It seems apparent that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

[Joe Chi Minh]

is the primordial manifestation at the microscopic level of the space-time continuum at the macroscopic level. What do you think? I mean it was bound to manifest at some point on the microscopic level, wasn't it.

[greyl]

1. No, it's just a label for an abstraction. nt

[Kutjara]

2. I think it has a potentially unlimited number of interpretations.

In one view, it may be something as simple as a statement of the nonclassical nature of microscopic reality, such that quantities like location and velocity have no independent meaning. In this interpretation, the seemingly illogical nature of the Principle is nothing more than the inapplicability of our macroscopic sensibilities to phenomena outside our limited range of experience.

Looked at another way, the Principle may be saying something fundamental about the nature of reality; viz, that nothing is 'settled' yet. If one believes in the Shroedinger's Cat view of the world, that superposed wave functions can exist in the absence of an 'observation', our entire reality may be an uncollapsed superposition, waiting for some far future 'observer' to collapse it into a determined history. In such a case, the Principle may be an expression of our state of flux. Things may not be independently measurable because they haven't 'actually' happened yet. Individual observations may collapse tiny portions of the wave function, but the natural state of the rest remains superposed.

Another possibility is that the simple act of observing amounts to a 'decision point' such that the universe splits into two at that instant. Any decision results in the spawning of a number of universes equal to the total possible range of observations in the overall wave function of that which is measured. This is almost the opposite of the previous case; in this instance, every possible eventuality actually plays out in one of the 'new' universes. But in so doing, it closes off other potential histories for those eventualities, so that they become, to some extent, unmeasurable within any given universe.

I'm sure there are many more options, but these are the ones that immediately sprang to mind.

[EST]

4. Your first paragraph nailed it.

The rest is just good beer and smoke idle gotchas.

I have been more than half convinced, for half a century, now, that the whole Schroedinger's cat so-called explanation was meant as a joke on a naive, too serious minded associate.

What I'm trying to say is that what we have come to accept as superposition, for instance, is much more likely to arise from observational difficulties and the resultant descriptive anomalies are silly explanations for something we simply haven't the capacity--yet--to see clearly.

In talking about extra dimensions, not as laid out in string theory but as an uneducated "me" would visualize dimensions beyond the three or four or five, a telephone pole might look like a circle. And some of the behavior that requires such non-every day explication to illustrate is another blind men and elephant rationalization.

Why is 300,000km/sec the speed limit in a vacuum? Doesn't make a lot of sense unless one allows for a notion that what we describe as empty space may well be something else, entirely, and not what we - in macro experience - perceive it to be.

[Kutjara]

5. Absolutely. In the absence of the ability to test...

...the more outlandish interpretations of the Uncertainty Principle, we have to accept that what we consider paradoxical is only so from our frame of reference. Rather than positing increasingly wild physics to explain it, we just need to get a bit wilder in what we consider to be 'normal' phenomena.

Interestingly, David Deutsch believes that he has a potential test for his 'many universes' hypothesis, involving a quantum computer. His test involves giving the computer a problem that even it shouldn't be able to solve in a reasonable amount of time. If the computer does solve the problem, then it must have used additional qubits from 'similar' quantum computers that are near it in the multiverse. In other words, it draws on the quibits from the versions of itself that made different decisions in the recent past, and therefore 'split off' into universes of their own. Deutsche believes that 'tunneling' may allow quantum computers in 'proximate' universes to lend qubits to eachother.

Its a neat idea (assuming we can build a quantum computer of sufficient power), but I think it still makes some big assumptions as to where the 'extra' qubits came from and what constitutes a sufficiently complex problem. It is the first example I've seen of testability in this regard, however, so it deserves some credit for that alone.

[EST]

7. Fascinating idea!

Unfortunately, it calls upon a further flawed observation to back up a flawed observation. It strikes me that when Einstein's notions of curved spacetime at the macro level proved inadequate for conditions at the micro level, those gifted thinkers of that time should have held his solutions as interim answers, rather than end points.

Interimly (for now, temporarily, until a better solution presents itself) they seemed to fit but an entire universe of information could well be excluded simply because we see things at the energy levels we do, rather than seeing at radio frequencies or gamma ray energies.

