Quantum Foam

[Alan Grayson]

Is the existence of the quantum foam, with virtual particles incessantly coming into existence and being annihilated, generally accepted? If I recall correctly, Bruce was extremely doubtful, claiming it's based on reifying, or making concrete, terms in an approximation method which are alleged to be off-shell particles. AG

[Jason Resch]

These videos provide a good introduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5rAGfjPSWE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG52mXN-uWI

Virtual particles are the basis of all particle interactions in QED, called the jewel of physics for having made the most accurate predictions of any physical theory.

Jason

On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 11:52 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is the existence of the quantum foam, with virtual particles incessantly coming into existence and being annihilated, generally accepted? If I recall correctly, Bruce was extremely doubtful, claiming it's based on reifying, or making concrete, terms in an approximation method which are alleged to be off-shell particles. AG

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 10:27 AM Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

These videos provide a good introduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5rAGfjPSWE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG52mXN-uWI

Virtual particles are the basis of all particle interactions in QED, called the jewel of physics for having made the most accurate predictions of any physical theory.

The trouble is that virtual particles are internal lines in Feynman diagrams, and the Feynman diagrams are formed as a perturbation expansion. They have to be summed to make contact with physical processes. This puts the status of virtual particles, as ontological entities, into considerable doubt. Ultimately, they are nothing but a calculational device, and quantum amplitudes can be evaluated without ever using Feynman diagrams, so virtual particles need never appear anywhere.

Bruce

[Jason Resch]

But this "calculational device" (funny how many things are mere devices) predicts the lamb shift as well as the Casimir effect, to great accuracy.

Jason 

[Bruce Kellett]

No, virtual particles do not predict the Lamb shift -- they are just an aid to calculating terms in the perturbation expansion of the QED vertex function.

Bruce

[Jason Resch]

Is this answer in error? https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/443186/lamb-shift-and-virtual-particles 

Aren't virtual particles necessary for explaining the limited range of the strong force?  And solving the blackhole information paradox?

Jason

[Bruce Kellett]

No, that seems to give the standard Feynman diagrams for radiative corrections to the photon propagator. (I misremembered previously. Radiative corrections to the vertex function are important for the calculation of g-2 for the electron, not for the Lamb shift, which is a photon propagator correction.) But the standard calculation says nothing about reifying the internal lines in the diagrams. In fact, a good approximation to the Lamb shift can be obtained from a simple non-relativistic calculation that never mentions quantum fields, vacuum polarisation, or virtual particles.

Aren't virtual particles necessary for explaining the limited range of the strong force?

No. The uncertainty principle can do that.

 

  And solving the blackhole information paradox?

No. There is no BH information paradox, and virtual particles are not necessary in order to understand Hawking radiation (despite what Hawking says in his popular accounts. His original paper on the matter does not use virtual loops. Not that these exist in the way described, anyway.)

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

Your objections to reifying virtual particles seems very well founded. Despite that, in your opinion is there a consensus in the physics community that they exist? Remember, the existence of the quantum foam is the necessary condition for the conjecture that the Cosmos arose as a quantum perturbation or eruption from that foam. AG 

[Brent Meeker]

Quantum foam is just an idea J. A. Wheeler had, that down at the Planck scale, the topology of spacetime was foam-like, a maze of connecting wormholes.  It was never worked out as a theory, although string-theory might be thought of as foam in more dimensions.  It's not an assumed basis for cosmogony in any theory I know of.

Brent

[Alan Grayson]

Doesn't the theory or conjecture that the Cosmos emerged from a quantum fluctuation assumes the existence of a quantum foam? AG 

[Jason Resch]

It assumes the pre-existence of the quantum vacuum. But the vacuum is far from the philosopher's nothing:

"The Universe had to have a way to come into being out of nothingness. ...When we say “out of nothingness” we do not mean out of the vacuum of physics. The vacuum of physics is loaded with geometrical structure and vacuum fluctuations and virtual pairs of particles. The Universe is already in existence when we have such a vacuum. No, when we speak of nothingness we mean nothingness: neither structure, nor law, nor plan. ...For producing everything out of nothing one principle is enough. Of all principles that might meet this requirement of Leibniz nothing stands out more strikingly in this era of the quantum than the necessity to draw a line between the observer-participator and the system under view. ...We take that demarcation as being, if not the central principle, the clue to the central principle in constructing out of nothing everything." — John A. Wheeler 

 

"Cosmologists sometimes claim that the universe can arise 'from nothing'. But they should watch their language, especially when addressing philosophers. We've realized ever since Einstein that empty space can have a structure such that it can be warped and distorted. Even if shrunk to a 'point', it is latent with particles and forces -- still a far richer construct than the philosopher's 'nothing'. Theorists may, some day, be able to write down fundamental equations governing physical reality. But physicists can never explain what 'breathes fire' into the equations, and actualizes them in a real cosmos. The fundamental question of 'Why is there something rather than nothing? remains the province of philosophers. And even they may be wiser to respond, with Ludwig Wittgenstein, that 'whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent'." -- Martin Rees

Jason

[Philip Thrift]

Here the deal about virtual particles.

Here is a nice, short video presentation on VPs. Who knows if it's "true".

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph6g-2x3IWg ]

Virtual particles - not essentially virtual, though are particles - are the temporary particles forming all around us at all times in all of the universe , juggling their way in and out of existence throughout the entire universe and happen to explain every weird phenomena at the quantum scale.

That's the thing about physics: One physicist says X is real. Another says X is not real.

One is BSing you. Or both.

@philipthriftt

[Alan Grayson]

But if virtual particles don't exist, if they're based on conceptual errors, what's the basis for claiming the vacuum is not a vacuum of nothingness? AG 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 4:57 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

But if virtual particles don't exist, if they're based on conceptual errors, what's the basis for claiming the vacuum is not a vacuum of nothingness? AG 

Virtual particles are a useful heuristic for evaluating a perturbation series. The conceptual error is to reify the terms in this series, particularly the virtual particles. Quantum foam, or the picture of virtual particles fluctuating in and out of existence, everywhere, and all the time. Is a major conceptual confusion. There are no such things as quantum fluctuations in the requisite sense. Disconnected Feynman diagrams do not contribute to physical processes -- this is an elementary text-book result.

Bruce 

[Alan Grayson]

How then do you interpret the Casimir Effect? Isn't it used to experimentally establish the existence of virtual particles? AG 

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 1:57:06 AM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

But if virtual particles don't exist, if they're based on conceptual errors, what's the basis for claiming the vacuum is not a vacuum of nothingness? AG 

That's the thing about physics: One physicist says X is real. Another physicist says X is not real.

[Bruce Kellett]

The Casimir effect is perfectly well explained in terms of Van der Waals type forces. Explanations in terms of virtual particles don't really work because virtual particles do not exert any force on anything -- because they are not real!!!!

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

I see. What about the vacuum energy? What does it consist of if not virtual particles? AG  

[Alan Grayson]

Part of what I'm getting at is this; if the vacuum energy has anything to do with the quantized EM field, the values 1/2*hbar *omega aren't photons! So what is the form of energy in the vacuum? AG

[Bruce Kellett]

Good question. Best answer to date is that it is Einstein's cosmological constant. Virtual particles can play no role because disconnected particle loops are necessarily of zero energy.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

Is there any experimental evidence that the vacuum energy is non zero? (I assume dark energy is inferred from the accelerating expansion, but is not considered part of the vacuum energy.) AG 

[Alan Grayson]

Slightly off topic for this thread. Do you believe the total net gravitational energy of the Cosmos is zero? AG

[Bruce Kellett]

I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.

Bruce 

[Bruce Kellett]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 2:52 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is the existence of the quantum foam, with virtual particles incessantly coming into existence and being annihilated, generally accepted? If I recall correctly, Bruce was extremely doubtful, claiming it's based on reifying, or making concrete, terms in an approximation method which are alleged to be off-shell particles. AG

See the post I have just made on an article by Arnold Neumaier:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

Bruce 

[Jason Resch]

Can you provide me with a link or reference that explains how to account for how these manifestations without assuming virtual particles?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle#Manifestations

Jason 

[Brent Meeker]

One thing I find interesting about modern physics is how very different mathematical structures can be used for the same physics: virtual particles or Green's functions, Hilbert space or path integrals, particles or fields, curvature of spacetime or entropy gradient,...  You would think this would give pause to those who want to reify the ontology of the mathematics and assert what's really real.

Brent

[Bruce Kellett]

You would have to go to technical monographs or advanced text books. Most of the phenomena described in that Wikipedia list are just manifestations of quantum fields. The descriptions in terms of virtual particles are sometimes convenient, but they are only ever heuristics, not descriptions of what is really going on. See Neumaier's article that I referenced, or the related articles that he links in his first paragraph. He explains the real physics behind many of these phenomena.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

You identify Einstein's CC with the vacuum energy. I have some related questions. How is the vacuum energy measured, does it include dark energy (if not explicitly then by default), and finally, in your opinion is the net gravitational energy (positive mass equivalents using E = mc^2 plus negative potential energy) for the Cosmos exactly ZERO?  Incidentally, I look forward to reading the article you posted on the myth of virtual particles. You ought to send this to the fellow in charge of Stenger's now private list who, as I recall, was quite enamored with virtual particles. AG   

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 1:07 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 3:17:41 AM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

Good question. Best answer to date is that it is Einstein's cosmological constant. Virtual particles can play no role because disconnected particle loops are necessarily of zero energy.

Bruce

You identify Einstein's CC with the vacuum energy. I have some related questions. How is the vacuum energy measured, does it include dark energy (if not explicitly then by default),

Dark energy is currently thought to be Einstein's CC, and it is measured basically by looking at brightness of supernovae in distant galaxies. The zero point energy of field theory is much too large to be dark energy. So most probably, zero point energy is an artefact of crude field quantization methods, and is actually exactly zero.

and finally, in your opinion is the net gravitational energy (positive mass equivalents using E = mc^2 plus negative potential energy) for the Cosmos exactly ZERO?

