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On May 07 2015 06:56 Rainling wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2015 12:38 radscorpion9 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +As a physics student I don't buy the idea that everything is fundamentally random. They said that Bell's inequality effectively proved the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (that a particle has no clear position or momentum until its measured, after which it 'collapses' into a particular state), but the whole inequality relies on the principle of 'locality' or that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. If one simply postulates the existence of extra dimensions, then information could easily travel 'faster' by effectively jumping through wormholes like in science fiction (remember, the sheet of paper representing spacetime, that you fold in two and jam a pencil through, representing the wormhole?). Then in that case the inequality is plausibly violated; photons of opposite spin travelling in opposite directions can influence each other when one is measured. It would be totally bizarre if it weren't the case; there is still no coherent explanation for how entanglement operates instantaneously across any distance in spacetime. So as far as I'm concerned the orthodox model has a pretty big hole in it and its hard to take seriously as it stands anyway. Maybe another physicist can help me understand. I'm only finished third year  I'm in my third year and I think you misunderstand the prevailing quantum mechanics model. I feel like this is a major misconception about QM propagated by people outside of physics, that it means that "everything is fundamentally random." Quantum mechanics is fundamentally deterministic as is. The wave functions underlying everything are fully deterministic, the only thing that appears probabilistic is measurements based on these wave functions. However this apparent randomness is an illusion based on lack of perspective. This explanation might help.
I think you both are wrong. And it would matter not a bit that i have my masters in physics already, as i am a terribly bad physicist.
First regarding the nonlocality: there is no plausible mechanism that would allow only entangled particles to exchange informations with infinite sublight velocities over arbitrary distances via spatial extradimensions.
All current theories predicting spatial extradimensions, predict only compact very low energy extradimensions. Those would be pretty specific in their behaviour, and nothing about them would make them behave in the way you invision them to.
Especially regarding filtering out only the interactions of matter that we would call collapse of a wavefunction of entangled quantum states. If there was real nonlocal action going on we would see it in all interactions all over the universe.
Maybe you were thinking about another theory modeling gravity as involving higher dimensions, (would nicely explain the comparative weakness of gravity) but those are no ordinary spatial dimensions that can be accessed by matter/electromagnetic energy. So it would still lack any mechanism about spin transfer which is in its fundamentals an electromagnetic interaction with the frame of inertia.
Our understanding of inertia is still lacking, but currently we are looking at a world that seems to be not perfect machian, and we probably can determine rotations to exist.
Secondly regarding determinism or not: Our human understanding of cause and effect is not evolved to accuratly capture all consequences of a fully quantum description of reality. A double slit experiment with a photon source that emits a single photon per interval still generates the interference pattern precicely because there is not a single path followed by a single photon but all paths with their respective probabilities. The probabilistic approach is not "just a tool to determine what 'might happen' but we don't know exactly". Everything we see only lets us the conclusion that nature is fundamentally behaving probabilistically and only the inimaginable large sum of interactions gives us the illusions of concrete and absolute outcomes.
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the thing about neurons is around here:Understanding how self-initiated behavior is encoded by neuronal circuits in the human brain remains elusive. We recorded the activity of 1019 neurons while twelve subjects performed self-initiated finger movement. We report progressive neuronal recruitment over ?1500 ms before subjects report making the decision to move. We observed progressive increase or decrease in neuronal firing rate, particularly in the supplementary motor area (SMA), as the reported time of decision was approached. A population of 256 SMA neurons is sufficient to predict in single trials the impending decision to move with accuracy greater than 80% already 700ms prior to subjects awareness. Furthermore, we predict, with a precision of a few hundred ms, the actual time point of this voluntary decision to move. We implement a computational model whereby volition emerges once a change in internally generated firing rate of neuronal assemblies crosses a threshold. so, they assigned to that threshold a "urge to move" of the subject then called it volition = the act of making a conscious choice or decision.
first, i don't know how many would agree with their definition of volition. second, it says nothing about how/why did those neurons fired in the first place.
now, a firing neuron is an electric discharge. the discharge follows a chemical reaction that takes place in your brain. In most experiments, the coupling is continuous and symmetric, i.e., it resembles diffusion. Coupling between neural oscillators, in contrast, is generally pulsatile and asymmetric. A signal is transmitted from the presynaptic to the postsynaptic neuron only when the presynaptic cell's membrane potential passes a threshold. Recent experiments have shown how such behavior may be mimicked in coupled CSTRs(continuous-flow stirred tank reactor) containing the BZ(Belousov–Zhabotinsky) reaction. (more on chemical systems/systems chemistry - http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/chaos/25/9/10.1063/1.4918601 + Show Spoiler +If we were to identify three themes that dominate the “early days” of nonlinear chemical dynamics, up to about 1990, they might be these:
(1) Chemical reactions with appropriate nonlinearities in their kinetics can give rise to such dynamical phenomena as multistability, periodic oscillation, and chaos.