By the way, it is rare that I am able to sharpen my thinking on these subjects, so thank you for this unexpected surprise. What hours do you hang around here, normally?

I would love the chance for some further discussion, from time to time. This apparent slowing down and subsequent speeding up of the expansion of the universe has me hung up a bit, as well as the odd rotation rates of the inner vs. outer regions of galaxies. Some good thinking needs to be done about this.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. Sorry. Answered wrong post.

[Kutjara]

13. Shadows on the wall.

Your post reminded me of Plato's statement about human knowledge: that we are only seeing the shadows cast on our cave wall by the reality outside. It seems that every time we send a probe into space or tune our radio telescopes to a different frequency these days, some part or other of the Standard Model hits the floor with a thud. We have certainly been guilty of a high degree of parochialism in our attempts to explain the universe, but the past decade has been a time of profound change in cosmology (and many other disciplines).

I sort of knew it would happen, because I remember reading an article (I think it was in 1996) in which some physisist or other made one of those monumentally unwise pronouncements about how the big questions in cosmology and fundamental physics were all but wrapped up and that college freshmen should consider taking a different major, because physics would soon be a dead area. You could almost hear the Department of Hubris winding up to deliver a wet fish slap to this guy's head. So here we are, a decade from that physisist's article, knowing less than we ever thought we did about a lot of things, relying on increasingly bizzare and uncertainly formulated string theories to tie the edifice together, scratching our heads about dark matter, dark energy and other exotica, puzzled about why even something as supposedly classical as the speed of the Voyager spacecraft is less than it should be, wondering if the speed of light and the mass of the electron have always been what they are today. I think the most exciting times are still to come. I hope I'm still alive when some new Einstein comes along and shows us how simple all this complexity really is.

To answer your question, I'm on DU sporadically throughout the day, whenever I need a dose of sanity to counteract the madness of those around me at work. When I'm a bit insomniac, like last night, I'm often on at around 2-3 am PST. I look forward to posting with you again!

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. "Rather than positing increasingly wild physics to explain it, we

just need to get a bit wilder in what we consider to be 'normal' phenomena."

I think you've contradicted yourself here.

Your second clause implies that what you called "increasing wildness" in your first clause, is a matter of our mechanistic perceptions. We need to stop thinking mechanistically; but, as you then say, "we just have to get a bit wilder".

I believe that the best the scientist can do is to manage the rationally, empirically-deduced paradoxes in relation to each other, to extrapolate what will probably be another paradox or paradoxes - but which lead somewhere. But our aetiological penchant, our desire for a full mechanistic understanding of everything before presuming to accept the paradoxes as contributing significantly - however imperfectly - to our understanding of matters fundamentally mysterious to our intellectual limitations
as human beings, is prone to hold us back.

I'm not talking here of gratuitous conjecture, as rationally-observed paradoxes are valid observations, and are apt to further our knowledge and understanding, the more deeply we penetrate the mysteries of our existence and its context, since, not illogically, in view of what we have already discovered about our universe at both the macro and the micro levels, suggest that they will continue proliferate.

[Kutjara]

12. Not sure if its a contradiction, exactly, but...

...I don't think I explained what I meant very well. I was trying to make the point that what we consider paradoxical or 'wild' may be nothing of the sort, but instead merely a manifestation of our inability to think in a sufficiently rich way to resolve the paradoxes.

I agree with you that the incorporation of paradox into our models is probably necessary to a full understanding of what is going on in the world. Indeed, quantum mechanics is so powerful as a predictive tool because it imbraces its own paradoxes, but doesn't let a little 'unreality' get in the way of the truth. I think, as physics develops, we'll see many more models that elegantly predict real phenomena, yet cannot be understood in common sense terms. My view is that it is common sense, rather than the models, that will need to change.

Of course, the requirement of testability is always present. No matter how wild or mundane the model, if we can't make predictions based on it and empirically test those predictions, the model is just a nice story, and no more than that. Insofar as a model is testable, it is science. Beyond that, it's religion.

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. A very sensible answer imho. However, I think you will find

that theoretical physics has a great deal more to do with philosophy now than the scientific method, and I believe philosophy will indeed give way to religion.

