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Post by laughter on Jul 28, 2014 22:29:11 GMT -5
SDP, Laughter, and others on this forum probably know a lot more about this than I do, but my understanding of superposition is somewhat different than what is usually written about it. I do not agree that "superposition is what reality is when no one is watching." From my POV superposition is what reality is when no one is DISTINGUISHING what is seen. If we open the box that contains "Schroedinger's cat," and look inside with Tzu's "still mind," what do we see? We see "what is" as it is. What we see is NOT a cat, NOT a dead cat, NOT a living cat, and NOT anything else conceivable because we have not yet conceived what we are seeing. As long as we are looking with a still mind, and not making an observation/distinction as an observer, we and what we see are unified in a state of superposition because there is no objective observation or act of distinction. If we then say, "the cat is dead" or "the cat is alive," we have made a distinction, and we have conceptually divided the universe into distinct (and imaginary) states. Conceptualization and distinction is what collapses the wave function rather than non-conceptual seeing. Does this make sense? Yes, I will agree with that under your conditions. One question in physics that there is not a lot of agreement on is at what point actually does the measurement take place, what is the dividing line between observer and observed. Some say the measurement takes place in someone's consciousness. Some say all you need is a mechanical measuring device. What you are describing is the still mind being a part of the superposition, a partless whole in the words of Jarrell, undivided wholeness in the words of David Bohm. sdp The friendly Wiggy paradox demonstrates quite succinctly that even if this were the case there would be no way for us to become conscious of it. .. hell, who needs QM for that matter .. "does the tree falling in the empty forest still make a sound?"
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Post by laughter on Jul 28, 2014 23:01:29 GMT -5
Yes. That's what I think is really going on vis-à-vis physics, and the whole observer paradox thingy. When I'm looking with a still mind (non-conceptually), there are no particles or waves or slits or even an observer separate from what's happening or being seen. It is only when I conceptualize what I imagine that I'm seeing that what physicists call "the wave function" collapses. As long as I am only seeing with a still mind, and not conceptualizing, the cosmos and I are one, both physically and psychologically. With silent seeing, the potential thingness of the universe is in a state of infinite superposition--nothing is distinct or separate--because I have not yet imagined that I am separate from what is being seen. In the words of Jesus, "I and my Father are one." Yeah, that's what I figure quantum physics is reluctantly creeping up on. The reluctance is the physics version of the existential crisis, since objectivity (the basic rule of scientific inquiry) is what's on the chopping block and under the microscope. Considering the art, philosophy, literature and even the politics of the 1920's and '30's a case could be made that this crises has come and gone. Think Satre for instance. For mainstream Physicists it's essentially the elephant in the room that everyone politely ignores. Admittedly of course, there are some alternative metaphysical interpretations of the wave function to the collapse of the material assumption that are used by some Physicists working outside of the mainstream. This dialog got me reading about post-modernism, because among current intellectuals, there seems to me to be a taking for granted of certain fundamental ideas such as - the inseparability of the artist, his or her art, and the audience - a world view of objectified interconnected "Oneness". This manifests in several ways: * the popularity of the holistic approach, as manifested in everything from social theory to daily living (mind-body integration in the form of healthy and harmonious choices). * the recognition of the artificiality of boundary's that are the result of history and conditioning such as ethnic and national divisions.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 28, 2014 23:03:37 GMT -5
Conceptualization and distinction is what collapses the wave function rather than non-conceptual seeing. Does this make sense? ha! ha! "what is the Quantum Observer?" <blank> <stare> This is where John Wheeler ended his career in physics. Earlier I gave a report on the book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter. Gefter began her search concerning reality as a teenager with her father. Over a period of over fifteen years, she turned her inquiry into a career as a science writer. She interviewed John Wheeler before he died and then several of his students after he died. His students pretty-much said, we don't know WTF all Wheeler's questions and ideas about the observer were all about. Wheeler as a physicist did not bring in God as ordering intelligence. So his question was, if consciousness creates reality via observation, what was the consciousness that brought reality out of the quantum soup, before man came to exist? Jarrell states that Wheeler's hunch concerning the double-slit delayed observation experiment showed that "the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well". (pg 21) sdp
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Post by laughter on Jul 28, 2014 23:04:30 GMT -5
Yes, most physicists (other than Bohm) wouldn't understand what we're discussing here because, as a group, they have no idea what we're talking about when we use the term "still mind" or "non-conceptual awareness." They begin with the idea that matter is stuff composed of other stuff, and that they, themselves, are observers separate from what is being seen, so they really can't imagine (because it can't be imagined--ha ha) what we're pointing to with words like "a unified suchness." Physicists say that they can fire a single subatomic particle at a particular target (or slit), but their words (and the ideas that the words represent) are based upon a gigantic range of huge assumptions that have never been questioned. What IS a subatomic particle, really? It is imagined as if it were a microscopic electrified grain of sand with a wide range of bizarre characteristics, but is that what it IS? NO! However they conceive it, that is not what it IS. If they started with the question, "What is a subatomic particle, really?" and found the answer to that question, they'd realize something important. yup!
