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Denying Self-Consciousness, Quantum and a Christian answer to the Problem of Evil

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  • Denying Self-Consciousness, Quantum and a Christian answer to the Problem of Evil

    I am on my 3rd round of chemo and each round makes concentration harder and harder. I probably won't respond to anything, but I have been thinking a lot about the future and being the philosophical guy I am, well, I came up with this.

    Denying Self-Consciousness, Quantum and a Christian answer to the Problem of Evil by Glenn Morton

    I like a long list of philosophers, believe that the thing we call self-consciousness is our soul--it is something above and different from the universe. It doesn't arise from the universe but the universe may in part arise from it, at least that is what science seems to say see below.

    During Christmas, my sons and I discussed self-consciousness. One son tried to say that he could doubt that self-consciousness existed. I and my other two sons jumped quickly on him noting that to do so is to exhibit insanity. Why did we accuse my beloved son of insanity at that moment? First and foremost, WHAT is doing the denying? How can something that is not conscious deny anything? Secondly denying my self-consciousness is self referential. It is making a statement about the lack of existence of the self same entity that makes the statement that it doesn't exist. One has to be conscious to make a statement, and one has to have self consciousness to know that there is a consciousness in myself which needs denying. So the fact that you deny you have self-consciousness requires that you have self-consciousness. And third, one can deny the existence of the rainbow, calling it an illusion and live just fine. One cannot deny self-consciousness and live well. If one were to really try to act as if they were not self-conscious, one would have to ignore pain, hunger, thirst and life would be very short indeed. Rocks don't have self-consciousness but then neither do they eat, drink, talk or form clubs for the denial of self-consciousness.

    Some might bring up Cotard's syndrome in which people claim they feel as if they don't exist. Again logically, what is it that is conveying this particular piece of information? It is the consciousness that they possess that is denying that their consciousness exists. Logically that is in conflict with the observational data that some consciousness is denying itself consciousness.

    I would add one other aspect of this problem. Without self-consciousness, science is impossible. In any experiment one must be aware of where the self is in relationship to the experimental equipment. One must be self-conscious to report the results after writing a paper for publication with one's name on it. More importantly, one must have self-consciousness and free will to do science. If every event is predetermined, then so are the states of consciousness predetermined. It is those states of consciousness which observe the experimental apparatus and report on what it does. This produces a conflict, if the states of consciousness are predetermined, did it really see the experiment or did it merely experience a set of predetermined experiences that signify nothing? As Rothman and Sudarshan say:

    Originally posted by Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan, Doubt and Certainty, (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1998), p. 74
    “Finally, we might agree with Hamlet:

    "Find out the cause of this effect / Or rather, say, the cause of this defect." What the Dane had in mind was the paradox of the Newtonian universe: in a strictly causal world, the existence of causality cannot be established. If every event is determined by every preceding event, then the concept of free will is meaningless, as is the notion of running an experiment, which presupposes that conditions can be varied. Yet, if the experimenter's very actions are predetermined, then nothing has been varied and no "experiment" has been carried out. To put it another way, one needs a defect in causality to verify causality. That is to say. . .”
    “Apparently, Newtonian physics did not clarify all issues.”
    One aspect of self-consciousness is intentionality, The Will to do something.

    It seems rather difficult to deny intentionality is a part of self consciousness. One would get laughed at for denying that one has the intention to walk to the bathroom, that this intention is just an illusion and not real. Without intentionality of the self-conscious entity nothing we do gets done.

    Gen 1:26 says:

    And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth

    An interesting question to me is whether or not intentionality is what this verse is speaking of. I had an experience in which my will overrode what biochemistry said should have occurred. This, in turn, implies that Intentionality can affect the physical events in the world. I once had surgery on the nerve at my elbow. I had cubital tunnel syndrome which basically means I was sawing my nerve in half at my elbow when I bent my right arm. As I lay on the surgical table awaiting the anesthesia, they told me that they were going to inject this stuff into my hand where the IV was, and that I would feel it crawling up my arm. They wanted me to count backwards from 100 to 90. They told me that no one made it past 95 and that by the time it got to my shoulder, it would quickly put me out. I told them that I would count backwards in Mandarin Chinese and make it to 90. So here is what happened.

