Lee, J., & Jeong, H. (2012). Using macroscopic entanglement to close the detection loophole in Bell-inequality tests. Physical Review A, 85(6), 062112.
Not for me, really. I only use one type of quantum manipulation technology and I don't have to worry about the same kind of issues.
And here I though the context was mind-body dualism.
Of course there is. The problem is the ways in which this distinction is unknown. In classical physics, if I wanted to know the value of some observable/measurable quantity or property, the value I obtained is a direct representation with what I measured. For example, if I wish to know the mass of a baseball, I weigh it and the value I get is the mass (on Earth anyway). If I want to know the baseball's momentum when I throw it, I take my value for the mass, I get a radar gun or something, and I measure it's speed at some point in such a way that I can also account for it's direction so that I can multiply mass and velocity and bingo-bango my value is the momentum.
In quantum mechanics, such "observables" are never values, they are mathematical functions called operators. These functions act on the quantum system to give us information about its state. Now, how can a mathematical function "act on" a quantum system? Because the quantum system is a mathematical entity with no known correspondence to any physical reality. According to the standard interpretation, it's meaningless to ask what it corresponds to, and all we can ask about is what is obtained from measurement. Things get worse with extensions of QM to quantum field theories and particle physics.
The point is that we already have to be very careful about trying to ensure we are aware of when we are talking about a mathematical entity, a mathematical representation of some property, process, or state of a system when we don't really know what we are representing, and when we know we are dealing with some physical system and we have to be careful to ensure that we know which representations are intended to correspond to something "real", and how (for example, neuronal populations may be represented using network topology in which entire populations are operationally described as single nodes for convenience; that's a clear example of when we know our model corresponds to something real but the representation is simplified or otherwise indirect for one reason or another, like simplicity).
All of that, though, isn't the big deal. Sure it is interesting and all but it has nothing to do with what I was talking about except insofar as your choice to call physical something that has no material existence and exists only as a link that makes e.g., two photons separated by miles behave almost like one. The photons aren't the problem either. Whether entangled or in a superposition state, we can still call them photons and talk about as physical systems. The problem is a causal "agent" that exists only as a link, but one that "exists" in no-space & no-time (nothing in reality travels between the photons; the link doesn't exist as anything in our universe other than its causal role in the behavior of the entangled systems).
So, I ask again, in what sense is this no-time, no-space "link" physical? If it is not physical (and therefore by your definition not real) how is it able to causally affect physical systems?