Exploring the Boundaries: Is Quantum Mechanics Really the Problem?

[reilly]

Wow. Before I vanished for family and vacation time, I had given up on this thread's potential to foster discussions and debates. All in good time.

I've got a few things to do over the next few days, so I'll 1. thank lot's of people for making this a "happening thing," and 2. say that, in my view consciousness has nothing at all to do with QM-- other than the obvious matters of matter and the various perceptual neural-transducers. Along with many neuroscientists, Sir Francis Crick in particular, it's my view that consciousness is simply the cumulative effect of neural activity.

Until recently, notions of free will., consciousness and "brain-mind" duality were predominantly considered by philosophers -- their's was really the only game in town. My how things have changed -- science has increasingly taken over from philosophy, as it must, and as it did during Newton's time. Seems to me that philosophers are becoming less and less relevant and much less important than even 15 years ago in the area of mental phenomena -- the 19th century's approach to understanding nature is losing ground to the realities of the late 20th century.

Does anyone really believe that Searle's Chinese Room (whatever-you-call it) has anything to do with reality? Indeed it is clever, just like the idea of the economic rational man, but, to me, it's just another case of, "Ma, look no hands."

To be continued.
Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[lalbatros]

Reilly,

I 'agree' with all your questions but one:

6. How can anyone who does not have at least a few years of experience with QM, after school, be a legitimate critic of QM?

The point cannot be "experience". This is close to an argument of authority.
Maybe you shoud replace this question by a statement about the scientific nature of the debate.

In addition, I could argue that too much experience maybe an obstacle to scientific discovery.
Who was the nobelist that was reluctant to read the complete bibliography on his thesis topic?
Had Einstein "a lot of experience" or a great insight when he was 25?

 

[vanesch]

Along with many neuroscientists, Sir Francis Crick in particular, it's my view that consciousness is simply the cumulative effect of neural activity.

The externally behavioural effects, yes. But it doesn't explain the experience from "within". It is this *redefinition* of consciousness which neuroscientists, AI specialists and so on apply, and they change it into something that fits a certain arbitrary descriptive or behavioural definition.

But, as the saying goes: it is not because you know the ENTIRE neurological system of a bat, that you know "what it's like to be a bat". You will be able to predict entirely the behaviour of a bat, you will know every single neuron that will be firing when you have it flying and catching some flies, when it mates, and so on. And you'll still not know what the bat "experiences". Now of course, you could not care less about what "it is like to be a bat", and say that this is not a scientific question. If you can entirely explain the behaviour of a bat, then you KNOW all there is to know about bats. It might be seen differently from the PoV of a bat...

And then the discussion turns to your body. Others may say that one couldn't care less about what "you might experience", and if they can explain the behaviour of your body, then that's all there is to it, and there's no such thing as "you" experiencing something, that this is not a scientific question, because the behavioural part is all there is to it. And then you know there's something fishy about this, because you DO experience something. You cannot express this, because this expression itself is entirely behavioural and yes, those neurologists might say, ok, if I put this needle HERE in this foot, then a K/Na wave will propagate along THIS nerve, will then give rise to neurotransmitters at THAT neuron in the brain, will then activate THESE neurons here, which will then activate THOSE muscles there, who will contract the lungs, and the neurons THERE will send pulses to THESE muscles here, and will hear the sound "AAAHH", produced by the cavity of the torax and the tension of the vocal cords.
But there's, nowhere, a description of the subjective experience of pain. And the neurologists say: there's really no such thing as a subjective experience of pain, but we can classify certain types of neurological loops which seem to induce this "AAAAH" production, and, they seem to produce also restructurations of the brain in such a way as to produce avoidance reactions next time similar stimuli are applied.

Then you KNOW you better get out of that place !

 

[gptejms]

So vanesch,are you saying that there's a quality to a human being which can not be explained just by the material/physical laws?

 

[vanesch]

So vanesch,are you saying that there's a quality to a human being which can not be explained just by the material/physical laws?

I don't know about OTHER human beings, but to myself, yes. There is my subjective experience, which is not EXPLAINED by physical laws, and of which I know that it exists. My body's behaviour is of course explained by material/physical laws. Including all I say and type. Maybe there is a prerequisite that there first needs to be a behaviour that behaves AS IF there were also a conscious experience, before such a thing can somehow emerge. But I could fairly well imagine my body doing all these things, WITHOUT me experiencing anything. But I do. And that's the thing I'm talking about here.

I say I don't know about others, because I don't know if they have subjective experiences. As the only thing that is available to me, is behavioural information, and as that will be the same with or without a subjective experience on their side, there's no way for me to find out.

Somehow, I *assume* that they might have a subjective experience, by analogy to myself, but I only have myself and my own subjective experience and an observed analogy to motivate this from. And what concerns bats, ants, stones, computers and rooms full of books, I have no idea because the analogy becomes worse and worse.