    I felt the anesthesia start up my arm. I began counting. 100, 99... I heard some European resident ask what I was doing. A Chinese guy in the OR said, "He is counting in Chinese." When I hit 95, the creepy crawlys in my arm had reached my shoulder and this massive wave of fatigue and sleepiness came over me. I forced myself to stay awake and keep counting, 94 (Jiu shi si), 93(Jiu shi san), 92(Jiu shi er), 91(Jiu shi yi), 90 (Jiu shi). I then said, "There, I did it. Goodnight" and went to sleep. I will fully admit that staying awake those last 5 numbers was extremely difficult, but clearly not impossible.

    The doctor later told me he had never seen anyone make it to 90 and that he had depended on the Chinese guy to tell him that I had indeed made it. My coworker the next day, upon hearing this, said, "Glenn, you don't have to fight against EVERYTHING." lol. But here is the point, my will overrode what mechanism would predict.

    So how did my intentionality override what biochemistry said should happen? Wilder Penfield, a Canadian neurosurgeon, was one of the first to illustrate that intentionality is different than physics.

    Originally posted by John Searle, Minds, Brains, and Science, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p.64
    “The best way to see the nature of the different components of an action is to carve each component off and examine it separately. And in fact, in a laboratory, it's easy enough to do that. We already have in neurophysiology experiments, done by Wilder Penfield of Montreal, where by electrically stimulating a certain portion of the patient's motor cortex, Penfield could cause the movement of the patient's limbs. Now, the patients were invariably surprised at this, and they characteristically said such things as: 'I didn't do that - you did it.' In such a case, we have carved off the bodily movement without the intention. Notice that in such cases the bodily movements might be the same as they are in an intentional action, but it seems quite clear that there is a difference. What's the difference? Well, we also have experiments going back as far as William James, where we can carve off the mental component without the corresponding physical component of the action. In the James case, a patient's arm is anaesthetised, and it is held at his side in a dark room, and he is then ordered to raise it. He does what he thinks is obeying the order, but is later quite surprised to discover that his arm didn't go up. Now in that case, we carve off the mental component, that is to say the intention, from the bodily movement. For the man really did have the intention. That is, we can truly say of him, he genuinely did try to move his arm.”

    Penfield's patients knew they didn't move their arms. It wasn't an intentional act, so merely engaging the circuitry didn't engage the consciousness. My self-conscious intentionality over-rode what determinism would seem to require. Because of this, I do not believe that self-consciousness is truly a deterministic phenomenon. Indeed, as shown above, if self-consciousness is determined, then experimental science is not truly experimental and nothing is actually learned.

    Several things point to us being more than just a material thing.

    Originally posted by Karl Sabbagh, The Riemann Hypothesis, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), p. 258
    "It is quite amazing to realize that our simpleminded materialistic conception of external reality is really built on quicksand," he said, "and that after a while the only real thing you can cling to is much more abstract. Just let me give you a concrete example of that. If you take one individual, most of his cells are actually replaced totally over a period of several years, so what is he? Is he a collection of cells? Certainly not, because precisely these cells are replaced. But what he is is something quite different-it's a scheme. The only thing that is pertinent is the scheme, the organization. Quantum mechanics is extremely striking in that respect, because it makes it clear that even if you try to cling to external matter as being reality, you will find that as soon as you go to the sufficiently small, then precisely because of quantum mechanics you will come across inconsistencies, so you can't rely on that as being the ultimate reality."

    Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner wrote a book in which they show that every single interpretation of Quantum Mechanics requires an external observer. In QM the observer plays an essential role. If nature is deterministic and meaningless, how is it that physics places an observer in a prime position?

