In F(t)=t+icosHt, is the unit time?

Is it that the focus given to physicalism is due because it is truly central to philosophical discourse, or is it just an accident that occurred by coincidence due to the interests of the forum's userbase? — Kuro

I think this focus is simply science-induced and because in this focus the soul-like qualities of nature are burnt with the relentless shining of a once liberating Enlightenment, a strong reaction has to be expected from the contra side of the schism and destruction caused. The other side of the medal mostly resides on the dark side of the light that's sent out by the bright star classes of the sciences. But that side exists, and people feel that. It can't be ignored and it's a matter of time before the dark side will be turned to show its splendid and untouched face to shine in a light so sublime that its first reaction is to turn back to darkness. But it will show itself again. Timid, luring, yet determined.

It was Xenophanes who pioneered the Christian God and the unit reality thought to propagate the modern sciences:

"Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind." He maintained there was one greatest God."

He was dissatisfied with the plurality of the gods living their happy lives on Olympus Mountain. Too confusing. He longed for unity, and invented a new, super human, super powerful, unimaginable god, leading ultimately to the omnipotent God as found in the Bible and Koran.

Plato loved the man, and considering his mathematical only approximately knowable, extramundane reality, a reality encountered in modern science:

Among the few other Greek writers who subsequently mentioned Xenophanes are Plato, who said that “The Eleatic school, beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, starts from the principle of the unity of all things,”

What's aporia gotta do with this? I think it's a rather baffling observation, that two men can change the course of history that dramatically.

But: is it "aha!" or being in awe?

Materialism on the other hand, is merely based on facts,and that's why has an "advantage" on that fight. But idealists will never give up fighting for their hope so easily. Unless science brings something unquestionable one day. — dimosthenis9

It's a fact that bare facts don't exist. Even elementary particles need other particles to gain identity. Add to this the bare fact that the internal identity of those basic structures of nature can never be known apart from assimilating them to our own internal reality, and it becomes clear, like a shape in the fog rising above it in the bright blue moonlight, that both the ideal and the material, through interaction, are mutually shape-shifting.

It seems rather strange though that F(t) equals real time plus a fluctuating imaginary part.

I haven seen F(t) before. Nice one.

I think for wavebehavior you need the space part of the wavefunction. A Gaussian wavepacket is a wavelike structure (composition of different momenta and omega exponentials: $u(x,t)=e^{i(kx-\omega t)}$, from which momenta/position and energy/time connections can be discerned). It's also a complex vector varying in space. If t evolves, the shape propagates.


From Wiki:

"In the coordinate representation of the wave (such as the Cartesian coordinate system), the position of the physical object's localized probability is specified by the position of the packet solution. Moreover, the narrower the spatial wave packet, and therefore the better localized the position of the wave packet, the larger the spread in the momentum of the wave. This trade-off between spread in position and spread in momentum is a characteristic feature of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle"



The product of complex time and position vectors gives the dispersing Gaussian wavepacket of a free particle (due to a momentum spectrum). The square gives the probability density, which is a density of probability traveling through space, in a wavelike shape. Not all wavefunction solutions have a wavelike nature though. But free particles always have.

The best argument against rabid atheists like Dawkins, Pinker, Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, etc. is that they don't and can't know if God exists. They have no rational arguments for asserting their claim.

Omnipotence means you can do everything. Imagine if you could do everything, unbounded by whatever laws. I wouldn't even be able to walk. What makes gods different? How can they be OP while being human or animal in shape (creating our world as an image of theirs)?

How can God choose between infinite possibilities? Can he even do that? I mean, isn't OP a hindrance?

No, what are they? — ToothyMaw

Dunno... 180booze said I am a "D-ker". We are "lil D-kers" (not understanding the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics). But WTF are lil D-kers???

What can gods do with omnipotence? Wouldn't they be omni-impotent?

