One Mind According to Quantum Field Theory

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience' started by Buket, Jun 30, 2016.

  1. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Metaphysical speculation can be fun and can be aesthetically satisfying, so there is nothing in principle wrong with it. But it has more in common with religion than with science. If you ask on a science forum whether the idea of a common mind is true, most people will say "no", or, if they want to be more philosophically accurate, they will say there is no evidence for the idea and thus it has no place in science. This leaves the door ajar for those who want to speculate in a non-scientific way, which is fine.

    But, if you say is it true that quantum field theory says there is a single Mind, the answer is a resounding NO, absolutely not, it is utter rubbish.
     
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  3. Buket Registered Member

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    You know what. Fred Alan Wolf said this to me via email. I had asked him a question. While talking he said this to me. I don't know why he lied or is this what he believes in..
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I would not dream of suggesting he lied to you. It may well be what he believes.

    But you will struggle to find many other qualified physicists who would agree with him.
     
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  7. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    My understanding of the "logic" behind this belief is as follows: (NOTE: I am not saying I believe this!)

    We have all heard the idea that the observer affects events in the quantum world. Some people takes this to mean "consciousness" affects reality. (Google "consciousness causes collapse") And, since it appears that we all experience the same reality, then it follows that there must be a universal and/or common consciousness. This is, of course, a load of "dingoes kidneys" as Douglas Adams would say.
     
  8. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, could be, I expect you are right.

    But in fact, the notion that the consciousness of the observer affects observation in QM is dingo's kidneys.
     
  9. Buket Registered Member

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    As a proof Ludvic Bass' article 'the mind of wigner's friend is given. I read the article and it was full of mathematical equations.
     
  10. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    A lot of the "quantum woo" people like to use the fact that most people don't understand quantum physics (especially the mathematics) to try to bamboozle them into accepting statements that aren't really supported by science.

    So they say, for example, thinks like "everything is cosmically connected to everything else", and they tell you this is because of "quantum entanglement", and that makes it sound like it has a basis in science. But in fact, quantum entanglement does not connect everything to everything else. It is really a specific type of correlation, usually involving microscopic properties of two or a small number of elementary particles. Entanglement allows a kind of restricted "instantaneous communication" between particles in an entangled system. However, some people will have you believe this can somehow be translated and scaled up into something like telepathy between human beings, or things like that. In fact, there is no solid chain of reasoning that leads from the quantum maths of elementary particles to telepathy between human beings. There's no proper scientific theory of that at all. And, in fact, there's also no convincing evidence that any kind of telepathy even happens at all.

    If somebody tells you that humans have a telepathic connection with one another because "quantum mechanics says so", they are lying to you. And if they say they can prove it with an article full of mathematical equations they know you won't understand, they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes.
     
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  11. Buket Registered Member

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  12. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Not really. The math stops in section 2. Sections 2 through 4 form a recap of Wigner's 1961 paradoxical assumption that consciousness is a phenomenon of knowledge distinct from physics. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner's_friend

    There are real questions in quantum mechanics, because quantum uncertainty and knowledge of history seem to be violently opposed to each other, yet the universe has both quantum behaviors and a historical self-consistency. Lots of proposals have been raised to try and make the two coexist. But introducing a metaphysical idea beyond what any observation, test or experiment can reveal is not the way forward. Wolf builds on top of unevidenced metaphysics to build castles in the sky, but without hope of proving they exist.

    Wolf's argument begins in section 5. But all of it is nonsense in terms of both physics (unlike particles, cats and human brains are poorly modeled as isolated systems at zero absolute temperature) and neurology. Because Wolf (and Wigner before him) ignores the physics of decoherence of pure states and he ignores that for the two observers to be in communication they are part of the same universe and quantum mechanics already guarantees that the intermediate observer will not exhibit any uncertainty of knowledge about the observation because quantum histories are self-consistent. Also ignored is that no experiment will resolve the difference between mixed state and a pure Bell state since there is no way to manipulate the state of a brain to choose an alternate basis to measure Wigner's friend. So it's more evidence that Wolf doesn't know a thing he is talking about rather than demonstrating that there is an aspect of mind which is independent of the physical operation of individual brains.
     
  13. Buket Registered Member

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    I was discussing this topic with someone else and he said that our brains are unique but like colors they are in the same category (the Mind). What do you think?
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    That's just like saying that oranges and apples are unique but they are in the same category (fruit). In other words, it doesn't tell us much that we don't already know.
     
  15. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    "Last week, physicist Brian Cox showed us why everything that could happen does happen in a riveting tour of the quantum universe. In this fascinating short excerpt from BBC’s A Night With The Stars, Cox turns to the Pauli exclusion principle — a quantum mechanics theorem holding that no two identical particles may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously — to explain why everything is connected to everything else, an idea at once utterly mind-bending and utterly intuitive, found everywhere from the most ancient Buddhist scripts to the most cutting-edge research in biology and social science.

    "This shift of the configuration of the electrons inside the diamond has consequences, because the sum total of all the electrons of the universe must respect Pauli. Therefore, every electron around every atom in the universe must be shifting as I heat the diamond up, to make sure that none of them end up in the same energy level. When I heat this diamond up, all the electrons in the universe instantly but imperceptibly change their energy levels. So everything is connected to everything else.”

    For a deeper dive into this infinitely fascinating world, treat your mind to Cox’s The Quantum Universe."====https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/02/21/brian-cox-everything-is-connected/
     
  17. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Of course, Cox immediately attracted criticism for his error back in 2012, when this happened. See here for where he went wrong:

    http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/02/23/everything-is-connected/

    Magical Realist:

    Given that at the top of your linked article, there is an explicit note added which says "UPDATE: Sean Carroll (previously) has a well-argued critique of Cox’s explanation.", why did you not take notice of that, and not mention it here? You're not trying to be deliberately misleading, I hope.
     
  18. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    I scanned over the critique but don't know if I agree with it. Brian Cox is a pretty reputable physicist. Perhaps you can explain why Cox is wrong?

    "If you treat each electron as though it sits in a "potential well" (created by the electrostatic field of the atomic nucleus), a good place to start is by thinking of a universe full of atoms as though it were a bunch of potential wells.

    Next you have to solve this multiple-potential-well problem. Jeff's notes solve the Schroedinger equation for two wells as an example, and show that whereas for an infinite potential you'd have two spatially-localised energy levels with identical energies, for a finite potential you have two non-localised energy levels with very slightly different energies.

    The animation at the end of the notes illustrates that an electron that starts off localised to a single atom is no longer an exact eigenstate in a multiple-atom situation. So for example in a system with two protons and only one electron, which starts with the electron bound to one of the protons, the electron would over time oscillate between the two protons. In principle no matter how far apart they are, though the oscillation period may be longer than the age of the universe. A long wait before you get invited to that sort of party.

    This means that, since in nature no "potential well" is really infinite, over enough time no electron is truly localised to a particular atom. So in principle one has to treat the potential of the whole universe, all the atoms, as a single system (a single Hamiltonian). All agree on this, as far as I can tell.

    This already means that saying "it's in a different place" is not sufficient reason to say of an electron "it's in a different quantum state".

    Also it sort of already concedes Brian's point about the interconnectedness of all electrons. But as Sean points out, it is nothing to do with the Pauli exclusion principle."===https://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/feb/28/1
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2016

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