# Does 'music' explain the universe in a unified theory (string theory)?



## JohnG (Oct 7, 2021)

from the BBC:









String theory - a simple way to understand the universe - BBC Reel


Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explains why he thinks string theory is the best way to understand how the universe works.




www.bbc.com


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## MegaPixel (Oct 7, 2021)

https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime/videos


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## bill5 (Oct 7, 2021)

I aint clickin that link, I bet I get rick-rolled


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## MegaPixel (Oct 7, 2021)

bill5 said:


> I aint clickin that link, I bet I get rick-rolled


Just search YouTube for space time, channel.


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## InLight-Tone (Oct 7, 2021)

According to the thinkers of the East, there are five different intoxications: of beauty, youth and strength; then the intoxication of wealth; the third is power, command, the power of ruling; and there is the fourth intoxication, which is the intoxication of learning, of knowledge. But all these four intoxications fade away just like stars before the sun in the presence of the intoxication of music. The reason is that it touches that deepest part of man’s being. Music reaches farther than any other impression from the external world can reach. And the beauty of music is that it is both the source of creation and the means of absorbing it. In other words, by music was the world created, and by music it is withdrawn again into the source which has created it.
_Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) Founder of the Sufi Order in the West_


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## Dirtgrain (Oct 7, 2021)

I'm a novice. Can Quantum Field Theory and String Theory both fit/both be true/complement each other?


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## bill5 (Oct 7, 2021)

I don't know. Is Sheldon available?


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## Rex282 (Oct 7, 2021)

The physical universe is “like”a virtual reality.


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## rgames (Oct 8, 2021)

Well... the problem with these kinds of explanations is that they skip over the fact that the mathematics and the physics are two different things. String theory is a mathematical *representation* of some physics but it's completely separate and distinct from the physics itself.

It's kind of like expressing an idea in English vs. German. The language is different but the idea is the same and is separate and distinct from the language used to express it.

The mathematics of string theory shares some characteristics of the mathematics that govern vibrating strings, yes, but it doesn't mean that there are actually countless vibrating strings that make up fundamental particles. If I explain the concept of supply and demand in English then the concept of the circle of fifths in English it doesn't mean they're the same thing just because I explained them both using a lot of the same English words.

Here's another way to think about it: heat and visible light are the same physics (electromagnetic radiation) but we can explain them with completely different mathematics. That's a case where different math explains the same physics whereas the above string theory example is the same math explaining different physics. But it gets better: should we be so inclined we can actually explain them using the same math, it just becomes more cumbersome.

There are even some examples where we create mathematical models that are based on physics that we know is competely wrong but gives the right answer. Aerodynamics is a good example: we can replace wings and other plane parts with "vortex lattice structures" that treat an aircraft like it's made of thousands of tiny tornados that twist the air around it. Of course, it's not. But it turns out that, mathematically, all those little tornados are doing the same thing as the actual aircraft surfaces and the math is a *lot* easier. So the physics is completely wrong but the math works out.

Math is not equal to physics.

rgames


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## Fa (Oct 8, 2021)

Well, the way we learn and get conscious, the way we communicate, the whole knowledge, the civilization, the education, the logics, with even some implication on the religion and magics, all of the human intellectual activity is based on 1 single principle: the cause and effect.

What's fascinating in music, is that despite some of the "rules" are obviously made out of "cause and effect" principles, some other things in music escape the common sense of mechanics, invading the space of unpredictable and contradictory: e.g. amazing is the sense of imperfection that makes the music human and emotional, there is a rhythm, but you don't have to follow it precisely or the music will be poor... there is a target intonation, but you don't have to reach it precisely or the music will be sterile... there is a perfect sound, but you need it a bit dirty and randomly noisy to feel it alive...

Perhaps it's what's obvious to every musician and artist, but not to all the common people: science and art are close but different.


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## ism (Oct 8, 2021)

Dirtgrain said:


> I'm a novice. Can Quantum Field Theory and String Theory both fit/both be true/complement each other?



QFT isn’t a physical theory in and of itself, it’s kind of like the underlying math. The Standard Model of current particle physics is a QFT, but a perterbative QFT, meaning that it’s full of approximation (it also predicts that the universe basically explodes at high energy unless you jump through some of the crazy hoops of the Renormalization Group).


Also, I say it’s ‘kind of’ like the underlying math, because if you ask a mathematician they’ll tell you that it contains objects that are ‘not well defined’. Which is a polite way to say that it’s not even math. 

You also have to do other crazy things to keep the universe just exploding, like temporarily pretending the universe hast infinitecimally more than 4 dimensions, and then choosing paths for your integrations that conveniently sidestep the universe exploding by ducking up into this part if you infinitesimal part of your 4 + epsilon dimensional universe so that the math works. Or should I say the ‘not math’ works. Because it does work, to a point at least. It just isn’t really math, at least so far as mathematicians can figure it.


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## JohnG (Oct 8, 2021)

rgames said:


> it doesn't mean that there are actually countless vibrating strings that make up fundamental particles.


So my string arrangement for my last rom-com is, therefore, not some analogue to the entire universe from the Big Bang until now?

Disappointing.


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## DrEntropy (Oct 8, 2021)

Dirtgrain said:


> I'm a novice. Can Quantum Field Theory and String Theory both fit/both be true/complement each other?


Quantum field theory, as others have said, is a framework for the quantum mechanics of fields (I know that sounds circular lol). The Standard Model is _a _quantum field theory that describes the universe as a set of interacting fields whose 'quanta' are the particles of which we are made. The theory is kind of a mess in that there are many (18) parameters, and it doesn't include gravity except semi-classically or as an effective field theory. Nevertheless no violations of the standard model have been observed. 

String theory is meant to be a 'simpler' theory - (good luck with that, google Calabi-Yau manifolds) where all these various particles are vibrations of loops / pieces of 'string'. The various particles fall out as different vibrational modes (notes?) of the string. The good news with string theory is that quantum gravity sort of just comes along for free! But things get complicated fast. So far no one has been able to derive (as a 'low' energy approximation) the standard model from string theory or make any testable predictions (except for the existence of supersymmetry, but this has not been verified experimentally and even if it were, supersymmetry does not *require* string theory.

Hope that helps, I am sure there are some fun you tube videos out there, but if you want to learn more I can heartily recommend the book by Briane Greene "The Elegant Universe" for a great lay persons exposition! For the standard model itself, i recommend "The theory of almost everything" by Robert Oerter who really does a fabulous job of celebrating what a smashing success the Standard Model is!


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## rgames (Oct 8, 2021)

JohnG said:


> So my string arrangement for my last rom-com is, therefore, not some analogue to the entire universe from the Big Bang until now?
> 
> Disappointing.


I can't say it's not... So feel free to keep the dream alive!


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 8, 2021)

Gotta say, I'm in the David Deutsch camp when it comes to the current (sober) understanding of String Theory:

_"I would warn against expecting the answer to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way round: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it."_

So in this sense, _theory _is still quite a strong word. Perhaps in the future, the tenets of String Theory may be falsified (or validated), but as far as I know, no one has _actually _proposed how.

Like 'AI', it's a sexy title for research-funding and news media, but the fact that nothing is on the horizon that may refute the many assumptions of String Theory makes it feel more like hype than the real thing. But we'll see .


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## DrEntropy (Oct 8, 2021)

Kyle Preston said:


> Gotta say, I'm in the David Deutsch camp when it comes to the current (sober) understanding of String Theory:
> 
> _"I would warn against expecting the answer to come from a new mathematical model. It should be the other way round: first find what you think might be the solution to a problem, then express it as a mathematical model, then test it."_


Agree 100%. David Deutsch, for people who don't know, was one of the pioneers of quantum computing, but I mostly love his stuff on quantum mechanics near closed timelike curves (i.e. quantum theory of time travel).


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## cuttime (Oct 8, 2021)

3DC said:


> The problem with our esteemed scientists like Hawking, Einstein, Kaku is that they have absolutely no clue what gravity is let alone the universe. Even today with all NASA technology and billion dollars labs they have no mathematical or physical explanation for gravity.
> 
> It is simply scientists religious belief.


I would never put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein or Hawking. In the last few years Kaku has gravitated (sic) toward pop science and damn near woo. I think he decided that since no one can really understand string theory, he would start peddling light saber sword designs. As far as gravity is concerned, I think Einstein had it absolutely right: Gravity is not a force per se, but a function of mass interacting with space, i.e., gravity is not a "pull" to be somewhere, but rather a function of where one "is" in relation to mass.


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## DrEntropy (Oct 8, 2021)

cuttime said:


> I would never put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein or Hawking.


I was just about to post the same thing. Kaku did contribute some to string field theory, but most of his 'work' has been as pop sci writer or talking head on every single science tv program.


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## cuttime (Oct 8, 2021)

DrEntropy said:


> I was just about to post the same thing. Kaku did contribute some to string field theory, but most of his 'work' has been as pop sci writer or talking head on every single science tv program.


I don't want to pile on at this point, but yeah.


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## Rex282 (Oct 8, 2021)

according to leading new physicist spacetime is doomed.Hoffman speculates the physical universe is a construct of conciousness and is not the objective truth of reality and is more like a VR world where matter are like icons and our bodies are avatars.


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## Quasar (Oct 8, 2021)

cuttime said:


> I would never put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein or Hawking. In the last few years Kaku has gravitated (sic) toward pop science and damn near woo. I think he decided that since no one can really understand string theory, he would start peddling light saber sword designs. As far as gravity is concerned, I think Einstein had it absolutely right: *Gravity is not a force per se, but a function of mass interacting with space, i.e., gravity is not a "pull" to be somewhere, but rather a function of where one "is" in relation to mass.*


Yeah pretty much. But gravity is still mysterious. Einstein took it one huge step beyond Newton, who described how gravity behaved using the inverse square without having any idea what gravity is or what causes this behavior, which he freely admitted. Einstein was able to explain how what we perceive as a gravitational "force" is a consequence of the way mass causes spacetime to bend. But physicists still have no idea why this apparent relationship between mass and spacetime exists, have no idea whether spacetime can ultimately be reduced to quanta, not to mention that the relationship between our 4D container and so-called "dark energy" (a placeholder term for an expansion observed, not at all understood but is believed to contain approximately 70% of the energy in the observable universe) remains entirely unknown.

IOW neither Newton nor Einstein were wrong about gravity as far as the consensus physics community knows, but the picture is still mostly incomplete.

I wouldn't put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohr, Dirac, Heisenberg, Planck or Boltzmann either. And though Hawking was a much more significant physicist than the popularizers like Kaku, Krause, Carroll, Tyson et al., I wouldn't quite put him up there with the all-time greats.


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## G_Erland (Oct 8, 2021)

Come on, everyone knows we stick to the earth because time runs faster down at your feet than up by your head also Richard Feynman’s name should be here - I really recommend James Gleick’s biography.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

G_Erland said:


> Come on, everyone knows we stick to the earth because time runs faster down at your feet than up by your head also Richard Feynman’s name should be here - I really recommend James Gleick’s biography.