 

[gptejms]

Your stand reminds me of Roger Penrose's stand against strong AI--though he talks of a quality of human intelligence not possessed by machines while you talk of another quality 'subjective experience'.

 

[vanesch]

Your stand reminds me of Roger Penrose's stand against strong AI--though he talks of a quality of human intelligence not possessed by machines while you talk of another quality 'subjective experience'.

Yes, I know. I have to say I think Penrose is somehow wrong there. It might be, or it might not be, that the brain is a quantum computer. I think there have been studies that show that it's hard to believe that there remains some coherence for long enough a time in a brain to achieve anything useful on purpose. But then, who knows. But if that's possible in a brain, why couldn't we build a machine based upon the same principles ?

I don't see what's fundamentally impossible in making a machine that is as intelligent as a human being. After all, intelligence is a behavioural concept (and is often confused with subjective experience!). Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. And then you can discuss about the class of problems we're talking about. 200 years ago, being able to play chess would have been considered as intelligent. But now that pocket computers can do so, we switch to other problem sets because we have a hard time admitting that a machine might solve problems better than we do (although computers do it all the time !). So we invent "human-scale", totally arbitrary, definitions, like the Turing test, which consists in tricking a human being into believing it is talking to another human being for at least, say, 20 minutes. This is a problem to be solved, which is deemed to define "human intelligence" (or shortly, intelligence). What if we turned that around, and asked for a human being to trick a computer into believing it was dealing with another computer ? We'd all quickly fail the test, because I don't see you manually working out in real time any ethernet protocol So humans seem to fail the "Turning test of machine intelligence" . We seem not to even pass the intelligence test of an ethernet card

But when I read strong AI proponents, and Penrose, it seems to me that at some point, they confuse "intelligence" with "subjective experiences". Penrose seems to think that we can use our subjective experiences to be mathematically more intelligent than any formal system (which would imply a genuine action of this subjective experience onto the physical world). And AI proponents seem to say that when a machine reaches behaviourally human-level intelligence (for instance, it passes the Turning test), then automatically goes with it some subjective experience (and hence all the ethics that goes with it).

 

[rewebster]

The problem I see with the Turing Test (tricking a human being) is that I've met some 'human beings' that could be tricked with dog on the other side of a screen. Which is the 'best' , 'acceptable' , 'most correct' , or 'true' (a law?) are all different answers that we all 'accept' in different ways. From 'worst' , 'unacceptable' , 'improbable' , to 'etc.' are also on the scale--just on the other end. --and all have been used to describe theories (from different people) that we use today---and ones that have been dismissed.

How were you (a person/anyone) raised?---How and why did it lead you toward QM or MW 's? (little pun with the etiology of the letters)


Another way to say it is, "How much fun can you have with a piece of string?"

 

[gptejms]

I don't see what's fundamentally impossible in making a machine that is as intelligent as a human being. After all, intelligence is a behavioural concept (and is often confused with subjective experience!). Intelligence is the ability to solve problems.

Intelligence also covers discovering new things(theory of relativity,quantum mechanics etc.),creativity,imaginative thinking etc.,looking at things with wonder(e.g. looking at wave-particle duality,measurement problem with wonder(&. coming up with MWI!))---these are the kind of things a machine can not do.So,I guess 'subjective experience' is required if you wish to go beyond solving problems or playing chess.Coming up with the game of chess is something a machine can't do.

What if we turned that around, and asked for a human being to trick a computer into believing it was dealing with another computer ? We'd all quickly fail the test, because I don't see you manually working out in real time any ethernet protocol So humans seem to fail the "Turning test of machine intelligence" . We seem not to even pass the intelligence test of an ethernet card

You are right about that except that a computer would never put/'think of putting' us to a Turing test to show us how inferior we are!

 

[rewebster]

"oh---noooo,



are you losing your 'emotion chip' ---again, Data?"

 

[gptejms]

Along with many neuroscientists, Sir Francis Crick in particular, it's my view that consciousness is simply the cumulative effect of neural activity.

Neural activity is associated with consciousness--you have greater neural activity while you are conscious than when you are unconscious.But consciousness is not equal to 'neural activity'.

 

[rewebster]

Maybe I'm mistaken, but the questions in post #1 deal more with the 'qualities' why QM isn't accepted more; and why hasn't QM been more fully examined as 'THE' primal theory of 'things'.



I think QM got sidetracked when a few brick walls were hit and no reasonable, logical, and definable hypotheses lead to experimental results.

 

[masudr]

looking at things with wonder(e.g. looking at wave-particle duality

Hah! wonder at wave-particle duality? Forget that rubbish for a moment!

Wonder at the marvel of trees! Of sunshine! Of blue skies! Of a fellow human's face! Of blank verse! Oh my, oh my! Some people would think we physicists don't do anything but read our physics books!

p.s. no offence meant, just light humour

 

[Haelfix]

Yea I don't believe the orthodox position of QM's is tenable to all orders of magnitude. Many of the obvious paradoxes that everyone knows are (in various senses) quite problematic, and its why they haven't dissappeared even after decades of debate.

