Randomness

Kedaman

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Data is objective in subjective perspective and subjective in objective perspective. Information is objective in objective perspective while subjective in subjective perspective.

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Are you having a laugh or something? Are you just winding me up here? You're just playing word games now, aren't you?

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To you data is objective no matter what, because you can't see think objectively like me. How paradoxal is that?

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Well we're not all blessed with your god like powers are we? ;)

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Information is subjective and meaningfull, but does it exist other than to you?

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No it doesn't. Two different people might extrapolate the same or similar informaiton from the same bit of data but they are independant and not directly verifiable.

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Do you think it's an illusion resulted from your interpretation?

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It's not an illusion, as such. It is unverifiably real. Useful data is extracted and uesless data is ignored. It is data framed from a particular perspective.

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Once again, what do you think the purpose of your consciousness is?

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From a biological point of view? To extract useful information. From a philisophical point of view? To ponder one's own existance.

Simon
No I am definitely not playing word games. But are you even willing to understand what I'm trying to say?

Nothing God-like to distinguish between objective and subjective point of view, but are you willing to try?

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Useful data is extracted and uesless data is ignored

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What does this mean? That information is just refined data?

Kedaman: English does not seem to be your native language, which probably creates a barrier to my understanding much of what you say. For example: I understand the following but it does not seem valid to me, and I have never seen a statement similar to it.

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. . . randomness is defined as information that appear from nothing . . .

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The following similarly seems invalid to me, but I do not really understand what is being said.

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If I consider Objectiveness essential to existance, then my information is your external universe.
If I consider Subjectiveness essential to existance, then my information provides your external universe. In this case there is practical use of probabilistic interpretation, but to me, it is still unnessesary belief to consider it true.

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Perhaps it would be better to say that I cannot translate the above into statements that are meaningful to me.

Simonm: Neils Bohr once said something like the following.

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If you are not confused by Quantum Theory, you do not understand what we are saying.

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It was just a quaint way of saying that QT concepts are inherently counterintuitive to a mind which has evolved to cope with the classical world we perceive with human senses unaided by technology.

There are no answers to questions like the following.

• Why did that particular nucleus decay when it did? Why that nucleus and not this one? Someday, some physicist might answer this one by saying “that is when the strange blue quark died.” Then the question becomes why did it die just then, when the strange blue quark in the other nucleus did not die?
  
• Why do like charges repel and unlike charges attract rather than vice versa?
  
• Why is the velocity of light approximately 300,000 km/sec instead of being faster or slower? Similarly, why do various physical constants have the values they have?
  
• Why is gravity attractive, rather than repulsive? Why is there a gravitational force of any kind? BTW: There are experiments attempting to determine if antimatter attracts or repels ordinary matter, because this is an open question.

We seem to think there should be an answer to the first of the above questions, but few people ask the other questions.

The following digression seems relevant to QT being counterintuitive. I often amuse myself by playing Blackjack in casinos about 60 miles from where I live. With correct play (not requiring card counting), you figure to lose $5.00 per $1000.00 worth of small bets, making it one of my less expensive forms of amusement. Skiing, golf, & duplicate bridge are more expensive.

At the Blackjack table, when you have a total of 16 and the dealer shows an 8, you should ask for another card, even though the odds are about 8 to 5 that you will bust. When you break your hand, the dealer immediately takes yours cards and your money. If you do not break or if you do not take another card, your punishment or reward comes 15 to 60 seconds later.

Whenever I ask for the card, I cringe a bit internally. This is due to the many times that I was immediately punished for taking the card. My intellectual knowledge that it is the correct play does not seem to be able to completely overcome the Pavlovian conditioning. Intellectual knowledge relating to QT is contrary to concepts conditioned into your mind by experiences and perceptions in the classical world.

The Schrodinger Cat debate does not seem so weird if the role of the observer is de-emphasized. Consider the following two statements.

• The wave function collapses and the quantum choice is made when an observer makes a measurement. Until that time the quantum particle is in some limbo state, neither particle nor wave, neither decayed nor undecayed, et cetera.
  
