Is quantum physics bunk?

[Taomeow]

Science, as a methodology, doesn't require one to believe that one is somehow separate from the universe. In fact, laboratory conditions are typically designed with this in mind to minimize the impact any specific scientist has on the experiment.

 

And again we pretend that these purportedly isolated (from what?  From what we can isolate them from, nothing more -- and that's not the universe, or even society, or even the meddling bosses) "laboratory conditions" "minimize the impact" of the fact that

 

the scientist will have to have his proposal for the experiment in this "isolated" laboratory approved by some "higher ups"

 

and financed by them in case he manages to shape it just so that they would want to,

 

and the work will have to be "peer reviewed" by peers who are in exactly the same boat they don't want to rock under any circumstances lest they themselves fall out of it, and

 

in case they get the wind of this work promising rewards before reviewing it, they will rush their own replica and try to publish first (I'm currently reading a book by a leading geneticist expounding on this very situation), and while at it,

 

cutting corners and tweaking with data to rush their package and establish priority, and

 

that the multitude of other factors on the "outside" of the "isolated lab" will all be "objective" to the max and no consideration will be given to how this new information affects the whales of the field (what if it invalidates everything they built their career, position, power on?), and no corporation will buy the rights to use the applications and then put the discovery on the shelf (any scientific discovery has millions of potential applications, from cognitive to pragmatic, unlike an "invention"), and that highest caliber science produced in this 'isolated" lab will be accepted and acknowledged just because it's true, regardless of who this discovery makes rich or poor, makes look stupid or gives a chance to say "told you so" to, or "in your face!" or "you are fired?.."  

 

Dream world, Neo.          

Edited April 2, 2015 by Taomeow

[forestofclarity]

If science was as fundamentally flawed as claimed in this post, then none of our technology would work. But it does work --- sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Some of it works better than others. 

 

Military research funds a lot of science. But if science was producing bunk, it wouldn't produce atom bombs, M-4s, bomb resistant vehicles, night vision goggles and (ironically) the internet. The fact that science focuses on producing profitable technology doesn't mean that the science doesn't work. Rather, science is a value neutral method. We may not like how or where the method is applied, but it works. 

 

Sometimes it is used for purposes we consider good, such as reducing infant mortality rate and increasing life expectancy. Other times, it is used for purposes we consider bad, such as the Cultural Revolution or environmental devastation. But the fact that science has the power to improve or destroy on such a scale is a testament to its effectiveness. 

 

 

Dream world, Neo.          

[Taomeow]

If science was as fundamentally flawed as claimed in this post, then none of our technology would work. But it does work --- sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Some of it works better than others. 

 

Military research funds a lot of science. But if science was producing bunk, it wouldn't produce atom bombs, M-4s, bomb resistant vehicles, night vision goggles and (ironically) the internet. The fact that science focuses on producing profitable technology doesn't mean that the science doesn't work. Rather, science is a value neutral method. We may not like how or where the method is applied, but it works. 

 

Sometimes it is used for purposes we consider good, such as reducing infant mortality rate and increasing life expectancy. Other times, it is used for purposes we consider bad, such as the Cultural Revolution or environmental devastation. But the fact that science has the power to improve or destroy on such a scale is a testament to its effectiveness. 

 

My whole point is that technology and science are not the same thing.  Technology works without science.  Science is not something that proves itself via technology -- the most fundamental sciences are too complex to even dream of creating, by any linear methods, any technology that could use them.  Try creating a worm...  not based on the technology already in existence (the actual worm) but from scratch, based on the science of how a worm is put together that we currently have.  Try it...  it's been tried, and it's not doable on the basis of our science.  Tinkering is doable, you can disassemble and reassemble the worm.  Science is not -- you don't know how to make one no matter how much data you've accumulated on how to tinker with parts.

 

The illusion of our technology being based on our science is what lets our science claim the knowledge it does not possess.  We're good at tinkering, we're good at slapping together theories to create an illusion of the latter explaining the workings of the former.  But in reality theories are theories and tinkering is tinkering, and one does not depend on the other at all.  Everything that "works" in our world was based on tinkering, invented by tinkerers.  None of what works works worse if we don't have a theory for it, or better if we do.  Investigate for yourself, you'll be shocked... 

 

The inventor of microbiology clearly saw the tiny homunculus in the head of each spermatozoon under the microscope he tinkered together, and believed that that's how we reproduce, because that was the theory.  It did not affect the practice, it only affected how what was observed was interpreted.  The rest of it is exactly like that too.  We can make a bomb, that's true, but it does not mean we see and understand how it works, we've just tinkered enough to produce it.  Many theories have replaced each other since we first produced it, with no effect of tinkering on the science or of the science on the tinkering.  We don't have a science that produces technology.  Shocking but true.  We have technology, and we have science, and we have the illusion of one being based on the other.  One is used to glorify the other the way you would claim expertise in biophysics behind your ability to lift your arm.  You've got the technology, but you don't have the science behind it.  It's every bit like that with all our external technologies.  Shocking...