Decoherence in my mind solved the majority of its problems, and made it a pragmatist approach. Otoh it does sweep various issues under the rug of the 'environment'. For instance, issues with say Von Neumann ideal measuring systems and so forth, nearly always imply some sort of logical adhoc separation of prescriptions for measurer, experiment and so forth and decoherence won't save you from those thought experiments.

Worse, talking about things like 'the wavefunction of the universe' immediately hits absurdities with Hilbert space seperability issues.

Measurement in curved spacetime also has numerous problems (some of which are sort of solved, others aren't).

I don't think many physicists believe orthodox Quantum mechanics is the end of the story (eg 2000 years from now it will be unchanged everywhere), but merely a perfectly sensible calculational tool and valid within the boundaries of experiment atm.

 

[rewebster]

The idea of being 'orthodox' isn't very creative. Maybe most 'have to be' orthodox.

History shows a lot of un-orthodox ideas-----gleaning one out of the many is hard to do at the time of its christening. Most of the presently 'accepted' ideas were challenged quite exhaustively, until facets of them gained some acceptance. What if the star's image wasn't deflected like Einstein predicted?


(I'm not a fan of relativity)

 

[vanesch]

Neural activity is associated with consciousness--you have greater neural activity while you are conscious than when you are unconscious.But consciousness is not equal to 'neural activity'.

My view too. "neural activity" is the underlying physical process, and from it "emerges" (in some cases ? In my case ?) consciousness, where I say "emerge" in a definitely vague meaning, because I don't know any better.

And now go telling which *other* physical processes potentially have such consciousness emerge...
Does consciousness emerge from phonon propagation and scattering in xtals ? From currents flowing on the surface of silicon chips ? In the convective pattern when I make stew ? From ionic waves in neurons ? In the motion of dust particles in a giant dust cloud ? In the waves at the surface of an ocean ? Inside a neutron star ?

Hard to tell, no ? I think the only way to be sure that there is a conscious activity, is to experience it ! (which brings us back to Descartes...)

So as of now, I know of one, for sure

 

[vanesch]

I don't think many physicists believe orthodox Quantum mechanics is the end of the story (eg 2000 years from now it will be unchanged everywhere), but merely a perfectly sensible calculational tool and valid within the boundaries of experiment atm.

I agree with you. But in the mean time, one has to do with what one has, and the more one can build a picture which makes sense, the better things are, no ? Realizing that ANY such picture, based upon ANY theory, will be potentially only temporary.

However, the issue becomes more important when one wants to do things like unifying quantum theory and gravity.

 

[rewebster]

We can use Popeye's paraphasing of Descartes to describe orthodox Quantum mechanics ---until things change, I suppose.

 

[rewebster]

Unifying quantum theory and gravity?

I wonder if that would be considered un-orthodox?

 

[nrqed]

@ Vanesch: I just noticed free will is an illusion? Such a fad thing to say, prove it? It's no better than saying predeterminism is preposterous based on modern theoretical physics. I hear that expression so often that it's almost like everyones convinced themselves it's true despite it being a hypothesis. Since as far as I am aware no philosophers have answered the questions either way or scientists for that matter, how can you prove that it is an illusion and if you just stated that, shouldn't you have chastised yourself for saying it on a physics thread?

this is not a proof but see

B. Libet., ''Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of consciousness will in voluntary action'', Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 529-566, December 1985.

A summarym copied from a book written by T.B. Czerner, M.D.:

''...a famous experiment by the University of California at San Francisco neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet in 1985...his subjects were asked to watch a spot revolving on a clock face in front of them and, at a time of their choosing, to flex their wrists. They were told to note exactly where the spot when they decided to act. With strategically placed electrodes, Libet measured two things: the time the action began and a brain wave called the readiness potential, an electrical pattern seen just before any complex action takes place. Invariably the readiness potential occurred before, not after, the moment of their ''decision''. The brain begins its activity *before* you ''decide'' that you want it to. If the readiness potential pccurs before your ''intention'', you are deluding yourself with your notion of free will. A shocking and depressing conclusion''

(the emphasis on before if the author's, not mine)


I am not saying this is conclusive proof that free will is an illusion. But I am saying that there *is* serious research suggesting this, and it's not just a ''fad'' (I remember reading in other books on consciousness some other experiment but that book is at the library right now)


It seems clear to me that no matter if quantum mechanics plays an important role in consciousnessor not, there is no place for the concept of free will in present scientific theories. By definition, free will involves an *directed* effect without a cause. There is no place for the idea of ''taking a decision'' in present scientific theories in my opinion.