• The state of a quantum particle is indeterminate until its state has some effect on the classical world. Yogi Berra would say: “Nothing has happened until some does happen.”

The above view avoids assigning such a critical role to the observer. The cat living or dying is a classical world event. If the quantum event happens, with or without an observer, the cat is dead. A forensic pathologist could tell the physicist that the wave function collapsed hours before the physicist looked in the box, eliminating the need for belief in a limbo state for the cat.

The following requires concentration, and to me is the best example of quantum weirdness I have encountered.

Particles can become entangled, meaning that their polarity and various other quantum properties are matched. Consider various experiments with polarization detectors and pairs of entangled photons. Pairs of photons are sent through two detectors. If a photon passes though a detector, a one is recorded, otherwise a zero is recorded.

• The output from a detector is a random string of zeros and ones, unless the photons are deliberately polarized, which is not the case in these experiments.
  
• For entangled photons and vertically aligned detectors, the two detectors record identical strings of zeros and ones.
  
• One detector can be rotated from vertical by a postive angle (call it Alpha) such that measurements consistently disagree by 25%. Id est: If the two strings of ones and zeros are compared, they agree 75% of the time.
  
• If the other detector is now rotated by negative Alpha from the vertical position, you would expect a 50% or better agreement in the strings of ones and zeros. You can imagine a reference string of zeros and ones which would be obtained from two vertically aligned detectors. One rotated detector would produce a string of ones and zeros with 25% of the bits disagreeing with the reference string. Similarly, the other rotated detector would record a 25% mismatch rate. Some of the mismatches could cancel, so the combined mismatch rate could be less than 50%
  
• When such an experiment is performed, the mismatch rate is 75%, which happens to agree with Quantum Theory predictions.

The explanation for the above is that the reference string never existed, and therefore the hypothetical results could not be used in the analysis. The logic leading to the 50% mismatch rate is impeccable. This sort of experiment leads to the claim that a quantum state cannot be assumed to exist if it has not been measured in some experiment. I think it is more proper to say that the state does not exist until its existence affects the classical world of our senses. At least I feel more comfortable with the latter statement.

A similar classical experiment would be to fire long carpenter nails at taut evenly spaced parallel wires. A nail approximately parallel to the wires would get through. In the classical experiment a motion picture camera could record the alignment of the nails and determine which would get though hypothetical vertically aligned wires. In a sense the reference string of ones and zeros would exist even though the aligned wires were not there.

Fascinating :) I've read this before but it's still pretty amazing.

By the way, you don't get strange blue up quarks. The colour (or color as you would write) of a quark is not a literal colour, it's just a label for the kind of quark, of which there are currently six known: (in order of mass, as far as I remember) up, down, strange, charm, bottom, top. There are also the six associated antiquarks (notice the symmetry with the six leptons and their antiquarks).

Guv - could you give me a reference descibing the quark colours you're talking about please? I don't remember coming across them before, I'd be very interested to read about it.

Ah, no need, I found an easy explanation of it without too much hard work searching :)

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/quarks.html

Guv

I do not seek to find underlying patterns to, what I believe are, random quantum phenomena. It is of interest, however, to find answers to certain questions that have not been answered, to my ears, very satisfactorarly.

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The wave function collapses and the quantum choice is made when an observer makes a measurement.

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What causes this "collapse of a wave function" to leave a definite state of affairs? More precisely, what causes it to take one particular state over another?

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realise that there need not be an answer. If there were an answer, It would not be described as random or probabalistic. It would be deterministic.

Kedaman

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No I am definitely not playing word games. But are you even willing to understand what I'm trying to say?

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I am willing, but there are limits. I won't spend the rest of my life attempting to grasp your cryptic notions. Am I really that far off? Am I not even close?

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Even fewer of these, can't believe in anything at all because they "know they don't know anything". Most of them can live with it, but some will not be satisfied but suffers depression from it. I am one of them, although I haven't seen any other.

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From what I have read, Socrates shared this belief. He spent much of his time walking round finding people to argue with and showing them that they knew nothing and leading them to contradict themselves. Socrates was not a solopsist, however, as they believed that reality was what ever you argued it to be.

