A few weeks ago I introduced to this forum the idea that every formulation of quantum mechanics requires an observer and that requires that mentality or soul is more important than matter. For a refresher, here is what three physicists said about mind/soul being more important than matter:
Which means, if you hold to Many Worlds View of Quantum, you actually believe there is a supreme being. LMAO. Most people who hold Many World's view don't realize it requires a super being ala God! and finally:
The need for an observer who is apart from nature for the quantum collapse, is something that ensures that this world is not materialistic. It is scientific fact that the world is not merely matter, and that mind does not arise from matter. Can we go further than this? Yes, a couple of weeks ago, as I was getting ready for my move, Nature published an article with astounding implications. The article in Nature is entitled." Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself" by Daniela Frauchiger & Renato Renner. The abstract says:
This is probably the easiest way to get a grasp on what these authors have done:
But the two conflicting answers are not mere belief, they are certitudes handed down by quantum mechanical mathematics. It is not a mere matter of the belief of the two outside physicists, but what a rigorous application of quantum tells them--and the answers conflict.
When I was in grad school in philosophy of science, one of the most important things I learned was that when you derive a contradiction from your line of reasoning, the assumptions you are using, either knowingly or unknowingly, are incompatible and you better go look for the flawed assumption. Frauchiger and Renner give the assumptions that go into their analysis:
Assumption Q, Universal applicability of Quantum. Most physicists and other scientists have used the materialistic assumption that quantum mechanics applies to all things inside this universe, including our consciousness/ mind/ soul. If our minds/souls are expressions of the workings of matter and some sort of epiphenomenon of complex matter, then mental states would be subject to the laws of quantum dynamics. Many suggestions have been made that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind for discussions of quantum theories of the mind. Others think it is ridiculous to think consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. If this latter group is correct, then the laws of physics as we know them, doesn't apply to mind/soul, and that would include quantum mechanics. They would be consistent with the above view that the observer is above and logically prior to matter as expressed by the three physicists above, but generally this second group of physicists don't believe in souls or God or other spiritual entities. Their position is inconsistent with the observation that somehow mind/soul is " outside of the description provided by physics" as Stephen Barr said above.
To me, assumption Q is the weak link in the set of assumptions. Mind is not subject to quantum mechanics, and that means it is something entirely different--something like a soul.
Assumption C--consistency. This is the real sine qua non of science and knowledge. If our theories are inconsistent, then all knowledge is impossible to obtain. If today when I measure the bounce of a ball and the height decreases with every bounce, then I know the laws of physics (friction and energy conservation) as we know them apply. But if tomorrow, the ball bounces higher and higher after each bounce, eventually shooting off into space, inconsistent with what we know of physics, then all we could do is shrug our shoulders and say we don't understand nature. Consistency is the very touchstone of logic. As a professor once proved in my class, from any inconsistency he can prove that the Pope is protestant, and he did as we students pealed off one inconsistency after another. If C is not valid, shut your science books and start reading Tarot Cards.
Assumption S--singular results. Frauchiger and Renner say " from the viewpoint of an agent who carries out a particular measurement, this measurement has one single outcome" This is totally consistent with our experience. We never experience multiple outcomes of a quantum experiment--it is one or the other--binary. I don't see how this can be the weak sister of the assumptions.
This all says one thing, there is something in the situation to which quantum doesn't apply. Maybe it doesn't apply to macroscopic objects, but already objects large enough to be seen have been placed in superposition
Before I die, I expect a macroscopic tardigrade will have been put into superposition, showing that quantum applies to even bigger macroscopic objects. The only other thing in the lab which is being modeled, is consciousness, and so this leaves the conclusion that it is the observer using quantum can't be modeled by quantum. So to me, this points to the fact that consciousness is not subject to the laws of physics. There are instances of where it becomes clear that mind is bigger than matter.
A detour: When I was struggling with whether or not to give up Christianity, a struggle which lasted 10 years, in which my wife and middle son thought I would become an atheist, there was one thing I could not get around-- my Turkish translator experience. I was at a Christian conference in Dallas, TX in 1969, and we had just heard a sermon on praying specifically. Don't pray for the missionaries in Africa cause you don't know if the prayer was answered or not. Pray for something that you will KNOW has been answered.