Hahaha, time runs slower at our feet, but that's not why we don't fall off the earth unless we're in Antarctica, because it's on the bottom of the earth and everything is upside-down there anyway.

Feynman was a really smart dude, and his QED work made exceptional contributions, but he was more of the "shut up and calculate" school of QM, and didn't really focus on fundamental questions pertaining to the nature of physical reality. I really enjoyed his 1964 lecture series though. He talked a lot like Art Carney and was quite engaging.

If we're going to add someone to a physicist Hall of Fame, we need to add John Bell.


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## G_Erland (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Hahaha, time runs slower at our feet, but that's not why we don't fall off the earth unless we're in Antarctica, because it's on the bottom of the earth and everything is upside-down there anyway.
> 
> Feynman was a really smart dude, and his QED work made exceptional contributions, but he was more of the "shut up and calculate" school of QM, and didn't really focus on fundamental questions pertaining to the nature of physical reality. I really enjoyed his 1964 lecture series though. He talked a lot like Art Carney and was quite engaging.
> 
> If we're going to add someone to a physicist Hall of Fame, we need to add John Bell.


Haha, yes off course - that was what i was thinking but managed to write it upside down anyway, I always mix that stuff up somehow. I think Feynman was such an impressive, practical type - and in lieu of ever being able to understand the actual mathematics, it is interesting to read these people’s stories to understand a bit more about the context of their thinking. Cheers!

Edit: as for calculate/fundamental questions, I get the feeling that many in «this» field fall into one of two camps - and Feynman absolutely seems to have been vary of speculation, very concerned with the actual limits of models and reasonable application of particular inquiry.


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## Technostica (Oct 9, 2021)

Scientists - children sitting in a playground trying to describe what they see whilst sleeping. 

Shamans/Yogis - older children having a lot of fun playing in the playground.


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## rgames (Oct 9, 2021)

Rex282 said:


> Hoffman speculates the physical universe is a construct of conciousness and is not the objective truth of reality


That idea goes back about 100 years to the early days of quantum mechanics. It's the Copenhagen Interpreation, or the opposite of it, can't recall which. The idea is that every element of reality - a flash of light, a bat hitting a baseball - is nothing more than a collapsed wavefunction and your consciousness (whatever that is) is part of the same quantum mechanical system that collapses into a realization. So when something happens, it does so because a wavefunction collapses, and your conscious awareness of the event is part of that wavefunction and its collapse. You and your consciousness are not independent of the universe.

All that stuff about "we're all intertwined with the universe" has a lot of very famous physicists behind it.

Religion picks up where science cannot yet go.

rgames


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

rgames said:


> That idea goes back about 100 years to the early days of quantum mechanics. It's the Copenhagen Interpreation, or the opposite of it, can't recall which. The idea is that every element of reality - a flash of light, a bat hitting a baseball - is nothing more than a collapsed wavefunction and your consciousness (whatever that is) is part of the same quantum mechanical system that collapses into a realization. So when something happens, it does so because a wavefunction collapses, and your conscious awareness of the event is part of that wavefunction and its collapse. You and your consciousness are not independent of the universe.
> 
> All that stuff about "we're all intertwined with the universe" has a lot of very famous physicists behind it.
> 
> ...


I entirely agree with the notion that science is an inadequate tool for determining truth, that all it can ever do is explain the behavior of observed material phenomena. It cannot tell us who we are or why we are here. Fundamental reality is God. The physical world does not create consciousness, rather it is conscious agency that creates our sensory impression of matter.

FWIW, the Copenhagen interpretation makes no claims in this regard, only that the wave function collapses when observed, and that this imposes a limit to how we are allowed to use the word "reality" when describing nature on subatomic scales.

Most people in most times and places have not believed in a materialist ontology. The Western world in the past few hundred years has been an anomaly in this regard. This biggest myth of our age is that we're at the summit of anything at all in terms of human achievement. It's more accurate to say that we're living in a dark age, an era of ignorance, though this is hard for people to see because of the technological wizardry that inundates our world.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Yeah pretty much. But gravity is still mysterious. Einstein took it one huge step beyond Newton, who described how gravity behaved using the inverse square without having any idea what gravity is or what causes this behavior, which he freely admitted. Einstein was able to explain how what we perceive as a gravitational "force" is a consequence of the way mass causes spacetime to bend. But physicists still have no idea why this apparent relationship between mass and spacetime exists, have no idea whether spacetime can ultimately be reduced to quanta, not to mention that the relationship between our 4D container and so-called "dark energy" (a placeholder term for an expansion observed, not at all understood but is believed to contain approximately 70% of the energy in the observable universe) remains entirely unknown.
> 
> IOW neither Newton nor Einstein were wrong about gravity as far as the consensus physics community knows, but the picture is still mostly incomplete.
> 
> I wouldn't put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohr, Dirac, Heisenberg, Planck or Boltzmann either. And though Hawking was a much more significant physicist than the popularizers like Kaku, Krause, Carroll, Tyson et al., I wouldn't quite put him up there with the all-time greats.



I got pretty much every book of most people you've just mentioned here and although at one time I thought String Theory was a likely candidate for a theory of everything, seeing how it's evolved into this big ball of spaghetti and;

* the fact that String Theory is background-dependent (meaning it needs a space-time upfront, which is something that a TOE shouldn't be, if you ask me and guys like Nima Arkani-Hamed in the video above probably agrees)

* String Theory is unlikely to be true if Cosmic Inflation turns out to be false, which at the moment we think it holds up, but you know - it's still somewhat up in the air

... has left me thinking that, although it has already shown very useful, we may need to switch things up a bit again.

That's why I like this new approach by Sean Carroll (who is both a popularizer and a great physicist) and collaborators - They flip the script by asking 'We've been trying to make these classical theories quantum mechanical by turning them into quantum fields, quantizing them, but (since Nature is fundamentally quantum mechanical) what if we instead START with quantum field theory, work backwards and see if classical mechanics comes out of that?'.

Turns out that when you do that it actually works AND you get both (4D) space-time AND gravity out it for free.

Here's how that works, if anyone's interested (it's as beatiful and elegant as string theory):

Also a great intro to the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics;



Bit more technical;



So no need for 11-dimensional M-Theory, even though it is absolutely gorgeous to look at, to think about and people like Ed Witten are total geniuses.

And even if String Theory's wrong - regular old QFT is already pretty 'musical': Nature is made up of these vibrating, interacting fields, where a large enough local excitation, when you look at it, to us, looks like a particle.

Anyway, fascinating stuff.... it's another hobby. Also - good morning, btw. 



PS: now when I see Michio Kaku yapping about aliens or space elevators or whatever I always think "Jesus, dude- what a shame. You went off the rails, fast! You could've stayed in the field and done some great science, but now look at you talking out of your *ss all the time. "


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## Knomes (Oct 9, 2021)

@ism, @DrEntropy do I smell fellow physicists here?


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## G_Erland (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> I entirely agree with the notion that science is an inadequate tool for determining truth, that all it can ever do is explain the behavior of observed material phenomena. It cannot tell us who we are or why we are here. Fundamental reality is God. The physical world does not create consciousness, rather it is conscious agency that creates our sensory impression of matter.
> 
> FWIW, the Copenhagen interpretation makes no claims in this regard, only that the wave function collapses when observed, and that this imposes a limit to how we are allowed to use the word "reality" when describing nature on subatomic scales.
> 
> Most people in most times and places have not believed in a materialist ontology. The Western world in the past few hundred years has been an anomaly in this regard. This biggest myth of our age is that we're at the summit of anything at all in terms of human achievement. It's more accurate to say that we're living in a dark age, an era of ignorance, though this is hard for people to see because of the technological wizardry that inundates our world.


Do you think that there are obvious/good arguments for «mind apart from body»?


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

rgames said:


> That idea goes back about 100 years to the early days of quantum mechanics. It's the Copenhagen Interpreation, or the opposite of it, can't recall which. The idea is that every element of reality - a flash of light, a bat hitting a baseball - is nothing more than a collapsed wavefunction and your consciousness (whatever that is) is part of the same quantum mechanical system that collapses into a realization. So when something happens, it does so because a wavefunction collapses, and your conscious awareness of the event is part of that wavefunction and its collapse. You and your consciousness are not independent of the universe.
> 
> All that stuff about "we're all intertwined with the universe" has a lot of very famous physicists behind it.
> 
> ...



Physicists have spent loads of time, effort and brain power trying to model the Universe as if this collapse actually happens, but so far it's very difficult to prove that it does.
Copenhagen really just goes "and so the wavefunction collapses, because otherwise it'd be chaos and we'd end up with waaay too many universes", without explaining why.

This is why the Many Worlds interpretation is so cool, because it states that there's no such thing as wavefunction collapse. It's just the Schrodinger equation evolving in Hilbert Space and that's it. It's the most economic, austere version of QM there is at the moment. Nothing gets tacked on.

Most modern physicists, if you ask them, these days don't adhere to Copenhagen (unless convenient), but adhere to something like Many Worlds. That's the trend, at least.


Aaand now I DO sound like Carroll.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

G_Erland said:


> Do you think that there are obvious/good arguments for «mind apart from body»?


Yes. Read Bernardo Kastrup:









Bernardo Kastrup


Follow Bernardo Kastrup and explore their bibliography from Amazon.com's Bernardo Kastrup Author Page.



www.amazon.com





A good one to start with might be _Why Materialism is Baloney_. _Or The Idea of the World_ is really good, too.

Or check out any of his many, many interviews and presentations on YouTube:




He makes brilliant, elegant, intellectually rigorous arguments that point out the absurdities of the dominant materialist paradigm, absurdities that become glaringly obvious once you start thinking about it.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> I got pretty much every book of most people you've just mentioned here and although at one time I thought String Theory was a likely candidate for a theory of everything, seeing how it's evolved into this big ball of spaghetti and...


I've seen both of these Carroll videos. I sort of junked-out on him for a while, and yes, he LOVES the many worlds QM interpretation LOL. My beef with him is that he really does know his science, but he should stick to what he's good at. When he waxes philosophical he's clearly out of his element.


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## G_Erland (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Yes. Read Bernardo Kastrup:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Interesting, all unknown to me, and seemingly totally contrary to my intuitions - thanks!


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## Macrawn (Oct 9, 2021)

I like reading layman's books on the subject. 

I remember reading a book called the Tao of Physics or something that connected Eastern mysticism to physics. Every particle has a complete opposite particle and those things are coming in and out of existence all of the time but they usually instantly cancel each other like the yin and yang. 

Kinda fascinated me that things come into existence from nothingness. Like there is energy drawn from "void" in Starcraft the game and that nothingness is actually a very unstable state. 

And those folks looking for particles. Many of them were looking to sort of find them all like there was an end to that. Like you could actually find the end of it. But they will always find more and more particles if they can get more and more energy. I suppose the only fundamental is the sound of the origin - the big bang and everything else is an overtone to that.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

G_Erland said:


> Interesting, all unknown to me, and seemingly totally contrary to my intuitions - thanks!


