Is quantum bunk?

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

What is Schrodinger's cat? - a definition from WhatIs.com - see also: quantum indeterminacy, quantum measurement indeterminacy



okay.. maybe i am not understanding this correctly, but is this cat theory saying that the quantum particles dont DO anything if they remain unobserved by (human) consciousness?!


im not sure i get this, but it sounds to me like scientists are coming down with a god complex

Stoner Shadow Wolf Reviewed by Stoner Shadow Wolf on 09-06-2008. Is quantum bunk? What is Schrodinger's cat? - a definition from WhatIs.com - see also: quantum indeterminacy, quantum measurement indeterminacy okay.. maybe i am not understanding this correctly, but is this cat theory saying that the quantum particles dont DO anything if they remain unobserved by (human) consciousness?! im not sure i get this, but it sounds to me like scientists are coming down with a god complex :( Rating: 5

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

:jawdropper: holy crap it works :jawdropper:

OKAY... this might not exactly be scientific, however i think faith and the quantum laws are sleeping together, so to speak. (i always knew faith was a slut, that's jsut a slutty name, ya know? erh ah i mean..)

so... i burned my finger with a match... ouch, right? well yeah, if you dont actually put a little effort into it.

***
focus for a moment on the burn... no wait, it doesnt hurt.


oh, it worked. ok so- ow damn the pain's back.
***


ok



that was basically what happened... yeah, it seems silly, but i think im on to something...


for a moment, even if only brief, i was able to "reverse the pain" as though i was never burned. i simply- there it goes again it does work :jawdropper: - i simply thought that maybe, if the quantum reacts to our expectations, it will; in other words, i never burned myself in the first place unless i am willing to believe i did.

however, without conscious effort, the particles will react the way they are "supposed to".



this little experiment tells me two things:


One: the quantum reacts to our awareness of it.

and two: if we do not put forth conscious effort to bend the quantum to our will, it will continue with a "default script", that is to say there is a natural process for the quantum that can be disrupted by our thoughts.


so even without our observation of the quantum, it will do what it is "supposed to do", but at the same time, our will overrides this.



of course all quantum physicists disprove this by not being omnipotent.



BUT IT WORKS ON BURNS!

... or at least this one... that's three times while writing this message that it's worked for me... i dont think it's coincidental.

[SnSstealth]

Great read wolf!
If you do anything else in your life. buy and read this book. I have never had a book enthrall me the way these have. Not even the Hitchhiker trilogy...lol

Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on Scientific Revolutions of the Twentieth Century by Trinh Xuan Thuan

I have a lot easier time buying quantum physics than I do the bible...lol

whiskeytango

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

lol nah, that was the first thing i found when i looked it up lol. that only led to more questions... which only led to even more... i was honestly hoping we had a quantum physicist stoner out there haha :stoned:





oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, what if we put a couple of cameras in the box too, and recorded everything from a remote location, but with no video feed, then had two individual (preferably unacquainted) people watch the tapes separately???


would one tape show a dead cat, while the other a live one?


furthermore, if this were recorded, what would THEN happen when the box were opened?

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

Think that counts as human tampering. For it to work, there can be no human interference at all I believe.

It has to remained closed, and it's contents untouched.

Mind blowing stuff. :stoned:

uh, the test cannot exist without human interference. that's an oxymoron at best.

[Coelho]

i was honestly hoping we had a quantum physicist stoner out there haha :stoned:

Im here... im not exactly a quantum physicist stoner, only a physicist stoner... but i think its enough.

The quantum mechanics actually says that particles have not any physical properties by themselves, and that they only got any physical properties when we measure them. So, while we are not watching them, they can do whatever they wish in any way they wish. The particles only have to "behave themselves" when were watching them.

Why is it so? The standard scientists usually are way too bound to the materialistic description of the world, that says that there are an objective world "out there", that we are somehow separated of it and we are only observers of it, even if our observations influences it. Then they become very confused, and find no sense in it and then say that quantum mechanics is "counter-intuitive", absurd or whatever. But its only because they are bound to the wrong world view.

