Determination

[StrictlyLogical]

Isn't that the Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM; that the trajectory of a single particle is ultimately influenced by the simultaneous trajectories of every other particle in the universe (which is what makes them so quirky)?

 

If so we could communicate at faster than light speeds... simply set up your QM system to ever so slightly act differently ... then you could "transmit" information signals "instantaneously" outside of the light cone in space time.  Of course this is not possible for a number of reasons I just wont bother getting into.

[Eiuol]

Now according to Objectivism.. when you lack any evidence .. ANY single bit of positive evidence showing how one could affect the other... or THAT one affects the other... can you please tell me how you can say it's POSSIBLE one affects the other?

Very indirectly by virtue of the fact I may alter reality by perhaps impacting by perception leading me to act a certain way by choice, making different parts of reality responding to minute changes over time. Reality at time A is different than at time B. The status of reality is not identical. Change alone will alter my relation to all things in my immediate surroundings, then those things to their surroundings. I do not mean to say there is an immediate and direct connection to all things. I do not suppose quantum entanglement.

It's part of why, but not the only reason why, we can't say on metaphysical grounds that some things are literally wholly unaffected by some other things. If you mean that I can be unaffected by some things at this moment, sure, I agree with you, but you seem to be talking about impact across all time, particularly that we can extend "now" into "by nature, able to overcome or transcend limited parts of reality".

 

Let's add in some Chaos Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

[StrictlyLogical]

Very indirectly by virtue of the fact I may alter reality by perhaps impacting by perception leading me to act a certain way by choice, making different parts of reality responding to minute changes over time. Reality at time A is different than at time B. The status of reality is not identical. Change alone will alter my relation to all things in my immediate surroundings, then those things to their surroundings. I do not mean to say there is an immediate and direct connection to all things. I do not suppose quantum entanglement.

It's part of why, but not the only reason why, we can't say on metaphysical grounds that some things are literally wholly unaffected by some other things. If you mean that I can be unaffected by some things at this moment, sure, I agree with you, but you seem to be talking about impact across all time, particularly that we can extend "now" into "by nature, able to overcome or transcend limited parts of reality".

 

Let's add in some Chaos Theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

 

I have no problem with any rational and reasonable claim.  Words have meanings.  If you want to be understood please choose more carefully. 

[Eiuol]

I have no problem with any rational and reasonable claim.  Words have meanings.  If you want to be understood please choose more carefully. 

Err, do you agree with me? I can't tell.

[StrictlyLogical]

"all things in my immediate surroundings, then those things to their surroundings. I do not mean to say there is an immediate and direct connection to all things."

 

The above is reasonable and what you should have said from the beginning.

 

But you cannot arrive at this claim rationally in the absence of any concretes, in the absence of any knowledge of the way reality actually works, you must refer to reality to arrive at this conclusion.  Heat which is transferred even slowly, is something which is conducted from one body to another, casting your shadow is more limited in its immediate primary affect but it also affects the heat distribution where your shadow falls so that sets into motion something... also sound and vibration radiate in all directions through air and along solid and fluid bodies... there is no earthly object to my knowledge which is 100 percent impervious to sound and vibration (its impossible).

 

Prior to the understanding of heat, sound, vibration and other properties which actually do pervade "all things in my immediate surroundings" say in pre-scientific eras or perhaps when you were 3 years old... such a claim .. that for example "my talking is affecting my birthday present in the box under the tree" would be based primarily in a mystical notion of "the connectedness of all things" and not on any previously observed and understood facts of reality.  It would have been a complete error of thought which by accident ... was true.  

 

In the same way a parrot can be trained to squawk "2+2 = 4" such would not have been cognition.

Edited February 20, 2015 by StrictlyLogical

[andie holland]

Subatomic is the better label for protons and electrons. I was trying to use a broad term to contrast with macroscopic.

 

HD's use of the word "pop" implies something "popping" out of existence spontaneously.  I was merely pointing out to HD that matter and single electrons cannot simply pop out of existence and into energy (absent the required antimatter with which to annihilate itself).

'Subatomic' is the only word, as 'microscopic' is simply incorrect.

 

Otherwise, in a standard nuclear reaction,there is a conversion of mass to energy because that's how 'nuclear fusion and fission work. Antimatter has nothing to do with the process.

[StrictlyLogical]

Yes you stated how nuclear reactions work before.

 

I studied nuclear fission and fusion in university. I never disagreed with you about nuclear reactions and how they work. 

 

I merely pointed out that they were NOT the point of discussion to begin with.  Again, WE were talking about the issue of spontaneously popping out of existence.  And yes antimatter has nothing to do with what YOU voluntarily decided to discuss... but it has something to do with a point I was making.

 

I really do not want to be rude, but am I missing something? Why are you badgering me about nuclear reactions? 

[EC]

Yes, the universe works in such a way that nothing is immune or unaffected by something in reality. Clearly my making this post doesn't make Jupiter's orbit wobble nor does it cause grass to grow faster, but that's only a conceptual distinction - all causality alters the status of reality.

 

It actually does in a negligible way but that's beside your point.

[StrictlyLogical]

Why are you badgering me about nuclear reactions? 

 

Honestly, I never would have imagined ever having to utter such a statement! 

 

All those years of being bullied with a stick are coming back to me. 

[Eiuol]

It actually does in a negligible way but that's beside your point.

If it does, then my point is only helped.

[andie holland]

Journalists who refer to "throwing enough basketballs at a wall and having one pass through" are relying on pseudoscience.

 

What could "pass through" walls certainly is not a normal basketball.  If you imagine a fictional body having the mass of a basketball and the size of a basketball but with near infinite forces holding it together, you could also imagine a fictional barrier having the same mass and width of a wall also with near infinite forces holding it together, then you could think you could reasonably predict the probability of tunnelling by the ball given the speed of impact.  Now at some finite speed you have to ask, as a dynamic system if say 2 micrometers of the ball were to tunnel through an outer part of the wall what kinds of forces are exerted upon the part of the ball still outside the wall.  How does the rate of change of the area not yet successfully tunneled into the potential barrier affect the way the various parts of the ball interact?  Do the almost infinite forces holding the bits of ball together become bunched up and form other potential barriers.. do bits of the ball start to tunnel through those... if they are lower barriers than the potential barriers in the wall do parts of the ball go backward... does part of the ball start to break? if the ball's internal potential barriers are higher than the wall does the wall start to break or do parts of the wall tunnel through the ball also?   Are we needing near infinite speeds AND near infinite forces for this to work?  Why would a complex system behave in such a complex manner?

 

If only the fictitious ball were a single particle rather than a complex arrangement of bits separately held together by the same forces forming the wall... and if only the wall were just a potential barrier rather than a complex arrangement of matter and forces holding it together...

 

I suppose if we imagine the basketball IS a single particle and the wall really IS only a force field, a potential barrier then Eureka! Basketballs could tunnel through walls.... even if not very often.... (depends on the momentum and the height of the potential barrier)

 

Well now as you see both the infinitely held together ball and wall and the single particle ball and force field are a LITTLE unrealistic as equivalents to a real basketball and wall.  Real basketballs are held together with some covalent bonding and also the complex polymer entanglements of the rubber molecules.  Whatever walls are made of.. they likely have much stronger bonds.  Now imagine that the first electron of the first atom on the outer surface of the ball, tunnels into and beyond an electron orbital of the outermost atom of the wall... its a great start... what then?  Will the electron be captured by the wall, will the next electron make it.. will some of the bonds start to break... will parts of the ball tunnel through other parts of the ball going backward?... will bunched up electrons that tunnel in weird ways or fail to tunnel, form EM barriers taller than those of the wall...

 

The pseudoscientist will sweep all of these considerations away with a dismissive wave of his incredulous arm... "what? you expect me to look at the details?  you don't have to do science to know the implications of it... all you need is your imagination and your intuition"

At least my own QM class was not taught by a 'journalist'. 

 

Neither is the de Broglie Equation considered 'pseudoscience' within the context of QM by its instructors. 

 

Moreover, it's more or less understood that the basketball analogy began with Feynman in his affirmative refereeing of Josephson's claim against Bardeen that tunneling explains how photons can penetrate an electron shield.

 

In any case, the concepts and reasoning of de Broglie are simple, although the math is quite difficult:

 

Given

 

* the Einsteinian of SR allows for all matter to be expressed as energy, and vice-versa,

 **The Heisenberg (per Gamow) allows for photons to travel at nearly infinite speed

*** The conversion of mass to energy is done at its rest state with respect to the wall

**** But the conversion to energy for the basketball is done at its potential 

***** That said near-infinite potentials are real probabilities, albeit small.

***** What we call mass is, in any case, 999999% empty space

 

Therefore, toss the ball at the wall enough times and it will eventually pass thru.

 

This principle, BTW, explains how stars create energy--not by gravitational compression.

[andie holland]

It looks like a supporting point to my objections. . . ?

Yes.

[andie holland]

Isn't that the Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM; that the trajectory of a single particle is ultimately influenced by the simultaneous trajectories of every other particle in the universe (which is what makes them so quirky)?

Your particular de Broglie? Boem came much later, in the 60's, as a response to Bell's Inequality: do photons exhibit a predictable direction of spin, and if so, why? For example, Einsteins's was called "EPR', or the missing glove.

 

Theirs was the 'pilot' theory in which the first photon guided the others in a sequence by creating a sort of blocking that would make the next swerve in the opposite direction (polarization).

 

Yet both were proven wrong by Aspect's experiments. which vindicated Bohr--communication at infinite speed.

 

First de Broglie, circa 1935, was the reductability of all matter to a wave function (energy). At the most basic level, all is quanta.  T;here are not two worlds; rather, it only appears that way because we like to think in 'materialist' terms for convenience.

[StrictlyLogical]

At least my own QM class was not taught by a 'journalist'. 

 

Neither is the de Broglie Equation considered 'pseudoscience' within the context of QM by its instructors. 

 

Moreover, it's more or less understood that the basketball analogy began with Feynman in his affirmative refereeing of Josephson's claim against Bardeen that tunneling explains how photons can penetrate an electron shield.

 

In any case, the concepts and reasoning of de Broglie are simple, although the math is quite difficult:

 

Given

 

* the Einsteinian of SR allows for all matter to be expressed as energy, and vice-versa,

 **The Heisenberg (per Gamow) allows for photons to travel at nearly infinite speed

*** The conversion of mass to energy is done at its rest state with respect to the wall

**** But the conversion to energy for the basketball is done at its potential 

***** That said near-infinite potentials are real probabilities, albeit small.

***** What we call mass is, in any case, 999999% empty space

 

Therefore, toss the ball at the wall enough times and it will eventually pass thru.

 

This principle, BTW, explains how stars create energy--not by gravitational compression.

 

No one said DeBroglie's equation was pseudoscience. 

 

Pretending a complex system of interacting particles and forces each being described as a distribution in position and momentum space, each giving rise to expectation values and their own potential barriers... etc. etc. is a single particle or dimple subatomic corpuscle is an error of mis- identification. 

 

Pseudoscience is  not stating that tunnelling would be like a basketball going through a wall... but claiming THAT a basketball could go through a wall because subatomic particles can tunnel.... while ignoring the complex science which would be needed to calculate what actually happens when a part of a basketball starts to tunnel through a part of a wall...

 

A single or simple enough subatomic particle a basketball is not... you can't just pretend it is.

Edited February 21, 2015 by StrictlyLogical

[andie holland]

No one said DeBroglie's equation was pseudoscience. 

 

Pretending a complex system of interacting particles and forces each being described as a distribution in position and momentum space, each giving rise to expectation values and their own potential barriers... etc. etc. is a single particle or dimple subatomic corpuscle is an error of mis- identification. 

 

Pseudoscience is  not stating that tunnelling would be like a basketball going through a wall... but claiming THAT a basketball could go through a wall because subatomic particles can tunnel.... while ignoring the complex science which would be needed to calculate what actually happens when a part of a basketball starts to tunnel through a part of a wall...

 

A single or simple enough subatomic particle a basketball is not... you can't just pretend it is.

In terms of QM, a basketball is not, as you claim, a 'complex system of interacting particles'. Rather, for de Broglie's equation, it's nothing but a wave function.

i believe that I detailed this in my last post.

Likewise, subatomic particles do not tunnel. The expression was/is limited to quanta, or photons. 

In other words, the science is easy to understand, the math difficult, and the probability real, but tiny.

[StrictlyLogical]

Andie:

 

Indulge me in an little exercise of critical thought:

 

Imagine you are back in the middle ages and some one is speaking about the rules for how things fall.  This person emphatically tells you that heavier things fall faster than lighter things.  You try to point out that light things use the air as a cushion.... (air resistance not being known a the time) the way crumpled paper falls quickly and a sheet sometimes falls slowly.  You begin to point out that in water density plays a role and that perhaps...suddenly, interrupting you, the person scoffs and says that he has enough evidence to make the claim to the generally applicable principle... "Given a first thing, heavier than a second thing, the first thing falls faster than the second thing" and challenges you to prove otherwise.

 

This being an era pre-enlightenment, but post stone buildings you begin to think about the stones used to build houses.. and perfectly logical argument comes to mind which requires no experimentation, no reference to observed particulars, but which clearly reveals the self-contradictory ... incoherence of the claim.

 

I don't want to grandstand, so I will give you the opportunity to write down the few lines of argument required to reveal the invalidity of the claim.

[Harrison Danneskjold]

This being an era pre-enlightenment, but post stone buildings you begin to think about the stones used to build houses.. and perfectly logical argument comes to mind which requires no experimentation, no reference to observed particulars, but which clearly reveals the self-contradictory ... incoherence of the claim.

Wouldn't collapsing houses neatly separate the stones from the thatching?

(I love riddles!)

[StrictlyLogical]

Wouldn't collapsing houses neatly separate the stones from the thatching?

(I love riddles!)

 

Nope... here's a hint ... forget about thatching. You need only think about stones.

[andie holland]

Andie:

 

Indulge me in an little exercise of critical thought:

 

Imagine you are back in the middle ages and some one is speaking about the rules for how things fall.  This person emphatically tells you that heavier things fall faster than lighter things.  You try to point out that light things use the air as a cushion.... (air resistance not being known a the time) the way crumpled paper falls quickly and a sheet sometimes falls slowly.  You begin to point out that in water density plays a role and that perhaps...suddenly, interrupting you, the person scoffs and says that he has enough evidence to make the claim to the generally applicable principle... "Given a first thing, heavier than a second thing, the first thing falls faster than the second thing" and challenges you to prove otherwise.

 

This being an era pre-enlightenment, but post stone buildings you begin to think about the stones used to build houses.. and perfectly logical argument comes to mind which requires no experimentation, no reference to observed particulars, but which clearly reveals the self-contradictory ... incoherence of the claim.

 

I don't want to grandstand, so I will give you the opportunity to write down the few lines of argument required to reveal the invalidity of the claim.

Even in the Middle Ages there were gurls such as me who would devise observational experiments to show that bigger is not faster. For example, heavy piece of plaster-board vs a small stone....

 

In other words, the tension between First Philosophy (abstract-conceptual) and Second Philosophy (First, observe!) has been around since the time of Ancient Greece. For example, Euclid was really a 'how-to sort of guy who absolutely hated the  term 'axiom' as applied  to his work in geometry.

[StrictlyLogical]

Interesting...

 

Back to the error in the above:

 

Upon thinking about the stones in the buildings you immediately think of a large heavy stone, and a small lighter stone falling next to each other.  You imagine that the lighter stone is falling slower than the heavier one and visualize it lagging behind the heavy one, the gap becoming ever increasing.

 

Then a thought comes to your mind... what if you tied the lighter slow stone to the heavier fast stone, would the slow stone "hold back" the fast stone?  You imagine the string becoming taught between the heavy stone "trying" to fall faster and the lighter stone "trying" to fall slower. Would the result be an average speed, or would the string break? Then you imagine bundling them tightly and ask yourself would the bundle fall at an average between the natural speed of the fast stone and the natural speed of the slow stone acting against each other?

 

Then you come to the realization that two stones which are tied together could be thought of as a single thing, a "bundle" of stones. If thought of as a single bundle, it has a weight greater than either of the two stones of which it is composed and should therefor fall even faster than either two alone...  but then again, when thought of as two stones working against each other they should at an average (or some intermediate) speed between the two... or in any case slower than the single bundle.

 

It seems as if the bundle must fall at two mutually exclusive (different) rates...This clealy starts to become disconcerting to you.

 

You then remember that from your experience watching your uncle make sculptures with the stone, that in fact the common stones used for buildings in your village are sandstone.  You remember your uncle showing you that in fact the stone is made of an incredible number of very little grains, and pebbles, which are packed closely together.

 

... it starts to dawn on you that any single heavy stone is actually a great number of very miniscule and much lighter stones.  If a stone can be thought of as a collection of tiny miniscule stones, then should the stone fall at the slow rate of any one of those single tiny stones??... but then again if tightly packed little stones can be though of as a single heavy stone (the same way the bundle can be thought of as a single thing) then should not the heavy stone fall at a single speed which is much faster than any single tiny stone?

 

While pondering this apparent paradox you realize that the fact that "something can be thought of" in one or more senses is not a principle of how reality works, things simply are what they are and do what they do... and ariving at a conclusion that something must be and do something self-contradictory reveals an error of thought... in particular it is the premise which directly lead to this contradiction which is in error.

 

 

With a smile, you then state to the fellow who originated the principle:

 

"Your asserted principle fails application to single things which are at once heavy and also are composed of a plurality of lighter things, leading to a self-contradiction regarding the speed at which it should fall. In fact since all things around us here (you point at everyday complex macroscopic objects made of matter) are made of divisible matter, no "thing" could fall at a single speed according to your principle, being both a whole heavy thing and a collection of subparts being lighter things. Your principle lacks non-contradictiory compositional application and is therefore incoherrent, quite simply: false."

[Harrison Danneskjold]

That's brilliant.

[aleph_1]

SL,

 

How do you apply this reasoning to heterogeneous mixtures? You might suppose that sandstone, being composed of grains of similar materials, might have parts that fall at equal rates, but balls of feathers and balls of lead might fall at different rates. How can you tell a priori what a heterogeneous mixture would do? Don't you just have to perform the exeriment?

[Eiuol]

That's brilliant.

Tell that to Galileo, he's the one who developed that exact argument. All SL did is tell it like a story. I'm not sure what the point of it is here. It's only meant to explain why it doesn't make sense for mass to be the relevant factor for falling speed.

[StrictlyLogical]

SL,

 

How do you apply this reasoning to heterogeneous mixtures? You might suppose that sandstone, being composed of grains of similar materials, might have parts that fall at equal rates, but balls of feathers and balls of lead might fall at different rates. How can you tell a priori what a heterogeneous mixture would do? Don't you just have to perform the exeriment?

 

the story was taking place in a pub... although it seems I forgot to mention it... with beer in hand the thought process occurred... and the response delivered.  Of course people can always experiment, but for a "principle" which specifically is already incoherent and invalid, there would be no need to.  In any case beer is more important than the blatherings of an irrational know it all..  

 

The principle as stated made no differentiation between types of materials, made no reference to density, no reference to proportionality etc.  As such the principle is as wide as spoken/defined and can be rebutted by simply finding an example for which it is incoherent.  A principle is not a principle if it only applies sometimes... if it did, another narrower principle defining the context of the "sometimes" might be a principle.. but the original statement no longer would be one.

 

As such the reasoning is not meant to "apply" to heterogeneous mixtures or any other specific situation... it merely identified a situation which decimates the general principle.... qua general principle. 

 

Make sense?

[StrictlyLogical]

Tell that to Galileo, he's the one who developed that exact argument. All SL did is tell it like a story. I'm not sure what the point of it is here. It's only meant to explain why it doesn't make sense for mass to be the relevant factor for falling speed.

 

Galileo did much more than the above type of argument (I had no idea he had). 

 

He performed a thorough systematic, integrated scientific investigation that explained falling bodies.  He utilized mathematics and experiment, including possibly the leaning tower of Pisa experiment, but definitely including pendulum and inclined plane experiments to develop fully formed scientifically verifiable explanations; he did not need simply to rebut a fictional drunkard's overly broad "pseudo-principle", which is all I have done above.

 

 

Is there a formal term for errors of "composition"?