(2) In spatially distributed systems, the interaction of diffusion with reaction kinetics leads to patterned behavior, including spirals and other traveling waves, Turing patterns, and spatiotemporal chaos.
(3) All of these phenomena are consistent with the laws of physics and chemistry, in particular, thermodynamics and kinetics, and an understanding of the general principles that govern these systems allows us both to construct reliable models and to design systems that exhibit behaviors of interest. The work of Prigogine and the Brussels school played a key role in helping chemists to appreciate the wealth of possibilities that become accessible when one studies systems far from equilibrium.25
In this section, we describe briefly some of the most important developments of the past quarter century, beginning about 1990. Again, we can point to three distinguishing, and interacting themes:
(1) The spatial and temporal patterns identified and characterized in the earlier period can be manipulated, controlled, and transformed into one another by carefully chosen, relatively small external perturbations.
(2) In many systems, interesting behavior arises as the result of interactions between many subunits, each of which possesses a nonlinear dynamical behavior. The resulting “emergent” dynamical behavior can be considerably more complex than that of a single isolated subunit.
(3) Novel dynamical phenomena occur in “structured media”16 consisting of spatially distributed arrays, which may be periodic or random, of distinct interacting reaction zones. Thus, for example, if one studies the BZ reaction in a microemulsion consisting of nanodroplets of water suspended in a continuous oil phase, the variety of patterns observed is far richer than what is seen for the same reaction in homogeneous aqueous solution.
Subsections: A. Control of chaos and other dynamical behavior B. Spiral wave dynamics C. Patterns in structured media D. Materials and chemomechanical transduction E. Synchronization: Collective behavior and emergence F. Synchronization: Chimeras and networks
also, there is no single Übermensch that can change anything. there will always be a host of other small Übermensch that will help him achieve change. you can call someone a pioneer sure, but in science he will be a nut before others will back him up(and that happens, usually, way in to the future) and in human social structures, he will need soldiers/tools to do his bidding.
Edit: emergence happens in social structures. when there is enough of <X> to demand/ask/want/need a change/something different/something else, it will happen. if it would be prevented/suppressed by any means(force mostly) chaos will ensue for a long, long time.
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While some of the arguments you guys make are a bit, umm, .... , hand waving?, it is still nice to see people take an interest in quantum physics. Trolling or not. 
So I'll just throw in some links to my favourite interpretation of QM: the path integral, aka "sum over histories". It essentially says that the probability of something happening is the sum of all the ways in which it can happen, which I find pretty neat.
wikipedia on path integrals
Quite some math in there, but that's physics for you.
another site I found
I only skimmed the second link, but the pictures seem to give a good image of what is going on.
And an article relating to QM on macroscopic scale. A group made medium-sized molecules (like 100 atoms) behave like quantum waves in a double-slit experiment, essentially setting the record for how large scale QM has been observed on.
article
hf.
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Well, the different interpretations of QM are just different mathematical variations of one and the same experimental observation. Therefore, you can say the world is deterministic or nondeterministic based on the interpretation you choose and still get the same results. This makes the question of determinism meaningless in the realm of physics and puts it into the realm of philosophy.
In any case, you really don't need QM to explain how quasi-random decision making arises on the level of neuronal circuits.
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Very long diatribe only to end with: Down with capitalism, up with communism! Dry - this has been repeated ad nauseum for a long time. There is no universal happiness; each individual has their own values that derive their happiness. That's neither a good or bad expression - it just is. However, you are wrong that materialism doesn't deliver happiness ceteris paribus. Ask those living in poverty, who have trouble putting food on the table, or have to fret over finances and their families well-being. Ask those people if they are happy. If you're such a sociologist, you should be aware of Maslow's hierarchy, so there is a very real causality to materialism and happiness. All in all, this sounds more like political calls to action, than anything else.