Patrick

Materialists are so dull. Almost as bad as secular humanists

I am not sure what this is supposed to mean :-)

 

[rewebster]

Invariably the readiness potential occurred before, not after, the moment of their ''decision''. The brain begins its activity *before* you ''decide'' that you want it to. If the readiness potential occurs before your ''intention'', you are deluding yourself with your notion of free will.


The problem with this deduction is that since the clock is visible to the subject, and that the hand is visible to the subject as the hand moves toward the 'chosen spot' , --there is an anticipatory response to when to decide when the hand is at that given spot. Whether to choose to decide (free will) if and/or when the hand is getting close to that chosen spot is still part of the process of deciding to 'choose'. Intention is still a decision, whether is acted upon or not, doesn't matter---deciding is a process. The initial part of this scenario and of this total process is the thinking process to anticipate.

I see the conclusion of this experiment as flawed not realizing this.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Invariably the readiness potential occurred before, not after, the moment of their ''decision''. The brain begins its activity *before* you ''decide'' that you want it to. If the readiness potential occurs before your ''intention'', you are deluding yourself with your notion of free will.


The problem with this deduction is that since the clock is visible to the subject, and that the hand is visible to the subject as the hand moves toward the 'chosen spot' , --there is an anticipatory response to when to decide when the hand is at that given spot. Whether to choose to decide (free will) if and/or when the hand is getting close to that chosen spot is still part of the process of deciding to 'choose'. Intention is still a decision, whether is acted upon or not, doesn't matter---deciding is a process. The initial part of this scenario and of this total process is the thinking process to anticipate.

I see the conclusion of this experiment as flawed not realizing this.

You misunderstand the experiment. The time of decision is not taken from some observation of the hand moving but from the subject's own report. The subject sees the clock and reports, as he decides, where the second hand is. With training subjects can get good at this. The potential rises before the subject becomes aware of deciding and has nothing to do with the actual move.

 

[rewebster]

The time of decision is not taken from some observation of the hand moving but from the subject's own report. The subject sees the clock and reports, as he decides, where the second hand is. With training subjects can get good at this. The potential rises before the subject becomes aware of deciding and has nothing to do with the actual move.


The subject's own report is a time delayed process also. Yes, the (subject's) move is separate (which I didn't get into). The process of 'thinking about moving' is what I was referring to.--and even before that, something has to initiate that process also --'something' (free will?) chose to tell the brain that it's body is in an experiment and it (the body) must be ready to 'do' something--anticipation. Anticipation is the 'readiness' for action. Choosing to react is just one of the choices (free will).


'Time' and/or the 'amount of time' /'measurement of time' for a thought/thought process (reaction) differs from the already prepared anticipation (ongoing during the experiment) creating a chance for a decision to be made.

 

[rewebster]

Along side this---as for particles/subparticles in QM---they react ---they don't choose to react.

 

[nrqed]

Invariably the readiness potential occurred before, not after, the moment of their ''decision''. The brain begins its activity *before* you ''decide'' that you want it to. If the readiness potential occurs before your ''intention'', you are deluding yourself with your notion of free will.


The problem with this deduction is that since the clock is visible to the subject, and that the hand is visible to the subject as the hand moves toward the 'chosen spot' , --there is an anticipatory response to when to decide when the hand is at that given spot. Whether to choose to decide (free will) if and/or when the hand is getting close to that chosen spot is still part of the process of deciding to 'choose'. Intention is still a decision, whether is acted upon or not, doesn't matter---deciding is a process. The initial part of this scenario and of this total process is the thinking process to anticipate.

I see the conclusion of this experiment as flawed not realizing this.

This has bothered me too which is why I haven`t been able to see this as a proof of the absence of free will. Thinking more about this, it almost seems to me as if there would always be such a problem in any experiment involving free will testing because the subjects have to report when they took a decision. To do this, they have to be looking at a clock or anything that is moving and that can be used to assign a time to such a decision. But this necessarily (as far as I can tell) introduces a time delay of some sort which is impossible to quantify. One could always argue that there is a time delay between taking the *decision* to do something and looking at the clock so that the clock reading may be ''late''. So that the event could be

make a decision, then activate the readiness potential then record the time on the clock


Pat

 

[reilly]

Schrodinger's Dog writes:
I do think though that looking into other alternatives isn't a bad idea, after all who knows what they may find to either support or cast doubt on QM?

Quote:
Originally Posted by reilly

6. How can anyone who does not have at least a few years of experience with QM, after school, be a legitimate critic of QM?

You could ask that of most critics, where's the harm in questioning scientific mainstream even if it is misinformed(out of the mouths of babes) That which does not kill science makes it stronger.

Didn't Einstein once say I looked in the mirror for ten years and that's the only theoretical physisist I saw? Perhaps he should of stuck to the mainstream too?
>>>>>...

RA writes:
Don't forget, Einstein (and Bohr, Picasso, Charlie Parker, Wagner, and ...) was at least a bit unique. Perhaps if we could see Einstein in the mirror we might do astonishing things as well.

