Does commonsense really run counter to Quantum Mechanics?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Spellbound, Dec 16, 2015.

  1. Spellbound Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Please elaborate.
     
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  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I have already done so in the 1st 3 paras of post No. 4 of this thread. I'm not sure I can add a lot to that.
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    No. It also contains all the ideas and principles we need to learn something new.
    I doubt. But, whatever, it also told them that if one does not know, one can try it out.
    No. Common sense is the base of the scientific method.
     
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  7. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Dave had that backwads: Aristotle believed that heavier objects fall faster. But the error/his point is basically the same. Legend has it that Tycho Brake used to do that very experiment (albeit with lighter, less messy fruit) at parties to show the "common sense" belief was wrong.
    No, actually it didn't. While Aristotle did do some observing, his basic philosophy was that you could figure things out by thinking about them. That's why he was so often so badly wrong: he often didn't bother to check!
    No, not really and especially wrong in the ignorance-based bias way most people, including you, apply it.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    About common sense telling us to try out:
    It did and does. All children try out whatever they can. Who tells them to try out? Certainly not their teachers - they usually would be much more comfortable without this. It is common sense.

    To figure things out by thinking about them is also a good idea, and also in agreement with common sense.
    Some people seem unable to have a conversation without personal attacks.
     
  9. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Aristotle largely tried to figure things out just by thinking about them, and not by actually investigating (testing) them. That's why his approach was bad and therefore why he drew so many wrong conclusions. Perhaps the way I explained it wasn't clear.
    Yes, that's a shame. Glad there isn't any of that going on here.
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    This was because he was part of the intellectual elite, and not a slave to do work.

    But so what, my original point remains valid - common sense tells us to try out things we don't know. At least if it is not too dangerous or so. And essentially the scientific method is the method of common sense. Popper has made this point later, when he started to advocate his critical rationalism as a general idea, not restricted to science.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Spellbound, there seems to be some confusion about Russ' comment.
    Instead of interpreting what he said (which, judging by his response, was in error), why don't you ask him for clarification?

    [EDIT] Too late. Never mind. Delete Plz.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Not sure I agree.
    We just established that, to Aristotle, it is not common sense to try things we don't know.

    And frankly, I think it's still the case today. It is what separates the scientifically-minded from the rest of the world. This and other science fora are virtually overrun with people who are happy to speculate about all sorts of wild ideas that don't even rise to the level of hypothesis, and see no value in the actual sweat equity to experiment or formulate.

    I don't think so. I think they're opposites. I think scientific sense is a distinct trait from common sense.

    Or or we back to talking about the rigorous definition of common sense? In which case I re- bow out.
     
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Oh. You think that Aristotle was selling his ideas as common sense, instead of elitist higher wisdom?
    Of course, thinking about the things is also part of common sense.

    A rigorous definition of common sense is meaningless. If something is common sense or not one can find out quite easily: Does it fit with what people usually do? In particular with what children, which are much less distorted by what society is teaching, which can distort common sense, usually do?
     
  14. The God Valued Senior Member

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    The definition as taken from wiki..

    ..........Common sense is a basic ability to perceive, understand, and judge things, which is shared by ("common to") nearly all people and can reasonably be expected of nearly all people without any need for debate.....

    To discover something new, you need to know something. In general you do not apply common sense to a discovery of something new, you apply common sense in the process, even in the process of defining objective, in taking observation, in setting experimenatal set up, in analysing data....for example if you are setting up a telescope to observe night sky stars, you are not going to put the same in a very brightly lit area (Urban Cluster)...you won't keep the lense facing you, you will keep it facing the sky at some angle......thats common sense.

    Probably what was told that a leaf or paper may take ten times more time than watermelon or stone. Because till then we had no idea about Gravity and air drag. So it was common sense, it need not be a scientifically validated thinking.


    It is still the widely accepted and perceived belief, as I said it need not be a scientifically validated stuff.

    Not at all.
     
  15. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Another philosophical discussion showing up in Physics and Math.

    All systems of mathematical reasoning are either inconsistent, or incomplete, or both, and this is not subject to philosophical debate because Godel already used a system of mathematical reasoning in order to prove this premise.

    Each and every time you see physics containing a constant along the lines of G in Newton's Law of gravitation, or the k in Coulomb's Law, or the 20 free parameters in string theory or in QCD, those theories too are INCOMPLETE because the origin or cause of the force of gravity or electrostatic interaction, or the 20 or so others were not derived from first mathematical principles. The same argument applies to hidden variables.

