Action-at-a-distance
Mike H
"action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why? Are there any philosophical
reasons for doing this that I should be aware of?
Uncle Al
Give a mechanism for action-at-a-distance that obeys the usual
conservation laws - energy, linear adn angular momenta. Are you going
to have your action-at-a-distance limited by lightspeed? If so, why?
If not, demonstrate superluminal information transfer.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
***{Real physicists, meaning those who embrace the notions of causal
determinism and continuous motion, have always considered "action at a
distance" to be repugnant. Newton, for example, basically considered
believers in "action at a distance" to be morons. (He put it more nicely
than that--"no facility for philosophical thinking" or some such--but
that's what it boiled down to.) What are the philosophical considerations
that militate against the concept? Simple: we know of the existence of
the material world only because we assume that no thing may come into
existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing (which I call the
principle of continuity). It is our acceptance of this idea that leads us
to believe that our sensations have sources, and, thus, sets us on the
path of inferring the natures of those sources. Belief in the
epistemological validity of the principle of continuity, in short, is the
default presumption of a non-vegetative consciousness: without it, we
would be unable to construct the structure of inferences that we call
"knowledge," and thus would remain in a vegetative state from birth.
With that context in mind, consider the meaning of "action at a distance."
In the case of gravity, for example, such a notion involves imagining that
one body, say the Earth, reaches out through empty space to another body,
say the Moon, and pulls on it--which means: exerts a force on it. But in
this picture the Moon is surrounded by *nothing*. Hence the force appears
out of *nothing*--which means: it is not carried by entities. There are no
particles either emitted by the Earth or influenced in their passage by
the presence of the Earth, which convey the force to its object.
Such a picture, in essence, invokes magic--which means: it violates the
principle of continuity. Either particles are leaping into existence out
of nothing to deliver the gravitational force to the Moon, or else the
force itself, without particles, is leaping into existence out of nothing.
Either way, the principle of continuity is violated, and the foundation is
ripped from beneath the entire structure of human knowledge. Here is why:
(1) If we assume particles are leaping into existence out of nothing just
as they strike the Moon, carrying the force, then we accept the
possibility of things leaping into existence out of nothing, and, since
the vast inferential structure we call knowledge was constructed on the
assumption that could not happen, we lose all basis for believing any of
it. We have to say we were wrong, as infants, in assuming that our
sensations came from something rather than from nothing. Hence we must now
admit that we have no basis for believing that our sensations have
sources--which means: we have no basis, even in probabilistic terms, for
believing that the material world--the world of science--including the
Earth, the Moon, gravity, etc., even exist, much less that there is some
pattern within the data that needs to be explained.
(2) If we assume that the forces are leaping into existence out of
nothing, without being carried by particles--i.e., that attributes such as
force need not be carried by entities--then we immediately arrive at
exactly the same result. For, in that case, the attributes by which sense
data differ from one another need not be carried by entities, and, thus,
our sensations need not have sources, and, once again, the entire vast
inferential structure of knowledge which we have been endeavoring to
construct since birth simply collapses, and we find, once again, that we
have not a shred of a basis, even in probabilistic terms, for thinking
that the world of science even exists, much less a reason for concerning
ourselves with its intricacies.
The implication: "action at a distance" is philosophically untenable. In
order to assemble the inferential structure known as "knowledge," we must
make two assumptions:
(1) All attributes are carried by entities.
(2) No entity may come into existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing.
Real physicists, having an intuitive grasp of both of the above, and thus
having what Newton called "a facility for philosophical thinking," quite
naturally reject both the old-style action-at-a-distance theories, and the
"mathematically continuous field" theories of relativity and quantum
mechanics. Instead, they work within the framework of causal determinism
and continuous motion which defined the essence of the classical approach
to physics. While they use, for the most part, the same mathematical
constructs as the proponents of relativism and quantum mechanics, they
interpret what they are doing in terms of the classical, rather than in
terms of the magical, worldview. (When they use "field" theories, for
example, they interpret them as *not* being mathematically
continuous--e.g., just as not every portion of a table top is being struck
by an air molecule at a given instant, so not every portion of the Moon is
being struck by a gravity-bearing particle at a given instant, etc.)
--Mitchell Jones}***
===============================================
Killfile inmates: Charles Cagle, Stephen Speicher, Mati Meron, Franz
Heymann, Mike Varney.
Mike H
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
news:mjones-1511...@66-105-229-46-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> What are the philosophical considerations
> that militate against the concept? Simple: we know of the existence of
> the material world only because we assume that no thing may come into
> existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing (which I call the
> principle of continuity). It is our acceptance of this idea that leads us
> to believe that our sensations have sources, and, thus, sets us on the
> path of inferring the natures of those sources. Belief in the
> epistemological validity of the principle of continuity, in short, is the
> default presumption of a non-vegetative consciousness: without it, we
> would be unable to construct the structure of inferences that we call
> "knowledge," and thus would remain in a vegetative state from birth.
I don't see how this follows. Can't our sensations have sources whether or
not things can come into existence out of or vanish into nothing? I also
don't see why knowledge has to be *impossible* if this happens. I can pretty
easily imagine a "magic universe" whose laws allow matter to appear from
nothing under very special circumstances, but which still supports the
existence and function of brains like ours that can perceive sense data and
gather knowledge about the world (in the exact same way we do in this
universe).
Robert Kolker
Mitchell Jones wrote:
> With that context in mind, consider the meaning of "action at a distance."
> In the case of gravity, for example, such a notion involves imagining that
> one body, say the Earth, reaches out through empty space to another body,
> say the Moon, and pulls on it--which means: exerts a force on it. But in
> this picture the Moon is surrounded by *nothing*. Hence the force appears
> out of *nothing*--which means: it is not carried by entities. There are no
> particles either emitted by the Earth or influenced in their passage by
> the presence of the Earth, which convey the force to its object.
Magnets are surrounding by nothing also, and the north pole of one
magnet manages to tug on the south pole of another with no intervening
substance. Action at a distance happens all the time.
Bob Kolker
Dave Ulmer
"Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
Where Physics seems to fail is in the area of Communications Theory. So far
there seems to be no understanding of Space as a carrier of data. In
action-at-a-distance, Space is the carrier of the magnetic or gravitational
data provided by the Mass of the system. I call this data type MS, coded by
Mass carried by Space. Type MS is just one of the 16 different types of data
in the Universe.
Dave...
Sam Wormley
>
> Where Physics seems to fail is in the area of Communications Theory. So far
> there seems to be no understanding of Space as a carrier of data. In
> action-at-a-distance, Space is the carrier of the magnetic or gravitational
> data provided by the Mass of the system. I call this data type MS, coded by
> Mass carried by Space. Type MS is just one of the 16 different types of data
> in the Universe.
>
> Dave...
Dave--Your first sentence raised my eyebrows
ôô
I include the referenced below for you as the tend to be excellent background
information on current physical understanding. Please do take a look at then.
We understand that space and time are not independent of each other. Information
in the form of electromagnetic wave needs no carrier or aether to propagate.
GTR give a complete description for gravity fields and waves.
Out of curiosity, what do you propose for different types of data?
Entropy:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Entropy.html
Information Theory: The branch of mathematics dealing with the efficient and
accurate storage, transmission, and representation of information:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/InformationTheory.html
Shannon, Claude Elwood (1916-2001)
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Shannon.html
Ref: Handbook of Physics, Spriger-Verlag (2002), Sec 4.2 Special Theory of Relativity
Ether hypothesis, analogy between light and sound propagation. According
to this hypothesis, electromagnetic waves are carried by a medium called
the ether. The reference frame in which the ether is at rest would
constitute an absolute coordinate system.
The value of the speed of light would then hold just in the reference
frame in which the ether is at rest.
[measurement techniques]
In particular, the existence of an ether would imply that electromagnetic
waves in a moving reference system propagate (analogous to sound
propagation) with distinct velocities forward (i.e., direction of motion
of the source and sideways. This hypothesis was tested for the first time
in the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887) by means of a Michelson
interferometer. Here one observes with a interference setup whether the
speed of light changes because of Earth's motion. The moving system in
which the experiment was performed is Earth itself on its path around the
Sun. The experiment proves that light propagates with equal velocity c
along the Earth's orbit and in the perpendicular direction, disproving
the ether hypothesis.
Ref: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/SpecialRelativity.html
Special relativity is a theory proposed by Albert Einstein that describes
the propagation of matter and light at high speeds. It was invented to
explain the observed behavior of electric and magnetic fields, which it
beautifully reconciles into a single so-called electromagnetic field, and
also to resolve a number of paradoxes that arise when considering travel
at large speeds. Special relativity also explains the behavior of
fast-traveling particle, including the fact that fast-traveling unstable
particles appear decay more slowly than identical particles traveling
more slowly. Special relativity is an indispensable tool of modern physics,
and its predictions have been experimentally tested time and time again
without any discrepancies turning up. Special relativity reduces to
Newtonian mechanics in the limit of small speeds.
An important point is that science is done by testing hypotheses with
observation and experiment. This is true in all the sciences as well as
scrutinizing the claims of "pseudosciences".
Old Man
news:3DD5A426...@attbi.com...
How does Bob account for the observable field energy
in the space between the magnet poles? [Old Man]
Gregory L. Hansen
Uncle Al <Uncl...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>Mike H wrote:
>>
>> It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid introducing
>> "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why? Are there any philosophical
>> reasons for doing this that I should be aware of?
>
>Give a mechanism for action-at-a-distance that obeys the usual
>conservation laws - energy, linear adn angular momenta. Are you going
>to have your action-at-a-distance limited by lightspeed? If so, why?
>If not, demonstrate superluminal information transfer.
Oddly enough, Barut's _Electrodynamics and Classical Theory of Fields and
Particles_ has the last chapter on action-at-a-distance electrodynamics.
I haven't read the chapter, it's not something I could just breeze
through. But from the chapter introduction,
---
"So far, we have considered the field as a physical system on its own
right interacting with the particles. When this picture is applied to the
case of electromagnetic field interacting with point particles, we found
an infinite self-energy, hence the necessity of mass renormalization and
the breakdown of microcausality in the motion of charged particles when
the radiation reaction is taken into account.
"It is also possible to eliminate the concept of field and introduce
only action-at-a-distance interactions between the particles. A single
particle, in this approach, does not produce a field of its own, hence has
no self-energy. The relativistically invariant interactions between the
particles is such that they simulate the field between them.
"To this class of theories belong the electrodynamics of Wheeler and
Feynman which gives a physical interpretation to the finite part of the
radiation reaction. Under this interpretation the Dirac prescription of
calculating the finite part of self-field and the resulting equation of
the motion would be exact."
---
A few lame Greg comments:
Barut is solid, and with names like Feynman and Wheeler attached we can
probably figure there's no blatant damage done to conservation laws, etc.
But its obscurity argues that there's no real benefit at least for casual
use.
I'd be very interested if someone could comment on quantizing an
action-at-a-distance electrodynamics.
To the original poster: apparantly physicists haven't just avoided
action-at-a-distance theories on philosophical grounds. They've been
investigated, and maybe still are.
--
"A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree
with the phenomena. This will please the imagination but does not advance
our knowledge." -- J. Black, 1803.
Dave Ulmer
"Sam Wormley" <swor...@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:3DD5BA67...@mchsi.com...
> Dave Ulmer wrote:
> >
> > Where Physics seems to fail is in the area of Communications Theory. So
far
> > there seems to be no understanding of Space as a carrier of data. In
> > action-at-a-distance, Space is the carrier of the magnetic or
gravitational
> > data provided by the Mass of the system. I call this data type MS, coded
by
> > Mass carried by Space. Type MS is just one of the 16 different types of
data
> > in the Universe.
> >
> > Dave...
>
> Dave--Your first sentence raised my eyebrows
> ôô
>
> I include the referenced below for you as the tend to be excellent
background
> information on current physical understanding. Please do take a look at
then.
Sam, I appreciate your efforts to educate me in the last centuries science,
unfortunately I have committed my efforts towards a more complete
understanding.
> We understand that space and time are not independent of each other.
I understand that they are independent of each other but work together to
produce the effects that have been observed.
Information
> in the form of electromagnetic wave needs no carrier or aether to
propagate.
Information is a type of knowledge, you shoud be using the term Data.
Information exists only in relationship to some type of language.
> GTR give a complete description for gravity fields and waves.
So define gravity and explain how it propagates through space.
>
> Out of curiosity, what do you propose for different types of data?
Draw out a square matrix of four rows and four colums. Name the rows Mass,
Energy, Space, and Time. Then name the columns Mass, Energy, Space, and
Time. Now you have 16 boxes in the matrix that are the products of these
elements. Name them by the first letters of the features that cross there.
ie. MM, MS, ME, MT, EM, EE, ES, ET.. and so on. These are the names of the
16 data types. Now understand that for data to be propagated in our Universe
you need a Carrier and a Coding pair. Let the rows of the matrix be the
Coders, and the columns be the Carriers. Now use your Common Senses to
witness all 16 data types, this is a challenging exercise. Type SE data,
coded by Space, carried by Energy is what you get when you see an image in
space. The image is spread out in space and that is the coding. In type SE
data Energy is used as the carrier (commonly light or electromagnetic
energy). Now look at an image on your wall, you see the type SE data, now
turn off the lights, and the data stream stops for you have turned off the
carrier. You have now witnessed type SE data. Now go on to witness the other
16.
Yea, Yea, Yea, I know all that old crap. It will take years to reconcile
this old stuff into the new framework of rigorous definition.
Dave...
Sam Wormley
>
>
> Sam, I appreciate your efforts to educate me in the last centuries science,
> unfortunately I have committed my efforts towards a more complete
> understanding.
>
The new must incorporate (totally) the old. A thorough understanding of
the old is essential. To be successful, you must understand (and embrace)
the well established physics.
-Sam
Dave Ulmer
Thats Nonsense!!
Winners only need to know enough to Win!
Dave..
Spaceman
>Magnets are surrounding by nothing also, and the north pole of one
>magnet manages to tug on the south pole of another with no intervening
>substance. Action at a distance happens all the time.
spinning electrons (and smaller stuff) are "no intervening substance"?
C,mon Bob!
stop that!
:)
James M Driscoll Jr
Spaceman
http://www.realspaceman.com
Spaceman
>Where Physics seems to fail is in the area of Communications Theory. So far
>there seems to be no understanding of Space as a carrier of data. In
>action-at-a-distance, Space is the carrier of the magnetic or gravitational
>data provided by the Mass of the system. I call this data type MS, coded by
>Mass carried by Space. Type MS is just one of the 16 different types of data
>in the Universe.
I don't see why you would limit to 16 types of data?
atoms alone show that wrong.
16 bit universe?
I do not think so.
:)
a circle can have millions of degrees of motion.
(360 is a "human/technology limited number"
today even some cars use 720 positions on a circle.
720 degrees for 1 spin.
720 positions for "accuracy of spin"
I find limiting data is a waste
since so far,
The Universe seems unlimited to such "numerical limits"
101100111100111011110000111110001110 never ends..
and has no final "data" end
16 "different types"
is too limiting.
and
16 gears are 16 different data types.
nevermind the Universe full of gears and wheels and levers
etc...
limits,
only limit you and me.
Not the universe.
Ed Keane III
It's Saturday and I don't have time to go into detail about about
my favorite subject, absorber theories. A short answer is that
Special Relativity and causality seem to forbid it. I think that a
mistake has been made in eliminating the idea of interaction at
the quantum level.
Here is an example of an action at a distance model that I recently
posted titled Virtual entangled photon. It is not functionally correct
in at least one respect that I can clean up easily but haven't here.
Would it be helpful to picture a photon as being entangled with
the excited particle in such a way that the measure of the photon
determined a characteristic of the particle?
One could imagine a sphere with points (of opposite polarity)
on its surface representing the potential location of the photon.
This can be pictured either as a sphere expanding at c with
stationary points or a stationary sphere with moving points.
Of course for this to be symmetric any absorbing particle
would only be able to *see* this sphere if its own such sphere
(wave, wave packet, standing wave, cyclically fluctuating point,
state, or whatever) matched at a given instant.
A surrounding spherical detector would not (normally)
immediately detect this sphere because it is only a projection
of the potential for emission of the photon and it must match
up with a potential absorber. Sufficiently small slits would
allow photons to be absorbed outside of the detector at points
with multiple alignments with the sphere points, but with
potentially conflicting views that could cancel or add to the
probability of absorption.
There is a hitch to this model. The concept of the entangled
projection means that it is necessary for the absorber to exist in
what is to most views the not yet existent future in order for the
excited particle to emit. I believe that SR allows an interpretation
that emission and absorption take place at the same instant. This
model also allows for regulation of the average emission rate of
excited particles as a basis for the measured passage of time.
-Ed Keane III
greysky
"Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
there is not a consistant way for information to be transferred without an
explainable connection of some sort between the seperated points. In the
case of EM waves, action produced at the transmitter can be promulgated
through space to cause change at the reciever because information is encoded
upon the self propagating wave, although things begin to get nardy when you
look at the carrier quanta . So there is good action at a distance, and bad
action at a distance, where it is no longer apparant what the information is
being carried by. If the information is not encoded upon any type of energy
structure, there is no longer any reason to include it within the self
consistant body of knowledge we call science, and FTL information transfer
becomes possible (and it will remain outside of science until it is brought
in when the body of knowledge is expanded to include it).
Ironically, quantum physics has buried deeply inside of it basic
methodologies that make superluminal information transfer not only a
possibility, but a necessity. It seems as though the universe is using non
local phenomena to communicate with different parts of itself all the time.
I have found that one rule seems to be prominent above every other - that
the universe places such a high priority on the ability to communicate with
itself that it will break its own rules to do it when it has to.
Transilience, even metacognition (which seems to be phenomenological but
which we humans with the information processor between our ears are only
able to barely catch the fringes of), happens. Without *Bad Action at a
Distance*, our universe would stop. This can be easily seen from a close
look at one of the simplest, most easy to understand, experiments of all
time, the single slit experiment.
Greysky
www.allocations.cc
You must *understand* FTL before
you can do FTL, or it won't be any fun.
Gregory L. Hansen
What Sam says is, historically, true. And by "historically true" I mean
he described just how science has advanced for as long as it has advanced.
Everyone wants to be the outsider that makes the significant contributions
to the field, but read your history. Every time that's happened, the
"outsider" had been following the field, as a hobby if nothing else, and
was well aware of the state of the art, and of the problems that needed to
be solved.
On sci.physics, the people that want to be the winners without
understanding the old always seem to try to solve problems that aren't
problems, and have no idea what the problems are that need to be solved.
And because they don't understand the old, they often try to "win" by
re-proposing old solutions that have already failed for reasons they don't
understand. Or they propose solutions that have been pre-broken by
experiments done long ago that they're not aware of. Or, at least as
often, they propose metaphysics that don't actually form concrete
relations that can be tested experimentally, which makes it "not even
wrong".
You can't fix something before you understand why it's broken, which means
you have to understand the old before you can bring in the new.
Dave Ulmer
"Gregory L. Hansen" <glha...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in message
news:ar68ot$p7g$3...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
> You can't fix something before you understand why it's broken, which means
> you have to understand the old before you can bring in the new.
>
every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all the
arguments proving the Earth is flat?
I think every person no matter how educated has a chance of making a major
contribution to science by simply pointing out another point of view that
challenges an old doctrine. Take my 16 types of data, these were never
discovered before me because scientists didn't recognize the difference
between information and data. These 16 types can easily be witnessed by most
any school kid yet no old school scientist ever recognized them. I think
they have the potential of revolutionizing Physics as we know it, but you
will never read it in any book published to date.
Dave...
Franz Heymann
"Dave Ulmer" <dave...@NOTccwebster.net> wrote in message
news:utbcfes...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> > It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid introducing
> > "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why? Are there any
> philosophical
> > reasons for doing this that I should be aware of?
> >
> >
>
> Where Physics seems to fail is in the area of Communications Theory.
So far
> there seems to be no understanding of Space as a carrier of data.
That is balderdash, pure and simple. Relativistic QED is the most
comprehensive theiry ever produced my man. If you understood it, you
would realise the essential puerility of youoe assertion.
> In
> action-at-a-distance, Space is the carrier of the magnetic or
gravitational
> data provided by the Mass of the system. I call this data type MS,
coded by
> Mass carried by Space. Type MS is just one of the 16 different types
of data
> in the Universe.
This is also drivel. Point me to one solitary line of physics in it,
and I will retract.
Franz Heymann
Franz Heymann
On the contrary. All EM, weak and strong interactions are known not to
involve any action at a distanc at all. They are all interactions which
are mediated by the ballistic interchange of particles. (Including
Bob's example of two magnets). And this is not just handwaving.
Quantitative calculations can be done, and no experiment has ever
produced a result contrary to the predictions. So far gravity has not
been brought into the fold.
>
> Bob Kolker
>
hanson
news:ar6bc3$3s0$3...@venus.btinternet.com...
> "Robert Kolker" <bobk...@attbi.com> wrote in message
> news:3DD5A426...@attbi.com...
> >
> > Mitchell Jones wrote:
> > > With that context in mind, consider the meaning of
> > > "action at a distance."
> > > In the case of gravity, for example, such a notion involves
> > > imagining that one body, say the Earth, reaches out
> > > through empty space to another body,
> > > say the Moon, and pulls on it--
> > > which means: exerts a force on it.
> > > But in this picture the Moon is surrounded by *nothing*.
> > > Hence the force appears out of *nothing*--
> > > which means: it is not carried by entities.
> > > There are no particles either emitted by the Earth
> > > or influenced in their passage by
> > > the presence of the Earth, which convey the force to its object.
> >
> > Magnets are surrounding by nothing also, and the north pole of one
> > magnet manages to tug on the south pole of another with no intervening
> > substance. Action at a distance happens all the time.
>
> On the contrary. All EM, weak and strong interactions are known not to
> involve any action at a distanc at all. They are all interactions which
> are mediated by the ballistic interchange of particles. (Including
> Bob's example of two magnets). And this is not just handwaving.
> Quantitative calculations can be done, and no experiment has ever
> produced a result contrary to the predictions. So far gravity has not
> been brought into the fold.
>
I do assume Franz means by "ballistic interchange of particles" that
there are packages, quanta of energy (i.e. h*f) emitted from and absorbed
by particles of mass. IOW there is a "ball game" going on when we talk
about action at a distance. Further, I do read his para to mean that
perhaps all AaaD are such ball games (EM, Eweak, StrongF) with the
exception of gravitation.
I have also no reservation to see these ball games being narrated by
wave behavior tales or being told in wave/particle duality stories,
after all, it is the same subject/object described by different
interpreters
or Pharisees depending..
What intrigues me in this context is that these ball games can go on
because the energy transmitted with these balls are in well defined
and daily observed amounts, in quanta or charges, i.e. (e^2 = hbar*a*c).
Since nature does and we have learned to fuck around with these
charges & packages, arrange and use them in big or small streams, in
parallel and in series, in a multitude of combinations that make it
possible for us to construct all kinds of familiar gismos and gadgets.
With gravitation we are not that lucky. All we can do is somehow
slide up or down a more or less steep gradient, which severely limits
our attempts to construct or finaggle gravitational gismos.
From this pov I just can't make up my mind, whether this is because
the gravitational quantum is much much larger then we imagine,
or that it is much much smaller than the sought after gravitons are
supposed to be.
Which is it and why?
hanson
Gregory L. Hansen
Dave Ulmer <dave...@NOTccwebster.net> wrote:
>
>"Gregory L. Hansen" <glha...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in message
>news:ar68ot$p7g$3...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
>> You can't fix something before you understand why it's broken, which means
>> you have to understand the old before you can bring in the new.
>>
>Well, I guess like Sam you think every new student of Physics should read
>every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
>science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
>wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all the
>arguments proving the Earth is flat?
Don't be silly, and don't give me that "You either think they must do
everything or nothing" crap. Before you can make serious contributions to
science, you must have studied enough. What "enough" is will differ
according to specialty. It just seems to be a fact that everyone around
here that thinks they can revolutionize science, or are the lone
voice finding the algebraic mistake that generations of scientists have
missed, have studied virtually nothing, and it shows.
They want the glory, they want the kudos, they want their names in the
history books... they don't want to have to do any work to get there.
>I think every person no matter how educated has a chance of making a major
>contribution to science
I would agree with that.
>by simply pointing out another point of view that
>challenges an old doctrine. Take my 16 types of data, these were never
But this much is a laugh. I've seen so many people try, and so often what
they point out as a flaw in the old doctrine isn't even part of the old
doctrine!
Virtually anyone can make a contribution to science, but they must become
educated in however narrow a specialty, and they must do more work than
thinking it up as they type messages on Usenet.
Terry Wilder
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
news:mjones-1511...@66-105-229-46-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
Well so much for the "real" manifestations of zero point fields
>
> Real physicists, having an intuitive grasp of both of the above, and thus
> having what Newton called "a facility for philosophical thinking," quite
> naturally reject both the old-style action-at-a-distance theories, and the
> "mathematically continuous field" theories of relativity and quantum
> mechanics. Instead, they work within the framework of causal determinism
> and continuous motion which defined the essence of the classical approach
And so much for the Josephson Junction.
> to physics. While they use, for the most part, the same mathematical
> constructs as the proponents of relativism and quantum mechanics, they
> interpret what they are doing in terms of the classical, rather than in
> terms of the magical, worldview. (When they use "field" theories, for
> example, they interpret them as *not* being mathematically
> continuous--e.g., just as not every portion of a table top is being struck
> by an air molecule at a given instant, so not every portion of the Moon is
> being struck by a gravity-bearing particle at a given instant, etc.)
Maxwell's equations are for the most part defined (as well as most scalar
and vector point functions)
on continuous or stepwise continuous regions
Terry Wilder
involves the somewhat nefarious notion
"simultaneous events" as would be measured
by "synchronous clocks".
Franz Heymann
"hanson" <han...@quick.net> wrote in message
news:kvAB9.1447$fY3.1...@newsread2.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
I mean particles. In the case of the EM interaction they are photons.
In the case of the Weak interaction they are the intermediate vector
bosons W+, W-, Z0. In the case of the strong interaction they are
gluons. These objects are all particles which may be emitted or
absorbed by certain appropriate other particles.
> IOW there is a "ball game" going on when we talk
> about action at a distance.
Yes.
> Further, I do read his para to mean that
> perhaps all AaaD are such ball games (EM, Eweak, StrongF) with the
> exception of gravitation.
There is overwhelming evidence in favour of the kind of processes
which I have sketched.
>
> I have also no reservation to see these ball games being narrated by
> wave behavior tales or being told in wave/particle duality stories,
> after all, it is the same subject/object described by different
> interpreters
> or Pharisees depending..
Duality is a dead duck. The particles are honest to goodness
particles. Their dynamics is governed by the behaviour of wave
functions, which in effect take the place of Newton's equations of
motion in classical physics.