No. Gravitational PE cannot cancel mass-energy or kinetic energy. The total energy of the universe is measured by integrating over an enclosing hypersurface. For a closed universe there is no such hypersurface, so the total energy is undefined -- it is certainly not zero. Lawrence suggested that canonical quantisation of gravity leads to the WdW equation, H\psi = 0, where \psi is the wave function of the universe. But there is no reason to equate H in this equation with the non-relativistic Hamiltonian or energy operator. H = 0 is just a constraint on physics, not a measure of anything.

Bruce

[Alan Grayson]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 9:21:29 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 1:07 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 3:17:41 AM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

Good question. Best answer to date is that it is Einstein's cosmological constant. Virtual particles can play no role because disconnected particle loops are necessarily of zero energy.

Bruce

You identify Einstein's CC with the vacuum energy. I have some related questions. How is the vacuum energy measured, does it include dark energy (if not explicitly then by default),

Dark energy is currently thought to be Einstein's CC, and it is measured basically by looking at brightness of supernovae in distant galaxies. The zero point energy of field theory is much too large to be dark energy. So most probably, zero point energy is an artefact of crude field quantization methods, and is actually exactly zero.

Yes, as I recall you made this argument years ago on Stenger's private list, that the zero point contribution of the EM field, which is a "mere" 120 orders of magnitude too large, is an artifact of quantization. Your argument is supported by the fact that 1/2*hbar*omega cannot represent a photon; and moreover, that nature starts with a quantized field, not with a continuous field which it somehow quantizes.  Can this same argument be extended to the strong and weak forces; that is, do they have ground level energies with the same type of problem (for contributing to the zero point energy) as the quantized EM field? AG

and finally, in your opinion is the net gravitational energy (positive mass equivalents using E = mc^2 plus negative potential energy) for the Cosmos exactly ZERO?

No. Gravitational PE cannot cancel mass-energy or kinetic energy. The total energy of the universe is measured by integrating over an enclosing hypersurface. For a closed universe there is no such hypersurface, so the total energy is undefined -- it is certainly not zero. Lawrence suggested that canonical quantisation of gravity leads to the WdW equation, H\psi = 0, where \psi is the wave function of the universe. But there is no reason to equate H in this equation with the non-relativistic Hamiltonian or energy operator. H = 0 is just a constraint on physics, not a measure of anything.

I assume you're familiar with Tolman's argument that they cancel exactly, in his monograph entitled Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology. I have not yet been able to get a PDF version of it, and haven't read the argument myself. But it seems to have been influential in reaching an opinion contrary to yours. Please comment on why you particularly dissent from Tolman's argument. AG 

[Philip Thrift]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 5:55:36 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.

Bruce 

Very interesting fellow. Interesting article. I was intrigued reading the link there to his biography of himself being math to applied math ending up in computing and dabbling in physics. Sounded like me!

Then

Two years after my Ph.D., my formerly atheistic world view changed and I became a Christian. I got convinced that there is a very powerful God who created the Universe, who controls what appears to us as chance, and who is interested in each of us individually. I understood (with Galilei, and later Newton and Maxwell) that God had written the book of nature in the language of mathematics. As a result of these insights, one of my life goals became to understand all the important applications of mathematics in other fields of science, engineering, and ordinary life. It is a challenge that keeps me learning all my life.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

@philipthrift

[Alan Grayson]

Are you suggesting, maybe tongue in cheek, that his analysis of virtual particles is suspect because he believes in a very powerful God? Do you believe in such a God? AG

[Samiya Illias]

I pray may Allah bless you with faith. He has already blessed you with much knowledge and understanding. May He choose you to serve Him with reverence. 

Samiya 

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[Brent Meeker]

Well, if he can convince Christians that learning mathematics is the road to salvation, more power to him.

Brent

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

@philipthrift

[Philip Thrift]

I've always been an atheistic materialist. I don't know if his "denial" of virtual particles is influenced by his theology or not, but this I know:

One physicist says there are Xs. Another physicist says there are no Xs. One or both is BSing. Probably both.

The luxury (or fun) of math and even applied math is it doesn't matter if whether you think of the entities of a theory being fictional or not. It is useful or it isn't. (In pure math, useful doesn't quite matter as in applied math.)  

@philipthrift

[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 3:14 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 11:12:58 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 10:01:19 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 5:55:36 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.

Bruce 

Very interesting fellow. Interesting article. I was intrigued reading the link there to his biography of himself being math to applied math ending up in computing and dabbling in physics. Sounded like me!

Then

Two years after my Ph.D., my formerly atheistic world view changed and I became a Christian. I got convinced that there is a very powerful God who created the Universe, who controls what appears to us as chance, and who is interested in each of us individually. I understood (with Galilei, and later Newton and Maxwell) that God had written the book of nature in the language of mathematics. As a result of these insights, one of my life goals became to understand all the important applications of mathematics in other fields of science, engineering, and ordinary life. It is a challenge that keeps me learning all my life.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

@philipthrift

Are you suggesting, maybe tongue in cheek, that his analysis of virtual particles is suspect because he believes in a very powerful God? Do you believe in such a God? AG

I've always been an atheistic materialist. I don't know if his "denial" of virtual particles is influenced by his theology or not, but this I know:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

One physicist says there are Xs. Another physicist says there are no Xs. One or both is BSing. Probably both.

Maybe you are the one who is bull shitting?

Bruce 

[Philip Thrift]

BSing about what? I'm not making any claims about whether virtual particles exist.

Here are two statements:

"It's an experimentally well-confirmed fact that virtual particles exist."

- http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-do-black-holes-destroy-information.html?showComment=1566705434388#c7842618397891133114

"Explanations in terms of virtual particles don't really work because virtual particles do not exert any force on anything -- because they are not real!!!!"

- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/ixyC1nvZ3i8/NsBRnAvdBAAJ

Now it seems to me that these are contradictory.  Are you saying one is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong? Are you saying that there is some sort of dialethic logic physicists operate with?

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

They seem so, but they are referring to different contexts.

Brent

Are you saying one is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong? Are you saying that there is some sort of dialethic logic physicists operate with?

@philipthrift

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 3:43 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:21:12 AM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 3:14 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 11:12:58 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 10:01:19 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 5:55:36 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.

Bruce 

Very interesting fellow. Interesting article. I was intrigued reading the link there to his biography of himself being math to applied math ending up in computing and dabbling in physics. Sounded like me!

Then

Two years after my Ph.D., my formerly atheistic world view changed and I became a Christian. I got convinced that there is a very powerful God who created the Universe, who controls what appears to us as chance, and who is interested in each of us individually. I understood (with Galilei, and later Newton and Maxwell) that God had written the book of nature in the language of mathematics. As a result of these insights, one of my life goals became to understand all the important applications of mathematics in other fields of science, engineering, and ordinary life. It is a challenge that keeps me learning all my life.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

@philipthrift

Are you suggesting, maybe tongue in cheek, that his analysis of virtual particles is suspect because he believes in a very powerful God? Do you believe in such a God? AG

I've always been an atheistic materialist. I don't know if his "denial" of virtual particles is influenced by his theology or not, but this I know:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

One physicist says there are Xs. Another physicist says there are no Xs. One or both is BSing. Probably both.

Maybe you are the one who is bull shitting?

Bruce 

The luxury (or fun) of math and even applied math is it doesn't matter if whether you think of the entities of a theory being fictional or not. It is useful or it isn't. (In pure math, useful doesn't quite matter as in applied math.)  

@philipthrift

BSing about what?

Bull shitting by bringing personal religious beliefs into the argument. That is argumentum ad hominem.

 

I'm not making any claims about whether virtual particles exist.

Here are two statements:

"It's an experimentally well-confirmed fact that virtual particles exist."

- http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-do-black-holes-destroy-information.html?showComment=1566705434388#c7842618397891133114

"Explanations in terms of virtual particles don't really work because virtual particles do not exert any force on anything -- because they are not real!!!!"

- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/ixyC1nvZ3i8/NsBRnAvdBAAJ

Now it seems to me that these are contradictory.  Are you saying one is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong? Are you saying that there is some sort of dialethic logic physicists operate with?

There can be differences of opinion......... Think about quantum interpretations for instance....

But I am quite sure that Sabine would agree with me about virtual particles if I sat her down and argued it out.

Bruce 

[Philip Thrift]

When you set up that conversation between you and Sabine Hossenfelder, let us know.

Perhaps you could make a podcast of that conversation, it would be interesting.

@philipthfift

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:21:12 AM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

He seems more of a dabbler in physics to me. He is primarily a mathematician.

The problems that these additional elements in the traditional interpretations are supposed to solve are sidestepped in the thermal approach by realizing basic but previously overlooked facts: The first is that we never ever measure directly something microscopic. Instead we deduce the microscopic information indirectly from macroscopic measurements together with some theory relating it to the microscopic system of interest. The second fact is that a macroscopic observation is simply the deterministic reading of an ensemble expectation value, and not (as postulated in the conventional interpretations) an intrinsically random event governed by Born’s probabilistic rule. Both facts together eliminate the validity of all no-go theorems for a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The thermal interpretation takes into account the approximate nature of quantum objects. But is not yet sufficiently well developed to give convincing answers to the unsolved questions mentioned above. The latter would require explicit QFT models of the measurement situation that can be solved in the customary approximations (including suitable coarse graining and a thermodynamic limit). Their solution should lead to the conventional quantum theory including Born’s rule where it applies.

@philipthrift

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:49:06 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 8/27/2019 10:43 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

"It's an experimentally well-confirmed fact that virtual particles exist."

- http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-do-black-holes-destroy-information.html?showComment=1566705434388#c7842618397891133114

"Explanations in terms of virtual particles don't really work because virtual particles do not exert any force on anything -- because they are not real!!!!"

- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/ixyC1nvZ3i8/NsBRnAvdBAAJ

Now it seems to me that these are contradictory. 

