Faster than Light

[mrsonde]

Dec 10, 2013 19:26:13 GMT 1 principled said:

Abacus

The big problem with this idea (as far as I know) is that when particle A is measured at one location, although particle B will take on a complimentary state instantaneously, regardless of the distance between them, you can never actually predict before a measurement is made what state particle A will be in after it is measured. This means, of course, that it is impossible to send prepared signals because it is all about the probabilities of this or that occurring after measuring particle A, you can never be sure.

Although I'm no expert, this is my interpretation as well. However, I'd like to explore the idea of the instantaneousness of entanglement.
As a thought experiment, let's take Mr S' two planets and join them with a massless, solid rod

There's the problem with this thought experiment. There's no such thing, and can be no such thing.

Because the rod is massless the movement will be transmitted instantaneously, would it not?

No.

There's quite an interesting thought experiment that avoids the impossibility of having your massless rod, however - imagined by Lucas, I think. Imagine a very large pair of scissors. The points of the scissors can move towards or away from each other at an infinitesimally small speed shy of c. Even given the limitations of impulse transmission down the two arms, the point of their intersection - the cutting point of the scissors - will move along the arms, either towards the points or towards the centre, at greater than c.

Returning to entanglement, could such "particle pairs" be connected by some mechanism - as yet unknown but analogous to the rod- where information can be transferred instantaneously yet not breach the law that information transfer can never be faster that the speed of light?

Yes - there must be some such mechanism. And it allows you to breach this "law".

[mrsonde]

Dec 11, 2013 21:29:33 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

I'm not aware that there is any way round the problem of the unpredictability of what state a particle will be in when measured because this seems a fundamental aspect of the way quantum objects behave.

As I say, if all you want is the detection of whether a photon is passing through both slits of a double-slit, and thereby creating an interference pattern, or has had its state measured, and thereby passes through only one slit, creating a clump pattern, you don't need to do any predicting.

It's all tied up with the measurement problem where when you attempt to "look" at a quantum object you can only measure its momentum or it's position, not both.

Hmmm...that's an unnecessarily specific interpretation of what is usually meant by the "measurement problem". This refers to the mysterious gap - conceptually, mathematically, observationally - between the quantum mechanical description of particles before they are observed (measured) and their actuality once they are. As Feynman pointed out, and Penrose emphasised after him, it was very unfortunate that Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle was dragged in to explain this "measurement problem" - it's not the crux of the issue at all, and has unnecessarily confused generations of physics students attempting to take it on board.

[abacus9900]

Dec 27, 2013 7:36:04 GMT 1 mrsonde said:

Dec 11, 2013 21:29:33 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

I'm not aware that there is any way round the problem of the unpredictability of what state a particle will be in when measured because this seems a fundamental aspect of the way quantum objects behave.

As I say, if all you want is the detection of whether a photon is passing through both slits of a double-slit, and thereby creating an interference pattern, or has had its state measured, and thereby passes through only one slit, creating a clump pattern, you don't need to do any predicting.

It's all tied up with the measurement problem where when you attempt to "look" at a quantum object you can only measure its momentum or it's position, not both.

Hmmm...that's an unnecessarily specific interpretation of what is usually meant by the "measurement problem". This refers to the mysterious gap - conceptually, mathematically, observationally - between the quantum mechanical description of particles before they are observed (measured) and their actuality once they are. As Feynman pointed out, and Penrose emphasised after him, it was very unfortunate that Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle was dragged in to explain this "measurement problem" - it's not the crux of the issue at all, and has unnecessarily confused generations of physics students attempting to take it on board.

Sorry, but all this seems to be just using words to express nothing and makes me question how much you do know about QM.

[mrsonde]

Jan 6, 2014 11:59:33 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

Dec 27, 2013 7:36:04 GMT 1 mrsonde said:

As I say, if all you want is the detection of whether a photon is passing through both slits of a double-slit, and thereby creating an interference pattern, or has had its state measured, and thereby passes through only one slit, creating a clump pattern, you don't need to do any predicting.

It's all tied up with the measurement problem where when you attempt to "look" at a quantum object you can only measure its momentum or it's position, not both.

Hmmm...that's an unnecessarily specific interpretation of what is usually meant by the "measurement problem". This refers to the mysterious gap - conceptually, mathematically, observationally - between the quantum mechanical description of particles before they are observed (measured) and their actuality once they are. As Feynman pointed out, and Penrose emphasised after him, it was very unfortunate that Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle was dragged in to explain this "measurement problem" - it's not the crux of the issue at all, and has unnecessarily confused generations of physics students attempting to take it on board.

Sorry, but all this seems to be just using words to express nothing and makes me question how much you do know about QM.

