Kevin's Watch

peter wrote:Indeed WF. You could argue that the universe must be observed in order to exist.

The quantum physics angle? I never believed in it. (There's a sect of quantum physicists who believe the observer effect is only observed relative to the observer. I like those guys. Can't remember the name. -- Edit: Ah, yes: Quantum Bayesianism.)

Besides, the thought of the universe existing as a giant bag of unresolved probabilities just makes me even more sad.

wayfriend wrote:

peter wrote:Indeed WF. You could argue that the universe must be observed in order to exist.

The quantum physics angle? I never believed in it.

I'm at least as sceptical of the belief that the universe was created for life to be in it.

Avatar wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote:Not sure about the hand, but the tree goes CRASH!!!!

Only if there is an ear linked to a brain in the vicinity that can translate the waves into sound.

--A

That's the point isn't it; that there is nothing but when there is a sensory apparatus of some sort to provide the 'second hand'.

I rather like that, wf!

peter wrote:

Avatar wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote:Not sure about the hand, but the tree goes CRASH!!!!

Only if there is an ear linked to a brain in the vicinity that can translate the waves into sound.

--A

That's the point isn't it; that there is nothing but when there is a sensory apparatus of some sort to provide the 'second hand'.

Nah. Everything's the same when not observed as it is when observed. (Macro, anyway. I don't understand that quantum stuff enough to agree or disagree, but I sure like what I assume wf's QB folks are saying. Can't read it atm.) It's all good fun philosophically to say what you two are saying, but there no reason to believe it. The natural laws are complex enough without adding: Nothing unobserved exists, and nothing observed exists when no longer observed. But all that would have been if observation was constant is calculated, and reality is created to the appropriate specifications where and when observation is.

Yes there is an element of fun in such speculations: but beyond this is a real and important desire to know what is. Physics is getting closer to answering this (not close, just closer) as in doing so is throwing up ideas that not only have mathematical backing to support them, but also have the power to provide solace in the face of our short, full of trouble and soon to be over lives. If the riddle of say why maths works is answered by virtue of it's being the more fundamental state of reality than the one we observe (and some physicists believe it is), then much of our existential angst evaporates in a puff of insignificance. Similarly if all our presents are proven to be co-existant, and the passage of time illusory - then what fear oblivion. Physics will conquer death (for that ultimately is what it's all about), not medicine. Look at the subjective reality of ourselves and the objective description of reality that physics strives for as the internal and external aspects of TC's dilemma....... medicine will tinker with the first, while physics will grapple with the second.

Fist and Faith wrote:Everything's the same when not observed as it is when observed.

But there's no way to know...

--A

If it didn't, we wouldn't be able to make predictions. Put a loaf of bread, a bowl of ice, and a goldfish (just a goldfish) on your counter, and leave the house for a week. When you come back, you'll have a bowl of water, a moldy loaf of bread, and a dead goldfish (probably somewhere on the floor). Because the same things happened when nobody was there watching as would have happened if you stayed and watched.

Fewer variables let us predict more precisely. Look at the clock on the wall. Leave for a while. When you come back, will the clock look the same? Under very specific circumstances, it will. Under most, it will not. And we know what it will look like, simply by looking at another clock. Or, if we're really good, by counting seconds the whole time we're away. If it doesn't look the way you expected it to, you do not imagine for a moment that it's because things aren't the same unobserved as observed. The first thing you would probably do is check the battery.

Very cogent argument Fist.

Some things we can predict, given a set of completely known and dependable environmental factors.

But aren't they still assumptions? Just because every other time a piece of bread has become mouldy, does it mean that it will inevitably do so?

--A

The bread might not get moldy. If it doesn't, it will not be because it was unobserved.

+JMJ+

Fist and Faith wrote:The bread might not get moldy. If it doesn't, it will not be because it was unobserved.

The diff is that bread is a real thing. The Quantum World is a construct, one step removed from real life (from the encounter of real Beings). The Quantum World doesn't have Esse, except in our minds' abstractions. Which is why we have to observe it (i.e. measure it, one step removed), rather than encounter it, in order to reify it.

As I said, I'm speaking of the macro.

+JMJ+

Fist and Faith wrote:As I said, I'm speaking of the macro.

'Sall good. Not trying to be unduly contentious. Just trying to help parse it out.

Yeah, I didn't think you meant it badly. Quantum is whack!

Strictly speaking, Quantum Physics doesn't say that things are different when they are not observed. It just says that what they are can be indeterminate.

IOW: It's not a matter of being yellow until you look at it, and then it is red. It's a matter of being possibly yellow or red until you look at it.

To bring it back: QP would have it that, should the universe exist with no one to observe it, it would be a cloud of possible realities with nothing you can pin down to be IS or IS NOT. Everything would be in a flux of possibility. "Everything is possible", as it were.

BTW, did we ever discuss how the universe may have formed from the Void merely because an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being observed it and quantum-collapsed the whole thing?

wayfriend wrote:Strictly speaking, Quantum Physics doesn't say that things are different when they are not observed. It just says that what they are can be indeterminate.

IOW: It's not a matter of being yellow until you look at it, and then it is red. It's a matter of being possibly yellow or red until you look at it.

Yeah, that's what I've understood it as saying.

wayfriend wrote:To bring it back: QP would have it that, should the universe exist with no one to observe it, it would be a cloud of possible realities with nothing you can pin down to be IS or IS NOT. Everything would be in a flux of possibility. "Everything is possible", as it were.

Except that's not the case. At least not in our universe. There was a definite reality of stars, galaxies, and a gajillion other things, before we showed up.

wayfriend wrote:BTW, did we ever discuss how the universe may have formed from the Void merely because an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being observed it and quantum-collapsed the whole thing?

Nice!

Fist and Faith wrote:Except that's not the case. At least not in our universe. There was a definite reality of stars, galaxies, and a gajillion other things, before we showed up.

Was there? How do we know?

Consider: we can see light that we theorize was created a billion years ago. But remember, we're just collapsing probabilities ... so one of the possibilities was that the light was emitted a million years ago, and that possibility became definite when we saw the light.

Any evidence of the universe before we appeared we obtained by ... observation.

Your observer would have to collapse an uncountable number of specific probabilities, in an uncountable number of specific chains, back over billions of years, in order to come into existence. Further, billions of observers did and do exist, each being possible only by collapsing their own uncountable number of specific events and chains. All of those billions of beings' uncountable events and chains would have to collapse in perfect harmony with each other in order for the universe to exist as it does.

It just can't work in the macro.

peter wrote:

Avatar wrote:

Fist and Faith wrote:Not sure about the hand, but the tree goes CRASH!!!!

Only if there is an ear linked to a brain in the vicinity that can translate the waves into sound.

--A

That's the point isn't it; that there is nothing but when there is a sensory apparatus of some sort to provide the 'second hand'.

This whole "tree in the forest thing" is about nonsense. The tree really goes, CRASH!!!!
The question could easily be put as - Does the Taj Mahal actually exist? I don't need to go to India to answer that question. As a matter of fact I knew these things when I was a child!

Ah...the wisdom of youth cf'd to the folly of age.