They seem so, but they are referring to different contexts.

Brent

What are the two contexts? 

I guess X is real or exists in one context, but X is not real or does not exist in another context needs to be defined.

@philipthrift

 

[smitra]

On 28-08-2019 08:40, Philip Thrift wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:49:06 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
>
>> On 8/27/2019 10:43 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>
>>> "It's an experimentally well-confirmed fact that virtual particles
>>> exist."
>>> -
>>>
>>
> http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/08/how-do-black-holes-destroy-information.html?showComment=1566705434388#c7842618397891133114

>>> [1]

>>>
>>> "Explanations in terms of virtual particles don't really work
>>> because virtual particles do not exert any force on anything --
>>> because they are not real!!!!"
>>> -
>>>
>>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/ixyC1nvZ3i8/NsBRnAvdBAAJ

>>> [2]

>>>
>>> Now it seems to me that these are contradictory.
>>
>> They seem so, but they are referring to different contexts.
>>
>> Brent
>
> What are the two contexts?
>

> I guess _X is real or exists_ in one context, but _X is not real or
> does not exist_ in another context needs to be defined.
>

What exists are the fields associated with particles. Particles can be
interpreted as existed states of fields. If we ignore interactions and
then introduce them in perturbation theory, then particles states in the
non-interacting theory can appear in computations when these particles
are never produced in the process that one is considering.

There are also processes where the particles can be produced out of the
vacuum due to exiting the quantum field. E.g. Schwinger pair creation in
a strong electric field, the dynamical Casimir effect where an
accelerating mirror will cause the creation of photons out of the
vacuum. Another example is that of a reflecting rotating sphere in
vacuum what will slow down due to the emission of photons, as pointed
out here:

http://www.jetpletters.ac.ru/ps/1604/article_24607.pdf

Saibal

[Philip Thrift]

Anyway, as anyone should be able to see as one reads further,

      

      Arnold Neumaier 

("good enough physicist"), 

              is a crackpot!

@philipthrift 

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/27/2019 11:34 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:21:12 AM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

He seems more of a dabbler in physics to me. He is primarily a mathematician.

The problems that these additional elements in the traditional interpretations are supposed to solve are sidestepped in the thermal approach by realizing basic but previously overlooked facts: The first is that we never ever measure directly something microscopic. Instead we deduce the microscopic information indirectly from macroscopic measurements together with some theory relating it to the microscopic system of interest. The second fact is that a macroscopic observation is simply the deterministic reading of an ensemble expectation value, and not (as postulated in the conventional interpretations) an intrinsically random event governed by Born’s probabilistic rule. Both facts together eliminate the validity of all no-go theorems for a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

There's nothing new about an ensemble interpretation, but it is effectively a hidden variable theory and so is non-local.  That's why it's not popular.

Brent

The thermal interpretation takes into account the approximate nature of quantum objects. But is not yet sufficiently well developed to give convincing answers to the unsolved questions mentioned above. The latter would require explicit QFT models of the measurement situation that can be solved in the customary approximations (including suitable coarse graining and a thermodynamic limit). Their solution should lead to the conventional quantum theory including Born’s rule where it applies.

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 10:45:12 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 8/27/2019 11:34 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:21:12 AM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

He seems more of a dabbler in physics to me. He is primarily a mathematician.

The problems that these additional elements in the traditional interpretations are supposed to solve are sidestepped in the thermal approach by realizing basic but previously overlooked facts: The first is that we never ever measure directly something microscopic. Instead we deduce the microscopic information indirectly from macroscopic measurements together with some theory relating it to the microscopic system of interest. The second fact is that a macroscopic observation is simply the deterministic reading of an ensemble expectation value, and not (as postulated in the conventional interpretations) an intrinsically random event governed by Born’s probabilistic rule. Both facts together eliminate the validity of all no-go theorems for a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

There's nothing new about an ensemble interpretation, but it is effectively a hidden variable theory and so is non-local.  That's why it's not popular.

Brent

I any case, reading about his

     thermal interpretation of quantum physics (including quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics, and application)

     https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/therm/

(and there are comments in some forums on this interpretation) seems "out there", and his home page

God excels in loving those He wants to love.
He excels in forming those He wants to form.
He excels in trying those He wants to try.
He excels in testing those He wants to test.

God excels in destroying what He wants to destroy.
He excels in creating what He wants to create.

God is perfect in everything.
All powers are His,
From the dawn of history into all eternity.

This is why it is safe to be in His arms,
Like a small child loved by his mother.

As all those who want to follow His lead,
He loves me, and I love Him.

           https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/

leads one to come to the crackpot diagnosis.

He seems to do some good mathematics and numerical analysis, bit outside of that ...

@philipthrift

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/28/2019 11:05 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 10:45:12 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 8/27/2019 11:34 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 12:21:12 AM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

Maybe Neumaier is a good enough physicist not to let his theological beliefs influence his physics. Don Page is another such whose name springs to mind. Neumaier's rejection of the reality of virtual particles and quantum foam is soundly based on his good physics.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

He seems more of a dabbler in physics to me. He is primarily a mathematician.

The problems that these additional elements in the traditional interpretations are supposed to solve are sidestepped in the thermal approach by realizing basic but previously overlooked facts: The first is that we never ever measure directly something microscopic. Instead we deduce the microscopic information indirectly from macroscopic measurements together with some theory relating it to the microscopic system of interest. The second fact is that a macroscopic observation is simply the deterministic reading of an ensemble expectation value, and not (as postulated in the conventional interpretations) an intrinsically random event governed by Born’s probabilistic rule. Both facts together eliminate the validity of all no-go theorems for a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

There's nothing new about an ensemble interpretation, but it is effectively a hidden variable theory and so is non-local.  That's why it's not popular.

Brent

I any case, reading about his

     thermal interpretation of quantum physics (including quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics, and application)

     https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/therm/

"The device as a physical system can be partitioned into slow large scale and fast small scale modes. The space of slow large scale modes has the form of a set of disconnected manifolds. After interaction with the system the total state of the device initially faithfully records the uncertain quantity <A> however it is metastable. Noise from the environment causes it to quickly decay into one of the slow mode manifolds giving a discrete outcome not fully reflective of < A>. "

Sounds like Zurek's quantum Darwinism meets GRW.

Brent

(and there are comments in some forums on this interpretation) seems "out there", and his home page

God excels in loving those He wants to love.
He excels in forming those He wants to form.
He excels in trying those He wants to try.
He excels in testing those He wants to test.

God excels in destroying what He wants to destroy.
He excels in creating what He wants to create.

God is perfect in everything.
All powers are His,
From the dawn of history into all eternity.

This is why it is safe to be in His arms,
Like a small child loved by his mother.

As all those who want to follow His lead,
He loves me, and I love Him.

           https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/

leads one to come to the crackpot diagnosis.

He seems to do some good mathematics and numerical analysis, bit outside of that ...

@philipthrift

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[Alan Grayson]

Phil, how about your considered opinion of his analysis of virtual particles? As Bruce indicated, some scientists are able to put aside their religious beliefs in analyzing physical theories. TIA, AG 

[spudb...@aol.com]

You need to answer the How questions of physics, before you can properly look at the Why questions of religion (yours), and philosophy. One possibility that I find compelling (and it is never a complete answer) is that God is a Boltzmann Brain, and the Universe might be, in some fashion that particular a Boltzmann Brain. Most here on this mailing group despises this notion, (which is ok by me!). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

In 2004, a German physicist, Andreas Albrecht,  reviewed the Boltzmann equations and sort of pondered this, a bit.

http://albrecht.ucdavis.edu/special-topics/inflation-arrow-time

A couple of years before, the Yahoodi physicist, Leonard Susskind had also looked at this possibility.

https://events.stanford.edu/events/138/13871/

Neither of these guys turned religious at all, but their speculations still stands. It makes as much sense as the conventional models of the cosmos, and yield the added, benefit, of suspecting in all this emptiness (apparently) that there's a Big Mind out there. Maybe God is akin to a computer operating system, compared to us microbes? For me, it's sort of inspiring. 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2088B473-5B71-4322-91E5-AC23E748E8B6%40gmail.com

.

[Alan Grayson]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 9:21:29 PM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 1:07 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 3:17:41 AM UTC-6, Bruce wrote:

Good question. Best answer to date is that it is Einstein's cosmological constant. Virtual particles can play no role because disconnected particle loops are necessarily of zero energy.

Bruce

You identify Einstein's CC with the vacuum energy. I have some related questions. How is the vacuum energy measured, does it include dark energy (if not explicitly then by default),

Dark energy is currently thought to be Einstein's CC, and it is measured basically by looking at brightness of supernovae in distant galaxies. The zero point energy of field theory is much too large to be dark energy. So most probably, zero point energy is an artefact of crude field quantization methods, and is actually exactly zero.

and finally, in your opinion is the net gravitational energy (positive mass equivalents using E = mc^2 plus negative potential energy) for the Cosmos exactly ZERO?

No. Gravitational PE cannot cancel mass-energy or kinetic energy. The total energy of the universe is measured by integrating over an enclosing hypersurface. For a closed universe there is no such hypersurface, so the total energy is undefined -- it is certainly not zero. Lawrence suggested that canonical quantisation of gravity leads to the WdW equation, H\psi = 0, where \psi is the wave function of the universe. But there is no reason to equate H in this equation with the non-relativistic Hamiltonian or energy operator. H = 0 is just a constraint on physics, not a measure of anything.