The fact is that there is no such thing as an objective reality. What we call the "real world", the world "outside there" is only a creation of our mind. We dont percieve directly the world as it is. We only percieve the electric signals that our brain transmits to our consciousness. This signals are a "map" of the world, a description of it. Ultimately, matter and energy are the same thing. But our brain "translates" the patterns of energy as being solid things, made of matter. And it informs our consciousness that there is "solid matter" there. But the only things that actually exist are: 1 - the patterns of energy that our senses percieved and 2 - the electric signal our brains send to our consciousness saying "there is a piece of matter there". So, everything we call the "real world" is only a lot of electric signals in our brain. Note that Im not saying that the things does not exist. Im only saying that they are NOT as we see them, because we only percieve the electric signals from the brain, and not the things itselves.

And thus, there are not things like particles, fields, energy, whatever. All this things are only classifications, properties created by our brains to describe to our consciousness what it is percieving. So, lets say that we observe something that we usually call a particle. Our brain will percieve it in some way, and then it will interpret what it observed in the terms it uses to describe the world. So, the brain will say "Ok, im observing a particle. It must have physical properties." Then it assigns physical properties that fit the best way possible to the thing its observing, and says to our consciousness "there is a particle X at position x,y,z, with speed vx,vy,vz, electric charge q, spin s, etc...". And we think we observed a real particle with all this properties, but the fact is that this properties are only a way our brain finds to describe the world to us, and not a "real" thing that exists outside it.

Thats why the observation interfers with the thing being observed. Or rather, the observation somehow creates what is being observed. Not that the observation creates the thing itself, but it creates a mental image of it into our brains. As mental images are the only thing we can actually interact with, we can say somehow that the observation creates (into our mind) the thing being observed, as well as all its properties.

So the physics is NOT the science of how the universe works, but only the science of how our brains interpret and percieve the universe. But unfortunately it will take a long time for the scientists to recognize it... IF they do it someday...

oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, what if we put a couple of cameras in the box too, and recorded everything from a remote location, but with no video feed, then had two individual (preferably unacquainted) people watch the tapes separately???

would one tape show a dead cat, while the other a live one?

furthermore, if this were recorded, what would THEN happen when the box were opened?

Well... if both cameras were recording the same event, they would show the same thing, and when the box were opened the cat would at the same state (alive/dead) that was showed in the tapes.

[Stoner Shadow Wolf]

ah wow so basically reality is subjective to our perceptions and we are nothing more than holographic programs with a pre-programmed perception of the world around us...

Thus delving back into the tried and true thoughtological experiment: when you and i look at red, do we see the same color interpreted in our minds? i mean, we see the same color, but does it register the same in our perception of it.



if i were able to see through the perceptions of another person, filtered through my own perceptions, would all the colors of the universe be scrambled? would the pitches and tones of sounds be transposed? would the "speed" at which i perceive the universe be any faster or slower?


not that anyone could ever provide an answer, it's just something fun to think about.

Infinity...

ok so hold on... the cameras are not observers unto themselves, they have no perceptions, no awareness of what they are recording, so the real question, i guess, would be when would the particle "order" be jumpped into action? by watching the tapes, or by opening the box, or do the tapes, in fact, have the ability to observe and affect the particles instantly?

[GreenDestiny]

I think it's a virtually impossible task.

The "cat" would have to be in a perfect vaccum with no light, no radio waves, no neutrinos or other subatomic particles or waves of energy that can go through stuff. It would have to be totally isolated from everything.... even "dark matter".

Cameras work by observing the interaction of energy bombarding and reflecting off of an object so that won't work. Would an emotionless person be any different than a camera? Oh yeah, and absolutely nobody can have any knowledge of it as it's taking place. It's a crazy theory but there's no way to really test it.

Plus if we could test it, once we start to observe the outcome it can instantly change and we won't know exactly how it was before we started to take a peek inside the box.

To disallow any interaction with it, or study it, would be the only way to preserve the quantum virginity of the experiment. Celibate blind faith in science. hahaha


It's like saying that dinosaur fossils do not exist until we dig them up.

or saying that Galaxy #127398127 didn't exist until our telescopes caught the light coming from it and THEN we looked at the pictures. Point to one spot in the sky and it might be empty. Point to another and discover a new galaxy, but the pictures collected didn't exist until we decided to look at it? I wouldn't believe that.


oh...........
You'll start to fall into madness if you go on to read about RetroPsychoKinesis. I have a hard time believing that stuff but I'm willing to experiment with it some day...

