pariah

isac newton would say that? two bodies will always be attracted to each other, thats why planets rotate and etc. (not very detaield in heree but i dont feel like going into depth).

i highly reccomend that space book by the wheel chair guy

its a very simplistic overview of all these things

Majestyk

I propose the question: Do the mentally defecient know that they are mentally defecient?

sourdough

you mean this guy;
www.mchawking.com/
click on mp3&lyricz

Justin70

Dammit!

I was REALLY enjoying the discussion about Quantum Theory! Could we stop with the logical fallicies argument and get back to QT?

I was actually learning a lot. Lob? Xian? Please?

Justin

Nowhere357

Great thread, people. Almost a clinic. MHO:

Yes.

Starting with an Newton's apple (ironic), the theory of gravity is our best attempt to explain what we observe. This associates gravity with mass. Stars have mass, galaxies are made of stars, therefore gravity exists in the Andromeda galaxy.

Yes.

Because all certainty in our relationships with the natural universe requires an acknowledgement of causality. The only other options I'm aware of are blind faith, or irrational belief.


Xian, you also ask:
"Do you think your rational processes & abilities are more accurate than ANY theist's rational processes who concludes that the universe was created by a supernatural being?"

No. Because "supernatural" (in this forum) MUST mean "things that don't exist at all" (see the home page), then any conclusion that supernatural beings exist clearly is not rational, but requires blind faith or irrational belief.

A person can hold irrational belief, and still have excellent rational processes (surprisingly, even when the irrational belief and rational belief directly contradict!). Therefore, a theist's belief in god is not a direct indication of his RATIONAL processes.


How would you define your view of god, without using the word supernatural?

NumberTenOx

I would like to credit Xian for attacking science at a (current) weak point. I suggest reading The Infamous Boundary: Seven Decades of Controversy in Quantum Physics by David Wick.

The basic question is this: why don't we see quantum effects (i.e. "lack of causation" in this thread) at the macroscopic level? Where, exactly, is the boundary between the QM world and the classical world? Why do we see superposition of states at the elementary particle level but not in macroscopic objects (why can't we see the cat as both dead and alive)?

The answer is pretty exciting: no one really knows. This is an ongoing subject of debate in the physics community, and has produced tons of very weird ideas. What is clear is that we're missing something in our understanding of how the universe is put together. I'm excited to try and follow progress in this area.

Cheers.

Asha'man

I think the answer to this is pretty obvious, and I stated it once before on this thread. The macroscopic scale exists only as the sum of an enormous number of quantum level entities. The random nature of quantum effects doesn’t disappear at the macroscopic level, it is simply hidden behind average behavior, which is all that we observe.

To see a chair perform an uncaused quantum tunneling 3 feet to the left is statistically impossible, since every single particle that forms the chair would have to behave in the exact same fashion, quantum tunneling randomly and without cause in the same direction.

The only way to get a chair to move three feet to the left is to apply a macroscopic cause, a force that affects every single particle and induces the same motion.

At the macroscopic level, causes are required for the explicit reason that vast numbers of particles must be influenced at the same time in the same way. At the quantum level, where only a very small number of particles are being examined, the random nature of quantum mechanics becomes visible.

Nowhere357

This explanation makes sense to me, but I don't find it obvious. Is it your opinion that no other rational explanations for QT (micro vs macro) exist?

BTW I think "statistical impossibility" is incorrect. I don't know statistics well, and a search turned up little of value. I would guess that every particle in the chair COULD tunnel at once, it's just highly improbable. Does "statistical impossiblity" have a technical meaning here? If "improbability" approaches a high enough value, does it then become statistically "impossible"?

NumberTenOx

Although I agree that viewing the boundary as a statistical one explains a lot, I don't think it's the end of the story.

First, the difference between "improbable" and "impossible" is a fine one. I seem to remember that if you compute the probability of an object as large as a chair exhibiting visible quantum tunneling, you get a time period much longer than the age of the universe. While in theory not impossible, in this case it is in reality impossible.

Second, I am not an expert, but QM systems exhibit superposition. Take the double slit experiment - when you're not looking each photon travels through both slits. When you look, each photon only travels through one slit. The question is what you mean by "look".

It turns out to be very complicated. If you interact with the photons in a way that let's you distinquish which path they traveled, you destroy the superposition. But you can interact with the photons in many ways that don't tell you which slit they went through, and maintain the superposition. The key seems to be not what you do, but if what you do allows the potential to determine the path information. If you alter one path, that destroys the superposition. If you alter both paths the same way, so that you can't distinquish photons afterwards, you maintain the superposition.

So the question arises where exactly does the superposition disappear? Where in the test setup is the place that "knows" that it is possible to determine the path information? Is the superposition maintained among the elements of the test setup, and then somewhere collapsed when it's finally determined that the pathways are unique or identical? If so you're dealing with superposition in test elements that are much larger than you would expect statistically to be able to exhibit quantum behavior.

I've explained this badly, and have only a dim understanding anyway. But I'm fascinated by the experiments that are being done in this area, and think that our understanding of what's happening is going to change dramatically sometime in the next few years.

Jamie_L

I'm a latecomer to the thread, but this bit caught my attention.

I'll ignore for a moment the vagueness of talking about "rational processes and abilities".

Step back for a minute and think about this. When any human being comes to a conclusion he feels is true, by definition that person believes his conclusion is more accurate than the different conclusions made by other people. If this were not the case, that person would reach one of those different conclusions instead.

If you think your conclusion is rational, you will think an opposite conclusion based on the same evidence is irrational. Again, this is essentially what it means to believe that you have made a correct, rational conclusion. It has nothing to do with arrogance.

How can one come to a conclusion and feel that the opposite conclusion is both accurate and rational? This isn't arrogance. It's just a fact of making conclusions.

However, it is possible to hold a conclusion contrary to someone else's, and still think that other person is in a more general way smarter, better at reasoning, etc. that you. If I say "you are incorrect about conclusion X", that is a completely independent statement from me saying "your rational processes and abilities are inferior to mine".

So, I believe theists come to an incorrect and irrational and incorrect conclusion, and that I have come to a rational and correct conclusion about the same thing. I don't claim to be smarter than all theists, though it's quite likely I'm smarter than many and less smart than many others.

Jamie