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 28, 2014 23:14:46 GMT -5
Yes, I will agree with that under your conditions. One question in physics that there is not a lot of agreement on is at what point actually does the measurement take place, what is the dividing line between observer and observed. Some say the measurement takes place in someone's consciousness. Some say all you need is a mechanical measuring device. What you are describing is the still mind being a part of the superposition, a partless whole in the words of Jarrell, undivided wholeness in the words of David Bohm. sdp The friendly Wiggy paradox demonstrates quite succinctly that even if this were the case there would be no way for us to become conscious of it. .. hell, who needs QM for that matter .. "does the tree falling in the empty forest still make a sound?" No. The falling tree would set up vibrations in the air, but with no ear to hear, no ear to decode the vibrations, there would be no sound. Additionally, in space there are no sounds because there is no air to carry the vibrations. sdp
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Post by laughter on Jul 29, 2014 0:07:32 GMT -5
ha! ha! "what is the Quantum Observer?" <blank> <stare> This is where John Wheeler ended his career in physics. Earlier I gave a report on the book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter. Gefter began her search concerning reality as a teenager with her father. Over a period of over fifteen years, she turned her inquiry into a career as a science writer. She interviewed John Wheeler before he died and then several of his students after he died. His students pretty-much said, we don't know WTF all Wheeler's questions and ideas about the observer were all about. Wheeler as a physicist did not bring in God as ordering intelligence. So his question was, if consciousness creates reality via observation, what was the consciousness that brought reality out of the quantum soup, before man came to exist? Jarrell states that Wheeler's hunch concerning the double-slit delayed observation experiment showed that "the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well". (pg 21) sdp Really, the collapse of the material assumption is simply the end of the line for Physics as the basis for Metaphysics, as it undermines the very foundation of the science itself. It turns out that objective physical reality is simply a very useful model that has no more foundation - despite the deep and fundamental human consensus that it embodies - than any other model. Ultimately, no model can capture what it is that we refer to as our experience and our agreement on and ability to communicate that experience mind-to-mind. Some minds will read that statement of absence as the presence of the model of no model, but that is simply a trick and artifact of language and information which are founded on the subject-object split ... and the statement of absence implicitly disclaims that split. That said, the intrusion of physical fact into common-sense notions of reality are an attention-getter. The mind can take itself on a wild ride when it kisses the void like this, that's for sure. WARNING: the rest of this is extreme TMT! For instance, consider the book of Genesis as a metaphor for deep history. Since the appearance of consciousness is a manifestation born out of the evolution of stardust, then it would follow that it was the arising of the first instance of consciousness that initially collapsed the superposition of all the possible configurations of the heavens since star formation eventually became possible in an interval after the big bang. But what would have constituted the first instance of a conscious observer triggering this collapse? (** muttley snicker **) .. Let there be light!
In my hyperminding days I speculated on the possibility that the entire Universe is just one big test. There is a theory of the Multiverse based on natural selection (I think I read this in one of Wheelers books btw) that postulates that our Universe creates gravitational singularities (black holes) because it was itself spawned by a similar Universe that created these same types of singularities. The theory is further based on the idea that each new Universe varies to some degree from it's parent, but that only Universes that are capable of supporting life and thus are subject to observation ever really come into existence. The motivation for this theory is to explain the anthropic problem without resorting to your SOI -- essentially, offering an explanation for the improbably fine-tuned values for natural constants such as the speed of light or the charge of an electron (among dozens of others). If any of these varied out to like the hundreth decimal place (or varied in proportion to one another) anything from a complete physical collapse or the impossibility for life as we know and observe it are the result. Now, mixed with a different idea -- that the process of evolution is the act of the environment encoding itself on life -- my speculation ran like this: what if just being able to support life isn't enough to guarantee the actual existence of a Universe? What if to actually be, that Universe had to produce an observer that was able to escape and outlive it? Just as we're pretty sure now that our Universe had a beginning, the current consensus is that it will suffer one of a number of ends, with the mainstream view referred to as " heat death". So I wondered, perhaps the reason that form is so entangled with emptiness and has no solid actuality is because if there is no observer at the END of physical extent of the Universe that is able to escape it, then, with regard to the Multiverse, it would be as if our Universe never was, and here, much much closer to the beginning than to the end of the story, this is a question of great uncertainty, and that uncertainty is reflected in the very nature and fabric of what constitutes the reality of it.