>
> What intrigues me in this context is that these ball games can go on
> because the energy transmitted with these balls are in well defined
> and daily observed amounts, in quanta or charges, i.e. (e^2 =
hbar*a*c).
The four-momenta are transferred by particles. Each of the components
of this four-momentum may take on any value between minus infinity and
plus infinity, with no holds barred.
Calculation of observable processes involve integration over the whole
range of each of these quantities.
> Since nature does and we have learned to fuck around with these
> charges & packages, arrange and use them in big or small streams, in
> parallel and in series, in a multitude of combinations that make it
> possible for us to construct all kinds of familiar gismos and
gadgets.
>
> With gravitation we are not that lucky. All we can do is somehow
> slide up or down a more or less steep gradient, which severely
limits
> our attempts to construct or finaggle gravitational gismos.
>
> From this pov I just can't make up my mind, whether this is because
> the gravitational quantum is much much larger then we imagine,
> or that it is much much smaller than the sought after gravitons are
> supposed to be.
The gravitational quantum, if it exists at all, will be found to be a
zero mass particle. This is a consequence of the fact that
gravitational waves propagate with the speed of light, and with the
fact that the gravitational field obeys an inverse square law. ( Deep
down, these are not independent reasons.)
> Which is it and why?
The whole basis of gravity, as it is understood at present is so very
different from that of the other interactions that it is not yet
possible to see how they are actually going to be brought together.
Added to this, the gravitational interaction is so extremely weak at
the elementary particle level compared to any of the other
interactions that nothing has yet been observed in the quantum domain
which could be ascribed to gravity. It is in fact in the region of
10^(-38) of the strength of the electromagnetic interaction.
Franz Heymann
Franz Heymann
"Ed Keane III" <kea...@westelcom.com> wrote in message
news:3dd6...@web2.westelcom.com...
> I think that a
> mistake has been made in eliminating the idea of interaction at
> the quantum level.
That line alone is sufficient to brand you as an ignorant pseud.
The rest of your offering will consequently not be worth reading, and
I therefore snip it.
[...]
Franz Heymann
Franz Heymann
"Dave Ulmer" <dave...@NOTccwebster.net> wrote in message
>
[...]
> Sam, I appreciate your efforts to educate me in the last centuries
science,
> unfortunately I have committed my efforts towards a more complete
> understanding.
If you intend overthrowing our current understanding of the physical
world, it would pay you to realise that it is an enormous monolithic
structure. You will not succceed in undermining it unless you
understand all its ramifications in detail. Do remember that your
replacement theory has to predict *everything* which current theory
predicts, *plus* some more to enable your theory to be distinguished
from current theory. How are you going to know whether your theory
predicts everything which current theory predicts without a very
thorough knowledge of present day physics?
At present I see you only struggling from one catastrophe to another
in your rather infantile contributions to this ng.
Franz Heymann
hanson
It is good to see that we (finally) seem to talk on a similar wavelength
without mutual polemics added. I am looking forward to future, equally
pleasant exchanges with you.
Take care and thanks again Franz,
hanson
Laurent
Action at a distance does appear to happen at spacetime level, where
objects exist embedded in a coordinate system (metric) defined by
the continuous functions of four independent variables (4D).
Extension and separation are properties of spacetime, but at the
aether level action at a distance does not make sense because there
exists no separation, the aether is one, it has no parts and it
lacks the properties of time and extension.
WITHIN the aether, motion/information/momentum is reported
instantaneously, distance doesn't apply, the aether has no parts, no
units, it is one. Within hyperspace, we have only EMR, where
information propagation is limited by moving mass (process) to the
speed of light. Within spacetime most things obey Newton's motion
laws, but thanks to the non-material properties and nature of the
aether, everything is non-locally interconnected to everything else
in its neighborhood and the rest of the Universe (Mach). So motion
(or information propagation), at this level, is instantaneous, the
holographic properties and the instantaneous information propagation
properties of momentum space is what make possible phenomena like
inertia.
--
Laurent
Thad Coons
"Dave Ulmer" <dave...@NOTccwebster.net> wrote in message
>
> "Gregory L. Hansen" <glha...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in message
> news:ar68ot$p7g$3...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
> > You can't fix something before you understand why it's broken, which
means
> > you have to understand the old before you can bring in the new.
> >
> Well, I guess like Sam you think every new student of Physics should read
> every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
> science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
> wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all
the
> arguments proving the Earth is flat?
As a would-be contributor of a new theory myself (in logic, not
physics), I endorse Gregory Hansen's comments entirely. To use a sports
analogy, if you're not one of the pros but you want on the team, you had
better be able to show you can compete at that level and whose spot you're
trying for. Most of the people who come up with new theories in physics on
this group only succeed in showing they couldn't make the High School JV,
let alone compete in the professional leagues.
> I think every person no matter how educated has a chance of making a major
> contribution to science by simply pointing out another point of view that
> challenges an old doctrine. Take my 16 types of data, these were never
> discovered before me because scientists didn't recognize the difference
> between information and data. These 16 types can easily be witnessed by
most
> any school kid yet no old school scientist ever recognized them. I think
> they have the potential of revolutionizing Physics as we know it, but you
> will never read it in any book published to date.
What relationship does your work have to accepted theory? How is it
similar? How is it different? What can it do that existing theories don't?
What kind of problems does it solve? Who has worked on similar problems? Who
has worked on it most recently? What are the standard references in your
field? Who are the recognized authorities? Can you show what they did get
right, or why what they did looks right, but isn't, or what they overlooked?
What limitations does your theory have?
This is the kind of thing the "outsiders" who have successfully made
contributions can do and have done. The lack of evidence of this kind of
homework is what distinguishes the crackpots from the geniuses.
Thad Coons
Mitchell Jones
it via e-mail with several people. Since the message below seems very
pertinent in this thread, I have decided to delete the name of the sender
and post it, with my response included. Enjoy! --MJ}***
> > > > > > > > > I've read that virtual
> > > > > > > > > particles pop into existence from nothing and annihilate
> > > > > > > > > themselves all the time.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > ***{Yes, there are a number of present-day physicists who
put forth
> > > > > > > > speculations of that sort.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > More than speculations, there have been actual tests.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ***{The problem with such notions is that they attack the very
base on
> > > > > > which science itself rests--to wit: our basis for believing in the
> > > > > > existence of an external world, where "tests" can be done,
> > > > > > "evidence" can be gathered, etc. One might just as well try to lift
> > > > > > himself off the floor by tugging at his own bootstraps, as cite
> > > > > > "scientific" evidence in support of the claim that the world of
> > > > > > science may not be real. --MJ}***
> > > > >
> > > > > I disagree, its a scientific theory after all.
> >
> > ***{Citing scientific evidence in support of the claim that the world of
> > science may not be real is just a complicated example of the fallacy of
> > self-reference. In order for the proof to be valid, the world of science,
> > including the scientific evidence used in the proof, would have to be
> > real. Thus in order for the proof to be valid, its conclusion has to be
> > false! (A simpler form of the same fallacy would result if you said,
> > "This statement is false." Result: if the statement is true, it is untrue;
> > and if it is untrue, then it is true! :-) --MJ}***
>
> I don't believe its a claim that the world of science may not
> be real.
***{If you believe that "virtual particles" can leap into and out of
existence, then it is not reasonable to deny that sensations can do
likewise. (For elaboration on this point, see below.) And if you admit
that sensations can do that, then it immediately follows that the material
world may not exist. --MJ}***
You are the only one that seems to think so.
***{The nature of truth is not subject to the will of the majority, so
even if your statement were true, it would be irrelevant. --MJ}***
[snip]
> > > > > Now, if I'm certain of my 'material' existance, then I do not
> > > > > concede that _all_ material things may not exist, only _some_
> > > > > material things may not exist.
> > > >
> > > > ***{Yup. That is the specific point of the proof: a person who claims to
> > > > be certain that he exists, while doubting the existence of *all*
material
> > > > things, implies a belief that he is a ghost.
> > >
> > > But that's the problem with your proof. I am certain I exist
> > > and I must have a material brain to exist (there is no evidence
> > > of a non-material thing being able to think). So I don't doubt
> > > the existance of *all* material things, only *some* material things.
> >
> > ***{That's not the position we are discussing. We are discussing the
> > position which results when a person claims that things may come into
> > existence out of nothing and vanish into nothing.
>
> Yes, that is the postion I'm discussing. *some* things may
> be poping into and out of existence. However *I* exist and
> my life is too consistent to be something that has randomly
> popped into existence from nothing. Therefore *something*
> material must exist and so your proof which requires the
> possibility of *all* material things not to exist is incorrect.
***{It is circular to argue that your sensations are so consistent as to
render it improbable that they are leaping into existence out of nothing.
To say that an outcome is "improbable" is to allege that under the
associated circumstances it has seldom appeared in the past. Thus it makes
no sense to speculate about the "probability" that the past never
happened--i.e., that the data which we think we remember about the "past"
are merely sensations that are leaping into existence out of nothing.
--MJ}***
> > Such a premise does not
> > merely imply that material entities outside of the self may be doing that:
> > it also implies that the self is subject to that possibility. Thus the
> > crucial question becomes one of precisely in what sense we are absolutely
> > sure of our own existence. Speaking for myself, I am absolutely sure that
> > I exist *over time*--which means: I am not merely sure that I exist in the
> > present instant, but also that I existed in the prior instant, and in the
> > instant before that, etc. Note, however, that if things can pop into
> > existence out of nothing, then the possibility that I just did that,
> > complete with memories that give me the false impression of existence over
> > time, is implied.
>
> A complete univerise (at least with respect to my point of view) simply
> popped into material existence out nothing in the middle of a usenet
> exchange and will vanish back into nothing? I suppose there is a
> *possiblity*, but it is so vanishingly small its not worth considering.
***{That is circular reasoning, as explained above. --MJ}***
> It seems much more likely a material universe where *some* things can pop
> into and out of existence is the reality. A universe of this type seems
> particularly compelling when its possible the matter composing the universe
> may have come from nothing.
***{As noted, such reasoning assumes that which is to be proven. The
reality is that as soon as you admit the possibility that things can leap
into and out of existence, you lose all basis for regarding any event as
more likely than any other. Let me be very explicit about this: I am
saying that if the principle of continuity may be false, then not merely
does it immediately follow that all material things outside the self may
not exist at all, and that the self may not have existed for more than an
instant, but it also follows that we have no basis whatsoever for thinking
that such states of affairs are improbable. The source of the difficulty
lies in the fact that sense data are evidence *only* if the principle of
continuity considered to be true. If we allow that it may *not* be true,
then we lose the ability to treat sense data, including memories, as
evidence, with the immediate result that all arguments, including
probabilistic arguments, collapse--which means: the entire structure of
human knowledge is reduced to rubble in an instant. --MJ}***
> > Thus if the principle of continuity--that no thing may
> > come into existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing--is false, it
> > unavoidably follows that I may not exist *over time*. And since (a) belief
> > that the principle of continuity may be false, and (b) absolute certainty
> > that I exist over time are mutually exclusive, it follows that if I am to
> > be intellectually consistent, I must abandon one or the other. But which
> > one? Well, it seems perfectly possible, and, indeed, highly likely, that
> > the principle of continuity is true; whereas the notion that I have not
> > existed for more than a single instant seems self-evidently preposterous.
> > Thus the abandonment of (a) is required. In other words, my absolute
> > certainty that I exist over time requires an equally strong belief that
> > the principle of continuity is true. And, of course, if the principle of
> > continuity is true, then the existence of a god or gods is impossible.
> > Q.E.D. --MJ}***
> >
> > > Thus your proof is invalid because it depends on a doubting
> > > *all* material things
> >
> > ***{Two points. First, a proof is considered valid if the conclusion
> > follows logically from the premises, which is true in this case.
>
> Then we disagree on the premises. I don't agree that *all* material
> things may not exist. I use your own argument "...the notion that
> I have not existed for more than a single instant seems self-evidently
> preposterous."
***{Note, however, that I do not merely say "The notion that I have not
existed for more than a single instant seems self-evidently preposterous."
I also say, "Since the denial of the principle of continuity implies that
I may not have existed for more than a single instant, it follows that the
principle of continuity must be true."
The difference between us, in other words, is that you seem to see no
generalized and corrosive implications of the denial of the principle of
continuity. You think it can be limited in its scope, in the ordinary way
that the range of application of other ideas can be limited. If, for
example, we note that gunpowder explodes when a spark is applied, we do
not conclude that everything will explode if a spark is applied, and so if
a single continuity violation occurs, thereby proving that the principle
of continuity is wrong, it does not seem to follow that the self may not
have existed for more than a single instant. If a single continuity
violation happened 1billion years ago and none have occurred since, the
self exists, and the material universe exists. Period. End of story.
Right? :-)
The answer is that what is and what can be reasonably claimed are not the
same. Given my belief that empty closets are possible I cannot reasonably
claim, as I look at a locked closet which I have never seen before, that
there is a broom inside--even if, in fact, there is. Likewise, given a
belief that things can come into existence out of nothing, I cannot
reasonably claim that I have existed for more than a single instant--even
if, in fact, I have.
Bottom line: absolute certainty that you have existed for more than a
single instant is incompatible with belief that the principle of
continuity may be false, and so it follows that the principle of
continuity must be true. Period. End of story.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > Thus when
> > you say "invalid," above, I assume you mean "irrelevant." Second, as noted
> > previously, we are in fact discussing a premise that requires the doubting
> > of all material things, and so my proof is not merely valid, but relevant.
> > --MJ}***
>
> I don't see how its possible to doubt all material things.
***{For a sane person, it isn't, and that is precisely the point: any
premise which implies that all material things may not exist is
necessarily a false premise. Therefore if the denial of the principle of
continuity implies that all material things may not exist, then that
denial is false, and thus the principle of continuity is necessarily true.
With that method of proof in mind, let us now examine what it means to
deny the principle of continuity.
The principle of continuity is the claim that no entity may come into
existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing. As such, it is false if
there is a *single instance*, anywhere, at any time, in which something
popped into existence out of nothing. It would therefore seem, on the face
of it, that such an event might be of trivial importance. If such things
only happened occasionally, or happened frequently in such a way as to not
intrude into our daily lives (e.g., as "quantum events" in the microcosm),
they would not be a cause for concern. In terms of their effects on the
world, in short, such events would not have to be particularly disruptive.
The problem with supposing that such events are possible, however, does
not lie in their effects on what can be (metaphysics), but in their
effects on what can be known (epistemology). In the latter regard, a
continuity violation is an event of a type that cannot be limited by time,
place, or circumstances, because it differs in a very fundamental way from
events of the normal sort. If, for example, a person comes running up with
soot on his face and informs you that he just put a spark to some
gunpowder and it exploded, his unpleasant outcome arose out of the
specifics of the situation. Those specifics--i.e., a dry mixture, in very
specific proportions, of powdered saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal, plus a
spark--are what we term a cause, and the explosion is the effect of that
cause. Thus the threat posed by the explosion, while very real, is limited
by virtue of the fact that when the cause is not present, the effect
cannot happen. If, on the other hand, the very same person comes running
up with soot on his face and reports that a firecracker came into
existence out of nothing 6 inches in front of his nose, hung there for
about a second, and then exploded, the implications are very different.
The reason is that the latter effect is alleged to not have arisen out of
the specifics of the situation, but out of *nothing*--which means: it is
alleged that there was no cause. Result: no limits can be placed on the
time, location, or circumstances of such events. That means the very act
of taking such a claim seriously is absurd. For if such events are
possible, the person making the report might be such an event. That is,
he, or the sensations which led you to think he is there, may have simply
appeared out of nothing. And such a notion, if presumed to be possible,
spreads similarly corrosive effects in all directions, ripping away the
basis for any and all knowledge. Does your right arm exist? Maybe not:
the sensations which convince you it is there may be leaping into
existence out of nothing. Thus if you believe something from nothing is
possible, you cannot reasonably claim that your right arm exists, even if
it does. And, likewise, if you believe something from nothing is possible,
you cannot reasonably claim to have existed for more than a single
instant, even if you have, and even if you feel absolutely certain that
you have.
The only way to resolve the grinding contradiction between certainty that
you have existed over time and the denial of the principle of continuity,
is to cease denying the principle of continuity, and to accept the fact
that any theory alleging that things can leap into or out of existence, is
false. Yes, I know: such a position is socially expedient, and will bring
you into conflict with your peers. If your peers are aphysicists, for
example, you will find yourself denying "quantum mechanics;" if your peers
are Christians, you will find yourself denying "God"; and so on. However,
truth is truth, and no one ever said the pursuit of truth was easy.
(Though in the long run, in a free country, the iconoclasts almost always
lead happier lives than the conformists, both because they are more likely
to be at peace with themselves, and because they are more likely to
experience the joy of discovery. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> Also let us assume for a moment we are both just brains in jars
> connected to computers which are creating our "reality", something
> similar to The Matrix. For us the univese would seem exactly like
> it is now, in fact there is no way for us to prove that is not
> our exact situation. However at a whim of the computers something
> could materialize from nothing.
***{Incorrect. Something could *seem* to have materialized from nothing.
The brain in the jar, however, ought to reject that interpretation (for
the reasoning given above), and, in fact, would quite properly respond by
beginning to suspect that he was in a jar! :-) --MJ}***
This would violate your principle
> of continuity
***{No, the principle of continuity would strictly apply to the "brain in
a jar" scenario: no thing in that universe, in fact, would leap into
existence out of nothing or vanish into nothing, and the brain in the jar
would, properly, treat the *appearance* of such events as evidence that
his sensory inputs were compromised in some way. --MJ}***
, therefore the principle of continuity cannot be true
> since there is no difference between the matrix universe and our
> universe and yet in the matrix univese things can materialize from
> nothing.
***{No they can't. The computer can send to the brain in the jar a
sequence of images which make it *appear* that way, but it cannot, in
fact, cause anything to materialize from nothing. The brain in the jar,
under this scenario, is basically watching a movie. The fact that it seems
very real does not mean it *is* real, any more than the appearance of
something popping into existence in "The Matrix" meant that such an event
was actually happening. --MJ}***
===============================================
Killfile inmates: Charles Cagle, Stephen Speicher, Mati Meron, Franz
Heymann, Mike Varney, Dirk Van de moortel.
Dave Ulmer
"Thad Coons" <toc...@citlink.net> wrote in message
news:utje2eo...@corp.supernews.com...
theory but you must admit that answering them all would be a lot of work
especially for one person. Even Einstein didn't answer all those questions
himself yet his theories were eventually adopted because they were workable
theories and other people helped him out and answered those questions.
Here on Usenet it would be an impossible waste of time to try and answer
even a few of the questions that you present. It is simply not practical to
type in a whole three-month course in theoretical physics here on this
newsgroup and then expect to answer everybody's questions. The only
practical way to present a new theory here is in just a very few words that
might get people thinking on their own. When I say "16 Data Types" this is
the name of a new theory in Physics that apparently nobody has ever thought
of before. I expect that you could read every book ever written and still
not learn what the 16 Data Types are. On the other hand the words "16 Data
Types" may get you thinking about data and you could discover them for
yourself. This shouldn't be too hard since you work with them everyday.
All you can ever hope from Usenet discussions is to maybe get a new idea now
and then that can help you test your own theories or the theories of others
that you believe in.
Dave...
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid introducing
> "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why? Are there any philosophical
> reasons for doing this that I should be aware of?
Action at a distance is an integral part of QM. Virtual particles at the other
hand is an attemt to make this less visible (but being nothing more then
interpretations, not touching the formalism). Strict "action-at-distance" based
interpretation of QM is given by John Cramer in his "transactional
interpretation
of QM" (all is on the web and in papers, search). This interpretaions has been
first devised by Feinman and Whiler and generalized and popularly represented
by Cramer.
It is a wounderful reading.
As for phylosophical reasons why people don't like it - most of phylosophy is
based on "common sense" and "everyday experience" and is therefore deeply
mechanistic. Check out "something out of nothing" derivation on my web-site
to see that logic (and mathematic as its tool) does allow and in fact requires
spontaneous creation of something out of nothing. Sooner or later philosophy
will
give in to the fact of sucsesful (and explicitely acausal) QM formalizm and
"common sense" of absolute causality will change.
Regards,
Evgenij
--
_________________________________________
cool stuff: http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com
remove hate_spam to answer
Sam Wormley
>
> When I say "16 Data Types" this is
> the name of a new theory in Physics that apparently nobody has ever thought
> of before. I expect that you could read every book ever written and still
> not learn what the 16 Data Types are.
"16 Data Types" is just bullshit. Also, my spell checker, which is more
reliable than "ulmer" thinks the name should be spelled "ulcer". Isn't
that interesting.
Relevant information:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/InformationTheory.html
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Shannon.html
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/SecondLawofThermodynamics.html
Sam Wormley
>
>
> Well, I guess like Sam you think every new student of Physics should read
> every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
> science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
> wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all the
> arguments proving the Earth is flat?
>
A Field Guide to Critical Thinking
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html
Tuning Up Your Crank Filters
http://spot.colorado.edu/~vstenger/Briefs/Cranks.html
Sam Wormley
>
> Well, I guess like Sam you think every new student of Physics should read
> every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
> science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
> wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all the
> arguments proving the Earth is flat?
>
Some excellent books:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Administrivia/booklist.html
Sam Wormley
>
> Well, I guess like Sam you think every new student of Physics should read
> every book ever written, just like you have before you can contribute to
> science. You must know ALL of the Old stuff even if it has been proven
> wrong, before being allowed to learn anything new. Have you studied all the
> arguments proving the Earth is flat?
>
The Earth does indeed look "flat" on the small scale and the idea that
the Earth is roughly spherical on a much larger scale explains the
flatness on the local scale.
Sam Wormley
Why Ulmer, waste your intellect on trolling in news:sci.physics? What
a waste of a human being.
Gregory L. Hansen
I've had great luck with the flat Earth model when surveying for a beam
line, putting up a retaining wall, and other localized projects.
Mitchell Jones
> The only way to resolve the grinding contradiction between certainty that
> you have existed over time and the denial of the principle of continuity,
> is to cease denying the principle of continuity, and to accept the fact
> that any theory alleging that things can leap into or out of existence, is
> false. Yes, I know: such a position is socially expedient, and will bring
> you into conflict with your peers. If your peers are aphysicists, for
> example, you will find yourself denying "quantum mechanics;" if your peers
> are Christians, you will find yourself denying "God"; and so on. However,
> truth is truth, and no one ever said the pursuit of truth was easy.
> (Though in the long run, in a free country, the iconoclasts almost always
> lead happier lives than the conformists, both because they are more likely
> to be at peace with themselves, and because they are more likely to
> experience the joy of discovery. :-)
***{Typo alert: in the above paragraph, "socially expedient" should have
been "socially inexpedient," and "aphysicists" should have been
"physicists." (The term "aphysicists" sounds like a wonderful Freudian
slip, actually--since most "physicists" nowadays stand in the same
relationship to "physics" as "amoralists" stand in relationship to
"morality." :-) --MJ}***
Laurent
"Dave Ulmer" <dave...@NOTccwebster.net> wrote in message
Action at a distance does appear to happen at spacetime level, where
Nicolaas Vroom
"Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid
> introducing "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why?
> Are there any philosophical
> reasons for doing this that I should be aware of ?
>
IMO I think there is only one reason:
There exists no experiment that clearly demonstrates
action-at-a-distance.
If someone has a different opinion than please
explain this experiment in detail.
Or give me an url which clearly shows the opposite.
A different question is:
How does one demonstrate action-at-a-distance.
An experiment that demonstrates action-at-a-distance
more or less goes as follows:
Consider that the Earth Moon distance is 1 light sec.
That means if I send a light signal (message) to the Moon
and it is there reflected then I get it back to Earth after
2 seconds. This is not action-at-a-distance. (aaad)
Suppose I draw a number from a box.
This number is entered in an aaad device
and "written as an aaad message" to the Moon.
At the Moon this message is read and transcribed
back as a number.
This number is send back to Earth as a light signal
message. If this message is received after 1 second
(or slightly more) than there is action-at-a-distance.
implying information transport with a v>c.
Consider a box halfway between the Earth and the
Moon. When this box is triggered it sends two different
photons one +x and one -x. One of those
goes to Earth and one to the Moon. The one at the Moon
is reflected back to Earth.
Of course when I receive at Earth a +x photon
than I know that at the Moon they have received a -x photon.
This is not action-at-a-distance.
Using this box approach there is no aaad involved
because the total information path is still 2 seconds.
0.5 sec to trigger the box, 0.5 sec to send a photon to the
Moon and 1 second to send the photon back.
In the discussion group digitalphilosphy recently the
following to url's were mentioned:
http://www.wheaton.edu/physics/backward.pdf
http://xxx.arxiv.cornell.edu/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/9602/9602020.pdf
The problem with both articles is that no practical actual
performed experiments are discussed.
Showing a detailed description of an experiment
and all the results of this experiment.
To describe only the mathematics what may be is
(or is not) possible, is not enough.
Nick.
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
> news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> > It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid
> > introducing "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why?
> > Are there any philosophical
> > reasons for doing this that I should be aware of ?
> >
>
> IMO I think there is only one reason:
> There exists no experiment that clearly demonstrates
> action-at-a-distance.
> If someone has a different opinion than please
> explain this experiment in detail.
Well known experimental tests of Bell's inequality (take any). They
show that so called "collaps of wave-function" is explicitely
non-local because non-comuting variable measured at two
entangled quantum objects become equal independent on the distance
between the objects at the moment of collaps. So you have
only two choices to interpret this
1) super-luminal interraction
or
2) non-locality
There is also a simple experimental refutal for the notion that
both entangled objects already carried the information about what state they
will take rather then accepted a random value (this case simply gives
distinctly different distribution).
Regards,
Evgen
Dave Ulmer
"Sam Wormley" <swor...@mchsi.com> wrote in message
news:3DDA605C...@mchsi.com...
> Dave Ulmer wrote:
> >
> > When I say "16 Data Types" this is
> > the name of a new theory in Physics that apparently nobody has ever
thought
> > of before. I expect that you could read every book ever written and
still
> > not learn what the 16 Data Types are.
>
> "16 Data Types" is just bullshit. Also, my spell checker, which is more
> reliable than "ulmer" thinks the name should be spelled "ulcer". Isn't
> that interesting.
Its fairly obvious that you could never recognize the difference betewen
time-variant and time-invarient data so how could I expect you to ever
recognize the other types.
I would hope you could upgrade from that AppleII and get a decent spell
checker. My spell checker never mistakes Wormley for a Worm!
Dave...
Mitchell Jones
***{Hi Evgenij. Frankly, I'm amazed that you are still posting that stuff
on your site, given the flaws in the reasoning that I pointed out to you
long ago. However, since you evidently want to discuss it some more, I
have copied the relevant remarks from your website, and inserted come
comments, below. --MJ}***
> ***************
> Imagine absolute nothingness - no time, no matter, nothing at all.