Ron L. Hubbard plays in a totally different league than Bohm plays in

Yeah, Capra (Tao of physics) and Pirsig (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance), and more of them. I can't see a connection between QM and eastern philosophy though, and Bohm's implicate order presents a different reality. I'm not sure what his friendship with K means for hidden variables. These were already thought up by Louis Victor Pierre Raymond, 7th Duc de Broglie. They give exactly the same measurable stuff but the ontology is more satisfying. At least, to me. I can't imagine particles taking all paths at once with unfounded probabilities. Probabilities must have an underlying mechanism. 't Hooft is one of the few defenders. Luckily. He has no career to loose. Can express his mind freely. Many physicists don't have the guts, afraid of not being accepted.

It becomes scary if people try hiding behind God for compensating their weaknesses. Or pressing their morals referring to them. "God assures our decency", while threatening with hel or promising heaven. Isn't a world in which evil has a place preferable above one in which it's gotta be eradicated?

Yeah, but why did he turn to characters like Jiddu Krishnamurti — universeness

Don't ask me but he was, like Bohm a holist (Bohm's holographic universe):

"His interests included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, holistic inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasised that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external authority, be it religious, political, or social."

Maybe they were lovers, who knows? JK was no quantum theorist, I think. I think they strengthened each other's view. On physical nature as well as soul.

Bohm was mocked
— EugeneW
But has anybody proven him wrong? — noAxioms

Nobody did, as a matter of fact. Just irrational prejudices about QM made Pauli and most others condemn him. Everything was fetched to defend the standard view. Sleazy methods included (he was friends with a mystic... can't be any good coming from them!).

Bohm does not suggest that the electron goes through one slit and then hops to the other. It takes one path in that interpretation. — noAxioms

It's not Bohm who says a particle hops from one path to another. It's me. An electron travels on parts of all possible paths, directed by non-local variables. This actually happens.

This is false. One would need to assume certain unprovable postulates (*cough* biases *cough*) to demonstrate this — noAxioms

One would need very precise measurements of arrival times. At the moment these measurements are extremely difficult to realize but it could be done in principle. Hidden variables give almost exactly the same predictions as the standard. But not totally.

My hunch is that the mind is in the spotlight so to speak in the scientific community - there's frenetic research ongoing in neuroscience, aimed at unravelling the mysteries of the mind, an enterprise equivalent in importance to space exploration (I'm fairly certain that a cost comparison between the two should vindicate my claim). Does anyone have hard data, figures, stats, to support this? — Agent Smith

Good point! What kind of telescope is needed to observe dark mind matter or energy?

This question, this one, this one, this one, this one, or not to forget this one or this one. All asked within 2 weeks. Conspicuous! Seems a popular subject. Why would that be?

Eyewitness testimony' is notoriously unreliable – uncorroborated it's only an opinion — 180 Proof

Doesn't the same hold for scientific facts? We never measure bare facts.

I don't think he is actually a sociopath, I just think that his intense desire to be regarded as a big brain atheist manifests as verging on anti-social behavior — ToothyMaw

:up:

Btw, you know what D-kers are?

In what way, TC, is your wife's or my mother's "experience of God's presence" intersubjective (i.e. publicly accessible)? — 180 Proof

In principle, God is publicly accessible. The ancient Greek saw them living on Olympus Mountain. I have seen them in the shape of clouds, three horses jjumping over the setting evening sun. Quite impressive!

I regret creating this thread, especially since no one has addressed the original part of my OP. — ToothyMaw

I was just about asking what the core of your question is. About God undoing his omnipotence?
I mean, what sum process you refer to?

but these theories imply hyper determinism and no free choice in what is measured — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's the question. What if it's determined to measure different aspects of a piece of reality, like looking at a hologram from various angles (Bohm)?

That's not the case with mathematics. The axioms are not produced with the intent of representing 'what is the case'. And the ones which get accepted are the ones which prove to be useful. So they are produced by imagination, and accepted by pragmaticism, and there is no question of if what they say is the case. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you can build up a, say, 1d continuum with aleph1 0d points?