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Post by laughter on Jul 29, 2014 0:08:39 GMT -5
The friendly Wiggy paradox demonstrates quite succinctly that even if this were the case there would be no way for us to become conscious of it. .. hell, who needs QM for that matter .. "does the tree falling in the empty forest still make a sound?" No. The falling tree would set up vibrations in the air, but with no ear to hear, no ear to decode the vibrations, there would be no sound. Well, the squirrel that ducked out of the way as it thumped to the forest floor would disagree with your assessment, but would have neither the inclination nor the capability to debate the topic with you. Additionally, in space there are no sounds because there is no air to carry the vibrations. sdp Yes, true ... ... but hardly a causal factor with regard to the price of tea in China.
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 0:10:09 GMT -5
Yes, most physicists (other than Bohm) wouldn't understand what we're discussing here because, as a group, they have no idea what we're talking about when we use the term "still mind" or "non-conceptual awareness." They begin with the idea that matter is stuff composed of other stuff, and that they, themselves, are observers separate from what is being seen, so they really can't imagine (because it can't be imagined--ha ha) what we're pointing to with words like "a unified suchness." Physicists say that they can fire a single subatomic particle at a particular target (or slit), but their words (and the ideas that the words represent) are based upon a gigantic range of huge assumptions that have never been questioned. What IS a subatomic particle, really? It is imagined as if it were a microscopic electrified grain of sand with a wide range of bizarre characteristics, but is that what it IS? NO! However they conceive it, that is not what it IS. If they started with the question, "What is a subatomic particle, really?" and found the answer to that question, they'd realize something important.Yeah, they'de realize they're out of a job.
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 0:28:25 GMT -5
Interesting. Yeah, it makes sense. So in non-conceptual seeing, it's not only that we haven't yet conceptualized an objective state that we are observing, but that the wave function hasn't yet collapsed and is still in a superposition. The event is undetermined until the observer determines it conceptually? That's really another way of saying that the observing and the observed are the same. Yeah, the wave function is a tacit acknowledgment that a particle entity has no certain reality independent of measurement (observation). In terms of the double-slit experiment, if there's no observation at the slits on the barrier then the field that creates the interference pattern on the screen wasn't differentiated into particles in the space between the barrier and the screen. Since there's still an interference pattern even when the intensity of the field is reduced to an energy that represents less than one particle at a time from the source: - the "particles" that form the stream can, and sometimes do go through both slits - in between the slit and the screen, the "individual particles" had no definite existence Decades of very very expensive experimentation have done nothing but confirm this model, and it's not anything that the experimenters wouldn't have wanted to disprove. Noone likes it. A Chemist or a Psychologist can posit an objective reality that would have been the case if not for observation, but a Physicist can't. I'll ask the same question I asked SDP. The wave function (that produces an interference pattern) is indeterminate in terms of particles, right? Can we say the particles associated with the wave function are non-local or superpositioned in time/space?
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 0:33:23 GMT -5
Yes, I will agree with that under your conditions. One question in physics that there is not a lot of agreement on is at what point actually does the measurement take place, what is the dividing line between observer and observed. Some say the measurement takes place in someone's consciousness. Some say all you need is a mechanical measuring device. What you are describing is the still mind being a part of the superposition, a partless whole in the words of Jarrell, undivided wholeness in the words of David Bohm. sdp The friendly Wiggy paradox demonstrates quite succinctly that even if this were the case there would be no way for us to become conscious of it. .. hell, who needs QM for that matter .. "does the tree falling in the empty forest still make a sound?" What if you leave a recorder in the woods and go back later and play it back? Did it make a sound then?
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 0:38:47 GMT -5
ha! ha! "what is the Quantum Observer?" <blank> <stare> This is where John Wheeler ended his career in physics. Earlier I gave a report on the book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter. Gefter began her search concerning reality as a teenager with her father. Over a period of over fifteen years, she turned her inquiry into a career as a science writer. She interviewed John Wheeler before he died and then several of his students after he died. His students pretty-much said, we don't know WTF all Wheeler's questions and ideas about the observer were all about. Wheeler as a physicist did not bring in God as ordering intelligence. So his question was, if consciousness creates reality via observation, what was the consciousness that brought reality out of the quantum soup, before man came to exist? Jarrell states that Wheeler's hunch concerning the double-slit delayed observation experiment showed that "the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well". (pg 21) sdp The underlying assumption is that man is the source of consciousness rather than an expression of consciousness.
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 0:41:22 GMT -5
The friendly Wiggy paradox demonstrates quite succinctly that even if this were the case there would be no way for us to become conscious of it. .. hell, who needs QM for that matter .. "does the tree falling in the empty forest still make a sound?" No. The falling tree would set up vibrations in the air, but with no ear to hear, no ear to decode the vibrations, there would be no sound. Additionally, in space there are no sounds because there is no air to carry the vibrations. sdp Wikki says "In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as a typically audible mechanical wave of pressure and displacement, through a medium such as air, and water." It doesn't say it has to be heard by something.