    Originally posted by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 174
    "Though it is hard to fit free will into a scientific worldview, we cannot ourselves, with any seriousness, doubt it. ]. A. Hobson's comment seems apt to us: "Those of us with common sense are amazed at the resistance put up by psychologists, physiologists, and philosophers to the obvious reality of free will."
    "However, as we have seen, in accepting both free will and the demonstrated quantum results, we face an enigma: the apparent creation of reality by conscious observation. Moreover, to avoid the enigma by denying free will, we must also assume that the world conspires to correlate our choices with the physical situations we then observe. While in classical physics free will is a benign problem, quantum mechanics forces us to consider such human aspects intruding into our physics. According to John Bell:

    'It has turned out that, quantum mechanics cannot be "completed" into a locally causal theory, at least as long as one allows ... freely operating experimenters.'

    The creation of reality by observation is hard to accept. But it is not a new notion."
    According to Bell, it is consciousness that forces local acausality, which raises questions. Are humans a physical acausal agent? Do we humans collectively or individually create the world we live in?


    Originally posted by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, Quantum Enigma, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 195
    "With another theory, Henry Stapp argues that classical physics can never explain how consciousness can have an effect, but an explanation comes about naturally with quantum mechanics. We saw earlier how free will was permitted in deterministic classical physics only by excluding the mind from the realm of physics. Stapp notes that extending such classical physics to the brain/mind would have our thoughts controlled "bottom-up" by the deterministic motion of particles an fields. There would be no mechanism for a "top-down" conscious influence."

    "Stapp takes off from von Neumann's formulation of the Copenhagen interpretation. Von Neumann, recall, showed that in viewing a microscopic object in a superposition state, the entire measurement chain-from, say, the atom to the Geiger counter, to the human eye looking at it, to the thus entangled synapses in the observer's brain-must, strictly speaking, be considered part of grand superposition state. Supposedly, only consciousness, something beyond the Schrodinger equation, beyond present physics, can collapse a wavefunction."

    "Stapp postulates two realities, a physical and a mental. The physical include the brain, perhaps in a particular quantum superposition state. The mental reality includes consciousness, and, in particular, intentions. The mental can intentionally act on the physical brain to choose a particular superposition state which then collapses to a particular situation. Consciousness does not directly "reach out" to the external world in this theory, but this mental choice nevertheless determines, in part, the character of the physical world external to the body-whether an object is wholly in a single box of its pair or simultaneously in both, for example. The final random aspect of the choice (which particular box the object is in, for example) is then made by Nature."

    It is clear that we need something beyond physics, beyond the equations of quantum to collapse the wave function, but doing so means that this mental thing, this observer, creates the world he lives in. All of us, in some sense are creating the world we live in, and maybe it is that collectively we humans are responsible for the world's good and ill.

    With this view is it unreasonable to have prayers from conscious beings affect the world? Can three people change reality? (For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them" Matt 18:20)

    Originally posted by Glenn R. Morton, an old email
    The first time I went to Dallas, I was 19 years old. I went to a Christmas religious conference there at the Adolphus Hotel. My best friend and college roomate was with me. His name is Wayne Sparkman and I think he lives in Pittsburgh or Philly now (I have lost track of him). We had heard a sermon that night on praying specifically. Don't pray for the missionaries in Africa because you will not know if the prayer is answered or not, pray for things that are observationally verifiable. That is the background.

    Anyway, being college students we were still up at 1 AM on this Thursday night in Downtown Dallas at the Adolphus Hotel, a girl walked up to us and asked us if we knew where she could find a Turkish translator. Of course, at 1 AM most folks are asleep and we weren't from Dallas. Wayne asked why she wanted one and the girl replied that they were trying to witness to a Turkish fellow but he didn't know enough English and they didn't know any Turkish. What made me say this, I don't know but I said, "lets pray about it." I must tell you that there were two desks at the Adolphus at that time (they have changed it), one ran east west and the other north south. I prayed that the Lord would bring us a Turkish translator to the north-south desk in 10 minutes. (Once again, I don't know why I was brazen enough to pray that particular prayer). When we finished, Wayne said, 'Lets look around.' I say (once again to my own surprise) "let's wait, we have another 8 minutes". We waited.

