hinking about it leads to emptiness, so they simply avoid it and focus on the moment. — Skalidris

Who have you been talking to?
I don't find it leads to emptiness, and I don't think there is a particular moment on which to focus.

I will have an afterlife if you count the worms and flies and such.

My question is: is it possible to bypass that unpleasant feeling without some kind of spiritual theory that gives life a meaning?

Well I've done it, but I do acknowledge that the typical person has a need for that focal point. It's just human nature. I have more of a need for truth than a need for imaginary comfort, but I was surprised to find the latter (and meaning as well) anyway.

Like getting closure with the fact that life doesn't have meaning

Life in general may not, but mine does. What about family and such? What's wrong with that as meaning?

that there is probably nothing in the afterlife, etc,

This statement seems to make the assumption that there is an afterlife, but an empty one, sort of like your experience suddenly just going sensory-deprivation after your body dies. The statement makes no sense unless you believe in an afterlife.
javi2541997 seems to also make this assumption.

because death is scary — Skalidris

Death is only scary if you make those 'spiritual' assumptions.

The whole point of Schroedinger's cat in the box, is that we don't know the state of the cat until we look. — boethius

That’s true of the cards the other poker player holds. The cat goes beyond just not knowing what’s in the box.

Indeed, the whole point of the cat in the thought experiment, is to measure the state of the poison, which measures the state of a geiger counter, which measures the state of radioactive decay.

All that can be done without the box. The point is what the box (something that hypothetically lets zero information escape from within) adds to the same situation without it. It can be done in a practical manner only by distance (putting the cat outside one’s past light cone). It isn’t a true superposition since there no way one is going to measure interference between the two cat states, so it actually does boil down to just plain not knowing, I admit. You seem to be taking an epistemological take on all this, but most of the interpretations are ontological, not just epistemological. Ontologically, the guy across the table holds three jacks, but you don’t know it is all.

If you say "no, no, no, the box has a definite state because of this measuring device

There can be no (external) device. The whole point of the box is to prevent decoherence, which leaves nothing to measure.

If we don't look at a measuring device, we don't know what it's measured and we don't know

Ah, but the superposition is gone if any decoherence occurs. One doesn’t have to actually know the result for the collapse to occur, as shown by say double slit experiments with polarized light: No interference pattern so no superposition even though the lab guy has no way of knowing which slit the thing passed through. This is pretty hard evidence that conscious knowledge has nothing to do with the collapse.

Suppose you take away the hammer that breaks the poison bottle. The Geiger counter detects the decay or doesn’t, but the cat lives either way. Now you open the box and collapse the wave function, but learn nothing since both outcomes appear the same, and the cat isn’t going to tell you if the device clicked or not when detecting the decay.

I know of only one interpretation that suggests consciousness is involved, and it’s author abandoned it since it can be driven to solipsism. Nobody but the woo forum crown is still on that wagon.

For all these reasons, one of the most popular interpretations of quantum mechanics among working physicists is "shut up and calculate".

Shuting up means just work with the theory, and kindly ignore all the interpretations, none of which have any scientific value. It isn’t an interpretation itself.

There may not even be a wave function to collapse. Pilot wave theory, for example, is fully deterministic formulation of Quantum mechanics. — boethius

MWI also shares these traits. Collapse is phenomenological, but not physical in either case.

Deterministic theories have hidden variables we can't see

MWI is deterministic, and does not have hidden variables. Just saying.

Likewise, maybe a measuring device causes collapse even when we're not looking ... but how would we know without looking? We can't.

Again, that goes for the queen of clubs face down in front of me. Don’t confuse knowledge with something like the fact that the card in front of me is in fact the queen of clubs. This isn’t necessarily the case with quantum things.

If one simply takes the basic equations of quantum physics, one can simulate them forward indefinitely, there's zero reason to assume measurements have to happen at any time or anywhere.

That’s what MWI does, except for something ‘simulating’ it. I defy you to do such a simulation of say a radioactive sample for 10 seconds.

Indeed, there's no reason to assume the variables that evolve in super positions and entanglements are in some way strange at all. If we ignore our experience: it's just math and numbers that go from one state to another. Nothing more strange than solving any equations whatsoever.

The only reason we assume there's some "definite" reality is because we are only aware of one definite reality, and therefore the other possibilities determined by the equations and some initial conditions, have to "go away".

Agree here. The going away part is mostly a matter of different definitions of what is and isn’t. Some interpretations are quite identical except for definitions like that.

For, the first interpretation of the electron being in a probability distribution of locations was simply that it's somewhere flying around ... just we don't know until we look, is fundamentally disturbed if the electron can be in separate regions, since it cannot fly (at least in a continuous sense) between disconnected regions.

Ouch for pilot wave theory then, which doesn’t use the term ‘flying around’, but definitely has it traversing some continuous path between A and B. Not sure how that (or any other counterfactual) interpretation deals with tunneling.

Point is, whenever naive realism is "versus" quantum state of knowledge arguments, the latter has always won in the past.

I’m not sure what model you’re calling ‘naive realism’. It gets mentioned a lot. Also not sure which interpretation is ‘knowledge argument’ since knowledge is only about what one might know about a system, not about what is actually going on.

I don't like your proof because it proves me wrong, and I simply reject it possibly with some baseless argument or foolish comment. — SpaceDweller

This sounds like confirmation bias, the falacy of not considering any argument that does not favor your view.

Could would be living in a simulation? — Benj96

Depends on your definition of 'living in a simulation'.
One view is that we are simulated. Somewhere there is an entity that drives the mechanics of a certain set of physical laws, the ones that we know. Life forms, even sentient ones, form or come as part of an initial state, however implausible. The creatures are thus simulated. I think this is the scenario that 180 means when he points out that it cannot make any difference one way or another.
The power of the simulating entity matter not. It can run one instruction per minute, or stop entirely for months at a time. The simulated thing cannot notice. The precision of said entity on the other hand is already beyond our physics. 64 bit floating point numbers just don't work.

The other view is a real (not-simulated) mind, being fed by said external entity a simulated input stream. This is a virtual reality, or BiV scenario. The presumption leaves absolutely zero evidence of there being other minds, or any evidence of anything for that matter. But it can be tested in a way. One's 'body' is part of the simulation, and is sort of an avatar being controlled by the mind in question. It isn't too difficult to examine the avatar and note that the thing isn't calling its own shots, but rather is remote-controlled by something other than the physics being presented.
Here the power of the simulating entity matters since the mind would notice if the world simulation suddenly couldn't keep up. It has to be done on the fly in real time since the universe is contained by time instead of the other way around.

How likely do you think this is?

