Can You Prove Paradox Exists?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by steampunk, May 10, 2012.

  1. steampunk Registered Senior Member

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    Threats can imply taking freedom from an innocent person. Threats can also imply the protection of freedom. Some threats are free speech.


    I'm sure that if we were more aware of the implications of such measurement, the connection would not seem to be a paradox at all.
     
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  3. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Example?
     
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  5. river

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    no , because the wave is three dimensional , and when it comes into contact with an obstruction , it devlopes a crest , the crest affect breaks the light-wave into particles
     
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  7. steampunk Registered Senior Member

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    Nevermind. I didn't mean that.
     
  8. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    The 'two slit' experiments in quantum mechanics.

    http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec13.html

    Quantum mechanics is often said to be paradoxical or to have paradoxical aspects. Clarifying the nature of that paradoxicality is one of the tasks of the philosophy of physics.

    Wave-particle duality resembles the taxonomical paradoxicality that I mentioned in my earlier post, since down on the microscale, electrons and photons appear to behave in ways that would justify our placing them into the very different and seemingly inconsistent classical classificatory categories of waves or particles, depending on particular experimental situations.

    There are additional problems of quantum paradoxicality associated with the superposition of states, with the individuation of particles and states, with causal locality, and so on.

    This quantum paradoxicality may or may not revolve around our attempts to understand what's happening on the microscale, by trying to model it in terms of classical concepts and classical logic derived from and/or evolved so as to deal with our macroscale experience.
     
    Last edited: May 11, 2012
  9. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    I thought Steampunk was talking about such phenomena as Jesus being said to be in two places at the same time.

    The photon/electron dualism seems more like two things being in the same place at the same time.


    Fortunately (heh) I didn't listen all that much at school, so things that to some people seem paradoxical, don't seem that way to me.

    I've heard that in the early days of when industrial engineering was first done on a massive scale (in the 1950's or so), companies sometimes involved lays who didn't know anything about engineering, to test their products and give suggestions. The idea was that a lay outsider would notice things that the engineers may have missed because their knowledge and ability to observe was so specialized and limited to standard approaches.
     
  10. Rouge Registered Member

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    @wynn

    Would you be able to argue that because electrons exist as a cloud of probability (instead of a discrete particle) that an electron can be in multiple places at once when it isn't being observed? This could be seen as a paradox because the electron is seen as existing over a range of positions simultaneously...

    I'd like to hear people's opinions on the idea
     
  11. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    These are not objects.
     
  12. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    What is the distance between two photons or electrons?
     
  13. Rouge Registered Member

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    in what context do you mean?
     
  14. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    You suggest that in different contexts are different distances between them?
    Can you give some examples?
     
  15. Rouge Registered Member

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    Sorry, when i said what context i was asking which two electrons or photons you are talking about and in which situation. For example you could be talking about the distance between two electrons in the same orbital, or you could be talking about the distance between one of the electrons in my hand and one in my laptop or any two electrons in the universe, therefore when you ask how far are two electrons away from each other then you need to specify which two electrons you are talking about. The same goes with the photons.

    When you posed the question, "What is the distance between two photons or electrons? " were you talking about the distance between the two possible positions the same electron can occupy?
     
  16. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    Between two side by side photons/electrons.
     
  17. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    One of the classic 19'th century experiements that seemed to prove that light was composed of waves was the famous two-slit experiment. It you shine a bright light through two slits, an interference pattern results.

    Now imagine turning down the flux to the point where photons (or electrons) can pass one at a time through the slits in the two-slit experiment. What results is that they behave like little material particles, impacting at discrete spots on the detector.

    Yet when enough electrons/photons pass through the slits (one-at-a-time) an interference pattern still forms. So the obvious question arises: what are the individual photons/electrons interfering with? The answer seems to be: with themselves.

    So even in the case of individual photon/electrons, the (whatever they are's) still seems to be passing through both slits and then interfering, somehow. Despite (kinda) behaving like discrete material particles, they still (kinda) continue to behave like waves as well.

    That can be tested by performing a similar one-slit experiment where interference patterns don't appear. So the distinctive bands really are dependent on the two slits beng open and appear to be an interference effect.

    It's a taxonomical paradox at the very least, since experiment seems to provide us with reasons to place these micro-objects (electrons or photons) into two seemingly inconsistent classificatory categories -- wave and particle.

    And yes, one of the inconsistencies is that in our experience, a single material particle can't simultaneously be in two places at once, as it would appear to have had to have been, if it somehow passed through both open slits and then interfered with itself like a wave would, changing the likelihood of where it would strike the detector.

    It seems to me that the most reasonable thing to say about this is to say that whatever's happening on the micro-scale, it doesn't fit comfortably into our classical concepts, our macro-scale taxonomical categories.

    Something new is happening down there, something that we know little about and haven't really observed until comparatively recently. (Or at least something new to our human experience. It's always been happening where we couldn't see it.)
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2012
  18. river

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    the two slit experiment is about waves , that turn into particles

    the same as a wave in the ocean has a crest , which produces PARTICLES of water

    same physical thing is going on
     
  19. sigurdV Registered Senior Member

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    Im writing on the liar, see the truth about truth.
     
  20. sigurdV Registered Senior Member

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    Andrew Gray has an interesting alternative theory.

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