[Coelho]

ah wow so basically reality is subjective to our perceptions and we are nothing more than holographic programs with a pre-programmed perception of the world around us...

I dont know if the universe is a hologram, as some recent theories says, or if it isnt... BTW, there is a VERY subtle point about the theories of the universe, that i must explain now:

When scientists say "the universe is made of vibrating strings", or "the universe is a hologram", or whatever, it does NOT mean that the universe is actually made of strings, or that its a hologram... it means ONLY that the mathematical equations that best describe the observed behavior of the universe are the same mathematical equations that describe the behavior of vibrating strings, or holograms, or whatever.
But they think, in their madness, that "well, if the math is the same of vibrating strings, then the universe MUST be made of vibrating strings..." Damn it! They should know better...

Thats one of the reasons of the endless mystery of the lights behavior... they say "sometimes light is a particle, sometimes its a wave"... and they got very confused by this. But the fact is, light is not a particle, nor a wave. Light is something else, that sometimes behaves in a way that can be mathematically described the same way a wave can be described, and sometimes behaves in a way that can be mathematically described the same way a particle can be described.

Thus delving back into the tried and true thoughtological experiment: when you and i look at red, do we see the same color interpreted in our minds? i mean, we see the same color, but does it register the same in our perception of it.

if i were able to see through the perceptions of another person, filtered through my own perceptions, would all the colors of the universe be scrambled? would the pitches and tones of sounds be transposed? would the "speed" at which i perceive the universe be any faster or slower?

not that anyone could ever provide an answer, it's just something fun to think about.

Well... ive thought a lot about it myself, and have no idea about the answer.
In the sentence before you says "we are nothing more than holographic programs with a pre-programmed perception of the world around us", and its interesting to the point i will discuss.

I wouldnt say that our mind has a pre-programed program to percieve the world. I would say that our brains works by recognizing patterns and naming them.

For example, our eyes has 3 color receptors, which i will call them R,G and B, for red green and blue. (Actually, the receptors does not percieve exactly this colors... the "red" percieves yellow instead red, but its not important to the point). So, when we look at a blue thing, our eyes send the signal "color:B" to the brain, when we look at a yellow (red+green) thing the eyes send the signal "color:RG", and when we look at a white (sum of all colors) thing, the eyes send the signal "color:RGB".

Then, the brain gets this signals and give them "names", or rather, assigns sensations for each pattern of signals. So for the pattern RG is assigned the "name" yellow (the sensation of color yellow as we see it), and for the pattern RGB it assigns the name "white". But the fact is, when we look at the white color, we cant discern into it the blues, greens or reds that make it. We see the white as a different color, which doesnt resemble any colors of which its made of. And it happens exactly because we are not seeing the white as it is, a sum of all colors, but we are seeing ONLY the name, the "label", the pattern ("color:RGB") called white.

So in fact everything we percieve are not the things itselves as they are, but ONLY the names that our brain gives to them.
And this goes for anything we percieve. Since our birth, our brains are very busy searching for patterns, naming them, and thinking only in terms of the names of the patterns, instead the patterns itselves. So we end thinking that the names of the patterns are the things itselves, we think that "the map is the territory".

So, i think the "program" our minds use to percieve the universe are not the same for everybody, a thing hardwired in our brains, but a result of the accumulation of patterns percieved by each one, in terms of which the brain constructs its "map" of the world.

Many of our perceptions are shared by everyone, for example, everybody who sees will unavoidably classify the patterns of electric signals from the eye as colors, and so all we humans will have the concept of "colors", even if the way we see them inside our minds can be very different from one to another.

But many of our perceptions are very different, because most of the perceptions are socially induced. Children percieves a LOT of things adults does not, but during our raising the adults says us which percieved things are important (they say "real") and which percieved things are not important (they say "unreal") and must be ignored. So, when we become adults, we learned to percieve the world in the exactly same way that everybody else does, and so we think the world is "real", because all of us percieve it the same way. But the fact is that we only percieve it the same way because we learned (or rather we were forced) to percieve the world the same way they do.