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On May 05 2015 06:23 helpman170 wrote:
Absolutely.
It is important to understand that there is no such concept as "free will" in science.
Science works within the realm of the empirically testable and the closest concept of that in neuroscience is the "decision maker neuron".
In its simplest form, it is a neuron that receives input from two other neurons A and B.
Neuron A would tell the decision maker to escape, neuron B to stand still.
The organism has a memory that tells the network on certain threatening inputs to escape 100% of time.
There is no decision making involved.
Now consider a different case where neuron A would tell the decision maker to go left, neuron B to go right.
The organism has no clear memory established of which option left or right is better.
That means the decision neuron will be activated 50% of the time by neuron A and 50% of the time by neuron B.
That is because both A and B connect to the decision maker with the same number of synapses and are equally likely to fire.
That means, the actual decision depends on biochemical thresholds to be met that give the illusion of random decisions.
That's actually not right. You're conflating the perceived best decision, with the inability to make decisions. You simply didn't address what determinism actually is - not that there is no randomness, but that you have no control over your actions. We can't simply look at a binary choice like you presented to determine with any thought either way.
I mean as someone who has a degree in the medical field, I'm well aware of how our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system works - and how our endocrine and exocrine glands effect certain responses. The point is, while fleeing from an attacking bear would be the optimal choice, I still have the choice of doing nothing, and there are certainly people who would choose that just to spite this argument. Fate? Destiny? Do you have the illusion of free will. It's a murky area. No one is reality thinks like your binary example.
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On May 07 2015 18:26 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2015 06:23 helpman170 wrote:
Absolutely.
It is important to understand that there is no such concept as "free will" in science.
Science works within the realm of the empirically testable and the closest concept of that in neuroscience is the "decision maker neuron".
In its simplest form, it is a neuron that receives input from two other neurons A and B.
Neuron A would tell the decision maker to escape, neuron B to stand still.
The organism has a memory that tells the network on certain threatening inputs to escape 100% of time.
There is no decision making involved.
Now consider a different case where neuron A would tell the decision maker to go left, neuron B to go right.
The organism has no clear memory established of which option left or right is better.
That means the decision neuron will be activated 50% of the time by neuron A and 50% of the time by neuron B.
That is because both A and B connect to the decision maker with the same number of synapses and are equally likely to fire.
That means, the actual decision depends on biochemical thresholds to be met that give the illusion of random decisions. That's actually not right. You're conflating the perceived best decision, with the inability to make decisions. You simply didn't address what determinism actually is - not that there is no randomness, but that you have no control over your actions. We can't simply look at a binary choice like you presented to determine with any thought either way. I mean as someone who has a degree in the medical field, I'm well aware of how our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system works - and how our endocrine and exocrine glands effect certain responses. The point is, while fleeing from an attacking bear would be the optimal choice, I still have the choice of doing nothing, and there are certainly people who would choose that just to spite this argument. Fate? Destiny? Do you have the illusion of free will. It's a murky area. No one is reality thinks like your binary example.
I was simply presenting an oversimplified model of decision making at the level of single neurons.
No mention of determinism or free will whatsoever.
Research in that area is extremely limited because we have to make use of simple organisms that allow us to genetically trace individual neurons for experimentation.
But even in those simple organisms we see that sensory noise is normalized and integrated via thesholding and convergence onto integratory neurons. It is straightforward to project this mechanism to higher brain centers where sensory inputs compete not only with each other but also with input from other internal brain states. At each integration step, we have the confluence of several factors that fluctuate within certain parameters to determine if the downstream neuron fires or not.
Even at those simple organisms we see that behaviors are not simple reflexes that give 100% response all the time, but that the integration is watered down via multimodal input until it reaches the motor output.
There was just a paper published this week that gives you an example for this noisy integration step: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7549/full/nature14297.html
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On May 07 2015 03:32 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2015 18:47 Vortok wrote:
Humanity needs a higher concentration of badasses before it can push past some of the current limitations.