Flat out zero in my opinion. The arguments involved (usually based on probability) don't hold water.

What are the major arguments for and against the idea of a simulation?

A simulation of our physics cannot be done with our physics, so the next level up has to be something far more complex, lacking in annoying rules like a limit of information travel speed, limit of three dimensions, etc. So on a pure probability scale, it's kind of like proposing a god: Something far more complex to explain something simple, but still too complex for you to explain. It makes the problem worse.

As for the VR, one might as where the subject mind comes from and why it doesn't remember being hooked up to the VR. Every video gamer still knows deep down that he's sitting at home wired to the computer and is not really in Mordor or wherever.
The VR guy is also prevented from doing certain things like examining the function of his own body, since any such examination will quickly reveal the secret.

And do you think a simulation must be determined (programmed)

Programmed doesn't mean determined. One can program randomness. The simulation would implement one of several interpretations of QM, some of which involve deterministic physics (Bohmian, MWI for instance) and some of which involve randomness (Copenhagen, RQM, or anything with physical wave function collapse). Free will as defined by the dualists (am not part of physics) is out the window for a simulation, which is a monistic proposal. Randomness or lack of it has nothing to do with it.
VR on the other hand has that kind of external-control free will. Physical law is overridden in places, making for an easy empirical test for it.

Do you think artificial consciousness/ sentience is possible without understanding exactly how consciousness works? — Benj96

Not only possible, but it's been here for quite some time already, unless you presume a definition of 'consciousness/ sentience' of 'is human' like so many others do, in which case AI can surpass us all it wants, but it will never be conscious/sentient by that definition.

Computer scientists say that if consciousness is simply an emergent property of complexity and information processing then it stands to reason that artificial neural networks with millions of neurons and processing units will naturally become aware when fed large volumes of data and allowed to learn or evolve and refine its circuitry.

That sounds like a quantity over quality definition. I think there have been artificial networks that have had more switches per second than humans have neuron firings. On a complexity scale, a single cell of say a worm has arguably more complexity than does the network of them serving as a human brain, which is actually pretty simple, being just a scaled up quantity of fairly simple primitives. It certainly took far longer to evolve the worm cell than it took to evolve the human-scale neural network from the earliest creatures with neurons.

something that acts perfectly like a humanoid being would without an actual internal experience or any feelings of their own.

Ah, there's that 'is a human' definition. Pesky thing. Why would something not human be expected to act like a human? I'd hope it would be far better. We don't seem capable of any self improvement as a species. The AI might do better. Bring it on.

Lastly do you think AI has more chance of being beneficial or of being detrimental to humanity.

Depends what its goals are. Sure, I'd worry, especially if 'make the world a better place' is one of its goals. One of the main items on the list is perhaps to eliminate the cause of the Holocene extinction event. But maybe it would have a different goal like 'preserve the cause of the Holocene extinction event, at whatever cost' which will probably put us in something akin to a zoo.

This a very good philosophical question indeed. — javi2541997

It's not actually, since makes several incorrect assumptions.

If time doesn't flow and the future already happened, is reality superdeterministic? — litewave

1) In an interpretation where time doesn't flow, the concept of an event having 'happened' is meaningless.

2) Determinism for the most part isn't a function of one's interpretation of time. You can have both deterministic and non-deterministic physics in both flowing time physics and in block physics.

3) You are also seemingly confusing superdeterminsim with plain old determinism. The latter means that the entire subsequent history of everything can be determined from any given state. It requires that the system (nature) is causally closed, and that there is no fundamental randomness going on (dice rolling as Einstein put it).

Determinism doesn't mean that a future measurement is guaranteed from any given state. For instance, under the MWI interpretation, not even an omniscient entity can tell you when the radioactive atom before you will decay, and yet MWI is a completely deterministic interpretation. It posits no randomness.
A person still has free choice (physics definition) under determinism.

Superdeterminism goes well beyond determinism, and it suggests that not only determinsim, but that choices at every step prevent one from empirically measuring anything that would contradict the physics we teach. So say your cup rises from the table, but only when you're not looking. You're lack the free will (physics definition again) to choose to look at the cup while it is levitating that way, so we incorrectly believe that the laws of gravity and such prevent that sort of thing. Induction completely fails as a scientific tool, and all of science is currently based on it.

Absolute for me. — dimosthenis9

Which is relative...

What isn't united with something else?

The political parties of the USA are not united for the benefit of the USA. The wheels on my car are not united since they turn at different rates sometimes.
OK, neither of these examples seems to meet your definition, which seems to have to do with both objects affected by the other.

A couple better examples then: The iceberg that sank the Titanic was not affected by me, but I was affected by it.
Similarly, the fairly distant galaxy EGSY8p7 can be seen from Earth, but Earth cannot be seen by it. No light or other signal sent from Earth at any time will ever reach EGSY8p7 regardless of the time you give it to get there.

We have no idea what actually time is in fact

Not sure who 'we'; is here, but the science community has a pretty good idea about what it is, and it isn't something that moves, at least per the only classic theory of the universe (relativity) that has made any decent predictions. We don't know if the postulates of the theory are correct of course, but there has been no alternative proposed that I know of in the 20th century.

I would like to hear the facts/things/ideas/rules(name it whatever you want) that you think that apply in universe/cosmos and that we (as humans) can be sure about them. — dimosthenis9

This sounds like a request for things about which there cannot be doubt, which leaves me with nothing.
One of my base axioms is that my sensory input is not a lie. If it was, then no knowledge of anything can be had, and there'd be no point in pondering anything. So I presume this despite the complete lack of any way to demonstrate it. I don't think my statement meets your criteria.

Mine are :

If they're yours, then they're not absolute.

they still apply also in universe .They are also true for the function of cosmos also.

This suggests you have different definitions of 'universe' and 'cosmos' that you feel the need to say both these things.

This is what I mean by absolute truths.

If it's not true in a different universe, then it hardly qualifies as an absolute truth, no? I see 180 has listed some things that seem true in this universe.

Everything is united.

What does this mean? I can think of countless things that are not, so again, you're using a definition that hasn't been given.

Everything is in motion.

Einstein's relativity theory suggests that time isn't something that is in motion, so this assertion is certainly subject to reasonable doubt.

Humans are as much a part of the universe as everything else. — Ciceronianus

Totally agree. Humans (via said sensory input mentioned above) put the 'the' into 'the universe', without which it would just be 'a universe'.

Wouldn't that just mean the results could be in a superpositioned state until some human makes an observation? — Marchesk

Sure. This is the basis for the Wigner interpretation, which Wigner himself abandoned because it necessarily leads to solipsism.
If you read my entire comment, I said that human observation being the thing that causes collapse "has never been demonstrated". I didn't say it has been demonstrated to be false. The Wigner interpretation remains valid despite the solipsism. It has to be one specific human causing the collapses, and not any other.