He's great, a brilliant dutch philosopher. The conversation linked to above is very good, but there are a lot of them. Some of his interviewers, alas, talk too much, but this guy converses with Kastrup pretty well and lets him get his major points across.


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## Rex282 (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Yes. Read Bernardo Kastrup:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Bernardo is in the same school of thought as Donald Hoffman who also has a Mathematical Thereom which he delves into in his book The case against reality.


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## Macrawn (Oct 9, 2021)

I think the idea of string theory has also interested me because of a few experiences I've had. 

Anyone ever see Fantastic Fungi on Netflix? It talks about this underground network of tree roots, and fungi in a forest and that energy is moved around the forest using this "network". It has been proven that trees can send nutrients via this network to other trees outside the reach of their root system. Very fascinating. Probably the source of inspiration for the "spore" drive in the Discovery series. 

Anyway if anyone has ever had some experience with the hallucinogenic properties of certain fungi I bet you have seen "strings" that connect things together or felt how things connect together. It's always been the source of inspiration for my own art work. These are the "strings" I've seen under such conditions.


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## Argy Ottas (Oct 9, 2021)

Came here for an new library called "String Theory" by BBC (that's what I thought) 🤦‍♂️
I ended up like that:


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## AllanH (Oct 9, 2021)

JohnG said:


> So my string arrangement for my last rom-com is, therefore, not some analogue to the entire universe from the Big Bang until now?
> 
> Disappointing.


I would say, that depends on how old you are: If you're about 13.8 B years, maybe so! Please don't play it again, just in case.


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## AllanH (Oct 9, 2021)

Regarding string theory: Until string theory can make testable predictions of new physics it's "just" mathematics, not physics. IMHO.


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## bill5 (Oct 9, 2021)

Here's a quick string theory intro for those not familiar: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p09xhj2b/string-theory-a-simple-way-to-understand-the-universe


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> I've seen both of these Carroll videos. I sort of junked-out on him for a while, and yes, he LOVES the many worlds QM interpretation LOL. My beef with him is that he really does know his science, but he should stick to what he's good at. When he waxes philosophical he's clearly out of his element.



Same here, but I do think he's fantastic explainer and if you've ever been to a science talk/conference then you'll know that's actually pretty rare. Many scientists suck at storytelling. I thought I was bad sometimes during my talks or workshops..., ehr... nah.

I don't mind scientists trying to be more philosophical now and then, even if it's not really in their wheelhouse. Not if it helps them to think differently about the world, see things from another angle, or be more careful about their ideas. After all - not too long ago science and philosophy were thought of as one and the same thing. 

Same goes the other way around - philosophers can learn a lot from engaging with scientists as well. 

Also, some physicists have jumped to philosophy, because it's the only way they can do the kind of science they want to do. They end up doing exactly the work a scientist would, just under a different title. It's a case of too few opportunities, and not enough interest/funding. Want to work on figuring out all the different interpretations of QM? Forget it. That's philosophy! Why not work on Dark Matter candidates or the expansion of the Universe or something? Supersymmetry, maybe, no? 

I'd hate to see Many Worlds be ruled out, because it's so pretty, but if it turns out it's wrong, so be it. As Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park says 'when you gotta go, you gotta go.'.


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## Double Helix (Oct 9, 2021)

rgames said:


> All that stuff about "*we're all intertwined with the universe*" has a lot of very famous physicists behind it.


The "very famous physicist" Joni Mitchel sang "We are stardust. . ."


quickbrownf0x said:


> . . .This is why the *Many Worlds interpretation* is so cool, because it states that there's no such thing as wavefunction collapse. It's just the Schrodinger equation evolving in Hilbert Space and that's it. It's the most economic, austere version of QM there is at the moment. Nothing gets tacked on.


Hugh Everett's MWI was published in 1957, sixteen years after Borges published "The Garden of Forking Paths," in which the conversation between YuTsun and Dr. Stephen Albert exactly predicted it. (btw, I agree with Everett)
____________________________________________

In _The World as Representation and Will_ Schopenhauer speaks of music as "pure will" (qtd by Sacks, in _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_, p.21).


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

AllanH said:


> Regarding string theory: Until string theory can make testable predictions of new physics it's "just" mathematics, not physics. IMHO.


It actually can and does, really. String Theory at first came out of efforts to describe one of the four fundamental forces in Nature; the Strong Force. Its predications are extremely precise. It's used loads in nuclear and particle physics and studying more 'mundane' things like our Sun.

It also, for example, gives you the answer to Hawking's black hole theorem; why the entropy of a black hole is related to the size of its area, instead of its volume AND gives you all possible corrections to it, no matter the size.

There are a bunch of others, but even if String Theory ultimately isn't 'true', it still has value up until some cut-off and you can look at it as just another tool in your toolbox.

BTW; if Many Worlds is true, I'd like to think that in another parallel universe I've actually managed to get this 18-minute cue done and posted on this forum, already.


----------



## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Double Helix said:


> The "very famous physicist" Joni Mitchel sang "We are stardust. . ."
> 
> Hugh Everett's MWI was published in 1957, sixteen years after Borges published "The Garden of Forking Paths," in which the conversation between YuTsun and Dr. Stephen Albert exactly predicted it. (btw, I agree with Everett)
> ____________________________________________
> ...


Fun fact - I just orded my new DAW rig and I've named her 'Everett'. 
I'm such a nerd, I've named all my machines after famous scientists; Maxwell (current DAW), Darwin, Kelvin, Hawking and now Everett. Maxwell is destined to be another VEPro slave.

I wonder how well Cubase would run on a quantum computer, btw.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Dirtgrain said:


> I'm a novice. Can Quantum Field Theory and String Theory both fit/both be true/complement each other?



Short answer; YES (up to a point).


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## AllanH (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> It actually can and does, really. String Theory at first came out of efforts to describe one of the four fundamental forces in Nature; the Strong Force. Its predications are extremely precise. It's used loads in nuclear and particle physics and studying more 'mundane' things like our Sun.
> 
> It also, for example, gives you the answer to Hawking's black hole theorem; why the entropy of a black hole is related to the size of its area, instead of its volume AND gives you all possible corrections to it, no matter the size.
> 
> ...


I find string theory intuitively appealing, even though I do not really understand the math. But the basic idea is simple and elegant, and that is always a good place to start.

I am aware that super string theory was used to derive the Beckenstin-Hawking formula for some types of black holes, but I did not realize that it had been experimentally verified. That seems like big news, so I'll have to see if I can find a reference for that.


----------



## Macrawn (Oct 9, 2021)

Thanks for the links to the Bernado Kastrup stuff. Very interesting. I wish I'd come across that years ago. 

It reminds me a little of a book called The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks. He's a neurologist and he talks about some of the cases he had. The book isn't related but it does talk about perception and how hat we see is not necessarily the actual physical picture of what we see but in how the brain processes that picture. What we actually see is a construct of what is actually there. 

In one of the essays he had a man who has some kind of problem in his brain and it affected his perception. He was leaving the office and instead of grabbing his hat on a hook he grabbed his wife's head who was sitting in a chair in the area of the hat. He had lost some of the contextual processing that allows us to identify objects. Both objects were round and similar in color and he couldn't tell the difference. So much of what we see is based on context that we have learned over a long period of time. 

There is also another case of an artist who drew realistic pictures and had some kind of disorder that got worse over a long period of time and when they examined his paintings over the years coinciding with the degradation the paintings became increasingly abstract until they were entirely abstract in nature. 

It makes me wonder if we could erase all of this perceptual context we have learned and then take a look at the world around us how would it appear?


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

AllanH said:


> I find string theory intuitively appealing, even though I do not really understand the math. But the basic idea is simple and elegant, and that is always a good place to start.
> 
> I am aware that super string theory was used to derive the Beckenstin-Hawking formula for some types of black holes, but I did not realize that it had been experimentally verified. That seems like big news, so I'll have to see if I can find a reference for that.



Oh, sorry. I'm saying that string theory can make solid, testable predictions that correspond with BH entropy. Not sure about actual physical experiments when it comes to this topic, though. It's been a while since I last checked. I've got guitars to record and an infinite amount of shoes to buy for my wife.

Some references;
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Bekenstein-Hawking_entropy
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP10(2019)062
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0370269396003450
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/black+holes+in+string+theory
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Bekenstein-Hawking+entropy
https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9604051


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## DrEntropy (Oct 9, 2021)

Knomes said:


> @ism, @DrEntropy do I smell fellow physicists here?


Indeed! I got my PhD (experimental AMO physics) and did some post doc work but jumped ship into "industry". Still love learn a bit more physics here and there though


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

DrEntropy said:


> Indeed! I got my PhD (experimental AMO physics) and did some post doc work but jumped ship into "industry". Still love learn a bit more physics here and there though


Man, I envy you. At one point I actually thought about doing the exact opposite - even managed to get back into uni (theoretical/high-energy physics), then decided I just didn't want to spend another 4+ years in school benches and called it quits. So now it's just another hobby. Had I gone through with it, who knows - I'd be tinkering away at ATLAS underneath a big meadow in Switzerland right now. Swapping Boltzmann-brain jokes.


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## wst3 (Oct 9, 2021)

3DC said:


> The problem with our esteemed scientists like Hawking, Einstein, Kaku is that they have absolutely no clue what gravity is let alone the universe. Even today with all NASA technology and billion dollars labs they have no mathematical or physical explanation for gravity.
> 
> It is simply scientists religious belief.


Can't like this enough!

Although calling it a religious belief might inflame some?

With the current climate (pun intended) of distrust towards all things scientific (climate change, the pandemic, vaccinations, etc) it is sometimes sobering to remember that we've been trying to understand gravity for hundreds of years, and all we have so far is an equation that predicts (quite accurately I might add) the effect of gravity.

It is wise to listen to scientists and other experts. It is equally wise to be at least a tiny bit skeptical.

I studied physics in college (a long time ago, not before Quantum Theory, but a lot longer than I'd like to admit!) I use some tiny bit of what I learned to study acoustics, and an even smaller bit to study electronics. I am by no means a physicist except by degree (and that'd dubious).

I've read quite a few popular or lay person books on various topics pertaining to mathematics and physics, largely because I can barely get through some of the simpler academic papers. Some of these books have been eye opening, and helpful, some are entertaining, some are both, and some are neither. The trick for us mere mortals is to figure out which is what!

For a frame of reference I believe that we are undergoing a change in the climate, I do not believe that it is global warming, and I do not believe that any of our models or theories accurately predict what comes next. It is wise, I think, however, that regardless how this turns out it makes sense to take better care of the earth!

Put in another context, I don't believe that machines will ever be able to think, at least not in the same sense that humans do. I do believe, strongly, that there are hundreds of tasks for which machines and computers are better suited, and some of these almost seem like AI, but they aren't

Anyway, my two cents...


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 9, 2021)

3DC said:


> A man in sync with the universe can hear music and visualize everything. A man in sync with math, physics and science is limited and blind.


