Further problems: The mind body problem: How can a mind emerge from a fully physical system? Is the mind an illusion (or would free will being an illusion imply this or vice versa)?
The so called physical world is the illusion of the mind. You started your thinking from a reverse position, that the physical is the real one and the mind is the illusion, which lead you to believe in determinism.
There are no physical laws, there are only the laws of God, which are the wills of the universal mind field. They can sometimes seem like laws, but they are behaviors. Just like if you snap your fingers, you do it because you want to, and a bird flies because it wants to, and an atom moves because it wants to. The more complex the body/flesh is, the more it can go against the will/laws of God.
I believe that I am making all my choices myself, and I am free to do it just as I please.
But I also believe that to a high enough intelligence, I am utterly predictable, and any cleverness or uniqueness I think I produce, is merely me exhibiting my typical predictable behavior patterns over and over again. Sometimes I can even glimpse this happening, but other times it eludes me.
This is how I reconcile the fact that we as humans have free will, with the concept that God is omniscient and knows things far in the future before they happen. I understand that not only is God smarter than we are, he is so much smarter than we are that we can't even comprehend the magnitude of the difference, much like a cat cannot possibly comprehend the extent of the difference between mental faculties of a cat and the mental faculties of a human. A cat can only be vaguely aware that the human is better at solving some problems (like opening a door) than they are, but they can never hope to comprehend the extent of the difference between the complexities of thought processes. Even a less intelligent man (or a child) cannot understand the difference between the cognition of a more intelligent man (or an adult) and themselves.
(Disclaimer: In this thought process, I am treating intelligence and wisdom synonymous.)
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"Cosmos" can be said to essentially mean "deterministic system". Although I don't believe anything (yes, anything) fully, the way I would like to think of the cosmos is that the entire cosmos is a deterministic system of rules. The matter comprising me may be a large set of data points in space, and space may be a multi-dimensional array of possibly infinite resolution. I would like if the way these data points interact with the rest of the data points in the cosmos is deterministic, as that might mean that what we humans have observed with science so far is an accurate subset of that model.
I, through the deterministic processes which govern my body's matter, have as free a will as any moving object in the cosmos. I am simply a very complex moving object. Through these complex deterministic processes, I can breathe, love, see, cry, think, and everything else we consider makes us human.
Thinking of it this way, the cosmos is simple but beautiful.
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I'm with Nach there. I think it's more likely that the current theories surrounding quantum mechanics just result from a lack of understanding of the observed data.
I'm with Nach there. I think it's more likely that the current theories surrounding quantum mechanics just result from a lack of understanding of the observed data.
I wouldn't hold such an opinion if I didn't understand quantum mechanics (and I don't.) Just because something may be highly unintuitive doesn't mean it's wrong.
I'm with Nach there. I think it's more likely that the current theories surrounding quantum mechanics just result from a lack of understanding of the observed data.
As someone who has actually formally studied Quantum Mechanics, indeterminism is not due to a lack of understanding, it's how the universe seems fundamentally to be. Every hidden variable theory possible has been found to be either inconsistent with QM's predictions (failing to accurately describe known phenomena) or inconsistent with Special Relativity's (superluminality). This result is known as Bell's Theory.
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Is it possible that nondeterminism is fallout from some equivalent to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem as applied to reality?
I don't honestly know if what I just said is complete gibberish or a legitimate question. It does kind of feel like "it is impossible to make a consistent Theory of Everything for physics" is a statement of similar strength as "it is impossible to make a consistent, complete system of axioms".
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Is it possible that nondeterminism is fallout from some equivalent to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem as applied to reality?
I don't honestly know if what I just said is complete gibberish or a legitimate question. It does kind of feel like "it is impossible to make a consistent Theory of Everything for physics" is a statement of similar strength as "it is impossible to make a consistent, complete system of axioms".
From my limited understanding, no, that's not complete gibberish. To my knowledge, physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers have tried to connect Godel's incompleteness theorem to the physical universe from around the time it was published.
There are some issues with attempts to do so, if I'm not mistaken:
The universe is non-deterministic. As you point out, this potentially upsets application of Godel's incompleteness theorem because mathematics tends to be concerned with deterministic truths while the universe is probabilistic in nature.
