Relativity vs Identity


Robert_Bumbalough

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Bell's inequality is proved by relatively elementary mathematics. It is rock solid as mathematical proofs go. He has definitely shown that if reality is local a certain set of inequalities of correlation for the outputs of double delayed measurements on entangled photons must hold. Experiment has show they do not hold. Ergo reality is non-local. There are no local hidden variables which can reproduce the actual measured correlations. Quantum theory predicts the failure of the inequalities and the measurements bear the predictions out. In so proving, Bell revealed a subtle error made by von Neuman in his important book "Grunlagen des Quantum Mechanik". Einstein's assertion of locality is just plain wrong.

The proof is rock solid. The experiments use less than one hundred percent efficient detectors, but with improving technology the double delayed entanglement correlation measurements falsify the inequalities proved by Bell (and later modified some by Bohm).

Quantum theory is on the mark and has not been falsified by any entanglement based experiment.

The Philosophers may long and lust for hidden causative factors, but they long in vain.

By the way, the finite and constant velocity of light is not a common sense notion. Common sense and unaided observation do not reveal the finite and constant speed of light. The finite speed of light in free space was first observed by Roemer in the mid 1600s and all subsequent experiments have shown light to have a constant speed in vacuo which is measured to five decimal places of precision.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Greetings Ba'al: Thank you. I admire and respect your mind and education. There is much I have to learn, and like the philosophers I too am very uncomfortable with nonlocality. But that may be because I do not understand it.

Victor Stenger wrote:

In the 1960s, John Bell proved an important theorem about hidden variables theories. He showed that any deterministic hidden variables theory capable of giving all the statistical results of standard quantum mechanics must allow for superluminal connections, in violation of Einstein's assertion that no signals can move faster than light (Bell 1964). In the jargon of the trade, deterministic hidden variables theories are nonlocal. In popularized language, they are holistic, allowing for simultaneous connections between all points in space. Bell proposed a definitive experimental test that has now been repeated many times with every increasing precision (Aspect 1982). In all cases, the results are fully consistent with quantum mechanics, requiring deterministic hidden variables, if they exist, to be nonlocal.

Instead of giving up on hidden variables because of their apparent conflict with relativity, proponents have taken Bell's theorem to imply hidden variables are even more profound, providing for the holistic universe of the mystic's fondest desires. The problem of nonlocality is dismissed by claiming that no communication of signals faster than light takes place. This conclusion can be proven to be a general property of quantum theory (Eberhard 1989), and will be true for Bohm's theory as long as Bohm's theory is consistent with quantum mechanics. But, as we have seen, Bohm's theory by itself has no unique, testable consequences. We can use Occam's razor to excise it from our discourse, and nothing substantial is changed. The notion of hidden variables has no use unless superluminal connections are observed. This has not yet happened, and so hidden variables remain a non-parsimonious alternative to conventional quantum mechanics. - Victor Stenger

Stenger also wrote about a process he calls zigzagging in spacetime as an explanation of nonlocality.

Feynman noted that whether you say you have a particle moving forward in time with negative energy, or its antiparticle moving backward in time with positive energy, is really quite arbitrary at the fundamental level. Energy conservation and the other laws of physics remain intact. By reversing the charges and momenta of the backward particles, charge and momentum conservation are unaffected.

The violation of causal precedence by tachyons, if they are ever found, will result not from their motion backward in time but from their superluminal motion. In the case of the known elementary particles, whether they move backward or forward in time they still remain within the light cone and retain causal precedence. That is, they do not exchange cause and effect from one reference frame to another. And, as I will now show, the apparent nonlocality proposed by Vigier is simply an artifact that can be understood without superluminal motion.

In Fig. 5.3, the Feynman diagram for the zigzag process is illustrated [Purists will object that the Feynman diagram is generally drawn in terms of four-momenta rather space and time. However, the space-time diagrams I show are an equivalent way of describing the same ideas. Even the purists must admit that one can go from a momentum space to a spacetime description by a canonical transformation]. As usual, the time axis is up and a single spatial axis is indicated to the right. An electron starts at point A and follows a path through spacetime at constant velocity, changing its position as time progresses. At point B, a fluctuation in the vacuum results in a momentum transfer to the electron, which turns it around so it goes backward in time. At point C, another vacuum fluctuation causes the electron to turn around again and resume its forward course in time, passing point D at the same time as the interaction B, but at a point separated by the distance BD. Thus it appears that the particle has made an instantaneous jump from B to D.

Actually, it is possible to view this nonlocal artifact without introducing motion backward in time, as illustrated in Fig. 5.4. Note that all the particles are moving in one time direction. At time C an electron positron pair is created by a vacuum fluctuation. The positron goes to the left and collides with the original electron at B where they annihilate each other, the annihilation energy disappearing into the fluctuating vacuum. In the meantime, the electron from the pair created at C continues on and is interpreted as the original electron from A transported instantaneously from B to D.