The reality isn't this binary. As an anecdote, I worked in physics for years and nearly every PHD I met was just as interested in music and culture as they were math and physics. I imagine because they understood:

_“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
- Einstein_


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Kyle Preston said:


> The reality isn't this binary. As an anecdote, I worked in physics for years and nearly every PHD I met was just as interested in music and culture as they were math and physics. I imagine because they understood:
> 
> _“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
> - Einstein_


Not to mention that there's beauty and wonder in discovering how the world really works. 
But leave it to Feynman to explain that a lot better than I can;


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## JohnG (Oct 9, 2021)

AllanH said:


> Regarding string theory: Until string theory can make testable predictions of new physics it's "just" mathematics, not physics. IMHO.


That’s exactly what my son said. He’s studying physics at university.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

JohnG said:


> That’s exactly what my son said. He’s studying physics at university.


.....hold my beer....


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> I don't mind scientists trying to be more philosophical now and then, even if it's not really in their wheelhouse. Not if it helps them to think differently about the world, see things from another angle, or be more careful about their ideas. After all - not too long ago science and philosophy were thought of as one and the same thing.


As people, of course, we are all entitled to philosophize. My problem is when these physics communicators conflate their scientific expertise with philosophical insight (as though one naturally follows from the other) and express it authoritatively, as Tyson did _ad nauseum_ in the PBS Cosmos series. They too often make sweeping philosophical or even theological assertions without realizing or acknowledging that they're doing so.

...One obvious and illustrative example of this is the Hawking quote:

_"Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics."_

This is a clear self-contradiction, because the assertion "philosophy is dead" is itself a philosophical statement, not a scientific one. And the fact that it refutes itself only makes it bad philosophy.

Science can inform us how nature appears to behave; it cannot ever, even in principle, tell us what nature _is_. You cannot draw an ontological truth from an empirical observation without begging the question, assuming the validity of your conclusion as the means by which to prove it. IOW, the scientific method can never prove that the scientific method is a valid epistemological tool for determining absolute reality, because it has to assume, a priori, the validity of the scientific method to do this.

Sean Carroll is a bright guy, but thinking that his knowledge of particle physics gives him a special insight into fundamental truth is akin to thinking that a gunsmith has a special insight regarding if, when and how guns should be regulated or not regulated in society. Conferring wisdom on those who merely possess information is IMO a very dangerous and socially damaging trend.


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## ryans (Oct 9, 2021)

3DC said:


> The problem with our esteemed scientists like Hawking, Einstein, Kaku is that they have absolutely no clue what gravity is let alone the universe. Even today with all NASA technology and billion dollars labs they have no mathematical or physical explanation for gravity.
> 
> It is simply scientists religious belief.



No one has any idea what anything is. It's all theories.

Theories based on observable evidence, I think the word belief isn't appropriate.

I have to ask what's your problem with the method of making observations and using evidence and trying to form conclusions. I mean, what's the alternative? Just saying god did it?

I'm no scientist (sadly, way, waaaay too stupid) but I get the impression to be one you have to be comfortable with the realm of the unknown (as it can only expand the further you explore many fields in science especially physics, astronomy, etc.)


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

rgames said:


> Well... the problem with these kinds of explanations is that they skip over the fact that the mathematics and the physics are two different things. String theory is a mathematical *representation* of some physics but it's completely separate and distinct from the physics itself.



snip


rgames said:


> Math is not equal to physics.


Whether mathematics is invented or discovered is subject to much debate. As you know (but not everyone does), black holes, antimatter, and the Higgs boson are just three examples of things that were predicted by mathematics and later confirmed to be real.

I don't expect everyone to sit through a long video, but I found this really fascinating:





3DC said:


> The problem with our esteemed scientists like Hawking, Einstein, Kaku is that they have absolutely no clue what gravity is let alone the universe. Even today with all NASA technology and billion dollars labs they have no mathematical or physical explanation for gravity.
> 
> It is simply scientists religious belief.


Very wrong in many ways. I don't mean to be rude, but seriously - what you're saying is perfectly ludicrous and insulting to a lot of brilliant scientists.

We don't know what space is either. Does that make what we do know religious belief?

Of course not. Really, you have to learn something about a subject to have a useful opinion about it.



cuttime said:


> I would never put Kaku in the ranks with Einstein or Hawking. In the last few years Kaku has gravitated (sic) toward pop science and damn near woo. I think he decided that since no one can really understand string theory, he would start peddling light saber sword designs. As far as gravity is concerned, I think Einstein had it absolutely right: Gravity is not a force per se, but a function of mass interacting with space, i.e., gravity is not a "pull" to be somewhere, but rather a function of where one "is" in relation to mass.


Woo?! Kaku is really good at explaining complicated concepts, some of which look far, far into the future. That is not woo.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

DrEntropy said:


> I was just about to post the same thing. Kaku did contribute some to string field theory, but most of his 'work' has been as pop sci writer or talking head on every single science tv program.



This is a man who has accomplished more than most of us will scratch the surface of in our lifetimes.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

JohnG said:


> That’s exactly what my son said. He’s studying physics at university.


And if you listen to any of the leading physicists who work with string theory, they'll say things along those lines. For example, Leonard Susskind says it provides a framework for studying... I forget how he puts it exactly, but string theory isn't something physicists sell like used cars!

They all get its limitations and possibilities inside out.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Sean Carroll is a bright guy, but thinking that his knowledge of particle physics gives him a special insight into fundamental truth is akin to thinking that a gunsmith has a special insight regarding if, when and how guns should be regulated or not regulated in society. Conferring wisdom on those who merely possess information is IMO a very dangerous and socially damaging trend.


The problem is that he's *way* ahead of this comment.


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 9, 2021)

3DC said:


> As you know in music note frequency exponentially doubles over the course of a full octave. So the middle note is still closer to the first note then to last note.
> 
> To put this into perspective our smartest scientists in the world are literally close to stupid compared to knowledge needed to understand the universe. These theories they make are like ants would theorize about quantum physics.



You're describing logarithms, used extensively in Astrophysics and Acoustics (they make large numbers manageable). So I can't say I agree with your analogy - you're basically saying _scientists are stupid because the universe is a logarithm. _



3DC said:


> Not only that but ants that actually believe they got it all figured out


Name one working scientist that believes we have it "all figured out". I think you see ego where there is none.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> As people, of course, we are all entitled to philosophize. My problem is when these physics communicators conflate their scientific expertise with philosophical insight (as though one naturally follows from the other) and express it authoritatively, as Tyson did _ad nauseum_ in the PBS Cosmos series. They too often make sweeping philosophical or even theological assertions without realizing or acknowledging that they're doing so.
> 
> ...One obvious and illustrative example of this is the Hawking quote:
> 
> ...


Yeah, I can see how you could make that argument. But then - as you can see, even really smart people can say some really dumb things. Scientist or no.

I liked Cosmos, but (without sounding like an *sshole) I don't think I was the target audience. It's sometimes too watered down for me, not in the least because the only 'real' way of learning all the details and nuances is to probably work your way through the maths. Which iss doable, but not very exciting to watch. There'd be a serious lack of lens flares and warp drives. I'm just happy that the general audience got small sense of how the world seems to work, to see how beautiful the whole thing is. So all-in-all I think they did a good job. Even though Tyson can get on my nerves sometimes - that dude is a complete 'overtalker'.

As for the point on Carroll and science not being able to anwer the WHYs and OUGHTs....

<Sam Harris just entered the chat> 

(I'm still on the fence with this point. It's an interesting topic, is all I can say).


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

3DC said:


> To put this into perspective our smartest scientists in the world are literally close to stupid compared to knowledge needed to understand the universe. These theories they make are like ants would theorize about quantum physics. Not only that but ants that actually believe they got it all figured out.
> 
> Tesla was smart enough to only think about the universe. He would never dare to put a stupid formula on something so huge an powerful as the universe yet most scientist are trying to do just that. They are actually trying to put themselves on par with "The Force" that created the whole universe in the first place.



So E=MC^2, the Shrödinger equation, quantum mechanics... those are all stupid formulas?

And of course Einstein's wife came up with all his 1905 theories.

Seriously, if I had a sense of humor this would all be funny.

I'm sorry to get so frustrated, but I've been reading about this crazy stuff for years, I devour populist physics podcasts and videos... and I don't know nearly enough to be dangerous. But I do know enough not to make dismissive comments about the whole field.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> The problem is that he's *way* ahead of this comment.


No, the problem is that he's adopted science as a religion, using the physics to push a particular brand of materialist metaphysics. He confidently asserts that God is a superstitious fallacy, that there is no free will etc., and he asserts this nonsense as a scientific authority on those subjects.

As a person, of course, he has every right to believe and publicly express whatever he likes. If he's an atheist, hooray for him. Whatever. My argument with him is that he misuses the science to lend authority to areas of inquiry that lie entirely outside the scope of what legitimate empirical investigation can do.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> No, the problem is that he's adopted science as a religion, using the physics to push a particular brand of materialist metaphysics. He confidently asserts that God is a superstitious fallacy, that there is no free will etc., and he asserts this nonsense as a scientific authority on those subjects.
> 
> As a person, of course, he has every right to believe and publicly express whatever he likes. If he's an atheist, hooray for him. Whatever. My argument with him is that he misuses the science to lend authority to areas of inquiry that lie entirely outside the scope of what legitimate empirical investigation can do.


Not quite what he says.

For example, he says "god" is a bad theory. He doesn't say it's bad philosophy, he says it's groundless science.

It is.


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 9, 2021)

You _might _be interested in ToKCast @Nick Batzdorf . It's mostly just one guy talking about the book _The Beginning of Infinity_ by David Deutsch, which sounds boring but really isn't. 

I left physics awhile ago but this book and his podcast have really re-ignited the fire of science in me again. Deutsch's philosophy of _good explanations _has given me a more rationally-optimistic view of the future than I thought I'd ever have.


----------



## cuttime (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Woo?! Kaku is really good at explaining complicated concepts, some of which look far, far into the future. That is not woo.


----------



## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Not quite what he says.
> 
> For example, he says "god" is a bad theory. He doesn't say it's bad philosophy, he says it's groundless science.
> 
> It is.


Let me share a few Carroll quotes with you:

_*“We are part of the universe that has developed a remarkable ability: We can hold an image of the world in our minds. We are matter contemplating itself.” *_

This assertion that we are matter is not a scientific statement, but a metaphysical opinion that science is not competent to address.

*“One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe.” *

Here he quite overtly states his belief that scientific success is in direct conflict with a faith in God. This belief is itself faith-based, not evidence-based, and goes way beyond his "God is not a good theory" rap. 

FWIW, I agree that "God is not a good theory" in the narrow sense that it is not necessarily useful to have an idea of the Divine in your head when performing an empirical investigation. I don't need to be theorizing about God when driving a nail with a hammer, but am probably better served by focusing on the hammering and not hitting my thumb. If this were all Carroll was saying I would have no quibble, but it's not. He's actively proffering an aethistic, physicalist metaphysical worldview and misusing the science to justify it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

cuttime said:


>



That has exactly nothing to do with woo, if that's what you're saying.