And, don't forget that Einstein was well educated in the physics of his time; he was a pro.

If you read a few books, Greene, Pagels or whoever, about QM you certainly know something, but not much. Further, for expository considerations, authors of lay books and articles tend to accentuate the drama of QM's peculiar characteristics. Generally these lay books tend to be sketchy at best about the empirical origins of QM, detailed knowledge of which is essential, repeat essential, to understanding QM.

Whether in the law, medicine, the arts, fine carpentry, and so on, the "just-out-of-school" youngster knows enough to be dangerous, and, all too often with the arrogance of youth, is dangerous. For Bohr and Einstein, for example, this situation led to great things. For me, and many others, this situation led to rapped knuckles and skinned knees. It takes a few years of practice to get things down. If you were busted, rightly or wrongly, for murder, would you want an old pro or Reese Witherspoon as your attorney?

Would you pilot an airplane after reading a couple of books on flying?

Would you have your next door neighbor, a superior mechanic, take your kid's tonsils out?

Suppose you are an investor, and someone approaches you with a scheme supposedly based on QM. This person want's to exploit the "fact" that an object can be in more than one place at a time. You have a kid taking high school physics, and you know a very smart attorney who reads about QM and physics quite extensively (my oldest son, for example). There's also a good physics department in town. Who do you ask for advice?

If you have not struggled with normalization of continuous spectra eigenstates, or Clebsch-Gordon coefficients, or the Stark Effect in hydrogen, or Coloumb scattering, or low-energy neutron -crystal lattice scattering, or the hyrdrogen atom according to the Dirac Eq., or ... you have at best a superficial knowledge of QM. As always, the devil is in the details.

Nothing wrong with questioning. But, in my opinion, too many keep asking the same questions, and, somehow forget to learn much. It is amazing to me that the criticisms of QM and relativity, for that matter, have not changed much in the 40+ years I've been familiar with physics. But, the main-stream during this time has quite revolutionized our view of the universe in the small and the large. (There's not a lot of hope for garage bands in physics.)


However, the role of detailed and experienced understanding in creativity is another matter. Who knows? Off hand, I can't think of a naif who's made a highly significant contribution to science. No doubt I'm wrong.

Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[selfAdjoint]

Wonderful post Reilly. And don't forget that Einstein and Bohr were both well trained scientifically by the time they started publishing. Bohr was doing a postdoc equiv with Rutherford when he developed the "old quantum theory".

 

[rewebster]

yes--nice post---ra

vanesch
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems.





Maybe timespace will tell






From post #26---I have a long hypothesis about magnetite particles in cells--what if they are ROM packets? why are there magnetite particles in there in the first place? Organized rust on plastic holds quite a bit of memory---why can't organized rust in a cell hold memory---the human brain has an immense amount of magnetite particles in those cells --and why are they there? If they do hold memory, can they be accessed by some external process?--do more (they) form as more 'experiences' occur to that individual (or cell)--[that would be a fairly easy and possible experiment] --I haven't seen anything written concerning this possibility of magnetite particles containing data---they do exist in certain cells of certain animals---why only certain cells?---wouldn't that be amazing if they did have the ability to hold memory?

Wouldn't it be fun to try to find out?

--Of course, this is all just my hypothesis.

 

[reilly]

self Adjoint and rewebster-- Thanks for your kind words.

Let's tackle the measurement problem, which, I think, applies to all the sciences, and the social sciences as well. When we make measurements on classical or quantum systems we know that we will encounter errors. That is sufficient to create a measurement problem, even if you are willing to accept a value in a 95% (or 90% or whatever) confidence interval. You cannot predict an individual measurement -- counting apples, or whatever is not relevant for our discussion. So, our classical predictions are made with real numbers; our measurements are not. That's a problem,

The fundamental issue: for measurements of variables or properties described by a single real number, why, in Nature do we obtain a single number for a measurement? Why are ensembles of measurements stable in the sense that they obey the various Laws of large Numbers? The plain fact is that, when brought to the empirical world, classical physics is probabalistic in Nature, and, hence, is subject to the vicissitudes of probability collapse.

Worse, actual classical dynamics involves retarded quantities. It's not at all clear to me how to deal with retarded systems with many particles -- initial conditions are a bear-- you can get a sense of the problems by looking at a system of two particles interacting through lagged forces, any kind that you want..

Classical ain't as nice as we sometimes think -- cf chaos and nonlinear dynamics, as well.

Regards,
Reilly Atkinson

 

[rewebster]

my first and simplest answer about measurements is knowing what you are measuring


the second is what are you using to measure with


the third is in what relation are you relating your measurements and your measuring device to


maybe the first should be--why are you measuring it in the first place?



Using a math equation on an approximation (unknown) is still a mathematical approximation--no matter how long the equation and proof

 

[koantum]

How can anyone who does not have at least a few years of experience with QM, after school, be a legitimate critic of QM?

