Xss27 you must be a very frustrated person given the numerous reasons that are about
FYI, I must admit that reading power-language to me has the opposite effect than aimed for.

It would however frustrate myself when google's and IBM's efforts for quantum computers would have been all but smoke and mirrors, so there are exiting times coming ahead. They say being further than strict testing and already on the terrain of monitoring early results.

I understand the appeal of all these high-tech goodies, Jees. The geek in me is very much alive! I'm just very cynical about things now, as you can tell They'll make some strides sure but I don't see it breaking past its own hype, in the same way AI won't either. We're not going to have personal quantum computing any time soon. What difference would it make to us anyway when all everyone just wants computers for is to stream Love Island and the football!



This is where I'm not cynical but optimistic. Sooner or later someone, or nature, will unleash something that will fundamentally shake the scientific paradigm to its foundations. I see it as an inevitability.

Science is a trip. But it's become like one of those thought loops that you sometimes get caught up in, where either someone pulls you out by shaking you or you shake yourself out of it by taking a step back to evaluate the situation. That's what science needs. It has become too head strong with the mathematics and needs some philosophical intuition, some feeling, to pull it out of the loop it has found itself in. Though I think a large part of the issue is both financing and the military industrial complex that both have a monopoly over the scientific process in the modern world, it's not a free humanitarian enterprise that people assume it to be.

The fact that mathematics even works at all suggests it has some connection to the ontology of our reality. We see geometry absolutely everywhere in nature, especially the golden ratio. It also permeates visionary and psychedelic states heavily. It is one of the reasons why I unsubscribed from the atheist school of thought. It is like the fingerprint of God, but not God itself.

But whilst a fingerprint may identify the subject it isn't much more than a hint, a signpost, to the subject. That's why I think the over reliance on mathematics to describe the universe is a failed endeavor and should only be used in a predictive fashion in physics when caution is applied. You can not take mathematics or use it in isolation to determine the movement or motivation of the whole system, in my opinion.

Incidentally I was reading about Roger Joseph Boscovich after finding out it was his book Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis that Tesla was reading in one of his iconic photographs. Boscovich was a Jesuit, very interesting and smart fellow. Anyway, he had this idea about determinism - from wikipedia;



That train of thought still permeates science today I feel. Not the idea itself, the determinism, but that you can analyze the system in part (or in that case the whole thing) and determine using mathematics the movement and motivation of the whole system. It presumes that the system is not a dynamic one in any way, with a creator or spontaneous/organic evolution for example.

Are you slowly coming around? Reading (interpreting) your quantum critics it would never be possible at all, due being all wrong at the most fundamental base.
Maybe you were cynical in expressing the unlikelihood and I took it too literal?

I thought that AI was already at our fingertips somehow. Prolly a matter of perception here.

I'm totally with you that the biggest body of developed high tech consists of serving mega stupor pursuits, where the money is, on the biggest marked of all being 'the human shortcomings/alleged-needs'. Aggravating situations. This is a totally other topic deserving an own thread I suppose. It would be nice to have development without this wasteful wash out, but that's intertwined with economics and politics and whatnot.

But does modern science rely too much on mathematics?

Black holes where a mathematical concept at first.
And einstein thought they where not likely to actually exist, exactly for this reason.

So i think einstein himself would probably have agreed with you that a mathematical model by itself is not enough and that you need empirical data to speak of proper science.

But now we have images of what very likely are actual black holes.

And i think the reason why so many of einsteins theoretical concepts, that he didn't even take seriously himself, came true, is because the mathematics of relativity and special relativity is rooted in empirical data.

Black holes still are just a mathematical concept though. The images we have do not prove the theory of black holes, all they actually tell us is that there's the most energetic environment we know of at the centre of galaxies and that's all. No one can see that environment directly and we've not probed it. You can project your belief on to that if you wish but the truth is we simply don't know what is there.

Black hole theory didn't predict 'jets'. Columns of matter, trillions and trillions of tons of it shooting out at near light speed from the poles of whatever sits at the heart of galaxies. Jets do not exactly fit the notion of an all consuming super gravitational centre..

If you go by what you see then the images could even suggest the opposite of black holes, matter actually being created.

Maybe this is what is productive at this point:

For more details on xss27's opinions about black holes, please refer to this thread: Probably a historic day

For more details on xss27's opinions about quantum physics in general, please refer to this thread: God



If everyone behaved like you the discussion would devolve even further. I assume you believe it's OK for you since you're the correct one.