Consider reading some Nietzche or perhaps Thomas Carlyle's "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History". I think you're on the right track, that history is mostly driven by cool people doing big things, but you make a big flaw. You suggest humanity should focus on producing more of these ambitious people, while it's not at all apparent that everyone has it in themselves to become what Nietzche called Ubermensch. Look how readily the vast majority of people stop striving once they're content. These people can't be improved, because they have no real incentive to put in effort themselves. It doesn't really matter how well-educated or skilled they are if they don't have the desire to apply those traits. Only a select few have the ambition to never be content. I think instead of trying to make everyone ubermensch, society should try to find those who already are ubermensch, and give them anything they need to allow them to do great things. Instead of getting more ubermensch, we make the ones we already have better, basically.
Always down for some interesting reading. I'll keep them in mind.
I wasn't quite going for a 'we should make everyone uber' theme, though my writing skills are probably lacking. I'm not advocating that everyone should be like the movers and shakers that have shaped history. As a quick, and likely poor, example, there are some personality types that naturally excel at hospitality and care for others. The people that love to arrange dinner parties, or make sure everyone at a restaurant is taken care of, things of that nature. Is someone like that particularly likely to produce some massive breakthrough that alters the course of human history? Maybe, but probably not, but they still have their own talents and purpose that is perfectly fine and valuable to society. I think we should find a way to help make people better at what they're already good at, whether they're a quantum physicist or a soccer mom. And that requires diving deep enough to reach a foundational level with core components that everyone shares.
I certainly don't expect there to be a one size fits all solution. Education is great, but we could probably talk to some old fisherman (to pick a random trade) that never went to school and he'd still likely have pearls of wisdom to share on par with some of the greatest scholars. I also agree that some people are content upon reaching a certain level. Education/self improvement takes time, just like keeping up with politics, gossip, and all sorts of other things. Some people will judge that for them personally it is more worthwhile to go in another direction than to continue their education. They generally seem to get through life just fine while ignoring what some groups may consider to be an optimal path, and the different perspective they provide can be quite valuable.
In most modern countries, it's fairly accepted that education and literacy for the general populace is almost universally good. A fair amount of progress can be observed once the general population was improved in this way. Whether this is progress towards the ubermensch or not likely depends on perspective. Thus far, the vast majority of that education is spent on purely academic subjects such as math, language, history, science and the like. Very little emphasis is placed on how to interact and get along with other people. Everyone is practically left to their own devices or to learn via trial and error at the school of hard knocks - some have natural talents in the area while others do not. There are books and courses that have been written on the subject (with varying degrees of sincerity), but it's still generally treated as something optional and non-vital.
One such book, that was placed in my hands many years ago, is "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie and was originally written close to a century ago. In the foreword it discussed that dealing with people is a huge part of our daily lives. One of their studies at the time suggested that even in a technical field such as engineering, about 15% of a person's success was due to the person's technical knowledge and about 85% relied on skill in human engineering - to personality and ability to lead people. And yet a rather significant portion of education focuses on that 15% area.
A quote of John D. Rockefeller that the book contained claimed that he said "the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability, than for any other under the sun." A fair amount of the focus of Carnegie's book relates to success in the business world, but that's just a piece of the whole and the overall concepts have fairly broad applications.
For some people, what they learn in history or science class may have very little relevance on the path they choose to go through life while for others those subjects serve as a vital foundation. Having to deal with other people is common to virtually everybody, even outside the business world. And yet instead of arming new generations with fundamental information about something so vital and common as interpersonal communication, we generally just say "Figure it out yourself, you're on your own."
The average literacy rate of the general population was eventually considered a limitation and subsequently addressed. I can see the general population's average capability at communication and understanding the viewpoints of others (which also partially connects to being able to look at a problem from multiple angles, even if working alone) as something that could be at a similar level of importance as literacy was determined to be. A lot of this post appears to emphasize people skills, but I'm thinking of something a bit broader than that. Increased people skills would just be a natural byproduct, though with significantly differing degrees of effectiveness from one person to another.
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Nietsche's zarathoustra describe a cyclical evolution of mankind from baby, to chamel, to lion, back to baby (the superhuman). For Nietsche, it's the history, more exactly the resentment, that prevent mankind from being better, from doing good. The society cannot create that kind of man, because the society is a set of institutions and moral laws that create chamel : men who support the moral laws on their back, until a lion come and break everything (which I believe is Zarathoustra - he is not the superhuman because he is still bound by his resentment, but he announce the arrival of the superhuman), permitting the birth of the superhuman baby with no history and thus no resentment.