The net result, in either view, is an effectively instantaneous jump of the electron over the spacelike separation BD. At time B the electron disappears and reappears at D some distance away. A quantum jump, a "spooky action at a distance," has taken place. However, when the event is not just viewed at one instant, but over the progression of time, nothing unusual has taken place.

Note that conservation of momentum is maintained overalland no other laws of physics are violated. The impulse delta(p) at B is exactly balanced by the opposite impulse at C. The impulses at B and C individually violate momentum conservation, but this is allowed by the uncertainty principle, provided the spatial distance delta(x) between B and C is less than h/delta(p). - Victor Stenger link

What Stenger says here makes sense, (I think, but I'm not sure.), if the thing about quantum particles moving backwards through time is allowable as he claims Feynman showed. Could this be an explanation for nonlocality that eliminates "magic" from consideration?

Many Thanks

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It's bewildering why you continue to criticize Korzybski's work in neurophysiology when he didn't do any neurophysiology. Sigh...

He came to neurological conclusions based on poor evidence. Poor Count. The Count and Ayn Rand, they really believed that had it pegged.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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It's bewildering why you continue to criticize Korzybski's work in neurophysiology when he didn't do any neurophysiology. Sigh...

He came to neurological conclusions based on poor evidence. Poor Count. The Count and Ayn Rand, they really believed that had it pegged.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Again, he did not come to any neurological conclusions, he came to some general semantic conclusions. Poor Baal.

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Again, he did not come to any neurological conclusions, he came to some general semantic conclusions. Poor Baal.

Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action.

Ba'al Chatzaf

There are many levels of science. According to you then chemistry is implicitly physics, does that make chemistry illegitimate? General semantics is a theory about how the nervous system should function from a neuro-semantic point of view, not neurological.

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Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action.

Ba'al Chatzaf

There are many levels of science. According to you then chemistry is implicitly physics, does that make chemistry illegitimate? General semantics is a theory about how the nervous system should function from a neuro-semantic point of view, not neurological.

GS, I have no idea what is meant by "neuro-semantic" and I wonder if you hold to the deterministic view that all of our ideas and concepts are generated by neural impulses or the like?

Ba'al appears to be a blatant determinist: "Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action. "

I am of the view that in order to be conscious one must have a brain and sensory organs, leaving aside for the moment the special cases of the unfortunately congenitally blind and deaf. The Miracle Worker comes to mind in this context and in that case the girl was able to experience "touch."

My point is that once one is conscious, ones consciousness has an identity of its own with certain powers and potentials, such as the capacity to abstract, to conceptualize, to think on the conceptual level, to focus one's mind, to choose what to focus on, to be aware of what one's mind is doing, and to control one's thoughts, to control one's actions, and that all of those things are not passive effects of neuological events such as neuro transmitters crossing synapses or charged particles flowing through the semipermeable membrane of the axons or dendrites of nerves.

gulch

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G.S.

"...neuro-semantic..." "... point of view...", not "...neurological..."

I know at this point, you could possibly be surprised by the knowledge that I am a big Korzybski advocate. The map is not the territory being one of the great obvious concepts that he made.

However, I do not see or understand the distinction you are making above.

Expound please.

Adam

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I know at this point, you could possibly be surprised by the knowledge that I am a big Korzybski advocate. The map is not the territory being one of the great obvious concepts that he made.

However, I do not see or understand the distinction you are making above.

Expound please.

Adam

The map is an analogy of his basic premise - the word is not the thing it represents. This is obvious but it leads to his assertion that the content of knowledge must be structural and this is what we should concern ourselves with. Knowledge exists in many levels of abstraction and we must continuously differentiate these levels. If we confuse levels or orders of abstraction this leads to arrested development in any given field. So you see, this is not neurology. You might describe general semantics as theory about how humans should interact with their environment with words and symbols.

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My point is that once one is conscious, ones consciousness has an identity of its own with certain powers and potentials, such as the capacity to abstract, to conceptualize, to think on the conceptual level, to focus one's mind, to choose what to focus on, to be aware of what one's mind is doing, and to control one's thoughts, to control one's actions, and that all of those things are not passive effects of neuological events such as neuro transmitters crossing synapses or charged particles flowing through the semipermeable membrane of the axons or dendrites of nerves.

I think you will agree that on one level, "events such as neuro transmitters crossing synapses or charged particles flowing through the semipermeable membrane of the axons or dendrites of nerves." mean one thing but on another level it may mean "I want some ice cream", for example. Feelings, thoughts, concepts, etc. don't exist without the neurological basis - the exist on top of it. It depends which level of abstraction we are interested.