Maybe I am thinking too classically, but wouldn't a closed universe have a surface containing it? If not, what does "closed" mean? AG 

CMIIAW, but I assume you're familiar with Tolman's argument that they cancel exactly, in his monograph entitled Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology. I have not yet been able to get a PDF version of it, and haven't read the argument myself. But it seems to have been influential in reaching an opinion contrary to yours. Please comment on why you particularly dissent from Tolman's argument. AG 

[Samiya Illias]

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

The Quran, like The Bible, gives us insights about Allah, but at the same time informs us that God is not like anything else. So we cannot imagine or compare God with anything. We can only have an idea... I have tried to explore some of these ayaat in a series of posts, which might be of interest to you: https://signsandscience.blogspot.com/p/allah.html    

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/681292908.79363.1567033180287%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Philip Thrift]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 5:32:23 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

Phil, how about your considered opinion of his analysis of virtual particles? As Bruce indicated, some scientists are able to put aside their religious beliefs in analyzing physical theories. TIA, AG 

I suppose if particles aren't real in one's scheme of things, then any kind of temporary particles aren't either.

https://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/therm/

For microscopic experiments, the thermal interpretation claims that particles (photons, electrons, alpha particles, etc.) are fiction, simplifications appropriate under special circumstances only. In reality one has instead beams (states of the electron field, an effective alpha particle field, etc., concentrated along a small neighborhood of a mathematical curve) with approximately known properties (charge densities, spin densities, energy densities, etc.) If one places a detector into the path of a beam one measures some of these densities - accurately if the densities are high, erratically and inaccurately when they are very low.

It is a historical accident that one continues to use the name particle in the many microscopic situations where it is grossly inappropriate to think of it in terms of a tiny bullet moving through space. If one restricts the use of the particle concept to situations where it is appropriate, or if one does not think of particles as ''objects'' - in both cases all mystery is gone, and the foundations become fully rational and intelligible.

I doubt anyone is going to find his "physics" useful for anything. 

He should just stick to doing numerical analysis and scientific computing, an important area in applied mathematics and computer science.

@philipthrift 

[Alan Grayson]

Generally, if we want to be absolutely strict, particles are idealizations which don't exist, since one cannot contain finite mass or energy in zero volume. However, the point you seem to be missing is that virtual particles are not like the idealizations we're familiar with. They are off-shell, which I think means they don't obey the total energy formula of SR. AG 

[Philip Thrift]

One can adopt any catechism/denomination of physics one wants to. It's a free country. 

But this seems to be the mainstream view:

from Particle Data Group / Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

https://particleadventure.org/virtual.html

Virtual particles

Particles decay via force carrier particles. But in some cases a particle may decay via a force-carrier particle with more mass then the initial particle. The intermediate particle is immediately transformed into lower-mass particles. These short-lived high-mass force-carrier particles seem to violate the laws of conservation of energy and mass -- their mass just can't come out of nowhere!

 

A result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle is that these high-mass particles may come into being if they are incredibly short-lived. In a sense, they escape reality's notice. Such particles are called virtual particles.

Virtual particles do not violate the conservation of energy. The kinetic energy plus mass of the initial decaying particle and the final decay products is equal. The virtual particles exist for such a short time that they can never be observed.

Most particle processes are mediated by virtual-carrier particles. Examples include neutron beta decay, the production of charm particles, and the decay of an eta-c particle, all of which we will explore in depth soon.

@philipthrift

[spudb...@aol.com]

Gratitude is essential.However, if you don't look for answers out of a fear of displeasing, it blocks future discoveries, re-evaluations, innovations. How is the best and least impudent question to pursue. Also, the Big Mind might be looking to get the species to improve itself, brain-wise. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CANgFmkGBAtqsMFGoOSBgB2Rkx0fdvM5SEt_TzWcbbEhZ-89dWw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Alan Grayson]

What the mainstream is affirming is that if you can't observe a violation of conservation of energy, it's OK to assume it's being violated; another bedrock principle! Where did this principle come from? The UP? Really? AG 

[Philip Thrift]

Physicists are like witch doctors. Ask them. 

@philipthrift

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 11:52:38 AM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

Is the existence of the quantum foam, with virtual particles incessantly coming into existence and being annihilated, generally accepted? If I recall correctly, Bruce was extremely doubtful, claiming it's based on reifying, or making concrete, terms in an approximation method which are alleged to be off-shell particles. AG

This discussion has a couple of confusions. Quantum foam refers to the hypothesis that spacetime is roiling with undulations in its metric description on a small scale due to the uncertainty principle. Virtual particles are descriptions of fields that are not on-shell due to the uncertainty principle and these occur in a fixed spacetime background.

Virtual particles have two meanings. First they define a zero point energy in a vacuum. For standard QFT these can be removed by a procedure called normal ordering. A usual method in QFT is to assign zero commutators between field amplitudes separated by spatial distances. This is called the Wightman condition, and it imposes a form of locality on QFT. Because of this we can simply assign a lowering operator b and b raising operator b^† on different regions, ignore the commutator [b, b^†] = 1, take a limit the two are at the same place and then justify shoving operators b^† to the left and b to the right. This is really a bit tricky, for we are removing an infinite ZPE by taking a type of calculus limit and people into axiomatic QFT spent a lot of time worrying about this. It also clips some wing feathers off from quantum nonlocality, because we are doing this in a classical spacetime. The other meaning for virtual particles is in Feynman diagrams for internal diagram lines, lines with endpoint vertices internal and not at the end of the diagram, and these are evaluated as sums over momenta and are not on-shell. In effect a bare charge or mass for a quantum particle couples to the vacuum in a way that renormalizes the charge and mass of the bare charge/mass of the particle. These virtual particles in a sense "exist" below the uncertainty bound ΔpΔx ≥ ħ and are then not directly observable. Two electrons with momenta p1 and p2 may have a virtual photon between them so the electrons have final mometa p1 + p and p2 - p. where this virtual photon acts as a conveyor of momenta. However, this is evaluated for the virtual photon with a summation of possible momenta.  

Quantum foam refers to a similar situation for spacetime. A particles with some mass m that is quantized may have amplitudes for being at x and y, and this does mean there is a quantum superposition of the metric for gravity at x and y. Without the mass spacetime for reasons similar to the ZPE vacuum will also have an uncertainty description. This is with a standard quantization perspective of spacetime, which outside of maybe very weak gravity or low momenta cut-off has some serious problems. Also the above conditions on QFT are not very applicable, for in effect the field is spacetime itself and how can one really assign that field to some point in spacetime? String theory has a background metric, which allows one to perturbatively work around this some. String theory description of quantum gravity is more successful that loop quantum gravity, but it has some difficulties of its own. In addition the spacetime foam in loo[p quantum gravity predicts that different wavelengths of light will be perturbed differently, shorter wavelength more so, and this means there is some dispersion of photons. However measurement of the arrival times for photons at different wavelengths from very distant burstars has found no such dispersion. The LQG mavens have made some work arounds on this, but the idea of quantum foam has its troubles.

LC

[John Clark]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 3:08 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Virtual particles are a useful heuristic for evaluating a perturbation series.

In the same way the existence of the sun is a useful heuristic for evaluating the Earth's future position in its orbit?

> There are no such things as quantum fluctuations in the requisite sense

What experimental results would be different if there WAS such a thing as quantum fluctuations in the requisite sense?

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 7:41:35 AM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 3:08 AM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Virtual particles are a useful heuristic for evaluating a perturbation series.

In the same way the existence of the sun is a useful heuristic for evaluating the Earth's future position in its orbit?

Virtual particles are not directly detectable. It is odd however that an observer in an accelerated frame should in fact observe them. Accelerated motion transforms virtual particles into a black body spectrum of radiation with 1K for 10^{21}m/sec^2. This is Unruh radiation that is related to Hawking radiation from a black hole. A black hole has a set of Boulware vacua, where empty space in one is equivalent to another with radiation. This is odd, and a probe on an accelerated frame will record a temperature, even if another observer on an inertial frame witnesses no such radiation. 

 

> There are no such things as quantum fluctuations in the requisite sense

What experimental results would be different if there WAS such a thing as quantum fluctuations in the requisite sense?

Quantum fluctuations simply represent the occurrence of a quantum particle after decoherence or detection that deviates from the most expected value. So in many ways a fluctuation refers not just to quantum mechanics, but also quantum measurement or decoherence. Quantum mechanics is perfectly deterministic, but measurements correspond to probability amplitudes so it is also stochastic. 

LC

 

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/30/2019 1:03 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Virtual particles are not directly detectable. It is odd however that an observer in an accelerated frame should in fact observe them. Accelerated motion transforms virtual particles into a black body spectrum of radiation with 1K for 10^{21}m/sec^2. This is Unruh radiation that is related to Hawking radiation from a black hole. A black hole has a set of Boulware vacua, where empty space in one is equivalent to another with radiation. This is odd, and a probe on an accelerated frame will record a temperature, even if another observer on an inertial frame witnesses no such radiation.

But the inertial observer can see the accelerated detector click and the accelerated thermometer rise in temperature.

Brent

[Lawrence Crowell]

That should be the case. Ford, can't remember his first name, I think says no. I got a bit of attention with a paper last decade I wrote where I suggested how to measure this. If you propel a body at these extreme accelerations and then catch it the body should have a higher temperature. From an inertial frame perspective this added temperature could be thought of the surface of the material, which has a sort of quantum atmosphere, interacting with the vacuum in an asymmetric fashion. 

LC 

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/30/2019 4:55 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 5:36:25 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 8/30/2019 1:03 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Virtual particles are not directly detectable. It is odd however that an observer in an accelerated frame should in fact observe them. Accelerated motion transforms virtual particles into a black body spectrum of radiation with 1K for 10^{21}m/sec^2. This is Unruh radiation that is related to Hawking radiation from a black hole. A black hole has a set of Boulware vacua, where empty space in one is equivalent to another with radiation. This is odd, and a probe on an accelerated frame will record a temperature, even if another observer on an inertial frame witnesses no such radiation.

But the inertial observer can see the accelerated detector click and the accelerated thermometer rise in temperature.

Brent

That should be the case. Ford, can't remember his first name, I think says no.

I think Wald says that for the inertial observer it appears that the accelerated detector/thermometer is interacting with the vacuum and producing the particles around it that provide the clicks and temperature.