> Concept of causality requires some cause for something to happen,
> therefore it can be stated that probability of an event is proportional
> to number of possible causes which exist. Now, in nothingness
> there is no causes, so probability of single event is 0. But that
> is of single event at one try. What about probability that event _ever_
> happens? There is a problem here, because we have nothing at all
> (so also no time) - no restrictions of number of tries.
***{Of course there is a restriction on number of tries. A "try" is an
event of a defined sort which is known, in some cases, to yield up an
outcome of a specified sort. For example, rolling a die is known, in
roughly 1/6th of cases, to yield up a 5. Since "events" are the result of
interactions among entities, and since you have stipulated that no
entities are present in the situation, there are no "tries." --MJ}***
Practically the problem can be mathematically formulated as such:
> ******
> what is the probablity that an event ever happens if number of tries
> approaches infinity if probability at single try is approaching 0?
> ********
>
> First, how to calculate the probability P that an event with "one-try
> probability" p will happen during N tries _at least once_? P is
> quite easy to derive from the theorem of multiplication of
> independent probabilities. I give only the answer:
>
> P = 1-(1-p)^N
***{In the above formula, p is the probability of an event, and N is a
counting number--which means: a positive integer indicating the number of
independent trials at that probability. If, for example, p is the
probability that, on rolling a die on a craps table, we will obtain a
five, and N is the number of rolls, then if we roll the die once, the
probability of obtaining a five is
P = 1-(1-p)^N = 1 - [1 - (1/6)^1] = .166667
Note, however, that the formula does not apply to the case where we do not
roll the die: N is restricted to positive integers, and 0 is *not* a
positive integer. The proof that zero is not an acceptable value for N is
easy: assume that the formula applies to the case where the die is never
rolled onto the table--which means: to the case where N = 0. In that case,
we obtain
P = 1-(1-p)^N = 1 - [1 - (1/6)^0] = 1 - [1 - 1] = 1 - 0 = 1.
In other words, if we do not roll the die onto the table, we are
guaranteed to obtain a 5! Indeed, by the same reasoning we are guaranteed
to also obtain a 1, a 2, a 3, etc. But that is absurd: we have defined a
trial as a roll of the die onto the table, and, obviously, if we never
roll it onto the table, it cannot produce a 5 or anything else! Therefore,
by the method of indirect proof, we have demonstrated that N, in the
formula, can never take the value of zero. (And since it is preposterous
to speak of, say, 2.6 trials, it is also clear that it can never take any
value other than a positive integer.)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> It can be seen that at any finite p<1 with increasing N P will be
> approaching 1, which means "certainty". However, what will
> happen, if p is "infinitely small" or in the limit = 0,
> but the number of tries in also infinite? Logic says it will give
> 0. But who needs logic here, let the mathematic speak!
>
> It is known that infinity can be described as 1/0, so
> considering N=1/p (here p is approaching 0) we can write
> equation for P as one limit
>
> Pinf= Lim {p->0} (1-(1-p)^(1/p))
***{Since p can take any value from 0 to 1, it follows that 1/p is not
limited to positive integral values. N, however, *is* limited to positive
integral values, for the reasons given earlier. Hence 1/p cannot be
substituted for N. You can, of course, attempt to rectify this difficulty
by limiting p to positive integral values, but if you do, its value must
be 1. The reason: the number 1 is the only number which is both a positive
integer and a permissible probability value. However, your position, in
your words, is that "in nothingness there is no causes, so probability of
single event is 0." Thus your argument fails. (Nor can you construct a new
argument based on the claim that, if nothing exists, N = 0, because, as
noted above, the formula does not permit a value of N = 0.) --MJ}***
> What is the answer? Using rules of finding limits, we find
> the answer, but it is not zero!
>
> Pinf = 1-exp(-1)=0.6....
>
> We find a magic number! Probability in not only not 0, but
> actually more then 1/2!
>
> While all this considerations can be seen as a joke (through
> mathematically correct
***{No, it is mathematically incorrect, for the reasons given above. --MJ}***
) I see
> more philosophical meaning to it. It is a proof that given
> infinite time (or number of tries), _something_ can and must
> arise out of _nothing_. It is a solution for the paradox
> of causality, which usually was resolved by notion of God
> as a first-cause!
***{Nope. You are a good mathematician, but you are not good enough to
bring a proof into existence out of nothing. :-) --MJ}***
> Regards,
> Evgenij
Richard
Excellent post Mitchell.
--
Richard
http://www.cswnet.com/~rper
--The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when
he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
--Archibald MacLeish
Mitchell Jones
> Mitchell Jones wrote:
> > With that context in mind, consider the meaning of "action at a distance."
> > In the case of gravity, for example, such a notion involves imagining that
> > one body, say the Earth, reaches out through empty space to another body,
> > say the Moon, and pulls on it--which means: exerts a force on it. But in
> > this picture the Moon is surrounded by *nothing*. Hence the force appears
> > out of *nothing*--which means: it is not carried by entities. There are no
> > particles either emitted by the Earth or influenced in their passage by
> > the presence of the Earth, which convey the force to its object.
>
> Magnets are surrounding by nothing also, and the north pole of one
> magnet manages to tug on the south pole of another with no intervening
> substance.
***{No, Bob. Magnets are surrounded by a complex aether which is a mixture
of various sizes and types of particles. Its primary constituents interact
with gross matter in a way that gives rise to magnetic lines of force.
Loops of magnetic flux are composed of spin-aligned etherons, strung
together in closed sequences, like pearls on a necklace, each with its
spin-axis parallel to the loop segment that passes through it. Each loop
is structured in such a way that adjacent particles are invariably
connected together in a north pole to south pole spin orientation. Because
the particles of which flux loops are composed are real entities that have
mass and occupy space, their spins exert real forces--which means:
particles which strike them are deflected along the tangent line at the
point of contact, in much the same way as a spinning grindstone deflects
sparks along the tangent line at the point where a piece of metal is
touching it. However, in the case of a spinning flux line, the directions
of the impressed forces are equal and opposite for equal and opposite
charges, and so there is no net effect on neutral charges. (If you would
like more detail about how it all works, I will be happy to post up a
lengthy explanation.) --MJ}***
>Action at a distance happens all the time.
***{Action at a distance happens only in the minds of persons who embrace
magical thinking--which means: in the minds of those who deny the
epistemological validity of the principle of continuity. --MJ}***
> Bob Kolker
Mitchell Jones
glha...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory L. Hansen) wrote:
> In article <3DD5595C...@hate.spam.net>,
> Uncle Al <Uncl...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
> >Mike H wrote:
> >>
> >> It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid introducing
> >> "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why? Are there any
philosophical
> >> reasons for doing this that I should be aware of?
> >
> >Give a mechanism for action-at-a-distance that obeys the usual
> >conservation laws - energy, linear adn angular momenta. Are you going
> >to have your action-at-a-distance limited by lightspeed? If so, why?
> >If not, demonstrate superluminal information transfer.
>
> Oddly enough, Barut's _Electrodynamics and Classical Theory of Fields and
> Particles_ has the last chapter on action-at-a-distance electrodynamics.
> I haven't read the chapter, it's not something I could just breeze
> through. But from the chapter introduction,
>
> ---
> "So far, we have considered the field as a physical system on its own
> right interacting with the particles. When this picture is applied to the
> case of electromagnetic field interacting with point particles, we found
> an infinite self-energy
***{"An infinite self-energy"? If anyone out there thinks they know what
the author meant by that, I would be very interested in hearing some
elaboration. Thanks in advance. --MJ}***
, hence the necessity of mass renormalization and
> the breakdown of microcausality in the motion of charged particles when
> the radiation reaction is taken into account.
> "It is also possible to eliminate the concept of field and introduce
> only action-at-a-distance interactions between the particles. A single
> particle, in this approach, does not produce a field of its own, hence has
> no self-energy. The relativistically invariant interactions between the
> particles is such that they simulate the field between them.
> "To this class of theories belong the electrodynamics of Wheeler and
> Feynman which gives a physical interpretation to the finite part of the
> radiation reaction. Under this interpretation the Dirac prescription of
> calculating the finite part of self-field and the resulting equation of
> the motion would be exact."
> ---
>
> A few lame Greg comments:
>
> Barut is solid, and with names like Feynman and Wheeler attached we can
> probably figure there's no blatant damage done to conservation laws, etc.
> But its obscurity argues that there's no real benefit at least for casual
> use.
>
> I'd be very interested if someone could comment on quantizing an
> action-at-a-distance electrodynamics.
>
> To the original poster: apparantly physicists haven't just avoided
> action-at-a-distance theories on philosophical grounds.
***{Indeed not. In fact, conventional "physicists" have gravitated toward
such explanations in part *because* of philosophical considerations--to
wit: because they have been trained in the Humian empiricist tradition,
and thus see themselves living in an essentially unknowable magical
universe where things routinely leap into and out of existence, rather
than in a knowable mechanical universe where the flow of events is
determined by an inexorable causality. --MJ}***
They've been
> investigated, and maybe still are.
***{Action at a distance, particularly in its "continuous field"
incarnation, is the dominant "explanatory" device in contemporary
"physics." Leaving the philosophical considerations aside and focusing on
psychology instead, the reason for that state of affairs is obvious: it is
easy to "explain" anything by attributing it to magic, whereas finding a
causal explanation that you can defend against criticism requires talent,
ability, and hard work. Thus in a world where the universe is seen for
what it really is--i.e., a gigantic machine--physicists are expected to
supply causal explanations of the workings of that machine--which means: a
physicist has to be a person of extraordinary reasoning ability, and
university curricula must be geared to weeding out candidates who reason
poorly. On the other hand, in a world that believes in magic,
"explanations" are easy, and "physicists" can be perfectly ordinary,
common-as-dirt conformists who couldn't reason their way out of a paper
bag, and whose only conception of "criticism" is to hurl insults at those
refuse to accept the prevailing magical point of view.
And therein lies the ultimate explanation for the sad state of
contemporary "physics": during the Age of Reason, governments in the
English-speaking world were constitutionally limited republics controlled,
for the most part, by an aristocracy of merit. Suffrage was denied to the
mindless conforming masses of "common men," and as a result education was
not geared to the fulfillment of "democratic, egalitarian goals." Instead,
the educational apparatus was oriented toward finding individuals who,
with education and training, would be able to function professionally at
the same high levels as their predecessors, when, due to advancing age,
those predecessors had to relinquish their positions in the social
structure. Today, by way of contrast, every moron has the vote, and
democratic nose counting dominates everything--which means: it is one's
ability to blend in with the herd, rather than one's ability to reason,
that is the commodity most valued by the educational apparatus. Result:
the professions have changed, and professional standards and requirements
have collapsed, as the filth of egalitarianism has oozed its way
throughout the educational apparatus. That's all one needs to know, if one
wishes to comprehend why physics, and most other intellectual disciplines,
have collapsed back into the primordial barbarism and magical worldview of
the pre-industrial era. And, unfortunately, it is also all one needs to
know to predict the future of this civilization.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Gregory L. Hansen
Mitchell Jones <mjo...@jump.net> wrote:
>In article <ar5gui$mkn$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>glha...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory L. Hansen) wrote:
>
>> In article <3DD5595C...@hate.spam.net>,
>> Uncle Al <Uncl...@hate.spam.net> wrote:
>> >Mike H wrote:
>> ---
>> "So far, we have considered the field as a physical system on its own
>> right interacting with the particles. When this picture is applied to the
>> case of electromagnetic field interacting with point particles, we found
>> an infinite self-energy
>
>***{"An infinite self-energy"? If anyone out there thinks they know what
>the author meant by that, I would be very interested in hearing some
>elaboration. Thanks in advance. --MJ}***
The electron is a point-like particle. If you think of assembling it from
infinitesmal peices, the work required to bring them all together is
infinite because the force goes as 1/r^2. If you define an electron
radius so that the mass is m=E/c^2, the resulting radius is larger than
experiment will allow.
>> To the original poster: apparantly physicists haven't just avoided
>> action-at-a-distance theories on philosophical grounds.
>
>***{Indeed not. In fact, conventional "physicists" have gravitated toward
>such explanations in part *because* of philosophical considerations--to
>wit: because they have been trained in the Humian empiricist tradition,
>and thus see themselves living in an essentially unknowable magical
>universe where things routinely leap into and out of existence, rather
>than in a knowable mechanical universe where the flow of events is
>determined by an inexorable causality. --MJ}***
Hume and "things routinely leaping into and out of existence" are pretty
much orthogonal.
>
>They've been
>> investigated, and maybe still are.
>
>***{Action at a distance, particularly in its "continuous field"
>incarnation, is the dominant "explanatory" device in contemporary
You misunderstand action-at-a-distance and fields. All the standard
theory is explicitly local. A source generates a field, the field is
thought of as physical with energy and momentum. When an electron at
point A interacts with a proton at point B, it doesn't matter what the
proton at point B is doing, what matters is what the field at point A is
doing. The proton generates the field, but the electron interacts only
with the field that exists where the electron itself is, and the only
effect the proton can have is to create the field that will exist at
point A at a later time. That's what makes it local. The electron also
interacts with its own field, because that exists where the electron is,
too, and that's where self-energy and renormalization come in.
Locality basically says the only things that affect a particle are things
that are right where the particle is, and no place else.
And quantum blurs the distinction between field and particle; the
electromagnetic field is composed of photons, an electron is a
quantization of the Dirac field. Still local.
>"physics." Leaving the philosophical considerations aside and focusing on
>psychology instead, the reason for that state of affairs is obvious: it is
Psychology, eh? I won't mince words. Crackpots are always inventing
psychological reasons that the state of science doesn't look the way they
want it to look, and I think it's related to the defense mechanisms that
psychologists talk about: "How to explain why nobody agrees with me when
it's so obvious that I'm right and they're wrong?"
I think whatever you have to say on physicist psychology will be basically
made-up and irrelevant, but I'm not going to read through it check.
Nicolaas Vroom
"Evgenij Barsukov" <e-barsoukov...@ti.com>
schreef in bericht news:3DDAC6FB...@ti.com...
> Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> >
> > "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
> > news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> > > It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid
> > > introducing "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why?
> > > Are there any philosophical
> > > reasons for doing this that I should be aware of ?
> > >
> >
> > IMO I think there is only one reason:
> > There exists no experiment that clearly demonstrates
> > action-at-a-distance.
> > If someone has a different opinion than please
> > explain this experiment in detail.
>
> Well known experimental tests of Bell's inequality (take any).
No. You give me details of this tests.
An url is okay.
Also tell me the distance involved: 1mm, 1m, or 1km
Be aware, this test should clearly demonstrate
action-at-a-distance (aaad) or if you prefer otherwise
super-luminal interaction (communication)
An example which demonstrates action-at-a-distance could
be as follows:
Consider a photon generator at the centre of position A and
position B. (1 km apart)
This photon generator each time (when trickered) generates
two photons, which each has a value (when measured)
between +10 and -10.
1) I setup my photon generator in a special way such that
when only the photon at position A is measured (and not
at position B) I find the value +5
and when I measure the photon only at position B I find the
value -5. This is always true if I measure ONE photon.
2) Next I move the position of the photon generator slightly
in the direction of position A. But now I measure each time
not one photon but BOTH photons.
What are the results ?
The result is that photon at position A is always +5
but the photon at position B can have any value.
3) Next I move the position of the photon generator slightly
in the direction of position B and again I measure not
one photon but BOTH photons.
What are the results ?
The result is that photon at position B is always -5
but the photon at position A can have any value.
If the results are as above then aaad takes place.
i.e. the measurement of one photon influences
the behavior "instantaneous" of the other.
In experiment 2 you measure A before B
The result is that the photon at A when measured is not changed.
However this measurement of photon A influences the state
of photon going in the direction of position B.
The result is that the photon at B when measured has changed.
In experiment 3 it is the other way around.
i.e. you measure B before A
and as a result B does not change but A changes.
Two important rules of this experiment
1) that it is asymmetric.
2) If you only measure one photon at one position,
(A or B) the result is always the same (no aaad involved)
IMO you can not perform any experiment
which demonstrates aaad, but ofcourse I can be wrong.
> They
> show that so called "collaps of wave-function" is explicitely
> non-local because non-comuting variable measured at two
> entangled quantum objects become equal independent on the distance
> between the objects at the moment of collaps. So you have
> only two choices to interpret this
> 1) super-luminal interraction
> or
> 2) non-locality
You only have to describe the experiment.
Keep such a description simple.
Nick
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Zoot Allures
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message news:mjones-2011...@66-105-229-8-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> In article <3DD5A426...@attbi.com>, bobk...@attbi.com wrote:
>
> > Mitchell Jones wrote:
> > > With that context in mind, consider the meaning of "action at a distance."
> > > In the case of gravity, for example, such a notion involves imagining that
> > > one body, say the Earth, reaches out through empty space to another body,
> > > say the Moon, and pulls on it--which means: exerts a force on it. But in
> > > this picture the Moon is surrounded by *nothing*. Hence the force appears
> > > out of *nothing*--which means: it is not carried by entities. There are no
> > > particles either emitted by the Earth or influenced in their passage by
> > > the presence of the Earth, which convey the force to its object.
> >
> > Magnets are surrounding by nothing also, and the north pole of one
> > magnet manages to tug on the south pole of another with no intervening
> > substance.
>
> ***{No, Bob. Magnets are surrounded by a complex aether which is a mixture
> of various sizes and types of particles. Its primary constituents interact
> with gross matter in a way that gives rise to magnetic lines of force.
> Loops of magnetic flux are composed of spin-aligned etherons, strung
> together in closed sequences, like pearls on a necklace, each with its
> spin-axis parallel to the loop segment that passes through it.
"Spin-aligned etherons, strung together in closed sequences, each
with its spin-axis parallel to the loop segment that passes through it."
Are these etherons perhaps some distant cousins of our mutual
friends, the "gravites, moving at millions of times the speed of light,
hitting from the back and pushing cone shaped spinning photons to
the speed of light?"
I mean, in full context, the ones you talked about on
http://groups.google.com/groups?&as_umsgid=mjones-2210...@66-105-229-18-aus-02.cvx.algx.net
Dirk V d m
Mike H
> ***{Note, however, that I do not merely say "The notion that I have not
> existed for more than a single instant seems self-evidently preposterous."
> I also say, "Since the denial of the principle of continuity implies that
> I may not have existed for more than a single instant, it follows that the
> principle of continuity must be true."
Do you believe that we are absolutely certain that we have not existed
for more than a single instant? Even in this universe, assuming matter
can't appear from or disappear into nothing, we have the ability (*in
theory*) to construct a human brain, and design it in a such a way to
give them the false impression of having existed for longer than a
single instant. So even if matter can't leap into existence out of
nothing, apparently sense data can.
> The problem with supposing that such events are possible, however, does
> not lie in their effects on what can be (metaphysics), but in their
> effects on what can be known (epistemology). In the latter regard, a
> continuity violation is an event of a type that cannot be limited by time,
> place, or circumstances, because it differs in a very fundamental way from
> events of the normal sort. [...]
> If, on the other hand, the very same person comes running
> up with soot on his face and reports that a firecracker came into
> existence out of nothing 6 inches in front of his nose, hung there for
> about a second, and then exploded, the implications are very different.
> The reason is that the latter effect is alleged to not have arisen out of
> the specifics of the situation, but out of *nothing*--which means: it is
> alleged that there was no cause. Result: no limits can be placed on the
> time, location, or circumstances of such events.
Why not? It seems to me that you can deny the principle of continuity
without contradicting the principle of causality. It could be, for
example, that the firecracker materialized out of thin air because of
some unique arrangement of the surrounding air molecules that
(according to a rather strange, but still determinate, set of laws in
that universe) *caused* the firecracker to materialize out of nothing
in a way that *is* limited by time, location, and circumstances.
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> "Evgenij Barsukov" <e-barsoukov...@ti.com>
> schreef in bericht news:3DDAC6FB...@ti.com...
> > Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> > >
> > > "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
> > > news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> > > > It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid
> > > > introducing "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why?
> > > > Are there any philosophical
> > > > reasons for doing this that I should be aware of ?
> > > >
> > >
> > > IMO I think there is only one reason:
> > > There exists no experiment that clearly demonstrates
> > > action-at-a-distance.
> > > If someone has a different opinion than please
> > > explain this experiment in detail.
> >
> > Well known experimental tests of Bell's inequality (take any).
>
> No. You give me details of this tests.
> An url is okay.
Detailed descriptioin of one of such tests (Freedman-Clauser experiment)
is here:
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_24.html#2.4
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_45.html#4.5
On the same site you can find its transactional interpretation.
> Also tell me the distance involved: 1mm, 1m, or 1km
1 m, 2 photons are flying in opposite directions so total distance between them
2 m.
> Be aware, this test should clearly demonstrate
> action-at-a-distance (aaad) or if you prefer otherwise
> super-luminal interaction (communication)
It demonstrate that without having in the system super-luminal interaction
information from one photon could not go to another.
Please note that this effect does not allow
to transmit information available to "external" observed, but only
information available internaly to the systems (which exchange possibility
is defined by Bell's inequality).
External observer finds that internal information has been transmitted by
differences between distributions in "transmitted" and "not transmitted" cases.
He can only find that information has been transmitted instanteneously (or that
in does
not need (!) to be transmitted due to nolocality which is equivalent), but what
this information is can not be found.
Note that this stuff is based on publications in phys.rew. and other
respectable
journals.
Regards,
Evgenij
Evgenij Barsukov
> > ***************
> > Imagine absolute nothingness - no time, no matter, nothing at all.
> > Concept of causality requires some cause for something to happen,
> > therefore it can be stated that probability of an event is proportional
> > to number of possible causes which exist. Now, in nothingness
> > there is no causes, so probability of single event is 0. But that
> > is of single event at one try. What about probability that event _ever_
> > happens? There is a problem here, because we have nothing at all
> > (so also no time) - no restrictions of number of tries.
>
> ***{Of course there is a restriction on number of tries. A "try" is an
> event of a defined sort which is known, in some cases, to yield up an
> outcome of a specified sort. For example, rolling a die is known, in
> roughly 1/6th of cases, to yield up a 5. Since "events" are the result of
> interactions among entities, and since you have stipulated that no
> entities are present in the situation, there are no "tries." --MJ}***
You are trying to extrapolate the entities of collapsed (or measured)
reality into the realm on the "thing in itself" (to which from
all physical entities only the QM probability functions and transaction waves
belong).
I am exploring event of _spontaneous_ (non-causal per definition!) arising of
something. It is quite obvious that for spontaneous events no observers who
will make
"tries" are needed, just as you dont need any observers to have a given
probability
of spontaneous gamma-quant emission.
My approach is quite similar to calculating density
fo virtual particles, while single virtual particles can not be detected
by definition, obvious from the very word "virtual". "Tries" in this case is
just an abstraction which indicates that at any moment of time event can happen
but might also not (while we might not even know about it). Similar approach is
the Monte-Carlo integration, when we are "trying" to hit the area and then
count number of hits.
I used the discrete expression "tries" because as I mentioned in my
original message, it is not possible to define time in Nothing.
The argument following this is refuted by same logic. While events
are spontaneous, and there is Nothing (including NO restictions of any kind),
there is also no restriction (see _Nothing_) for "waiting time" (expressed here
as number of tryes) for the event to happen.
> > It can be seen that at any finite p<1 with increasing N P will be
> > approaching 1, which means "certainty". However, what will
> > happen, if p is "infinitely small" or in the limit = 0,
> > but the number of tries in also infinite? Logic says it will give
> > 0. But who needs logic here, let the mathematic speak!
> >
> > It is known that infinity can be described as 1/0, so
> > considering N=1/p (here p is approaching 0) we can write
> > equation for P as one limit
> >
> > Pinf= Lim {p->0} (1-(1-p)^(1/p))
>
> ***{Since p can take any value from 0 to 1, it follows that 1/p is not
> limited to positive integral values. N, however, *is* limited to positive
> integral values, for the reasons given earlier. Hence 1/p cannot be
> substituted for N. You can, of course, attempt to rectify this difficulty
> by limiting p to positive integral values, but if you do, its value must
> be 1.
This is a constructive point! But you already almost found the solution.
I can limit probability p to 1/N where
N is positive interger approaching infinity. This way all p's will be between
1 and 0. In this case nothing prevents me to write the equation in this form:
Pinf= Lim {N->inf} (1-(1-1/N)^(N))
Obviously, the result is same:
Pinf = 1-exp(-1)
Welcome to the world of Nothing! :-)
Regards,
Evgenij
Mike H
news:f9c129dc.0211...@posting.google.com...
> Do you believe that we are absolutely certain that we have not existed
> for more than a single instant?
Sorry, typo. This should read "are we absolutely certain that we *have*
existed for more than a single instant."
Dirk Van de moortel
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message news:mjones-1911...@66-105-229-55-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
[snip]
> > Pinf= Lim {p->0} (1-(1-p)^(1/p))
>
> ***{Since p can take any value from 0 to 1, it follows that 1/p is not
> limited to positive integral values. N, however, *is* limited to positive
> integral values, for the reasons given earlier. Hence 1/p cannot be
> substituted for N. You can, of course, attempt to rectify this difficulty
> by limiting p to positive integral values, but if you do, its value must
> be 1. The reason: the number 1 is the only number which is both a positive
> integer and a permissible probability value. However, your position, in
> your words, is that "in nothingness there is no causes, so probability of
> single event is 0." Thus your argument fails. (Nor can you construct a new
> argument based on the claim that, if nothing exists, N = 0, because, as
> noted above, the formula does not permit a value of N = 0.) --MJ}***
:-))
http://users.pandora.be/vdmoortel/dirk/Physics/ImmortalFumbles.html#JonesMath
Title: "***{Mathematics according to MJ}***"
Dirk Vdm
Mitchell Jones
mike...@hotmail.com (Mike H) wrote:
> mjo...@jump.net (Mitchell Jones) wrote in message
news:<mjones-1911...@66-105-229-3-aus-02.cvx.algx.net>...
> > ***{Note, however, that I do not merely say "The notion that I have not
> > existed for more than a single instant seems self-evidently preposterous."
> > I also say, "Since the denial of the principle of continuity implies that
> > I may not have existed for more than a single instant, it follows that the
> > principle of continuity must be true."
>
> Do you believe that we are absolutely certain that we have not existed
> for more than a single instant?
***{You read the sentence wrong. I am absolutely certain that I exist
*over time*--which means: that I have existed for more than a single
instant. And since the possibility of things leaping into and out of
existence implies that I may have appeared an instant ago (complete with a
set of memories to convince me that I have been around for a long time),
such a possibility contradicts my certainty that I have existed over time.
In other words, the statements (a) "I am certain that I have existed over
time," and (b) "It is possible that the principle of continuity may be
false," stand in direct contradiction to one another. Thus logical
consistency requires that, to the degree that a person is certain of (a),
he must be equally certain that (b) is false--which means: a reasonable
person is as certain of the principle of continuity as he is of his own
existence. It must be emphasized, however, that the above argument is a
proof only because the destructiveness of (b) is not limited to (a). In
other words, the argument is that (b) requires us to doubt *everything*,
including things of which we are certain, such as (a); hence (b) must be
false. --MJ}***
Even in this universe, assuming matter
> can't appear from or disappear into nothing, we have the ability (*in
> theory*) to construct a human brain, and design it in a such a way to
> give them the false impression of having existed for longer than a
> single instant.