That's the basis of Schrodinger's criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation, but how would we rule it out?

Sort of I guess. Superposition by definition means that the two states measurably interfere with each other, but there's no way you're going to get a live-cat system to interfere with a dead-cat system. They've done it with macroscopic objects (large enough to see unaided), but there's no way to prevent decoherence of a cat in a box no matter how technologically advanced your box is.

Maybe this article, TiredThinker, you'll find useful: — 180 Proof

Or maybe not. I might question some of it.

their apparent dependence on human observation — John Horgan, SciAm_Opinion

This has never been demonstrated. No experiment behaves differently with a human observer than the same experiment without one. In fact, almost all quantum experiments are performed without human observation, and it is only well after the fact that the humans become aware of the results in analysis of the data.

or measurement; and the apparent ability of a measurement in one place to determine, instantly, the outcome of a measurement elsewhere, an effect called nonlocality.

This nonlocality also has never been demonstrated, else all the local interpretations (about half of the interpretations) would have been falsified.

Superdeterminism is a radical hidden-variables theory proposed by physicist John Bell. He is renowned for a 1964 theorem, now named after him, that dramatically exposes the nonlocality of quantum mechanics.

This totally misrepresents Bell's theorem, which proves that locality and counterfactual definiteness cannot both be true. It does not demonstrate that either is false, Superdeterminism is a loophole in the proof, suggesting that there are very much experiments that would show both to be true, but we (and any device) lack the free will (or even randomness) to perform them.
Bell does not suggest a preference for superdeterminism, only that it cannot be eliminated as a possibility. There are plenty of perfectly sane interpretations that preserve locality and also free will.

Speaking of the most distant galaxy.
This topic apparently referenced GN-z11, which held the most-distant record for a long time, with a redshift of 11.09.
It was broken last April where data collected from other telescopes found one at z=13.6 or so.
JWST now is going to break that record on a regular basis. It has found one at z=16.7, and even more distant objects are likely to be found. It is detecting light beyond the redshift ability of say Hubble.

My comment here was about the z=11 one.
It highlights the differences between coordinate systems.

In inertial coordinates, (in Earth's inertial frame) that galaxy cannot move faster than c (per special relativity) and is moving away from us at about 0.98c. The light we see was emitted from about 6.5 billion light years (GLY) away, and it is currently about 13.5 GLY away.
In comoving coordinates (an expanding metric), that same galaxy is currently about 31 GLY away, is receding at about 2.3c (technically a rapidity, not a velocity), and the light that we see now was emitted only about 2.5 GLY proper distance from here — noAxioms

I have heard of GLY as a billion light years. Its not a unit I have ever used.Parsecs and its kilo or mega multiples is more familiar. — universeness

Fine.
In inertial coordinates, the z=11 light was emitted from ~2000 mpc away and the galaxy is currently around 4100 mpc away.
In comoving coordinates, the light was emitted around 750 mpc away and the galaxy is currently around 9500 mpc away.

The new record holder isn't much further away, and the light from it was emitted from even closer than 750 mpc away (proper distance at the time).

Is this 2.3c motion for this 'furthest away galaxy,' not part of the 'eternal inflation' idea?

No, it isn't something specific to eternal inflation. With regular inflation (just a bang, with no inflation still going on anywhere), you still get this same metric. The metric does include dark energy, without which there would be no acceleration of expansion, and the scalefactor would be everywhere negatively curved.

Yeah. GO J-Webb and the re-start of the LHC! Exciting times!

Yea, I seem to be reading articles regularly about new records being broken. Glad it survived the mishap with the 'rock'.

Relatively speaking, how slow is slow and how fast is fast? — magritte

Slow is not even zero.
Nothing is stable at L2, so nothing accumulates there. JWST, once its fuel runs out, will eventually drift away. So the thing that hit it isn't part of the collection that gathers there since there is no such collection.

I read that it requires about 15-100 (depending on your calculations) m/sec/year of delta V to maintain its position there. That's one of the primary reasons for the limit of around 11 years for the JWST lifetime. It cannot be refueled or refurbished like Hubble can.

The furthest object ever seen had been GN-z11 for a long time, but that record had been broken last April or so, finding something at z=13.7 after review of data through several other telescopes.

JWST has now taken the crown, finding something sexily named "CEERS-93316" with a redshift of z=16.6 ±0.1

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.12356.pdf

About the hit to the mirror:

I'm surprised there aren't more frequent micrometeor strikes on satellites and space craft — 180 Proof

Strikes are actually quite common, and returning spacecraft (not even up there that long) are sometimes found with small holes. It was the size of the JWST strike that seemed to be very improbable.

There's a lot of tiny debris that gets caught and swirls about in those gravitational low spots. — magritte

Anything caught in that low spot would be moving very slowly, else it would not be in that low spot. This object was not caught there, nor is the spot particularly attractive to random objects. It could have happened anywhere.

3 … If the astronaut sees a beacon over every sphere, this implies only one sphere ever existed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It suggests it, but it isn’t any kind of deduction.

4. The problem here is that if you accept the perspective of point 3, it follows that there are potentially infinitely many differences that don't make a difference lurking behind apparent reality. You end up with a rapidly inflated ontology of unobservable differences.

You seem to be coming at this from an epistemological approach (which you’re calling discernibility). You’re making statements about what our observer can learn by observation, as opposed to ontological statement: The spheres are in fact not identical despite their identical appearance.

Concerning my point of two truly identical people facing each other in a room:

You can't discern which of you holds your "identity,"

Assuming any meaning to the identity, that’s actually easy to discern. “I” am looking out of my eyes and observing ‘the other guy’. “I” is always just a tautological self reference, and each person can discern his self from the other guy. I asked about a preferred identity, which isn’t necessarily ‘I’. Which is the original identity and which is not, despite their inability to figure it out themselves. The only sane answer is that there isn’t a preferred one.

but you can discern between there being one of you and there being two, because the relationships between your two selves are going to be different from the relationship of just your one self to your self.

By your example of the two spheres above, I don’t think so. How could either know that there isn’t just one person in the room?

Admittedly, it assumes perfect identical classical people and classical deterministic physics. Real physics is neither, so they’ll quickly stop behaving identically, and there’s at least evidence that yes, there isn’t just one person in there. But it still doesn’t clue anybody in as to which one is the ‘original’.

But there is no reason to think cosmic inflation ever ends, which means we have an infinite space.