There is a huge literature out there on deep questions about consciousness and free will, with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, information theorists, and (under "also ran") a handful of physicists.

How can anyone who lacks familiarity with a somewhat representative part of this literature—not just a set of measure zero—offer "answers" to those questions?

Again, there is a considerable professional literature discussing the philosophical issues raised by contemporary physics, including the so-called "measurement problem". The vast majority of physicists substitutes its blissful ignorance of these deep issues in the philosophy of modern physics with a naïve semiclassical hotchpotch of mutually inconsistent ideas. If you do not believe me, read this http://koantum.blogspot.com/2006/04/is-there-quantum-mechanical-world.html" (Professor of the Foundations and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences at the Institute for History and Foundations of Science, Utrecht University).

How can anyone who lacks familiarity with a somewhat representative part of this discussion offer "solutions" to those issues?

 

[reilly]

koantum -- Both you and Prof. Dieks use an old propaganda technique, sometimes called the strawman attack. Without any apparent supporting empirical evidence, you both claim that many physicists are "blissfully ignorant''; basically you both say much of the physics community is mired in bad thinking, is blessed with an erroneous conceptual background. (I've been called many things in my life, but until your suggestion, only my ex-wife has called me ignorant -- she does not like me much, I'm afraid.) If that is indeed the case, then prove it -- I'm a market and survey research professional, and would happy to evaluate your sampling scheme and survey instruments or interview protocols. Seems to me you are both saying that much of the physics community doesn't have a clue about what they are doing. I always wonder what "Divine Right of Kings" and scholastics folks thought about that horrible, inconsistent, heretical stuff propagated by Galileo, Newton -- they had the temerity to build a new world view, with considerable emphasis on empiricism.

But, being a confirmed reductionist and empiricist, I note that mainstream physics has had success after success, while at the same time those outside the mainstream -- or at the periphery -- have accomplished very little -- with the exception of Bell and the explorations of his work.

Where and how are physicists paying a price for their naive views?

Prof. Dieks seems to forget that the human mind functions with "classical " ideas and concepts -- what else can it do, with brains being wired as they are? Of course, that's the rub -- nature and our conceptual and perceptual apparatus don't entirely get along, but given time, history suggests to me that our current "paradigm" will change, and in 100 years or so, in no small measure due to the pragmatic success of QM, the standard "pragmatic Born, knowledge interpretation" will seem quite natural. History is full of such intellectual conceptual shifts -- in science, politics, art, music, and so on. Further, in my opinion, by that time neuroscientists will understand the human perceptual system well enough to have a good handle on measurements.

Just for the record, I have, in fact read a fair amount of the rump approach to QM, all of which I find less than convincing, and some I find to be wonderfully fanciful and mystical-- cf. David Deutsch and his shadow photons. I'm also somewhat familiar with the fancy mathematical approach to QM -- Mackey(my undergraduate advisor for the year I was a math major), Gleason, and my college roommate, Marc Rieffel -- they are playing a different ballgame than most physicists, but their work is, obviously, of great value.

And, in the past, I was a serious student of neuroscience, having been drawn in by my interest in neural networks -- used backprop in marketing studies with mixed success. Just as my wife is a minimalist artist, I'm a minimalist in science. And, I feel quite free to accept or reject ideas, concepts and theories according to my personal notions, which, after 68 years of life, have been, I hope, honed to a reasonable "T."

The only stuff I've read and studied about consciousness, which makes any sense to me, is hard core empirical work -- or about notions based on empirical work -- see, for example Chapter XI in Dr. Gazzaniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences, with eight papers on the subject of consciousness -- even includes work by Patricia Churchland, a philosopher. (My copy of this huge book-- 1500 pages, of which I've read about half -- is the first edition, and, I understand there is now a more up-to-date edition.) I've read the two Steves, Kosslyn and Pinker, with whom I had the good fortune to discuss some of these neuro-topics -- they were consultants to a consulting firm I helped start back in the late 1970s. (We were doing a study to try to develop an "alphabet" for visual presentations, see Visual Cognition edited by Pinker in 1986.) Pinker, in particular, is a brilliant writer, and a brilliant guy, and his books, The Langauge Instinct, and How the Mind Works are, at least in my view, challenging, solidly argued, empirically based, and highly informative. I like to think that I know a small something about minds and consciousness. I even think I might have an iota of knowledge about QM that could not be called "blissful ignorance."

And, re Dieks, where is it written that physics is something other than a highly empirical science?

Dieks writes:
What does it really mean, for example, to say that a quantum object does not possesses properties of its, own but... only acquires properties in a measurement context?...