***{"False impression"? You think we are gods, that we can bring a human
being into existence out of nothing? Hell, we can't even construct a
human brain at all, much less bring one into existence out of nothing. The
best we could hope to do would be to surgically remove a brain from
someone's skull, keep it alive by pumping in the appropriate nutrients,
and connect its nerve trunks to a supercomputer, so that it would get the
impression it was in some sort of virtual reality. --MJ}***
So even if matter can't leap into existence out of
> nothing, apparently sense data can.
***{Even a brain floating in a nutrient solution, with pumps connected to
arteries and veins, and electrodes connected to its nural inputs and
outputs, would have existed for more than a single instant and would know
that it had done so. Result: such a brain would be in a position to verify
the principle of continuity by means of the same sort of a priori
reasoning that I discussed above. Result: if you tried to feed it fake
sense data that suggested things were leaping into existence out of
nothing or vanishing into nothing, it would be in a position to recognize
that those data were fake, and, as a result, that its sensory inputs could
not be trusted. Just because most people aren't bright enough to reason
that way does not mean such reasoning would not be the correct response to
such a situation. --MJ}***
> > The problem with supposing that such events are possible, however, does
> > not lie in their effects on what can be (metaphysics), but in their
> > effects on what can be known (epistemology). In the latter regard, a
> > continuity violation is an event of a type that cannot be limited by time,
> > place, or circumstances, because it differs in a very fundamental way from
> > events of the normal sort. [...]
> > If, on the other hand, the very same person comes running
> > up with soot on his face and reports that a firecracker came into
> > existence out of nothing 6 inches in front of his nose, hung there for
> > about a second, and then exploded, the implications are very different.
> > The reason is that the latter effect is alleged to not have arisen out of
> > the specifics of the situation, but out of *nothing*--which means: it is
> > alleged that there was no cause. Result: no limits can be placed on the
> > time, location, or circumstances of such events.
>
> Why not? It seems to me that you can deny the principle of continuity
> without contradicting the principle of causality.
***{Each link in a causal sequence operates locally--which means: A
affects B by touching B, B affects C by touching C, etc. In other words,
all forces are exerted by particles in collision. As to why we must
conceive of causality as a process that operates locally, the answer is
that "billiard ball causality" is the only kind of causality which can
serve as a tool in the quest for knowledge. (For more detail, see below.)
--MJ}***
It could be, for
> example, that the firecracker materialized out of thin air because of
> some unique arrangement of the surrounding air molecules that
> (according to a rather strange, but still determinate, set of laws in
> that universe) *caused* the firecracker to materialize out of nothing
> in a way that *is* limited by time, location, and circumstances.
***{While you can imagine a circumstance where an effect appeared out of
thin air, conditioned by a "causal" process that operates non-locally, the
premise that things can do that destroys the basis for making reasoned
claims about anything, because the epistemological consequences of
non-local "causality" are the same as those of uncaused events. If, for
example, a firecracker can materialize out of thin air due to distant
circumstances, our sensations may be materializing out of thin air due to
the state of affairs in regions so distant as to be forever beyond our
reach--e.g., on Betelgeuse. The implication: such a premise is fully as
destructive to the possibility of knowledge as is the premise that the
event is unconnected to any circumstances anywhere. Thus from the
standpoint of epistemology, there is no difference between non-local
causality and no causality at all. --MJ }***
Dirk Van de moortel
"Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message news:mjones-2311...@66-105-229-2-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
[snip]
> ===============================================
> Killfile inmates: Charles Cagle, Stephen Speicher, Mati Meron, Franz
> Heymann, Mike Varney, Dirk Van de moortel.
A few minutes after I posted your fumble
http://users.pandora.be/vdmoortel/dirk/Physics/ImmortalFumbles.html#JonesMath
I had a visit on my site from:
Allegiance Telecom Inc., United States
You post from NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.105.229.2
which belongs to:
Registrant:
Internet Allegiance, Inc. (ALGX2-DOM)
1950 Stemmons Freeway Suite 3026
Dallas
TX,75207
US
This proves that you lie about your killfile.
Why the lie?
Dirk Vdm
Mike H
news:mjones-2311...@66-105-229-2-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> mike...@hotmail.com (Mike H) wrote:
> > Do you believe that we are absolutely certain that we have not existed
> > for more than a single instant?
>
> ***{You read the sentence wrong. I am absolutely certain that I exist
> *over time*--which means: that I have existed for more than a single
> instant.
Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to ask: Do you believe that we are
absolutely certain that we *have* existed for more than a single instant?
(See below.)
> > Even in this universe, assuming matter
> > can't appear from or disappear into nothing, we have the ability (*in
> > theory*) to construct a human brain, and design it in a such a way to
> > give them the false impression of having existed for longer than a
> > single instant.
>
> ***{"False impression"? You think we are gods, that we can bring a human
> being into existence out of nothing?
Not out of nothing, but *in theory* (i.e., it is possible that) we could
construct one from existing materials to bring *sensations* (and supposedly
"certain" memories of what it has experienced long before the construction)
out of nothing.
> Hell, we can't even construct a
> human brain at all,
Not right now, but it's possible that we will be able to do so in the
distant future. The *possibility* is enough to show that we aren't
completely certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
Your argument seems to be this:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
(2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
(C) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
I claim that the "brain-construction" thought experiment disproves (2).
> much less bring one into existence out of nothing. The
> best we could hope to do would be to surgically remove a brain from
> someone's skull, keep it alive by pumping in the appropriate nutrients,
> and connect its nerve trunks to a supercomputer, so that it would get the
> impression it was in some sort of virtual reality. --MJ}***
>
> > So even if matter can't leap into existence out of
> > nothing, apparently sense data can.
>
> ***{Even a brain floating in a nutrient solution, with pumps connected to
> arteries and veins, and electrodes connected to its nural inputs and
> outputs, would have existed for more than a single instant and would know
> that it had done so. Result: such a brain would be in a position to verify
> the principle of continuity by means of the same sort of a priori
> reasoning that I discussed above.
I probably should have worded that sentence differently. Even if matter
can't leap into existence out of nothing, apparently "certain" memories of
past sensory experiences (and the resulting conviction that one has existed
for more than a single instant) can.
Mitchell Jones
> Hi there!
>
> > > ***************
> > > Imagine absolute nothingness - no time, no matter, nothing at all.
> > > Concept of causality requires some cause for something to happen,
> > > therefore it can be stated that probability of an event is proportional
> > > to number of possible causes which exist. Now, in nothingness
> > > there is no causes, so probability of single event is 0. But that
> > > is of single event at one try. What about probability that event _ever_
> > > happens? There is a problem here, because we have nothing at all
> > > (so also no time) - no restrictions of number of tries.
> >
> > ***{Of course there is a restriction on number of tries. A "try" is an
> > event of a defined sort which is known, in some cases, to yield up an
> > outcome of a specified sort. For example, rolling a die is known, in
> > roughly 1/6th of cases, to yield up a 5. Since "events" are the result of
> > interactions among entities, and since you have stipulated that no
> > entities are present in the situation, there are no "tries." --MJ}***
>
> You are trying to extrapolate the entities of collapsed (or measured)
> reality into the realm on the "thing in itself" (to which from
> all physical entities only the QM probability functions and transaction waves
> belong
***{Say it as you wish, the fact remains: if nothing--i.e., empty space,
not aether, or ZPF, or "virtual particles," or "the Dirac sea," etc.--is
all that exists, there can be no "tries." Only something can act; nothing
never can. Thus your argument fails. --MJ}***
).
> I am exploring event of _spontaneous_ (non-causal per definition!)
arising of
> something. It is quite obvious that for spontaneous events no observers who
> will make
> "tries" are needed, just as you dont need any observers to have a given
> probability
> of spontaneous gamma-quant emission.
***{I am not talking just about "observers." Only entities--real things
that have mass/energy and occupy space--can *do* things. Only entities can
act. Thus since a "try," however defined, is clearly an action, it
requires that something--some entity--already exist. Thus you engage in
self-contradiction when you suppose that, in an imaginary realm where
there is only nothing--i.e., no entities--actions can nonetheless take
place. --MJ}***
> My approach is quite similar to calculating density
> fo virtual particles, while single virtual particles can not be detected
> by definition, obvious from the very word "virtual".
***{"Virtual particles" are supposed to produce real effects; hence they
exist; hence a realm consisting solely of virtual particles could not be
described as "nothing" any more than aether can reasonably be described as
nothing. If you intend to argue that matter can come into existence in
regions where there is nothing but aether, I would agree with you. And if
you prefer to refer to the aether as "the Dirac sea," or ZPF, or "virtual
particles," I would disagree only in matters of detail, while still
agreeing with the generality, precisely *because* in such cases the matter
is *not* coming into existence out of nothing.
However, you seem instead to be saying that something can come literally
from *nothing*, and with that I very strongly do disagree. Even if we
leave aside the obvious: that nothing cannot act, massive difficulties
remain. The worst of those difficulties is simply this: if something can
come from nothing, then no knowledge whatsoever can be possible, for in
the attempt to work out the implications of such a possibility one would
immediately have to ask oneself whether one's sensations were leaping into
existence out of nothing, and, obviously, one would have to say they might
be. And the next question would be whether any sort of probability number
could be assigned to such a likelihood, and, equally obviously, the answer
would be no. The probability of an event is a concept that presupposes the
existence of an external world in which the rules of nature endure over
time, and, obviously, cannot be applied to the question of whether such a
world exists. Therefore as soon as the possibility of entities leaping
into existence out of nothing is even considered, it becomes crystal clear
that, if one were to decide such things could happen, logical consistency
would require the abandonment of any claim to have any knowledge at all
about anything. One could not reasonably claim that one's sensations had
sources. That would mean one could not claim that an external world, or
one's body, or one's brain, or the internal parts of the brain such as
storage areas for memory, understanding, verbal abilities, etc., even
existed, or even that they were likely to exist. In short, as soon as we
allow that something from nothing is possible, knowledge become
impossible.
Bottom line: you need to specify whether you are talking literally about
*nothing*, or merely about a tenuous and hard-to-detect form of
*something*, when you make the sorts of claims you are making. If the
former, then you are succumbing to palpable nonsense; and if the latter,
then you need no mathematics to prove your conclusion, for it is obvious
that if low density, tenuous, hard-to-detect material is concentrated
sufficiently, something which is high density and easy to detect will
result.
--Mitchell Jones}***
"Tries" in this case is
> just an abstraction which indicates that at any moment of time event can
happen
> but might also not (while we might not even know about it).
***{Any abstraction which allows for the possibility that an event can
happen presupposes the existence of entities--which means: something must
exist already. To claim otherwise, i.e., that *nothing* can act, destroys
the possibility of knowledge. --MJ}***
Similar approach is
> the Monte-Carlo integration, when we are "trying" to hit the area and then
> count number of hits.
> I used the discrete expression "tries" because as I mentioned in my
> original message, it is not possible to define time in Nothing.
***{Correct, and that's just another flaw in your argument: not merely
must there be entities present for an action (a "try") to take place, but
there must also be a passage of time. With true nothing being all that is
present, there would be neither entities nor time, hence, again, there
would be no "tries." --MJ}***
> The argument following this is refuted by same logic. While events
> are spontaneous, and there is Nothing (including NO restictions of any kind),
> there is also no restriction (see _Nothing_) for "waiting time"
(expressed here
> as number of tryes) for the event to happen.
***{An event is an interaction among entities. You seem to be talking
about true nothing--i.e., an absence of all entities. Under those
circumstances, there can be no events, hence no tries. (Or else there can
be no knowledge.) --MJ}***
> > > It can be seen that at any finite p<1 with increasing N P will be
> > > approaching 1, which means "certainty". However, what will
> > > happen, if p is "infinitely small" or in the limit = 0,
> > > but the number of tries in also infinite? Logic says it will give
> > > 0. But who needs logic here, let the mathematic speak!
> > >
> > > It is known that infinity can be described as 1/0, so
> > > considering N=1/p (here p is approaching 0) we can write
> > > equation for P as one limit
> > >
> > > Pinf= Lim {p->0} (1-(1-p)^(1/p))
> >
> > ***{Since p can take any value from 0 to 1, it follows that 1/p is not
> > limited to positive integral values. N, however, *is* limited to positive
> > integral values, for the reasons given earlier. Hence 1/p cannot be
> > substituted for N. You can, of course, attempt to rectify this difficulty
> > by limiting p to positive integral values, but if you do, its value must
> > be 1.
>
> This is a constructive point! But you already almost found the solution.
> I can limit probability p to 1/N where
> N is positive interger approaching infinity.
***{Remember: we are talking about true nothing, not about a realm filled
with diffuse, hard-to-detect material. Result: in that realm, N = 0. And I
have already demonstrated that N, as used in the formula P = 1 - (1 -p)^N,
must be a counting number. Since zero is not a counting number, you cannot
set N = 0 for the purposes of the formula, and this entire line of
argument fails. --MJ}***
This way all p's will be between
> 1 and 0. In this case nothing prevents me to write the equation in this form:
>
> Pinf= Lim {N->inf} (1-(1-1/N)^(N))
>
> Obviously, the result is same:
> Pinf = 1-exp(-1)
>
> Welcome to the world of Nothing! :-)
***{Evgenij, you are a smart guy, and one of the few who post to this
group who seems able to think in mathematical terms, but the above
argument, though interesting, simply does not work. --MJ}***
greysky
Depends on your definition of nothing.
> However, you seem instead to be saying that something can come literally
> from *nothing*, and with that I very strongly do disagree.
Something can come from nothing, it does all the time. Virtual particles can
be thought of as being composed of imaginary energy. Yet virtual particles
can interact with real particles to produce perturbative effects. How can
imaginary energy cause a real particle to move? A case of real work being
performed by non - energetic imaginary potentials. SOP at the quantum level
where ethere are no clear boundaries between the real and the not real.
>Even if we
> leave aside the obvious: that nothing cannot act, massive difficulties
> remain. The worst of those difficulties is simply this: if something can
> come from nothing, then no knowledge whatsoever can be possible, for in
> the attempt to work out the implications of such a possibility one would
> immediately have to ask oneself whether one's sensations were leaping into
> existence out of nothing, and, obviously, one would have to say they might
> be. And the next question would be whether any sort of probability number
> could be assigned to such a likelihood, and, equally obviously, the answer
> would be no. The probability of an event is a concept that presupposes the
> existence of an external world in which the rules of nature endure over
> time, and, obviously, cannot be applied to the question of whether such a
> world exists. Therefore as soon as the possibility of entities leaping
> into existence out of nothing is even considered, it becomes crystal clear
> that, if one were to decide such things could happen, logical consistency
> would require the abandonment of any claim to have any knowledge at all
> about anything. One could not reasonably claim that one's sensations had
> sources. That would mean one could not claim that an external world, or
> one's body, or one's brain, or the internal parts of the brain such as
> storage areas for memory, understanding, verbal abilities, etc., even
> existed, or even that they were likely to exist. In short, as soon as we
> allow that something from nothing is possible, knowledge become
> impossible.
No it does not. You are worrying about nothing. The fact is that even
though an imaginary potential creates a virtual particle, the information
that defines the virtual particle is the same as that which defines a real
particle with a complex nature. Matter waves are totally imaginary... that's
why they need to be squared. Information is usually Complex. But, even when
it isn't, characteristics of both the real and imaginary part of a complex
wave ate teh same. This is why a virtual electron behaves the same way as a
real electron. The universe seems to care more about the information in a
system than if it has 'energy'.
>
> Bottom line: you need to specify whether you are talking literally about
> *nothing*, or merely about a tenuous and hard-to-detect form of
> *something*, when you make the sorts of claims you are making. If the
> former, then you are succumbing to palpable nonsense; and if the latter,
> then you need no mathematics to prove your conclusion, for it is obvious
> that if low density, tenuous, hard-to-detect material is concentrated
> sufficiently, something which is high density and easy to detect will
> result.
Because the information in an imaginary system is the same as that in a real
system, it can produce the same effects without changing the math much.
>
> --Mitchell Jones}***
>
> "Tries" in this case is
> > just an abstraction which indicates that at any moment of time event can
> happen
> > but might also not (while we might not even know about it).
>
> ***{Any abstraction which allows for the possibility that an event can
> happen presupposes the existence of entities--which means: something must
> exist already. To claim otherwise, i.e., that *nothing* can act, destroys
> the possibility of knowledge. --MJ}***
If the universe operated that way, we would promptly disappear.
Greysky
www.allocations.cc
Nicolaas Vroom
Overview of url's related to quantum mechanics:
(Two url's #7 and #8 require concatenation)
1. The transactinal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
John G. Cramer
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mijp2/transaction/Welcome.html
An electronic book about Quantum Mechanics subdivided in 5 chapters
Backup site of above two url's: i.e. section 2.4 and 4.5
2. EPR und Bell'sche Umgleichung
by Robert Casties - in German
http://philoscience.unibe.ch/~casties/physics/eprphy.pdf
page 10 shows a schematic of Freedman Clauser experiment
3. Does CHSH Correlation or FC Correlation lead to the largest
violation of Bell Inequality ? M. Ardehali
Research laboratory NEC
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9701032
Theoretical discussion.
4. Can we really understand matter
By Eugene Linden 16 april 1990
http://www.eugenelinden.com/canwereallyunderstandmatter.html
Contains the following sentence:
"In his experiment, Clauser, assisted by Stuart Freedman,
found a way of firing photons in opposite directions and
selectively changing their polarization. The outcome was clear:
a change in one photon did alter the polarization of the other."
5. Contains a list of 34 actual Physical Review Letters
http://fangio.magnet.fsu.edu/~vlad/pr100/100yrs/html/chap14_toc.htm
This is a very worthy url to study.
Each document mentioned is related to Quantum Mechanics.
6. #23: Experimental test of local hidden-variable theories
S.J. Freedman, J.F. Clauser
Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 938-941 (1972)
http://fangio.magnet.fsu.edu/~vlad/pr100/100yrs/html/chap/fs2_14023.htm
Article discusses results of actual performed experiments
7. Atom based tests of the bell inequalities
E.S. Fry and Th. Walther 12 april 2001 8 pages
http://www.physik.tu-darmstadt.de/lqo/publications/proceeding/pdfdownloads/
bellpaper.pdf
Very good overview paper Discusses Loopholes
8.Experimental violation of Bells inequality with efficient detection
Nature 15 Feb. 2001
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v409/n6822/
full/409791a0_r.html
"Local realism is the idea that objects have definite properties whether
or not they are measured, and that measurements of these properties
are not affected by events taking place sufficiently far away.
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen used these reasonable assumptions
to conclude that quantum mechanics is incomplete...
Many experiments have since been done that are consistent with
quantum mechanics and inconsistent with local realism....
Here we have measured correlations in the classical properties
of massive entangled particles:
these correlations violate a form of Bell's inequality."
Article discusses results of actual performed experiments.
9. Grondslagen van de Quantum Mechanica
J Hilgevoord Utrecht October 2001 173 pagina's
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~wwwgrnsl/jos/publications/qmsyll.pdf
Een uitgebreide cursus.
After studying all the above documents IMO there is no
action-at-a-distance involved in the performed experiments.
Ofcourse I'am open to any argument which could change this.
(By preference with url's.)
IMO the most logical explanation for the observed correlations
is that those correlations exists immediate when the photons
(for example document 6) are created.
Those correlations are not a result of the measurement process.
Secondly exactly if there is action-at-a-distance involved
who influences who.
Does the left photon influences the right photon only ?
Does the right photon influences the left photon only ?
Do they both influence each other ?
Again IMO there is no mutual influence involved when one photon
passes a polariser (or anything else) onto the other photon.
The quoted line as mentioned in docemented 4 is wrong
Studying document 6 does not support the claim:
a change in one photon did alter the polarization of the other.
IMO the experimentors have no control in the "polarization"
of the 2 created photons.
Is there anyone who has performed or witnessed an
experiment very close to the one mentioned in document 6?
Is it possible currently possible to repeat this experiment ?
Are there improvements possible ?
Why is phi incremented with 22.5 degrees ?
Nick
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
G=EMC^2 Glazier
thinking there is a 100% vacuum at sea level in our atmosphere.
Going with QM gravity you can have gravities attraction over any
distance. Going again with QM,and GR you can have infinite mass in a
zero volume of space. Bert
nightbat
nightbat
Correction Bert, that was before Chandra proved otherwise and
got the Nobel for it. Limits are a part of Nature, in the expanding
cosmos and heart of a theoretical black hole.
the nightbat
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-2311...@66-105-229-2-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> > In article <f9c129dc.0211...@posting.google.com>,
> > mike...@hotmail.com (Mike H) wrote:
> > > Do you believe that we are absolutely certain that we have not existed
> > > for more than a single instant?
> >
> > ***{You read the sentence wrong. I am absolutely certain that I exist
> > *over time*--which means: that I have existed for more than a single
> > instant.
>
> Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to ask: Do you believe that we are
> absolutely certain that we *have* existed for more than a single instant?
> (See below.)
>
> > > Even in this universe, assuming matter
> > > can't appear from or disappear into nothing, we have the ability (*in
> > > theory*) to construct a human brain, and design it in a such a way to
> > > give them the false impression of having existed for longer than a
> > > single instant.
> >
> > ***{"False impression"? You think we are gods, that we can bring a human
> > being into existence out of nothing?
>
> Not out of nothing, but *in theory* (i.e., it is possible that) we could
> construct one from existing materials to bring *sensations* (and supposedly
> "certain" memories of what it has experienced long before the construction)
> out of nothing.
***{If we had a brain in a jar, whether we made it ourselves or borrowed
it out of someone's skull, then with a proper computer hookup we could in
principle create the appearance of a virtual world. However, the stimuli
that we fed to the brain in the jar would *not* be coming out of nothing:
they would be coming from the computer to which the brain was attached.
That means he would be in a real world. It just wouldn't be the world that
his sensations suggested that he was in, that's all. --MJ}***
> > Hell, we can't even construct a
> > human brain at all,
>
> Not right now, but it's possible that we will be able to do so in the
> distant future. The *possibility* is enough to show that we aren't
> completely certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
>
> Your argument seems to be this:
>
> (1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
> possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
> (2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
> (3) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
> true.
>
> I claim that the "brain-construction" thought experiment disproves (2).
***{Why? It takes more than an instant for sensations to even register.
The human eye, for example, cannot detect stimuli that have a duration
less than a tenth of a second or so. (If it could, we would perceive
motion pictures as a succession of stills, and the movie industry would
not exist.) Thus if we are conscious, we know we have existed for more
than an instant.
Nevertheless, leaving the above aside, my point, in general terms, is
this: when one wants to decide whether a claim is true, a good approach is
to see if the denial of that claim is inconsistent with anything that you
know to be true. If it is, then the denial is proven false and the
original statement is proven to be true. Thus if one wants to prove that
the principle of continuity is true, one states the denial--to wit: that
things may come into existence out of nothing and vanish into nothing--and
then tries to find something one is sure of, which conflicts with that
denial. And when one does that, the result is an embarassment of riches:
one finds that the denial of continuity conflicts not merely with every
certain and every probabilistic claim about the material universe, but
with the conclusion of every deductive proof as well. (One only affirms
the conclusion of a deductive argument because one expects that, if one
were to work one's way through the proof again, one would come to the same
conclusion--which means: every claim based on deduction is both an
affirmation that the past really happened, and a prediction that the
future will yield up the same result as the past. As such, it is
inescapably demolished by the possibility that things may leap into
existence out of nothing and vanish into nothing, since that obviously
implies that the "past" which you "remember" may have never happened, and
that the future may differ from that past.) Thus it turns out, upon
reflection, that the principle of continuity is the foundation of the
entire structure of human knowledge. Result: if one believes it to be
false, or even that it *may* be false, one loses all grounds for believing
anything whatsoever.
Faced with such an overwhelming multitude of things that can be cited as
contradicting the denial of continuity, the natural response is to try to
find the most certain statement among that myriad of things, and focus
one's arguments upon it. When I do that, the statement which seems most
certain to me is simply this: "I exist." Since I assume that every
reasonable person will be as utterly certain of his own existence as I am
of mine, that is generally the example I use. And, oddly enough, for the
most part it works: the vast majority of people with whom I discuss this
are, in fact, willing to reject statements which imply that they may not
exist. A few, however--yourself included--are willing to claim, on various
grounds, to doubt their own existence. To them, and to you, I can only say
this: if you hold any reason-based belief--i.e., any knowledge--that
belief contradicts the denial of continuity, for if the principle of
continuity may be false, all knowledge is impossible.
What we have here, in short, is the reductio ad absurdum from Hell: either
(a) the principle of continuity is true, or (b) we can know nothing
whatsoever.
Since (b) is howlingly absurd and, indeed, self-contradictory, it
inescapably follows that (a) must be true. Q.E.D.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > much less bring one into existence out of nothing. The
> > best we could hope to do would be to surgically remove a brain from
> > someone's skull, keep it alive by pumping in the appropriate nutrients,
> > and connect its nerve trunks to a supercomputer, so that it would get the
> > impression it was in some sort of virtual reality. --MJ}***
> >
> > > So even if matter can't leap into existence out of
> > > nothing, apparently sense data can.
> >
> > ***{Even a brain floating in a nutrient solution, with pumps connected to
> > arteries and veins, and electrodes connected to its nural inputs and
> > outputs, would have existed for more than a single instant and would know
> > that it had done so. Result: such a brain would be in a position to verify
> > the principle of continuity by means of the same sort of a priori
> > reasoning that I discussed above.
>
> I probably should have worded that sentence differently. Even if matter
> can't leap into existence out of nothing, apparently "certain" memories of
> past sensory experiences (and the resulting conviction that one has existed
> for more than a single instant) can.
***{Unless you are claiming to believe in ghosts, memories are material in
nature: specific configurations of chemical molecules stored in neural
nets within a material brain, or tiny magnetic domains ("binary bits") in
a computer, etc. Hence if matter can't leap into existence, then neither
can memories. (Of course, this is a side issue: the main thrust of my
argument is expressed in the previous note.) --MJ}***
Mike H
> In article <XaPD9.7964$VB6.17...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Your argument seems to be this:
> >
> > (1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is
> > possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
> > (2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single
instant.
> > (3) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity
is
> > true.
> >
> > I claim that the "brain-construction" thought experiment disproves (2).
>
> ***{Why? It takes more than an instant for sensations to even register.
> The human eye, for example, cannot detect stimuli that have a duration
> less than a tenth of a second or so. (If it could, we would perceive
> motion pictures as a succession of stills, and the movie industry would
> not exist.) Thus if we are conscious, we know we have existed for more
> than an instant.