What is it exactly that you don't understand? It can't be the first bit, because you've just posted an article describing exactly that experiment - haven't you?

So it must be the second bit. Which also seems straightforward:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem

"The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is the unresolved problem of how (or if) wavefunction collapse occurs..."

Okay?

[abacus9900]

Jan 8, 2014 3:59:49 GMT 1 mrsonde said:

Jan 6, 2014 11:59:33 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

Hmmm...that's an unnecessarily specific interpretation of what is usually meant by the "measurement problem". This refers to the mysterious gap - conceptually, mathematically, observationally - between the quantum mechanical description of particles before they are observed (measured) and their actuality once they are. As Feynman pointed out, and Penrose emphasised after him, it was very unfortunate that Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle was dragged in to explain this "measurement problem" - it's not the crux of the issue at all, and has unnecessarily confused generations of physics students attempting to take it on board.

Sorry, but all this seems to be just using words to express nothing and makes me question how much you do know about QM.

What is it exactly that you don't understand? It can't be the first bit, because you've just posted an article describing exactly that experiment - haven't you?

So it must be the second bit. Which also seems straightforward:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem

"The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is the unresolved problem of how (or if) wavefunction collapse occurs..."

Okay?

"Wavefunction collapse" is just another fantasy that has no real existence outside the minds of physicists. The fact remains that until a measurement is made things like electrons, photons, protons and the rest remain as just potentials in the mind if God. Have you learnt nothing from our discussions. There are no "waves" or "collapse" going on when we make a measurement, just our perception of the mind of God. This statement might seem religious but it is more a rational way to ascribe a final framework to things which are simply too deep for human beings to comprehend.

[mrsonde]

Jan 14, 2014 20:55:53 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

Jan 8, 2014 3:59:49 GMT 1 mrsonde said:

Sorry, but all this seems to be just using words to express nothing and makes me question how much you do know about QM.

What is it exactly that you don't understand? It can't be the first bit, because you've just posted an article describing exactly that experiment - haven't you?

So it must be the second bit. Which also seems straightforward:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem



Okay?

"Wavefunction collapse" is just another fantasy that has no real existence outside the minds of physicists.

;D You've just spent more than twenty pages arguing that it's only when such "wavefunction collapse" occurs that anything comes into existence at all! Before any observation is made, all that exists are "probability waves", you've insisted over and over!

The fact remains that until a measurement is made things like electrons, photons, protons and the rest remain as just potentials in the mind if God.

This is a very interesting and I'd even go so far as to say alarming new interpretation of what the term "fact" means. You're saying there is some dictionary or philosophical system somewhere that defines fact as whatever you want there to be? Does that mean Santa Claus really does exist? Damn. I've been visiting primary schools for thirty years misinforming thousands of children for nothing.

Have you learnt nothing from our discussions.

Yes. I've learned that you are not amenable to reason, or having your errors in learning corrected.

There are no "waves" or "collapse" going on when we make a measurement, just our perception of the mind of God.

You should submit this amazing discovery to Nature and Mind ASAP. The world deserves to know!

This statement might seem religious

Errr...it did seem that way, I admit. Have I misunderstood you again?

but it is more a rational way to ascribe a final framework to things which are simply too deep for human beings to comprehend.

It's the old "Royal We" again, isn't it, Abacus? You don't comprehend something, so it's too deep for "human beings"?

Well, look. I'll tell you what - I'm being very foolish here, I know, given your brick-wall inability to take anything in evinced so far; but I've informed you of this before, so there's really no greater loss. I'm very much in sympathy for your "religious" endeavour. I deplore and detest the hamfisted way you've gone about inventing your "rational" argument - because it's nonsense, based on basic misunderstandings about perception, and quantum mechanics, that a first-year undergraduate in either philosophy or physics could easily point out to you, if you ever listened. But in fact, if you discard the erroneous initial assumptions you've started out with - the false premises I've pointed out to you at least half a dozen times already - and build instead a properly rational description of how we come to know anything, and what this therefore says about the nature of reality, you end up with what you're looking for.

Not "God" as you would recognise the concept, no doubt. But that really should be no surprise.

[abacus9900]

but it is more a rational way to ascribe a final framework to things which are simply too deep for human beings to comprehend.

It's the old "Royal We" again, isn't it, Abacus? You don't comprehend something, so it's too deep for "human beings"?

Well, look. I'll tell you what - I'm being very foolish here, I know, given your brick-wall inability to take anything in evinced so far; but I've informed you of this before, so there's really no greater loss. I'm very much in sympathy for your "religious" endeavour. I deplore and detest the hamfisted way you've gone about inventing your "rational" argument - because it's nonsense, based on basic misunderstandings about perception, and quantum mechanics, that a first-year undergraduate in either philosophy or physics could easily point out to you, if you ever listened. But in fact, if you discard the erroneous initial assumptions you've started out with - the false premises I've pointed out to you at least half a dozen times already - and build instead a properly rational description of how we come to know anything, and what this therefore says about the nature of reality, you end up with what you're looking for.