Brent

I got a bit of attention with a paper last decade I wrote where I suggested how to measure this. If you propel a body at these extreme accelerations and then catch it the body should have a higher temperature. From an inertial frame perspective this added temperature could be thought of the surface of the material, which has a sort of quantum atmosphere, interacting with the vacuum in an asymmetric fashion. 

LC 

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[Bruce Kellett]

On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 10:12 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I think Wald says that for the inertial observer it appears that the accelerated detector/thermometer is interacting with the vacuum and producing the particles around it that provide the clicks and temperature.

I think the idea that the detector interacts with the vacuum is misguided. The point is that the accelerated frame has a different vacuum -- it is not that it interacts with the inertial vacuum, which would tend to suggest that there is only one vacuum. The vacuum is important for the definition of particle states -- different vacua have different definitions of particle states. Hence the vacuum of the accelerated observer is a thermal sea, relative to the quiescent vacuum of the inertial observer.

Bruce 

[Lawrence Crowell]

If you think about it there should be a way this works from the perspective of the inertial frame. Physics should not depend on frames, even if we are talking about the difference between an inertial and accelerated frame.

LC 

[Brent Meeker]

I think that's right.  But it doesn't address how the inertial observer sees the effects on the accelerated instruments.

Brent

Bruce

[smitra]

From the point of view of an observer in the inertial frame it is the
dynamic Casimir effect.

Saibal

[Lawrence Crowell]

It is related to that. The dynamic Casimir effect involves and oscillating mirror that changes the vacuum ZPE in the cavity. This can generate particles out of the vacuum in the laboratory. Experiments on dynamic Casimir effect have been done. Any body has a quantum atmosphere, as Wilczek calls it, and that body under constant acceleration for any inertial observer the leading edge interacts with the vacuum with a more UV shifted quantum atmosphere and the trailing edge has a more IR shifted quantum atmosphere. 

LC

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Aug 2019, at 01:56, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 8/27/2019 3:56 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 2:52 AM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is the existence of the quantum foam, with virtual particles incessantly coming into existence and being annihilated, generally accepted? If I recall correctly, Bruce was extremely doubtful, claiming it's based on reifying, or making concrete, terms in an approximation method which are alleged to be off-shell particles. AG

See the post I have just made on an article by Arnold Neumaier:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

Bruce

One thing I find interesting about modern physics is how very different mathematical structures can be used for the same physics: virtual particles or Green's functions, Hilbert space or path integrals, particles or fields, curvature of spacetime or entropy gradient,...  You would think this would give pause to those who want to reify the ontology of the mathematics and assert what's really real.

But only the physicalist reifies the physical things. Any reification there leads to a contradiction with Computationalism. 

We do have something similar with computer science. Very different mathematical structure are Turing universal, (numbers, combinators, gas, GOL-pattern, etc.) and so give the same fundamental science (same theology, same physics). But here to, it would ridiculous to reify the basic ontology, except for a matter of clarity and fixing the notion we can use. That is why I add always (combinators) when I say that I use the numbers, so that people does not believe that I believe in the necessity of assuming the numbers, as we can also assumes only K, S, KK, ...

A theory is only a way to explore a (unknown) reality. 

Now, when doing metaphysics, we develop theories on the nature of that reality (ontological, phenomenological, etc.) and test the consequences (which are never “ontological”, as all ontologies are not testable. Apart from consciousness, no “real existence” is ever testable.

Bruno

Brent

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Aug 2019, at 07:14, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 11:12:58 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 10:01:19 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:

On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 5:55:36 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:

I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/

where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain the mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.

Bruce 

Very interesting fellow. Interesting article. I was intrigued reading the link there to his biography of himself being math to applied math ending up in computing and dabbling in physics. Sounded like me!

Then

Two years after my Ph.D., my formerly atheistic world view changed and I became a Christian. I got convinced that there is a very powerful God who created the Universe, who controls what appears to us as chance, and who is interested in each of us individually. I understood (with Galilei, and later Newton and Maxwell) that God had written the book of nature in the language of mathematics. As a result of these insights, one of my life goals became to understand all the important applications of mathematics in other fields of science, engineering, and ordinary life. It is a challenge that keeps me learning all my life.

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/

@philipthrift

Are you suggesting, maybe tongue in cheek, that his analysis of virtual particles is suspect because he believes in a very powerful God? Do you believe in such a God? AG

I've always been an atheistic materialist. I don't know if his "denial" of virtual particles is influenced by his theology or not, but this I know:

One physicist says there are Xs. Another physicist says there are no Xs. One or both is BSing. Probably both.

I agree that one or both could be wrong. But why insinuate that they are BSing? 

Also, sometimes, two different theories assert the same thing, but in different ways, and that can include the “assumed basic ontology”. Mechanism illustrates this completely, as you can take any terms of any Turing-complete, without induction, without changing any conclusion about the “same” reality.

It is more the relations between the “objects” that counts. In fact, eventually it is the relations between the relations which counts, which imply the necessity for the mind to invoke the infinite, even if we do not “reify” it into the ontology (like with the class of all sets is not a set, or that Plotinus Number of the Numbers is not a number, etc.).

Reality is independent of the theories. Different theories can handle well different aspect of Reality. Sometimes they can handle well the same aspect of Reality, yet in a completely different way, and this usually announce fertile marriage between the theories. (Examples in mathematics exist between braids and spin statistics, or group and particles theory, of topology and algebra, etc).

The luxury (or fun) of math and even applied math is it doesn't matter if whether you think of the entities of a theory being fictional or not.

OK.

It is useful or it isn't. (In pure math, useful doesn't quite matter as in applied math.)  

For someone open to the idea that Reality might be Mathematical, if not Arithmetical, if not sigma_1 arithmetical only, the distinction between applied and pure mathematics makes no more much sense fundamentally.

It becomes a bit like the difference between artificial and natural, once you embed the researcher in the Reality that it researches. So that difference is also natural, and indeed almost unavoidable when the universal machine develops a big ego, and feel different.

Monism favours that embedding of the “subject” into the “object”. QM without collapse is essentially QM + the axiom asserting that the physicists obeys to the physical laws. Similarly, with Digital Mechanism, Gödel’s work is an embedding of the mathematician in the mathematical reality.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

I just mean when a scientist is BSing in the Feyerabend sense: It's when existences or nonexistences of entities of a theory are written or spoken about  as being reality with the conviction of the Westminster Catechisms. 

I've decided that in the matter vs. math debate, to conclude that there is no debate,  if one just says that a study of math is just a study of matter, and nothing more.

https://twitter.com/philipthrift/status/1167548170714386433

..

Jussi Jylkkä @JylkkaJussi

It’s partly terminology, why couldn’t it be that pain is a mathematical structure. If mathematical things are concrete, then how can we be sure what those things are really like?

Philip Thrift @philipthrift

Replying to @JylkkaJussi @flyrusca

If mathematical structures equals matter, that's a kind of a cool "new" math!

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Aug 2019, at 04:46, Samiya Illias <samiya...@gmail.com> wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions.

That makes sense. Unfortunately some read the Quran literally, which is non-sensical.

God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything.

You can't know this for sure. 

Also, “Our help” might be ambiguous.

What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

The Quran, like The Bible, gives us insights about Allah, but at the same time informs us that God is not like anything else. So we cannot imagine or compare God with anything.

…including a person a priori. But this might be the reason why “God" has truly no name, and that we have to be cautious when using some “nicname”, “parabola" and “images” or “words".

The danger is obvious. Any claim of “knowing "God” transform the discourse into an authoritative argument, which concerning the divine, leads to the worst case scenario. It prevents people of just *perhaps* approaching “God", and it can make people repeating propositions without genuine inner understanding for long period.

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

There is truly no intermediate between a subject and the big one which has no name.

Text are ladders, but should be left behind eventually.(The more we understand our ignorance, and works its mathematical structure).

I don’t know if any of this is true, but it is already said by the sound (Löbian) Universal Machine, using reasonable definition of “believe”, “know”, etc. It also follows informally, arguably, from the mechanist hypothesis.

The Muslims and the Christians have already had Neoplatonist periods, like with the Islamic Golden Age. I do think that this is still alive in our heart.

But today, many schools get agressive. That signals many con men around.

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CANgFmkGBAtqsMFGoOSBgB2Rkx0fdvM5SEt_TzWcbbEhZ-89dWw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain. Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age. The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 2:41 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else

I agree 100%!!  If I want fantasy I'll read Harry Potter.

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

This, I like Bruno. For me(not you!) T

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

The Boltzmann Brain conjecture, as to the Universe & God, to my mind, the same, seems workable as anything else in cosmology. Because I like it doesn't make it true, but the hypothesis does make it a bit for fun (for me). In my imagination,. I feel it's a good idea to tap God on the shoulder and ask our questions, politely, How'd you do this? How'd you do that? More, specifically, how do you store information? 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/DB85ACC1-9E2B-48FF-BC47-254A6FDA9D0E%40ulb.ac.be

.

[Samiya Illias]

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 5:51 AM spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This, I like Bruno. For me(not you!) T

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

The Boltzmann Brain conjecture, as to the Universe & God, to my mind, the same, seems workable as anything else in cosmology. Because I like it doesn't make it true, but the hypothesis does make it a bit for fun (for me). In my imagination,. I feel it's a good idea to tap God on the shoulder and ask our questions, politely, How'd you do this? How'd you do that? More, specifically, how do you store information? 

Screenshot from https://signsandscience.blogspot.com/2017/12/humans-extinct-extant.html 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/490049935.901804.1567299096181%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Bruno Marchal]

This will only obscure the difference between math and physics. But those science does not study the same things. Mathematics studies abstract relations, which are out of the category of space, time, and physical things. Physics is a theory of observable predictions.

With mechanism, physics becomes a very special branch of machine theology, which is itself a very special branch of mathematical logic (itself a very special branch of mathematics).

https://twitter.com/philipthrift/status/1167548170714386433

..

Jussi Jylkkä @JylkkaJussi

It’s partly terminology, why couldn’t it be that pain is a mathematical structure. If mathematical things are concrete, then how can we be sure what those things are really like?