But "we" would have existed only as unconscious brains that haven't
experienced anything, before that first moment when we recognize the
stimulus. Not only that, but if we do the thought experiment right, we will
have also given the brain a "life history" full of false memories, both
short-term and long-term, so that the brain will be convinced ("with
certainty") that it has existed for much *longer* than a tenth of a second.
It's this possibility that you seemed to be disputing when you wrote on
11/23:
"I am absolutely certain that I exist *over time*--which means: that I have
existed for more than a single instant. And since the possibility of things
leaping into and out of existence implies that I may have appeared an
instant ago (complete with a set of memories to convince me that I have been
around for a long time), such a possibility contradicts my certainty that I
have existed over time." --MJ
So when you say that (as a consequence of denying the principle of
continuity) "we may not have existed for more than a single instant," do you
mean that we may have false memories of the past when we might not have
existed (which the brain-construction thought experiment proves must be
possible even in *this* universe), or that a brain may have popped into
existence out of nothing complete with such memories?
Alternatively, instead of creating a brain first and then feeding it
sensations "from the outside," we can create a brain and *give it* the
electrical stimulation required for it to be conscious from the very start
(eliminating the need for the 1/10 of a second required for it to become
aware of a sensory stimulus).
> (One only affirms
> the conclusion of a deductive argument because one expects that, if one
> were to work one's way through the proof again, one would come to the same
> conclusion--which means: every claim based on deduction is both an
> affirmation that the past really happened, and a prediction that the
> future will yield up the same result as the past.
I'm a little confused here: wouldn't a prediction of the future based on the
past be an inductive argument?
> Faced with such an overwhelming multitude of things that can be cited as
> contradicting the denial of continuity, the natural response is to try to
> find the most certain statement among that myriad of things, and focus
> one's arguments upon it. When I do that, the statement which seems most
> certain to me is simply this: "I exist."
Interesting. How does the possibility that the principle of continuity is
false imply that we may not exist?
> And, oddly enough, for the
> most part it works: the vast majority of people with whom I discuss this
> are, in fact, willing to reject statements which imply that they may not
> exist. A few, however--yourself included--are willing to claim, on various
> grounds, to doubt their own existence.
I don't remember claiming anything like that. But I'd be interested to hear
your argument that a denial of the principle of continuity leads to that
possibility.
> What we have here, in short, is the reductio ad absurdum from Hell: either
> (a) the principle of continuity is true, or (b) we can know nothing
> whatsoever.
>
> Since (b) is howlingly absurd and, indeed, self-contradictory, it
> inescapably follows that (a) must be true. Q.E.D.
>
> --Mitchell Jones}***
(snip)
> > I probably should have worded that sentence differently. Even if matter
> > can't leap into existence out of nothing, apparently "certain" memories
of
> > past sensory experiences (and the resulting conviction that one has
existed
> > for more than a single instant) can.
>
> ***{Unless you are claiming to believe in ghosts, memories are material in
> nature: specific configurations of chemical molecules stored in neural
> nets within a material brain, or tiny magnetic domains ("binary bits") in
> a computer, etc. Hence if matter can't leap into existence, then neither
> can memories.
The particles *themselves* can't leap into existence. But it doesn't follow
that memories, which are composed of such particles, have the same property.
(That's like saying the set of all natural numbers is finite, since each
number in the set is finite. What applies to all the parts doesn't
necessarily apply to the whole.) Indeed, a memory is actually an
*arrangement* of particles inside a person's brain, and arrangements (which
aren't matter, but rather are properties of it) can and do "leap into
existence out of nothing."
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-2511...@66-105-229-7-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> > In article <XaPD9.7964$VB6.17...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> > <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Your argument seems to be this:
> > >
> > > (1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
> is
> > > possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
> > > (2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single
> instant.
> > > (3) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity
> is
> > > true.
> > >
> > > I claim that the "brain-construction" thought experiment disproves (2).
> >
> > ***{Why? It takes more than an instant for sensations to even register.
> > The human eye, for example, cannot detect stimuli that have a duration
> > less than a tenth of a second or so. (If it could, we would perceive
> > motion pictures as a succession of stills, and the movie industry would
> > not exist.) Thus if we are conscious, we know we have existed for more
> > than an instant.
[snip]
> Alternatively, instead of creating a brain first and then feeding it
> sensations "from the outside," we can create a brain and *give it* the
> electrical stimulation required for it to be conscious from the very start
> (eliminating the need for the 1/10 of a second required for it to become
> aware of a sensory stimulus).
***{That makes no sense: there will be a time delay before the signal
registers. Period. There is no way to avoid it. In any case, as I
explained, this is much ado about nothing, because the denial of
continuity doesn't just contradict belief that we have existed for more
than an instant: it contradicts all knowledge whatsoever, even including
deductive knowledge. --MJ}***
> > (One only affirms
> > the conclusion of a deductive argument because one expects that, if one
> > were to work one's way through the proof again, one would come to the same
> > conclusion--which means: every claim based on deduction is both an
> > affirmation that the past really happened, and a prediction that the
> > future will yield up the same result as the past.
>
> I'm a little confused here: wouldn't a prediction of the future based on the
> past be an inductive argument?
***{There is no way to disentangle the two types of arguments. When a
deductive conclusion is affirmed, there is the implication that, if one
worked one's way through the proof again, one would reach the same
conclusion--which means: belief in deduction involves an implicit
affirmation that the past really happened, and an implied prediction that
the future will behave in accordance with the pattern established in the
past. That is simply a fact. Hence when you deny continuity, you do not
merely deny all inductive arguments, but all deductive ones as well.
(David Hume's major philosophical error, in fact, was his failure to
recognize this.) --MJ}***
> > Faced with such an overwhelming multitude of things that can be cited as
> > contradicting the denial of continuity, the natural response is to try to
> > find the most certain statement among that myriad of things, and focus
> > one's arguments upon it. When I do that, the statement which seems most
> > certain to me is simply this: "I exist."
>
> Interesting. How does the possibility that the principle of continuity is
> false imply that we may not exist?
***{If the principle of continuity may be false, then your sensations may
be leaping into existence out of nothing--which means: the external world
may not exist, your right arm may not exist, your nose may not exist, your
ears may not exist, your brain may not exist, internal structures within
the brain such as a storage area for memories may not exist, etc. Even "I
think, therefore I am" is not a defense, since that string of words may
have popped into existence out of nothing rather than come into being as
the result of a mental process ("thought") going on in a brain. Hence all
inductively based knowledge is null and void if the principle of
continuity may be false; and, since all deductive knowledge is inductively
based, it too is null and void. Conclusion: the principle of continuity is
the base of the entire structure of human knowledge. If it is false, or if
it *may* be false, knowledge itself is impossible. Thus either (a) the
principle of continuity is true, or (b) we can know nothing whatsoever.
But, as already noted, (b) is itself a claim of knowledge, and, thus, is
self-contradictory. Thus all that remains is (a)--which means: the
principle of continuity is true, and any statement which contradicts it is
false.
Thus statements such as "God created the universe out of nothing," or
"Action at a distance takes place," or "When an electron jump occurs, the
electron disappears from its position in one orbit and reappears in the
next, without passing through the intervening space," or "In a
gravitational field, forces are associated with mathematical points in
space, rather than with force bearing entities" are all false, because
they imply violations of continuity. To sum up: magic is impossible,
because the principle of continuity is an absolute truth. Hence the
existence of a god or gods is impossible; hence "quantum mechanics" (the
magical interpretive framework, not the mathematics) is false; hence
"relativity" (again, the magical interpretive framework, not the math) is
false; etc.
Bottom line: we ain't living in no goddamn realm of magic, folks. Many of
you may not like it, but the universe is a gigantic machine in which past,
present, and future are linked by an inexorable causality, and the task
of physics is to discover the nature of that causality. That means we do
experiments to determine what the data points are, then we do mathematical
physics to identify/create equations that capture the patterns implicit in
those data, and then we do *theoretical* physics the old fashioned way: we
create visualizable models of causation, describable in natural language,
which *explain* those mathematical patterns. (Note: this means
mathematical physics and theoretical physics are *not* the same thing, and
it means that a mathematical equation and an explanation are *not* the
same thing.)
And, by the way: the fact that we live in a deterministic mechanical
universe does *not* mean we lack free will. Quite the contrary: it is only
in a deterministic mechanical universe that free will is possible. (We can
only hope to act as we will if we have some assurance that our bodies
exist and that the commands which our minds send to our bodies will not
vanish into nothing before reaching their destinations--which means: free
will is only possible if the principle of continuity is true.)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > And, oddly enough, for the
> > most part it works: the vast majority of people with whom I discuss this
> > are, in fact, willing to reject statements which imply that they may not
> > exist. A few, however--yourself included--are willing to claim, on various
> > grounds, to doubt their own existence.
>
> I don't remember claiming anything like that.
***{Not explicitly, perhaps, but it was implicit in what you did claim.
The notion, for example, that we may have only existed for an instant, is
tantamount to the claim that we may not exist at all, since it requires a
definition of "self" grindingly different from what virtually everyone has
in mind. (Nobody I know, probably even including you, sees himself as a
disembodied field of consciousness which popped into existence in an
infinite void a mere instant ago. :-) --MJ}***
But I'd be interested to hear
> your argument that a denial of the principle of continuity leads to that
> possibility.
[snip]
Mike H
> In article <J3vE9.3877$eg7....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Alternatively, instead of creating a brain first and then feeding it
> > sensations "from the outside," we can create a brain and *give it* the
> > electrical stimulation required for it to be conscious from the very
start
> > (eliminating the need for the 1/10 of a second required for it to become
> > aware of a sensory stimulus).
>
> ***{That makes no sense: there will be a time delay before the signal
> registers. Period. There is no way to avoid it.
What will the brain look like after the signal has been "registered"?
Whatever the answer, it's theoretically possible to duplicate it by
construction. But as you pointed out, that's a side issue.
The real issue is whether premises (1) and (2) hold true in the argument:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
(2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
(3) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
In my previous post, I asked you to clarify what you meant by "having
existed for more than a single instant":
On 11/25/02, I wrote:
"So when you say that (as a consequence of denying the principle of
continuity) 'we may not have existed for more than a single instant,' do you
mean that we may have false memories of the past when we might not have
existed (which the brain-construction thought experiment proves must be
possible even in *this* universe), or that a brain may have popped into
existence out of nothing complete with such memories?"
If the former definition is being used, then premise (2) is false as shown
by the brain-construction thought experiment (unless you want to refute it).
That being the case, you would probably want to choose the latter
definition. But this raises the question: what's essentially *different*,
epistemologically speaking, about a brain that's constructed out of existing
materials and a brain that appears out of nothing? Both give rise to sensory
experiences and false memories, and both events are constrained by the laws
of physics (as I pointed out in the firecracker example).
I ask for a little more reasoning in support of premise (2).
> > Interesting. How does the possibility that the principle of continuity
is
> > false imply that we may not exist?
>
> ***{If the principle of continuity may be false, then your sensations may
> be leaping into existence out of nothing--which means: the external world
> may not exist, your right arm may not exist, your nose may not exist, your
> ears may not exist, your brain may not exist, internal structures within
> the brain such as a storage area for memories may not exist, etc. Even "I
> think, therefore I am" is not a defense, since that string of words may
> have popped into existence out of nothing rather than come into being as
> the result of a mental process ("thought") going on in a brain.
Sensations are material in nature (unless you claim to believe in ghosts
;-) ). So if we were to build a model of the external world explaining how
it is that we have the thoughts and sensations we do, we can't say that
*nothing* exists, even if we allow the principle of continuity to be false.
At the very least, we need brains popping into existence in a void. And
while such a theory would certainly explain our sensory experiences, it
wouldn't be nearly as good a theory as, say, general relativity or quantum
mechanics.
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-2511...@66-105-229-14-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> > In article <J3vE9.3877$eg7....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> > <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Alternatively, instead of creating a brain first and then feeding it
> > > sensations "from the outside," we can create a brain and *give it* the
> > > electrical stimulation required for it to be conscious from the very
> start
> > > (eliminating the need for the 1/10 of a second required for it to become
> > > aware of a sensory stimulus).
> >
> > ***{That makes no sense: there will be a time delay before the signal
> > registers. Period. There is no way to avoid it.
>
> What will the brain look like after the signal has been "registered"?
> Whatever the answer, it's theoretically possible to duplicate it by
> construction. But as you pointed out, that's a side issue.
>
> The real issue is whether premises (1) and (2) hold true in the argument:
***{No, that ignores the main point, which is that an argument of the same
sort could be made using *any* premise that you hold to be certainly true.
If, for example, you are thoroughly convinced that the Pythagorean theorem
is correct, you could say:
(a) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is possible that the Pythagorean theorem is false.
(b) I know for certain that the Pythagorean theorem is true.
(c) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is true.
The reason for (a), as noted yesterday, is that when one affirms the
conclusion of a deductive argument, one implies that, were one to go
through the reasoning again, one would reach the same conclusion--which
means: one implies that the past actually happened, and that the future
will be like the past. But if things can leap into existence out of
nothing, then both of those premises clearly may be false.
Bottom line: the central point I am trying to convey is simply that the
principle of continuity is the foundation of the entire structure of human
knowledge--which means: every reason-based belief rests upon the
presumption that it is true. The particular incarnation of that reasoning
which you are presently fixated upon, below, is merely a particularly
vivid illustration of that dependency.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> (1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
> possible that we have not existed for more than a single instant.
> (2) We know for certain that we have existed for more than a single instant.
> (3) Therefore, we know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
> true.
>
> In my previous post, I asked you to clarify what you meant by "having
> existed for more than a single instant":
>
> On 11/25/02, I wrote:
> "So when you say that (as a consequence of denying the principle of
> continuity) 'we may not have existed for more than a single instant,' do you
> mean that we may have false memories of the past when we might not have
> existed (which the brain-construction thought experiment proves must be
> possible even in *this* universe), or that a brain may have popped into
> existence out of nothing complete with such memories?"
***{If the principle of continuity is false or may be false, then either
circumstance, or neither, would be possible. --MJ}***
> If the former definition is being used, then premise (2) is false as shown
> by the brain-construction thought experiment (unless you want to refute it
***{As far as I can tell, you are attempting to dispute (2) by arguing
that (1) is true. However, both were given. You do not have to demonstrate
that which has been given, and it is pointless to argue against something
that was given. The only issues here are whether the conclusion--that is,
(3)--follows from what was given, and whether what was given is factually
true. If we therefore focus on (1), I think we agree that it is true.
Focusing on (2), on the other hand, leads to the conclusion that you are
not presently a member of the group which "we" describes. So long as that
remains true, you will be unable to verify (3) by means of this particular
argument. Remember, however, what I said at the beginning: the denial of
any belief that you are sure of can be substituted for the predicate in
step (1), leading to a version of step (2) that you will agree with, and
thereby permitting you to verify step (3). Here is the generalized form of
the reasoning:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is possible that X is false.
(2) I know for certain that X is true.
(3) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is true.
For X, substitute any statement that you feel sure is true. It is my
belief that with some reflection, and perhaps a bit more discussion, you
will agree with (1) and (2), after which (3) will follow.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Evgenij Barsukov
That is a strange statement from a person who studied reference 1) where
Cramer treats this particular notion, derives 2 distinctly different
distribution for both cases
Distribution 1: information existed in the moment of creation of photons
and
Distribution 2: information exchanged in the moment of measurement
...and finaly shows that first Clauser experiment corresponds to
distribution 2 with probability 99.9% and closeness has been further
improved with subsequent more precise measurements by Aspect.
Besides, that is not an achievment of Cramer (he just explains it well),
but the essence of Bell's inequality, so you should see this
derivation in all of the 9 references you listed in one form or another.
Regards,
Evgenij
Mike H
> In article <48AE9.438$UI.23...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The real issue is whether premises (1) and (2) hold true in the
argument:
>
> ***{No, that ignores the main point, which is that an argument of the same
> sort could be made using *any* premise that you hold to be certainly true.
The argument I drew attention to in my previous post is one I took to be a
"paradigm case" of the many arguments you claim prove the principle of
continuity. The other arguments you have given so far have rested on our
certainty that we have existed over time (which is also a premise of your
original argument).
If you believe that one of your many arguments is valid and proves the
principle of continuity, choose one and defend it. (If every one of them
contains the hidden premise that we are absolutely certain that we have
existed for more than a single instant, then it doesn't matter which one you
choose, since that's the premise I'm attacking.)
> If, for example, you are thoroughly convinced that the Pythagorean theorem
> is correct, you could say:
>
> (a) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
> is possible that the Pythagorean theorem is false.
> (b) I know for certain that the Pythagorean theorem is true.
> (c) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
>
> The reason for (a), as noted yesterday, is that when one affirms the
> conclusion of a deductive argument, one implies that, were one to go
> through the reasoning again, one would reach the same conclusion--which
> means: one implies that the past actually happened, and that the future
> will be like the past. But if things can leap into existence out of
> nothing, then both of those premises clearly may be false.
The soundness of this argument, then, rests on the truth of premise (2) ("we
know for certain that we have existed for more than a single instant") in
the previous argument. Since the brain-construction thought experiment
falsifies this premise without assuming *anything* about the principle of
continuity, the consequences it has for deductive knowledge (if any) are
inescapable.
In order to reach a different conclusion when affirming a deductive
argument, the rules of logic have to change. For this to happen, our
consciousness must suddenly warp into a state where we perceive the world in
a way drastically different from the way we used to, where the normal laws
of reasoning don't apply. We have no philosophical grounds for rejecting the
possibility that this will happen. The best we can do is say that as long as
our sensory experiences are governed by the rules of logic (so that the
results of deductive arguments will remain the same) we can rightfully call
claims such as Pythagoras' theorem "knowledge."
On 11/25, I asked a very important question:
"What's essentially *different*, epistemologically speaking, about a brain
that's constructed out of existing materials and a brain that appears out of
nothing? Both give rise to sensory experiences and false memories, and both
events are constrained by the laws of physics (as I pointed out in the
firecracker example)."
If you believe knowledge is impossible without the certainty that one has
existed for more than a single instant, and also that there is no essential
difference between a brain being constructed from existing materials and a
brain popping into existence from nothing, then you are forced to accept
that the principle of continuity alone won't yield the possibility of
knowledge. You have to prove that brain-construction is somehow
*metaphysically impossible* as well. But with the aid of more powerful
technology, we certainly *could* construct brains with false memories.
> > On 11/25/02, I wrote:
> > "So when you say that (as a consequence of denying the principle of
> > continuity) 'we may not have existed for more than a single instant,' do
you
> > mean that we may have false memories of the past when we might not have
> > existed (which the brain-construction thought experiment proves must be
> > possible even in *this* universe), or that a brain may have popped into
> > existence out of nothing complete with such memories?"
>
> ***{If the principle of continuity is false or may be false, then either
> circumstance, or neither, would be possible. --MJ}***
>
> > If the former definition is being used, then premise (2) is false as
shown
> > by the brain-construction thought experiment (unless you want to refute
it
>
> ***{As far as I can tell, you are attempting to dispute (2) by arguing
> that (1) is true.
Premise (1) states, "If it is possible that the principle of continuity is
false, then it is possible that we have not existed for more than a single
instant." I'm not just arguing that premise (1) is true; I'm arguing that it
*is*, in fact, possible that we have not existed for more than a single
instant, whether the principle of continuity is true or false. This is
enough to refute the arguments you have given so far.
> The only issues here are whether the conclusion--that is,
> (3)--follows from what was given, and whether what was given is factually
> true. If we therefore focus on (1), I think we agree that it is true.
> Focusing on (2), on the other hand, leads to the conclusion that you are
> not presently a member of the group which "we" describes.
Ah, playing the old "your mind must not work like ours" card in
epistemology, I see. :-) That one can be used to defend any philosophical
argument.
I'll grant the possibility that our states of consciousness are so
fundamentally different that we arrive at different conclusions about the
certainty of our past existence. Still, I'd like to ask what makes *you*
certain that you have existed for more than a single instant, in light of
the possibility that scientists have constructed your brain a mere five
minutes ago and suspended you in a matrix to be fed with sensory information
that behave in a way identical to the world of your false memories.
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-2611...@66-105-229-22-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> > In article <48AE9.438$UI.23...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> > <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > The real issue is whether premises (1) and (2) hold true in the
> argument:
> >
> > ***{No, that ignores the main point, which is that an argument of the same
> > sort could be made using *any* premise that you hold to be certainly true.
>
> The argument I drew attention to in my previous post is one I took to be a
> "paradigm case" of the many arguments you claim prove the principle of
> continuity. The other arguments you have given so far have rested on our
> certainty that we have existed over time (which is also a premise of your
> original argument).
>
> If you believe that one of your many arguments is valid and proves the
> principle of continuity, choose one and defend it.
***{We seem to be miscommunicating. I cannot tell you what belief you are
sure of. I do not have a thought probe planted in your brain, and so I
cannot know what is going on in there. Thus all I can do is sketch out, in
general terms, the procedure that a person must follow in order to verify
the principle of continuity to himself, and trust you to follow that
procedure. To reestablish context, here is that procedure again:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is possible that X is false.
(2) I know for certain that X is true.
(3) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is true.
For X, substitute any statement that you feel sure is true. It is my
belief that with some reflection, and perhaps a bit more discussion, you
will agree with (1) and (2) in the argument that results, after which (3)
will follow.
Do you see what I am getting at? The point is that since I am absolutely
certain that I have existed for more than an instant, I can substitute
that statement for X, and come up with a proof--one among many--that the
principle of continuity must be true. For example, let X = "I have existed
for more than an instant." In that case, the argument becomes:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is possible that "I have existed for more than an instant" is false.
(2) I know for certain that "I have existed for more than an instant" is true.
(3) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is true.
The above proof works for me because I am, in fact, absolutely certain
that I have existed for more than an instant. Moreover, I thought it would
work for you as well, since most people are willing to claim certainty on
that point. However, as it turned out, you want to argue that such
certainty is not justified. Thus it would not be appropriate for you to
use the above argument. For you, then, the question becomes this: can you
find any statement that you are absolutely sure is true? If you can, set
it equal to X, and plug it into the above argument, and you are in
business. And if you can't, then you are shit out of luck, for in that
case, with time and reflection, you will be reduced to the belief that no
statement is any more likely to be true than not, and that you have no
basis for believing in anything.
In case you have noticed that I am not interested arguing with you about
whether my absolute certainty that I have existed for more than an instant
is justified, let me explain. The problem is that the premise you are
arguing from is the premise that the principle of continuity may be false.
What you are saying, in essence, is that since the principle of continuity
may be false (assumed by you, not proven), I am not justified in being
absolutely certain that I have existed for more than an instant. And since
I believe that if we assume the principle of continuity may be false, no
belief is justified, it follows that I agree with you that, if you
*assume* the principle of continuity may be false, then my absolute
certainty that I have existed for more than an instant is not justified.
But that is precisely my point: the possibility that the principle of
continuity may be false stands in direct contradiction to my certainty
that I have existed for more than an instant. Hence I cannot believe both.
Thus I must either say: "I may not have existed for more than a single
instant," or else I must say "It is impossible that the principle of
continuity is false."
Obviously, I choose the latter. (After all, only an idiot would abandon a
belief that seems absolutely certain, in order to affirm something that
seems clearly to be false. :-)
Nicolaas Vroom
> Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> >
> > "Evgenij Barsukov" <e-barsoukov...@ti.com> schreef in bericht
> > news:3DDD3093...@ti.com...
> > > Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> > > >
> > > > "Evgenij Barsukov" <e-barsoukov...@ti.com>
> > > > schreef in bericht news:3DDAC6FB...@ti.com...
> > > > > Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
> > > > > > news:4DcB9.826$7q4.51...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
> > > > > > > It seems like physicists do everything they can to avoid
> > > > > > > introducing "action-at-a-distance" into their theories. Why?
> > > > > > > Are there any philosophical
> > > > > > > reasons for doing this that I should be aware of ?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > IMO I think there is only one reason:
> > > > > > There exists no experiment that clearly demonstrates
> > > > > > action-at-a-distance.
> > > > > > If someone has a different opinion than please
> > > > > > explain this experiment in detail.
> > > > >
> > (Two url's #7 and #8 require concatenation)
> > 1. The transactinal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
> > John G. Cramer
> > http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mijp2/transaction/Welcome.html
> > An electronic book about Quantum Mechanics subdivided in 5 chapters
> > Backup site of above two url's: i.e. section 2.4 and 4.5
> >
> >
> > http://fangio.magnet.fsu.edu/~vlad/pr100/100yrs/html/chap14_toc.htm
> >
> > This is a very worthy url to study.
> > Each document mentioned is related to Quantum Mechanics.
> >
> > 6. #23: Experimental test of local hidden-variable theories
> > S.J. Freedman, J.F. Clauser
> > Phys. Rev. Lett. 28, 938-941 (1972)
> > http://fangio.magnet.fsu.edu/~vlad/pr100/100yrs/html/chap/fs2_14023.htm
> >
> > Article discusses results of actual performed experiments
> >
> > Nature 15 Feb. 2001
> >
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v409/n6822/
> > full/409791a0_r.html
> >
> > "Local realism is the idea that objects have definite properties whether
> > or not they are measured, and that measurements of these properties
> > are not affected by events taking place sufficiently far away.
> > Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen used these reasonable assumptions
> > to conclude that quantum mechanics is incomplete...
> > Many experiments have since been done that are consistent with
> > quantum mechanics and inconsistent with local realism....
> > Here we have measured correlations in the classical properties
> > of massive entangled particles:
> > these correlations violate a form of Bell's inequality."
> >
> > Article discusses results of actual performed experiments.
> >
> > action-at-a-distance involved in the performed experiments.
> >
> > Ofcourse I'am open to any argument which could change this.
> > (By preference with url's.)
> >
> > IMO the most logical explanation for the observed correlations
> > is that those correlations exists immediate when the photons
> > (for example document 6) are created.
> > Those correlations are not a result of the measurement process.
>
> That is a strange statement from a person who studied reference 1) where
> Cramer treats this particular notion, derives 2 distinctly different
> distribution for both cases
> Distribution 1: information existed in the moment of creation of photons
> and
> Distribution 2: information exchanged in the moment of measurement
>
> ...and finaly shows that first Clauser experiment corresponds to
> distribution 2 with probability 99.9% and closeness has been further
> improved with subsequent more precise measurements by Aspect.
>
Exactly where does Cramer mentions this distinction between
Distribution 1 and Distribution 2 ?
Where does Cramer mentions this 99.9% value.
Related to the concept of Distribution 2:
1. What sort of information is exchanged ?
2. Which is the exact position/place of measurement
in the Freedman Clauser Experiment ?
Are that the two lenses ?
or the wavelength filter ?
or the rotatable and removable polarizer ?
or the single-photon detector ?
(See Figure 1 in document 6)
If you see a light flash from a light house
and if you are at 1 km distance from that light house
than you KNOW that an observer at the opposite side
also receives a light flash.