The whole point of applied probability theory (as in sales forecasting, survey research,...), and of the knowledge interpretation of QM is to avoid such ridiculous (I apologize for using a loaded word, something I try to avoid, but when in Rome..) notions about properties existing only when measured -- seems to me that such an idea only could make sense unless and when we as physicists are backed into a corner from which we cannot escape due to the press of empirical evidence. The plain fact is simply that until you measure, you don't know. What's so hard to accept here? (Remember that the idea of reality is, among other things, just plain convenient, as is the notion of existence. I won't go so far as to say they are convenient fictions, but ...And, of course, over the years these concepts have changed -- we would have a difficult time having a conversation with, say, a 13th century cleric, whose ontology, if I might use a word that I don't fully understand, would be quite alien to us, and vice versa.

Prof. Dieks' article is one man's opinion -- he gives no supporting evidence for dissing the physics community's intellectual shortcomings-- and I could not disagree more with his exposition.

Regards,
Reilly

 

[DrChinese]

koantum: On your site, you talk about a "crisis in physics" and I don't think most would agree with your assessment. Who is to say what is in fact the optimal path to knowledge? Each takes their own path, and each asks his own questions. At some level, any physicist is curious but may express it in different ways.

reilly: I got a little confused about your comments about "properties existing only when measured ". Are you saying that your belief is such quantum properties ARE well-defined even if not measured? Or are you making no statement at all about that? (I am just trying to clarify your position a bit in my own mind.)

 

[koantum]

koantum: On your site, you talk about a "crisis in physics" and I don't think most would agree with your assessment.

Not on http://thisquantumworld.com" " by Lee Smolin (published in Update, the official magazine for Members of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan/Feb 2006). Given the name and fame of the author, I think it deserves broad exposure.

 

[koantum]

koantum -- Both you and Prof. Dieks use an old propaganda technique, sometimes called the strawman attack. Without any apparent supporting empirical evidence, you both claim that many physicists are "blissfully ignorant''; basically you both say much of the physics community is mired in bad thinking, is blessed with an erroneous conceptual background.

reilly—You evidently use the same technique. I claimed (and continue to do so, because by reading, correspondence, and conversation I have collected a mass of evidence to this effect) that "the vast majority of physicists substitutes its blissful ignorance of these deep issues in the philosophy of modern physics with a naïve semiclassical hotchpotch of mutually inconsistent ideas." You attribute to me the claim that many physicists are "blissfully ignorant''—period. This isn't quite the same, is it?

Both Dieks and myself are much more generous than you paint us. We both agree that the theoretical and/or experimental expertise of most contemporary physicists is nothing short of awe-inspiring. (I say "theoretical" rather than "mathematical" because mathematicians might disagree, given the nonchalance with which mathematically ill-defined expressions are used—with great success—by theoretical physicists. In this context I recommend "http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0603155" " by Fredenhagen, Rehren, and Seiler, to appear in: An Assessment of Current Paradigms in the Physics of Fundamental Phenomena, Springer, 2006.) The necessity to acquire this expertise leaves no time for deep philosophical reflection. Nobody therefore blames physicists for their philosophical naivety.

Again, nobody doubts that images can be of considerable help in dealing with mathematical concepts or in manipulating complicated expressions, e.g., Feynman diagrams. As far as the theoretical predictions (for comparison with experimental data) are concerned, it doesn’t even hurt if you believe something as philosophically naïve and absurd as Zee's claim that Feynman diagrams "are literally pictures of what happened." But if at the end of the day you base your worldview on the mental images that accompany your theoretical activities, then ... (well, the less said the better).

Seems to me you are both saying that much of the physics community doesn't have a clue about what they are doing.

This is pure polemic. Nobody questions their theoretical and/or experimental expertise. But consider this: In QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Feynman tells a general audience that "by explaining quantum electrodynamics to you in terms of what we are really doing [his emphasis], I hope you will be able to understand it better than do some of the students." Imagine! One of the greatest physicists of the past century believes that it is possible, in only four lectures, to make a lay audience understand quantum electrodynamics better than do some of the physics students. And we all know that this genius, who perhaps understood quantum mechanics better than anyone, thought it "safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." You get my drift? I am saying that there are many different ways of understanding. Please don’t mix them up, at least not deliberately.

But, being a confirmed reductionist

This statement alone is sufficient to demonstrate your philosophical naivety. If you applied the same scientific standards in the ideological domain, you ought to keep an open mind. The success of contemporary physics, however great and astonishing, is far from being a proof of the correctness of reductionism. In Newtonian mechanics the 3 body problem was insoluble. With general relativity the 2 and 1 body problems became insoluble. In quantum field theory the 0 body (vacuum) problem is insoluble. Nothing is already too much. It is clear therefore that even for a protein molecule it is impossible (i) to predict with sufficient accuracy and (ii) to measure with sufficient accuracy so as to be in a position to check whether its behavior is governed strictly by physical laws.