Every last word he says makes total sense and is grounded in science.

Also, that interview is very brief and he doesn't get to go into detail. I like Colbert, but he shouldn't be interviewing people who are worth listening to. He just interrupts to try and be funny - as he often is, but in this case it's swinging and missing.

His interview with Leon Botstein, president of Bard College (where my daughter went) was the same. Comedy doesn't work when the "interviewer" keeps interrupting a serious person with something to say.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Let me share a few Carroll quotes with you:


Sorry, I agree with him and disagree with you that he's misusing science.

But I'm not religious, and I understand why someone who is wouldn't like what he says.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> snip
> 
> Whether mathematics is invented or discovered is subject to much debate. As you know (but not everyone does), black holes, antimatter, and the Higgs boson are just three examples of things that were predicted by mathematics and later confirmed to be real.
> 
> ...




I think if you'd ask scientists at the end of the 19th century whether we had any idea about how gravity, or any of the other fundamental forces worked, they'd give you a completely different answer that they would today.

Because since then, we've actually learned ALOT. In fact, we've learned so much that we can describe and predict pretty much any day-to-day physical phenomena to incredible accuracy, thanks to our Standard Model. It's only in extreme situations where things break down, like at the beginning of the universe, or inside or near a black hole, or at the tiniest of scales where particles become so insanely 'heavy' they can only exist for like a 16th-thousand-billion-billions of a second (and much shorter), after it decays into other ones.

So this low-medium range regime (of trees, tables and chairs, people and so on) is totally understood. The underlying physics, that is. No new particles around the corner here. We've looked, very very hard. Nothing. If there _is_ anything, it's either way too light and loosely coupled or way too massive and therefore can't exist for long to have any effect on us at all. In that sense - it's bad news for things like ghosts and so on.

I'm not saying that there aren't any mysteries left to solve. I'm saying that if we're going to solve them, on some fundamental level - our Standard Model or Core Theory (whichever name you prefer) is going to be part of that solution. Here's the entire thing;







Pretty cool, huh?

So we also know a lot about gravity and space-time, even though there's still debate on how those ultimately fit together with QFT. General Relativity is amazingly powerful tool. Doesn't matter if it breaks down near some crazy UV cut-off - it works everywhere else (it can even play nice with QFT - no joke). That just means it's probably not fundamental and that we need to do some more digging. And science has plenty of ideas.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> I'm not saying that there aren't any mysteries left to solve. I'm saying that if we're going to solve them, on some fundamental level - our Standard Model or Core Theory (whichever name you prefer) is going to be part of that solution.


Exactly. There has never and will never be an experiment showing it (or relativity) wrong, any more than Newton was "wrong." It's already well known that there's more going on, and that's why physics isn't over.


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Sorry, I agree with him and disagree with you that he's misusing science.
> 
> But I'm not religious, and I understand why someone who is wouldn't like what he says.


This is completely irrelevant to your last point. It's not about "being religious" and therefore "disliking" someone else's point of view. I am not emotionally distraught, offended or outraged because he says things I don't agree with.

Your claim was that Carroll is only saying that theoretical conceptions of God are not useful in the conduct of science. When I demonstrated via his own words that this is not true, but that he is using science to make specific metaphysical claims, you then say you still don't think he's misusing science. Huh?

Regardless of one's personal worldview or belief system, either it is valid to use the physical sciences to make metaphysical claims or it is not. Simple like that. And if it is valid, where is the peer-reviewed scientific evidence for the metaphysical claims being made?


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## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> <Sam Harris just entered the chat>


Don't even get me started about him...


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 9, 2021)

If you weren't religious you wouldn't have a problem with him dismissing religion because it conflicts with science. I do too (dismiss it).

By the way, on the surface his many worlds theory seems implausible. But I don't really understand it in depth, so maybe I'm battling a straw man. The universe splitter thing, though... something has to be wrong.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Don't even get me started about him...


I made you chuckle, though - didn't I?


----------



## Quasar (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If you weren't religious you wouldn't have a problem with him dismissing religion because it conflicts with science. I do too (dismiss it).
> 
> By the way, on the surface his many worlds theory seems implausible. But I don't really understand it in depth, so maybe I'm battling a straw man. The universe splitter thing, though... something has to be wrong.


Your first point isn't true. But okay, dismissed.

Of all the two dozen or more attempts to account for the wave/particle duality and the double-slit paradox, MWI is arguably the most parsimonious, and I could see why materialists might subscribe to it. That it may seem implausible is likely the result of our human (animal) nature in which "more" and "bigger" requires more work. It's harder to build a skyscraper than a barn, for instance.

But in the vast, quite possibly infinite universe, it isn't necessarily "harder" to have an infinite number of infinite universes than anything else we might imagine, and saying that each super-positional possibility is equally real avoids the paradox by simply saying that everything that can happen does happen. Nothing collapses when we make an observation, rather we just happen to be in a world where the wave is found at one particular location instead of another.

Personally, I think MWI is bat shit crazy, but that's because I don't grant the primacy of matter, not because I think it's worse than any of the other popular materialist explanations. My own guess is that wave/particle duality and Heisenberg uncertainty indicate something like the end of the road for what we are allowed to observe (which is more Copenhagen), akin to how if you examine a digital image closely enough, eventually you get to the individual pixels, after which there is a sort of barrier that keeps you from describing the image more microscopically than that.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> If you weren't religious you wouldn't have a problem with him dismissing religion because it conflicts with science. I do too (dismiss it).
> 
> By the way, on the surface his many worlds theory seems implausible. But I don't really understand it in depth, so maybe I'm battling a straw man. The universe splitter thing, though... something has to be wrong.


It's really not that complicated. It's just regular quantum mechanics, but taken seriously and at face value. The world is quantum mechanical. There's the Schrodinger equation. You run it. The Universe's wavefunction naturally branches into a whole bunch (possibly an infinite number) of configurations/states, ie 'parallel worlds'. These worlds can't interact with each other once they split.

Space-time (so both space _and_ time) and things like locality (where stuff has an 'address', relative to everything else) are unlikely to be fundamental. They emerge out of QM as a by-product of (possibly) quantum entanglement. You end up with this soapy, bubbly-looking foam, if you zoom out far enough. And that's it.

All the other interpretations do a lot of fancy stuff to make all these parallel worlds go away, because 'we can't see them'/'it's too many universes!'. But Nature doesn't share those concerns per sé, so if we're happy to think of at least 10^500 vacuum states as a possibility in the string theory landscape, why not here? It's a big number - so what? 
There's plenty of room in The Hilbert Hotel.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 9, 2021)

Quasar said:


> Your first point isn't true. But okay, dismissed.
> 
> Of all the two dozen or more attempts to account for the wave/particle duality and the double-slit paradox, MWI is arguably the most parsimonious, and I could see why materialists might subscribe to it. That it may seem implausible is likely the result of our human (animal) nature in which "more" and "bigger" requires more work. It's harder to build a skyscraper than a barn, for instance.
> 
> ...



Again, I see what you're trying to say. I think it's important for folks like myself to keep an open mind and to update my assumptions and models if new evidence comes along. And unless you have some other method, I think that's probably the 'best' attitude to have, right?

In the end, I don't care about MWI. I care about getting as close as possible to a decent description of how the world works or at least seems to work. I mean, that would be nice. If it turns out to be unicorns farting rainbows, or Ceiling Cat sneezing - fine, too.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy pottering around in my little studio, moving faders and not worrying about the inner workings of QED when I add a nice little smooth curve to my CC1 controller lane. 

And don't forget:


----------



## DrEntropy (Oct 9, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> There's plenty of room in The Hilbert Hotel.


Ha! Very poetic! 


quickbrownf0x said:


> It's really not that complicated. It's just regular quantum mechanics, but taken seriously and at face value.


But yeah, this economy of ideas is why I have been a "Many worlder" ever since I first read Everett's paper.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

At quantum scales there’s very little time (because there’s very little space), and my brain says that the key to wave/particle duality is related to that.


----------



## quickbrownf0x (Oct 10, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> At quantum scales there’s very little time (because there’s very little space), and my brain says that the key to wave/particle duality is related to that.


Sure, but wave/particle duality hasn't been much of a mystery for a while now and is clearly described by QFT: in the end, it's all about quantum fields. They're the fundamental thing. You hit one of these field with enough energy you create local 'ripples'. This excitation is what we perceive as a particle (when you look at it), where for a moment we see it being in one narrow spot. When we stop looking at it, it(s wavefunction) really is spread out across the entire field. So you lose any sense of 'where' it's located. And that's what you see if you do things like double-slit experiments.

So at that point, the best you can do is calculate probabilities (which we're extremely good at, btw). This isn't because we don't understand QFT or QM well enough or because of some spooky supernatural thing. It's because it's a fundamental rule of Nature. It's a simple case of mathematical cause->effect, really. That may sound hand-wavey, but if you'd look at the mathematics you'd probably go 'Ah, right. so _that's_ why there's no other way.).


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> It's really not that complicated. It's just regular quantum mechanics, but taken seriously and at face value. The world is quantum mechanical. There's the Schrodinger equation. You run it. The Universe's wavefunction naturally branches into a whole bunch (possibly an infinite number) of configurations/states, ie 'parallel worlds'. These worlds can't interact with each other once they split.
> 
> Space-time (so both space _and_ time) and things like locality (where stuff has an 'address', relative to everything else) are unlikely to be fundamental. They emerge out of QM as a by-product of (possibly) quantum entanglement. You end up with this soapy, bubbly-looking foam, if you zoom out far enough. And that's it.
> 
> ...



Sure, but if you do the same with Newton’s theories, you get an entirely false picture of a cosmology of ‘absolute space’. 

And it seems to me there’s absolutely no reason to think that QM or QFT, never mind the really fun, yet wildly speculative and as yet wildly unempirical mathematics of string theory or LQG are any less naieve compared to what comes next than Newton was. (The scale of structure of Loop Quantum Gravity might even be as microscopy wrt String Theory as QM is to newtonian Mechanism. The net product of all physics thus far accessible to the human world is a tiny fraction of the phase space of the universe. )

So sure, many worlds is parsimonious vis-a-vis the algebraic syntax of QM (and our ontology-biased set-theoretical intuitions encoded in the foundations of mathematics (pre-category theory, and its alternative foundations)).

But it’s a huge leap to say that we understand this. Or rather, to say that we ‘understand’ a QFT is really to say we understand the syntax, and have empirical correlations to its calculus. Which is no small thing. But to say that we ‘understand’ it on any kind of human-cosmological level is something else.

Unless of course you’re a very hard core positivist. Which is perhaps also a part of the problem in that a particular configuration of early 20th century positivism is baked very deeply into the formalism of QM (notably Hilbert) and it’s dominant interpretations (notably Bohr). 

Anyway, Many Worlds is my interpretation of QM, because it’s the most fun.


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## rgames (Oct 10, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> dismissing religion because it conflicts with science


There are plenty of scientists who don't believe that religion and science are in conflict.

