The true nature of reality.

[somejerk]

we are holograms.

[concept_]

www.renedescartes.com

[magma]

I'm going to stop stealing dr ddd's thunder by posting my Young Telegraph versions of his posts 30 seconds before he finishes his now!

i'm a she

but i guess that depends on your reality

Your electrons are still negatively charged, right?

[metalboxproducts]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYyFmllA29M

Nice to see you around here. I've been kinda missing you.

[upreal]

Or not....

this

[misk]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYyFmllA29M

Nice to see you around here. I've been kinda missing you.

tha both of ya.

[parson]

we are holograms.

we are projectors. what we experience is the holograms we've created.

[alien pimp]

we are holograms.

we are projectors. what we experience is the holograms we've created.

someone quote this and put "this!" underneath

[parson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYAlJ4dr ... re=related

[alien pimp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYAlJ4dr ... re=related

nice advocacy for dualism from some holists!

[parson]

would you plz describe the differences between dualists and holists

i'm not accustomed to describing perspectives in these terms

[alien pimp]

i think you do just fine, but nevermind it's not important
what's important is 79,5% of these quantum movies sound to me like propaganda for a new nerd religion
anytime you can't figure out something they pull out the joker card and it's done

i wait for more developments form them before i'll be sure of anything, but so far i feel like i'm watching "lost". which is not the worst thing after all

[parson]

a lot of them are trying to start a religion. anyone trying to apply dogma is suspect.

[alien pimp]

no surprise to me
the criteria of coherence was never enough for truth, therefore an idea that falls in place is not necessarily true. these guys use mostly that, that's faulty science

[parson]

but also it is not just these quantum new age weirdos saying love can reprogram your dna:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dean ... _fate.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Ornish

[alien pimp]

that i can believe. i can believe him too
what i can't believe for instance is that the observation, not the observer, is changing a particle's attitude
(consenting that observation = an intellectual process, not an intervention in the observed space)

[dr ddd]

i havent clicked on all these links as @work so am not sure if i get the point here.... but i'm trying to understand what you're saying.

do you believe that, e.g., a particle can not possibly have an associated force that acts on another?

if a particle has an interacting force that can interact with another...... the observer particle is thereby having an affect on the observed particle - but only via the carrier ("observation" style) force. Are gravity and electromagnetism just intellectual concepts? The problem is that there are entities in our surroundings that cant be touched, only observed or modelled. And these entities can also be observation mechanisms themselves. We observe electricity by how it affects charged particles, we cant see the entity electricity itself. We also use electricity to observe the particles. The fact that, at the same time, it is also affecting the particle, affects our observation. So we have to think laterally and allow or model for this behaviour. The model is always just that, a model, so it boils down to statistics, reducing uncertainty and increasing precision to a level that is nigh impossible for our brains to comprehend with natural language and concepts from our very limited spatial awareness- until the model no longer fits and we need to consider something else. The fact our natural language is limited and incapable of explaining this phenomenon is why it has become a philiosophy of maths rather than words.


along this line - actually my argument earlier was very much against the concept of a binary true/ false model... the very nature of uncertainty in measurement or observation leads to the concept of probability. A binary model hardcodes this probability into being a very simplistic 50%/50% which is just not a natural concept in our world. We can take a piece of string and measure it as being a certain length, but there's uncertainty in the measuring device which can only be fully removed to a perfect precision if the measuring device was the string itself (not even allowing for human error, is the string straight?, does it have elasticity?, etc). So actually, if the argument is that you dont like probability or dont believe in it as a model, then you remove the concept of uncertainty and say the things you observe are that of certainty. And, arguably, the only certainty that you have in this world is that the "thing" is itself. You cant' even be certain that it is not equal to something else, as it could well be.

So if you dont like probability, the only option you have is a very basic unary model (i.e. true) that something is equal to itself. Any other "false" concept would have an associated uncertainty and it's not binary anymore i'm afraid.

Take your traffic light idea, you say the traffic light is red or not. Actually the traffic light is an electrical device consisting of thousands of interations and influences that mean the the light may "not" be shining the colour red even if you believe it is. Both external and observational. You cant remove the observer from the observation of whether it is red or not.

