On 24/11/2008, at 10:29 AM, Colin Hales wrote:
> OK. I was rowing my apparently virtual boat merrily down the stream.
> But apparently that's not interesting enough. :-)
It's more interesting when you get a barbershop quartet to sing it as
a round - then you get polyphony!
>
>
> VIRTUAL is just a word. "AS-IF" would be a good synonym. The
> physicists in question are trying to make sense of a model of
> appearances (how the world appears to them when they look). They can
> be 100% predictive (in the article now, 98% predictive) and be 100%
> not talking about what reality is made of.
Agreed - you have explained this very well in many of your other
posts. I'm not even a physicist's or a logician's or even a humble
mathematician's bootlace, so if I can understand you, that's a big
complement on the clarity of your exposition
> The reason is that they build the phenomenal consciousness of the
> scientists into all laws whilst creating a set of laws of
> appearances that entirely and permanently fail to predict phenomenal
> consicousness. A system I am entirely fed up with and choose mostly
> to resign myself to (in the sense of I give up arguing about it).
>
So here I may need some help. Aren't you some kind of latter-day
Copenhagenist in this? Or are you saying scientists introduce the
observer as if real and then fail to see his reality in the data (as
somehow affecting the data?) I know this list has been pummelling away
at this issue for years, but I was just hoping that somebody for once
may have actually damped down the dust a little - as this article
suggests. Psychologist Carl Jung got very excited in the late 50s
after he gained a rudimentary understanding of particle physics from
Wolfgang Pauli and was completely over the moon about Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle because he had always believed in his heart of
hearts that reality was God's "dream" (he was a bit of a closet
theologian as well) and was seeing in all this confirmation of the
central place in the universe of human consciousness (the "psyche" as
he and Freud called it)
He saw this as God's hand at work. Maybe this is tangential to the
point; I don't know
> Reality can be made of interacting 'somethings', where that
> 'something' has not even been uttered yet in any physics ever, and
> the results in the paper would still be as they are because all the
> scientists are doing is organising appearances.
I have absolutely no problem with that thought. Who would have even
DREAMED of Dark Matter and Dark Energy before they turned up? Your
separation of the two "systems" of thinking into the subjective world
of appearances and the phenomenal (virtual/"as-if") world strikes me
as extremely useful and simplifies a lot of the angels-on-pinheads
aspect to much of the relentless discussion going on. Once again,
we've been talking about "observer moments" for years. I imagine
there's a lot more talk still to come.
I only ask (muse?) - can't they BOTH be true (the psychical/subjective
phenomenality AND the substratum - whatever that is: numbers,
mathematical objects, a primitive physical materiality, whatever?)
Considering most people are now entertaining serious notions of higher
dimensions, parallel universes and the like - it would seem there is
room for both (dare I say) realities to co-exist (and associate via
interference phenomena?) What that could possibly mean is up to
someone with more clout than I to say
>
>
> So in terms of the use of the word 'virtual' you seem to want to
> discuss ... yes, it is 'as-if' the universe were made of <pick your
> fave from the zoo of particle/antiparticle pairs>. But the universe
> could actually be made of something completely different and they'll
> never know because they never let them consider the possibility of
> separation of "appearance" and "structure"(that creates appearances
> in humans made of the structure). So ....
But that underscores the need for something like Bruno's comp hyp,
surely. We can only BET on the higher realities. Goedel has kind of
proven that we can never prove anything about them
We are stuck on the inside of Nothing, as Russell says.
>
>
> "According to this article, the best we can do is to VIRTUALLY CONFIRM
> something. But since reality is VIRTUAL, according to this VIRTUAL
> CONFIRMATION, is not VIRTUAL CONFIRMATION equivalent, in reality, to
> CONFIRMATION?"
>
> 'Confirmation' (insofar as consistency with a model does that) of
> virtual particles as a model of appearances cannot be confused with
> a 'virtual' or 'AS-IF' confirmation.
But you are saying scientists are regularly doing just that. Hence
your ongoing frustration, yes?
> Scientists don't act 'as if' they do science. They actually do it,
> even if it's only the 'appearances' half of the pair of possible
> science models). So the above sentence conflates terms, which is why
> I thought you weren't serious.
I'm both serious and unserious. I exist in an infinitude of brain
states over this. Humour, lateral thinking and discontinuity
(provocation) often gives birth to previously hidden directions in
thinking. A well placed jocular statement can often show people the
sidetrack that leads straight to the solution that they just zipped
past in blind straight-ahead vertical thinking fashion.
>
>
> Getting back in boat, assuming merrily mode. It's as if I am rowing,
> downstream. :-)
Is there room for two in that boat, Colin?
Kim
>
>
> cheers,
> colin hales
>
>
>
> Kim Jones wrote:
>>
>> Oh, somebody will stick their head up soon and disagree. Where would
>> all the fun and games be if some rash, working scientist actually
>> confirmed something?
>>
>> Counting angels on pinheads is a very satisfying intellectual pastime
>> for some - always was, always will be...
>>
>> K
>>
>> On 24/11/2008, at 7:18 AM, Tom Caylor wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I posted a comment to this article:
>>>
>>> "According to this article, the best we can do is to VIRTUALLY
>>> CONFIRM
>>> something. But since reality is VIRTUAL, according to this VIRTUAL
>>> CONFIRMATION, is not VIRTUAL CONFIRMATION equivalent, in reality, to
>>> CONFIRMATION?"
>>>
>>> On Nov 22, 6:45 pm, Colin Hales <c.ha....domain.name.hidden>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I knew it....
>>>>
>>>> "Row row row your boat
>>>> Gently down the stream
>>>> Merrily Merrily Merrily Merrily
>>>> Life is but a dream."
>>>>
>>>> Is actually a law of nature...
>>>>
>>>> cheers
>>>>
>>>> Colin Hales
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Kim Jones wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-m
>>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> What's your definition of "reality"?
>>>>>
>>>>> It is whatever it is.
>>>>> It should be the roots of our knowledge and beliefs. It is what
>>>>> makes
>>>>> us bet on the physical realities, on the psychological
>>>>> realities, on
>>>>> the arithmetical realities and many other related realities, ...
>>>>> (Bruno
>>>>> Marchal)
>>>>>
>>>>> Email:
>>>>> kmjco....domain.name.hidden
>>>>> kimjo....domain.name.hidden
>>>>>
>>>>> Web:
>>>>> http://web.mac.com/kmjcommp/Plenitude_Music
>>>>>
>>>>> Phone:
>>>>> (612) 9389 4239 or 0431 723 001- Hide quoted text -
>>>>>
>>>> - Show quoted text -
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> >
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Received on Sun Nov 23 2008 - 20:10:57 PST