If you make an error, it is in assuming that because "science" requires empirical testing, if it is not testable, it can't be true. That's not the same as identifying gratuitous conjecture for what it is. Gratuitous,as well as conjectural.

Conjectures, doubtless informed by experience, as well as a perception of "elegance" or aesthetic quality, after all, will form the basis of hypotheses, since conceptual leaps are required with the acceptance, however provisional, of each paradox. The inductive reasoning of the armchair philosopher, rather than the rather than the normal deductive reasoning of the more mundane conduct of science.

[Kutjara]

16. Ahh, now we're straying into the old 'inductive' vs. 'deductive' debate.

Karl Popper made some good arguments that the scientific method has never been 'deductive,' no matter how much it tries to portray itself as such. Scientists don't typically observe some phenomenon and then develop a hypothesis to explain it (although they did this far more in the past when such phenomena were directly observable with the naked eye). Instead, they dream up hypotheses based on extrapolations of existing theories (or perhaps gratuitous conjectures) and then go looking for the phenomena that will confirm or refute the hypothesis.

This view very much supports the 'philosophical' approach you mention. I don't know if it will ever extend as far as religion, where we are dreaming up untestable explanations and then accepting them on faith. I hope not.

Actually, I didn't mean to say that if something isn't testable, it isn't true. Instead, I'd rather say if it isn't testable, there's no way of knowing whether it's true or not, so we can't really have an opinion about it and call that opinion 'science.' The Universe may very well have started in a Cosmic Egg or been seeded by extrauniversal scientists in their lab or thought into being by the Great Bird of the Cosmos, but there is no way we can (currently) test any of these assertions and so, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, we must remain silent.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. "Actually, I didn't mean to say that if something isn't testable,

it isn't true. Instead, I'd rather say if it isn't testable, there's no way of knowing whether it's true or not, so we can't really have an opinion about it and call that opinion 'science.' The Universe may very well have started in a Cosmic Egg or been seeded by extrauniversal scientists in their lab or thought into being by the Great Bird of the Cosmos, but there is no way we can (currently) test any of these assertions and so, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, we must remain silent."

In my opinion you make the grossest of errors here in adducing "science" as the ultimate and indeed exclusive paradigm of all worthwhile knowledge, simply on the grounds that what can't be tested, (you claim) can't be known. Then you not very subtly imply that any knowledge that cannot be tested under the canons of empirical science, must be gratuitous conjecture of the most dopey kind; when the reality is, rather, that science and its methodologies can never afford us anything more than truly the basest and most rudimentary of all forms of knowledge. Our capacity for understanding can usually make use of such information, but in comparison with the other uses of our understanding, it scarcely registers at all.

Tell me, if Einstein used aesthetic quality as his criterion for the selection of his initial hypotheses, - and there's an awful lot of beauty and potential beauty out there - do you not think it a mighty big coincidence, since the testing came afterwards, that he hit upon such epoch-making hypotheses? Even though very few in number.

I would suggest to you that intuitive, infused knowledge and understanding, are as high above any potential for knowledge and understanding afforded by the scientific method, as the heavens are above the earth (to borrow a simile from the psalms). Love and goodness are not mere abstractions, but real experiences in our lives. Indeed, the former (implying the latter, of course) is so real that human life absolutely requires some measure of it for our personal growth, or we grow into psychopaths or simply die while still a baby. And even the likes of an Al Capone or a Hitler need to experience some kind of expression of it. But what chance of testing love or goodness under laboratory conditions? As Einstein pointed out (not to speak of the quote in my sig line), "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts."

[Syrinx]

3. what?

:shrug:

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Thanks for your opinions.

[EST]

8. Thanks for opening such a fascinating discussion.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Yup.

In the same way the Bernoulli Principle is the primordial manifestation at the fluidic level of the theory of Plate Tectonics at the geologic level.

On another note, what the hell are you talking about?

[NNadir]

14. I used to lie awake at night thinking about that.

Actually, I often lie awake thinking about the Bernoulli principle, since I often get gas pains at night. I often fart forcefully.

On occassion I have aslo been awoken by plate tectonics, mostly when I lived in California.

Since these two effects have had the same effect, loss of sleep, they must be related in some very fundemental way.