It could be that you didnt realise what you observe as the colour red is the same as someone else, you could be wearing tinted lenses, and in fact, the truth of the matter is that the light is not red at all! In fact, the combinations of colours reflected from the light object combine to produce a red colour. In fact, red is the VERY colour the light isnt, it;s what you observe it to be.

So what can you do? You need to clarify and specifiy what saying "the traffic light is red" means- either the light emitted from the bulb is seen as red by the person looking at it, or the lightbulb is red when switched on (is the light still red if someone painted it red and switched it off?) and so on...
Given this, you take more observations, you get other observers to observe it too... you assemble your data together and compare.... until your pretty sure that the theory you had that the light was red, is accurate to say a 95% confidence level with the limited observation techniques that you had for now.

Now you can use this confidence level to predict whether or not the light will be red the next time you look at it, all you know is that the light IS red +/- some uncertainty. It may be or may not be, and all that will tell you is whether your predicition was true or false for that single observation..... now you need to take some more observations, just to be sure that the reason it was or wasnt red isn't due to the fact that the lightbulb blew in the meantime, or that the fact you saw it red last time somehow changes the way it would act this time (e.g. the cable shorted out) or some other helpful observer came along while you werent looking and painted it.... you need to rule out all random statistical fluctuations and human error, and then limit any systematic ones (like the constant inaccuracy in the measuring device used for the string).

then, and only then, - maybe you have an idea for a model of whether the light is red or not and, unless you're god and you make it so, that certainly isnt binary.

Philosophy has evolved from using a language of words to one of maths as words are fundamentally limited in describing the world around us. The argument I've said above could be boiled down to a few lines of simple maths. So, maybe maths is wrong, but it's currently less wrong than words and is pretty damn good at articulating philosophies and there's a lot less "chatter". Theoretical particle physics is just exactly that - a philosophy of where we come from and why we exist. The philosophy is done in maths and is then translated and related to people in words for them to understand - but if you have not followed the original mathematical argument and worked through it yourself, it is always going to sit uncomfortably with a listener who thinks there have been some herculean leaps of faith and assumption judging from the language translation.

This high level representative language of words can use the same ideas to justify other scientific arguments and very bizarre concepts - but this sort of pseudo-science (like pseudo code) isnt necessarily wrong or incorrect, it's a representation of an idea... but needs to be translated back to the original founding language of the philosophy (i.e. maths) and substantiated/implemented (by observation and experiment)


ps: magma: yes they are, but they've gone all supersymmetric (i've always loved the fact that someone actually named some particles "sleptons")

[magma]

ps: magma: yes they are, but they've gone all supersymmetric (i've always loved the fact that someone actually named some particles "sleptons")

Quite a post. I'll digest that all properly later.

My favourite particle name is the Gluon because they help hold the nucleus together like GLUE!

[jonnyrebel]

prime numbers.....

horizon blew my mind last night

[alien pimp]

if a particle has an interacting force that can interact with another...... the observer particle is thereby having an affect on the observed particle - but only via the carrier ("observation" style) force. Are gravity and electromagnetism just intellectual concepts?...

that's what i'm saying, observation as we conceive it today - an intellectual activity confined in our brain - is hardly suspect for changing particles behaviour.
the hypothesis that observation generates such forces that puts it in line with gravity is hardly supported by anything, but if it does it goes along my lines: we're physically interfering in the observed system

basically the trick that's played to our minds is switching from the two frames (observation as intellectual activity / physical force ) many times in the same logical construct
it's an oooold trick but still successful today
but:
if we agree observation is a force of somekind, than it's no wonder it changes behavior, it's a wonder we didn't see it before in other experiments
if we agree it's not a force, then what's changing that behavior and what proves do we have it's that, and not some other force/phenomenon we don't know about?

