And a reconstruction of the wavefunction over all the points produces a map of probabilities, not a description of an actual trajectory. — Metaphysician Undercover
The problem being that there is a real difference between a spatial separation and a temporal separation, because by the nature of time, a temporal separation is not invertible, while a spatial separation is. — Metaphysician Undercover
The separation between time1 and time2 cannot be treated in the same way as the separation between spatial point A and point B, because the empirical evidence demonstrates that things only move from time 1 to time 2, and the opposite is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover
The power, or force, which causes the material world to be as it is, at each moment as time passes at the present, must be prior to the passing of time at the present, and therefore a cause which is in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover
When one of them excludes the possibility of the other, this means that the two are incompatible. — Metaphysician Undercover
The very idea of an electron with a definite ‘position’ or ‘momentum’ is meaningless prior to an experiment that measures it.
Is there any 'given electron' - prior to it being measured? — Wayfarer
Interestingly this popped on my radar today, describing something very similar to what the OP describes but with light waves instead of electron waves.
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-crack-quantum-physics-puzzle/ — Kenosha Kid
Another unjust accusation. — NOS4A2
I never tire of defending people from unjust accusations, just as you never tire of making them. — NOS4A2
I thought he “reached into his trousers”. I haven’t seen the scene, but the article makes no mention of dick rubbing. Have you seen it? — NOS4A2
Although unfortunate, the circumstances of the setup appear consensual, with Giuliani led to believe he was being courted. — NOS4A2
Damn. A consensual act with a 25 year old woman? How could you do this, Rudy? — NOS4A2
We're the rational animal, and that's a difference that makes a difference. — Wayfarer
Do you think the principles that reason recognises - the law of the excluded middle, and so on - are 'the product' of evolutionary biology? — Wayfarer
H. sapiens evolved, no doubt whatever, but at the point of being able to realise such abstract truths, escaped the bounds of biological evolution, became something more than what biological evolution can explain — Wayfarer
So the challenge to you is to explain how you manage to reduce the wave transmission of energy to a trajectory. — Metaphysician Undercover
in relativistic quantum theories, we do not proceed by specifying an initial state, time-evolving it forward, and asking the probability of spontaneously collapsing to a particular final state. Rather, we have to specify the initial and final states first, then ask what the probability is. This is constructed as a Green's function G(r, t; r', t'). — Kenosha Kid
So how would you reconcile these two incompatible descriptions of the electron, one in which it has a momentum as a wave packet, and the other within which it has a position with the capacity to leave that position creating a hole there? — Metaphysician Undercover
In relation to quantum trajectory theory, here's an article (I haven't had time to read completely read it yet) which might interest you, if the link works: https://doi.org/10.3390/e20050353
entropy 2018, 20(5), 353 — Metaphysician Undercover
And this is a philosophy forum, where [E−V]u=12m[p−A]2u is not, as it were, lingua franca. — Wayfarer
Please point out where you think I failed to understand it [the interpretation of the wave function collapse]
— Kenosha Kid
If you posted your OP at physicsforum.com, I'd be interested to see what other physicists say about it. I intuitively feel there's a problem with it, but of course I don't have the skills to say what, exactly. — Wayfarer
Why should we assume that anything can only exist or not exist when most of reality (space) does not follow that rule? — Hippyhead
In that case they should stick to their knitting and not write books which end up in the Religion section of the bookstore. — Wayfarer
Kenosha Kid likes to waffle. When it suits Kenosha's purpose, the electron is a particle. When it suits Kenosha's purpose, the electron is a wave. But Kenosha adheres to no concrete principles to distinguish between when the electron is observable as a particle, and when it is observable as a wave. Kenosha Kid will call it a particle, or a wave, depending on what is required at that point in the discussion. — Metaphysician Undercover
They all acknowledge that there is a deep philosophical problem sorrounding the ontological status of the wave function - whether it's real, or simply a mathematical device, or an artefact of the understanding. None of that is resolved. — Wayfarer
The back screen is physical, it's not 'ideal'. When you run the experiment, the results are recorded on a physical screen. — Wayfarer
It referred only to the general ideas of himself and Bohr with respect to what could and could not be stated on the basis of quantum physics. So I hardly think it's 'simplistic'.
— Wayfarer
In truth, it's less the interpretation and how it's applied — Kenosha Kid
But again, the Schrodinger equation is wave-like, but it is an actual wave? — Wayfarer
But that got smacked down with: don't be stupid, the particle interferes with itself! (per Dirac). — Wayfarer
The inconvenient fact you seem to be avoiding is that the vast majority of reality can not be said to either exist or not exist, one or the other. So, should you be an atheist who bases your philosophy on observation of reality, you might consider observing that. — Hippyhead
1) The vast majority of arguments both for and against theism assume, typically without any questioning at all, that a God exists or doesn't exist, either/or, one or the other.