It's pretty easy to argue that science is, in fact, a religion.

To wit: when the world's scientists enter into their places of work every day they are doing so under the belief that there is some underlying order that they can figure out. What is the rational basis for this belief? There isn't one. It's a belief, pure and simple. Is that not religion?

People think science and religion are in conflict because science is in conflict with *some* elements of *some* religions. But that's not a valid justification because science is often in conflict with itself! So if the measure of rational thinking is whether science is *not* in conflict with it then that leads to the paradox where science invalidates itself. Oy.

Newton's laws were fact for centuries until Einstein came along. Science invalidated itself and moved on. Furthermroe, Einstein didn't *know* he was right, he *believed* he was right. And he was. But that shift in science didn't start with a fact, it started with a belief. Again, is belief not the basis of religion?

Now it's certainly true that there are elements of some religious beliefs that are clearly in violation of scientific principles. It's *really* hard to argue that the Earth is 6000 years old (or whatever...) or it's turtles all the way down. But creation and the nature of the universe as a whole? Or the best way to interact with our fellow human beings? Science doesn't have solid explanations there but no shortage of beliefs.

Science and religion absolutely can coexist. Religion fills the gaps that science hasn't yet addressed.

The fact that they conflict is not justification to dismiss one or the other. Ultimately you make a personal decision regarding which one you choose to adhere to.

Dare I say, that choice seems a lot like religion.

rgames


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> Sure, but if you do the same with Newton’s theories, you get an entirely false picture of a cosmology of ‘absolute space’.
> 
> And it seems to me there’s absolutely no reason to think that QM or QFT, never mind the really fun, yet wildly speculative and as yet wildly unempirical mathematics of string theory or LQG are any less naieve compared to what comes next than Newton was. (The scale of structure of Loop Quantum Gravity might even be as microscopy wrt String Theory as QM is to newtonian Mechanism. The net product of all physics thus far accessible to the human world is a tiny fraction of the phase space of the universe. )
> 
> ...


You know, that's actually a good and fair point and I probably should've been more careful there, when I used the word 'understood'. Told you I'm not always the best explainer. Cheers.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

rgames said:


> Dare I say, that choice seems a lot like religion


This is just one of those things that can't be argued but that I couldn't disagree with more.

Well, you can argue it, but there's no way to "win" the debate, since all we have to debate with is words. 



rgames said:


> Newton's laws were fact for centuries until Einstein came along


Just a semantic point: Newton is still "right," it's just that Einstein peeled off another layer of the onion. The same will apply to GR.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> It's really not that complicated. It's just regular quantum mechanics, but taken seriously and at face value. The world is quantum mechanical. There's the Schrodinger equation. You run it. The Universe's wavefunction naturally branches into a whole bunch (possibly an infinite number) of configurations/states, ie 'parallel worlds'. These worlds can't interact with each other once they split.
> 
> Space-time (so both space _and_ time) and things like locality (where stuff has an 'address', relative to everything else) are unlikely to be fundamental. They emerge out of QM as a by-product of (possibly) quantum entanglement. You end up with this soapy, bubbly-looking foam, if you zoom out far enough. And that's it.
> 
> ...



I do understand all that - albeit in a more fuzzy way than you just explained it - but what I don't know is whether MW has an explanation for how we get to the branch we all exist in. It seems to me that the other branches are simply possibilities that remain unrealized. But they must be way ahead of me.

Sean Carroll starts off one of his lectures by jumping left and saying there's a universe where he jumped right. I don't think you have to go as far in Quasar's un-materialist direction to suspect that that's totally wrong:



Quasar said:


> Personally, I think MWI is bat shit crazy, but that's because I don't grant the primacy of matter, not because I think it's worse than any of the other popular materialist explanations. My own guess is that wave/particle duality and Heisenberg uncertainty indicate something like the end of the road for what we are allowed to observe (which is more Copenhagen), akin to how if you examine a digital image closely enough, eventually you get to the individual pixels, after which there is a sort of barrier that keeps you from describing the image more microscopically than that


Two things.

1. The way I picture Heisenberg uncertainty and wave/particle duality is as a 3-dimensional waveform jumping up from a field.

If you're looking at it from a side or a distance, you see a whole wave but no particular point; if you zoom in far enough, you only see a point moving at some velocity, but not the whole wave; if you observe it from in front, it's just a point.

It must be more complicated than that, I know. This is just my way of conceptualizing it in my brain.

2. Primacy of matter: it's possible that there is a sort of innate "cosmic consciousness." That's not religion, though, it's more like using consciousness and life as an analogy. I could explain that further, but it sounds like you've thought this through to come to your point of view.

And it's why I say you don't necessarily have to believe in the the primacy of matter to come to various conclusions.

By the way, that's totally different from the human spirit, or life force in general - which I see as being attached to things that are alive, rather than to a god.

Actually, a third thing:

3. Re: your analogy of what we're allowed to observe: everything - that is, every type of reality - is on a scale, in my view. It's the transitions between those scales that are a mystery, whether it's a GUT or just, I dunno, the difference between our lives and the whole planet.

In more mundane terms, everyone's problems are on their own scale! I can't afford to lose $10,000, Jeff Bezos can't afford to lose $ a few hundred billion. (Well, maybe he can, but you get the point - our hard-edged realities are on our own scales.)


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

rgames said:


> Religion fills the gaps that science hasn't yet addressed.



This is the “god of the gaps” extreme. And the other extreme is Steven Jay Gould’s “Two Magesterium”.

Both extremes, it see, to me, are category errors.




Nick Batzdorf said:


> Just a semantic point: Newton is still "right," it's just that Einstein peeled off another layer of the onion. The same will apply to GR.



The issue I have with this class of ‘successive approximations’ metaphors is that it risks obscuring just how radical the paradigm shifts are. In much of everyday life Newton is a good enough approximation to Einstein that you only occasionally need to invoke the greater accuracy of Einstein to add a few small corrections. 


Yet in other domains of experience Newton is so inadequate that it isn’t even wrong. Take the inner regions of a spinning or charged black hole for instance, wherein the radical, rupturing paradigm shift is fundamentally inavoidable (where all that stuff about the opening of the Einstein-Rozen bridge to alternate universes isn’t even the weirdest thing going on - I was lucky enough to study this kind of stuff with Werner “Mr Black Holes Have No Hair” Israel. And there is some very, very weird stuff going on there, if you believe Einstein). 

Anyway, I don’t think physics is interesting because it explains everything with box checking predictability (commercially useful though that quality of physics may be), but because, again and again, it ruptures paradigms, and assures us that the universe is reliably even weirder that that we could have imagined without math.

(Which, incidentally, is also kind of how I feel about sample libraries).


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> The issue I have with this class of ‘successive approximations’ metaphors is that it risks obscuring just how radical the paradigm shifts are. In much of everyday life Newton is a good enough approximation to Einstein that you only occasionally need to invoke the greater accuracy of Einstein to add a few small corrections.


Fair enough, but I for one have not fallen victim to that risk!

The thing is, all of these theories work until you get to smaller/larger/slower/faster scales.


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> but what I don't know is whether MW has an explanation for how we get to the branch we all exist in. It seems to me that the other branches are simply possibilities that remain unrealized.



This doesn’t necessarily need any explanation. There’s no reason a multiverse should privilege any particular infinitesimal slice over the infinity of others. Which is to say there’s no reason most of the infinity of other Nick Batzdorfs across the multiverse writing on (their multiverse variants of) vi-c might not be wondering the same thing. 



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Fair enough, but I for one have not fallen victim to that risk!
> 
> The thing is, all of these theories work until you get to smaller/larger/slower/faster scales.



Quite right, my issue is with the implicit risks of deploying metaphor, not necessarily the content of an individual use of the metaphor.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> The thing is, all of these theories work until you get to smaller/larger/slower/faster scales.



Or you happen to be in a region of the universe in which the theories don’t apply.


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 10, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I do understand all that - albeit in a more fuzzy way than you just explained it - but what I don't know is whether MW has an explanation for how we get to the branch we all exist in. It seems to me that the other branches are simply possibilities that remain unrealized. But they must be way ahead of me.
> 
> Sean Carroll starts off one of his lectures by jumping left and saying there's a universe where he jumped right. I don't think you have to go as far in Quasar's un-materialist direction to suspect that that's totally wrong:
> 
> ...


First - I like the way you think (not that I agree with everything) and second; that's a whole lot of stuff to answer. Maybe Matt O'Dowd can explain this better than I can. I will say that the issue of how real these worlds are hasn't been settled. It depends on who you talk to. Personally I lean towards them being as real as the next one (nothing particularly 'special' about any of them), but I'm always open to change my mind.



And now.... back to my cue...


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 10, 2021)

The way I see it... multiverse: irrelevant.
Infinite multiverses and/or infinitely repeating universe: hopefully impossible, and still utterly irrelevant.
Could we be in a simulation or is reality impossible / etc The Matrix: irrelevant.

The way I see.. whatever you want to call all of this? We've got one life. Nobody knows anything about anything related to souls or an afterlife. Death is very real. Suffering in this life is very real. If you fuck yourself up (or something up), then when you wake up tomorrow it will still be fucked. I've a couple of scars that won't be healing, so I can attest to that. No infinitude of multiverses is gonna change that.

Focus on your life, for whatever that advice is worth; chances are, you probably only get the one....


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## quickbrownf0x (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> This is the “god of the gaps” extreme. And the other extreme is Steven Jay Gould’s “Two Magesterium”.
> 
> Both extremes, it see, to me, are category errors.
> 
> ...


Can't argue any of this, really. You've worked with Werner Israel? That's amazing. Funny how incredibly diverse this forum is. Very cool.


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> The way I see it... multiverse: irrelevant.
> Infinite multiverses and/or infinitely repeating universe: hopefully impossible, and still utterly irrelevant.
> Could we be in a simulation or is reality impossible / etc The Matrix: irrelevant.
> 
> ...



Well sure, but the same is true of wether the earth is flat or not. Or whether I need another flautando library or not. And in both cases, I feel that there’s quite a lot at stake.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> Well sure, but the same is true of wether the earth is flat or not. Or whether I need another flautando library or not.


Haha, well... planes do have to travel around the earth


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## Dirtgrain (Oct 10, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> The way I see it... multiverse: irrelevant.
> Infinite multiverses and/or infinitely repeating universe: hopefully impossible, and still utterly irrelevant.
> Could we be in a simulation or is reality impossible / etc The Matrix: irrelevant.
> 
> ...


What on earth? You do you, and I'll do me.


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> Haha, well... planes do have to travel around the earth



Yes - but Galleleo and his contemproraries didn’t loose sleep over that.

Meanwhile, Deutch (the Oxford physicist, serious name in quantum computation) aruges that quantum computation works only because we’re mining computations from other worlds (otherwise it would violate conservation of energy). So it’s not completely unimaginable that whatever happens to be true or not true about the multiverse might not have material impact on future google cloud billings in the not too too distant future.