I do not accept that "we know nothing". We know something. It might not be much but it is still someting. I still don't know what basis you have to completely dismiss all that you know. Don't hold it as absolute fact but don't dismiss it altogther either.

Simon
Nope, not quite. Information is not meaningless to me, it is a tool, a tool for the situation. I don't hold absolute facts because I define facts as beliefs and beliefs are moraly wrong to me. For me there is no validity of information, only usefullness. So, no I'm not here to argue about the lack of proovability, as Socrates did. I am taking the productive step to define my worldview (as a tool, not a belief).

I am glad that you didn't turn out to not care, because I want at least someone to understand me :)
I will try my best to make you understand, so I hope you will get there within nearest two or three posts.

I have begun to view things in two extreeme perspectives, mostly because there is two interpretations I do, one is subjective and one is objective.

In the subjective view, there is no "me", just what I observ, the QM vision, where everything being observed exists. The view perspective can be applied on any system, which in turn gives the illusion of an objective universe. This objective universe "exists" in terms of QM.

In the objective view, there is only me and information; since there is no need for any external objects, I don't define any external objects (Occam's razor). The only practical use of this view is the openmindness.

The objective universe is of course the source to my subjective one, all phenomena observed is related to information, all events are evaluated observations based on definite static information.

The classic Newtonian objective universe can be dismissed, because it's not good, we (know) that the physical world doesn't work by itself.

Now if we look around, what do we see? Objects, Systems, Properties, States, Time, Space and all kinds of Dimensions, but we don't see information. However this vision is provided by the information, a hint to existance of such. But what have you said? That information isn't a physical thing, it only exist and is meaningfull to you. So although we describe an objective universe (we do percept the entities, the objects) with our subjective perspective, we dismiss the fact that information exist as such, or say it is an illusion caused by the fact that our brain interprets it into electrical signals and produce a probabilistic result in terms of QM. We deny ourself without knowing it. You wouldn't, you would rather disagree and be illogical, and that is what most people are, but that is a practical and prevents you from going insane and from the perspective of evolution, that is something that we don't want to preserve.

The Quantum man is WEIRD, ILLOGICAL and POWERLESS. If you think Solipsism is a bad vision, then QM is worse, because you are not part of it, your mechanical body is, you're something else, and you don't care, why? because you only use QM as a tool, you don't derive your worldview from it; "I think therefore I am". I think Quantum physisist more or less don't see the point in a world view, or are being illogical as the rest of the crowd.

If you understood this flaw, then you have understood half of what i'm trying to say. So if not, I want to hear how far you got and what you didn't understand.

Now what alternatives do we have? An Objective universe of course, with elemental information that provides our subjective vision of an imaginary objective universe. In this perspective the imaginary objective one doesn't exist while the information does. The good part is that information is definite while the bad part is that we can only imagine how a very small part of it looks like.

I think Solipsism does one unnessesary assumption for me to accept it, that universe is a product of my mind. I am openminded to the theory that we can share collective information.

Thanks for listening :)

Kedaman

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I don't hold absolute facts because I define facts as beliefs and beliefs are moraly wrong to me.

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Why are beliefs morally wrong? Isn't that statement, in itself, a belief?

The point I'm really trying to make here is that what is wrong with beliefs, if they are not absolute? In this way, beliefs are tools that we use to make sense of the world but we are not religously bound to them.

If this is what you are trying to say then I agree with you.

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In the subjective view, there is no "me", just what I observ, the QM vision, where everything being observed exists.

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I do not understand this. How can there be no "me" if there is an "I" that can observe things? The fact that there is an "I" implies that I exist, right?

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In the objective view, there is only me and information; since there is no need for any external objects, I don't define any external objects (Occam's razor). The only practical use of this view is the openmindness.

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The only part I disagree with there is: "there is not need for any external objects". As I have stated previously, an external world provides an explanation for the complex, automonous phenomena that we see. It provides a source of information that we experience. It is not self evident to me that information can be created from nothing by a consious mind.