(Assuming the light of the light house shines in two directions)
To explain that you do not need any non-local theory
(faster than light theory)
nor is there any form of instantaneous communication involved.
Why do you need a form of instantaneous communication
in order to explain (what ?) the Freedman Clauser Experiment. ?
(What makes it so special ?)
Is there any reader of this posting who has performed an
experiment like the FC experiment ?
Mike H
> In article <oSVE9.619$v95.31...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > If you believe that one of your many arguments is valid and proves the
> > principle of continuity, choose one and defend it.
>
> ***{We seem to be miscommunicating. I cannot tell you what belief you are
> sure of. I do not have a thought probe planted in your brain, and so I
> cannot know what is going on in there. Thus all I can do is sketch out, in
> general terms, the procedure that a person must follow in order to verify
> the principle of continuity to himself, and trust you to follow that
> procedure. To reestablish context, here is that procedure again:
>
> (1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
> is possible that X is false.
> (2) I know for certain that X is true.
> (3) Therefore I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
>
> For X, substitute any statement that you feel sure is true. It is my
> belief that with some reflection, and perhaps a bit more discussion, you
> will agree with (1) and (2) in the argument that results, after which (3)
> will follow.
(snip)
> For you, then, the question becomes this: can you
> find any statement that you are absolutely sure is true?
Certainly. How about 2 + 2 = 4? Then the argument becomes:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
possible that 2 + 2 is not equal to 4.
(2) I know for certain that 2 + 2 = 4.
(3) Therefore, I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
The problem with this argument is that premise (1) and premise (2) use
different standards of "knowledge," in a way that fundamentally depends on
the truth of the premise in the original argument which states, "I am
absolutely certain that I have existed for more than a single instant." As
you pointed out, deductive claims are like inductive claims because we
assume that when we carry out the deduction again, we will arrive at the
same result. And as I mentioned in my previous post, there is a crucial
difference between this kind of "induction" and the induction used in
empirical science. In science, all that needs to be the case for an
induction to fail is one sensory experience that doesn't fit in with our
previous experiences. On the other hand, in order to arrive at a different
result when affirming a deductive argument, our state of consciousness
itself has to warp in such a way that the rules of logic change. There are
no philosophical grounds for rejecting the possibility that this will
happen. So, we have two senses of "certain knowledge" in this argument: 1)
"I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4, and that my state of consciousness
will not warp so that this statement becomes false," and 2) "I am absolutely
certain that 2 + 2 = 4." If we choose the former sense, premise (2) becomes
false; if we choose the latter, premise (1) becomes false. Thus, the
argument is unsound.
When we make claims of knowledge in science and mathematics, we grant the
possibility that something like the above might happen to our state of
consciousness. This is a problem that can't be solved by the introduction of
the principle of continuity. The best we can say as that as long as we are
"alive" (so to speak), and our minds continue to work the way they do, we
can rightfully call such claims "knowledge."
There is also the possibility that our minds never changed at all, and that
we simply have the false memory of arriving at a different result when we
affirmed a deductive argument. Again, this is a possibility that we will
have to live with, and one which can't be alleviated by the introduction of
the principle of continuity as shown by the brain-construction thought
experiment.
> In case you have noticed that I am not interested arguing with you about
> whether my absolute certainty that I have existed for more than an instant
> is justified, let me explain. The problem is that the premise you are
> arguing from is the premise that the principle of continuity may be false.
Not quite: I'm arguing from the premise that brain-construction is possible.
This is true *whether or not* the principle of continuity is true, so the
indroduction of such a principle doesn't solve anything.
> But that is precisely my point: the possibility that the principle of
> continuity may be false stands in direct contradiction to my certainty
> that I have existed for more than an instant. Hence I cannot believe both.
> Thus I must either say: "I may not have existed for more than a single
> instant," or else I must say "It is impossible that the principle of
> continuity is false."
If I understand you correctly, you're saying the argument proving the
principle of continuity varies from person to person depending on what
"certain knowledge" each person claims to hold. In your case, you have
chosen, "I know for certain that I have existed for more than a single
instant."
Now, I'm curious why *you* believe you have existed for more than a single
instant. To answer this, you would have to answer the question I asked on
11/25:
"What's essentially *different*, epistemologically speaking, about a brain
that's constructed out of existing materials and a brain that appears out of
nothing? Both give rise to sensory experiences and false memories, and both
events are constrained by the laws of physics."
What this thought experiment shows us is that the problems the principle of
continuity purports to solve are problems that would remain even after the
indroduction of such a principle. Even if you knew brain didn't pop into
existence five seconds ago with false memories, the possibility would still
remain that your brain was constructed by scientists just as recently, and
that they are feeding you with sensory input in a way to create the illusion
that no such construction took place at all.
> Obviously, I choose the latter. (After all, only an idiot would abandon a
> belief that seems absolutely certain, in order to affirm something that
> seems clearly to be false. :-)
On the contrary, many such "idiots" have made outstanding original
contributions to science. Copernicus, for example, proposed that Earth
revolves around the sun, which was certainly "clearly false" back then.
Scholars were "absolutely certain" that it was the other way around.
Einstein, too, showed us that space isn't Euclidean (a fact of which we were
once certain), but rather is curved by the distribution of mass and energy
in it. Hugh Everett showed us that our world isn't the only one that exists,
and Stephen Hawking proved that black holes aren't completely black. The
list goes on and on.
If we are given two possibilities for what the truth is, and we find
evidence or argument that one of them is false, then we must accept the
other, no matter how implausible it may be.
G=EMC^2 Glazier
take in the entire universe. Seems very small distances of action like a
magnet picking up a nail is just as amazing. The force of magnetisim is
not the same force as gravity,and there can be little argument.. Bert
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
***{Yup. You drop two marbles into a coffee cup, then drop in two more,
then put your hand over the cup and shake it, then dump the contents into
a glass, and out fall five marbles! How? Simple: the extra one came into
existence out of nothing while you were shaking the cup. :-) --MJ}***
> (2) I know for certain that 2 + 2 = 4.
> (3) Therefore, I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
> true.
>
> The problem with this argument is that premise (1) and premise (2) use
> different standards of "knowledge," in a way that fundamentally depends on
> the truth of the premise in the original argument which states, "I am
> absolutely certain that I have existed for more than a single instant." As
> you pointed out, deductive claims are like inductive claims because we
> assume that when we carry out the deduction again, we will arrive at the
> same result. And as I mentioned in my previous post, there is a crucial
> difference between this kind of "induction" and the induction used in
> empirical science. In science, all that needs to be the case for an
> induction to fail is one sensory experience that doesn't fit in with our
> previous experiences.
***{Scientific experiments are all analogous to the thought experiment I
described above, where two pairs of marbles were placed in a coffee cup,
which was then shaken, after which five marbles fell out. How so? Simple:
the experimenter, in all cases, has to be able to control the important
conditions within his experiment, in order for the results to be
meaningful. If, for example, you want to determine whether "cold fusion"
will take place when deuterated palladium is held at 500 atm for an
extended period of time, you have to use a containment vessel that will
hold the desired materials inside at that pressure, and, obviously, if
contaminants can enter the vessel by merely appearing there out of
nothing, or if the desired materials can exit from the vessel by
disappearing into nothing, then the containment vessel serves no purpose.
It can only contain, if the principle of continuity is true. Hence the
kind of induction used in the argument is precisely the same as that used
in science--to wit: it assumes in both cases that we can, by our efforts,
close the system so that it retains the elements we desire, and excludes
the elements we do not desire. --MJ}***
On the other hand, in order to arrive at a different
> result when affirming a deductive argument, our state of consciousness
> itself has to warp in such a way that the rules of logic change.
***{No, it is just another example of the same kind. When we affirm the
conclusion of a deductive proof, it is in part because we believe we have
reasoned our way carefully through the steps and verified them all.
However, the validity of that premise rests on the presumed integrity of
the storage area in the brain that contains our memories. Specifically: it
assumes that if a record is there indicating that we worked our way
through the proof, that record could only have gotten there because, in
fact, we *did* work our way through the proof. But, of course, if the
principle of continuity may be false, then we have no basis for believing
that: the record of our supposed verification may have simply leaped into
existence out of nothing, rather than resulted from an actual thought
process in a real brain. Bottom line: the storage area in the brain is a
containment vessel, and it can only contain if the principle of continuity
is true. --MJ}***
There are
> no philosophical grounds for rejecting the possibility that this will
> happen. So, we have two senses of "certain knowledge" in this argument: 1)
> "I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4, and that my state of consciousness
> will not warp so that this statement becomes false,"
***{To speak of "consciousness warping" is to introduce confusion into the
discussion. We are not here concerned with the ordinary sorts of mental
errors that go on, where for example, a person forgets or becomes confused
or makes an error of logic, because such errors have a defined nature that
persists over time, and, thus, can be dealt with by means of a defined
procedure--to wit: if we suspect that we may have made a mistake in a
proof, we can check it again. However, if the source of the difficulty
lies in memories appearing out of nothing or vanishing into nothing, there
is no procedural solution: the containment vessel known as memory cannot
contain, under those conditions, and we can no longer trust that we have,
in fact, verified anything, however many times we may think we have gone
back and checked it. --MJ}***
and 2) "I am absolutely
> certain that 2 + 2 = 4." If we choose the former sense, premise (2) becomes
> false; if we choose the latter, premise (1) becomes false. Thus, the
> argument is unsound.
***{No, I have used the terms in the same sense throughout my
presentation, as explained earlier. It is you who, at this point, seems to
be shifting into a usage that has nothing to do with the point at issue.
--MJ}***
> When we make claims of knowledge in science and mathematics, we grant the
> possibility that something like the above might happen to our state of
> consciousness.
***{By which you clearly refer to ordinary mental errors related to
forgetting, getting memories out of sequence, etc. Thus, as I suspected,
you are deviating away from the point of the discussion. We are not here
concerned with mental errors, but with the possibility that valid data
will pop out of existence or that invalid data will pop into existence.
What I am saying is that even if a person makes no mental errors of the
ordinary sort, he *still* cannot trust any of his conclusions, deductive
or otherwise, unless it is impossible for the principle of continuity to
be wrong. For if things may leap into existence out of nothing and vanish
into nothing, his memories may do that, even if he has reasoned perfectly.
(Furthermore, even if he makes no mental errors *and* his memories are not
altered, his expectations still may turn out to be wrong, simply because
the future did not abide by the rules of the past.) --MJ}***
This is a problem that can't be solved by the introduction of
> the principle of continuity.
***{I never said that ordinary mental errors could be solved by invoking
the principle of continuity. My point is that if the principle of
continuity may be false, no conclusion can be trusted even if errors of
the ordinary sort do not occur. --MJ}***
The best we can say as that as long as we are
> "alive" (so to speak), and our minds continue to work the way they do, we
> can rightfully call such claims "knowledge."
***{Not if the principle of continuity may be false. --MJ}***
> There is also the possibility that our minds never changed at all, and that
> we simply have the false memory of arriving at a different result when we
> affirmed a deductive argument. Again, this is a possibility that we will
> have to live with
***{We can live with the possibility of ordinary mental errors, because
there are procedural solutions to such problems. We cannot, however, deal
with the possibility that the principle of continuity may be false,
because there is no procedural workaround: if we grant such a possibility,
the entire structure of knowledge instantly collapses. --MJ}***
, and one which can't be alleviated by the introduction of
> the principle of continuity as shown by the brain-construction thought
> experiment.
***{In my view, your "brain construction thought experiment" was far to
wooly to have clearly demonstrated anything. In any event, to repeat: I
never claimed that ordinary mental errors would disappear if the principle
of continuity were true. What I do claim, however, is this: if the
principle of continuity is false, or even if it *may* be false, then
knowledge itself becomes impossible. --MJ}***
> > In case you have noticed that I am not interested arguing with you about
> > whether my absolute certainty that I have existed for more than an instant
> > is justified, let me explain. The problem is that the premise you are
> > arguing from is the premise that the principle of continuity may be false.
>
> Not quite: I'm arguing from the premise that brain-construction is possible.
***{Evolution made us, so, obviously, brain-construction is
possible--though not by any species even remotely as primitive as man.
Thus your premise is correct. However, as noted below, the conclusion you
attempt to derive from that premise is incorrect. --MJ}***
> This is true *whether or not* the principle of continuity is true, so the
> indroduction of such a principle doesn't solve anything.
***{This isn't about "introducing" continuity. We are not gods, and do not
have the power to require the universe to behave in accordance with the
principle of continuity. What we are discussing is whether it is possible
to decide, on reasoned grounds, whether the principle of continuity is
true. --MJ}***
> > But that is precisely my point: the possibility that the principle of
> > continuity may be false stands in direct contradiction to my certainty
> > that I have existed for more than an instant. Hence I cannot believe both.
> > Thus I must either say: "I may not have existed for more than a single
> > instant," or else I must say "It is impossible that the principle of
> > continuity is false."
>
> If I understand you correctly, you're saying the argument proving the
> principle of continuity varies from person to person depending on what
> "certain knowledge" each person claims to hold. In your case, you have
> chosen, "I know for certain that I have existed for more than a single
> instant."
>
> Now, I'm curious why *you* believe you have existed for more than a single
> instant.
***{You were curious before. In fact, you have repeatedly attempted to
draw me into an argument in which I am supposed to attempt to prove that,
even if the principle of continuity may be false, I must have existed for
more than an instant. And, beyond pointing out at one point that one needs
to have existed for more than an instant in order for sense impressions to
register, I have thus far refused to attempt such an argument. And I have
been very open in stating why: I believe it is impossible to justify any
belief, if one assumes that the principle of continuity may be false. Note
that "any belief" explicitly includes the claim to have existed for more
than an instant. To illustrate what I am getting at, let's suppose that I
were to attempt to argue that I must have existed for more than an
instant, *even if* the principle of continuity may be false. In that case,
something such as the following might ensue:
Me: It takes more than an instant for sense impressions to register.
Therefore, if I am conscious of anything, I must have existed for more
than an instant.
You: But what if your brain already had sensations flowing down its
internal neural pathways when it popped into existence? In that case, you
would be conscious the very instant that you appeared, without any
delay--which means: you would be fully conscious *before* you had existed
for a single instant.
Do you see the problem? The difficulty is that no belief, however certain
it may appear, can be defended if one grants that the principle of
continuity may be false. And the reason no belief can be defended under
those conditions is that the mere *possibility* that the principle of
continuity is false contradicts *everything*--which means: it is only if
it is impossible for the principle of continuity to be false, that
knowledge--i.e., reason based belief--is possible.
Result: if you are absolutely certain that you have existed for more than
an instant, a contradiction exists between that belief and the possibility
that the principle of continuity is false.
Result: you must abandon one claim or the other. Either you must say: "I
may not have existed for more than an instant," or you must say "It is
impossible that the principle of continuiuty is false."
How does one resolve the above "problem"? Well, one can discard the belief
that seems certain to be true, in order to affirm the proposition which
seems clearly to be false, or else one can abandon the proposition that
seems clearly to be false, in order to affirm the belief that seems
certain to be true.
Duh, let's see, how shall I decide? :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
To answer this, you would have to answer the question I asked on
> 11/25:
>
> "What's essentially *different*, epistemologically speaking, about a brain
> that's constructed out of existing materials and a brain that appears out of
> nothing? Both give rise to sensory experiences and false memories, and both
> events are constrained by the laws of physics."
>
> What this thought experiment shows us is that the problems the principle of
> continuity purports to solve are problems that would remain even after the
> indroduction of such a principle. Even if you knew brain didn't pop into
> existence five seconds ago with false memories, the possibility would still
> remain that your brain was constructed by scientists just as recently, and
> that they are feeding you with sensory input in a way to create the illusion
> that no such construction took place at all.
***{It's not the same problem. If you believe that things can pop into and
out of existence, it becomes impossible to provide a reasoned basis for
any belief--which means: there is no possibility of knowledge, whether you
are in a jar or not. If, on the other hand, you accept the validity of the
principle of continuity, then you can attain real knowledge, even if you
are in a jar. For example, all necessary connections grasped while a brain
in a jar will be valid in all possible worlds where the principle of
continuity is satisfied, even you grasped those connections while doing
problem solving in a virtual world that does not exist. Thus if you
grasped that two plus two equals four, or that vertical angles are equal,
or that species arise out of the Darwinian struggle for survival, it
doesn't matter in the least whether you did so in a virtual world or in a
real one: such insights constitute knowledge regardless of the
circumstance in which they are grasped, provided that the person who
grasps them accepts the epistemological validity of the principle of
continuity. --MJ}***
> > Obviously, I choose the latter. (After all, only an idiot would abandon a
> > belief that seems absolutely certain, in order to affirm something that
> > seems clearly to be false. :-)
>
> On the contrary, many such "idiots" have made outstanding original
> contributions to science. Copernicus, for example, proposed that Earth
> revolves around the sun, which was certainly "clearly false" back then.
> Scholars were "absolutely certain" that it was the other way around.
> Einstein, too, showed us that space isn't Euclidean (a fact of which we were
> once certain), but rather is curved by the distribution of mass and energy
> in it. Hugh Everett showed us that our world isn't the only one that exists,
> and Stephen Hawking proved that black holes aren't completely black. The
> list goes on and on.
***{You are misinterpreting my words. Copernicus did not abandon a belief
that *he* regarded as certain, in order to affirm something that, *to
him*, seemed clearly to be false. What he abandoned was a belief which
*others* regarded as certain, but which *he* regarded as false, in order
to affirm a belief that seemed clearly true *to him*. And you are guilty
of the same misinterpretation in each of the other examples you cited.
Since the parenthetical comment that you misinterpreted was preceded by "I
choose the latter," it was clear I was talking about myself; and since I
have stated over and over and over again that I am absolutely certain that
I have existed for more than an instant, and that I believe the principle
of continuity is true, there were no grounds whatsoever for you to assume
I was referring to beliefs of persons other than myself. --MJ}***
> If we are given two possibilities for what the truth is, and we find
> evidence or argument that one of them is false, then we must accept the
> other, no matter how implausible it may be.
***{Good advice. Now apply it to the following:
(1) "I am absolutely certain I exist," and "The principle of continuity
may be false."
(2) "I am absolutely certain that I have existed for more than an
instant," and "The principle of continuity may be false."
(3) "I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4," and "The principle of
continuity may be false."
(4) "I am absolutely certain that the Pythagorean theorem is true," and
"The principle of continuity may be false."
(5) "I am absolutely certain that vertical angles are equal," and "The
principle of continuity may be false."
(6) "I am absolutely certain that the interior angles of a polygon with
three straight sides sum to a straight angle," and "The principle of
continuity may be false."
(7) "I am absolutely certain that the Sun exists," and "The principle of
continuity may be false."
(8) "I am absolutely certain that my brain exists," and "The principle of
continuity may be false."
(9) "I am absolutely certain that the physical universe exists," and "The
principle of continuity may be false."
(10) "I am absolutely certain that my memories are records, albeit
imperfect, of a past which actually happened," and "The principle of
continuity may be false."
(11) And on, and on, and on, ad infinitum.
In each of the above cases, only one of the pair of listed claims can be
reasonably affirmed. Hence if we choose to affirm the claim on the left,
we must doubt the claim on the right, and if we choose to affirm the claim
on the right, we must doubt the claim on the left. But since the claim on
the right is always the same, and since the claims on the left, if the
list were complete, would include all of the important discoveries made by
mankind throughout its history, it is clearly the claim on the right that
we must reject--which means: we must conclude that the principle of
continuity is true.
Bottom line: the possibility that the principle of continuity is false
contradicts every piece of reason-based knowledge. Hence if any person is
sure of any reason-based claim, logical consistency requires that he also
be sure that the principle of continuity is true. And if any person
believes the principle of continuity may *not* be true, logical
consistency requires him to make no claims--which means: to keep his mouth
tightly shut, forever.
--Mitchell Jones}***
Mike H
> In article <1N7F9.4834$zM7....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In science, all that needs to be the case for an
> > induction to fail is one sensory experience that doesn't fit in with our
> > previous experiences.
>
> ***{Scientific experiments are all analogous to the thought experiment I
> described above, where two pairs of marbles were placed in a coffee cup,
> which was then shaken, after which five marbles fell out. How so? Simple:
> the experimenter, in all cases, has to be able to control the important
> conditions within his experiment, in order for the results to be
> meaningful. If, for example, you want to determine whether "cold fusion"
> will take place when deuterated palladium is held at 500 atm for an
> extended period of time, you have to use a containment vessel that will
> hold the desired materials inside at that pressure, and, obviously, if
> contaminants can enter the vessel by merely appearing there out of
> nothing, or if the desired materials can exit from the vessel by
> disappearing into nothing, then the containment vessel serves no purpose.
> It can only contain, if the principle of continuity is true.
When we perform an experiment requiring a containment vessel, there is
always the *possibility* that matter will appear from nothing and ruin the
experiment. This doesn't tell us anything about the principle of continuity;
it only tells us that our method of experimentation might be faulty (though
the probability of this happening is extremely small, since we've never
observed matter appearing from nothing, and it is forbidden by our present
laws of physics). We can't assume that the universe obeys a certain
principle just because experiments would be harder to carry out confidently
if it were false.
> However, if the source of the difficulty
> lies in memories appearing out of nothing or vanishing into nothing, there
> is no procedural solution: the containment vessel known as memory cannot
> contain, under those conditions, and we can no longer trust that we have,
> in fact, verified anything, however many times we may think we have gone
> back and checked it. --MJ}***
Correct. And as I will show later, this possibility remains even if the
principle of continuity happens to be true. It is one of the inescapable
downfalls of human knowledge that we can't be *absolutely certain* of a
claim, just because we "remember" having affirmed it deductively.
> > and 2) "I am absolutely
> > certain that 2 + 2 = 4." If we choose the former sense, premise (2)
becomes
> > false; if we choose the latter, premise (1) becomes false. Thus, the
> > argument is unsound.
>
> ***{No, I have used the terms in the same sense throughout my
> presentation, as explained earlier. It is you who, at this point, seems to
> be shifting into a usage that has nothing to do with the point at issue.
> --MJ}***
Let's look at the argument again:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it is
possible that 2 + 2 is not equal to 4.
(2) I know for certain that 2 + 2 = 4.
(3) Therefore, I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is
true.
Now, let's look at three different standards of knowledge.
1) "I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4, and that my state of
consciousness will not warp so that the rules of logic change and this
statement becomes false."
2) "I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4, and that my memory of having
carried out a deductive proof of this fact is not an illusory one."
3) "I am absolutely certain that 2 + 2 = 4 *right now*, because I am
conscious at this very instant of the reasons this statement is necessarily
true."
If we use the first or second standard of knowledge throughout the argument,
premise (2) becomes false. If we use the third, premise (1) becomes false.
So under these three standards of "knowledge," my argument which purports to
prove the principle of continuity is unsound.
Do you have a fourth standard of knowledge? Which sense of the term do you
claim you have used throughout your presentation?
> > When we make claims of knowledge in science and mathematics, we grant
the
> > possibility that something like the above might happen to our state of
> > consciousness.
>
> ***{By which you clearly refer to ordinary mental errors related to
> forgetting, getting memories out of sequence, etc.
I was referring to the possibility that the rules of logic which govern our
sensory experiences might suddenly change into something else.
We also grant the possibility that no such warping takes place, but that we
simply have a false memory of affirming a deductive argument for a statement
which is, in fact, false. This possibility is an inevitable consequence of
the brain-construction thought experiment, and, therefore, cannot be
remedied by the introduction of the principle of continuity.
> ***{In my view, your "brain construction thought experiment" was far to
> wooly to have clearly demonstrated anything.
Then let me elaborate on it a little.
A group of genius scientists (perhaps living in the distant future) build a
sophisticated device that, when given input about what false memories they
want their newly-constructed brain to have, begins building such a brain
from scratch by constructing neurons out of biological material and wiring
them to each other in a way to create the false memories chosen by the
scientists. (Let's suppose, for the purpose of the thought experiment, that
one of the false memories constructed is that the brain-subject has affirmed
deductively that 2 + 2 = 5.) Afterwards, the scientists hook the brain up to
a matrix, where it is "turned on" by electrical stimulation and then fed
sensory information that creates the illusion that no such construction took
place, so that the brain-subject thinks he has existed over time and "knows"
that 2 + 2 = 5.
But when he carries out the deduction again, he discovers (to his great
surprise) that 2 + 2 = 4. What happened? It turns out he was wrong to
suppose that because he "remembers" having affirmed a statement deductively,
he is still entitled to hold that statement with apodeictic certainty. He
forgot to acknowledge the possibility that his memories are simply an
illusion.
If your goal is to establish epistemological grounds for believing that all
the statements that constitute our body of "knowledge" are statements of
which we are absolutely certain, simply because we "remember" having carried
out deductive proofs for them, then you are chasing a mirage. The thought
experiment outlined above shows that even if the principle of continuity
*is* true, we have no way to be certain of the vast majority of our
knowledge claims, in the way you suppose we must be in order for the
structure of our knowledge not to collapse. It is an inescapable consequence
of the fallibility of human recollection.
> > Not quite: I'm arguing from the premise that brain-construction is
possible.
>
> ***{Evolution made us, so, obviously, brain-construction is
> possible
When I say "brain-construction is possible," I mean brain-construction in
which false memories that are wired into the brain of having existed for
longer than one really has is possible.
> > Now, I'm curious why *you* believe you have existed for more than a
single
> > instant.
>
> ***{You were curious before. In fact, you have repeatedly attempted to
> draw me into an argument in which I am supposed to attempt to prove that,
> even if the principle of continuity may be false, I must have existed for
> more than an instant.
Correct, and this is because every justification you have offered for the
principle of continuity rests firmly on the assumption that we *have*
existed for more than a single instant. As you explained on 11/26:
"The reason for (a) [which states that if it is possible for the principle
of continuity to be false, then it is possible that the Pythagorean theorem
is false], as noted yesterday, is that when one affirms the conclusion of a
deductive argument, one implies that, were one to go through the reasoning
again, one would reach the same conclusion--which means: one implies that
the past actually happened, and that the future will be like the
past..." --MJ
In order for there to be a standard of "knowledge" under which your argument
is sound, you have to *assume* that it is impossible that you have not
existed for more than a single instant. But as shown by the thought
experiment above, this premise is clearly false.
In fact, if it were true that if we weren't certain whether we existed for
more than a single instant, then the entire structure of human knowledge
would collapse, then the entire structure of human knowledge *would indeed*
collapse. If one suspects that the possibility that our memories may be
illusions interferes with our ability to gather knowledge about the world,
postulating a principle such as the principle of continuity is not the way
to solve the problem.
> And, beyond pointing out at one point that one needs
> to have existed for more than an instant in order for sense impressions to
> register, I have thus far refused to attempt such an argument. And I have
> been very open in stating why: I believe it is impossible to justify any
> belief, if one assumes that the principle of continuity may be false.
