What is Reality?

Great Debates
21

Both, really. I mean that speculation that consciousness collapses the quantum wave function is obviously unsatisfactory. Human consciousness is a very high-level phenomenon, relying on immensely-complex chemical and biological machinery, which are made up of atoms and molecules that operate by the rules of quantum physics. This violates basic reductionistic assumptions that are normally taken for granted in physical science. If true, it would seem to make any complete understanding of consciousness or of quantum physics impossible. The only reason such an unconventional idea would be seriously considered by physical scientists is that they didn’t have any clearly better alternative.

Beginning in the early 1980’s some physicists began to formally consider models of measurement using quantum mechanics. The result of this has been the theory of decoherence. The general idea of decoherence is that when a quantum system interacts with another system with a large number of internal degrees of freedom, satisfying certain thermodynamic conditions, components of the system’s state that correspond to macroscopically distinct states “decohere” from one-another and cease to interact. This means that quantum behavior disappears.

Decoherence does not rely on any single interpretation of quantum mechanics, such as the mainstream Copenhagen interpretation or the many-worlds interpretation, because it is a mathematical consequence of the physical theory. You do still need a few basically ad hoc assumptions, but they are similar to a subset of the assumptions required anyway in most interpretations of quantum mechanics.
There is no need to give the observer any special role (except perhaps in the computation of probabilities, which are philosophically problematic in general).

22

I know I exist. I also know I don’t exist in a vacuum.

23

Sorry to be a bit OT here but FWIW “true story” is not an oxymoron (bolding mine):

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Whoops…forgot to cite the above quote. It came from http://www.m-w.com

25

Einstein was right that it makes no sense that there would be some magical dividing line between the microscopic world ruled by quantum effects and the macroscopic world which we call “reality”. But there are other explanations for this seeming dichotomy.

IIRC, one idea is that simple atomic level interactions are reversible in time which accounts for quantum uncertainty. But for a particular system, as the number and complexity of these interactions increases the possibility of the interactions becoming reversible goes essentially to zero and the state of the system can be said to become part of the universe’s history at that point. Set in stone, so to speak.

The above is a crude explanation of what I have read as one possibility and is likely overly simplified.

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No. You don’t. You may think you exist. Or possibly, you may think that you think you exist.

But you don’t know.

27

Ram a needle under one of your fingernails. Then see if you still have any doubts about what reality is.

28

The OP asks “What is reality?”. I maintain that at this point in human mental evolution and available tools in year 2003, it is impossible to answer the question. IMHO, it is pointless and futile to even try. Here are some of the reasons behind my position.

1- Compare the question to “What is beauty?”. Well, it has been said that “Beauty is in the eyes of beholder”. Therefore a simple answer to the question “What is reality?” can be: It is in the mind of beholder. Of course, we can discuss what beholders, among the 6 billion on this planet, are qualified to judge what is more beautiful than other, or whose explanation of reality is more acceptable than others.

2- It appears that “the 6 billion” has delegated the task to two groups of people: The scientists, or the philosophers (including the religious). These 2 groups generally base their explanations either on the basis of “God”, or the “Big Bang” theory, neither of the groups capable of explaining who created “God” nor what caused the “Big Bang”. Lack of these explanations is another reason why we may not be qualified, at this point in our evolution, to explain “what is reality”.

3- The problem with the explanations of these 2 groups is that neither can articulate their answers in a way that the other 5.9 billion can understand. Ordinary human beings can easily understand the 2-dimentional world of Pythagoras. Try to expand that to 3-dimensions, and you end up with Fermat’s last theorem that prominent mathematicians have been struggling for decades without finding an answer. Also, you may be good at playing 2-dimentional chess with 8 x 8 squares. But try to play 3-dimensional chess of 8 x 8 x 8 squares. Even today’s most powerful computers will have to wait for the advent of nanotechnology to do that. Now let’s proceed to the 4-dimensional world of Einstein where you introduce Time as a 4th dimension to our Cartesian world of x, y, z coordinates. How many people among the 6 billion can visualize that? How many people can actually understand the relativity theory so that they can start addressing the issue of “what is reality?”. Now comes the 5-dimensional world of Quantum Mechanics, where you introduce the “probability of occurrence” in addition to x, y, z and Time. I submit to you that very few people on this planet can even perceive a 5-dimensional paradigm, let alone an n-dimensional paradigm where n > 5, and IMHO the “reality” possibly lies somewhere there.