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The Quantum man is WEIRD, ILLOGICAL and POWERLESS. If you think Solipsism is a bad vision, then QM is worse, because you are not part of it, your mechanical body is, you're something else, and you don't care, why? because you only use QM as a tool, you don't derive your worldview from it

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Have I missed something here because I don't understand exactly what you mean by a "quantum man" and why we are not part of quantum mechanics.

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I think Quantum physisist more or less don't see the point in a world view, or are being illogical as the rest of the crowd.

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True. Many quantum physisists don't explore the philisophical implications of their field but this is because they see that as beyond their remit. They see it as a tool that they can use because it works. What explanations it happens to provide (to both philisophical and non-philisophical issues) are to them, irrelevant. I think they are called 'Instumentalists'.

Simon
I think you disagree with me based on your flawed analogy that subjective and objective universe co-exist. You don't see they are mutually exclusive and that you get paradoxes based on a fusion of these.

The observer in QM does not exist. The observed exist. It is this that is not making any sense, the reason why the Quantum physisist don't have a world view or are intstrumentalists. If you don't understand QM then fine, because it doesn't make sense to me either, but this is the illusion of an objective univese you get with a QM vision. In your place, there stands a mechanical robot, the Quantum mechanical robot actually (The quantum man) and he acts based on probability, not on your choises. He doesn't percept or process information, his sensors convert mechanical impulses to electrical impulses, send them to the brain which in turn process a result of actions. Most important of all, the Quantum man is not the observer, YOU ARE. That's why this vision is absurd.

There is no "Why" Simon, this is part of the quantum theory.

Kedaman

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I think you disagree with me based on your flawed analogy that subjective and objective universe co-exist. You don't see they are mutually exclusive and that you get paradoxes based on a fusion of these.

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No, I don't see that they are mutually exclusive and I don't see what paradoxes arise from this belief. Could you illustrate such a paradox?

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The observer in QM does not exist.

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What basis for that assertion do you have?

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The observed exist. It is this that is not making any sense, the reason why the Quantum physisist don't have a world view or are intstrumentalists.

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Not so. I didn't say that all quantum physisists didn't have a world view based on the implications of QM. There are many that do.
Therefore, your suggestion that it is inherent in QM that one doesn't have a world view is simply flawed (unless you are suggesting that they shouldn't).

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In your place, there stands a mechanical robot, the Quantum mechanical robot actually (The quantum man) and he acts based on probability, not on your choises. He doesn't percept or process information, his sensors convert mechanical impulses to electrical impulses, send them to the brain which in turn process a result of actions. Most important of all, the Quantum man is not the observer, YOU ARE. That's why this vision is absurd.

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Of course it is always possible that we don't make choices because we free-will is an illusion.
But, I'm not yet convinced that a probabalistic universe rules out the possibility of free-will

I'm not saying, for instance, that an atom chooses when to decay. It might be possibile, however, for a consious being manipulate the possibilities such that one might be selected over the other. That is pure speculation and I don't expect anyone to take it seriously. There are scientists who do use the probabalistic nature of QM to allow for the possibility of free-will (Roger Penrose for example) but it is far from widely accepted.

Simon
Yes. The best example is the definition of existance. In a subjective universe, anything exists in term of a probability. In a objective everything is definite. Therefore they are mutually exclusive.

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I'm not saying, for instance, that an atom chooses when to decay. It might be possibile, however, for a consious being manipulate the possibilities such that one might be selected over the other.

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That is not QM. There is no basis for randomness.

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Therefore, your suggestion that it is inherent in QM that one doesn't have a world view is simply flawed

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I am sorry but I didn't mean to imply that, I had suggested earlier that there is also those who just simply are being illogical.

Kedaman

Aha! Now I think I am getting somewhere. I am comming closer to understanding your definition of subjective and objective.

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In a subjective universe, anything exists in term of a probability. In a objective everything is definite.

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I see what you're saying here but I think you slightly misunderstand the definitions (as I understand them) of subjectivity and objectivity.

I would edit your sentance like this: "In a probabailistic universe, anything exists in term of a probability. In a deterministic everything is definite."

Objectivity is a way of seeing things independant of perspective and preconception.