This appears to be circular reasoning. You claim that the principle of
continuity is true, because we are certain of statements we have affirmed
deductively in the past, in turn because we are certain that our memories
aren't illusions and that the past really happened. But then you go on to
say that we can only claim that the past really happened on the basis of the
principle of continuity. This leaves out the possibility that both our
certainty of principle of continuity *and* our certainty that the past
really happened are unfounded, and this possibility turns into fact when one
considers the thought experiment given above.
Mitchell Jones
<mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> news:mjones-2811...@66-105-229-4-aus-02.cvx.algx.net...
> > In article <1N7F9.4834$zM7....@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> > <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > In science, all that needs to be the case for an
> > > induction to fail is one sensory experience that doesn't fit in with our
> > > previous experiences.
> >
> > ***{Scientific experiments are all analogous to the thought experiment I
> > described above, where two pairs of marbles were placed in a coffee cup,
> > which was then shaken, after which five marbles fell out. How so? Simple:
> > the experimenter, in all cases, has to be able to control the important
> > conditions within his experiment, in order for the results to be
> > meaningful. If, for example, you want to determine whether "cold fusion"
> > will take place when deuterated palladium is held at 500 atm for an
> > extended period of time, you have to use a containment vessel that will
> > hold the desired materials inside at that pressure, and, obviously, if
> > contaminants can enter the vessel by merely appearing there out of
> > nothing, or if the desired materials can exit from the vessel by
> > disappearing into nothing, then the containment vessel serves no purpose.
> > It can only contain, if the principle of continuity is true.
>
> When we perform an experiment requiring a containment vessel, there is
> always the *possibility* that matter will appear from nothing and ruin the
> experiment.
***{The above sentence is wrong, for the following reasons: (a) You can't
use the term "we", which implies the existence of people other than
yourself, unless you make the inference from sensation to source which is
necessary to conclude that there are people other than yourself. But that
inference is based on the principle of continuity, which in the very same
sentence you explicitly claim may be false. Hence you assume, and must
assume, that the principle of continuity is true, in order to allege that
it is, or may be, false. Likewise, you refer to "an experiment," "a
containment vessel, and "matter" in the sentence, despite the fact that if
your sensations do not or may not have sources, you have no grounds
whatever for believing in the existence of any of those things. --MJ}***
This doesn't tell us anything about the principle of continuity;
> it only tells us that our method of experimentation might be faulty (though
> the probability of this happening is extremely small, since we've never
> observed matter appearing from nothing, and it is forbidden by our present
> laws of physics).
***{As I have pointed out on several prior occasions, the "possibility" of
continuity violations destroys the concept of probability. The notion of
probability rests on the idea that things will behave as they have behaved
in the past, which rests on the notion that there was a past and that we
have information about it, and that a future will arise out of the
continuation of the processes observed in the past. If, for example, we
say that a toss of a balanced coin turned up 50% heads in the past, and,
thus, we expect approximately that pattern in the future, the presumption
is that an external world exists in which there are things called coins
which are capable of being balanced or unbalanced, human beings with arms
capable of tossing them, a future in which the materials that were present
in the past remain present and obey the same rules as in the past, etc.
However, this entire framework is *inferred*, not given. And the inference
proceeds as follows: (a) no thing may come into existence out of nothing
or vanish into nothing; (b) therefore my sensations have sources; (c) an
external world exists in which there are things called coins which are
capable of being balanced or unbalanced, human beings with arms capable of
tossing them, a future in which the materials that were present in the
past remain present and obey the same rules as in the past, etc. It is
therefore fundamentally meaningless to speak about the probability of
anything, within any context where it is supposed that the principle of
continuity is false or may be false. Hence the above sentence is
essentially self-contradictory, in that it assumes the falsehood of the
position which the sentence is advocating. --MJ}***
We can't assume that the universe obeys a certain
> principle just because experiments would be harder to carry out confidently
> if it were false.
***{It is only by assuming the validity of the principle of continuity
that you acquire a basis for thinking that the universe exists, or that
experiments exist, or that people capable of carrying them out or having
confidence in them exist. Hence an accurate translation of the above
sentence would run somewhat along the following lines:
"We must *pretend* that we can't assume that the universe obeys the
principle of continuity, even though we do in fact assume it every time we
open our mouths and utter a claim about anything, including even those
instances when we open our mouths to claim that continuity is or may be
false."
The reason we assume the validity of the principle of continuity whenever
we claim any knowledge whatsoever is simply this: the principle of
continuity is the foundation upon which the entire structure of human
knowledge rests. Without it, knowledge is impossible.
Why, then, must we pretend that the principle of continuity is or may be
false, while engaged in the pursuit of knowledge? (Should we pretend that
we need not dribble while playing basketball? Should we pretend that a
game of chess is not over when we stand mated? Should we pretend that we
can fly by flapping our arms? :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > However, if the source of the difficulty
> > lies in memories appearing out of nothing or vanishing into nothing, there
> > is no procedural solution: the containment vessel known as memory cannot
> > contain, under those conditions, and we can no longer trust that we have,
> > in fact, verified anything, however many times we may think we have gone
> > back and checked it. --MJ}***
>
> Correct. And as I will show later, this possibility remains even if the
> principle of continuity happens to be true. It is one of the inescapable
> downfalls of human knowledge that we can't be *absolutely certain* of a
> claim, just because we "remember" having affirmed it deductively.
***{Why would you bother to attempt such a demonstration? I have already
stated that deductive arguments are fundamentally inductive in nature.
Given that, what demonstration is required?
The important point, as I have already noted, is that if the principle of
continuity is true, we can employ various procedures that enable us to
raise the probability that a deduced conclusion is true: we can go through
the proof again; we can write it out at great length and in great detail;
we can discuss it with others who have also worked their way through it;
we can argue with them about any doubtful areas; etc.
If the principle of continuity is *not* true, on the other hand, then we
lose the concept of probability itself, and, thus, we lose all of the
above described procedures that might have been employed to lend credence
to a deduced conclusion. Result: we find ourselves without a shred of a
basis for claiming that any conclusion is any more likely than any other.
--Mitchell Jones}***
***{Look, this is just getting silly. My argument is the same in all
instances: you find some statement you are sure of, and, by analysis, you
discover that if the principle of continuity may be false, you can't be
sure of that statement. Result: you either cease claiming to be sure of
the statement, or else you cease claiming that the principle of continuity
may be false. However, since the same dilemma arises with respect to every
certain belief a person holds, the choce boils down to this: you either
give up every claim to certain knowledge about anything, or else you
affirm the principle of continuity.
If you refuse to affirm the principle of continuity, you will find that
without the certain knowledge--e.g., that an external world exists, that
memories are results of events that actually happened, that the future
will arise out of the materials and rules of the past--you also lose the
probabilistic knowledge. The implication: you lose all basis for making
any claim, certain or otherwise, about anything, or else you accept the
epistemological validity of the principle of continuity.
Intellectually, therefore, the argument is simple and overwhelming--which
means: reluctance to accept it are often interpersonal in nature. How so?
Simple: taking the position that the principle of continuity is
true--i.e., that no thing may come into existence out of nothing or vanish
into nothing--is massively socially inexpedient. It requires that you
reject all forms of magical thinking--which means: it is guaranteed to
bring you into conflict with every primitive mind on this planet, if you
are honest and open about your views. Since Earth is a primitive backwater
world, the armpit of the galaxy, so to speak, you are going to irritate
the crap out of virtually everyone you deal with, if you embrace the
conclusion that logic clearly requires in this instance. In my case, since
I don't give a flying fuck who I irritate, the choice is easy. For you,
however, the level of reluctance may be somewhat higher. :-)
--Mitchell Jones}***
[snip]
> If your goal is to establish epistemological grounds for believing that all
> the statements that constitute our body of "knowledge" are statements of
> which we are absolutely certain, simply because we "remember" having carried
> out deductive proofs for them, then you are chasing a mirage.
***{That is totally off track. I never claimed, or implied, or believed
that all of our knowledge is certain knowledge. Are you trying to convince
me that memories are popping into your brain out of nothing, or what? :-)
--MJ}***
The thought
> experiment outlined above shows that even if the principle of continuity
> *is* true, we have no way to be certain of the vast majority of our
> knowledge claims, in the way you suppose we must be in order for the
> structure of our knowledge not to collapse. It is an inescapable consequence
> of the fallibility of human recollection.
>
> > > Not quite: I'm arguing from the premise that brain-construction is
> possible.
> >
> > ***{Evolution made us, so, obviously, brain-construction is
> > possible
>
> When I say "brain-construction is possible," I mean brain-construction in
> which false memories that are wired into the brain of having existed for
> longer than one really has is possible.
>
> > > Now, I'm curious why *you* believe you have existed for more than a
> single
> > > instant.
> >
> > ***{You were curious before. In fact, you have repeatedly attempted to
> > draw me into an argument in which I am supposed to attempt to prove that,
> > even if the principle of continuity may be false, I must have existed for
> > more than an instant.
>
> Correct, and this is because every justification you have offered for the
> principle of continuity rests firmly on the assumption that we *have*
> existed for more than a single instant.
***{Totally off track. The argument I am using is that *every* certain
claim is incompatible with the possibility that the principle of
continuity may be false, and, thus, can be used to argue that the
principle of continuity must be true. (The argument, to repeat, is that
every certain claim, whatever it might be, is contradicted by the
possibility that the principle of continuity is wrong; hence we must
either doubt all seemingly certain claims, or else we must accept that the
principle of continuity is true.) The claim to be certain that one has
existed for more than a single instant is merely an example, albeit a very
good one, of a certain claim. --MJ}***
[snip]
You claim that the principle of
> continuity is true, because we are certain of statements we have affirmed
> deductively in the past, in turn because we are certain that our memories
> aren't illusions and that the past really happened.
***{The principle of continuity implies that our sensations have sources,
hence that the material universe, including our bodies, or brains, our
memories, other people, etc., exist, hence that the future will arise out
of the interactions of the materials of the past, hence that it will obey
the rules implicit in the natures of those materials, hence that inductive
reasoning and, thus, probability, will work, hence that knowledge, both
certain and probabilistic, is possible. On the other hand, if the
principle of continuity may not be true, then our sensations may not have
sources; hence the material universe, including our bodies, or brains, our
memories, other people, etc., may not exist; hence there is no basis for
believing that the future will arise out of the interactions of the
materials of the past; hence there is no reason to believe that the future
will obey the rules implicit in the natures of those past materials; hence
there is no reason to believe that inductive reasoning and, thus,
probability, will work; hence we have no basis for making any claim of any
sort, whether certain or probabilistic in nature.
Nothing about your "brain construction" experiment alters the above in the
slightest, for the following reasons:
(1) If you leave the memories of your homebrew brain intact after your
original intervention, provide it with a self-consistent virtual world
where the principle of continuity seems to apply, and if it has sufficient
intelligence, then it will correct any conceptual errors (e.g., 2 + 2 = 5)
that you originally built into its knowledge base, and will acquire a
large amount of conceptual knowledge--i.e., understanding of necessary
connections--which will apply in all possible worlds. The fact that it may
never succeed in constructing an accurate picture of the actual world in
which it lives--i.e., of the lab where it subsists as a
brain-in-a-jar--will not prevent it from acquiring understanding that will
apply in that unseen world: a polygon with three straight sides will, in
that world, have interior angles that sum to a straight angle, two plus
two will equal four, things will behave as they behaved in the past, pain
will be avoided and pleasure pursued, natural selection will be in favor
of individuals who have the traits that are required to survive and
reproduce, etc.
Moreover, that individual, if sufficiently intelligent, will be aware of
the (unlikely) possibility that it might be a brain-in-a-jar, just as you
and I are aware of it. I mentioned the other day, for example, that one
possible motive for a "brain-in-a-jar" scenario might be to train the
young of an advanced species in an environment where mistakes would be
non-fatal. Thus it is clear that an intelligent individual who was
actually *in* a jar might reach the same sorts of conclusions, and, thus,
might conceive in general terms of the actual nature of his situation. He
would, of course, assign a very low probability that any group with the
level of sophistication to pull off such a thing would do it. (That
degree of knowledge of how the brain works would enable the construction
of a brain with basic skills and understandings already in place, thereby
obviating the need for training. Just as we begin our lives here on Earth
with the various core understandings that our species requires--e.g.,
awareness that the sounds of human speech are not noise, but rather a
complex code which we must learn to decipher--so an alien species in the
"brain construction" business would have no need to start their young off
in a virtual world. They would give them a toolbox of essential
understandings, and set them loose in a real world, not a virtual one.
Result: any "brain-construction" scenarios that might actually occur would
be vanishingly small as a percentage of the total cases, and, thus, it is
a virtually zero probability that we are in such a situation.)
(2) If you place your homebrew brain in a situation where things seem
unambiguously to be popping into and out of existence from the beginning,
you will produce a vegetative state: you homebrew brain will be a retard.
And if you keep altering its memories, thereby rendering its efforts to
accumulate knowledge null and void, the same outcome will eventuate:
eventually, you will have a retard.
(3) If you create a virtual world in which the principle of continuity
applies, but where society punishes those who acknowledge that it applies,
then you will create an impaired consciousness of the sort that we see all
around us today--i.e., a consciousness which *pretends* that continuity
may not apply, and perhaps even believes its own nonsense at the conscious
level, while simultaneously, with every claim it makes, implying
otherwise.
--Mitchell Jones}***
But then you go on to
> say that we can only claim that the past really happened on the basis of the
> principle of continuity.
***{If the principle of continuity is true, then your sensations did not
leap into existence out of nothing: they had sources, and those sources
are "things in themselves"--the past that really happened. But while it is
certain that the sources are "out there," the inferential process by
which we attempt to determine their natures is highly uncertain, and
though it becomes less so as we accumulate understanding and experience,
it never achieves complete, utter certainty. Thus while we can be certain
that our memories are manifestations of real events that happened in the
past, we cannot ever be 100% sure of the natures of those events. --MJ}***
This leaves out the possibility that both our
> certainty of principle of continuity *and* our certainty that the past
> really happened are unfounded, and this possibility turns into fact when one
> considers the thought experiment given above.
***{The alternatives are as follows:
(1) If we accept that the principle of continuity is true, then we can be
certain that a real world exists in which a past really happened, and that
our memories are products of events which happened in that past. That does
not, however, mean (a) that we can be certain that sensory experience and
mental processes are the exclusive source our memories (since the
probability is not zero that some of our memories were implanted or
erased), or (b) that we can be certain that the picture of the past which
we have inferred from our memories is accurate (since we are prone to
error and, in addition, the probability is not zero that we are attached
to a virtual reality device).
(2) If, on the other hand, we do *not* accept that the principle of
continuity is true, then we can have neither certain nor probabilistic
knowledge vis-a-vis any claim whatsoever, for the reasons that we have
already discussed extensively.
The choice, in short, is between (1) a life in which we can learn and
grow--in which certainty is possible in some things and probabilistic
knowledge is possible in others, and (2) a life in which knowledge itself
is impossible--impossible because the premise on which all knowledge is
based has been denied.
If you think you see something wrong with this picture, please tell me
what it is.
Mike H
> ***{The above sentence is wrong, for the following reasons: (a) You can't
> use the term "we", which implies the existence of people other than
> yourself, unless you make the inference from sensation to source which is
> necessary to conclude that there are people other than yourself.
Talking about other people as if they existed doesn't "presuppose" absolute
certainty of their existence, any more than walking to the fridge to get a
bottle of soda presupposes absolute certainty that there *is* soda in the
fridge.
> ***{As I have pointed out on several prior occasions, the "possibility" of
> continuity violations destroys the concept of probability. The notion of
> probability rests on the idea that things will behave as they have behaved
> in the past, which rests on the notion that there was a past and that we
> have information about it, and that a future will arise out of the
> continuation of the processes observed in the past.
The same reasoning could be used in the brain-construction scenario.
Suppose the scientists, instead of designing a brain with the memory of
having affirmed deductively that 2 + 2 = 5, design one that remembers every
single coin-flip it has ever experienced having turned up tails. When they
hook the brain up to the computer simulation, however, they feed the brain
with data suggesting that tails should only turn up approximately 50% of the
time. So if the possible falsity of the principle of continuity destroys the
concept of probability, so does the possibility of brain-construction. What
this tells us is that we should look for a concept of probability elsewhere
than our certainty that our memories aren't illusions.
> The reason we assume the validity of the principle of continuity whenever
> we claim any knowledge whatsoever is simply this: the principle of
> continuity is the foundation upon which the entire structure of human
> knowledge rests. Without it, knowledge is impossible.
The argument you have used to show that knowledge is impossible without the
principle of continuity also can be used to show that knowledge *actually
is* impossible, in light of the brain-construction thought experiment. This
suggests that either the argument for the principle of continuity is
unsound, or the standard of knowledge used in the proof is not a very useful
one.
> > Correct. And as I will show later, this possibility remains even if the
> > principle of continuity happens to be true. It is one of the inescapable
> > downfalls of human knowledge that we can't be *absolutely certain* of a
> > claim, just because we "remember" having affirmed it deductively.
>
> ***{Why would you bother to attempt such a demonstration? I have already
> stated that deductive arguments are fundamentally inductive in nature.
> Given that, what demonstration is required?
The thought experiment in the demonstration can also be used to show (as I
did above) that all inductive knowledge is put in jeopardy by the
possibility that we are newly-constructed brains.
> > If we use the first or second standard of knowledge throughout the
argument,
> > premise (2) becomes false. If we use the third, premise (1) becomes
false.
> > So under these three standards of "knowledge," my argument which
purports to
> > prove the principle of continuity is unsound.
> >
> > Do you have a fourth standard of knowledge? Which sense of the term do
you
> > claim you have used throughout your presentation?
>
> ***{Look, this is just getting silly. My argument is the same in all
> instances: you find some statement you are sure of, and, by analysis, you
> discover that if the principle of continuity may be false, you can't be
> sure of that statement. Result: you either cease claiming to be sure of
> the statement, or else you cease claiming that the principle of continuity
> may be false. However, since the same dilemma arises with respect to every
> certain belief a person holds, the choce boils down to this: you either
> give up every claim to certain knowledge about anything, or else you
> affirm the principle of continuity.
The three standards of knowledge I mentioned above cause at least one
premise in the argument becomes false. However, you appear to have an
entirely different standard of knowledge in which the argument becomes
valid. What sort of standard is it?
> Since Earth is a primitive backwater
> world, the armpit of the galaxy, so to speak, you are going to irritate
> the crap out of virtually everyone you deal with, if you embrace the
> conclusion that logic clearly requires in this instance. In my case, since
> I don't give a flying fuck who I irritate, the choice is easy. For you,
> however, the level of reluctance may be somewhat higher. :-)
If I were a conformist, I would have littered my argument with ad hominem
attacks, emotional appeals, childish name-calling, and abusive assuring
phrases ("nobody in his right mind would believe that...") to support claims
I couldn't back up myself. (Those are, after all, a conformist's only refuge
when he gets cornered in a debate.)
> > If your goal is to establish epistemological grounds for believing that
all
> > the statements that constitute our body of "knowledge" are statements of
> > which we are absolutely certain, simply because we "remember" having
carried
> > out deductive proofs for them, then you are chasing a mirage.
>
> ***{That is totally off track. I never claimed, or implied, or believed
> that all of our knowledge is certain knowledge. Are you trying to convince
> me that memories are popping into your brain out of nothing, or what? :-)
> --MJ}***
The same is true of trying to establish epistemological grounds for
believing that the past really happened, and that we can reliably make
deductive inferences from our memories of it.
> > You claim that the principle of
> > continuity is true, because we are certain of statements we have
affirmed
> > deductively in the past, in turn because we are certain that our
memories
> > aren't illusions and that the past really happened.
>
> ***{The principle of continuity implies that our sensations have sources,
> hence that the material universe, including our bodies, or brains, our
> memories, other people, etc., exist,
As I pointed out on 11/25, it goes too far to say that *nothing* might
exist:
"Sensations are material in nature (unless you claim to believe in ghosts
;-) ). So if we were to build a model of the external world explaining how
it is that we have the thoughts and sensations we do, we can't say that
*nothing* exists, even if we allow the principle of continuity to be false.
At the very least, we need brains popping into existence in a void."
> Nothing about your "brain construction" experiment alters the above in the
> slightest, for the following reasons:
>
> (1) If you leave the memories of your homebrew brain intact after your
> original intervention, provide it with a self-consistent virtual world
> where the principle of continuity seems to apply, and if it has sufficient
> intelligence, then it will correct any conceptual errors (e.g., 2 + 2 = 5)
> that you originally built into its knowledge base, and will acquire a
> large amount of conceptual knowledge--i.e., understanding of necessary
> connections--which will apply in all possible worlds.
And if a brain popped into existence out of nothing with the conviction that
2 + 2 = 5, it will eventually correct its error. So this fact can't be used
to distinguish brains appearing from nothing and brain-construction. Also,
even if our brains *were* constructed by scientists and left in a computer
simulation for, say, five years, we would still have no way of *knowing* we
weren't constructed a mere five minutes ago.
The whole point of the refutation, of course, is that a brain being
constructed by evil scientists and a brain appearing from nothing are events
that are *epistemologically identical*. In other words, each possibility has
exactly the same implications for our ability to gather knowledge about the
world. Unless you can point to a fundamental difference between these two
events, whatever you say follows from the possible falsity of the principle
of continuity also follows from the (true) premise that brain-construction
is possible.
G=EMC^2 Glazier
a distance. His theory makes centrifugal force naive thinking. Bert
Mitchell Jones
that you snipped. Without some specific comments from you concerning why
you do not find those answers satisfactory, it would be sheer guesswork on
my part to attempt an elaboration. Thus to avoid repetition I have
restored that material, so that I can simply point to it, when necessary.
--MJ}***
> > In article <HpAF9.1088$FP4.59...@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com>, "Mike H"
> > <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "Mitchell Jones" <mjo...@jump.net> wrote in message
> > ***{The above sentence is wrong, for the following reasons: (a) You can't
> > use the term "we", which implies the existence of people other than
> > yourself, unless you make the inference from sensation to source which is
> > necessary to conclude that there are people other than yourself.
>
> Talking about other people as if they existed doesn't "presuppose" absolute
> certainty of their existence, any more than walking to the fridge to get a
> bottle of soda presupposes absolute certainty that there *is* soda in the
> fridge.
***{I didn't say it did. Why not respond to what I actually said? Since I
restored the context that you snipped, below, I suggest that you re-read
it, and try again. --MJ}***
But that
> > inference is based on the principle of continuity, which in the very same
> > sentence you explicitly claim may be false. Hence you assume, and must
> > assume, that the principle of continuity is true, in order to allege that
> > it is, or may be, false. Likewise, you refer to "an experiment," "a
> > containment vessel, and "matter" in the sentence, despite the fact that if
> > your sensations do not or may not have sources, you have no grounds
> > whatever for believing in the existence of any of those things. --MJ}***
> >
> > This doesn't tell us anything about the principle of continuity;
> > > it only tells us that our method of experimentation might be faulty
(though
> > > the probability of this happening is extremely small, since we've never
> > > observed matter appearing from nothing, and it is forbidden by our present
> > > laws of physics).
> >
> > ***{As I have pointed out on several prior occasions, the "possibility" of
> > continuity violations destroys the concept of probability. The notion of
> > probability rests on the idea that things will behave as they have behaved
> > in the past, which rests on the notion that there was a past and that we
> > have information about it, and that a future will arise out of the
> > continuation of the processes observed in the past.
>
> The same reasoning could be used in the brain-construction scenario.
>
> Suppose the scientists, instead of designing a brain with the memory of
> having affirmed deductively that 2 + 2 = 5, design one that remembers every
> single coin-flip it has ever experienced having turned up tails. When they
> hook the brain up to the computer simulation, however, they feed the brain
> with data suggesting that tails should only turn up approximately 50% of the
> time.
***{From your use of "only" I assume that you intended to give some lower
percentage, say 25%, in the above sentence. --MJ}***
So if the possible falsity of the principle of continuity destroys the
> concept of probability, so does the possibility of brain-construction.
***{Incorrect. If tails were to come up only 25% of the time over a vast
number of trials, that would tell us that the coin was unbalanced, not
that the concept of probability was wrong. --MJ}***
What
> this tells us is that we should look for a concept of probability elsewhere
> than our certainty that our memories aren't illusions.
***{I never said we should look for it there. If you will read the
material immediately below that you snipped and I restored, you will find
what I actually did say about what the concept of probability depends
upon. I suggest that you re-read it and try again. --MJ}***
> > The reason we assume the validity of the principle of continuity whenever
> > we claim any knowledge whatsoever is simply this: the principle of
> > continuity is the foundation upon which the entire structure of human
> > knowledge rests. Without it, knowledge is impossible.
>
> The argument you have used to show that knowledge is impossible without the
> principle of continuity also can be used to show that knowledge *actually
> is* impossible, in light of the brain-construction thought experiment.
***{No it can't. I responded to that in detail in my previous post, and
you snipped out that response without comment, and are now repeating your
earlier claim as if I had said nothing about it. I have restored that
snipped material to its original position near the bottom of this post. I
suggest that you re-read it and try again. Remember: I cannot respond to
your objections unless you state them. --MJ}***
This
> suggests that either the argument for the principle of continuity is
> unsound, or the standard of knowledge used in the proof is not a very useful
> one.
***{No, it suggests that you snipped out my extensive remarks about your
"brain construction thought experiment" without comment and are now
behaving as if those remarks were never made. When you do that, all you
convey to me is that you regard my earlier remarks as unsatisfactory.
Since that does not give me the slightest clue regarding *why* you regard
them as satisfactory, an attempt on my part to elaborate would require
that I read your mind. However, I can't do that, so the ball remains in
your court. --MJ}***
> > Why, then, must we pretend that the principle of continuity is or may be
> > false, while engaged in the pursuit of knowledge? (Should we pretend that
> > we need not dribble while playing basketball? Should we pretend that a
> > game of chess is not over when we stand mated? Should we pretend that we
> > can fly by flapping our arms? :-)
> >
> > --Mitchell Jones}***
> >
> > > > However, if the source of the difficulty
> > > > lies in memories appearing out of nothing or vanishing into
nothing, there
> > > > is no procedural solution: the containment vessel known as memory cannot
> > > > contain, under those conditions, and we can no longer trust that
we have,
> > > > in fact, verified anything, however many times we may think we have gone
> > > > back and checked it. --MJ}***
> > >
> > > Correct. And as I will show later, this possibility remains even if the
> > > principle of continuity happens to be true. It is one of the inescapable
> > > downfalls of human knowledge that we can't be *absolutely certain* of a
> > > claim, just because we "remember" having affirmed it deductively.
> >
> > ***{Why would you bother to attempt such a demonstration? I have already
> > stated that deductive arguments are fundamentally inductive in nature.
> > Given that, what demonstration is required?
>
> The thought experiment in the demonstration can also be used to show (as I
> did above
***{Nope. You will have to respond to my comments about your "thought
experiment," rather than ignore them, if you wish to shift the burden of
proof. --MJ}***
) that all inductive knowledge is put in jeopardy by the
> possibility that we are newly-constructed brains.
