# Non-Experts and Science **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 17, 2017, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866 "2017-08-17T11:41:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/181 "2017-08-27T16:14:29Z")
I’m kind of curious as to how many iterations there will be to this loop? Also, who will hit their exit condition first? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/182 "2017-08-27T16:23:08Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I’m surprised…and maybe a little depressed…that it’s that high. What is their reasoning? > > (Do they have any experimental evidence, or is it just philosophical arguments such as we’re seeing here in this thread?) There’s no experimental evidence—the whole business of interpretation is a philosophical one, not an empirical one. But they also don’t use arguments like the ones in this thread, but rather, arguments that are at least capable of being right or wrong. I think they’re wrong (by and large), but that’s no reason to exclude them from the discussion table. Also, keep in mind that the poll is a) pretty informal, and b) has a quite small sample size. For instance, [this other recent poll](https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.4646) that used the same survey, but with a larger sample size, only has 1% attribute some fundamental role to consciousness. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/183 "2017-08-27T16:26:32Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > I’m kind of curious as to how many iterations there will be to this loop? Also, who will hit their exit condition first? Well, I once got stuck under the shower because the instructions on the bottle read ‘lather - rinse - repeat’, so my loop evasion is apparently not great… ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/184 "2017-08-27T16:34:39Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Well, I once got stuck under the shower because the instructions on the bottle read ‘lather - rinse - repeat’, so my loop evasion is apparently not great… You owe my cat an apology. I scared him laughing. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/185 "2017-08-27T16:36:41Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Here, I’m gonna actually side with **abashed** …a little. > > Now, no, **Half Man Half Wit** is not guilty of the crime charged; as he himself noted, he’s seeking to clarify, not obfuscate, and he offered to explain. > > But we have seen threads in the SDMB where experts pull out technical details that go beyond the necessary scope of the discussion, in order to overwhelm opposition. It is not terribly common, thank Ghu, but it has happened. So, no, not understanding a technically-accurate response is not always an indication that the recipient of the response is “too ignorant” to argue on the subject. First, my point stands. If you can’t understand the very terms you are arguing against, your argument will fail and you need to acknowledge your limitations. Second, as you note your scenario is irrelevant here and I don’t understand why you needed to bring it up, since it allows abashed to cherrypick this as a victory. Third, even when befuddlement is the purpose, it never makes the amateur ass-pulled gibberish any more right. Fourth, a huge difference exists between those who are ignorant - which is most people on most subjects - trying to gain understanding and those who claim to understand a technical discipline better than the experts - an infinitesimal percentage. The latter are always wrong. I’ve never seen an exception and can’t imagine how one could exist. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/186 "2017-08-27T16:58:51Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > Baseballs can’t be in two places at once. If the laws of physics did not change with scale we wouldn’t need different sets of equations with which to describe them. According to my understanding baseballs can be in two places at once its just very unlikely that they would do so. The difference between a baseball and an electron, is akin to flipping one coin versus flipping 10^25 coins. In the first case I have no good idea about the percentage of heads (it could be 100% or 0%) in the second case I’m pretty darn sure that it will be almost exactly 50% to at least 10 decimal places. So we feel good about our understanding of where the baseball is but less good about the electron even though they are both basically following the same laws. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/187 "2017-08-27T17:33:36Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > According to my understanding baseballs can be in two places at once its just very unlikely that they would do so. The difference between a baseball and an electron, is akin to flipping one coin versus flipping 10^25 coins. In the first case I have no good idea about the percentage of heads (it could be 100% or 0%) in the second case I’m pretty darn sure that it will be almost exactly 50% to at least 10 decimal places. So we feel good about our understanding of where the baseball is but less good about the electron even though they are both basically following the same laws. Can I have those 10[sup]25[/sup] coins when you’re done with them? ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/188 "2017-08-27T17:59:11Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Can I have those 10[sup]25[/sup] coins when you’re done with them? Sadly, they are quatloos and have very little value in US currency even with so many. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2017, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/189 "2017-08-27T18:59:12Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > First, my point stands. If you can’t understand the very terms you are arguing against, your argument will fail and you need to acknowledge your limitations. > > Second, as you note your scenario is irrelevant here and I don’t understand why you needed to bring it up, since it allows abashed to cherrypick this as a victory. . . . First, no, you’re wrong: bad people can use this technique against innocents. Second, I’m not responsible for what someone else does. You erred in stating a principle too strongly, as an absolute, lacking proper context. Ignorance of some terms of a discussion is not equivalent to ignorance of the entire discussion, which is pretty much what you implied. I brought it up as a nitpick, and those are generally considered valid here. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/190 "2017-08-28T00:07:41Z")
> [@BeepKillBeep](#): > > Sadly, they are quatloos and have very little value in US currency even with so many. But I want to bet on the newcomer! ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/191 "2017-08-28T11:39:49Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > No. I’m using exact terms here, for clarity. If something’s not clear to you, I’m always happy to explain. > The difference is that an EM wave is an excitation in a background electromagnetic field, while a probability is something abstract that tells us the likelihood for something to happen. If EM waves are still too abstract for you, take a water wave instead: the wave is the movement of water; however, the universe isn’t filled with some abstract ‘probability-stuff’ that could oscillate leading to a wave. Rather, it’s here our description that associates to different points in space and time different probabilities of events occurring. > > And yes, once again: our models of water waves are mathematical, and hence, in some still not quite clear sense, ‘informational’. But that doesn’t imply that water is made from information anymore than if we would use clockworks to model it implies that it is made of clockworks. > This is nonsense. Quantum fields also obey the laws of relativity. > What reason would we have to assume that it didn’t? Of course, in principle, you don’t know that the space outside of your field of view isn’t just densely packed with Hitlers [[1]](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3307), but you also have no warrant, no justification to assume that this is the case. > > The simplest assumption in line with all the available evidence is that indeed, the outcome would be exactly the same; and actually, the idea that conscious observation is special yields a theory different from quantum mechanics. > If we hadn’t evolved, we could not discuss these matters of fact, yes; but it doesn’t follow that hence, those wouldn’t be the very same matters of fact. > But why would somebody do something so silly? I know that Sherlock Holmes lived in Baker Street 221B; but that doesn’t mean Sherlock Holmes is real. > The fact that quantum mechanics includes classical mechanics, and hence, is a proper extension thereof into the relevant regime, was actually one of its guiding principles from the start, called by Bohr the [_correspondence principle_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correspondence_principle). That Schrödinger’s equation leads to Newton’s laws was proven early on by [Paul Ehrenfest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenfest_theorem). That classical mechanics can be described in the same terms as quantum mechanics (with baseballs being just as much described by a wave function as photons) was likewise [demonstrated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koopman%E2%80%93von_Neumann_classical_mechanics) almost immediately after modern quantum mechanics was formulated. > > No. This was really introduced in the very beginning: the correspondence principle came in 1920, Ehrenfest’s theorem in 1927, and in 1931, the Koopman-von Neumann formalism for classical mechanics was introduced. Von Neumann’s _Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics_, which is widely regarded as having introduced quantum mechanics in the form it is still used today, was published in 1932; so this sort of thing really was baked into QM from the start. > > Of course, QM explains phenomena classical mechanics couldn’t explain: that’s why it was introduced in the first place. But it doesn’t do so in opposition to classical mechanics, but rather, as an extension of it into the realm of the ‘very small’ (actually, the realm where the action is comparable to Planck’s constant, which is often, but not necessarily that of small physical size). > > was published in 1932; so this sort of thing really was baked into QM from the start. > > Of course, QM explains phenomena classical mechanics couldn’t explain: that’s why it was introduced in the first place. But it doesn’t do so in opposition to classical mechanics, but rather, as an extension of it into the realm of the ‘very small’ (actually, the realm where the action is comparable to Planck’s constant, which is often, but not necessarily that of small physical size). You see, I do not intend any offence, but It’s pretty clear to me that you, and indeed some others here, still assume there is an independent physical world ‘out there’ that has an independent existence of its own regardless of any observations. Also, you seem to regard ‘physical’ objects (like water, for example) as not containing information. Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me try to make my point a bit clearer. When you examine what water is you necessarily have to gather information about it in terms of its colour (if any), its texture, its, weight, its taste and so forth. Moreover, if you are examining what water is from a scientific perspective you have to go even further by considering how it is chemically composed and even to the atomic level as to what kinds of atoms it’s made of. So you can see that this is simply information. Anything that we perceive as ‘physical’ can be represented as a 'bundle’of information, even ourselves. Now when we turn to the quantum world, again, what we see is just information in terms of how we describe what we observe and its behaviour and this, naturally, includes mathematical models that we construct. So, I guess what I am saying is that essentially, there is really no distinction between the ‘material’ world and the ‘non-material’ world in terms of information. But the point to remember is that we can’t necessarily get to one from the other. That is, we could never have predicted the quantum world before we did experiments based on what was known about classical physics at the time, and, indeed, quantum behaviour came as a shock to the early pioneers of the phenomenon. So what this shows is we cannot use current paradigms which describe physical or classical behaviour to reach a smooth and logical transition to another level of reality. The question then arises as to what underlies or all this ‘science?’ The only common factors can be a)Information and b) Consciousness. Information has to be available in the first place in order to be discovered by us, but equally consciousness is also required to interpret information. This approach does not make any more assumptions than this and, therefore, is the simplest and most credible interpretation of reality. Any other interpretations you look at always make too many assumptions. The double-slit experiment quite clearly demonstrates this. When ‘which-way’ information is erased before we examine the photosensitive screen, at any point after that when we look at the screen it shows an interference pattern. This means that any information showing which-way now does not exist in our current realty and the photosensitive screen has to reflect this by being ‘consistent’ by showing interference pattern (in other worlds no particles). It does not matter how long you leave it to look at the screen, the result will be the same. Our consciousness has revealed what the current reality is in terms of information. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/192 "2017-08-28T13:58:46Z")
You have not been able to convince even a single person that your interpretation is true. Repeating it over and over does not work. It can never work because it’s simply wrong, but let’s ignore that for a moment. Now what? Let’s assume, because we have no contrary evidence, that you will never acknowledge that you are wrong. What is your next step? Do you go off and find another message board? Do you start a blog and preach to the unconverted? Do you start making YouTube videos? Where do you hope to be in five years? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/193 "2017-08-28T14:17:02Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > Anything that we perceive as ‘physical’ can be represented as a 'bundle’of information, even ourselves. Now when we turn to the quantum world, again, what we see is just information in terms of how we describe what we observe and its behaviour and this, naturally, includes mathematical models that we construct. Well, at least you seem to have made some headway in grasping the idea that there is no “fundamental difference”, much less “nothing in common”, between the models of classical physics and those of quantum physics. For a guy who within the past 48 hours was still apparently under the impression that knowing the answer to _“the problem of why and when does quantum behaviour become classical behaviour”_ was a Nobel-Prize-worthy achievement, rather than a routine curriculum item in undergraduate physics classes, that’s progress. As for your current strand of metaphysical speculation, sure, you can assert all you want that physical reality, insofar as we can perceive it, “is just information”. But then you’re stuck with having to come up with a meaningful definition of “information” that does not in its turn depend on some concept of physical reality. I have no objection to your continuing to run on that solipsistic hamster wheel as much as you like, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that you’ve made any kind of logically persuasive case for other people to join you. > [@abashed](#): > > Information has to be available in the first place in order to be discovered by us, but equally consciousness is also required to interpret information. This approach does not make any more assumptions than this and, therefore, is the simplest and most credible interpretation of reality. Any other interpretations you look at always make too many assumptions. On the contrary, claiming _a priori_ that undefined entities such as “information” and “consciousness” exist in any meaningful way involves a metric assload of assumptions. If you disagree, kindly supply us with your meaningful and precise definitions of what “information” and “consciousness” are, without employing any assumptions about reality. Best of luck. ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/194 "2017-08-28T15:24:15Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, at least you seem to have made some headway in grasping the idea that there is no “fundamental difference”, much less “nothing in common”, between the models of classical physics and those of quantum physics. That’s a strange thing to say in light of us not having a theory of everything. Classical physics is not quantum physics. We have two versions of reality and that is not good. What has happened in the past is that we only had classical physics or, if you like, ‘Newtonian physics’ and then certain observations called into question the veracity of Newtonian mechanics. This was solved by Einstein’s Relativity, so far so good. We then discovered the world of quantum mechanics. Now, before ideas about probability waves, superposition, entanglement, tunneling, and so on were known, we could rely on stuff behaving like stuff and doing predictable things. Then came along QM and we realized the world wasn’t as straightforward as we thought. We had to include quantum behaviour in all our models of reality, including the big stuff. So now we can’t just use Newtonian mechanics in trying to calculate how things behave, we have to include an element of quantum behaviour too, which introduces uncertainty into things. Why and how did this happen? It happened because when scientists decided to look into the nature of light they inadvertantly introduced the quantum world into the then current reality. What does that mean, I hear you say. Well, because the world is composed of information it’s possible to change the world to some extent if you can bring in information that had not, hitherto, existed in our reality. Since the universe is basically probabilistic, you are never 100% sure of what is going to happen. Yes, most things are pretty predictable, especially in the past when we did not have to accommodate QM, however, doing novel experiments caused the nature of the probabilistic ‘odds’ to change because we were dealing with novel and unpredictable phenomena that had not existed in our reality frame before (you and others would probably argue that it did but that is just an assumption), simply because no such experiments had ever been conducted before. So the point I’m trying to make (rather badly, I admit) is that classical mechanics could never be used in and of itself to predict stuff like Relativity or quantum mechanics because there was nothing in the formalism to allow it to. We needed a completely new slant on things which Einstein obligingly provided and then, again, another new paradigm which resulted in QM. But all this ‘new’ information does not, as I have noted, automatically flow from existing models of reality. Someone has to do experiments in order to unearth new information which could be one of a number of possible, probabilistic outcomes. You must have consciousness in the mix too, otherwise any inherent information will not become established in our reality. This may be because we are somehow entangled in the experiment - that we actually\*\* form\*\* part of the experiment. After all, any scientific experiment cannot conduct itself! Again, this is borne out by the double-slit experiment where information about which slit a particle went through is, as registred by a detector, not kept, in fact, destroyed. So such information no longer exists within our reality frame. Now when someone looks at the back screen where any ‘hits’ would be seen, all that is observed is a interference pattern. It is clear what has happened. Since any information about particle detection no longer exists in our reality, the back screen if forced to show an interference pattern to be consistent with a reality that did not register particles! It’s as if the past has been wiped clean and any history of particles simply did not happen. Now, this is direct scientific evidence of information playing the main role in reality forming (as well as consciousness to a lesser extent). It is the simplest interpretation of the experiment. So how do you answer this? > [@](#): > > For a guy who within the past 48 hours was still apparently under the impression that knowing the answer to _“the problem of why and when does quantum behaviour become classical behaviour”_ was a Nobel-Prize-worthy achievement, rather than a routine curriculum item in undergraduate physics classes, that’s progress. > As for your current strand of metaphysical speculation, sure, you can assert all you want that physical reality, insofar as we can perceive it, “is just information”. But then you’re stuck with having to come up with a meaningful definition of “information” that does not in its turn depend on some concept of physical reality. > > I have no objection to your continuing to run on that solipsistic hamster wheel as much as you like, but you shouldn’t kid yourself that you’ve made any kind of logically persuasive case for other people to join you. > > On the contrary, claiming _a priori_ that undefined entities such as “information” and “consciousness” exist in any meaningful way involves a metric assload of assumptions. If you disagree, kindly supply us with your meaningful and precise definitions of what “information” and “consciousness” are, without employing any assumptions about reality. Best of luck. It’s not a question of employing no assumptions about reality, that is impossible. It’s a question of employing the simplest and least number of assumptions based on experimental data, which information theory meets. ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/195 "2017-08-28T15:42:35Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > According to my understanding baseballs can be in two places at once its just very unlikely that they would do so. The difference between a baseball and an electron, is akin to flipping one coin versus flipping 10^25 coins. In the first case I have no good idea about the percentage of heads (it could be 100% or 0%) in the second case I’m pretty darn sure that it will be almost exactly 50% to at least 10 decimal places. So we feel good about our understanding of where the baseball is but less good about the electron even though they are both basically following the same laws. Well, yes, since we’ve had quantum mechanics we are forced to think like this. However, prior to knowing about QM we never had to bother about ‘probabilities’ because we could be as sure as we could that throwing a baseball in a certain direction would not result in there being another baseball existing simultaneously in some other place. It’s because we (i.e. scientists) have introduced new information into our reality frame that has profoundly altered our perspective. How has this been done? By designing highly novel, technical experiments which has led to unpredictable data and that data, once introduced and observed, is here for good!! The reason this has never happened before is because the technical know-how wasn’t about in the past and one can predict even more bizarre data being introduced in the future. Entanglement is a good example of this phenomenon. Entanglement cannot be explained by any causal conventional or ‘physical’ model in science because it is a bit of new data that has become established as a result of firstly, a thought experiment and secondly, an actual scientific experiment, with all the necessary hardware. But, the actual outcome could never had been predicted because, again, it is a matter of probabilities. What all this really shows is that physical reality is a myth and that it is\* information\* (+ consciousness) that is the only real basis of reality ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/196 "2017-08-28T15:47:00Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > You see, I do not intend any offence, but It’s pretty clear to me that you, and indeed some others here, still assume there is an independent physical world ‘out there’ that has an independent existence of its own regardless of any observations. No; it’s because of the observations made so far in the progress of science that we (well, I, at any rate) believe that there’s an independently existing world out there. It’s simply the most natural explanation capable of accounting for all observable evidence, and the otherwise miraculous effectiveness of our scientific models. Plus, it doesn’t depend on magic and mysticism: on your account, ‘consciousness’ (whatever that may be) acts on ‘information’ (whatever you take that to mean) to just somehow poof the world into existence. This isn’t a deep explanatory insight; it’s ‘solving’ a difficult problem by substituting an intractable one. > [@](#): > > Also, you seem to regard ‘physical’ objects (like water, for example) as not containing information. They contain information in the technical sense, of course; but they don’t contain semantic information. It’s even readily quantifiable how much information they contain: up to constant factors, it’s just the logarithm of the phase space volume accessible to the system. That’s because this measures the amount of distinguishable states; and information in the technical sense is simply distinguishability. Thus, a system that can be in two states contains one bit of information, a system that can be in four states contains two bits, a system that can be in eight states three, and so on. But of course, you should note that this information is concept derived from the physical states of the system, or rather, the number of states available to the system. > [@](#): > > When you examine what water is you necessarily have to gather information about it in terms of its colour (if any), its texture, its, weight, its taste and so forth. Yes, but this information pertains to my _description_ of water. You keep conflating between things and descriptions of things, and claiming that since descriptions contain information, things do, too. But there is no reason at all to believe so. You could equally well make the argument that everything is made from bananas—because I can phrase every description in terms of bananas. Water is