Subjectivity is a way of seeing things from a particular perspective[/i] or in terms of preconceived ideas.

Using these definitions, I don't believe such contradictions or paradoxes arise.

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There is no basis for randomness.

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OK, that's fair enough. I'm just saying that a decision that, would otherwise have no basis for choosing one possibility over another (i.e. random) might be suseptable to some sort of "consious overide".

As I have said, I am really just playing with ideas there and I have no basis for asserting the above as fact.

It seems to me, Kedaman, that you subscribe to the dualistic (rather than mechanistic) idea of consiousness. You "believe" that no mechanistic process (be it deterministic or probabalistic in nature) could ever be consious or have an "ability" to choose.
Only the coupling of a mechanistic brain with a spiritual "magic" element gives us the sensation of consiousness and free-will.

Perhaps this "consious overide" that I talk of is actually provided by the spiritual element that is refered to in a dualistic view of consiousness.

Perhaps I am also a dualist, really. Although if asked, I would say that I am a mechanist. :confused:

Simon
I don't think there is place for both mechanical world and spiritual (although i would call it an objective world containing consciousness and information) in the same universe. Or rather, I would say it is rather unnessesarily complicated. I see that you at least understood that it is a question of consciousness :) But you hardly want to dismiss mechanism and say that it is an illusion :(

I am not sure how to take the separation you made with Objective/Deterministic and Subjective/Probabilistic.

To me an objective universe is definite, but not nessesarily deterministic. If there is a consciousness capable of defining information, the universe is no more static, it is no more deterministic, it is under the control of the the conscious being. Similarily a certain amount of conscious being can control the universe (non-solipsistic view)

An objective universe cannot be probabilistic, because then it's not definite, and whats the idea with a undefined universe? imagination. What is imagination good for? Well a conscious being, so we end up in a non-deterministic objective universe with a conscious controlling mind.

Kedaman

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But you hardly want to dismiss mechanism and say that it is an illusion

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Well, if you want to dismiss it, fine, dismiss it. I don't see any real basis to do so so I will continue to believe it (as it is a useful tool in understanding the complexity I perceive).

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I am not sure how to take the separation you made with Objective/Deterministic and Subjective/Probabilistic.

To me an objective universe is definite, but not nessesarily deterministic.

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I don't think a universe should be considered "objective" or "subjective". It can be viewed objectively or subjectively but it has no inherent status of objectivity/subjectivity.

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To me an objective universe is definite, but not nessesarily deterministic.

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That's fine. I have no problem with that. But then you go on and say this:

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An objective universe cannot be probabilistic, because then it's not definite, and whats the idea with a undefined universe?

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In a probabalistic universe, only that which is unknown and in the future is undefined. The past is definite.

Simon
Nope, I don't think the past isn't definite, if you didn't observe something at a specific time then it's not there either. In a probabilistic universe only something that has been observed exist.

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Well, if you want to dismiss it, fine, dismiss it. I don't see any real basis to do so so I will continue to believe it (as it is a useful tool in understanding the complexity I perceive).

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You believe in that a tool is true? Is that what you mean? That it has to be usefull to be true?

Kedaman

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In a probabilistic universe only something that has been observed exist.

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That is not consistant with my understanding of a probabalistic universe. Something remains undefined until it is observed. The possibilities peacefully co-exist until an observation forces a seperation of these possibilities.

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You believe in that a tool is true? Is that what you mean? That it has to be usefull to be true?

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Not "true" in the absolute sense. It is held tentatively true until such time as it is no longer useful. Call it a "proto truth" (a term coined by Edward De Bono I believe).

Simon

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That is not consistant with my understanding of a probabalistic universe. Something remains undefined until it is observed. The possibilities peacefully co-exist until an observation forces a seperation of these possibilities.

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Okay, we can agree on this, the probability always exist until it's observed.

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Not "true" in the absolute sense. It is held tentatively true until such time as it is no longer useful. Call it a "proto truth" (a term coined by Edward De Bono I believe). [/B]

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hmm. A usefull truth. Well if you want me to agree with you, then i could call it the same, but I don't believe for that matter.