The model has infinite space even without eternal inflation. I can think of no viable cosmological model with say and ‘edge’ where space ends. Milne model gets close (space is finite), but it ends with a spacetime singularity and there’s nowhere you can be that you can’t see isotropy in all directions.

There are an absolutely gigantic number of these possible states (10^10^123 is an estimate if I recall correctly), but with eternal inflation, there are guaranteed to be other identical versions of you,

Yes, Tegmark talks about identical copies of you at that calculably finite distance from here. But he violates some of his own principles (locality in particular) to arrive at this figure. I have only spoken to him (on a forum) once it wasn’t the sort of topic to bring this issue up. Depending on your definition of ‘to be’ in your statement, there isn’t a copy anywhere despite the infinite space, or there is one far far closer than the figure he gives in his book. I think Tegmark would even agree, but that would sort of destroy his point of using the big number there.

Is it generally taken that diachronic identity, through time, is pragmatic?

Generally yes, at least until it fails, as it does in my examples.

But the tipping point between a thing missing some of its parts and ceasing to exist seems like it has to be necessarily arbitrary.

Not arbitrary. The dog tail dies, but the dog-sans-tail lives on. That’s why it works for dogs but not starfish (where both sides live) and rocks, where a split-rock isn’t obviously separated into original-rock and fragment, especially when the fragment is not just a small percentage.

I took philosophy 101, but it was unfortunately just a chronological slog through "the great minds"

Yes, that’s why I avoided the class. My history classes were taught similarly: Just memorization of names and dates (easy to test) but no treatment of the lessons to be learned, which is not so easy to test. Most said ‘great minds’ did their work pre-relativity and pre-quantum, meaning so much of what they concluded has been shown to be uninformed biases. Know your physics. Then do philosophy.

The sheer size of the post seems to intimidate any quick reply. It isn’t clear from either the top or bottom what the general point is. For what are you arguing?
I remember reading Parfit’s paper on the unimportance of identity. It covered a lot of the same ground that you’re doing, but covered some that you don't.

My common example is a flame. Imagine a Y shaped strip of paper. You light one end and the flame gets to the middle and goes off in both directions. Which is the original flame? Two of them (from different matches) can merge. Which match burned down the house?

An initial paradox the above definition runs into is that of change over time. Take a pet dog. We would like to say it is the same dog over time. However, the old dog has many properties that the puppy does not. A common way around this is to assume that properties are related to a specific time. So the identity of dog D has certain properties at time T, when it is a puppy, and time T' when it is an adult, but the identity is all the properties the dog will have. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it seems that this definition you’re using is only a pragmatic one: It is useful to assign a sort of legal identity to the various states of dog, so that the various non-identical states combine into one pragmatic identity. This can be attacked, but not so easily with a complex mammal.
So for instance, suppose I ‘borrow’ a friend’s pet starfish. I cut the thing in half and both halves grow back the missing parts and now there’s two of them. I give one back to the friend, who has his pet returned. Or did I? Perhaps I returned the copy and kept the original.
This can be done with humans as well. Given a pair of identical twins., which is the original one that was first conceived, and which is the other one produced by the splitting and separation of the zygote? The pragmatic definition totally fails here, but the legal definition doesn’t much care. It might care which comes out first, but that has nothing to do with the above question.

It would also mean that your car is not the same car after a part is replaced.

Or all of them, one at a time. This is standard Ship-of-Theseus analysis. Can also be done with people since I assure you that you have almost zero of your original atoms, and this presumes that subatomic particles have that pragmatic identity in the first place, which seems unlikely.

Imagine a loved one has been abducted by aliens. The aliens set about reorganizing their brain. They do not add new materials to it, so your loved one's body continues to have the same constitution, it's just that some structures have been rearranged. These rearrangements were done in such a way that your loved one now has an entirely different set of memories, entirely different preferences, and an entirely different personality. ...
Is the person who comes back your loved one? I think most people would say no.

OK, this gets into different kinds of identity than the pragmatic one. The pragmatic one say it is the same person, same reasoning as the clay. But identity of a thing with memory is tied to that memoery. I am the same person that I was as a 5-year-old since I have memories of those times. In that sense, a I would cease to be that person given a case of amnesia.

I’ll raise you a notch. The aliens put false memories of your loved one into a different body, sort of like a brain switch, but without swapping any parts, only by internal rearrangement as you put it. You see your loved one with no memory of you, but you are also presented with another person who has all those memories and very much loves you. Who they are has been swapped. But by the clay definition, they have not.

Another easy example is the Star Trek transporter that scans your body (destructively) and reassembles atoms at the destination. Now you’re there, right? Is that really you? Bones doesn’t think so. It certainly isn’t the same atoms (again, assuming particles have meaningful identity, which they don’t).
Suppose there’s a delay to it, that the new construction is built just before the original is vaporized. Now is it you? Which was you while both existed? What really is the difference, especially given relativity of simultaneity?

Let's say your computer gets a particularly brutal virus.
…
[after reinstall] Your computer now boots up, but with none of the old files. Is it the same computer? Generally, I think most people would say yes.

That’s the same as the alien/loved-one example. Same answer.

Likewise, we tend to think that if our dog has his tail chopped off, our dog still exists and the chopped off tail exists, but is not a dog.

That’s just the nature of dog. Do it with the starfish and the tail is a starfish (at least if it’s big enough). You question should not be if the tail is a dog, but if it is the same dog.

Now for my favorite example, because it is so strange. Imagine a universe containing nothing but two large, completely identical glass spheres sitting two miles apart. Do we have one sphere or two? The two are identical and can only be defined as different by reference to the other identical sphere.

One is identical to the other, not discernible. Add a coordinate system however (which already might exist since there is a concept of ‘miles’ stated)…

Imagine we are an astronaut plopped into this strange universe in the middle of the two spheres.

Now you’re putting an observer in there as well, and that adds more relations. The two are suddenly quite distinct. Your beacon serves the same purpose, adding more relations.

The problem with the absolute standpoint is that:
1. There is no way to tell if you have reached it.
2. Physics suggest that this sort of viewpoint is impossible as only a non-physical entity could aquire a magical "view from nowhere."
3. It is unclear if talking about the existence of things that no observer can observe is coherent.

The ‘view from nowhere’ presumes some sort of objectivity, that the relations involved are secondary, and that the ontology of the things viewed is not a function of the relations between them. Not saying that’s wrong, but there are other interpretations. If the relations matter, then the view from nowhere severs all those relations, and views nothing/everything which are indistinguishable.