So the birth and appearance of great people is an historical result to Nietsche.
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First, I'll give a few objections to the actual readings of what you're saying.
With respect to the Jesus of the Gospels claiming that the evil of man is caused only by ignorance is not convincing. You cited one specific example, that only tangentially speaks of ignorance, specifically that they do not recognize the divinity of the man whom they are crucifying. While Jesus of the Gospels never explicitly addresses the issue you are talking about, I'm far from convinced that he should be put into the camp of a traditional reading of Socrates, specifically his dialogue with Satan while he is in the desert comes to mind to tangentially refute your interpretation.
Second, I wouldn't at all put Aristotle in the same camp of Descartes with respect to the soul. Aristotle's thought regarding the soul is called hylomorphism (basically "matter-formism"), where there isn't a true duality, but is instead a monism where matter (potentiality) is opposed to form (actuality). Now you might think these two categories seem like a dualism, but really matter and form aren't two different "substances" but rather just the capacity for change versus what something is at this very moment. Aristotle borrows heavily from Anaxagoras in Dei Anima quoting him: "Mind is the ultimate reality." This implies that there is no other substance but form, where matter is just not yet actualized.
Even if you do want to argue that hylomorphism is really a dualism, it is still quite far from how the traditional reading of Descartes explained his dualism, and should not in any way be considered similarr. They really couldn't be more different. A "traditional" reading of Plato's myth of Er, however could be argued to be similar to Descartes...
And transitioning from Aristotle's Hylomorphism, your argument about the "tools of science" to address the "free will" debate, I believe is completely and utterly wrong. This "debate," I would argue, is a complete misunderstanding of terms, and if there is a debate to be had about it, this is where it should lie. Check out this comic, it gives a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/70
In short, I don't think science has anything to do with the "free will" debate, as science isn't really that great of a tool to help us describe what we mean by the "self." It only investigates questions as to in what way things behave, but doesn't really help us think clearly about the nature of our language and what we mean by certain words (however, science can indeed provide some excellent counter examples of our claims about what we "mean.")
Also, the last point I want to mention. In reference to determinism absolving responsibility of of culpability and blame, you should check out some Baruch Spinoza. He's spoke about what Nagle was speaking about (or at least what you claim Nagle was speaking of, I haven't read that essay of his) over 300 years before him.
All in all, I think you make some interesting points, but be very cautious in making claims about what previous philosophers have said. These claims are usually hotly debated (even issues that you think are obvious, just check out the "Straussian" interpretation of Plato's Socrates.) and it is quite easy to sidetrack the discussion or even discredit your education on the matter.
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On May 04 2015 12:12 Danglars wrote:Your conception of oneness must either be so broad to apply to all and be a meaningless term, or only applying to a select few and wrong on all . . . The examples you cite lend no support to the following QM/String/Determinism proposals.
While I agree with you that the op does not cite any examples lending to understanding of QM, Heisenberg did say that Aristotle was the only man who understood indeterminacy.
So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss using ancient, especially Greek, philosophy as a way of understanding some aspects of QM. Of course, the Atomists understood atoms much differently from how we understand them, but really we just have a more detailed picture of what atoms are; it isn't that they were really wrong they just didn't have the tools that we do.
I'm really tired of people saying things like "Science is incredibly counter-intuitive," because that just isn't completely true. Sure Aristotle got a lot of physics wrong using "intuition." But the Greeks as a whole predicted atomic and evolutionary theory (often claimed to be two very counter-intuitive scientific theories). While they were indeed wrong about many things, and many specific things about those theories, they clearly had a certain perspective of the world that has been lost. While we shouldn't just take what they say at their own word, there is clearly a lot we can learn from trying to get inside their heads by reading men like Aristotle.
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On May 04 2015 16:26 fred1 wrote:Never laughed so hard. Ninazerg is starting to leave an impact...
I agree. M-Theory is about a membrane folded in on itself?? That's really not what M theory means at all. At its core it's just a way of uniting multiple mathematical formulations of the same thing which happens to require 11 dimensions...nothing infinite about it. I stopped reading after this point. Philosophers who pretend to understand physics really irritate me.
EDIT: Drunk and wishing that there was some BW or SC2 to watch, that could have something to do with the irritation
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EPT