    In 10 minutes a guy walked in from the street and went to the north south desk. Wayne told me to go ask the fellow if he spoke Turkish. I told Wayne that I couldn't do it. (I chickened out!) Wayne had the courage to walk up and ask that guy if he spoke Turkish. He did!

    Wayne brought him to the girl who took him over to where they were witnessing. Wayne and I were amazed. So we hung around till they were through using the translator to talk to the translator. The guy was a short order cook in downtown Dallas. He got off at 12:30 and had never gone home the way he chose to go that night. He ran out of cigarettes and came into the hotel to get change so he could buy some(who said smoking was bad?). He had been with the Air Force at Adana, Turkey (I recall) and worked as a translator. He wasn't a Christian so he got witnessed to that night also.

    About a year later, I was working at the Okla. University Research Institute in the Oil Information Center. We put oil production statistics into the computer. They decided to branch out and help Wycliff develop their first computer translation helps. A Dr. Joe Grimes was the liaison and I asked him how many people in the U.S. spoke Turkish. He said that about 5000. [grm-there were very few Middle Easterners in the country at that time because immigration laws didn't allow them in. My Lebanese wife's grandparents were some of the lucky ones to make it to the US during their lifetimes.]. When you figure out that 90% percent were probably asleep at 1 AM and what percentage were in Dallas in 1969, it was truly amazing to find one of them in a 10 x 3 foot area of Dallas after that 10 minutes had passed.
    This was my personal experience, like that of Jane Arroway in Contact. It became a peg-point that I could not get around as I struggled with whether God existed during my 40s and early 50s. It is like today going into your local grocery store with 3 friends and asking for a speaker of Aleut to be at checkout line 5 in 10 minutes. And ask for it publically, 3 hours after being told that you SHOULD ask for such things!

    If it is the case that we collectively choose the world we live in, then this creates an incredible answer to the problem of evil so many atheists use to kill God off. They say, "Why would a loving God allow....[fill in your disaster of preference]" and with that, God is off to the dustbin of history.

    But if mankind collectively as observers are responsible for choosing the world we live in, then it isn't God who sent that tornado or earthquake but us, collectively.


    Now, my middle son thought the above sounded deistic. It might if one doesn't realize that Luke 4: 5-8 seems to indicate that it isn't God who is in control of the world, at least as of His time.

    5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
    6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
    7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
    8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve


    Note that Jesus didn't contradict him and say that No, you don't have authority to make the offer. Which at least as far as Christian theology is concerned might mean that the Fall transferred authority from God to Satan and to Fallen mankind. And while Matt 29:18 says that all authority has been given to Christ, there is no indication that he has exercised all that authority yet. Even in a corporation, one can have authority but not exercise it. Why might that be? It may be because of a wider view of which we are unaware. My bosses did some strange things in my company and when I got to that level, I began to understand why--the wider view doesn't always appear to the person in the trenches.