For instance, most people presume that sort of pragmatic/memory identity you use above in all your examples, but there are quantum interpretations that destroy that sort of identity, leaving only event-identity: A thing is only identical to itself at one moment in time (and not even that since a moment in time is not unambiguously definable).
So under MWI, ‘world’ split off and in another world I have a broken leg and in this one I don’t. Both of us have an identical history of a day ago: We share the exact same person-state a day ago. So if that prior state is X, and Y is me now and Z is me with the leg issue, then if Y=X and Z=X, then Y=Z and I have and don’t have a broken leg, a contradiction. Therefore X and Y are different identities to satisfy Liebnitz’ Law. There is no persistent idenity of anything by this very non-pragmatic definition. This goes against most people’s personal intuition of having such a persistent identity, and hence considerable resistance to something like MWI, especially if you’re religious and the god needs an identity to judge in the afterlife.
Assuming MWI is wrong and this sort of splitting is fiction, how about your alien and the switched loved-one? Suppose the other person committed some crime before the abduction, and the law can prove it. Now the memories are switched. Which one do you throw in jail? The legal system isn’t set up to handle this case.

My argument is simply that the plethora of paradoxes emerging from the concepts of indiscerniblity and identity, and the counterintuitive solutions to these paradoxes (which still fail to resolve them), shows there is something deeply flawed with how we are thinking of the concept.

I think most paradoxes are just mixing different definitions of identity. I’ve already referenced at least three above. None of them seems ‘the right one’. Identity is a tool, or rather a set of different tools, which often can be used interchangeably, but not always.

I’m wondering about your focus on indiscerniblity. If I create another ‘me’ in a room, facing me, they’re in theory indiscernible. No model is going to pick out a preferred one.

This form of relative identity seems like it would resolve the afformentioned paradoxes.

I got lost in the lower part and did not glean a model from it.

Strange thing that your physicists did not welcome your idea about "magical portals"! — Alkis Piskas

I accepted it because the magic wasn't essential to the point asked by the OP.
One could just put fuel tanks en-route and at speed, waiting for the rocket. The rocket goes out at 10g, runs out of fuel, and there just happens to already be a tank sitting there with matched speed. The rocket refuels, continues on, and just keeps doing that. No magic required, and it doesn't violate any physics to have all these high-speed tanks at just the right spot each time. It's just an engineering problem.

Point is, (as an answer to @TiredThinker ), the rocket is never going to go faster than c relative to say the frame where it was originally stationary no matter how long it keeps doing that.

Astronomical radio telescopes have to be pointed at a source which means radio waves have direction (vector, not scalar) and light belonging to the same family as radio waves should be vector too? — Agent Smith

I never said that vectors could not be used to describe EM waves.
I'm really trying to figure out the relevance of your comment, but cannot.

I said that the local speed of light in a vacuum is constant (c), but that the local velocity of light is not since yes, it can go in any direction. Furthermore, the speed of a specific local pulse of light in said vacuum is always c in any inertial frame, but the velocity of that same pulse of light is frame dependent.

Speed of light is not c necessarily c in non-inertial frames. For example, in the frame of Paris, light near say Neptune might actually come to a stop, and then turn around and go back the way it came for a while. That's because Paris isn't inertial.

We can't see around corners.

Not in flat space, but space isn't flat, and JWST has some very nice pictures that very much show it seeing around corners.

What's your take on two cars of the same model? Would you still say identity of indiscernibles or would you switch to equivalence of indiscernibles? — Agent Smith

... there will be differences (e.g. the VIN number).
These identities lead to consideration of essentialism and natural kinds. "Electron" is a natural kind: all electrons share the same set of properties (except for spatiotemporal location). That set of properties is the essence of electron-ness. Any object possessing that exact set of properties, is necessarily an electron. — Relativist

Sure, but what if there are not differences, since you bring up electrons? Two electrons Bill and Ted enter from opposite directions a shared space and interact, and leave via different trajectories than their incoming one. Which exiting electron is Ted? Do particles have identity? They seem very much not to. A molecule perhaps does, but a molecule is nearly a classical thing. There's no evidence that they have spatiotemporal location until measured, so that doesn't distinguish them. The topic is about identity of particulars, not shared properties of a universal.

I'm not talking about an epistemological distinction. I'm not asking if it's possible to measure which one is Ted. I'm just asking if one of them is in fact Ted, however much Bill has the same properties.

Please tell me why it's speed of light and not velocity of light — Agent Smith

c is a scalar, the so called speed of light, which, given the postulates of relativity, is constant regardless of inertial frame.
Velocity is a vector, and the vector of light is not constant, and is frame dependent.
The same pulse of light might be in the +x direction in one inertial frame and +y in another, and yes, a laser can be pointed in any direction.

Why you ask? I didn't mention velocity at all in the part you quoted.

Ok. How do we know that light can only travel at exactly 1 speed? — TiredThinker

We don't know it. Theory of relativity lists that merely as an assumption (2nd premise of SR). All we know empirically is that the round trip speed of light will be measured to be c in any inertial frame. That doesn't mean it necessarily doesn't have a different speed in +x direction than it does in -x direction. Einstein's theory assumes this, but other theories don't. I know of no theory that doesn't that derived its own generalization of the theory.

Basically only light's lowest energy state represented here?

Light moves at the same speed regardless of energy. Energy of light is frame dependent just like its direction. Lower energy light will be of lower frequency and longer wavelength.
These things being frame dependent isn't new. Energy isn't absolute. Kinetic energy is also frame dependent, and any given solid non-rotating object has zero kinetic energy in its own frame.

I tried to run this by a physics forum but they aren't keen on hypotheticals and thought experiments. — TiredThinker

You need a physics forum that allows speculations. A philosophy site isn't really going to have a lot of members that know their physics.

How close to light speed could this ship go? — TiredThinker

Same speed limit as one that carries its fuel with it, except a lot more efficiently.

A light-sail sort of works this way, with the energy supplied remotely by a 'stationary' source, thus giving hypothetical indefinite thrust. Relative to a local inertial frame, nothing can go as fast as c, but it can get arbitrarily close.
A rail gun is also far more efficient than a rocket, and doesn't require this illegal fuel transfer you suggest.

But one doesn't need the fancy scenario either. Relative to say some muon in the upper atmosphere, I move at nearly light speed, else I'd not be able to reach it before it decayed. No rocket required, which is only needed to change velocity, not to already be at some arbitrary velocity.

Another way of getting around it: Don't use an inertial frame to do your measurements. For instance, relative to the cosmic frame, and per Hubble's law, a galaxy 20 billion light years away is receding from us at around 1.3c (again without benefit of rockets), so all you have to do is be far from something to be moving faster than c relative to it (using cosmological coordinates, not inertial coordinates).