***{First, the nature of the human genome was determined by Darwinian
natural selection, and our brains were all constructed by the genetically
controlled process of embryonic development. Hence at birth we are all
"newly constructed brains," and no hypothetical laboratory run by "mad
scientists" needs to be postulated to produce that result.
Second, nothing about a state of being "newly constructed" bears on the
validity of induction: induction is valid in a universe where the
principle of continuity is true, and invalid in a universe where it is
not, regardless of whether a brain is newly constructed due to a
genetically controlled process of embryonic development or to the efforts
of super advanced alien scientists in some extraterrestrial lab.
Here is a quote of some remarks that you snipped (also present in their
original positions further down), which define the circumstances under
which induction is and is not valid:
The principle of continuity implies that our sensations have sources,
> > hence that the material universe, including our bodies, our brains, our
> > memories, other people, etc., exist, hence that the future will arise out
> > of the interactions of the materials of the past, hence that it will obey
> > the rules implicit in the natures of those materials, hence that inductive
> > reasoning and, thus, probability, will work, hence that knowledge, both
> > certain and probabilistic, is possible. On the other hand, if the
> > principle of continuity may not be true, then our sensations may not have
> > sources; hence the material universe, including our bodies, our brains,
> > our memories, other people, etc., may not exist; hence there is no basis
> > for believing that the future will arise out of the interactions of the
> > materials of the past; hence there is no reason to believe that the future
> > will obey the rules implicit in the natures of those past materials; hence
> > there is no reason to believe that inductive reasoning and, thus,
> > probability, will work; hence we have no basis for making any claim of any
> > sort, whether certain or probabilistic in nature.
It is my contention that there is no difference, from the standpoint of
epistemology, between a "brain-in-a-jar" and a brain that is in its
natural body. In either case, if the brain is free to process its inputs
without interference and accepts the epistemological validity of the
principle of continuity, then it can acquire knowledge about "things in
themselves." The fact that the extent of that knowledge is limited by the
quality of the sensory inputs and the processing capabilities
(intelligence) of the brain alters that basic conclusion not a whit. It is
no more surprising that being hooked up to a virtual reality computer
would provide inputs of different quality (perhaps better; perhaps worse)
than being hooked up to a natural body, than it is that, even in a natural
body, sensory impairments (e.g., blindness, being deaf, etc.) would
influence the quality of inputs.
Bottom line: the discovery of knowledge--i.e., the acquisition of
reason-based beliefs--requires the premise that the principle of
continuity is true, whether a brain is newly constructed or not.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> > > If we use the first or second standard of knowledge throughout the
argument,
> > > premise (2) becomes false.
***{As I pointed out the other day, premise (2) [in the original argument,
not in your "standards"] is given--which means: it can't be false. It is
the assumption on which the proof is based. You can't change what is
given, Mike. That's simply not the way an indirect proof works.
Let me elaborate: in an indirect proof, you show a proposition A to be
false by *assuming* it to be true, and demonstrating that such an
assumption contradicts some other proposition B (the "given") which is
known to be true. Since the assumed truth of A contradicts B, which is
known to be true ("given"), we can then conclude that A must be false.
Given that explanation, here is the proof again:
(1) If it is possible that the principle of continuity is false, then it
is possible that 2 + 2 is not equal to 4.
(2) I know for certain that 2 + 2 = 4.
(3) Therefore, I know with certainty that the principle of continuity is true.
In the above, A = "It is possible that the principle of continuity is
false," and B = "I know for certain that 2 + 2 = 4." Thus if we let "~"
represent denial, the proof runs as follows:
(1) If A, then ~B. (Reason: demonstrated by argument.)
(2) B. (Reason: this was given.)
(3) Therefore ~A. (Reason: since B (the given) can't be false, A must be false.)
Since A = "It is possible that the principle of continuity is false," it
follows that ~A = "It is impossible that the principle of continuity is
false." Q.E.D.
--Mitchell Jones}***
If we use the third, premise (1) becomes false.
***{That is incorrect. The feeling of rightness which you think is coming
from "the reasons this statement is necessarily true" may, in fact, be
leaping into existence out of nothing. (Or, alternatively, a powerful
feeling of wrongness may have vanished into nothing before it reached your
consciousness. :-) --MJ}***
> > > So under these three standards of "knowledge," my argument which
purports to
> > > prove the principle of continuity is unsound.
> > >
> > > Do you have a fourth standard of knowledge? Which sense of the term do you
> > > claim you have used throughout your presentation?
> >
> > ***{Look, this is just getting silly. My argument is the same in all
> > instances: you find some statement you are sure of, and, by analysis, you
> > discover that if the principle of continuity may be false, you can't be
> > sure of that statement. Result: you either cease claiming to be sure of
> > the statement, or else you cease claiming that the principle of continuity
> > may be false. However, since the same dilemma arises with respect to every
> > certain belief a person holds, the choce boils down to this: you either
> > give up every claim to certain knowledge about anything, or else you
> > affirm the principle of continuity.
>
> The three standards of knowledge I mentioned above cause at least one
> premise in the argument becomes false. However, you appear to have an
> entirely different standard of knowledge in which the argument becomes
> valid. What sort of standard is it?
***{What you are calling "standards" are, in fact, false inferences drawn
by you about the nature of the argument. My "standard" is merely
recognition that the inferences made by you are false. For details, see my
two previous comments. --MJ}***
[To be continued]
Mitchell Jones
> > If you refuse to affirm the principle of continuity, you will find that
> > without the certain knowledge--e.g., that an external world exists, that
> > memories are results of events that actually happened, that the future
> > will arise out of the materials and rules of the past--you also lose the
> > probabilistic knowledge. The implication: you lose all basis for making
> > any claim, certain or otherwise, about anything, or else you accept the
> > epistemological validity of the principle of continuity.
> >
> > Intellectually, therefore, the argument is simple and overwhelming--which
> > means: reluctance to accept it are often interpersonal in nature. How so?
> > Simple: taking the position that the principle of continuity is
> > true--i.e., that no thing may come into existence out of nothing or vanish
> > into nothing--is massively socially inexpedient. It requires that you
> > reject all forms of magical thinking--which means: it is guaranteed to
> > bring you into conflict with every primitive mind on this planet, if you
> > are honest and open about your views. Since Earth is a primitive backwater
> > world, the armpit of the galaxy, so to speak, you are going to irritate
> > the crap out of virtually everyone you deal with, if you embrace the
> > conclusion that logic clearly requires in this instance. In my case, since
> > I don't give a flying fuck who I irritate, the choice is easy. For you,
> > however, the level of reluctance may be somewhat higher. :-)
>
> If I were a conformist, I would have littered my argument with ad hominem
> attacks, emotional appeals, childish name-calling, and abusive assuring
> phrases ("nobody in his right mind would believe that...") to support claims
> I couldn't back up myself. (Those are, after all, a conformist's only refuge
> when he gets cornered in a debate.)
***{You won't get any argument from me about that! :-) --MJ}***
> > --Mitchell Jones}***
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > If your goal is to establish epistemological grounds for believing
that all
> > > the statements that constitute our body of "knowledge" are statements of
> > > which we are absolutely certain, simply because we "remember" having
carried
> > > out deductive proofs for them, then you are chasing a mirage.
> >
> > ***{That is totally off track. I never claimed, or implied, or believed
> > that all of our knowledge is certain knowledge. Are you trying to convince
> > me that memories are popping into your brain out of nothing, or what? :-)
> > --MJ}***
>
> The same is true of trying to establish epistemological grounds for
> believing that the past really happened, and that we can reliably make
> deductive inferences from our memories of it.
***{You are once again repeating something to which I have already
responded, after ignoring my response. Thus I say again: you cannot shift
the burden of proof without responding to your opponent's arguments. Go,
therefore, to the bottom of this post, where I have restored the reasoning
that you ignored, and respond to it now. Otherwise, the burden of proof on
this point will forever remain yours. --MJ}***
> > The thought
> > > experiment outlined above shows that even if the principle of continuity
> > > *is* true, we have no way to be certain of the vast majority of our
> > > knowledge claims, in the way you suppose we must be in order for the
> > > structure of our knowledge not to collapse. It is an inescapable
consequence
> > > of the fallibility of human recollection.
> > >
> > > > > Not quite: I'm arguing from the premise that brain-construction is
> > > possible.
> > > >
> > You claim that the principle of
> > > continuity is true, because we are certain of statements we have affirmed
> > > deductively in the past, in turn because we are certain that our memories
> > > aren't illusions and that the past really happened.
> >
> > ***{The principle of continuity implies that our sensations have sources,
> > hence that the material universe, including our bodies, our brains, our
> > memories, other people, etc., exist,
>
> As I pointed out on 11/25, it goes too far to say that *nothing* might
> exist:
>
> "Sensations are material in nature (unless you claim to believe in ghosts
> ;-) )
***{Um, I assume that you are harkening back to a tongue-in-cheek comment
that I made several posts ago when you say that. However, if we are now
being serious, then I must point out that the actual choice is more
complex. The reason is that while entities have mass and occupy space,
and, thus, are clearly material in nature, they are not in fact the only
type of existent. Here are some examples of other types of existents:
(1) Attributes such as the color of a rose exist, yet do not have mass and
do not occupy space.
(2) Phenomena such as sound, light, gravitation, fire, thought, etc.,
exist, yet do not have mass and do not occupy space
(3) Ideas exist, yet do not have mass and do not occupy space.
(4) Potentialities exist defining the natures of the various specific
things that can be, yet do not have mass and do not occupy space.
The above examples, and many others not listed, make it clear that there
is a vast realm of existents which, considered of and by themselves, are
non-material in nature. Result: it is only by virtue of the premise that
non-material existents are manifestations of material existents--i.e., of
entities--that we can treat sensations as being "material in nature." This
presumption that non-material existents are manifestations of entities is
part of the unstated subtext of the principle of continuity, and has been
implicit in every allusion to "the inference from sensation to source,"
from the beginning of our discussion to the present.
As to why it is part of the subtext, the answer is that if we allow the
notion of non-material existents that are *not* manifestations of
entities, we lose all basis for belief in the existence of entities--which
means: we have no basis for belief that the external world, or our bodies,
or our brains, or specific structures within our brains, exist. That means
leaving out the subtext collapses the structure of knowledge in precisely
the same way as doubting or denying the principle of continuity itself.
Bottom line: sensations, considered of and by themselves, do *not* have
mass, do *not* occupy space, and are *not* material in nature. Thus it is
only because the principle of continuity permits us to infer from
sensation to source, that entities come into the picture, and we find
ourselves able to claim that *something*, as opposed to *nothing*, must
exist.
--Mitchell Jones}***
. So if we were to build a model of the external world explaining how
> it is that we have the thoughts and sensations we do, we can't say that
> *nothing* exists, even if we allow the principle of continuity to be false.
> At the very least, we need brains popping into existence in a void."
***{We need the principle of continuity in order to make the inference
from sensation to source, in order to get from sensations to entities.
Since "nothing" is a term which refers to the absence of entities, it
follows that if we can't make that inference, we have a meaningless
construct: sensations in nothing, from nothing, felt by nothing. --MJ}***
hence that the future will arise out
> > of the interactions of the materials of the past, hence that it will obey
> > the rules implicit in the natures of those materials, hence that inductive
> > reasoning and, thus, probability, will work, hence that knowledge, both
> > certain and probabilistic, is possible. On the other hand, if the
> > principle of continuity may not be true, then our sensations may not have
> > sources; hence the material universe, including our bodies, our brains,
> > our memories, other people, etc., may not exist; hence there is no basis
> > for believing that the future will arise out of the interactions of the
> > materials of the past; hence there is no reason to believe that the future
> > will obey the rules implicit in the natures of those past materials; hence
> > there is no reason to believe that inductive reasoning and, thus,
> > probability, will work; hence we have no basis for making any claim of any
> > sort, whether certain or probabilistic in nature.
> >
> > Nothing about your "brain construction" experiment alters the above in the
> > slightest, for the following reasons:
> >
> > (1) If you leave the memories of your homebrew brain intact after your
> > original intervention, provide it with a self-consistent virtual world
> > where the principle of continuity seems to apply, and if it has sufficient
> > intelligence, then it will correct any conceptual errors (e.g., 2 + 2 = 5)
> > that you originally built into its knowledge base, and will acquire a
> > large amount of conceptual knowledge--i.e., understanding of necessary
> > connections--which will apply in all possible worlds.
>
> And if a brain popped into existence out of nothing with the conviction that
> 2 + 2 = 5, it will eventually correct its error.
***{No. You can't predict what will eventually occur under a scenario
which is demonstrably impossible. You might just as well say that an
additional error will pop into existence in that brain every second, as
say that it "will eventually correct its error." --MJ}***
So this fact can't be used
> to distinguish brains appearing from nothing and brain-construction.
***{If you mean that two initially identical brains who had a run of
identical experiences in which continuity was not violated would acquire
the same beliefs, even if one popped into existence out of nothing and the
other was constructed in a lab and hooked to a computer, my position is
that it is impossible for a brain to pop into existence out of nothing (a
conclusion that I have already proven in spades). Thus the distinction
between brains appearing from nothing and brain construction is that the
former is impossible and the latter is possible. --MJ}***
Also,
> even if our brains *were* constructed by scientists and left in a computer
> simulation for, say, five years, we would still have no way of *knowing* we
> weren't constructed a mere five minutes ago.
***{I have no idea what your point is, but in any case we would have
probabilistic knowledge--i.e.: we could note the massive improbability of
such a scenario.
Why is it massively improbable? Because (a) creating a brain from scratch
with all the myriad changes in place that would have resulted from 5 years
of life in the world is enormously, mind-bogglingly more difficult than
(b) creating a "blank slate" brain and letting in go through 5 years of
actual experiences, which is in turn enormously more difficult than (c)
simply removing a natural brain from its original body and placing it in a
jar, supplying it with nutrients, hooking it to a computer, and then
letting it go through 5 years of experiences. The fact that (c) may be
plausible does little to render (b) plausible, and even less to alter the
wild implausibility of (a).
Which reminds me: don't you think you are stretching this "brain
construction" example way beyond its elastic limit? First, you imagined
advanced aliens with the ability to construct a human brain in the
laboratory from scratch and hook it up to a virtual reality machine. OK,
that's a stretch, but I played along, to see where you were headed. But
now you have progressed to the point of giving your mythical aliens the
power to create a human brain that has memories of a series of fake
experiences, and memories of fake thoughts about those fake experiences,
and also the power to give that brain the appropriate fake understandings,
habits, and expectations to go along with those fake experiences and
thoughts. In short, you have now attributed godlike powers to your
advanced aliens. Hell, we are talking about *super* godlike powers here,
since not even the Judeo-Christian god who allegedly created the entire
universe has ever been alleged to be able to control the goings-on within
the human brain!
Bottom line: I think your "brain construction thought experiment" has now
crossed well over the line separating reality from cloud cuckoo land.
--Mitchell Jones}***
> The whole point of the refutation, of course, is that a brain being
> constructed by evil scientists and a brain appearing from nothing are events
> that are *epistemologically identical*. In other words, each possibility has
> exactly the same implications for our ability to gather knowledge about the
> world.
***{I repeat: a brain appearing from nothing, like any other continuity
violation, is demonstrably impossible, whereas brain construction, albeit
a stretch, is at least arguably possible. Thus you cannot say they are
"epistemologically identical." A circumstance in which a mind cannot exist
offers zero potential for the acquisition of knowledge, whereas one in
which, at least arguably, a mind might find itself, has a non-zero
potential for the acquisition of knowledge. --MJ}***
Unless you can point to a fundamental difference between these two
> events, whatever you say follows from the possible falsity of the principle
> of continuity also follows from the (true) premise that brain-construction
> is possible.
***{What follows from *assuming* that the principle of continuity may be
false, is the contradiction of every reason-based belief, thereby forcing,
by the method of indirect proof, the conclusion that the principle of
continuity is true. That proof is fully as valid if done by a brain
constructed by advanced aliens and hooked to a virtual reality computer,
as it is if done by a brain constructed by a genetically controlled
process of embryonic development and hooked to actual reality by natural
sense organs. As for what follows from, in your words, the "possible
falsity of the principle of continuity," the answer is *nothing*, because
it is *impossible* that the principle of continuity is false. --MJ}***
Evgenij Barsukov
> > You are trying to extrapolate the entities of collapsed (or measured)
> > reality into the realm on the "thing in itself" (to which from
> > all physical entities only the QM probability functions and transaction waves
> > belong
>
> ***{Say it as you wish, the fact remains: if nothing--i.e., empty space,
> not aether, or ZPF, or "virtual particles," or "the Dirac sea," etc.--is
> all that exists, there can be no "tries." Only something can act; nothing
> never can. Thus your argument fails. --MJ}***
This is not a fact, that is a mere assumption, based on another assumption -
causality.
This assumption is already not consistent with experimental facts which
resulted
in entire formalism of quantum mechanics. Therefore I feel no obligation to
stick to this assumption in any of my derivations.
I go from exactly opposite assumption - that "Nothingness" (not Dirac see, not
physical vacuum
or anything else we use in physics, but _absolute philosophical nothingness_,
nothing at all) as well
as "Infinity" as _absolute absence of boundaries of any quantitative or
qualitative kind_
are both a reality, which define everything else. And this both coexisting
realities (formulated
purely mathematically) give the non causal events as a result of their
interaction. That is what
I demonstrated, no more and no less.
See, my axiomatic basis is different from yours, but in boundaries of my
axiomatic basis
I am completely right, and moreover, the nature seems to agree with results
derived from
my axiomatic basis rather then with results derived from yours (which would for
example
never allow absolute random events needed by quantum mechanics).
> However, you seem instead to be saying that something can come literally
> from *nothing*, and with that I very strongly do disagree. Even if we
> leave aside the obvious: that nothing cannot act, massive difficulties
> remain. The worst of those difficulties is simply this: if something can
> come from nothing, then no knowledge whatsoever can be possible, for in
> the attempt to work out the implications of such a possibility one would
> immediately have to ask oneself whether one's sensations were leaping into
> existence out of nothing, and, obviously, one would have to say they might
> be. And the next question would be whether any sort of probability number
> could be assigned to such a likelihood, and, equally obviously, the answer
> would be no. The probability of an event is a concept that presupposes the
> existence of an external world in which the rules of nature endure over
> time, and, obviously, cannot be applied to the question of whether such a
> world exists. Therefore as soon as the possibility of entities leaping
> into existence out of nothing is even considered, it becomes crystal clear
> that, if one were to decide such things could happen, logical consistency
> would require the abandonment of any claim to have any knowledge at all
> about anything. One could not reasonably claim that one's sensations had
> sources. That would mean one could not claim that an external world, or
> one's body, or one's brain, or the internal parts of the brain such as
> storage areas for memory, understanding, verbal abilities, etc., even
> existed, or even that they were likely to exist. In short, as soon as we
> allow that something from nothing is possible, knowledge become
> impossible.
These are interesting considerations. However, presence of non causal
events do not prohibit causality. For example, statistical thermodynamics
gives completely causal predictions how large masses of gas will behave
despite of assumption of completely random motion of each single particle
comprising the gas. Same is with quantum mechanics - while QM-sized objects
have certain properties in undefined state, interaction of multiple QM objects
(decoherence) rapidly results in decrease of the "randomness" and increase
of causality.
Indeed, I do not have right now any mathematical description of the transition
from absolute non causality of single events to causality of multiple
coexisting
events, however I presume that such description can be developed and I am
thinking
about it.
Possible starting point there is a notion of "state" of a given
"kind" of event. The thing is that while probability of 1 event at infinite
number of times is 1-exp(-1), same equation gives that probability of 2
simultaneous events at infinite number of times is zero. This interesting
discontinuity seems to allow spooky "interaction" between
events over infinite observation period, despite the definition of single
events as independent at each try. It seems that probability theory gives
here an interesting result that while events are independent at finite
number of tries, they can become dependent at infinite number of tries
in the sense that if one of the events already occurred,
it "prevents" another event from happening, similar to "occupying the state".
This gives a hope for transition from non causality of single event to
causality of multiple. Note the striking similarity with Pauly principle
prohibiting "occupying" the same quantum state by more then one fermion.
Regards,
Evgenij
Mitchell Jones
> Mitchell Jones wrote:
> > > You are trying to extrapolate the entities of collapsed (or measured)
> > > reality into the realm on the "thing in itself" (to which from
> > > all physical entities only the QM probability functions and
transaction waves
> > > belong
> >
> > ***{Say it as you wish, the fact remains: if nothing--i.e., empty space,
> > not aether, or ZPF, or "virtual particles," or "the Dirac sea," etc.--is
> > all that exists, there can be no "tries." Only something can act; nothing
> > never can. Thus your argument fails. --MJ}***
>
> This is not a fact, that is a mere assumption, based on another assumption -
> causality.
***{If *nothing* can act, then you have no basis for believing in the
existence of anything. Your sensations, in that case, need not have
entities as sources: they may be the actions of *nothing*. --MJ}***
> This assumption is already not consistent with experimental facts which
> resulted in entire formalism of quantum mechanics. Therefore I feel no
obligation to
> stick to this assumption in any of my derivations.
***{Without that "assumption," you have no basis for believing that the
external world, including the quantum world (the microcosm), scientific
laboratories, proponents of "quantum mechanics, and "experimental facts
which resulted in the entire formalism of quantum mechanics," exist at
all. Hence you are arguing in a circle: your reasoning tacitly assumes
that which you are seeking to prove, and, thus, is invalid. --MJ}***
> I go from exactly opposite assumption - that "Nothingness" (not Dirac sea, not
> physical vacuum or anything else we use in physics, but _absolute
philosophical
> nothingness_, nothing at all) as well as "Infinity" as _absolute absence of
> boundaries of any quantitative or qualitative kind_ are both a reality, which
> define everything else. And this both coexisting realities (formulated
> purely mathematically) give the non causal events as a result of their
> interaction. That is what I demonstrated, no more and no less.
>
> See, my axiomatic basis is different from yours, but in boundaries of my
> axiomatic basis I am completely right, and moreover, the nature seems to
> agree with results derived from my axiomatic basis
***{You are using my axiomatic basis to conclude that nature exists,
Evgen. Then, having concluded that nature exists, you form a picture of
what nature involves which denies the premise that you used to conclude
that nature existed in the first place. That is not merely reasoning in a
circle: it is self-contradiction as well. --MJ}***
rather then with results
> derived from yours (which would for example never allow absolute random
> events needed by quantum mechanics).
***{"Quantum mechanics" is merely a magical interpretive framework that
was applied, first, to Bohr's "old quantum theory," and then, a bit later,
to Schroedinger's equation (over the protests of Schroedinger, I might
add). Since it requires us to deny the premise upon which our belief in
the existence of the world is based, and since *all* evidence bearing on
whether "quantum mechanics" is valid is part of the world, it follows
inescapably that "quantum mechanics" must be false. The implication: the
proper interpretation of the mathematical constructs claimed by "quantum
mechanics" must take place within the classical framework of determinism
and continuous motion. The fact that it is difficult, in many cases, to
find such an interpretation, does not justify the abandonment of the
attempt, because the alternative of invoking magic clearly cannot work.
(Besides, what law of nature requires that theoretical physics must be
easy? :-) --MJ}***
> > However, you seem instead to be saying that something can come literally
> > from *nothing*, and with that I very strongly do disagree. Even if we
> > leave aside the obvious: that nothing cannot act, massive difficulties
> > remain. The worst of those difficulties is simply this: if something can
> > come from nothing, then no knowledge whatsoever can be possible, for in
> > the attempt to work out the implications of such a possibility one would
> > immediately have to ask oneself whether one's sensations were leaping into
> > existence out of nothing, and, obviously, one would have to say they might
> > be. And the next question would be whether any sort of probability number
> > could be assigned to such a likelihood, and, equally obviously, the answer
> > would be no. The probability of an event is a concept that presupposes the
> > existence of an external world in which the rules of nature endure over
> > time, and, obviously, cannot be applied to the question of whether such a
> > world exists. Therefore as soon as the possibility of entities leaping
> > into existence out of nothing is even considered, it becomes crystal clear
> > that, if one were to decide such things could happen, logical consistency
> > would require the abandonment of any claim to have any knowledge at all
> > about anything. One could not reasonably claim that one's sensations had
> > sources. That would mean one could not claim that an external world, or
> > one's body, or one's brain, or the internal parts of the brain such as
> > storage areas for memory, understanding, verbal abilities, etc., even
> > existed, or even that they were likely to exist. In short, as soon as we
> > allow that something from nothing is possible, knowledge becomes
> > impossible.
>
> These are interesting considerations. However, presence of non causal
> events do not prohibit causality. For example, statistical thermodynamics
> gives completely causal predictions how large masses of gas will behave
> despite of assumption of completely random motion of each single particle
> comprising the gas.
***{Same fallacy: you are talking about entities (particles of gas) while
denying the only premise that would enable you to conclude that entities
exist. The only approach which has any hope of yielding real knowledge
about anything is to accept the premise that lies at the base of the
structure of knowledge--to wit: the principle of continuity--and proceed
from there, being careful at each point not to make use of any ideas which
contradict that fundamental notion.
I would add that the idea of actual, real-world randomness is nonsense,
and was *not* required to support either the kinetic theory of gases or
statistical thermodynamics. If, for example, you assume that the motions
of all the molecules of air in a room are purely random, it immediately
follows that there is a non-zero probability that *all* of them will
simultaneously bounce in the same direction, despite the fact that, in
that case, they would have nothing to bounce off of. In fact, of course,
they cannot bounce unless they bounce off of one another, a state of
affairs which gives a *zero* probability that they will all bounce in the
same direction at the same time--which means: the assumption of
statistical randomness is an approximation that is employed to aid in
certain types of calculations, and nothing more
--Mitchell Jones}***
Same is with quantum mechanics - while QM-sized
> objects have certain properties in undefined state, interaction of multiple
> QM objects (decoherence) rapidly results in decrease of the "randomness"
> and increase of causality. Indeed, I do not have right now any mathematical
> description of the transition from absolute non causality of single events to
> causality of multiple coexisting events, however I presume that such
> description can be developed and I am thinking about it.
>
> Possible starting point there is a notion of "state" of a given
> "kind" of event. The thing is that while probability of 1 event at infinite
> number of times is 1-exp(-1), same equation gives that probability of 2
> simultaneous events at infinite number of times is zero. This interesting
> discontinuity seems to allow spooky "interaction" between
> events over infinite observation period, despite the definition of single
> events as independent at each try. It seems that probability theory gives
> here an interesting result that while events are independent at finite
> number of tries, they can become dependent at infinite number of tries
> in the sense that if one of the events already occurred,
> it "prevents" another event from happening, similar to "occupying the state".
> This gives a hope for transition from non causality of single event to
> causality of multiple. Note the striking similarity with Pauly principle
> prohibiting "occupying" the same quantum state by more then one fermion.
>
> Regards,
> Evgenij
===============================================