A proof that the perceptions are socially induced is that there are primitive societies of indians (for example), who can usually see and interact with "spirits", that are completly invisible for us, "civilizated" ones. Everybody, when is a child, can percieve this "spirits". But in some societies (as ours) this perceptions are disregarded, and in others (theirs) they are reinforced. So, after years of this conditioning, we end being completly unable to see this "spirits", while they can.

ok so hold on... the cameras are not observers unto themselves, they have no perceptions, no awareness of what they are recording, so the real question, i guess, would be when would the particle "order" be jumpped into action? by watching the tapes, or by opening the box, or do the tapes, in fact, have the ability to observe and affect the particles instantly?

Well... the quantum mechanics says that even the tape would record the cat as being alive and dead "at the same time". But, the moment it were watched, the tape would suffer a "wavefunction collapse", which means it would have to choose a definite state to be. Like, the tape would have the record of the two possibilities, but when the first person watched it, it would choose only one state, and so the person would watch the cat as being alive or dead.

I think it's a virtually impossible task.

The "cat" would have to be in a perfect vaccum with no light, no radio waves, no neutrinos or other subatomic particles or waves of energy that can go through stuff. It would have to be totally isolated from everything.... even "dark matter".

Indeed... the cats experiment is only an illustration of the "absurdity " (or rather, conter-intuitiveness) of some quantum mechanics behaviors, and not a feasible experiment.
But the atoms indeed behave this way, and can be "alive" or "dead" at the "same time", until some measurement force them to choose only one single state to be at.

Cameras work by observing the interaction of energy bombarding and reflecting off of an object so that won't work. Would an emotionless person be any different than a camera? Oh yeah, and absolutely nobody can have any knowledge of it as it's taking place. It's a crazy theory but there's no way to really test it.

Plus if we could test it, once we start to observe the outcome it can instantly change and we won't know exactly how it was before we started to take a peek inside the box.

To disallow any interaction with it, or study it, would be the only way to preserve the quantum virginity of the experiment. Celibate blind faith in science. hahaha

Well... the interation itself does not destroy the alive-deadness of the cat... a camera would record a cat alive and dead at the same time, without any troubles... the camera and the tape wouldnt mind it... only when our conscious minds enters the system is that the system is forced to choose only one state to be at. Because is our consciousness that cant admit the possibility of a thing being in two states at the same time, and so it forces the thing to choose only one state.

It's like saying that dinosaur fossils do not exist until we dig them up.

or saying that Galaxy #127398127 didn't exist until our telescopes caught the light coming from it and THEN we looked at the pictures. Point to one spot in the sky and it might be empty. Point to another and discover a new galaxy, but the pictures collected didn't exist until we decided to look at it? I wouldn't believe that.

Well... it doesnt exist for us. But there may be other observers somewhere else that observed it, and noticed its existence.
BUT what if we humans were the only conscious observers of the universe? How would we be sure that the galaxy existed before if no one was there to observe it? We can assume that it existed, but its only an assumption, and not a sure thing.

You'll start to fall into madness if you go on to read about RetroPsychoKinesis. I have a hard time believing that stuff but I'm willing to experiment with it some day...

Its a nice thing, i already read about this... in an experiment, someone is asked to psychokinetically interfere with the generation of a sequence of random numbers, for example. Then they analise the numbers generated and see if the people succedeed in interfering it. Many people actually does.

Then, they did a weirder experiment. They generated a sequence of random numbers, recorded it somewhere (a tape, for example), and only AFTER the tape being recorded they asked the person to interfere with the random number generation. Of course they didnt tell the person the tape was already recorded, so the person thought it was interfering with a thing that would happen, instead a thing that already had happened.

And when they looked at the results... the person HAD suceeded in interfering with the random numbers generation, even if it happened BEFORE the person started to interfere... LOLOLOLOL!!!!!! I can only imagine the faces of the experimenters when did see this!!! LOLOLOL!!!!! They thought they were very smart trying to fool around with things they doesnt understand and that are far greater than they imagine... LOLOL!!!! :S2:

But for me it isnt a surprise. Time is only a human minds construct, and so it isnt hard to transcend it, if one knows how to do this.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" :rastasmoke:

[GreenDestiny]

yeah! that's the random number experiment I was thinking about. It blew my mind when I heard about it.

Human consciousness, to me, seems to be the best examples of showing that the quantum shit is for real.