Not "God" as you would recognise the concept, no doubt. But that really should be no surprise.

Many years ago a very famous mathematician by the name of Kurt Godel proved mathematically that no matter how powerful a system of formal rules were, it could never be complete because you could never prove, in formal terms, some of its axioms. Now, that is not to say that such axioms are not true in the sense of actually working in practical terms, but that is not the same as being able to prove, in the strictest, most rigorous way, that such axioms are correct. For example, take Euclid's statement that parallel lines never meet. Now, in the real world this postulate does seem to work, however, because we now know about spacetime and curved space and even the fact that the earth is a sphere (something Euclid was unaware of) it is false because space is not completely flat and continuous. So here, we see that to enable proof to be supplied in support of some postulate we have to go outside the system of axioms, or rules, that give rise to the postulate. Now, this principle applies to any scientific theory such that you can never actually prove formally that any theory is correct from within the system it comes from. Even the Big Bang cannot be proved within the current system of scientific methodology because, once again, we have to go outside of that in order to prove it, in other words, all our scientific ideas are part of something greater and, therefore, too limited in terms of human conceptions. Having said this, it is also true that even if we go outside the system in order to prove some idea, even that cannot be formally proved within its system and, once again, we are forced to go outside of that to provide a formal proof. You can probably see where this is leading, yes, we can go on like this forever always having to go outside our current level of proof to provide proof. Now, what all this means is that we will never be in a position to prove anything in the strictest sense, so we are simply left to conclude that the mind of God is what causes everything because we have no other rational way of resolving the problem.

To put it in a nutshell, everything we know can only be considered within the context of something greater and as our knowledge will always be limited we will never really know anything! This, interestingly, echoes back to my contention that we create our own reality. Now you have proof of this and the usage of the "Royal We" is fully justified in light of this.

"Gödel's ontological proof is a formal argument for God's existence by the mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978).

It is in a line of development that goes back to Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). St. Anselm's ontological argument, in its most succinct form, is as follows: "God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist." A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716); this is the version that Gödel studied and attempted to clarify with his ontological argument."

"Gödel left a fourteen-point outline of his philosophical beliefs in his papers. Points relevant to the ontological proof include

4. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
5. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
13. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.
14. Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not."


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_ontological_proof

[principled]

It would seem that we humans cock up everything. Now, it's the universe. As we stare out over the horizon to distant galaxies we are, according to the abstract of a Cornell University paper, bringing about our demise due to quantam effects of observation.
The full paper (which I can't access), is here: arxiv.org/abs/0711.1821

The popular press version is here: io9.com/we-might-be-destroying-the-universe-just-by-looking-at-1514652112

I was building an Ark just in case the floods continued, but after reading the article there seems little point!!!
P

[mrsonde]

Feb 3, 2014 16:53:32 GMT 1 abacus9900 said:

It's the old "Royal We" again, isn't it, Abacus? You don't comprehend something, so it's too deep for "human beings"?

Well, look. I'll tell you what - I'm being very foolish here, I know, given your brick-wall inability to take anything in evinced so far; but I've informed you of this before, so there's really no greater loss. I'm very much in sympathy for your "religious" endeavour. I deplore and detest the hamfisted way you've gone about inventing your "rational" argument - because it's nonsense, based on basic misunderstandings about perception, and quantum mechanics, that a first-year undergraduate in either philosophy or physics could easily point out to you, if you ever listened. But in fact, if you discard the erroneous initial assumptions you've started out with - the false premises I've pointed out to you at least half a dozen times already - and build instead a properly rational description of how we come to know anything, and what this therefore says about the nature of reality, you end up with what you're looking for.

Not "God" as you would recognise the concept, no doubt. But that really should be no surprise.