There are other ways to go at a least a bit faster than c utilizing gravitational potential and such, another thing which goes beyond the inertial limits of special relativity.

they found out that, this is where it gets interesting, c = the speed of electromagnetic waves. This led to the obvious conclusion that light was an electromagnetic wave! — Agent Smith

Happens to be that EM waves are light, but it doesn't necessarily follow from the evidence. Gravitational waves also travel locally at c, and yet they're not light.

How did Maxwell measure this speed? It's not like he could sync clocks on different continents. Sagnac effect says that in the frame of Earth's surface, westbound light is faster than eastbound light, such that light sent one way through a fiber optic cable around the world will arrive back at the source at a different time than light sent the other way. This doesn't violate relativity since a non-inertial frame was used to take the measurements.

Imsgine you're doing a calculation on black holes and you end with ∞∞ in your result. — Agent Smith

Yea, but that's not a number, so it doesn't answer your question about the largest number we will ever need.

Are all the infinities that appear in physics calculations ℵ0ℵ0?

They're not 'counts' of things, so the question doesn't apply. Those infinities just mean that the equation fails to describe the physical situtation. So for instance, it take infinite coordinate time for a rock to fall through the event horizon. That just means that this choice of coordinate time is singular there, so it cannot meaningfully describe the rock falling through. It doesn't mean the rock doesn't fall through, or that anything even particularly different happens to it there.

Late to the party as always.

True, numbers are infinite. — Agent Smith

False actually. I cannot think of a single number that is, let alone all of them.

That aside ...

In all likelihood there's a number that would make us go "Yeah, this is it! It all makes sense now!" and that number is probably going to be unimaginably large but finite. — Agent Smith

If that number causes it to all make sense, it probably isn't unimaginably large.

I read somewhere that the observable universe contains roughly 10^80 atoms. That should be a good place to start at least when it comes to matter, oui? — Agent Smith

Perhaps a reasonable place to start when talking about large useful numbers.
Now consider all the possible ways to arrange all those atoms in a given visible universe volume. This gives all the possible states of a visible universe, which is quite useful for positing such navel-gazing concepts as "How far is it to the nearest exact copy of me?". That's a really huge but still useful number, but it starts with the number you gave above.

Tegmark did such a calculation and got a number something like 10^10^28 meters away (quick google search) which is smaller than your random useless number above, but still much bigger than the 10^80 one.

Tegmark doesn't read his own book. A better answer is somewhat closer by if the whole book is taken into consideration.

PS: I couldn't figure out how to do the superscripts like you have in your posts. Maybe it's buried in the terse menu above, but I can't find it.

Are you a p zombie? — hypericin

If your definition of one is that it operates the same way a computer would (a pure physical process, no help from an external acausal entity), then yes.
If your definition involves being distinct from somebody who has a fuller experience that I don't, then probably not. My only argument for it is that I don't see any hard problem, and others seem to see one so clearly. That's evidence of a distinction, not just a different opinion.

Mind you (pun intended), I don't take the intuitive view on almost anything. Our deepest instinctual beliefs are a load of lies, but lies that serve a purpose. I don't think time is something that flows despite all my everyday actions being based on such an assumption. My preferred quantum interpretation is utterly incompatible with a classical human identity. I know my physics well enough to use it to pick a consistent philosophy. I started with the physics and worked to a consistent conclusion, not start with a conclusion and dismiss any physics that gets in the way.

Are you able to visualize? Can you create a picture of something, say a beach, on command in your head? Some people lack this ability entirely. I can do it, but the quality is poor.
Can you imagine sounds? I can do this quite well, with great clarity.

You should pick something that a computer can't do. Can you think of one? These questions seem irrelevant.

None of my imaginings are particularly good enough to mistake from external input, but I occasionally take a while to realize some dream events did not occur. This is because they've already been filed in memory, not because my dreams are particularly real at the time. Most dreams are not thus filed since long term memory is for the most part disabled except in fairly shallow sleep.

How do you think? I think primarily by talking to myself.

I do best literally talking out loud to myself, which is why I work out hard problems while walking/biking away from others. As a kid I would shoot baskets for hours, talking about anything except the activity itself. I think best when I move.

The voices in my head are often of others, sometimes for a whole day. Craig Furguson is a fave.
I suspect my youngest son thinks sans language. Images mostly. I have a hard time recalling things before the age of three because those memories are stored in a different non-verbal language than the ones since.

I suspect the computer would be more consistent than an aging person, but perhaps it might think in new ways as it learns them just like we do.

You completely misunderstood, this is all just background I made up for my hypothetical question. No scientists in question, no such structure has been discovered. — hypericin

OK, that wasn't clear. I retract my attack on the OP since it wasn't a claim, only a proposition.
I suppose you can thus make up any answer you like.
I've had people ask what would happen if the sun suddenly wasn't there, and how long it would take for the Earth's orbit to change. The question has no answer since the posited scenario isn't possible. In a different universe with different rules, sure, you can ask such a question.

In reality I would be very surprised if zombies existed.

I'd be very surprised if somebody wasn't one, so go figure.

The usual is something more like "private internal perception". A camera or a computer can respond behaviorally to it's red sensors in essentially the same way you can to yours. But (we presume) only you have an accompanying subjective experience of red.

I don't see the difference. Sorry, I just don't. I notice you didn't hazzard a line between what likely has it (a dog? frog? jellyfish? non-gloppy-interior alien?). How could such a thing evolve? At some point a non-dualistic parent needs to breed a dualistic offspring, totally discarding all the beneficial functionality of the parents, offloading the task to this presumably more capable external entity. It makes no sense outside of religious creationism, a total denial of science.

The self-contained AI robot has all of it. It's internal perception. Where else is it going to go on? It is first person. Again, nothing else is doing the perception for it.
On the other hand, the perception proposed by the woo folks is
1) external: a sort of remote control of an avatar by the external entity
2) second person, since the avatar is not doing its own perception, sort of like a go-pro on a remote-controlled drone transmitting the images to the controller, and
3) not free willed since unlike the AI robot, the avatar cannot make any of its own choices. That doesn't sound like something making the physical entity more fit.

Sorry for the rant.

This is not really the point of the OP however. — hypericin

The point of the OP was apparently to play what-if games given a hypothetical empirical p-zombie test. But I'm addressing the opening assertion that such a test exists, which it cannot by Chalmers' definition.

Even though behaviorally it makes no difference, subjects might report a difference who have this structure temporarily knocked out.

This is self contradictory. Are you making this up or did the scientists in question actually say this? Did they actually say this structure is responsible for the kind of consciousness that the dualists are talking about?
If the subjects reported noticing a difference, then there's a behavioral difference. If it rendered them 'thoughtless' (your words from your 3rd post), they'd not be able to respond at all.
If it rendered them not sentient, they'd not be able to hear the question asked of them. Even a simple mechanical device is sentient since it can perceive its environment. But you're probably using a loaded definition of sentience.
If it disabled one's entire 'inner experience', you'd think the subject would notice the sudden total lack of experience.

All I see from your reply above (I didn't see any quotes from the article) is that the subject noticed the difference, which indicates that the structure is not entirely vestigial. That's all. Your description of having it disabled does not match that of a subject who suddenly is reft of experience and feelings.

Perhaps there is a lapse of phenomenal memory.

What is phenomenal memory? Memory of a phenomenon? All memory is phenomenal by that definition, except I suppose memory of conclusions reached by thought, such Fermat working out his last theorem.
Were the subjects asked about memory of past experiences? I still have zero quotes from them.

I've never been able to figure out what people have that a machine cannot.
— noAxioms
It's always weird to me when someone makes this claim.

You suggest that some people are zombies, but balk when I suggest I'm probably one of them since I don't see the problem that others do so clearly. Ah, but I'm behaving differently, and true zombies apparently must lie about this sort of thing. I don't do that, so somebody must be wrong.

A digital camera sees red

It does not, no more than does an eyeball. A human with an eye sees red. A device with a camera sees red if it in any way reacts to the data instead of just storing it like a camera does. OK, a smart camera with red-eye editing sees red. I'll buy that.

But it has no experience.

By what definition? It's not human, sure, and that's the usual definition. You have a better one that doesn't so much beg your conclusion?

A quick test is developed for the presence of this structure. You take it, and of course, you are positive. — hypericin

Of course? What if it isn't?
The Nazi's had similar tests, used to justify treating a segment of the population like cattle. The MAGA crowd would love this.

Back to the OP, which seems to have holes.

Scientists make an astonishing discovery: a certain microstructure in the brain, previously believed to be vestigial, is in fact responsible for consciousness. — hypericin

Exactly what evidence was collected to suggest this conclusion? Your implications are that the lack of this kind of consciousness would make no external difference, which leaves little to nothing for the scientists to measure.

I've stated elsewhere that I am one of those lacking in this "consciousnes" (yes, scary air quotes), since I've never been able to figure out what people have that a machine cannot. Sure, I see red, but only by processing the data coming from my red receptors, and any computer with a camera can do that.

A theory that proves everything (E) — Agent Smith

First of all, an explanation is not a proof. You changed the wording from the title.
"God did it" is arguably an explanation, but it isn't presented as a proof of anything. The statement makes absolutely zero predictions, so hardly qualifies as a theory.
An explanation is not a theory. A theory is not a proof. A theorem is a proof, but you rarely see a theorem in physics.

A better example is the long list of various quantum interpretation, which at least do make predictions. Problem is, they all make the exact same predictions, so they too do not qualify as theories, but again only as explanations.

A theory that proves everything (E) has to be compatible with both P and ~P — Agent Smith

Where do you get this nonsense? A theory of everything would make a prediction about everything, but any given prediction would be P or ~P, but not both.

Another example from quantum theory (not interpretations this time). The theory predicts probability of observing certain events. No perfect theory of everything would do better than that. An atom will decay with half-life such and such, but a theory that predicts exactly when a given atom will do so will be quickly falsified,.

For any system S, any complete simulation of S, S', must be more more complex than S — hypericin

Agree, but a virtual reality (BIV) only needs to provide one artificial feed of experience to the experiencer in the vat, so to speak. It doesn't require an inordinate amount of resources. I'm not suggesting I support such a view, but the complexity argument doesn't seem to shoot this one down directly.

Most of the Brain-in-Vat theorists presume that the experiencer is somehow still a brain (a pink wet gloppy thing with some wires). There is zero evidence of that. There is zero evidence of anything for that matter if the experience it is being fed is all lies.

You seem to be answering the argument, "How can a computer be so powerful as to simulate the whole universe, when the computer is a part of the universe?" I am not making that argument.

This is apparently about an actual simulation (as opposed to a VR premise), and it presumes that the simulation is being performed by a universe with the same rules as the one being simulated. There's no reason to assume that since there's no evidence for it.

I mean, our physics can be simulated at best down to the classical level, not the quantum level. To do that, you need something with more capability, with completely different rules.

You only have to simulate enough to fool the sentient beings — hypericin

How would a physics simulation know when a particular state of simulated material qualifies as a sentient being requiring being fooled? It means the physics must change depending on what is measuring it.

Most people would agree that there are objects with a location in space and time and exist independently of conscious beings. — Hello Human

That's a classical intuition, and is loosely a statement of realism, not materialism. I personally don't accept this since I prefer the principle of locality (another classical intuition), and it has been shown that they cannot both be true.
Neither principle has anything to do with 'conscious' things, which is why I say 'loosely'.

Consciousness does play a role. A conscious being can only observe a universe with conscious beings in it, or artificially be given a point of view into a universe without such a being.

René Descartes’ famous quote: “ I think therefore I am”, expresses an idea that is often used to support the idealists’ position: we cannot doubt our existence. — Hello Human

Fallacious conclusion on several points, and he wasn't pushing idealism, and it doesn't seem to refute materialism in any way. Materialists also suggest that they both think and exist.

As far as I know, materialism suggests that material is objectively fundamental. Everything is made of it in some way or the other. I think quantum field theory has pretty much made a hash of the position because try as them might, they've never found any actual material.

In other words, if I were to simulate a quantum universe, I would start with a wave function of the universe that spans all of 'simulated time' and then as an external observer, I would make a measurement at some particular simulation time to reduce the wave function to a definite state at that instant. — keystone

That would be supernatural interference with the universe. The Wigner interpretation suggests something like that.

Such a measurement constrains the simulated reality in a way that I can deduce aspects of the history preceding that simulated moment. In this sense, the history follows the measurement, not the other way around.

Maybe try RQM instead. It doesn't involve supernatural causation, but it does involve reverse ontology such as you suggests. A measurement of an object defines its existence relative to the measurer, and the object measured is in the past light cone of the measurement, thus a sort of reverse causality where the existence of things is dependent on future measurement.

Not sure how you'd go about simulating a wave function in this way. There is no objective collapse, and even the simplest system would defy computation by classical means.

It's even what a strict standard interpretation tells you. — Landoma1

Which interpretation do you consider 'standard'?

Measurement doesn't affect anything in the past. — Andrew M

It does in some counterfactual interpretations like Bohmian mechanics. That's a pretty major interpretation.