Thus, at 1 am in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel, a college woman came up to me and my best friend, Wayne Sparkman, and asked us if we knew where she could find a Turkish translator. They wanted to share the Gospel with a Turkish guy staying in the hotel. Middle Easterners were very rare in the country in 1969 and later a linguist told me that about 95% of all the 5000 Turkish speakers in the US at that time lived in New York City. Well, I don't know what made me say this, but I said, Let's pray for a Turkish translator to come to a specific desk (there were 2 check in desks) in 10 min. When we finished praying, my roommate and best friend, Wayne, asked if we shouldn't start looking. Again, I don't know what made me say this, but I said, "We still have 8 min." We stood there for 8 more minutes. At exactly 10 m, a guy entered the hotel and went to that very desk. Wayne asked me to go see if the guy spoke Turkish. I was freaked out and couldn't, so Wayne did it. The guy had been a Air Force interpreter in Turkey; he worked as a short order cook in downtown Dallas and had never before been in the Adolphus Hotel. In fact this was not on his way home, but he needed to buy some cigarettes and so came to the Hotel to get some. I worked up the odds of that happening by chance and it was an astounding number against such an occurrence happening by chance--yeah some have tried to suggest it was a grand fluke, like meeting a friend in Tallinn Estonia in a bar when he doesn't drink, but I couldn't say that because of the time requirement--precisely 10 minutes in a 10 ft square area. Flukes like meeting your friend don't involve asking God for your friend to be there at a specific time.
So years later when discussing atheism vs theism with Wil Provine, a well known evangelical atheist if there ever was one, and I had finally kinda given up on Christianity and told him to email me his best proof of atheism, he told me there was no proof of atheism. I was shocked. What he had was faith; what I had was faith AND an experience--like Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact--I had an experience with God. I couldn't become an atheist because they had nothing really to offer in the way of reality or proof. They had no experience nor scientific proof of their position. Why? I think they could be atheists because they had had no contact with the supreme consciousness.
My oldest son's wife is Singaporean Chinese. She was raised in a Daoist home, although her father by then was really kind of nothing--no beliefs. She was the first of her family to become a Christian and through her, her brother became a Christian, and through them, their cousins all became Christian. When she and Dan married, we went to Singapore for the tea ceremony, minus the religious aspects of it and her father took us up to Melakka, Malaysia where his sister lived and acted as a guide through the traditional Daoist Temple in Melakka. Oo Hong Hee, her father, explained Daoism to me but it was clear that he no longer believed it. When his mother died about 4 years ago, both he and his wife became Christians along with his wife's grandparents. My daughter-in-law was instrumental in winning almost her whole family to Christ.
But then 6 months after he became a Christian, he was given a death sentence, a cancer on his neck or head. I wondered what the effect of this would be on his new found faith? Well, I now call him miracle man, to his face. A few months later, the cancer totally disappeared, and he became a far more devout Christian than I.
As I have thought about this, I think God gives to each Christian what they need to deal with whatever pressures that they will encounter so that they can have an Ebenezer stone to look at, to keep them Christian. I needed a Turkish translator; Hong Hee needed a cancer miracle, but we both had encounters with God--and that is consistent with the observational data from Quantum that spirit is more important than matter; that spirit is not explainable by the mathematics of Quantum. Disbelieve if you like, but if so, please don't ignore the scientific data that goes against your position, mind seems to be something different and outside the realm of science.
Originally posted by Steven Weinberg, Scientific American July 2018, p. 32
Originally posted by Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos Oxford University press, 1997 p. 264
Originally posted by Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), p. 27-28
Originally posted by Frauchiger and Renner, "Quantum Theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself" Nature, Sept 18, 2018
Originally posted by Davide Castelvecchi, " Reimagining of Schrödinger’s cat breaks quantum mechanics — and stumps physicists" Nature Sept 18, 2018
When I was in grad school in philosophy of science, one of the most important things I learned was that when you derive a contradiction from your line of reasoning, the assumptions you are using, either knowingly or unknowingly, are incompatible and you better go look for the flawed assumption. Frauchiger and Renner give the assumptions that go into their analysis:
Originally posted by Frauchiger and Renner, "Quantum Theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself" Nature, Sept 18, 2018
To me, assumption Q is the weak link in the set of assumptions. Mind is not subject to quantum mechanics, and that means it is something entirely different--something like a soul.
Assumption C--consistency. This is the real sine qua non of science and knowledge. If our theories are inconsistent, then all knowledge is impossible to obtain. If today when I measure the bounce of a ball and the height decreases with every bounce, then I know the laws of physics (friction and energy conservation) as we know them apply. But if tomorrow, the ball bounces higher and higher after each bounce, eventually shooting off into space, inconsistent with what we know of physics, then all we could do is shrug our shoulders and say we don't understand nature. Consistency is the very touchstone of logic. As a professor once proved in my class, from any inconsistency he can prove that the Pope is protestant, and he did as we students pealed off one inconsistency after another. If C is not valid, shut your science books and start reading Tarot Cards.
Assumption S--singular results. Frauchiger and Renner say " from the viewpoint of an agent who carries out a particular measurement, this measurement has one single outcome" This is totally consistent with our experience. We never experience multiple outcomes of a quantum experiment--it is one or the other--binary. I don't see how this can be the weak sister of the assumptions.
This all says one thing, there is something in the situation to which quantum doesn't apply. Maybe it doesn't apply to macroscopic objects, but already objects large enough to be seen have been placed in superposition
Originally posted by Jason Palmer, "Team's quantum object is biggest by factor of billions" [url
A detour: When I was struggling with whether or not to give up Christianity, a struggle which lasted 10 years, in which my wife and middle son thought I would become an atheist, there was one thing I could not get around-- my Turkish translator experience. I was at a Christian conference in Dallas, TX in 1969, and we had just heard a sermon on praying specifically. Don't pray for the missionaries in Africa cause you don't know if the prayer was answered or not. Pray for something that you will KNOW has been answered.
Thus, at 1 am in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel, a college woman came up to me and my best friend, Wayne Sparkman, and asked us if we knew where she could find a Turkish translator. They wanted to share the Gospel with a Turkish guy staying in the hotel. Middle Easterners were very rare in the country in 1969 and later a linguist told me that about 95% of all the 5000 Turkish speakers in the US at that time lived in New York City. Well, I don't know what made me say this, but I said, Let's pray for a Turkish translator to come to a specific desk (there were 2 check in desks) in 10 min. When we finished praying, my roommate and best friend, Wayne, asked if we shouldn't start looking. Again, I don't know what made me say this, but I said, "We still have 8 min." We stood there for 8 more minutes. At exactly 10 m, a guy entered the hotel and went to that very desk. Wayne asked me to go see if the guy spoke Turkish. I was freaked out and couldn't, so Wayne did it. The guy had been a Air Force interpreter in Turkey; he worked as a short order cook in downtown Dallas and had never before been in the Adolphus Hotel. In fact this was not on his way home, but he needed to buy some cigarettes and so came to the Hotel to get some. I worked up the odds of that happening by chance and it was an astounding number against such an occurrence happening by chance--yeah some have tried to suggest it was a grand fluke, like meeting a friend in Tallinn Estonia in a bar when he doesn't drink, but I couldn't say that because of the time requirement--precisely 10 minutes in a 10 ft square area. Flukes like meeting your friend don't involve asking God for your friend to be there at a specific time.
So years later when discussing atheism vs theism with Wil Provine, a well known evangelical atheist if there ever was one, and I had finally kinda given up on Christianity and told him to email me his best proof of atheism, he told me there was no proof of atheism. I was shocked. What he had was faith; what I had was faith AND an experience--like Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact--I had an experience with God. I couldn't become an atheist because they had nothing really to offer in the way of reality or proof. They had no experience nor scientific proof of their position. Why? I think they could be atheists because they had had no contact with the supreme consciousness.
My oldest son's wife is Singaporean Chinese. She was raised in a Daoist home, although her father by then was really kind of nothing--no beliefs. She was the first of her family to become a Christian and through her, her brother became a Christian, and through them, their cousins all became Christian. When she and Dan married, we went to Singapore for the tea ceremony, minus the religious aspects of it and her father took us up to Melakka, Malaysia where his sister lived and acted as a guide through the traditional Daoist Temple in Melakka. Oo Hong Hee, her father, explained Daoism to me but it was clear that he no longer believed it. When his mother died about 4 years ago, both he and his wife became Christians along with his wife's grandparents. My daughter-in-law was instrumental in winning almost her whole family to Christ.
But then 6 months after he became a Christian, he was given a death sentence, a cancer on his neck or head. I wondered what the effect of this would be on his new found faith? Well, I now call him miracle man, to his face. A few months later, the cancer totally disappeared, and he became a far more devout Christian than I.
As I have thought about this, I think God gives to each Christian what they need to deal with whatever pressures that they will encounter so that they can have an Ebenezer stone to look at, to keep them Christian. I needed a Turkish translator; Hong Hee needed a cancer miracle, but we both had encounters with God--and that is consistent with the observational data from Quantum that spirit is more important than matter; that spirit is not explainable by the mathematics of Quantum. Disbelieve if you like, but if so, please don't ignore the scientific data that goes against your position, mind seems to be something different and outside the realm of science.
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