tronvillain

It has been a while since I did any reading on the subject, but I was not under the impression that hidden variables were ruled out entirely. True randomness is just the simpler hypothesis.

Kenny

Local hidden variables are ruled out by Bell's Theorem violations. Non-local hidden variable theories are not ruled out, however.

Aethari

The site says,

"The current status of hidden variable theories is framed by an influential paper by John Bell, which acknowledges that hidden variable theories are possible, but only if the theories are nonlocal, meaning that changes in the quantum system are conveyed from place to place faster than the speed of light, in violation of Einstein's special relativity theory."

All I know is what I've read so far Are nonlocal hidden variables a reasonable conclusion if they violate special relativity? I don't know enough about physics to answer that.

~Aethari

crocodile deathroll

No I would not dismiss particle motion as being random as giving up as there is an inherent weakness in that our brains too are particles are so random. They is made of exactly the same "random" particles. So the random wave function of the universe is also the wave function of the individual.

This opens the way to the possibility of <a href="http://www.universalrelativity.com/quantum_immortality.htm" target="_blank">Quantum Immortality </a>
This is not a fanciful as it sounds, given the improbable chances of existing in the first place.
We can never possibly be aware of the quantum superpositions where we do not exist

Oxymoron

Are you serious? Your profile says you are a "scientific realist". But this sounds like utter pseudoscientific BS. Then again, it could just be me and my atheism prejudicing me

There is no evidence (though some speculation) about quantum effects (microtubules) in brains. By the time you get to the macro level (cells, bacteria and larger), QM has long since smoothed out into the regular classical behaviour we're familiar with.

In any case, particle motion is not random. At the micro level it may be indeterminate (position being complementary with momentum, energy complementary with time), but the bounds of uncertainty are well defined through the Heisenberg equations. QM is - at root - a statistical system that says in principle this is the most you can know about a system. Whether the underlying process is "truly" random or not is neither here nor there, for even if it weren't we could never know.

crocodile deathroll

I am an athiest too and I said it may be one possibility not an empirical fact, I chose my words carefully.

There are a lot of questions I would like to answer about the mystery of consciousness. Like why am I living now and not in the reign of Queen Victoria? And consider that there is 14 billion years between the big bang and your birth and did that seem like 14 billion years to you?
And if you were unconscious for another 14 billion years and opened your eyes and awoke would it feel any more different to being unconscious for an attosecond?
So I am illustrating it is really impossible to be aware of you own non-existence. Consider that

Oxymoron

I am sure your parents had something to do with that? Ok, I'm being a bit flippant. Do you mean "why am I conscious of being alive now?" Presumably because you are alive now.

I don't understand. What does that have to do with the price of a loaf?

Yes. My body would long have disintegrated and I would not have the hardware support for consciousness.

Inverse Descartes? I am considering it, but it is not shedding light on anything.

There really is no mystery that I can see about consciousness. Most scientists can't even agree on how to define it so it's entirely bogus to say it's mysterious It's a red herring. At the end of the day, all the richness of human behaviour is a product of the complexity of brains and their support hardware, nothing more.

crocodile deathroll

If you were born a mere 4600 years earlier and watching the pyramids being built then your subjective now then and not in some far flung future world in 2002 AD.
In the 14 billion years you had not been born a mere 4600 years would seem neither here nor there.


Well it is only mysterious until science demystifies it. Take Watson and Crick with the double helix, the most important building blocks of life, was a mystery for centuries until they demystified it.

Funny then eminent neurologist Susan Greenfield said consciousness is a mystery. One of the big questions she would like to answer is "what causes consciousness ?" period.
Mystery: what is it in your brain that makes you feel like you and me feel like me when on a QM level we are composed of exactly the same material.
The same boring baryons in all of us. But I am sure some scientist will crack it soon.

If you were a particle physicist, could you observe the difference between the properties of quarks the came out of your brain and quarks that came out of someone else's?

And yes you have hit on it, we are a product of the complexity of brains. "Complexity" is the key word here. You can never endow the property of consciousness to a vacuum or an electron or a bacterium

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

tronvillain

Kenny:
I had to go and do some reading, but as far as I can tell that conclusion is dependent on the hidden variable theory giving the photons a definite polarization. Perhaps I am missing something, but I am not clear why this would necessarily follow from the existence of local hidden variables.

Now, I do not actually think there are hidden variables, local or non-local. It is far simpler to say that the principle of sufficient reason does not always hold - that some events are truly random.

crocodile deathroll

I have no problems in the multiverse theory. Someone may prove me wrong sometime down the track, but I feel it is a hand escape for explaining so called quantum variables.
Like imaging if you decided to commit suicide and you put a revolver to your left ear and pulled the trigger. The usual outcome will result in your brains blown out of your right ear but you will not be aware of the fatal outcomes because for the simple reason you will be dead, and it is not possible to observe your own death

However the hypothetical multiverse there are trillions of quantum variables to your brain would be full every possible outcome and it is only the living outcomes you will be aware of. So you may find the trigger jamming or waking up in hospital surviving your injuries. But it is more likely you will continue to exist in a world where you had second thoughts and did not pulled the trigger at all and this same claim is your "free choice". But free choice is just an illusion instead you simply switched a universe where the motor cortex in your brain was not activated 2000 milliseconds before a decision of suicide was made. It was activated 2000 milliseconds before you made the decision not to proceed and instead it find yourself in a universe where you calmly place the loaded revolver back on the table.
<a href="http://www.damaris.org/dcscs/readingroom/2000/brainstory6.htm" target="_blank">The illusion of free will</a>