The universe may be finite. Godel's theorem deals with very large numbers, so perhaps the universe is simply not large enough to contain a self-contradictory system. Hey, I suppose that even with an infinite universe, cosmic inflation may still prevent large enough systems from emerging.
Can a one-to-one correspondence be established between mathematical axioms and physical laws? I believe this is the biggest open question. I do not know if basic mathematical operations such as addition and multiplication or even the successor function can be written as a direct consequence of physical laws. How can the universe violate Godel's incompleteness theorem if axioms do not meaningfully exist in our universe? This question would need to be addressed before assuming that the universe is non-deterministic specifically because of the incompleteness theorem.
If I somehow haven't emphasized it enough, I have a relatively poor understanding of this subject, so don't take my word as gospel.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Every hidden variable theory possible has been found to be either inconsistent with QM's predictions (failing to accurately describe known phenomena) or inconsistent with Special Relativity's (superluminality). This result is known as Bell's Theory.
Which does not in any way indicate that things are non-deterministic. Just because existing theories/tools have yet to prove what is determining existing phenomenon does not mean that nothing is determining it.
I haven't seen anything claiming that it's impossible for there to be determinism. All I see so far is that we cannot know if there's determinism.
On a side point, say the simulation theory was true, and those ruining the simulation just wanted to "mess with" those running tests to confuse the results and hide their influence. In this case, the simulators are the determining factor, yet every test is rigged. To put it differently, only looking for some hidden "variable" as it were is shortsighted.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Thanks for the explanation, Bobo. It's interesting to hear that this is still an open problem, so to speak. I guess bridging theoretical math and "applied math" (physics) is a tricky job. :)
Nach wrote:
On a side point, say the simulation theory was true, and those ruining the simulation just wanted to "mess with" those running tests to confuse the results and hide their influence. In this case, the simulators are the determining factor, yet every test is rigged. To put it differently, only looking for some hidden "variable" as it were is shortsighted.
That starts getting into "does it really matter if functionally the result is the same?" regions. I mean, barring some security exploit that allows us to jailbreak the simulation, someone mucking with the numbers to make our tests nondeterministic is identical (from any perspective we can achieve) to a nonsimulated reality in which things really are nondeterministic.
If we were able to actually determine that we were in a simulation, and that was why our test results seemed nondeterministic, then that would be a different matter. Likewise if we were able to achieve some deeper understanding of (a non-simulated) reality that explained the seeming nondeterminism.
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Derakon wrote:
That starts getting into "does it really matter if functionally the result is the same?" regions. I mean, barring some security exploit that allows us to jailbreak the simulation, someone mucking with the numbers to make our tests nondeterministic is identical (from any perspective we can achieve) to a nonsimulated reality in which things really are nondeterministic.
It matters in terms of being able to prove things.
I propose the following theorem: If all input variables are known and the algorithm is known, then the exact output is always calculable there is no room for "surprising" results.
I also propose another theorem: It cannot be proven all the input variables are known and the full mechanics of an algorithm are known unless the output is always accurately calculable.
Under these strict rules there is no room for non-determinism for something we *believe* we know everything about (even though that's probably unlikely). It would mean that QM cannot possibly show non-determinism, but can show that someone is actively mucking with stuff. There's just a level of determinism - the jailbreaking, that we cannot penetrate.
Which sort of flows into what you said in the end:
Derakon wrote:
If we were able to actually determine that we were in a simulation, and that was why our test results seemed nondeterministic, then that would be a different matter. Likewise if we were able to achieve some deeper understanding of (a non-simulated) reality that explained the seeming nondeterminism.
If we really think we know everything there is to know about QM, and that both my above theorems hold true, then we have proven we are in a simulation with active mucking going on.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
I believe that I am making all my choices myself, and I am free to do it just as I please.
But I also believe that to a high enough intelligence, I am utterly predictable, and any cleverness or uniqueness I think I produce, is merely me exhibiting my typical predictable behavior patterns over and over again. Sometimes I can even glimpse this happening, but other times it eludes me.