In mathematics (as opposed to metaphysics and theology) we don’t care on the nature of things. We only reason from axioms that we share on some intuition that we have. Nobody knows, or even try to know, what is a number, or what is a set, but we do agree on some of their properties. 

When interested in the nature of things, we still have to accept primary things and primary laws between those things to account of the “other things”.

Physics studies the physical reality.

Math studies the mathematical reality.

Metaphysics/theology studies the nature of Reality, and tackle the fundamental question “Is Reality Mathematical, or Physical, or theological or mental, etc.”  and this without deciding the answer in advance, and trying to get observable consequences, so that the metaphysics can be improved/refuted.

It is a just a bad habit that we use dogma in metaphysics (since long). 

The truth is that we don’t know, but there too we can build theories and test them. 

Somehow, since QM’s foundational problem, physics begin to handle metaphysical question, and to have to decide (even if momentarily) on some philosophical principles, like Mechanism (cf Everett) or non Mechanism (cf Bohr, von Neumann, Wigner, etc.).

Bruno

Philip Thrift @philipthrift

Replying to @JylkkaJussi @flyrusca

If mathematical structures equals matter, that's a kind of a cool "new" math!

@philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain.

There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. 

Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age.

When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence of (genuine) religion. 

The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma.

The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) understanding that nobody can claim to have found it.

It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal and impersonal.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

Bruno

LC

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 1 Sep 2019, at 02:51, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This, I like Bruno. For me(not you!) T

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

The Boltzmann Brain conjecture, as to the Universe & God, to my mind, the same, seems workable as anything else in cosmology. Because I like it doesn't make it true, but the hypothesis does make it a bit for fun (for me). In my imagination,. I feel it's a good idea to tap God on the shoulder and ask our questions, politely, How'd you do this? How'd you do that? More, specifically, how do you store information? 

Of course, the Boltzmann brain conjecture is simply a theorem in elementary arithmetic, once we work in the Mechanist frame. The simple UD program 

For all i, j, s,  computes the s first steps of phi_i(j)

Generates all information and stores it at all the relevant place, always in number. In particular, this generates all Boltzmann bBrains, in fact all Brains, digital machines, universal numbers.

For example, you can store the registers (a, b, c, d, e, f) where a, b, c, are numbers coding already some informations, in the number (2^a)(3^b)(5^c)(7^d)(11^e)(13^f).

Then the fundamental theorem of arithmetic (the uniqueness of the ordered decomposition into power of prime factors) guarantied that you can, by elementary addition and multiplication retrieve the information in the relevant context.

So, information is stored n the numbers themselves, when we encode the program in elementary arithmetic.

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/490049935.901804.1567299096181%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Philip Thrift]

Even if mathematical physics only ranges over a subset of mathematics

    https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-deconstructed-standard-model-equation 

but mathematics by itself can range over all mathematical-fictional worlds, it is still (so far, until AIs take their place) only human brains that have fabricated those worlds (in writing!).

@philipthrift

[Philip Thrift]

Related question:

Is there any mathematics that exists in some mathematician's brain that she cannot write in a paper (or on a blackboard)? 

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

Physics does not range on a subset of mathematics. It is not a mathematical structure among all the others. With mechanism, the physical reality emerges from the whole arithmetical reality, in way enforced from the mechanist hypothesis, making it testable (and verified up to now thanks to QM without collapse).

Here is an image. You can imagine the entire mathematical reality by the volume of an infinite sphere. The physical reality is the border of that sphere, its surface, as seen from inside the sphere. That surface does not exist (as the shore is supposed to be infinite), but it is still apparent.

That is only an image, but it can been made more precise once you understand well the first person indeterminacy. The mind is more like "all computations", and the physical reality is given by a *first person* statistic on the leaves of all (halting) computations. 

The goal is too explain as many things as possible, and thus assuming as less as possible. As I tend to believe in the existence of my laptop-computer, I am obliged to believe in at least one universal system. We cannot prove the existence of a universal system without assuming one. I use arithmetic because it is the simplest one. Then, with mechanism, I can explain why we cannot assume more than a universal system. It leads to a contradiction, (or redundancy).

It is not just that elementary arithmetic explains where the beliefs in real number, analysis and physics come from, it is that with mechanism, there is no other explanation available, and it determines the entire physical realm, so we can test mechanism by comparing it to the physical data and current theories.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Brent Meeker]

On 9/1/2019 4:38 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the
> materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem,
> but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is
> insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve
> as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

The "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

Brent

[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 8:57:19 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Sep 2019, at 13:57, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

Even if mathematical physics only ranges over a subset of mathematics

    https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-deconstructed-standard-model-equation 

mathematics by itself can range over all mathematical-fictional worlds, it is still (so far, until AIs take their place) only human brains that have fabricated those worlds (in writing!).

Physics does not range on a subset of mathematics. It is not a mathematical structure among all the others. With mechanism, the physical reality emerges from the whole arithmetical reality, in way enforced from the mechanist hypothesis, making it testable (and verified up to now thanks to QM without collapse).

Here is an image. You can imagine the entire mathematical reality by the volume of an infinite sphere. The physical reality is the border of that sphere, its surface, as seen from inside the sphere. That surface does not exist (as the shore is supposed to be infinite), but it is still apparent.

That is only an image, but it can been made more precise once you understand well the first person indeterminacy. The mind is more like "all computations", and the physical reality is given by a *first person* statistic on the leaves of all (halting) computations. 

The goal is too explain as many things as possible, and thus assuming as less as possible. As I tend to believe in the existence of my laptop-computer, I am obliged to believe in at least one universal system. We cannot prove the existence of a universal system without assuming one. I use arithmetic because it is the simplest one. Then, with mechanism, I can explain why we cannot assume more than a universal system. It leads to a contradiction, (or redundancy).

It is not just that elementary arithmetic explains where the beliefs in real number, analysis and physics come from, it is that with mechanism, there is no other explanation available, and it determines the entire physical realm, so we can test mechanism by comparing it to the physical data and current theories.

Bruno

The dialectics of a language* and matter occurs only in these possibilities:

• natural objects (its internal natural language)

• human brains (creating fictions)

• human-made devices

* The language of arithmetic consists of

• A 0-ary function symbol (i.e. a constant) 0,

• A unary function symbol S,

• Two binary function symbols +, ·,

• Two binary relation symbols =, <,

• For each n, infinitely many n-ary predicate symbols {X^i}_n

- https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~htowsner/prooftheory/PeanoArithmetic.pdf

@philipthrift 

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain.

There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. 

Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age.

When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence of (genuine) religion. 

The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I have to give my low down on religion now.

I think it stems from the evolution of the brain and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were important because they communicated information about the environment in narratives the projected human beings onto nature. This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods or later with the “BIG GOD.”

So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this includes religion. However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social control structures. Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems, and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the minds of people. Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as 1984 under the pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, and in religion this is called sin.

Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the world are wrong. The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the 15^th or 16^th century. Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods of the ancient Greeks..

What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, but without the totalitarian ideology. 

LC

The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma.

The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) understanding that nobody can claim to have found it.

It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal and impersonal.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

Bruno

LC

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[Brent Meeker]

On 9/1/2019 4:28 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain.

There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. 

Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age.

When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence of (genuine) religion. 

The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I have to give my low down on religion now.

I think it stems from the evolution of the brain and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were important because they communicated information about the environment in narratives the projected human beings onto nature. This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods or later with the “BIG GOD.”

Right. Originally there was no boundary between the supernatural and the natural. Weather was driven by storm spirits.  Disease was possession by demons.  Animals moved in accordance with totems.  But with the development of agriculture and city states man seemed to have conquered most of the nature spirits.  The city state had its culture and morals and they were commanded by the leader; but to give them more force he claimed they were the commandments of a great spirit leader in the sky who handed down these commandments on stone tablets.  And our people are right and moral and other people, who don't agree are wrong and evil, and we should conquer them and take their land.   Got mit uns.

Brent

So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this includes religion. However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social control structures. Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems, and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the minds of people. Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as 1984 under the pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, and in religion this is called sin.

Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the world are wrong. The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the 15^th or 16^th century. Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods of the ancient Greeks..

What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, but without the totalitarian ideology. 

LC

The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma.

The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) understanding that nobody can claim to have found it.

It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal and impersonal.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

Bruno

LC

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[Brent Meeker]

On 9/1/2019 4:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Sep 2019, at 02:51, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This, I like Bruno. For me(not you!) T

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

The Boltzmann Brain conjecture, as to the Universe & God, to my mind, the same, seems workable as anything else in cosmology. Because I like it doesn't make it true, but the hypothesis does make it a bit for fun (for me). In my imagination,. I feel it's a good idea to tap God on the shoulder and ask our questions, politely, How'd you do this? How'd you do that? More, specifically, how do you store information? 

Of course, the Boltzmann brain conjecture is simply a theorem in elementary arithmetic, once we work in the Mechanist frame. The simple UD program 

For all i, j, s,  computes the s first steps of phi_i(j)

Generates all information and stores it at all the relevant place, always in number. In particular, this generates all Boltzmann bBrains, in fact all Brains, digital machines, universal numbers.

The problem is not to generate them or to show why they aren't generated.  It's to explain why we aren't, with probability 1, Boltzmann brains.

Brent

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[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:54:58 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:

On 9/1/2019 4:28 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain.

There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. 

Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age.

When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence of (genuine) religion. 

The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I have to give my low down on religion now.

I think it stems from the evolution of the brain and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were important because they communicated information about the environment in narratives the projected human beings onto nature. This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods or later with the “BIG GOD.”

Right. Originally there was no boundary between the supernatural and the natural. Weather was driven by storm spirits.  Disease was possession by demons.  Animals moved in accordance with totems.  But with the development of agriculture and city states man seemed to have conquered most of the nature spirits.  The city state had its culture and morals and they were commanded by the leader; but to give them more force he claimed they were the commandments of a great spirit leader in the sky who handed down these commandments on stone tablets.  And our people are right and moral and other people, who don't agree are wrong and evil, and we should conquer them and take their land.   Got mit uns.