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Ba'al appears to be a blatant determinist: "Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action. "

Reductionist, not determinist. There are many quantum processes taking place in the brain. Physical reality is not deterministic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Ba'al appears to be a blatant determinist: "Any commentary on cognitive or mental doings is implicitly neurological. Our minds are our brains in action. "

Reductionist, not determinist. There are many quantum processes taking place in the brain. Physical reality is not deterministic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

There are quite a lot of definitions for determinism, but here are the first two entries from dictionary.com

1. the doctrine that all facts and events exemplify natural laws.

2. the doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, have sufficient causes.

I believe all physics, implicitly, is considered deterministic. Even probability related to quantum events is deterministic (i.e. strictly rule-based). Only forces that can act on physics from outside the physical system of the universe can be a force against determinism by definition. Therefore:

1. If free will acts against determinism

2. Free will is the product of consciousness

Then - consciousness cannot be said to operate strictly according to physical laws.

If we want a clean way to think about consciousness from a physics point of view, perhaps it's best to suggest that consciousness modifies the probabilities of quantum events in the brain. Now that is cool!

Christopher

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Why do animals have consciousness (brains) but plants do not? Because plants don't make choices. I posit that free will is extant in animals generally and in plants not at all. Free will is animal compensation for rootlessness, but you don't need conceptual thinking for free will--not even in people. Now, non-human animals will make choices that within the animals' knowledge will benefit their lives (and reproduction) only while silly people often do not since they are "higher" animals.

--Brant

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Your mistake is in presuming all consciousness is the same... conceptual conscious is not the same as perceptual consciousness, far less than the sensal level... consciousness, for those who possess it, is a consequence of centralization of the pleasure/pain mechanism in terms of organizing thru nerves [and the centralization thru what evolved as the brain] the means of coordinating defensiveness and attentiveness to better survivability...

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1. If free will acts against determinism

2. Free will is the product of consciousness

Then - consciousness cannot be said to operate strictly according to physical laws.

Our free will is one of the manifestations of the quantum nature of reality.

Everything that exists operates according to physical laws. We just don't know all the physical laws yet. Maybe we will never know them all because we operate within the limitation of our three pound brains. Our wits do have a limit.

When we can drill down to reality at Planck Length (were are 15 orders of magnitude removed, even with out best instruments), we will know just how "rule based" reality is.

Demokritus was basically right. His best formulation was that everything is atoms (truly indivisible things) in space. That was his guess and he is basically right even though he did not know enough to get the details completely right. Consciousness is one of the processes our brain does.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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If we want a clean way to think about consciousness from a physics point of view, perhaps it's best to suggest that consciousness modifies the probabilities of quantum events in the brain. Now that is cool!

Christopher,

This implies that consciousness is more than the sum of its parts.

That's top-down thinking and I fully agree with it.

Your mistake is in presuming all consciousness is the same... conceptual conscious is not the same as perceptual consciousness, far less than the sensal level... consciousness, for those who possess it, is a consequence of centralization of the pleasure/pain mechanism in terms of organizing thru nerves [and the centralization thru what evolved as the brain] the means of coordinating defensiveness and attentiveness to better survivability...

Robert,

I agree that conceptual thinking is different than perceptual, etc., but only to the extent that conceptual thinking is built on perceptual thinking. It includes all the others. There is a tendency in some Objectivist-libertarian discussions I have read on this to consider conceptual thought as cut off from the rest.

It is all awareness of reality operated by sense organs and a nervous system in an individual organism (and a brain in higher life forms). To that extent, conceptual thinking is identical to the rest.

Michael

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1. If free will acts against determinism

2. Free will is the product of consciousness

Then - consciousness cannot be said to operate strictly according to physical laws.

If we want a clean way to think about consciousness from a physics point of view, perhaps it's best to suggest that consciousness modifies the probabilities of quantum events in the brain. Now that is cool!

Christopher

What do we mean by 'free will'? That we can choose from among several options?

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1. If free will acts against determinism

2. Free will is the product of consciousness

Then - consciousness cannot be said to operate strictly according to physical laws.

If we want a clean way to think about consciousness from a physics point of view, perhaps it's best to suggest that consciousness modifies the probabilities of quantum events in the brain. Now that is cool!

Christopher

What do we mean by 'free will'? That we can choose from among several options?

Yup.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Ok folks, before we start a new discussion about free will, I'd suggest to reread this thread, to avoid an endless repeating of the same arguments.

I have the free will to talk about free will on this thread if I want. Free will, free will, free will,..... :P One thing I didn't see on that thread, we may have freedom to make choices but there are always physical restraints. So it's free will only within certain parameters. For example, we are only free to choose not eating for so long, etc.

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And this was debatable? lol

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