(Personally, I think Deutch is wrong and that there no need to outsource quantum wierdness to alternate universes. There’s no reason a single universe can’t be perfectly weird on it’s own. But the point is that absent any actual empirical evidence, or deeper theory, it’s all about one’s only ideological preference. )


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> Yes - but Galleleo and his contemproraries didn’t loose sleep over that.
> 
> Meanwhile, Deutch (the Oxford physicist, serious name in quantum computation) aruges that quantum computation works only because we’re mining computations from other worlds (otherwise it would violate conservation of energy). So it’s not completely unimaginable that whatever happens to be true or not true about the multiverse might not have material impact on future google cloud billings in the not too too distant future.
> 
> (Personally, I think Deutch is wrong and that there no need to outsource quantum wierdness to alternate universes. There’s no reason a single universe can’t be perfectly weird on it’s own. But the point is that absent any actual empirical evidence, or deeper theory, it’s all about one’s only ideological preference. )


Yea, I'm inclined to agree; this realm and the possibilities within it are enough.


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## ism (Oct 10, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> Yea, I'm inclined to agree; this realm and the possibilities within it are enough.




Which is to say that we’re all of us on this thread drawing upon science for metaphors to help structure and texture how we view/understand/cope with the world.


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## Rich4747 (Oct 10, 2021)

ask people what is the greatest in the universe. some say love, some reference the physical world. physicality is simply a device to separate the two. a device that will fade away at some point. spending your life trying to figure it out may not add up to much... At least that's what a custodian told me.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

ism said:


> This doesn’t necessarily need any explanation. There’s no reason a multiverse should privilege any particular infinitesimal slice over the infinity of others. Which is to say there’s no reason most of the infinity of other Nick Batzdorfs across the multiverse writing on (their multiverse variants of) vi-c might not be wondering the same thing.


Multiverse in the sense of bubble universes (Alan Guth, etc.) isn't remotely the same thing as many worlds universes, no?

The former seems totally plausible to me, the latter seems pretty close to proof that there's something wrong with the theory that predicts it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> The way I see it... multiverse: irrelevant.
> Infinite multiverses and/or infinitely repeating universe: hopefully impossible, and still utterly irrelevant.
> Could we be in a simulation or is reality impossible / etc The Matrix: irrelevant.
> 
> ...



So you don't believe it's right to ask questions?

I find this incredibly interesting. Of course we only have one life.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 10, 2021)

Another thought occurs to me re: many worlds.

Carroll talks about the wave function of the universe, meaning it's all one big wave made up of (my words, not his) insanely high numbers of sub-waves, or excitations.

Well, what if all the branches except the one we live in are sub-waves that get annihilated?

How? Beats me, but somehow the idea that there's more matter than antimatter feels like it could be part of the explanation.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 10, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> So you don't believe it's right to ask questions?
> 
> I find this incredibly interesting. Of course we only have one life.


Some of these questions, possibly even this discussion, might be approaching something that could almost sound like a religious debate. So I think I'll back off; "ism" makes a good point, if that's how he copes, that's him.



Nick Batzdorf said:


> Another thought occurs to me re: many worlds.
> 
> Carroll talks about the wave function of the universe, meaning it's all one big wave made up of (my words, not his) insanely high numbers of sub-waves, or excitations.
> 
> ...


This sounds far more realistic to me. Basically that as present decisions are made, possibilities collapse, the past becomes written, and time moves forward in the one realized stream.


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 10, 2021)

rgames said:


> Ultimately you make a personal decision regarding which one you choose to adhere to.
> 
> Dare I say, that choice seems a lot like religion



I completely agree with you on this, though I choose to frame it as ‘creativity’ vs ‘appealing to authority’ (which applies to both science and religion).

Like Deutsch, I refuse to believe that good explanations require an _authority_ to be genuine or reliable. 

Even the best scientific explanations, undoubtedly, contain errors. And those errors can only be revealed and updated with more evidence and deeper creativity.

So in this sense, scientism _can _potentially impede progress the same way religious dogma does - by appealing to authority.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 11, 2021)

What if someone said that about medicine? 

Sure, quacks exist.

Do you therefore make arbitrary decisions about whether to trust healthcare professionals? Is taking your doctor’s advice blind adherence to authority?


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## ism (Oct 11, 2021)

quickbrownf0x said:


> Can't argue any of this, really. You've worked with Werner Israel? That's amazing. Funny how incredibly diverse this forum is. Very cool.


A truly lovely guy Werner. Set out to Dublin, originally to work with Schroedinger, (some weird Irish history behind how that happened), married an Irish poet, and launched into about a career of forever shifting our perceptions of the university. He's most famous for the "No Hair" theorem, but some of his mapping of the quantum boundaries of black holes, for instance, is even crazier. My grad student self thought this was all impossible romantic (especially the part about the Irish poet). 




Kyle Preston said:


> So in this sense, scientism _can _potentially impede progress the same way religious dogma does - by appealing to authority.




I'd argue that scientism is, by definition, a category error where scientific discourse claim ontological and/or epistemological authority beyond its regime of validity. At which point it become a discourse of power. And yes, it's bad for science, emblematically in things like Social Darwinism which was not only an explicit form of scientism in Nazi ideology (also: recent tory policy), but impeded the scientific advancement field like social psychology, and cooperative evolutionary dynamics (and there's some fun stories about how it took the presence of women in various fields to break out of some of these ideological lacunae).


There's a scene in a Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" that goes something like this:


Thomisina: Septimus, is God an Newtonian?

Septimus: An Etonian? Almost certainly I'm afraid. We must ask your brother to make enquiries.


Which seems like a throw away joke, but the play itself hinges on the transition from the classical worldview towards the romanticisms in the 19th century setting of the play, while the struggles of the modern characters are involved in debates arising from the emerging popular narrative of Chaos theory in the 20th century setting.

So the joke is also about how the God of Newton is a world view of mechanism and order and predictability, reflected in beliefs about the rigidity of the social order, and how this is coming under pressure with the rise of Romanticism, and thermodynamics (in the course of the play Thomisina, who's kind of an homage to Ada Lovelace, precociously discovers quite a lot of physics decades or centuries before it's historical discovery).


The irony is that Stoppard, having read a few of the popular books on Chaos theory that in vogue c. 1990, creates a tremendously effective play drawing on this rich field of metaphors, including the various pressures of scientific and social concepts of of rigid, knowable, mechanistic order yielding to chaos and unknowability. 


It's really a wonderful play if you ever get a chance to see it. Even if you don't like physics, the metaphors are handled wonderfully. 


But it also contradicts its own content of chaos and unknowability in it's form. Because while the action which jumps back between the early 19th and late 20th centuries, showing each set of characters in their uncertainty, and grappling with the cracks in the ambient ideological world views, one of the reasons it's such a satisfying play is that the audience ultimately is given a God's eye view. The poor characters must live with chaos and unknowability. But as the audience, we, very satisfyingly, get to know everything. So ultimately it deploys these metaphors of physics to let the audience *feel* very smugly satisfied that 20th century science gives us all the answers we need. Even which the literal *content* of the play is all about (metaphors of) chaos and unknowability. 


And this is exactly the kind of unchallenging assimilation of ideas into middle class smugness that Brecht railed against as a fundamental, even reactionary, conservatism in the theatre of the Weimar Republic of the 20s & 30s. (And there's a much larger story here about how Brecht understood that that science and scientism are very complex social forces).


But it does shed light on how the literary elements of popular exposition science are always present. Gleick's book on Chaos theory, for instance, that was a major source of inspiration for Stoppard, and it's notable how it draws on conventions of the genre of hard boiled detective fiction in its exposition. 


Incidentally, anyone interested in Quantum Mechanics might like Stoppard's "Hapgood". As a play, it's not as good as "Arcadia", but it's a remarkable exposition of Quantum Mechanics in the genre of a Cold War spy caper. I have a nuclear physicist friend who cites this as her favourite Stoppard play. (Though again, as we see frequently in Stoppard plays, the pleasure arises from position the audience as all knowing while the characters fumble, amusingly, with their uncertainty. Though of course, this doesn't make it less fun.)


So I don't think that it's possible for thing like many worlds theory and quantum uncertainty or whatever the pop theory-of-everything du jour happens to be can ever not influence our imaginative and metaphorical engagements with the world. 



Which is largely a good thing, provided we can find a way to avoid falling into scientism on once side or obscurantism on the other, the one sin often arising as a reaction to the other. 


Except of course, that whenever scientism serves a world view and/or a set of interests, it can be extremely dangerous. I'd argue that "Artificial Intelligence" is the epicentre of the most dangerous strains of scientism at the moment, and there have been some extremely interesting connections make between AI and QFT recently at some quite fundamental levels, thought they've not been popularized yet, so far as I know. 


Note, for instance, how the "Artificial Intelligence" is very much the underlying science and technology behind the evil that Facebook is being accused of (destroying democracy, harming children, etc). Except that our popularizations are too often romantic and utopian. Which has left us as a society sleepwalking into the current nightmare.


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## rgames (Oct 11, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> This is just one of those things that can't be argued but that I couldn't disagree with more.


You can make the argument, it just requires an entry into the realm of the philosophical.

By the way, do you know what academic credentials nearly all great scientists have? It's not "Doctor of Science".

It's "Doctor of Philosophy"



rgames


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 11, 2021)

rgames said:


> You can make the argument, it just requires an entry into the realm of the philosophical.
> 
> By the way, do you know what academic credentials nearly all great scientists have? It's not "Doctor of Science".
> 
> ...


True, but then 100% of all statisticians with doctorates also have PhDs. 

Anyway, there are no winners in arguments over philosophy unless they agree with me.


----------



## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 11, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> What if someone said that about medicine?
> 
> Sure, quacks exist.
> 
> Do you therefore make arbitrary decisions about whether to trust healthcare professionals? Is taking your doctor’s advice blind adherence to authority?


And have I ever been known to ask rhetorical questions?


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 11, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> What if someone said that about medicine?
> 
> Sure, quacks exist.
> 
> Do you therefore make arbitrary decisions about whether to trust healthcare professionals? Is taking your doctor’s advice blind adherence to authority?


Rejecting authority doesn’t necessarily lead to arbitrary decision-making. It also doesn’t mean we should therefore ignore empiricism. 

But a good reason to trust doctors (generally) is because medical science has a million good _explanations_ for what’s going on in our bodies. I believe the reason this field has progressed so much (maybe I’m wrong) is because scientists ask “How do we know this” as opposed to “By what authority do we claim this”.

One leads to good explanation and the other to some authoritative body. Progress happens much less in the latter.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 11, 2021)

I'm not an argument to authority GUY.

But... I am an ask rather than assert when I have NFI about a subject man.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 12, 2021)

ism said:


> This doesn’t necessarily need any explanation. There’s no reason a multiverse should privilege any particular infinitesimal slice over the infinity of others. Which is to say there’s no reason most of the infinity of other Nick Batzdorfs across the multiverse writing on (their multiverse variants of) vi-c might not be wondering the same thing.



Just when you thought you were out they drag you back in.

I think the flaw - and it must be flawed - is that there *is* a reason this slice is prioritized: because it's the only one that exists and there's no reason to believe any other one does!