Brent

There have been of late archaeological finds in what is N. Iraq and S. Turkey of pre-Akkadian cultural remains. These people were forming small sedentary settlements around 5000BCE. One central aspect to these are shrines, where these appear to reflect the start of organized religious activity that was less tribal and more city-state oriented. This seems to reflect the emergence of a priest class with probably some sort of associated political/dynastic class. 

This has gotten a bit off track from quantum fluctuations.

LC

 

So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this includes religion. However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social control structures. Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems, and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the minds of people. Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as 1984 under the pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, and in religion this is called sin.

Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the world are wrong. The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the 15^th or 16^th century. Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods of the ancient Greeks..

What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, but without the totalitarian ideology. 

LC

The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma.

The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) understanding that nobody can claim to have found it.

It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal and impersonal.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

Bruno

LC

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[spudb...@aol.com]

My guess, even if "young Crowell" objects,  is that religion confers an evolutionary advantage to those so, deluded. Thus they, we, breed more offspring with this psychological trait, whilst the socialists doth diminish, hence, their mad- rush by progressives, worldwide, to embrace the Islamists as their chums, those wielders of the jihad. Chief enemy? Oh, any nationalist of any type will do. In any case, as it confers evolutionary advantage, the religions will evolve in their own Darwinian fashion, because around these regions, them's the rules! Nationalism, can surely be suicidal among the pig-ignorant, but among the more nuanced it too,  can be am effective tool of survival. With religions tuned toward survival, even yes, postmortem, survival, as illusionary, as this may be; this also is a good evolutionary trait!   May, the Spaghetti Monster guide thy path! 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, Sep 1, 2019 9:34 pm
Subject: Re: Quantum Foam

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[Philip Thrift]

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 8:34:06 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

This has gotten a bit off track from quantum fluctuations.

LC

 

The originating Topic 'quantum foam' became 'religious myth'.

@philipthrift

 

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 9:57:43 PM UTC-5, spudb...@aol.com wrote:

My guess, even if "young Crowell" objects,  is that religion confers an evolutionary advantage to those so, deluded. Thus they, we, breed more offspring with this psychological trait, whilst the socialists doth diminish, hence, their mad- rush by progressives, worldwide, to embrace the Islamists as their chums, those wielders of the jihad. Chief enemy? Oh, any nationalist of any type will do. In any case, as it confers evolutionary advantage, the religions will evolve in their own Darwinian fashion, because around these regions, them's the rules! Nationalism, can surely be suicidal among the pig-ignorant, but among the more nuanced it too,  can be am effective tool of survival. With religions tuned toward survival, even yes, postmortem, survival, as illusionary, as this may be; this also is a good evolutionary trait!   May, the Spaghetti Monster guide thy path! 

For subsistence people the distinction between nature and spirits or supernature does not exist, and these provide a narrative framework for communicating information about the environment. We more modern people no longer really have a need for mythic thinking for survival, but it is still there. It has been used as a way to control people and society. 

As someone on the more progressive side of things, I have mixed sense about Islam. I am opposed to any mistreatment of Muslims, but I see the religion as frankly pernicious. I read a translation of the Koran after 9/11 and frankly the only book I ever read that shocked with as much ideological horror is Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. During the cold war we did not permit Russian communists to emigrate to the US if they refused to renounce communism. I can almost see the same with Islam, but for our Constitutional protection of religious freedom. Some projections has Islam as the world majority world religion by 2070, but based on other projections the world implosion may be underway and Islam will just feast on the rotting corpse of the modern world --- never to arise again. 

I think humanity is approaching a sort of peak of all that we may come to know, prove, discover, create and invent. I think before long Homo sapiens will be slouching back to a stone age. The whole period we are in with civilization may be little more than an intermediate period between the Pleistocene stone age where the Earth was rich and abundant and the next stone age where Earth will be depleted and polluted. If so then mythic thinking might again have real survival benefits. If Islam takes control of the start into the next stone age, then frankly I could care less.

My point with respect to this list though is that I think this is supposed to be largely about scientific questions and subjects. I did not subscribe to this in order to get screeds about Islam or any other religion.

LC

[spudb...@aol.com]

And so we have!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294721340_God_is_a_Vacuum_Fluctuation

Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck!

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Mon, Sep 2, 2019 2:54 am
Subject: Re: Quantum Foam

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[spudb...@aol.com]

Well, I tend not to disagree with you concerning Islam (The Uma) doing nothing about the Islamists, so that Kuffar lives (infidels) don't really matter under Sharia Law; and no we shouldn't opt to live under their Dhimmi Laws, in which we and our grandkids resign ourselves to permanent 2nd or 3rd class status (If Pakistan is any example?). The Ahmadis within Islam don't hold these values toward kuffar, and are hated by Sunni & Shia for their 'disloyalty.'  I can see religions evolving because of this Singularity evolves, or errupts, as you have indicated below. My idea of a Singularity is way different from most people familiar with the term. I think that when AI gets harnessed more & more to the task of improving on, and creating wholly new inventions, this will change human life forever. (For the better). Minsky's brain in a box is nice, and good for stories and movies, but that is a secondary or tertiary thing. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Mon, Sep 2, 2019 11:16 am
Subject: Re: Quantum Foam

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[Samiya Illias]

This might be of interest: 

https://islam-qna.blogspot.com/2016/02/back-to-future-why-old-testament-is.html 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2039784171.1629108.1567471493570%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Philip Thrift]

Nice find, but Michael Forrest's paper should have related something more naturally plausible:

cosmopsychism

   - https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

At least we know consciousness exists in at least one place

(inside our skulls, though there are deniers)

    - https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/

but no evidence of God has ever been observed.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

If this is true. Then we get at last a definition of science: the attempt to use the “No True Scotsman Fallacy” each time we get wrong. (If you don’t mind doing such a “fallacy” right now).

In science, we change the definition and the theories all the times, in fact each time we discover that they are wrong. When discovering that Earth is not Flat, we did not say, so Earth do not exist, we just say that our conception of Earth has to be revised.

Doing theology or metaphysics with the scientific attitude consists in applying the same attitude with respect to the concepts of that domain, even if that implies to change, or question, our deepest conception on the nature of Reality.

Bruno



>
> Brent

>
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[Bruno Marchal]

On 2 Sep 2019, at 01:28, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:38:31 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 31 Aug 2019, at 20:41, Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wednesday, August 28, 2019 at 9:46:21 PM UTC-5, Samiya wrote:

فَاذْكُرُونِي أَذْكُرْكُمْ وَاشْكُرُوا لِي وَلَا تَكْفُرُونِ

So remember Me, I will remember you and be grateful to Me and (do) not (be) ungrateful to Me. 

[Al-Quran 2:152] 

The Quran does not discourage the HOW questions, rather it encourages humans to ponder upon the creation, but it emphasises the WHY questions. God does not need our help in creating, sustaining, destroying or recreating everything. What He wants from us is realisation and acknowledgement for all He has done, and is continuously doing, and to realise that there is great purpose in all of this. 

For this reason religion has the effect of dulling minds. Science is about asking how, it is not really about why questions that are more in the philosophical domain.

There is no reason to not exige as much rigour in philosophy than in any other domain or inquiry. Theology has been rigorous for one millenium, but 1500 years of dogma made us forget this. 

Paul in one of his epistles admonishes against study of the world because one is worshiping the "creature" and not the creator. As such this sort of religious ideology induces people to focus on "the Truth," or really some illusion of such, and they lose the ability to ascertain whether some proposition has some probability or reason for being true or false. When religion takes over you get a dark age.

When fake religion, or dogmatic religion, takes over. That leads to absence of (genuine) religion. 

The term genuine religion makes about as much sense as a “dry hurricane.” I have to give my low down on religion now.

I define the religion/theology of the machine M by the set of true propositions about M, and its mathematical structure.

The proper theology is the set of true propositions (about M) that the machine M cannot prove, yet still be able to produce as true proposition in some way (by experience, guess, extrapolation, etc.)

I think it stems from the evolution of the brain

…assuming the religious proposition that such brain exist, and time, space, etc. and then, in which theory? 

The human religion is admittedly a human construct, but so is physics and all science. The object studied by such science might precede the humans. Usually people believe that the Big Bang is not a human creation, and, when we assume Mechanism, we assume that, similarly, the truth of the elementary arithmetical sentences precede the humans too.

and in particular with the development of language. At some point in hominid evolution language developed to a level of sophistication that our ancestors started to tell stories. Fouts et al showed with sign language that Washoe and other chimpanzees communicated elemental language, and later it was found the chimps in the wild appear to sign to each other. However they do not appear to tell stories. With our hominid ancestors these stories were important because they communicated information about the environment in narratives the projected human beings onto nature.

OK.

With Mechanism, Nature appears to be such narrative. It is a narrative common to *all* universal number in arithmetic. Physics, with Mechanism, is universal. It is the same for all universal machine, and indeed, that provides a very deep and string invariant from which the physical laws can be extracted and explained, including the non communicable parts (the theory of qualia extends the theory of quanta, and does not contradict it.

This makes the stories interesting and relative, so this means aspects of the natural world were anthropomorphized. These are spirits, totems and demiurges and so forth. To cut to the chase, with the developments of large scale societies, city states, nations and empires religion matured from simple forest gods called upon my shamans to organized social systems with big gods or later with the “BIG GOD.”

Monotheism is Monism, in the personal for presentation. Ig God is a person or a thing is an open problem in the canonical mathematical theology of the universal machine.

So I do think there is an evolutionary basis for mythic narratives and this includes religion.

In the large sense of the term, a religion given by a believe in reality “outside us”, which of course no one can prove the existence.

All Turing machines, due to the gap between G and G* (the Solovay logics of machines (and some daemons) self-reference), universal machine are bounded up to develop belief in such unprovable realities. Some of these belief can appear to be true, other can appear to be false, other can appear and be undecidable, momentarily of forever.