We also use electricity to observe the particles. The fact that, at the same time, it is also affecting the particle, affects our observation.

another logical mistake people in those docs do a lot: confusing the means and the aims
actually electricity is not used for observation, but to create observable and measurable circumstances for us!
correct observation excludes intervention! what you say about electricity is like: we observe a meeting by throwing tomatoes at participants. no! that's called "observing a meeting that's being thrown tomatoes at" and you observe it with your sensory perception and intellectual activity

"Observation is either an activity of a living being (such as a human), consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any datum collected during this activity. "

as long as observation is defined like that, the only 2 activities implied are
receiving knowledge
data collecting
so these should be the ones who might change the particle's behaviour
if so, show me the proves any of these does and nothing else, then we'll just move these activities in the "intervention" section and use them as is.

OBSERVATION EXCLUDES INTERVENTION BY DEFAULT
i hope this also brings something to most of your following ideas too

along this line - actually my argument earlier was very much against the concept of a binary true/ false model... the very nature of uncertainty in measurement or observation leads to the concept of probability.

this is like throwing a few buckets of sand in to fill holes in the superspeed highway pavement.

A binary model hardcodes this probability into being a very simplistic 50%/50% which is just not a natural concept in our world.

based on what?

So if you dont like probability, the only option you have is a very basic unary model (i.e. true) that something is equal to itself. Any other "false" concept would have an associated uncertainty and it's not binary anymore i'm afraid.

another logical failure: any measurement should be aware of an error margin, usually it is, and then we consider if that margin plays a significant role in what we try to achieve
like you do a poll: you have the usually 2-3% error margin and you take it as is
eg: 75% +/-3% of US people know better the names of the 3 stooges than the name of the 3 powers in the state. if you want to know about american awareness for state affairs and you can't use that... case closed. the margin plays no role in your decision whether you consider americans aware.
but it might play a role in deciding if they are more aware than last year, if let's say in 2008 the percentage was 70%
this is a very caricatural way to describe these, but good enough to picture the basic idea

on the other hand, there's enough data without uncertainty that you can build on, eg: how many apples i ate today
you can debate about how many grams of apple i ate, about color whatever, but not about how many! when you start debating with that you also start making that kind of videos i dislike

Take your traffic light idea, you say the traffic light is red or not. Actually the traffic light is an electrical device consisting of thousands of interations and influences that mean the the light may "not" be shining the colour red even if you believe it is. Both external and observational. You cant remove the observer from the observation of whether it is red or not.

It could be that you didnt realise what you observe as the colour red is the same as someone else, you could be wearing tinted lenses, and in fact, the truth of the matter is that the light is not red at all! In fact, the combinations of colours reflected from the light object combine to produce a red colour. In fact, red is the VERY colour the light isnt, it;s what you observe it to be.

So what can you do? You need to clarify and specifiy what saying "the traffic light is red" means- either the light emitted from the bulb is seen as red by the person looking at it, or the lightbulb is red when switched on (is the light still red if someone painted it red and switched it off?) and so on...
Given this, you take more observations, you get other observers to observe it too... you assemble your data together and compare.... until your pretty sure that the theory you had that the light was red, is accurate to say a 95% confidence level with the limited observation techniques that you had for now.

Now you can use this confidence level to predict whether or not the light will be red the next time you look at it, all you know is that the light IS red +/- some uncertainty. It may be or may not be, and all that will tell you is whether your predicition was true or false for that single observation..... now you need to take some more observations, just to be sure that the reason it was or wasnt red isn't due to the fact that the lightbulb blew in the meantime, or that the fact you saw it red last time somehow changes the way it would act this time (e.g. the cable shorted out) or some other helpful observer came along while you werent looking and painted it.... you need to rule out all random statistical fluctuations and human error, and then limit any systematic ones (like the constant inaccuracy in the measuring device used for the string).

then, and only then, - maybe you have an idea for a model of whether the light is red or not and, unless you're god and you make it so, that certainly isnt binary.

i'm sorry man, but the redlight model is a drop of godliness i'm bringing to this world for the simple reason that if you fail at it you usually die or are seriously injured.
and it explains why mistakes perpetuate: because in most of the cases you get away with the mistake. but not at the redlight!
what it is made of, all the details are 100% irrelevant
what's relevant is you are given just 2 options: cross or don't. that's dual enough, it involves an outside referral point that billions use successful and just a few millions fail, and it only says: cross or don't. if we'd had a redlight like that for each decision we make we'd be gods now.