Infinity doesn't mean everything is possible just because it's impossible to prove that it isn't.  I mean, you could argue that Bach wrote his cello suites (the soul of humanity) starting in the middle and then added notes working outward left to right, and in that universe he wrote it for the sampled cello on a Synclavier.

Reductio ad absurdum? Okay, then take the black hole information paradox. Prove to me that the information doesn't just jump into another slice with no more privilege than the one it started in.

But quantum mechanics. Right, and there's no reason that other slices have to follow our laws of physics.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 12, 2021)

I wanted to stay away, and maybe I don't have a dog in this fight, but...

I would think the difficulty with infinity is there's no way to quantify a 'most' out of it.. that seems counter-intuitive to what the definition implies. Example; let us suppose to achieve a 'most' out of infinity you split it right down the middle and added a +1 to one of the two halves; you've then created a bias using the smallest reducible value (you could use decimals but you get the idea.) As a result, you'd have two outcomes: ((Infinity/2)), and ((Infinity/2) +1). I'd think then, we might as well consider infinity meaningless (irrelevant) at this point, so then you'd just be dealing with the +1.


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## ism (Oct 12, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> I wanted to stay away, and maybe I don't have a dog in this fight, but...
> 
> I would think the difficulty with infinity is there's no way to quantify a 'most' out of it.. that seems counter-intuitive to what the definition implies. Example; let us suppose to achieve a 'most' out of infinity you split it right down the middle and added a +1 to one of the two halves; you've then created a bias using the smallest reducible value (you could use decimals but you get the idea.) As a result, you'd have two outcomes: ((Infinity/2)), and ((Infinity/2) +1). I'd think then, we might as well consider infinity meaningless (irrelevant) at this point, so then you'd just be dealing with the +1.



Seems to me that you’re conflating countable and uncountable infinity. Or are you saying you don’t believe Cantor?


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## ism (Oct 12, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> I think the flaw - and it must be flawed - is that there *is* a reason this slice is prioritized: because it's the only one that exists and there's no reason to believe any other one does!



But this is the fundamental question of Quantum Measure theory. The probabilities that emerge as observables are only probabilities, and there’s nothing in the theory to say why, when a measurement is performed one possible world is observed over another, and moreover, who get to be the privileged observer, who observes the observer, all that stuff about cat etc. We don’t have a theory of what’s going on under the hood, just a calculus involving matrices of imaginary numbers.

So many worlds theory is one wild speculation, and that somehow the world experienced in the psychological consciousness of mammals descended from hamsters is somehow privileged as “real” and while other possible worlds are discarded is another, equally wild, speculation, vis-a-vis anything the theory actually says.


We can say that out intuition says that one interpretation sounds more plausible, but the problem is that a) the human intuition forged in the world of macroscopic phenomenon and classical logic is almost always wrong in the quantum world, and b) if you look closely enough at what the theory does actually say, every attempt to de-weirdify one part of the theory just comes back to bite you with extra weirdness in another part.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 12, 2021)

ism said:


> But this is the fundamental question of Quantum Measure theory. The probabilities that emerge as observables are only probabilities, and there’s nothing in the theory to say why, when a measurement is performed one possible world is observed over another, and moreover, who get to be the privileged observer, who observes the observer, all that stuff about cat etc. We don’t have a theory of what’s going on under the hood, just a calculus involving matrices of imaginary numbers.
> 
> So many worlds theory is one wild speculation, and that somehow the world experienced in the psychological consciousness of mammals descended from hamsters is somehow privileged as “real” and while other possible worlds are discarded is another, equally wild, speculation, vis-a-vis anything the theory actually says.
> 
> ...


I do understand that argument about the quantum state just being made up of probabilities, but mine is that there are no other "observers" - in other words we *are* the privileged ones!

It's the affirming the consequent logical fallacy that I don't buy - that because of quantum weirdness being unintuitive, anything weird and unintuitive is the quantum world. 

(There's a smiley there - I know, know.)

To expound on what I wrote above about there being very little time at quantum scales: my thought is that somehow the answer must have to do with nothing being measurable/observable without time. And the world where time exists is this one - the classical one.

But I also recognize that professional physicists have already thought about everything I can come up with. I know that most of them believe that spacetime isn't fundamental. Nima Arkani is one of many to say it will go.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 12, 2021)

ism said:


> Seems to me that you’re conflating countable and uncountable infinity. Or are you saying you don’t believe Cantor?


I am referring to actual, uncountable infinity; rather than that which could be countable but beyond comprehension of our feeble brains, (which I would consider far more realistic; a false or artificial infinity.)

Also, just because I am reducing actual infinity to being 'irrelevant' would not necessarily mean it does not exist - just that, because it is so infinite that nothing could ever possibly comprehend it, I don't think it could be capable of mattering... this would be in contrast to the countable "infinity", which might only be expressible to some supremely powerful thing capable of comprehension (a God?). That might still be approaching irrelevancy to me, and there might be nothing I could do ever about it - but then logically it could still concern some supremely powerful.. thing.


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## ism (Oct 12, 2021)

Karl Feuerstake said:


> I am referring to actual, uncountable infinity; rather than that which could be countable but beyond comprehension of our feeble brains, (which I would consider far more realistic; a false or artificial infinity.)


Well mathematically, I can't tell if you're speaking in terms to rigorously definable Cantorian transinfinite set theory or earlier philosophical understandings (which are full of issues).

And physically, I don't know why many worlds theory would discount notions of an infinity (countable or otherwise) of universes a priori. Infinity is a tricky think. At the very least it's worth noting that uncountable infinities abound throughout QFT, which typically works in (uncountably) infinite dimensional spaces. This of course causes all kind of headaches for many people, but isn't necessarily obviously wrong. It's also possible that some theory of quantum gravity with provide some kind of ultimate discreteness to reign in some of the infinities. But I stress - the only definitive statement I'm prepared to make about any of it is that all very, very weird.

For instance, when you push a chair across a room, QED predicts an infinite number of virtual particles bubbling up out of the quantum vacuum interacting with your chair to account for your experience of it having mass when you put it ... so again, very, very weird.

Which is kind of what I like about it, and perhaps why I like to argue against anything being particularly obvious or intuitive right or wrong. 



Anyway, this is so far beyond actual physics that I really can't follow any of these arguments, or even figure out what category of arguments they are (psychological? metaphysical? theological? mathematical?), and without any kind of discursive base, the risk of rampant category errors is just too great, and I don't think I'd better say anything else within my physicist hat on or I'll just add to the confusion.


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## Karl Feuerstake (Oct 12, 2021)

ism said:


> Well mathematically, I can't tell if you're speaking in terms to rigorously definable Cantorian transinfinite set theory or earlier philosophical understandings (which are full of issues).
> 
> And physically, I don't know why many worlds theory would discount notions of an infinity (countable or otherwise) of universes a priori. Infinity is a tricky think. At the very least it's worth noting that uncountable infinities about throughout QFT, which typically works in (uncountably) infinite dimensional spaces. This of course causes all kind of headaches for many people, but isn't necessarily obviously wrong. It's also possible that some theory of quantum gravity with provide some kind of ultimate discreteness to reign in some of the infinities. But I stress - the only definitive statement I'm prepared to make about any of it is that all very, very weird.
> 
> ...



Well I enjoyed the chat for what it was worth.. sorry if I couldn't keep you entertained haha. I felt it approached something more metaphysical than mathematical.

Regarding something more related to the original topic of the thread; perhaps there's a bit of string theory to this?


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## Kyle Preston (Oct 12, 2021)

ism said:


> intuition says that one interpretation sounds more plausible, but the problem is that a) the human intuition forged in the world of macroscopic phenomenon and classical logic is almost always wrong in the quantum world, and b) if you look closely enough at what the theory does actually say, every attempt to de-weirdify one part of the theory just comes back to bite you with extra weirdness in another part.


This was the argument that convinced me to take QM seriously in undergrad -- it seems so obvious now, but human intuition is just too biased to be THE bedrock for objective truth. 

Sometimes, intuition urges me to eat a pound of Doritos, for no reason at all. How haughty it would be to then conclude that intuition is THE north star of truth, of _Dorito_ truth!

I think this is why inductivism always bothered me, because experience doesn't feel like the _source _of theory-making, but only how we decide on theories (look at me relying on intuition again). 

But yea, Nick is still right. Quantum leads to weirdness, weirdness doesn't necessarily lead to quantum. 

And yet, the world _has _to be weirder than classical interpretations suggest. No one will ever physically _touch _string theory. And our mammal brains just *hate *that fact. So we wrangle and writhe and make sense of it all for _our _intuition.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 13, 2021)

It's all I can do to accept that there could be more dimensions than the 3+ we live in and have the capability of comprehending.

Anyway, ism, I'd love to get you drunk and listen to your explanations.


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## ism (Oct 13, 2021)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Anyway, ism, I'd love to get you drunk and listen to your explanations.


Sound like fun. ( And I would know  I'd argue that there are entire branches of mathematics that make much more sense drunk. )

I'll send you a free copy of my upcoming book which seeks to unify the theories of Loop Quantum Gravity and web development (which is actually, not nearly as stupid as it sounds, if not necessarily something I'd care to try to explain sober, at this stage of writing).


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## ism (Oct 13, 2021)

Kyle Preston said:


> But yea, Nick is still right. Quantum leads to weirdness, weirdness doesn't necessarily lead to quantum.


Yep, and it's a time tested logical on-ramp to obscurantism - "Some true things are weird. Therefore, all weird things are true." 

The trick is to rail against it's dual of intuition as reductionism equally vehemently. The on ramps for which include the old: "Most of my day job is adequately described by the accountant-friendly classical logic of sodden 'Mr Literal Pants' Cartesianism. Therefore ..." 




Kyle Preston said:


> And our mammal brains just *hate *that fact


Darwin's big mistake, imo, at the public relations level, was to argue that we descended from apes. When in fact, as mammals, it's equally correct to say that we're actually descended from hamsters. 

But I'll also add that there's an additional layer of nature vs. nurture in this. In that the human mind is optimized not for the cartesian structures of classical computation (witness how event a crappy 1970s calculator, which is optimized for such logic, can probably beat you at calculating cube roots, for instance, and badly). Whereas the universe of logic that the human mind is evolved and optimized for is massively contextual, relational and entangled. Girard's "Linear logic", discovered only c. 1984 can be shown to be very closely related to "quantum logic" (which is a thing, even if Abramsky notes that "quantum non-logic" might be a more helpful description for that particular branch of mathematical logic). And in recent years it's been shown to be very productive in describing the structure of human language, as well as the psychology of "quantum cognition and decision". 

So our intuitions that the world operates via the logic of classical, "Mr Literal Pants" Cartesian categories logic, are probably at least as much cultural constructions of the enlightenments.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Oct 13, 2021)

ism said:


> witness how event a crappy 1970s calculator, which is optimized for such logic, can probably beat you at calculating cube roots, for instance, and badly


I've heard there are people still making payments on those.


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