However, religion starting in the ancient world became totalitarian social control structures.

Yes. That happens when we separated religion from Reason or science. That is the goal: to steal the fundamental science to control people. That can concern all science (cf biology in the USSR), but is more and more prominent for the most fundamental science.

Both Christianity and Islam are complete totalitarian systems,

Christianity became totalitarian around the closure of Plato academy.

Islam might be born authoritarian, then became very open to rationality, science, including greek theology, and then, in 1148, become authoritarian, in most of its branches. Yet, if you look closely, not all branches did fell in that trap. Note that the materialist religion has been authoritarian (and still is) in many countries, with some low and high degrees. In china, things get extreme today with that respect.

and it works by instilling the commands of an infinite authority into the minds of people.

Yes. 

Eric Blair wrote a fascinating treatise on the social psychology of totalitarian power, where he noted how this is the most effective way of controlling people. Eric Blair wrote this in fictional form as 1984 under the pen name George Orwell. His catch phrases about THOUGHT CRIME and the rest are references to the sort of internal control over minds based on terror, and in religion this is called sin.

Yes, that is what happen with religion when you use authoritarian power to steal a science. It becomes only an instrument of control. Note that the actual politics of health is entirely of that kind, with its myth, like drugs, …, and the will of control (making you actually buying other drugs, …). Thomas Sazs wrote a book on drugs politics using Orwell’s 194 to compare. 

In fact, when religion is separated from science, both religion and science become pseudo-reliion and pseudo-science. 

Religion though has ultimately this “emperor's new clothes” problem in that our examinations of the world have revealed how religious ideas about the world are wrong.

All our theories are usually wrong. The problem is not there. The problem is in the dogma. The problem is when you lost the right to doubt.

That is the problem I did met, not with academical scientists, but still with academical philosophers, who estimate that we have non right to doubt matter, and argue only with mockery, bullying, diffamation and never through reasoning and dialog. Of course, they have learn well the 1500 years of technic to hide the problems that are unable to solve, and they have become immune to doubt, or even immune to thinking. And when you dig on this issue, you see they belong to a clerical form of atheism, which copy the worst aspect of the totalitarian religions. Some are even related to the Muslim Brotherhood, in the combat against the doubts. 

The cosmology of the Tanach, or old Testament, is based on Sumerian cosmology of a flat earth covered by an iron dome all submerged in water. Ever wonder why the Israelis called their anti-missile system Iron Dome? So much else is just wrong as well. The intellectual power of religion has weakened since the 15^th or 16^th century.

The intellectual power of dogma has weaken, and that is a good sign. But theology has remained in the hand of the charlatan, and as long as theology does not come back to reason, doubt, modesty, it will remain in the hands of the charlatans.

Religions, thought of as memes or sort of brain viruses

You can see all ideas like that. But the dogmatic one can last very long. That’s why we have to denunciate this, and one the best way is in studying the mathematical canonical theology of the universal machine, which is already aware of the “theological” or “scientist trap”, like when some people claim to know the truth (the theology of the machine explains that in such case we are with a con man).

are fighting back hard these days. I would compare the state of religion as similar to WWII Germany during the Ardennes offensive in late 1944. At least intellectually this is the case, and over half of young people raised religiously are leaving. Christianity and Islam are worn out mythic narratives, which will in time if we survive pass on as did the Orphic gods of the ancient Greeks..

The dogma will pass on if we make it so, but apparently we have to be patient. It will take a long time before theology come to reason, because it is too much useful to the bandits that we tolerate when voting for them.

What I see emerging is a new paradigm for mythic systems, and we see it in superheroes Yugio and Magic cards etc. It is a suspension of rational thought to imagine super-powered people, who are almost like gods, but it does not command your complete attention and it is largely a systems of games and entertainment. This fulfills the psychological need for mythic narratives, but without the totalitarian ideology. 

Yes, we have to sublimate the terror and the mythe in games, movies, fantasy, … sure. We must invest in education, so that people learn to defeat the demagog, using religion, health  or any applied science domain.

But to say that we have to eliminate religion would only mean to impose some religion. In science, we just never claim to have the definitive theory, and we remain open to change the theories, even the relation between the theories.

With mechanism, there is no creator nor creation, only number relations and internal statistics imposed by incompleteness. The physical universe is a … useful fiction, not to take literally, or this ends in the elimination of the data of consciousness and persons, like with the Churchland or even Dennett.

I don’t know if mechanism is true, but it gives a testable theory, so we can proceed. Physicalism remains consistent with string form of non mechanism, but there is no evidence for them, nor really any theory that I would have seen.

Bruno

LC

The expansion of the influence of Christian fundamentalism is one reason the US has this orange baboon, or Godzilla, as President. People are becoming stupid, and this unfortunately appears to be a trend in the rest of the world as well.

It is just that we have not yet transformed the Renaissance. Not all science have come back to reason. We are still leaving theology in the hand of people advocating (if not imposing) dogma.

The entire God/Non-God debate hides the original questioning of the greek, where the question was about the existence of the universe, not of God, which is a nickname for the truth that we search, with the (enlighten) understanding that nobody can claim to have found it.

It is the separation of theology from science which has made some people thinking that science = truth, and religion = fiction, when (of course) science is doubt, especially about the ontology commitment, be them personal and impersonal.

Please, I wish this religious stuff were taken somewhere else. Religion has no more sense than if I wish upon a star my fairy godmother will come, transubstantiate mice and a pumpkin into a horse drawn coach and take me to eternal bliss --- or happy ever after. It is all just magical thinking and ultimately preposterous nonsense.

It can be, but biology has become a similar non sense in the materialist dogmatic USRR. It is not the domain which is a problem, but the use of dogma, and the discouragement of the doubt, and that is insane, but is not “religion”, it is the fake religion that we deserve as long as we don’t let the domain to come back to reason and experiences.

Bruno

LC

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 2 Sep 2019, at 02:22, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 9/1/2019 4:49 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 1 Sep 2019, at 02:51, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This, I like Bruno. For me(not you!) T

Proselytism  is a symptom of lack of trust in “God"’s power (In advertising notably). 

The Boltzmann Brain conjecture, as to the Universe & God, to my mind, the same, seems workable as anything else in cosmology. Because I like it doesn't make it true, but the hypothesis does make it a bit for fun (for me). In my imagination,. I feel it's a good idea to tap God on the shoulder and ask our questions, politely, How'd you do this? How'd you do that? More, specifically, how do you store information? 

Of course, the Boltzmann brain conjecture is simply a theorem in elementary arithmetic, once we work in the Mechanist frame. The simple UD program 

For all i, j, s,  computes the s first steps of phi_i(j)

Generates all information and stores it at all the relevant place, always in number. In particular, this generates all Boltzmann bBrains, in fact all Brains, digital machines, universal numbers.

The problem is not to generate them or to show why they aren't generated.  It's to explain why we aren't, with probability 1, Boltzmann brains.

Good point. That is close to the formulation of the mind body problem.

And the tools to answer this is given by the theology of the self-referentially correct machine, and the answer already suggested is .. quantum logics/mechanics. Incompleteness restrains a lot the type of computations on which consciousness can stabilise.

The problem is that many introduce here ontological commitment, which usually introduced a selection without explain how such section is possible. It is like the reduction of the wave packet. It is a choice which is not available when we assume that consciousness is invariant for the doctor substitution.

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

*A* religion is only *a* theory in the metaphysical domain. As I said, it is a theorem of Peano arithmetic that universal machine or number have a rich religious background, in the theoretical sense that I just gave you in my preceding post.

It is easy to prove incompleteness from the assumption of the existence of a universal machine, and thus from Church’s thesis.

What is less easy is what correspond to Gödel’s *second* incompleteness theorem, or from Löb’s generalisation of it, which is that the machine themselves can prove their own "Gödel’s and Löbs theorem”, and in fact can recover those axiomatic of incompleteness, that is the Solovay Modal Logic G and G*. Those modal logics describe completely (at the propositional level) the logic of what any (sound) machine can prove about its provability and consistency abilities, (G) and extrapolate from soundness of Mechanism, cautiously (as we get near the “theological trap, but that is easy with G*, which axiomatise the truth that the machine is unable to prove, but can know, in some sense (different from the Theaetetus sense, but related).

About itself, the logic cannot identify, for p partial computable, between p, []p, []p & p, []p & <>t, []p & <>t & p, despite G* proves them all equivalent. Here, one simple reality (the sigma_1 complete arithmetic, which is a very tiny part of the arithmetical reality) is shown to be seen is very different ways by any sound universal machine, and I give both simple thought experience, and formal development, to explain some of the modes plays the role of “physics”, once we assume mechanism, making the Mechanist hypothesis testable, and incidentally, rather well tested thanks to Quantum Mechanics. Newton Mechanics, if that was the physical theory considered as true, would be an impediment for Mechanist philosophy. 

That is the whole point I wanted to illustrate, we can proceed in that domain with the scientific attitude and method. 

Bruno

LC

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[Brent Meeker]

On 9/3/2019 1:55 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:

Nice find, but Michael Forrest's paper should have related something more naturally plausible:

cosmopsychism

   - https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

We should send a copy of Vic's "The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning" to Forrest.

Brent

At least we know consciousness exists in at least one place

(inside our skulls, though there are deniers)

    - https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/

but no evidence of God has ever been observed.

@philipthrift

On Monday, September 2, 2019 at 7:28:04 PM UTC-5, spudb...@aol.com wrote:

And so we have!

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294721340_God_is_a_Vacuum_Fluctuation

Nyuck Nyuck Nyuck!

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon, Sep 2, 2019 2:54 am
Subject: Re: Quantum Foam

On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 8:34:06 PM UTC-5, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

This has gotten a bit off track from quantum fluctuations.

LC

 

The originating Topic 'quantum foam' became 'religious myth'.

@philipthrift

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