No hidden variables can account for the correlations of entangled entities unless those hidden variables are non-local (e.g., Bohm, Pilot Wave Theories, etc., but these theories imply hyper determinism and no free choice in what is measured to begin with). Only recently have experiments shown that non-locality cannot be simply faster than light, its speed must be infinite, something that shows up in the formalism — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which means non-local hidden variables are possible. Why should infinite lightspeed be a problem? As long as no information is propagated this should be no problem. I think hidden variables is the only viable theory in which you can embed QM. No measurement problem, no many worlds, only advantages. Why is hyperdeterminism a problem? The will needs determination to be free. We are not determined by deterministic processes. We are the process.

The mathematician complaining about the hostile attitude towards hidden variables was John Nash,

Bohm was mocked "a hopeless fool", "aTrotskyte", a "communist conspiricist", "a traitor"... How can one not sympathize with his ideas?

Seems he is the modern Galilei. In a modern church.

Yeah, its hard to judge someone like Bohm but he suffered badly from depression and he was friends with some mystic called Jiddu something. — universeness

But why call hidden variables immature or related to being Trotskyan? Just look in this video... Its written in it.



No wonder he got depressed...

I think the nature of reality will always remain a mystic mystery somehow. Maybe the basics of nature are geometric structures made of hidden variables reaching out for other structures, and when near their coupling to the vìrtual field offers a means to interact, collapse and get identity. What particle likes to get lost in space...?

https://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=919863

What he means with "almost" spontaneously?

Thinking about and discussing QM with others will remain good practice and good fun, if somewhat frustrating, but I think we probably need another million years of science and scientists before we 'know.' — universeness

Well, hidden variables offer an answer. They are non-local variables. Bohm was ridiculed for it. He was literally called names by his contemporaries (a frustrated Troskyan, having an unmatured brain, etc.). Hidden variables were not done. You can even considering them being space itself surrounding the particle. Virtual particles wavefunctions could make up the bulk of space and curve empty space negatively (these kinds of things are what you're banned for on physics sites...).

So not all paths are taken at once but parts of paths. Feynman made it confusing himself.

You say it 'jumps from path to path.' This idea is just as confusing for me. How would 'jumping' allow a single electron to pass through both slits? — universeness

Confusing indeed! Let's say the electron just explores all possible paths to reach for other particles to interact with. It goes through one slit and during this transgress it hops to the other. Then to the other again, passes through, goes to the left to the right, over all possible path parts. The wavefunction accompanying it, determines which path it can move on, so a wavefunction from one slit, or one that's already collapsed after passing through both, will give a different pattern, which builds up from many one particle interactions and reflects the shape of the single particle wavefunction.

How does the particle hop from one path to another? How often does this happen? Well, that's indeed mysterious. It does it fast and instantaneous (seems like c is superseeded, and in a sense it does, I mean, imagine you are that particle; you're here and the next on the other side of the slit, instantaneously, without delay!).

And this, as t=time progresses, describes a wave in the complex plane. — jgill

I could be wrong, but doesn't $e^{-iHt}$ describe a rotation of a complex vector as time goes on? The magnitude of this vector, is proportional to the probability in standard interpretation, is constant in time. How does that reflect a wavy probability in space? What propagates a probability wave in time? We know the Hamiltonian is the generator of time translations ($e^{-iHt}$ being the translator and H the generating operator associated with a conserved energy). What does it translate? The wavefunction in space. If you multiply the spatial part (also an e power for a free particle) by this translator than the wavy space part propagates in time. If H=0, the space-wavepart is stationary. The zero energy generates no propagation in time. Nevertheless, the particle can have momentum, if the spatial extent is bound.

Infinity is the spatial edition of eternity. It has a long history. An eternal history.

Space is infinite. There is no end to it. The universe expands in it. Accelerated even. Will it come to a sudden stop because space ends?

Where's Occam the Barber when you need him? — 180 Proof

Haha! He couldn't find his shaving gel. Space is hard to shave....

Space! What else? Could harbor Gremlins...