Besides, there are clear indications that subjective consciousness eludes reductionism. It is much like the little discrepancy that existed between classical theory and observations at the beginning of the 20th century. Some quotes:

"Sometimes I really regret that I did not live in those times when there was still so much that was new; to be sure enough much is yet unknown, but I do not think that it will be possible to discover anything easily nowadays that would lead us to revise our entire outlook as radically as was possible in the days when telescopes and microscopes were still new.—Heinrich Hertz as a physics student, ca. 1875

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote... Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.—Albert. A. Michelson, speech at the dedication of Ryerson Physics Lab, University of Chicago. 1894

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement"—Lord Kelvin, 1900
​

the human mind functions with "classical " ideas and concepts -- what else can it do, with brains being wired as they are? Of course, that's the rub -- nature and our conceptual and perceptual apparatus don't entirely get along, but given time, history suggests to me that our current "paradigm" will change, and in 100 years or so, in no small measure due to the pragmatic success of QM, the standard "pragmatic Born, knowledge interpretation" will seem quite natural.

I couldn't agree more with what you're saying here, except I would credit Bohr before Born, and I believe that one can go further. Probabilities are fundamental but not necessarily subjective. The central role played by probabilities in the fundamental theoretical framework of physics argues that quantum-mechanical probabilities are objective and, as such, are the quantitative expression of an objective fuzziness. Several important ontological conclusions can be drawn from this, and these (I believe) will be common knowledge by the end of the 21st century.

Here is a part of the abstract of http://cogprints.org/4480/" :

The problem of making sense of quantum mechanics (QM) is as much a psychological problem as it is a physical one. There is a conflict between the spatiotemporal structure of the quantum world (which is discussed in some detail) and the way in which the (visual aspect of) the phenomenal world is constructed by our minds (which is also discussed in some detail). Unlike the quantum world, the phenomenal world conforms to the cookie cutter paradigm (CCP)---the idea that the synchronic multiplicity of the world rests on surfaces that carve up space much as cookie cutters carve up rolled-out pastry. The attempt to model the physical world in conformity with the CCP gives rise to pseudoproblems (including most versions of the notorious measurement problem) that foil our attempts to understand the quantum world. The genuine problems arising from the fact that the fundamental theoretical framework of contemporary physics is an algorithm for calculating the probabilities of possible measurement outcomes on the basis of actual measurement outcomes, are solved not by adding physically unwarranted assumptions to the quantum formalism but by rejecting unwarranted assumptions that are all but universally made.​

Further, in my opinion, by that time neuroscientists will understand the human perceptual system well enough to have a good handle on measurements.

I beg to differ. The human perceptual system has nothing to do with the measurement problem.

Just for the record, I have, in fact read a fair amount of the rump approach to QM, all of which I find less than convincing, and some I find to be wonderfully fanciful and mystical-- cf. David Deutsch and his shadow photons. I'm also somewhat familiar with the fancy mathematical approach to QM -- Mackey(my undergraduate advisor for the year I was a math major), Gleason, and my college roommate, Marc Rieffel -- they are playing a different ballgame than most physicists, but their work is, obviously, of great value.

Complete agreement.

Just as my wife is a minimalist artist, I'm a minimalist in science.

Off the record, my wife too is an artist, though I wouldn’t call her minimalist. (You can check that out http://vishwajyoti.com" .) The way I see it, minimalism is beneficial to science, but there is much that is beyond the reach of science, and when it comes to a world view, I demand from it more than science can achieve.

I feel quite free to accept or reject ideas, concepts and theories according to my personal notions, which, after 68 years of life, have been, I hope, honed to a reasonable "T."

I believe that everybody must have this freedom. But maybe, just maybe, you are in for a surprise, just like the physicists quoted above.

re Dieks, where is it written that physics is something other than a highly empirical science?

Nowhere. But this also means that it makes no sense to base a comprehensive world view on physics alone.

The whole point of applied probability theory (as in sales forecasting, survey research,...), and of the knowledge interpretation of QUANTUM MECHANICS...

As Mermin (another crank in your opinion?) wrote: "In a non-deterministic world, probability has nothing to do with incomplete knowledge. Quantum mechanics is the first example in human experience where probabilities play an essential role even when there is nothing to be ignorant about." So please don’t give me that $%*# about sales forecasting and survey research.

... is to avoid such ridiculous... notions about properties existing only when measured—seems to me that such an idea only could make sense unless and when we as physicists are backed into a corner from which we cannot escape due to the press of empirical evidence. The plain fact is simply that until you measure, you don't know.

Is this statement intended to mislead, or are you really ignorant of the many "no-go theorems" that leave no room for any other conclusion than that (to paraphrase a famous dictum by Wheeler, no run-of-the-mill physicist either) no property or value is possessed unless it is measured (that is, unless there is an actual event or state of affairs from which it can be inferred). The average physicists' naïve and internally inconsistent world view is precisely their defense against this "ridiculous" conclusion—as ridiculous, I presume, as the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun.