Objective versus Subjective Reality

When you said that duplicate copies in multidimensions require their own energy (E=mc2); I agree, it only has one rest mass energy. But it makes me think of chess where each chess piece can guard multiple squares (almost like eigenstates). The weighted probabilites are dependent upon potential energy distribution. And then, the particle moves into an eigenstate. Instead of treating the wave as a particle moving from the future, what if we imagine that the wave exists in a "complex space" (not physically/directly measureable) while the automated universe (God/your choice) decides which eigenstate will be chosen.The chess metaphor does imply the possibility of strategy and potentially intelligence. I notice that the universe sometimes behaves this way. Events (which I admit are not exactly quantum systems) seem to unfold this way. Athiests/agnostics have their eigenvalues chosen with dice. Spiritual people (especially those asking for help) seem to experience a more helpful flow of events. Can events/situations actually be compared to quantum systems?Can QM be compared to chess?

On the QM/chess analogy: You caught me! I'm busted. It does open itself up to "intelligence". It's my personal opinion that this is where physics takes a wrong turn in its journey to be the theory of everything. It will be the journey of almost everything until it can understand how the remaining pieces fit including the three letter word piece. Perhaps another few hundred years. I think the conservation laws will still work with these pieces. God is infinite, but our ability to work with God/understand and not argue is very limited. So limited amounds of (something having to do with the body of Christ as a "spiritual/psychic substance") will only do (or have the potential to do) as much as it can before it's orderliness is consumed by entropy. In my opinion, this is the missing piece.

The humongous stumbling block of mathematical physics is that, to be really good at it, you have to be an athiest or an agnostic. But that is what blocks the final piece of the puzzle. In Holy Communion, when the priest says,"eat of the body of Christ", he's not talking about living cells. He's referring to a spiritual/psychic substance that is maximally charged with "orderliness"; it will bring order to an entropically described system in a way that overrides the randomness (something like Gibb's free energy). However, it is a substance intimately related to consciousness. The neurobiologists who think that they understand how the brain functions will be impacted the most by this.


I do want to thank you for being thoughtful in your reply. I have encountered hostility from intellectuals to such a degree, I thought it was the norm.We can agree to disagree, that's fine. I was actually presenting ideas I discovered in Theosophy. Monothesim comes in two varieties, a personal God (Christianity, Judaism) and an impersonal God (Theosophy, Buhdism). At some perceived risk, I approached God from both points of view (hoping not to run afoul). My experience has been that a sacred worship of God begets a very tolerant God and a discovery of very exciting inner teachings.It was my intent to show that physics does not have to imply the absense of either a "real" God, spirituality or the paranormal. With (1) quantum mechanic eigenstates that are chosen randomly (it appears) and receptors in the brain (receptor theory) that are driven by organic molecules, physics has not successfully rid the universe of a spiritual underpinning. As a Theosophist, and as someone who has asked the "Powers that be" many times, I have never found an angry Christian diety nor any hellfire damnation with which to keep the congregation from straying. I have only found, over and over again, a benign power that has answered my request for help, my thirst for knowledge and my need for healing. You will forgive me if I reject the Theory of Everything because the physics relies too heavily on randomness and dice to be able to keep out unknown influences. But as a theory of almost everything, it is really quite good.


John Merryman wrote on Apr. 10, 2009 @ 18:18 GMT
Lawrence,Math does tend toward its own deification of platonic ideals. The forms of group religious models which tend towards being intellectually constrictive are similarly reductionistic.Jason,Scientists get emotional about religion. I wouldn't describe myself as pro, or anti religious, because thought is inherently reductionistic, while reality is wholistic. So whatever model we chose to model reality, from the most devout religions, to the most disciplined sciences, the result is like holding water with a sieve. Some participants of this discussion might disagree, but that's because they are viewing it from the point of view of science, which is to analyze physical reality, as opposed to organized religion, which is to cohere a social unity. Personally my view of god is that it is implacable in both creation and destruction, but I try not wasting time worrying over what I have no control over. This is, to me, an informed atheism(not anti-theism), because anything truly absolute is beyond relative desire.

The implacable creative of destructive nature of God is readily apparent. And as the little creatures of His creation, we may seek to emulate those powers. We are really quite good at breaking things and destructon,in general. Creation is a much more difficult ability to master. Placing every atom, just right, takes an enormous amount of information; that's even before we get into forces that we don't know about yet. Somewhere in the universe, there are creative forces of nature. The known four forces are very simplistic in their ability to obey the complicated steps in rearranging matter; but they can hold the final "construction" together quite readily. We need to look for the "creative" force that commands the other four forces; it will have it's symmetric to entropy (thermodyanics). It is the force that will obey its informational directives, the way ribosomes obey the DNA strands to construct proteins. But this is a force of nature, a fifth force. What is missing from the mathematical physics that it cannot predict its existence?

As mathematical physics has accounted for all of the Laws of Nature it can find, a bottom up picture where the atoms create the information, but are not directed by it, is the most reasonable conclusion in terms of the creation of the universe. The Creator has better things to do than to waste his power and knowldedge moving atoms around. I am sure that he automates it. But what happens when the really interesting creative environments appear? Methane gas on planets that can support a rich chemistry might be a good place to create life. In fact, I don't know if "water" is the true lifegiver. Personally, I think we should be looking for chemically dynamic environments. I've wondered if Venus might be chemically dynamic enough? By dynamic chemistry, I'm referring to the possibility of cyclical chemical reaction steps (for example, the Kreb cycle). I'm not saying that there is anything like that on Venus, I'm just looking for places where cyclical chemical reactions might be occuring. I still believe there is a creative "Fifth Force" that commands the other four forces. The terminology is a bit dramatic. However, it gave me the following idea.Are we allowed to describe a "Ribosomal" Field (borrowing from the idea of cellular ribosomes). This R-field consists of a scalar potential energy field for each of the four forces; after all, it's going to command those other four forces by manipulating their potential energy at the quantum level. Lets simplify the R-field and say that only commands the strong force. Anyway, the R-field will respond to chunks of information, each of which is like a letter in an alphabet. But the R-field will process information in a conservational way. It will process the information chunk in ways that obey the conservation of energy. Furthermore, it will expend a minimal amount of change in entropy to produce the result. Anyway, I'm still playing with the idea.

It's not like "magical thinking" hasn't been beneficial to science historically, so here goes.Let's start with quantum field theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theoryForces are mediated by bosons acting as virtual particles, which means that the four forces emerge out of processes that are hidden by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (as if that wasn't "magic"). Since I'm going to make my argument within the conservation laws, I hope you won't mind some story telling.Let's go back to a time when alchemy was alive and well. There was an alchemist who was put on the spot by the king. The king and his angry guards demanded that he change a base metal into gold or visit the dungeon. They handed him a chunk of iron ore and then, with arms crossed, watching impatiently. Now, a real alchemist is very much aware of the the conservation laws. So this is what he does, he takes the iron ore between his palms and begins to exercise his knowledge and power over the forces of nature. He begins to generate a quantum field, a virtual field, between his palms. Now, fortunately for the alchemist, he has a magic ring that will help him since his heart is pounding and he can't concentrate, anyway. But, he knows how the magic works. There are mysterious forces within this virtual field; they act like templates. They will obey the conservation laws as best they can; and they will transmute one thing into another, according to a reaction (like a chemical reaction). In this case, the transmutation is nuclear or a quantum reaction. In this instance, the template, which works like a potential energy disturbance, will take 3 iron atoms, some additional neutrons, some kinetic energy (since a decrease in entropy isn't helping), and it will convert it into one gold atom, and some other byproducts. Now this reaction doesn't occur naturally, but using a virtual field, some occult power stored in the ring, and a sincere prayer to a compassionate God, the reaction is driven forward. While the iron was only partially transformed, and the rest of the energy came from the glucose in his now shriveled pinky, the king and the guards were impressed and the alchemist came to no harm. While quantum mechanics had not been invented yet, there were already those who had mastered its arts. Eventually, Heisenberg would reveal that the physical, classical deterministic world sits upon an ocean of mystery. And with this story, I would argue that physics will have to do a better job to rid the universe of occult magic, the divine and all the spooky stuff before it can claim to have a Theory of Everything.

We are like two-eyed fish facing opposite directions. The one eye sees the mathematics, the logic; the other eye sees consciousness, the spiritual. We have not evolved to the point of seeing the universe with both eyes looking at the same thing. If we could, we would see the iceberg.The surface of the water is the quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's ocean. Everything above it is classical, everything below it is quantum and virtual. Perhaps we are more like one-eyed fish that swim on our sides.But everything below the water line is virtual and eventually, invisible to physics. We are not fungi nor a mere collection of neurons. Anything above the waterline can be destroyed. Anything below the waterline has watery roots that descend beyond what we can see. Perhaps we are not like one-eyed fish, but more like aquatic plants that descend into the depths. Admittedly, we would be strange looking plants, one with an eye or maybe two eyes, but so much for metaphors.But QM is the waterline. What lies below it is largely unknown.

Beyond just writing awkward poetry, I was trying to make some points.1. There are really two valid ways of looking at the world; One is logically/mathematically, and the other is through "human experience" (emotionally/spiritually). 2. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle has been used by physicists to explain how forces work (as long as everything is conserved in the long run). But this is really an indication that physicists cannot explain everything; they cannot keep out the "unknown". If that is the case, then a TOE is not possible.3. "Surface of the water" is a metaphor for QM. Anything below it is just not quantifiable or observable under repeatable laboratory circumstances. 4. This whole "physics" idea that consciousness is just a bunch a neurons and electrical impulses (which implies that life is meaningless and biological death equals permanent death) is wrong. So if you sold the soul you thought you didn't have, you may want to buy it back (ask nicely).

The surface of the water is symbolic of quantum (wave) mechanics; above is classical mechanics and below it is very mysterious. One of the reasons why I believe that "consciousness" is something more fundamental below the waterline is because consciousness emerges within an enterconnectedness, a network of sensory signals. In classical mechanics, particles are localized. In quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement and nonlocality of information become important. Below the waterline, I anticipate increasing nonlocality and entanglement. I expect it to eventually conform to an organized set of laws, probably not very recognizable. Under these conditions, I believe that information, while not localized, will transmit and process in ways similar to signals in the brain. If quantum fields can be described with quantum waves, it doesn't seem too far a leap to anticipate signal propagation and even naturally occuring signal processing. While this opinion is partially motivated by knowledge of theosophy/metaphysics and is combined with quantum mechanics, I think the idea is at least plausible. While it's speculative, can it be readily dismissed?

Everything that you say is true about our biological existence. But let us not forget that everything electrochemical is governed by electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is mediated by virtual photons whose very existence is only to conserve momentum/spin/energy. But they do so statistically. I'm afraid it's too handwavy to make the spooky things disappear. Distruction of the physical body would certainly alter consciousness, but not necessarily extinguish it permenantly. If we admit there is an objective reality that can't be measured, then science cannot collapse the impenetrable mystery

Remember, the only reason mathematical physics works at all to describe the Laws of Nature is because of conserved quantities. Mathematics came from merchants who didn't want to be cheated out of a ducat. The physical universe which was bought and paid for with so much energy applied to a physical space, something that neither physicists (nor the rest of us) understand. Space itself will manifest phenomena: for .5101MeV, you get an electron complete with 1/2spin. Of course, "space" energetically charged you for an electron-positron pair. We have yet to figure out how "space" is constructed. Physicists are ready to declare a TOE, that everything is understood, but they cannot even explain the operational principles behind "universe construction theory". Physicists will say: "hey, take some space, declare its laws, F=ma, Maxwell's equations, universal constants, etc... and whammo, we can build a universe!"I am sure that the Creator (God/aliens/your choice) is looking at us humans and our TOE and his laughing uproarously, and planning a surprise (nothing bad); probably a brain busting puzzle. "So my children want to play God, hehe." He looks closely at us and says, "Theory of Everything?" God has a sense of humor. He says, "How about a theory of 'Conserved Automation'?" He asks, "Ye physics Gods, my children whom I love, step into the ultraverse where I am, and let us create new universes together. Canst thou wield the forces of Creation? Canst thou weave the fabric of space from the living energy within thy essence? Thou art bound by the laws of conservation. Come back in a few aeons when you are ready to command such forces. We shall play God, together." God says one more thing, "make sure when you build a universe, that you use "back doors" to get back inside. The clever little creatures that you create will try to kick you out of your own universe and say it's theirs. When the time is right, I will teach you 'Quantum Universe Interfacing'."

Georgina,I believe we have agreement on the following points:1. Objective reality cannot be measured.2. Science alone cannot answer all questions.Mathematical physics has done a great job so far at quantifying the physical nature of the observable universe. If we can agree that physics will stay on its side of the measureable universe, and God/paranormal/spooky stuff will stay on its side of the objective reality, then I will quit raising this important but non scientific issue. Of course, I will have to consult with God to determine what happens next. If I get the chance, I'll ask why pertubative theory fails to bring General Relativty and QM into on mathematical structure: Subjective TOE.

But this issue/debate has made me wonder about pertubation theory which is what prevents QM and Relativity from unifying. The way I understand it, by adding a few more increasingly diminishing terms we can solve the exact solution plus anything nearby? I'd like to research online the attempted mathematics to unify the two subjects. Without being an expert, getting large space physics (GR) to unify with QM means we need a better description of "space". I'm not an expert in Hilbert space/Minkowski space, but can we define (mathematically) a background space, that is a function of scale? I don't think anybody describes space this way. You can limit it and quantify and restrict it all you like. As an awkward example, for F=maF(r); r(q) is position, where q is a scaling ratio perhaps. 'm' is the same at all scales, and a(q)...For K=1/2mv2, v(q) as well...Do you thing a real mathematical powerhouse has ever, or would ever, attack the unification problem by defining 'space' as a function of scale?