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 1:05:43 GMT -5
This is where John Wheeler ended his career in physics. Earlier I gave a report on the book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter. Gefter began her search concerning reality as a teenager with her father. Over a period of over fifteen years, she turned her inquiry into a career as a science writer. She interviewed John Wheeler before he died and then several of his students after he died. His students pretty-much said, we don't know WTF all Wheeler's questions and ideas about the observer were all about. Wheeler as a physicist did not bring in God as ordering intelligence. So his question was, if consciousness creates reality via observation, what was the consciousness that brought reality out of the quantum soup, before man came to exist? Jarrell states that Wheeler's hunch concerning the double-slit delayed observation experiment showed that "the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well". (pg 21) sdp Really, the collapse of the material assumption is simply the end of the line for Physics as the basis for Metaphysics, as it undermines the very foundation of the science itself. It turns out that objective physical reality is simply a very useful model that has no more foundation - despite the deep and fundamental human consensus that it embodies - than any other model. Ultimately, no model can capture what it is that we refer to as our experience and our agreement on and ability to communicate that experience mind-to-mind. Some minds will read that statement of absence as the presence of the model of no model, but that is simply a trick and artifact of language and information which are founded on the subject-object split ... and the statement of absence implicitly disclaims that split. That said, the intrusion of physical fact into common-sense notions of reality are an attention-getter. The mind can take itself on a wild ride when it kisses the void like this, that's for sure. WARNING: the rest of this is extreme TMT! For instance, consider the book of Genesis as a metaphor for deep history. Since the appearance of consciousness is a manifestation born out of the evolution of stardust, then it would follow that it was the arising of the first instance of consciousness that initially collapsed the superposition of all the possible configurations of the heavens since star formation eventually became possible in an interval after the big bang. But what would have constituted the first instance of a conscious observer triggering this collapse? (** muttley snicker **) .. Let there be light!
In my hyperminding days I speculated on the possibility that the entire Universe is just one big test. There is a theory of the Multiverse based on natural selection (I think I read this in one of Wheelers books btw) that postulates that our Universe creates gravitational singularities (black holes) because it was itself spawned by a similar Universe that created these same types of singularities. The theory is further based on the idea that each new Universe varies to some degree from it's parent, but that only Universes that are capable of supporting life and thus are subject to observation ever really come into existence. The motivation for this theory is to explain the anthropic problem without resorting to your SOI -- essentially, offering an explanation for the improbably fine-tuned values for natural constants such as the speed of light or the charge of an electron (among dozens of others). If any of these varied out to like the hundreth decimal place (or varied in proportion to one another) anything from a complete physical collapse or the impossibility for life as we know and observe it are the result. Now, mixed with a different idea -- that the process of evolution is the act of the environment encoding itself on life -- my speculation ran like this: what if just being able to support life isn't enough to guarantee the actual existence of a Universe? What if to actually be, that Universe had to produce an observer that was able to escape and outlive it? Just as we're pretty sure now that our Universe had a beginning, the current consensus is that it will suffer one of a number of ends, with the mainstream view referred to as " heat death". So I wondered, perhaps the reason that form is so entangled with emptiness and has no solid actuality is because if there is no observer at the END of physical extent of the Universe that is able to escape it, then, with regard to the Multiverse, it would be as if our Universe never was, and here, much much closer to the beginning than to the end of the story, this is a question of great uncertainty, and that uncertainty is reflected in the very nature and fabric of what constitutes the reality of it. When a paradox forms, it can be useful to take a step back and question the assumptions that led up to it. The fact that innumerable factors have to be just right for life to happen at all assumes that there are pre-life objective universal rules about what is required for life. Who wrote these rules? What if consciousness simply forms life, and then uses the conditions under which it was formed as the basis for a set of rules that then seem to be a set of requirements for life to happen?
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Post by enigma on Jul 29, 2014 1:08:23 GMT -5
No. The falling tree would set up vibrations in the air, but with no ear to hear, no ear to decode the vibrations, there would be no sound. Well, the squirrel that ducked out of the way as it thumped to the forest floor would disagree with your assessment, but would have neither the inclination nor the capability to debate the topic with you. You obviously haven't been to one of our squirrel satsangs.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jul 29, 2014 7:34:05 GMT -5
No. The falling tree would set up vibrations in the air, but with no ear to hear, no ear to decode the vibrations, there would be no sound. Well, the squirrel that ducked out of the way as it thumped to the forest floor would disagree with your assessment, but would have neither the inclination nor the capability to debate the topic with you. Squirrels have ears :-). sdp
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