    One more thing. When I was 25 my older brother, an eagle scout, Sr. high school class president (after 1 year in the town), president of his pledge class, a good athlete (none of which I was) who looked like Robert Redford, died. He was 29 and left a wife with two children, one barely born and had a one year old dental practice in Nebraska. I saw no good in that event at all ----until many years later when my former sister-in-law came to visit. She had not been a Christian at the time of Gary's death. Gary had wanted her to be one. When he died, she was naturally mad at God and stayed that way for years. But because of Gary's witness during the 4 months between diagnosis and death, she eventually became a Christian. That is what she told me. She met a wonderful man who adopted my niece and nephew and was a great father to them. My niece and nephew also eventually became Christians. Being 25, I saw how short life could be and started trying to achieve things, I worked harder at all I did, and eventually rose in the ranks of an oil company. And when, in 2003, I was diagnosed with the cancer that may (or may not) take me in a couple of years, I spent a month in a deep depression. I had been told I wouldn't make 5 years. I was 53 yrs old. I considered retiring early--giving up. But I thought of Gary, who was everything I wanted to be as a kid, and thought, what do I have to gripe about? I saw my kids grow up. He didn't. I decided then that I would chose to live my life happily with as much gusto as I could. Since then, I have lived in China, learned Mandarin badly, started 4 companies, all successful. And I look back on Gary's death with new perspective. I couldn't see the broader picture when I was 25. I think I see some of it today.
    Last edited by grmorton; 01-16-2017, 08:57 PM.

  • #2
    Originally posted by grmorton View Post
    I am on my 3rd round of chemo and each round makes concentration harder and harder.


    You're in my prayers.

    I'm always still in trouble again

    "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
    "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
    "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by grmorton
      I am on my 3rd round of chemo and each round makes concentration harder and harder.
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by grmorton
        Denying Self-Consciousness, Quantum and a Christian answer to the Problem of Evil.
        I do deny the Christian answer to the problem of evil.

        I do not deny Self-Consciousness, but consider the soul to be distinct and separate from our Conscious and Self-Conscious Self.
        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

        go with the flow the river knows . . .

        Frank

        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by rogue06 View Post


          You're in my prayers.
          Me too also!
          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

          Comment


          • #6

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
              I do deny the Christian answer to the problem of evil.

              I do not deny Self-Consciousness, but consider the soul to be distinct and separate from our Conscious and Self-Conscious Self.
              This is intellectual parallel play and an Evidence free post there Frank. Your or my belief doesn't matter. Only evidence matters. you provide nothing of evidentiary value. What you or I deny is of no importance and what we accept is of no importance if it violates observational data. This is why I find discussing things with you so boring. Goodness, Frank, I like you but show that you actually have knowledge in the areas you speak on. It makes me sad that you seem incapable of that. Shoot, tell me that Quantum doesn't create reality but cite data, experiments etc.--speak to any issue in my post. Parallel play is what 3 year olds do.
              Last edited by grmorton; 01-17-2017, 12:30 PM.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                I do deny the Christian answer to the problem of evil.
                Why? What is your answer to the problem of evil?
                Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                Comment


                • #9
                  Thanks for the prayers, guys, each round gets tougher. It is moving the numbers in the right directions but I am not so foolish as to think that it kills the worst of the worst cancer cells. It always kills the easiest to be killed. And that is the conundrum of cancer treatments. The real killers are left alive to do their damage. I will take everyone's prayers, but no one should ever feel sorry for me as I have said, my life has been amazing.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by seer View Post
                    Why? What is your answer to the problem of evil?
                    Some posts were lost in the upgrade(?), but nonetheless I will restate some issues concerning my view of the problem of evil.

                    Yes, I consider evil to be an absence of good, and yes St. Augustine makes similar statements, but this alone does not represent the 'problem of evil' from the Christian perspective that the Baha'i belief nor I agree with.

                    Other issues concerning the mythical nature of 'Evil' like the 'ideal good of Eden before the Fall,' 'Fall,' 'Original Sin,' and the source of the temptation and reason for the 'Fall' negate a simplistic agreement that evil is the absence of Good. These beliefs represent an ancient human view of 'Evil' during the period Christianity evolved from Judaism based on Pentateuch mythology.
                    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                    go with the flow the river knows . . .

                    Frank

                    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                      Yes, I consider evil to be an absence of good, and yes St. Augustine makes similar statements, but this alone does not represent the 'problem of evil' from the Christian perspective that the Baha'i belief nor I agree with.
                      No Augustine pretty much invented the concept based on his understanding of Scripture and you guys stole it.