This is how I reconcile the fact that we as humans have free will, with the concept that God is omniscient and knows things far in the future before they happen. I understand that not only is God smarter than we are, he is so much smarter than we are that we can't even comprehend the magnitude of the difference, much like a cat cannot possibly comprehend the extent of the difference between mental faculties of a cat and the mental faculties of a human. A cat can only be vaguely aware that the human is better at solving some problems (like opening a door) than they are, but they can never hope to comprehend the extent of the difference between the complexities of thought processes. Even a less intelligent man (or a child) cannot understand the difference between the cognition of a more intelligent man (or an adult) and themselves.
(Disclaimer: In this thought process, I am treating intelligence and wisdom synonymous.)
It isn't really free will though, if it's just something you believe you have. It's just an illusion then. And this brings up the classic argument, that God has then chosen from the very beginning which people go to hell (which the Bible also says), and satan in the garden was part of his plan too, and nobody has real free will. They only think they have.
Some Christians counter this argument by comparing God to a time traveller, but it's not the same thing, because a time traveller is not the creator of everything, so obviously he doesn't determine the actions of people, even if he would know them.
This is how to reconcile it:
God/universe knows everything we're going to do, because it has free will. When I choose to snap my fingers, the "I am" within me determined me to do that, and that pre-determination is free will. If I didn't determine what I'm going to do, my actions would be just random. They wouldn't be free. Determinism is the same thing as free will. They're just a false dichotomy.
Every hidden variable theory possible has been found to be either inconsistent with QM's predictions (failing to accurately describe known phenomena) or inconsistent with Special Relativity's (superluminality). This result is known as Bell's Theory.
Which does not in any way indicate that things are non-deterministic. Just because existing theories/tools have yet to prove what is determining existing phenomenon does not mean that nothing is determining it.
It's placing a constraint on the character a deterministic universe can take. Giving up locality is a (very) tough pill to swallow for physicists, as all phenomena can currently be described via fields and by extension local action. There's no "spooky action at a distance."
For a physicist it's more likely that the universe is simply not deterministic. Otherwise, you'd need to figure out the mechanism behind non-locality, and figure out why it can pass certain messages but not others.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
It's placing a constraint on the character a deterministic universe can take. Giving up locality is a (very) tough pill to swallow for physicists, as all phenomena can currently be described via fields and by extension local action. There's no "spooky action at a distance."
For a physicist it's more likely that the universe is simply not deterministic. Otherwise, you'd need to figure out the mechanism behind non-locality, and figure out why it can pass certain messages but not others.
All that is saying is that lets just go with some idea because it's too difficult to come up with something which will probably be more accurate.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
All that is saying is that lets just go with some idea because it's too difficult to come up with something which will probably be more accurate.
Nature is going to be the way it is irrespective of your desire for "accuracy" or whatever. So it's not that reasoning through to the determinism underneath is too difficult. It's that for all intents and purposes, we have no reason to believe that there is determinism underneath. And absent of a very good reason to believe otherwise, all you are bringing to the table right now is wishful thinking. An argument from personal incredulity.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
It's that for all intents and purposes, we have no reason to believe that there is determinism underneath. And absent of a very good reason to believe otherwise, all you are bringing to the table right now is wishful thinking. An argument from personal incredulity.
My reasoning is very simple, based on every study I've conducted with physics I fully understand, I see that "If all input variables are known and the algorithm is known, then the exact output is always calculable there is no room for "surprising" results" always holds true. Most of those studying QM want to claim this is not true of QM, despite being true for everything else. Perhaps, but they have 0 proof that all input variables are indeed known and that the "algorithm" is all known. There is still much study in the field of QM leaving the question of "algorithm" open, and the fact scientists are still occasionally proposing new variables to look for shows that there is no proof yet that all variables are known. Until there is proof that all variables are known, instead of proof against proposed variables, and knowledge of the field by all scientists is deemed complete, I find all the arguments entirely unconvincing. It is wishful thinking to assume everything is known, when there is no proof for that.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
It's that for all intents and purposes, we have no reason to believe that there is determinism underneath. And absent of a very good reason to believe otherwise, all you are bringing to the table right now is wishful thinking. An argument from personal incredulity.