2) The vast majority of reality at every scale, space, can not be clearly said to either exist or not exist, as this phenomena has properties which fit our definitions of both existence AND non-existence.
3) Thus it's not reasonable to assume without questioning that a God could only exist or not exist. — Hippyhead
and as MU observed, this is a philosophy forum, not a physics forum. I do ask questions on that forum also, but they give pretty short shrift to philosophy over there. — Wayfarer
Or rather, to the genes of Toxoplasma gondii. — Banno
yet 'the altruistic gene' doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? — Wayfarer
Dawkins and his ilk are generally tone-deaf to the existential plight of h. sapiens. Indeed, they show no awareness of what an existential plight might consist of. — Wayfarer
They ridicule religion as 'failed empirical hypothesis' but it was never intended as that to begin with. And for those who never thought that the Bible was literally true in the first place, the fact that it's *not* literally true doesn't have the devastating philosophical implications that Dawkins hopes for. — Wayfarer
For some yet unknown reason, Dawkins misrepresented the thesis in his book, turning a work on altruism into a book on the selfishness of genes. — Olivier5
I’m still curious where Singer fits into this conversation. — Pfhorrest
How is this difference bearing on your question? — Olivier5
And how the heck are we supposed to know of a tribe who knows of no other existence?????? — Olivier5
What part of "This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all" did you fail to see, read, or understand? — Olivier5
Google is your friend. You should have researched your subject earlier. — Olivier5
You're not listening. — Olivier5
Nope. You said:
Like morality, the question of what meaning we should find for ourselves — Olivier5
The problem is you keep forgetting what your thesis is. — Olivier5
Don't underestimate them. — Olivier5
Hunter-gatherers still exist, and they may ask themselves more profound questions than you think, thank you very much. — Olivier5
I thought the electron couldn't be 'found' anywhere until it is measured? It is not a discrete entity that exists in some unknown location until such time as it is registered. In fact there really is no such thing as 'an electron' until it is measured, when it manifests as a registration on a plate - which is the basis of 'the measurement problem'. — Wayfarer
But your explanation presumes that there is an electron as a discrete existing particle that exists independently of being measured. Whereas, if you are to question the 'Copenhagen Interpretation', isn't that precisely the point at issue? — Wayfarer
It referred only to the general ideas of himself and Bohr with respect to what could and could not be stated on the basis of quantum physics. So I hardly think it's 'simplistic'. — Wayfarer
However, the 'collapse' of the wave function is actually a metaphor, as there never is an actual wave per se (any more than there is an actual particle). — Wayfarer
Saying it is 'nothing more than feelings' begs the question - it presumes that the notion of final cause can only be a matter of feeing, but that presumption is itself part of what is at issue in this debate. — Wayfarer
What I'm pointing out is that Dawkins quite reasonably rejects Darwinian thinking as a basis for social or individual morality — Wayfarer
And yet the latter part of his career mainly comprises dissolving the traditional basis for morality in what his colleague Dennett calls 'the acid of Darwin's dangerous idea'. So - how to avoid nihilism? If the universe really is purposeless, and we just blind robots enacting the program of selfish genes, what is the philosophical basis for a humane culture? — Wayfarer
By the way, why do you present this stuff on a philosophy forum when you are completely uninterested in philosophical discussion of it? Why leave your peers? Have you been rejected? — Metaphysician Undercover
Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying. — jamalrob
And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question as 'why are we here?' — Wayfarer
. I could already spot a fake philosopher when the book came out. I remember it took me about 2 seconds of analysis, — Olivier5
Gould has blunt this weapon a tiny little bit. That's the only reason you are pissed off about him, and so blatantly unfair. — Olivier5
He really did set the popular literature of the field back, misrepresenting it as in absolute chaos then plagiarising George Williams to appear to set it right again. — Kenosha Kid
Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory. — John Maynard Smith
He quite conspicuously misrepresents the views of biology's leading spokesmen. — Ernst Mayr
nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.[2] The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism -- so properly are we all -- it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know.
...
For biologists, the central problem is that Gould's own exposition of evolutionary biology is so radically and extravagantly at variance with both the actual consensus state of the field and the plain meaning of the primary literature that there is no easy way to communicate the magnitude of the discrepancy in a way that could be believed by those who have not experienced the evidence for themselves. — John Tooby
(2) These include Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Bill Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Tim Clutton-Brock, Paul Harvey, Brian Charlesworth, Jerry Coyne, Robert Trivers, John Alcock, Randy Thornhill, and many others. — John Tooby