                      Other issues concerning the mythical nature of 'Evil' like the 'ideal good of Eden before the Fall,' 'Fall,' 'Original Sin,' and the source of the temptation and reason for the 'Fall' negate a simplistic agreement that evil is the absence of Good. These beliefs represent an ancient human view of 'Evil' during the period Christianity evolved from Judaism based on Pentateuch mythology.
                      The question is why do men make bad choices, why do they disobey God. The fall and Original Sin simply point to the fact that man chose to disobey God early on and continue to do so. So sin violates the moral will of God. That is evil, there is something deeply wrong with us. So what do you have?
                      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by seer View Post
                        No Augustine pretty much invented the concept based on his understanding of Scripture and you guys stole it.



                        The question is why do men make bad choices, why do they disobey God. The fall and Original Sin simply point to the fact that man chose to disobey God early on and continue to do so. So sin violates the moral will of God. That is evil, there is something deeply wrong with us. So what do you have?
                        There is no such thing as good in itself, or evil in itself, apart from a subject. With respect to mankind good and evil is that which is either in our collective, ergo our personal best interests, or detrimental to our best interests. Other than that you have no way to define either good or evil.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by seer View Post

                          The question is why do men make bad choices,
                          “Bad choices” vary from Age to Age, e.g. owning slaves is a "bad choice" nowadays whereas it was quite acceptable once... God even laid down rules how to treat slaves, so the story goes.

                          why do they disobey God.
                          One cannot obey or disobey a non-existent entity such as a god.

                          The fall and Original Sin simply point to the fact that man chose to disobey God early on and continue to do so. So sin violates the moral will of God. That is evil,
                          There is no substantive evidence for any of this mythical nonsense...especially given that the so-called “moral will of God” has changed over the Ages...e.g. re slavery.

                          there is something deeply wrong with us.
                          Speak for yourself.

                          So what do you have?
                          Moral values derive from our evolved need for self-preservation and procreation and are essential for social cohesion, which in turn is essential for the survival of our species.
                          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by grmorton View Post
                            Shoot, tell me that Quantum doesn't create reality but cite data, experiments etc.--speak to any issue in my post.
                            I cut out the noise, but will respond to this. What you need to do is clarify this statement. Quantum Mechanics does not create reality. Quantum Mechanics is the based on the observed behavior of sub-atomic particles, and has no specific application in the macro-world. The anecdotal observation of parallels of observed behavior in the macro-world do no represent Quantum behavior in the macro world. Natural Laws and fractal behavior (chaos theory) are best used to describe macro-world phenomenon.

                            Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/4gw2ll/how_much_does_quantum_uncertainty_effect_the/



                            How much does quantum uncertainty effect the macro world?

                            Very little. Schrödinger's cat was meant to be a thought experiment showing how non-sensical it was to assume that quantum mechanics scaled to the macroscopic world. In modern physics, the concept of decoherence explains why the cat is not in a superposition of dead and alive states that collapse when you open the box (note that even the idea of wave function collapse isn't very popular anymore either). Here is a brief explanation of what that means.

                            A single electron can be placed in a superposition of up and down spins. This is also known as a pure state, containing all the information that we can possibly know about the electron. Even knowing all the possible information, we can't predict if the spin will be up or down. A pure state can also exhibit interference with other pure states, producing things like the double slit interference pattern.

                            An electron can also be entirely spin up. This is a different pure state, but now we know what value we will get if we measure the spin of the electron.

                            Of course, we can also just have an electron that is in a decoherent mixture of up and down spins. This is not a pure state. We still might not be sure if the electron will be spin up or spin down, but that is because we don't have all the information. In some sense, the electron is really entirely in a spin up state or entirely in a spin down state, but we don't know which one. This is also what much of the macroscopic uncertainty in the world resembles - if we had better measurements, we could reduce the uncertainty.

                            © Copyright Original Source

                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                              Speak for yourself.
                              Right in your world things like rape and murder are perfectly natural and determined by the laws of nature.
                              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                              Comment

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