My reasoning is very simple, based on every study I've conducted with physics I fully understand, I see that "If all input variables are known and the algorithm is known, then the exact output is always calculable there is no room for "surprising" results" always holds true. Most of those studying QM want to claim this is not true of QM, despite being true for everything else. Perhaps, but they have 0 proof that all input variables are indeed known and that the "algorithm" is all known. There is still much study in the field of QM leaving the question of "algorithm" open, and the fact scientists are still occasionally proposing new variables to look for shows that there is no proof yet that all variables are known. Until there is proof that all variables are known, instead of proof against proposed variables, and knowledge of the field by all scientists is deemed complete, I find all the arguments entirely unconvincing. It is wishful thinking to assume everything is known, when there is no proof for that.
Ugh, Nach. Please stop. OmnipotentEntity is right. You really don't know what you're talking about and you're doing yourself no favors by insisting that you "fully understand" the physics behind it when you clearly do not.
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Bobo the King wrote:
Ugh, Nach. Please stop. OmnipotentEntity is right. You really don't know what you're talking about and you're doing yourself no favors by insisting that you "fully understand" the physics behind it when you clearly do not.
When did I say I fully understand the physics behind QM?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
It is wishful thinking to assume everything is known, when there is no proof for that.
This is a vacuous statement, is the thing. Your argument devolves into "you can't prove you know everything", which is true (and literally always will be true, because e.g. we can never prove that the universe isn't being manually manipulated by an omnipotent sentient amoeba who merely chooses in each instant to pretend that everything follows physical laws). But it's also useless, because it doesn't tell us anything about the universe, which is the fundamental rule we use to decide whether to trust a proposed theorem.
The fact is that the current understanding of QM is a better predictor of reality than any other theoretical framework we've achieved thus far. Does that mean that it is a perfectly accurate description of reality? That is, as noted above, impossible to declare with absolute certainty. But QM is the best model we have right now. Arguing that it might be incomplete due to [insert handwaving here] (as opposed to due to some legitimate predictive failure) amounts to philosophical wankery; it's not a serious argument.
Put another way, unless you can demonstrate some way to test your proposed hypothesis that things really are deterministic at some level lying "underneath" QM, said hypothesis is pointless.
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When did I say I fully understand the physics behind QM?
I seem to have misinterpreted your previous statement. I did, however, find this comment of yours earlier in the thread:
Nach wrote:
Bobo the King wrote:
Nach wrote:
Which is probably just wishful thinking if not outright baloney. Every perceived possibility for randomness is simply inability to understand the variables or algorithms involved.
This is strongly suspected to be false. To fully understand why, you'll need to thoroughly study RGamma's link on hidden variable theories as well as things like quantum entanglement and the Bell inequalities. We have strong reason to believe that probability naturally arises out of quantum mechanics and attempts to explain quantum mechanical phenomena as a consequence of probability theory results in predictions that are not upheld by experiment.
I've read up on all this material, I find it entirely unconvincing. All the experiments can prove is that so far there is much phenomena that cannot be explained by existing tools. I would go so far as to say that determinism is unfalsifiable, anything which proves non-determinism can be viewed in a different perspective to prove lack of knowledge.
Your last two sentences demonstrate that you have essentially no understanding of Bell's theorem.
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Derakon wrote:
Nach wrote:
It is wishful thinking to assume everything is known, when there is no proof for that.
The fact is that the current understanding of QM is a better predictor of reality than any other theoretical framework we've achieved thus far. Does that mean that it is a perfectly accurate description of reality? That is, as noted above, impossible to declare with absolute certainty. But QM is the best model we have right now. Arguing that it might be incomplete due to [insert handwaving here] (as opposed to due to some legitimate predictive failure) amounts to philosophical wankery; it's not a serious argument.
I'm not saying that QM as a whole must be wrong, I'm saying that it comes off as hubris to claim that things are non-deterministic simply because we haven't been able to yet explain random phenomenon.
Derakon wrote:
Put another way, unless you can demonstrate some way to test your proposed hypothesis that things really are deterministic at some level lying "underneath" QM, said hypothesis is pointless.