entirely independent of my description of water; indeed, if that weren’t so, then I couldn’t have a description of water, since that description would be grounded only in itself. > [@](#): > > Moreover, if you are examining what water is from a scientific perspective you have to go even further by considering how it is chemically composed and even to the atomic level as to what kinds of atoms it’s made of. So you can see that this is simply information. “So you can see that this is simply bananas” would be an equally justified conclusion. Nothing about what you have said justifies the leap from ‘water is described in terms of its constituent atoms’ to ‘water is made of information’, or whatever it is exactly you’re trying to argue. Again, the natural assumption is that since water is described in terms of atoms, it’s made from atoms. (And atoms aren’t information.) > [@](#): > > Anything that we perceive as ‘physical’ can be represented as a 'bundle’of information, even ourselves. Indeed. But why do you think this feature of our perception entails the equivalent composition of the world? I mean, consider the following, equivalent argument: “Anything that we perceive as ‘physical’ can be represented as a ‘bundle’ of cogs, gears, and levers (this is true, by the way, since you can build a universal computer from clockwork). Hence, the world is made of cogs, gears, and levers.” Do you see any problem with this argument? > [@](#): > > The only common factors can be a)Information and b) Consciousness. This is just a complete non sequitur. > [@](#): > > Information has to be available in the first place in order to be discovered by us, but equally consciousness is also required to interpret information. Again, information just comes down to a pattern of differences. So yes, differences have to be there in order to be discovered—but moreover, in order to have differences, you first need something that differs from something else. You don’t start with unactualized differences that then somehow conjure up stuff to differ! > [@](#): > > This approach does not make any more assumptions than this and, therefore, is the simplest and most credible interpretation of reality. Any other interpretations you look at always make too many assumptions. The problem is that your approach doesn’t introduce any new explanatory power. Whatever happens, you just handwave at ‘consciousness’ or ‘information’; ultimately, every explanation you give boils down to ‘a wizard did it’. > [@](#): > > The double-slit experiment quite clearly demonstrates this. Again, not in the opinion of the vast majority of those actually familiar with the double-slit experiment. You’ve, I think, once again missed my gentle prodding in the direction of answering my question, namely, how you reconcile the fact that (nearly) everybody who actually understands the science in question draws conclusions different from yours with your own conviction in your conclusion. I’d greatly appreciate it if you could take the time and explain why you think that it’s all the experts on the topic that got it wrong, while you, lacking a basic understanding of the field you’re discussing, have it right. > [@](#): > > When ‘which-way’ information is erased before we examine the photosensitive screen, at any point after that when we look at the screen it shows an interference pattern. It’s not wrong to phrase it that way, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means. If there is no coupling to the environment, then the wave function stays coherent, which both means that an interference pattern develops, and that there is no way to reconstruct which way a given photon took. On the other hand, if there is some significant coupling with the environment, then coherence is lost, and the interference pattern vanishes; and then, thanks to the coupling to the environment, we can make an experiment to distinguish which way a photon took. The point is that it’s the coupling that destroys (or smears out) coherence, and also leads to which-path information being recoverable—since if a system couples to another, the state of one system will influence the state of the other. Consequently, the state of the photon going through a particular slit will change the state of the environment. That’s all there’s to it; we never need talk about information at all (and, as misunderstandings such as yours show, it would probably be better if popular accounts actually did eschew such talk). ---
**Author:** ![abashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@abashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abashed)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/197 "2017-08-28T15:59:43Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > According to my understanding baseballs can be in two places at once its just very unlikely that they would do so. The difference between a baseball and an electron, is akin to flipping one coin versus flipping 10^25 coins. In the first case I have no good idea about the percentage of heads (it could be 100% or 0%) in the second case I’m pretty darn sure that it will be almost exactly 50% to at least 10 decimal places. So we feel good about our understanding of where the baseball is but less good about the electron even though they are both basically following the same laws. Yes, but all that is saying is that nothing is 100% predictable. We would not, for example, expect a pitcher to pitch a baseball and at some point in the game see two or three other baseballs suddenly appear. Take a brick. We can measure a brick to whatever accuracy we desire. Now it’s highly improbable that we would need to measure the length of such a brick to the 10th decimal place. So, for all practical purposes an approximation is adequate. When we measure an electron’s position we can never be sure where exactly it will be because there is significant room for error. With a brick we can be pretty sure it won’t suddenly change its position (unless someone moves it). Newtonian laws of motion are quite adequate to calculate how a bricks behaves although, true, it is only an approximation, but a good one. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/198 "2017-08-28T16:00:53Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > Classical physics is not quantum physics. We have two versions of reality and that is not good. This is false. Classical physics is quantum physics, as has been pointed out to you a number of times now. > [@](#): > > It happened because when scientists decided to look into the nature of light they inadvertantly introduced the quantum world into the then current reality. Do you honestly not see the circularity here? ‘Because of quantum mechanics, the world is made of information. Because the world is made of information, researchers introduced the quantum world.’ > [@](#): > > But all this ‘new’ information does not, as I have noted, automatically flow from existing models of reality. Someone has to do experiments in order to unearth new information which could be one of a number of possible, probabilistic outcomes. You haven’t given any argument that excludes the following possibility: 1) the world was always quantum mechanical, 2) classical mechanics is an incredibly good approximation to quantum mechanics on everyday scales, 3) we only discovered that the world is quantum mechanical once we learned how to make sufficiently precise experiments. In this case, all the ‘new’ information will be there from the beginning; we’ve only had to learn how to unearth it. After all, if we discover a gold vein, we typically don’t think that our digging somehow put it there (a good thing, since there’s no reason to believe something that silly), but rather, that we merely discovered what had been there all along. > [@](#): > > You must have consciousness in the mix too, otherwise any inherent information will not become established in our reality. This may be because we are somehow entangled in the experiment - that we actually\*\* form\*\* part of the experiment. After all, any scientific experiment cannot conduct itself! All of this is just word salad. > [@](#): > > Again, this is borne out by the double-slit experiment where information about which slit a particle went through is, as registred by a detector, not kept, in fact, destroyed. Again, I’ve explicitly pointed out to you that your understanding of the double slit experiment is lacking. What matters is coherence, and the loss thereof to the environment. Nature doesn’t give a hoot about what information we can recover. > [@](#): > > So such information no longer exists within our reality frame. Now when someone looks at the back screen where any ‘hits’ would be seen, all that is observed is a interference pattern. It is clear what has happened. Since any information about particle detection no longer exists in our reality, the back screen if forced to show an interference pattern to be consistent with a reality that did not register particles! But all a double slit experiment ever registers is particles—i.e. little individual events of fluorescence on the screen. If there were no particle-detection, what one would expect is the screen gradually and uniformly darkening along the interference bands; but instead, one gets individual little dots, as if from particles. In reality, of course, it’s simply that neither the particle- nor the wave-concept are individually sufficient to capture the behavior of light. > [@](#): > > Now, this is direct scientific evidence of information playing the main role in reality forming (as well as consciousness to a lesser extent). It is the simplest interpretation of the experiment. It’s not; it requires magic and mysticism, some extra-physical influence of consciousness to disrupt unitary evolution. On the other hand, the simple quantum mechanical prediction that I’ve given in detail is that whenever there is significant coupling to the environment (which, through changing its state, acts as a detector), coherence will be lost—no need for consciousness’ magic gaze at all. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/199 "2017-08-28T16:02:52Z")
> [@abashed](#): > > When we measure an electron’s position we can never be sure where exactly it will be because there is significant room for error. This, too, is wrong: after a position measurement, the electron will be in an eigenstate of position, and that position be known to in principle unlimited accuracy. (Sure, there are no real-world measuring apparatuses with unlimited accuracy, but you’ve got the same problem with the brick.) ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/non-experts-and-science/793866/200 "2017-08-28T16:11:25Z")
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