[Marblehead]

Does science have answers for us? The good news is that it does offer a path to better answers then the ones we have.

 

Cheers.

I'm glad you ended that on a cheerful note.

[mostly_empty]

Shocking but true.  We have technology, and we have science, and we have the illusion of one being based on the other.  One is used to glorify the other the way you would claim expertise in biophysics behind your ability to lift your arm.  You've got the technology, but you don't have the science behind it.  It's every bit like that with all our external technologies.  Shocking...

 

Although I would tend to agree with you it is probably strong to say that there is no link between the two at all. 

 

Think about one of  the technologies we know best - fire. Observations of fire lead to theories about fire. More or less a moth to a flame. Now we have beautiful theories of fire that far exceed any technology involving a few sticks. The only ways of testing our more extreme ideas of fire involve webs of technologies that nobody understands either as components or systems... So one way of looking at this is that what most people think of as the technology falling out of science is equally pieces of conceptually polished reality which enable our theory habit. 

 

What about everyone who is certain that their theories are driving the process? They are either the sort of practioners who would rather do something interesting than to talk philosophy of science OR they have thought a little about the potential relationships between the contents of their head and the nature of reality. Especially the nature of imagination/reality.

 

Back to the thread topic? QM has always bothered people because it allows some correct calculations while dissatisfying everyone who has thought about the very large variety of potential theories. Everyone from Solvay 1927 was very clear that the successes of QM were destroying cherished theories. With QCD there was improvement in the technological application of a method that literally corresponds to reality better than it does to our theories about it. But your use of the word theory may differ....

Edited April 2, 2015 by mostly_empty

[allinone]

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Edited April 3, 2015 by allinone

[3bob]

where do all of these problems along with non-problems exist?

[Marblehead]

where do all of these problems along with non-problems exist?

Only in our mind Bob, only in our mind.  Nature will do its thing whether we understand it or not.

[3bob]

 MH, instead of the saying, "only in our mind" I'd say only in the mind, for in thinking we have a separate dealy-bob called "our mind" is also "only in our mind"  .   

[Marblehead]

 MH, instead of the saying, "only in our mind" I'd say only in the mind, for in thinking we have a separate dealy-bob called "our mind" is also "only in our mind"  .   

Sorry 3bob but that there is strictly a matter of opinion.  That's yours.  Mine is different.

[3bob]

Mh, then again I don't have a problem with relative dealy-bob's if that is what your mean.

[ralis]

Sorry 3bob but that there is strictly a matter of opinion.  That's yours.  Mine is different.

 

I agree that "in the mind" is an overarching view which leads to all sorts of complicated inferences/conjectures.

[3bob]

not really, for such complications are only in our minds

[Marblehead]

Mh, then again I don't have a problem with relative dealy-bob's if that is what your mean.

I'm pretty sure I knew what you meant and I'm also pretty sure you know what I meant.

 

But then, in your post #120 you used "our minds".  I have only one mind.  And I even have a problem using the word "mind" and prefer the word "brain".  And yes, my brain is different from your brain.  Mine is in my body and yours is in your body.

[3bob]

what, you haven't had an out of brain experience?  Btw is the Tao dependent upon a physical brain and if not its trying to tell us something...

[Marblehead]

what, you haven't had an out of brain experience?  Btw is the Tao dependent upon a physical brain and if not its trying to tell us something...

Oh, No!  There goes 3bob using circular logic again!

 

No, I have never had an out-of-brain experience.  But yes, I have many times done things before I put my brain in gear.

 

No, Tao is not dependent on any of the things that are Tao.  Wait a minute!  What did I just say?  Of course it is dependent on all the other things because withyout them Tao would no be complete.

 

Oh, Tao is always telling us stuff.  Sometimes we are just too busy to listen.

[3bob]

umm,  "There was something undefined yet complete in itself"  ...

 

(T.T.C. 25)

[Marblehead]

umm,  "There was something undefined yet complete in itself"  ...

 

(T.T.C. 25)

Now, if I tried discussing that I would end up using circular logic.

 

Sometimes we just need to keep our mouth shut after something like that has been said.

[alchemystical]

Fascinating thread. The entire field is full of more faith, leaps of logic and contradiction than any religious text plus it also has the same zealous kind of adherents who are entirely intolerant of anything or anyone who profanes their "scripture" but yet are totally blind to this foible of their psyche.

 

Its amusing really as that level of staunch faith and "of course we know what we're talking about... look it says right here... so obvious" mindset is identical to what was attached to religion before it. Another funny factor is how the gods of one religion become the demons of that which supplants it as thats evidently what happened here just as it occurred with indigenous shamanism before it when that switched over organized faith - each one a downgrade in terms of practical efficiency and results to what came earlier.

 

I do believe, like most good lies, there is a kernel of truth in there that has been obfuscated with layers upon layers of abstruse reasoning to hide what is actually useful but all in all it really does point to a very interesting "flaw' in the way the mind of man works. Speaking from a hackers perspective you could almost say it was an attack vector which allowed the execution of malicious code with the dumb terminal being entirely unaware of the process...