Why should we not think there is a level underneath though? At some point scientists were saying the smallest element was the molecule. As science progressed, whatever was thought to be the end all later on was proven untrue and there was a level beyond. Just because the current extent of our knowledge that we're researching is QM, we should honestly think that is the last step? Eventually I guess there must be a last step, but unless we have proof that it is, why should we *believe* that? Such logic is probably just repeating the same mistakes of the past.
We can *blindly* trust the current knowledge at saying there is randomness, but I find that hard to swallow.
Bobo the King wrote:
Your last two sentences demonstrate that you have essentially no understanding of Bell's theorem.
Then please explain it in a way someone with only superficial understanding of QM can understand it.
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I'm not saying that QM as a whole must be wrong, I'm saying that it comes off as hubris to claim that things are non-deterministic simply because we haven't been able to yet explain random phenomenon.
Things are non-deterministic to the best of our knowledge. That "to the best of our knowledge" disclaimer is attached to literally every statement of fact in scientific inquiries, and is thus assumed to be implicit because otherwise writing things gets really repetitive, really fast.
Why should we not think there is a level underneath though? At some point scientists were saying the smallest element was the molecule. As science progressed, whatever was thought to be the end all later on was proven untrue and there was a level beyond. Just because the current extent of our knowledge that we're researching is QM, we should honestly think that is the last step? Eventually I guess there must be a last step, but unless we have proof that it is, why should we *believe* that? Such logic is probably just repeating the same mistakes of the past.
You are of course free to seek out some underlying level. There's nothing inherent about QM (as far as I'm aware) that means that it must be the most fundamental level. However, we have no evidence for a deeper level, so by Occam's Razor there's no reason to assume that one exists. Until such a level is found, "the universe is nondeterministic" is the best (most accurately predictive) physics model we have.
We can *blindly* trust the current knowledge at saying there is randomness, but I find that hard to swallow.
Well, you're letting your personal biases influence your beliefs. At least you're in good company; Einstein famously had trouble swallowing QM as well.
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Derakon wrote:
Nach wrote:
I'm not saying that QM as a whole must be wrong, I'm saying that it comes off as hubris to claim that things are non-deterministic simply because we haven't been able to yet explain random phenomenon.
Things are non-deterministic to the best of our knowledge. That "to the best of our knowledge" disclaimer is attached to literally every statement of fact in scientific inquiries, and is thus assumed to be implicit because otherwise writing things gets really repetitive, really fast.
That's the crux of my argument though, the idea of determinism vs. non-determinism specifically depends on knowledge. Unless we are certain we know everything (unlikely), then we cannot know it is non-deterministic. This is also why I said determinism is non-falsifiable.
Derakon wrote:
so by Occam's Razor there's no reason to assume that one exists.
Yet learning from mistakes of history, there's reason to assume one does exist.
Derakon wrote:
Until such a level is found, "the universe is nondeterministic" is the best (most accurately predictive) physics model we have.
We can *blindly* trust the current knowledge at saying there is randomness, but I find that hard to swallow.
Well, you're letting your personal biases influence your beliefs. At least you're in good company; Einstein famously had trouble swallowing QM as well.
I'm aware of Einstein's problems, and I agree with many of his remarks. These QM concepts don't *feel* like they are being very scientific. It may be the most accurately predictive, but at the same time it acknowledges limitations of not being able to be predictive. But then not being able to predict some things leads to ideas of randomness without physical causation, and all this is coupled with inability to know multiple properties simultaneously, or being able to study things without changing them. All that to me just says we don't know enough, or due to how it all works, we can't know enough. I find this makes "randomness as likely" to be a heavily flawed conclusion.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Nach wrote:
Then please explain it in a way someone with only superficial understanding of QM can understand it.
Thank you, I read it. I don't see how this or anything else I've read proves a leaning towards inherent randomness. All these articles just seem to cover better trying to understand entanglement. Also to just throw some crazy on top, these theories I've read don't even seem to discuss what if whatever equipment is running the tests may somehow be entangled influencing the outcome. Are properties being measured those of the particles or possibly properties of the measuring equipment? I'm sure there's some paper on that too, but the summaries on Wikipedia and elsewhere that I've seen don't seem to get much into that.
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