    Reality has no such limitations as those imposed on mathematics, the proof of which is itself mathematical. Does anyone here really need a proof of this? I have one, but it is long, as you would expect of a philosophical style of argument. And someone is sure to insist that it be done somewhere else.

    Spellbound noticed that I had implied, but did not fully elaborate this idea in a thread in the Philosophy forum, and evidently believed it should be discussed here.
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2015
  16. river

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    danshawen show your arguement .

    I ask this not out of; your full of BS .

    But out of curiosity.
     
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  17. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    "you're". Also, a proof is different from an argument, or BS. It is binding, as far as mathematical reasoning is concerned. Several ideas were put forward in my previous post, not all of them my own. What exactly is it that you want me to do? Or, what is it specifically which I wrote that you doubt?

    I don't need to prove Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Someone already spent an entire lifetime doing that, and this was more useful a life than the thousands whose lives were were wasted trying to get to the last digit of pi before computers were developed to help.

    Godel is in the same league as Brahe, who observed epicycles in great detail so that Kepler could use them later to figure out what was really going on.

    Symbolic math has limits. Godel found and defined them.
     
  18. river

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    You said in post # 32 " I have one , but it is long "

    All I'm asking ; as long as it maybe ; start.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Common sense is often - and this is common sense - learned or acquired assessments that run counter to the initial reactions of children. Human life is social life, and slow to learn. Society is a source, not a distortion, of most common sense.
    A survey of what people do will not reliably discover what those same people regard as common sense behavior. People routinely defy what they themselves recognize as common sense. You shouldn't depend too much on people behaving as they know they would if they had any sense - that's just common sense.
     
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  20. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    No, everything isn't subjective. Science is objective. All you're saying is because humans are involved 'everything' associated with our thought process has to be subjective. Because we have individual consciousness we can find objectivity by consensus associated with scientific research. This is a science thread?
     
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  21. brucep Valued Senior Member

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    In science I think of common sense as something that is self evident to folks who are actively involved in scientific research. Such as 'humans are conscious beings.'. Or that gravity is real natural phenomena. Common sense that requires a scientific foundation might be 'this is fundamentally a quantum universe'. We couldn't form a consensus on that until the last century. Probably a weak analogy but we do this in our daily life when we take paths that are common to all of us. Or should be common to all of us such as reading the scientific literature before you start running your mouth about stuff that has no chance of meeting the requirement of scientific consensus.
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I don't pretend to guess the motives of someone millennia dead. I don't think you should either. Just looking at his work.


    Derp. Good catch Russ. I meant 'Common sense told pre-Galileans that a watermelon would fall ten times faster than an orange'.
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2015
  23. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Okay. It probably will pop up somewhere in the "Philosophy" forum, because that's where it really belongs. In the meantime, those not familiar with Gödel's work might wish to read this:

    https://edge.org/conversation/rebecca_newberger_goldstein-godel-and-the-nature-of-mathematical-truth

    No philosophy or model of reality is complete until and unless it defines the nature of truth and any limitations on how much of it can be known.

    I didn't know, Gödel starved himself to death (some time after his friend Einstein died), evidently because he thought his food might be poisoned.

    According to Gödel, incomplete systems of logic will be those for which one true proposition that cannot be proven is possible. Inconsistent systems of logic are ones in which it is possible to prove that literally anything is possible.

    Here is one example of an obvious error or contradiction in current mathematics that has evidently been allowed to stand. Negative and imaginary probabilities really bug me. Probabilities are between zero and one. Negative and imaginary probabilities are not probabilities. They are range errors. What really is the point of studying errors, mathematical or otherwise? The only thing errors are any good for is for someone to notice they are errors and if possible, correct them. Equivocating errors with truth only serves to compound the original error. Just so we understand the ground rules. Defining falsehood as truth never impressed me.

    Studying errors for the sake of learning how many different ways they can be made is something like studying historical fiction to try and learn about actual history. I'm not interested in either. If you are, by all means, have at it.

    Reality is self-correcting, and unlike our models of it, mathematical or otherwise, it is ALWAYS both complete and consistent. If mathematics is not, the fault is in the representation of truth limited by means of its own symbolology.
     
    Last edited: Dec 20, 2015

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