Many years ago a very famous mathematician by the name of Kurt Godel proved mathematically that no matter how powerful a system of formal rules were, it could never be complete because you could never prove, in formal terms, some of its axioms. Now, that is not to say that such axioms are not true in the sense of actually working in practical terms, but that is not the same as being able to prove, in the strictest, most rigorous way, that such axioms are correct. For example, take Euclid's statement that parallel lines never meet. Now, in the real world this postulate does seem to work, however, because we now know about spacetime and curved space and even the fact that the earth is a sphere (something Euclid was unaware of) it is false because space is not completely flat and continuous. So here, we see that to enable proof to be supplied in support of some postulate we have to go outside the system of axioms, or rules, that give rise to the postulate. Now, this principle applies to any scientific theory such that you can never actually prove formally that any theory is correct from within the system it comes from. Even the Big Bang cannot be proved within the current system of scientific methodology because, once again, we have to go outside of that in order to prove it, in other words, all our scientific ideas are part of something greater and, therefore, too limited in terms of human conceptions. Having said this, it is also true that even if we go outside the system in order to prove some idea, even that cannot be formally proved within its system and, once again, we are forced to go outside of that to provide a formal proof. You can probably see where this is leading, yes, we can go on like this forever always having to go outside our current level of proof to provide proof. Now, what all this means is that we will never be in a position to prove anything in the strictest sense, so we are simply left to conclude that the mind of God is what causes everything because we have no other rational way of resolving the problem.

To put it in a nutshell, everything we know can only be considered within the context of something greater and as our knowledge will always be limited we will never really know anything! This, interestingly, echoes back to my contention that we create our own reality. Now you have proof of this and the usage of the "Royal We" is fully justified in light of this.

"Gödel's ontological proof is a formal argument for God's existence by the mathematician Kurt Gödel (1906–1978).

It is in a line of development that goes back to Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109). St. Anselm's ontological argument, in its most succinct form, is as follows: "God, by definition, is that for which no greater can be conceived. God exists in the understanding. If God exists in the understanding, we could imagine Him to be greater by existing in reality. Therefore, God must exist." A more elaborate version was given by Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716); this is the version that Gödel studied and attempted to clarify with his ontological argument."

"Gödel left a fourteen-point outline of his philosophical beliefs in his papers. Points relevant to the ontological proof include

4. There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind.
5. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.
13. There is a scientific (exact) philosophy and theology, which deals with concepts of the highest abstractness; and this is also most highly fruitful for science.
14. Religions are, for the most part, bad—but religion is not."


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel's_ontological_proof

There's a serious misunderstanding of Godel's Theorem(s) here. They do not relate to any attempt to prove, in formal or any other terms, the truth of axioms. By definition, axioms are never proven. If they are, they're not axioms, but theorems derived from other axioms. Given this misunderstanding it's difficult to know how to disentangle the false statements in the rest of the post, especially as I fail to see why you're making them - why, that is, you seem to believe that Godel and your misapprehensions about his work lead in any way to your conclusion. I can only repeat once again that you do not comprehend what the term "proof" means, and it's a confusion that constantly leads you into all sorts of errors! Proof of a postulate is given within the system stipulated by a given set of axioms and formal rules - there is no other meaning of the term in logic, and no other way of furnishing it. "Going outside" this system does not enable proof of anything within - the notion's absurd, in the sense of being meaningless and self-contradictory.

The other essential point is to repeat that no empirical statement or theory can be "proven" in the logical sense, Big Bang or anything else. The term "proof" has a very different meaning when referring to statements about the world, of the evidentiary relation. Given that, I fail to see what you mean by our scientific ideas therefore being part of "something greater" - whatever that means. They may be, but not because of this peculiar rumination on Godel!

Now, what all this means is that we will never be in a position to prove anything in the strictest sense, so we are simply left to conclude that the mind of God is what causes everything because we have no other rational way of resolving the problem.

Your first statement is straightforwardly false. Some statements in a consistent axiomatic system attempting to encompass arithmetic are undecidable; on the other hand, there are an infinite number that are perfectly provable, in the strictest sense. Again, this has nothing to do with empirical reasoning, on the logical implications of hypothetico-deduction, or the evidentiary relations of observational data with those hypotheses: that is, it has nothing to do with science, or with logic in general. Your conclusion is also obviously fallacious - it doesn't follow whatsoever, even if the statements you've used to get there were in any sense true, and even if the conclusion as you've formulated it - the mind of God is what causes everything - was intelligible. "The problem" that you claim we have no way of resolving rationally needs to be stated clearly, and you need to show that it is indeed irresolvable - your segue into the nature of proof in science has no relation to Godel, and nor for the life of me do I see how or why you've lept into supposing that "the mind of God" helps resolve the issue in the slightest!

Your "nutshell" is also straightforwardly false. It is an untrue statement. It may echo your belief that we create our own reality; being false, logically it can "echo" any other false statement.

Godel's proof of God is as obviously fallacious at every other ontological "proof". Quite simply, it's plainly bonkers, as was Godel by the time he formulated it.

If you really believe you have presented a "proof" of these contentions, kindly present it for our consideration. Even a reasonable argument, free of blatant falsehoods and misrepresentations, would be a welcome advance.

Why are people who pretend to proffer rational arguments for the existence of God so intellectually lazy? You'd think that they'd be the very people who considered such an argument important enough to take some care over.