novemberromeo, it is easy to ask questions for which there are currently no understandable answers. “Explain what is reality” is one of them. Others are: “Explain how God or Big Bang came about”, or “How can human beings travel beyond the speed of light?” or “How do you create an alternative universe totally different than the one we are currently perceiving as humanoids?”. I am not saying that ultimately there won’t be answers to these questions in the distant future. But my comment to the OP is as follows:

IMHO, at this point in our snail-paced mental evolution and knowledge, perhaps we should recognize that there is no point to raise certain questions that, even if there were answers for them, our current state of brain is incapable of perceiving or understanding the answer.

29

“… at this point in our snail-paced mental evolution and knowledge, perhaps we should recognize that there is no point to raise certain questions that, even if there were answers for them, our current state of brain is incapable of perceiving or understanding the answer.” ~** Wake Up Call**

Wait a minute **Wake up call **, speak for the current state of your own incapable brain. My own brain when not besot with alcohol, I perceive, is quite capable of understanding just about anything if patiently guided along step- by-step by someone real real smart.

And although frithrah suggests that** Straight Dopers** can be a contentious lot, here is a fundamental departure point for further debate; to a man we all agree that…

** SOMETHING EXISTS RATHER THAN NOTHING.**

Now that settled, upon what else can we agree?

______________________ :)___________________

30

Apparently andros does not agree with you:

You can’t “think you exist” and not exist on some level. If you are aware of existing then you exist. Therefore, I “know” I exist.

Unfortunately, I 'm not as sure about the rest of you.

You don’t know if you never ask. Just because the majority of the population is too strung out on Fox shows and Jerry Springer reruns to understand anything more complex than a potatoe chip does not mean that these questions can’t be answered.

Just because we will probably never be able to comprehend 9 dimensional space as anything more than an abstract mathmatical theory doesn’t shouldn’t just throw our hands in the air and just accept any ridiculous crackpot theory of “reality” without the observations to back it up.

So, we may be part of a Matrix program or a big Simcity game or some baboons dream of being human, but until evidence is presented to the contrary, I’m going to go with what the physicists describe.

31

*You can’t “think you exist” and not exist on some level. If you are aware of existing then you exist. Therefore, I “know” I exist. *~ msmith537

Well now** ms mith 537**, wherever did you get this “I” that “you” know exists?
What is “I-ness” ? What is the nature of “you-ness”?

What in the world has come over you?
___________________________________ :slight_smile:

32

OK. Let’s do couple of things to the above statement and see what we can do to reality.

1- There are places in this universe like planet smith842 where 8 hours in that place is equivalent to 80 years on planet earth. So, a guy called ms on planet smith842 goes to sleep at 12 ’ O clock and wakes up at 8. During those 8 hours, he dreams the following:

He opens his eyes in a strange place called planet earth. These guys, called parents, assure him that it is not a strange place. 4 hours into his dream, ms is a 40 year old person on planet earth with a set of perceptions, outlook, and belief systems that were the result of his upbringing, education, environment and genetics during the past 4 hours of dreaming.

2- When ms wakes up startled at 8’o clock because the guy in his dream suddenly dies at an early age of 80 years (only 8 hours on planet smith842), all ms can remember from the dream is the earthling guy saying:

**You can’t “think you dream” and not dream on some level. If you are aware of dreaming then you are dreaming. Therefore, I “know” I dream. **

And ms says to himself: What??.. What on “earth” this creature in my dream was talking about?

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Milum. I just ran a search on your past posts in other threads. Quite impressive. Were you really recognized as the smartest guy in the Southeast as those posts seem to indicate? Wow.

I have a question for you. Why would someone real real smart (who is generally very busy) take the time or would even want to patiently guide you along, step-by-step through the most complex issues, and teach you everything you need to know? You are a smart guy. Why expect others to sacrifice their time, patiently guiding you along step-by-step, when you can do it yourself at your own pace?