It is pointless to argue with someone who is immutable to the reasoning and logic and already has an estabilished opinion on everything

Look in the mirror. Always the same, you science cult followers just can't resist using the condescending attitude can you. Whatever, keep believing science has it all wrapped up neatly if it helps you sleep better at night, and just plug your ears and eyes to the continuing failures of particle physics and cosmology going on right now.

Please no cussing or personal attacks,nor preaching, as per our attitude requirements.

Physicists Roger Penrose has some interesting ideas about the collapse. He says it is triggered when gravitational energy exceeds the uncertainty allowed by quantum mechanics (if I understand his idea right).

Ok, I love you too

P.s. I'm not that deep into science cult, but I used to be, I just think it provides me the way to live comfortable life. I look at it as the best toolset we have to studying our reality as of now and that's it. Science has had a lot of history of common human behaviour like bullying and undeservingly belittling certain ideas, including religion. Everything should be balanced - rationality vs. spirituality.

Thank you for being straight on topic

Thanks

There are some cool videos on YouTube of him explaining it if you haven't seen one of them already. He does a great job I think.

^^^ Will do, it is yet another deviation from the Von Neumann - Wigner interpretation (aka human-or-alike consciousness is paramountly needed for 'materialization' ).

I think this is a beautiful general-audience talk on an interpretation that is gaining more acceptance lately.

This topic again!?

You can see video of the results of modern double slit experiment here (this is good article to get an idea of how these experiments are conducted and how one measures a photon):

https://aapt.scitation.o...i/full/10.1119/1.4955173

The idea that consciousness causes wave function collapse is not really taken seriously by most physicists. Victor Stenger (before he died) wrote a few books (Quantum Gods and The Unconscious Quantum) debunking this idea and how it was being promoted by new age guru types to sell pseudoscience to the lay public.

What causes wave function collapse has been debated endlessly and might not even be the correct question to be asking. Whether wave function is a real description of reality or just a mathematical construct to describe the results of experiments (like the double slit) is a philosophical rabbit hole that might not even matter really.

xss27 is right in that theoretical physics is at the end of its rope. It is time for a paradigm shift to move the field forward. Physics is very much at that point described in Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" where most of the work ongoing is just confirming the old paradigm and not really developing a new more complete one.

I don't know what form this revolution will take. Building bigger particle accelerators seems to be a dead end. Even though the Large Hadron Collidor did what they thought it would do. It confirmed predictions from the standard model of particle physics in regards to Higgs boson. It did not find super-symmetry as predicted and this is an interesting problem.

I'm sorry
Clearly you invested some efforts in 2011 & 2013 on debunking the consciousness myth as it is presented sometimes but you won't have to do that again here (so far), that idea is not once promoted in this thread, and it was my initial goal with OP to un-feed that route even further.
To cut in the collapse cake again has delivered some nice additions over the older threads, so all is not in vain.

I've also noticed that you are not against consciousness interfering per se, but not on the base of the experiments and findings so far. I concur, it would actually a very bold claim to state there is impossible involvement at all, one needs a very strong case to do so. Mind-over-matter not working as wished is not enough.

Thanks for that link of the detectors!

Science front line is speculation and philosophy, trial and error. If anyone like xss27 spray disregard over science, he/she/anyone might reconsider the idea they had about science or propose a more successful approach?

On a side note: seriously, if we do find more keys to absolute-codex, a theory of everything , are we (humanity at large) emotionally capable to harvest and handle the responsibility that comes with it?

So let's say particles are always in a superposition of different states, and it is when they interact with other particles that they collapse into a single state. Wouldn't that automatically mean that somewhere a particle in superposition, just by the power of numbers, in one of it's many positions, has to bump into another particle in one of it's many positions, causing both of them to collapse into a definite state?

Wouldn't that be a realistic answer to why there are definite states at all?

One can skip to 11 mins if needed.

The video in the OP is very nice, clear explanation of the issue. I'm joking a bit regarding this discussion



Yes exactly, there is no experimental evidence to suggest that consciousness is involved.



I should add I disagree with most everything else xss27 (no offense ) said about science. I do agree that fundamental physics is in a bit of a bind these days though.



We are barely responsible enough to handle nuclear fission so I guess it depends on the technology developments that would come from such a theory. I'm not sure theory of everything is realistic because there are things in the universe we can't ever observe.



Thats kind of how I think about it. But I'm not sure if that is a lay-persons understanding (I'm not physicist).