34

Damn Wake up, I didn’t know that I would be investigated. Great. I really can’t stand much close scrutiny. I just wanted to know why msmith537 presumed the “I”.

You know, like, if you intro an “I” into a universe that only has a postulate that sez only…

SOMETHING EXISTS OTHER THAN NOTHING

…then you must explain where you got the concept and what you mean by “I” or the thought police will arrest you and and put you in the jail for the ignorant, inmature, and uninformed.

_________________________________ :slight_smile:

35

Maybe I don’t understand the question here (since I am merely a product of public schools). My definition for “I” is basically that there is a self-aware consciousness out there that basically identifies itself as msmith537.

Even if I “exist” as a dream or computer simulation, it is still a form of existance. It is just the nature of existance that is in question.

36

But** msmith537** when you assume your “self” as the all-encompassing interpreter of the “SOMETHING” that we all agrees exists, you close the loop against further logical discussion on this board.

Please don’t do this to me as I think most highly of myself. :slight_smile:

37

reality is whatever is going on beyond my brain.

my brain/mind contains a “paradigm of reality”

some of that paradigm is built from second hand information form other people. i have found on occasion that information has been wrong and i’ve had to modify the paradigm.

some aspects of reality are somewhat interesting but useless. i took a quantum physics coures in the 70’s, it was required for electrical engineering. i didn’t see the application to my major and no one would explain it. so some aspects of reality i am content to ignore.

the Hubble telescope has located galaxies 10 billion+ lightyears away. did they exist in reality before the Hubble found them. since they are so far away there reality at this time cannot be what the Hubble is showing us because 10 billion+ years have gone by.

we are each stuck with our limited paradigm of reality but we can exchange info to try to improve our paradigms. of course we have these language problems.

is Europe a continent in reality?

Dal Timgar

38

Why only physicists? How about Chemists, Spectrascopists, Neurophyisiologists, Neuropharmacalogists, Geneticists, Brain Researchers working on neurocybernetics, Psychophysiobiologists, picotechnology-based computer scientists, virtual reality designers, etc.

After all, isn’t brain a physio-chemical entity where “reality” is supposedly perceived? According to QM theory, observers (such as a physicist) can effect the outcome of events by their mere presence and observation. IMHO, to get to the “truth” and to be able to understand “reality”, we need to be very aware of how our brain is working and how is it interpreting the unfolding events and drawing conclusions. Understanding the workings of the brain in itself is an immense task requiring more than just physicists’ participation.

39

We may picture our theories as maps of reality. If our maps of reality were comprehensive and consistent with each other, there would be little demand for further investigations in the philosophy of nature. The problem, in modern times, is precisely that our maps are fragmented, confused, and often appear to contradict each other. Physicists survive in this situation by marking various regions with large `Keep Out’ signs, and learning to choose which of their opposing maps should be used in the various stages of their travels.

“I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, But how can it be like that?' because you will get down the drain’ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.” – Richard Feynman.

Feynman may well have a point about the difficulties and dangers in trying to answer the question `What can the world be like such that quantum mechanics can be true of it?’, but what we need therefore are suitable new instruments of analysis which are precise and versatile. We will need to extend many of our common sense ideas beyond their original scope, while at the same time always considering carefully exactly how they can still be applied.

Please stop putting that alarm on snooze… its time to wake up… only 300 years ago, the world was flat and the center of the universe, 200 years ago dissecting the molecule was impossible, 50 years ago the moon was too far away, 20 years ago it was thought impossible that computers would be part of everyday life and 20 minutes ago you thought our mental evolution was ‘snail paced’.

I request you to keep this discussion to its main topic : Philosophy of Nature and Quantum Physics.

The physical theories of the Greeks, of Newton and of modern quantum physics assume different philosophical ideas about substances, and these ideas are not compatible with each other. They cannot all be correct! My purpose in this forum is to illuminate these different basic ideas, and to see whether there is one set of ideas which recommend themselves as reasonable, and which can help us understand the world and its peculiarities as revealed by quantum physics

PS: BTW as for your pedantic panderings on philosophy and reality, please refer carefully to my previous postings in the same thread.

40

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?