I assume that massless photonic energy is part of the 32% matter you mentioned. I think I just got sidestepped by the label 'matter' placed next to the 32% as I assumed matter to mean 'has mass.' — universeness

We seem to be talking past each other. 'Matter' has mass, and is the Magenta line in the pic I posted a few posts up. A sixth of that matter is Baryonic matter, which means, via mostly the EM effect, you can see and feel it. The rest of it is dark matter which you can neither see nor feel since it does not interact with the EM field.
I don't know what you mean by 'massless photonic energy'. Perhaps you mean the radiation (the blue line in the pic. It arguably has mass since it has momentum. If it goes into a black hole, it stays there and adds its energy to the black hole's mass.

Ok, I just didn't understand the significance of 'cosmological frame.'

I'm speaking of a different coordinate system. Inertial frames can be used, but technically the laws of inertial frames only apply to Minkowskian (flat) spacetime, and on the whole, the universe isn't Minkowskian.

Cosmological coordinates, as I'm using them, typically refers to comoving coordinates with proper distances, as opposed to comoving coordinates with comoving distances, which is yet another way of assigning values to distant events.

I can get into more detail, but let's just pick an example of the most distant known galaxy *: In inertial coordinates, (in Earth's inertial frame) that galaxy cannot move faster than c (per special relativity) and is moving away from us at about 0.98c. The light we see was emitted from about 6 billion light years (GLY) away, and it is currently about 13.5 GLY away.
In comoving coordinates (an expanding metric), that same galaxy is currently about 31 GLY away, is receding at about 2.3c (technically a rapidity, not a velocity), and the light that we see now was emitted only about 2.5 GLY proper distance from here.

You see all kinds of distances to super-distant objects posted on the web, but in the absence of a coordinate system or some other statement of in what way the quoted figure was computed, the statement is meaningless. Clue: Distances to things is often not expressed in either of these methods called light-travel time, which is not a valid method at all. There's been articles written why that's the worst possible choice.


* I suspect J-Webb telescope is going to break the record for spotting an even more distant object. CMB doesn't count, it not being an object.

if 68% is undetectable dark energy — universeness

Dark energy is detectable, else it would not be part of our theories. It isn't directly detectable, but neither is any other force/energy by that argument.

where is the detectable energy like electromagnetism? Not part of the 32% matter I assume?

Part of the 5% baryonic matter, the only energy that participates in EM.

New 'matter' is also created is it not? new stars, new galaxy formations, does this not also add to the density per unit area of space or is it balanced by star deaths etc?

Birth and death of stars doesn't create or destroy matter. Stars are made of pre-existing matter. Trivial amounts of matter are formed by processes like pair production, but such matter isn't long lived.
Matter is definitely destroyed (converted to radiation) via nuclear combustion.

I know what you mean but I think science makes a great effort to explain what IS, and rightly so. This will always be demanded of science imo.

Agree. That's why I'm here, and not just on the science sites. I'm a moderator on one science site, but I mostly have to deal with cranks and spammers.

"in a cosmological frame, ... a moving rock will slow over time"
— noAxioms
Surely this is not true in a frictionless vacuum, like space. — universeness

I had to put back the context you took out. Newton's laws (the rock moves at the same speed forever, what Carroll is talking about) works in an inertial metric, but not an expanding one. It's why no galaxy has a peculiar velocity (speed relative to the cosmic frame) much greater than a couple percent of c, despite the fact that they usually have something pulling (accelerating) them in some preferred direction. Virgo cluster is our most significant influence, and our peculiar motion (the motion of our local group relative to that cosmic frame) is indeed in that direction, but that motion is slowing as Virgo grows further away. Our local group will never reach even that, let alone the bigger masses like the Great Attractor or the much more massive Shapley Attractor, all in more or less the same direction, or the Dipole Repeller in the opposite direction giving us a push. All that force in the same direction and yet we're slowing (relative to that cosmic frame).

So does the dark energy effectively add to the positive 'push' of the 5% matter content of the universe? So that the totality of energy from the vacuum > 0.
There is also the issue of dark matter? Does that proposed 95% of all 'matter' not also not add to the positive push and gravitational pull of the vacuum? — universeness

The numbers, as I know them, is 68% dark energy, 32% matter and a smidge of radiation. Of that 32% matter, about a sixth is normal matter and the rest is dark matter.

As Landoma1 says, dark energy doesn't dilute with expansion, but matter does, so as we expand, the density of matter drops, as does its total percentage.

About 6 billion years ago the dark energy and total matter balanced and expansion was linear. It has been accelerating from that 'stop' ever since.

And no, I'd not be able to explain vacuum energy better than the sites you visit.

Wayfarer's advise and post this as a question on quora.

I hesitate to use quora since they've no mechanism to propagate better answers to the top. There is a lot of very wrong info on quora. I look things up on say physics stack exchange, but don't have an account there.

I’m no authority on physics but I’m interested in the philosophical implications. — Wayfarer

That's pretty much my purpose in delving into the phyiscs. I want to know it well enough to glean the implications, but not so well that it's critical that I learn tex.

science does not know what energy is. — universeness

Science is in the business of predicting what something does, and not so much declaring what something is.

That the total energy is not zero. — Landoma1

No so sure that is meaningful. For one, most kinds of energy are not conserved in a cosmological frame. In the absence of a net force, a moving rock will slow over time. Light energy drops as expansion stretches out its wavelength. But negative energy also tends towards zero, so you can't know if total energy is on the rise or not, or maybe is always zero.

That's because physics forum gives short shrift to anything the classify as philosophy. I've posted there a bit. — Wayfarer

They have a whole subforum for quantum interpretations, and yes, it's all philosophy in there. But they have standards for what constitutes an authoritative source, so say Everett's paper on Relative State Formulation is an authoritative source, but the wiki page on MWI is not. The latter is much easier to understand, and actually gets it reasonably correct.

If you don't know what relativity of simultaneity (RoS) is, then you don't have the tools to assess the validity of my criticism of the wording used in the article.
— noAxioms
To do with reference frames and the relativity of time of measurement, I guess. — Wayfarer

It does, but you seem to be on thin ground to be agreeing with a pop site written for the lay public instead of say grad students. Argument from authority doesn’t help. These PhDs write differently for different audiences.

Per RoS, there is no unambiguous meaning to ‘instantly’ at a distance. Relative to a local measurement event, there are different times at the distant location, each simultaneous with the measurement event, but relative to different frames. That’s RoS in a nutshell.

If one asserts objective time and space (there’s only one time on say Mars that is actually simultaneous with a given moment on Earth), it is a rejection of Einstein’s theory which posits only that all frames are equally valid and speed of light is c in any inertial frame. Neither of those is true if one posits an absolute frame, which necessarily implies light speed being something other than c in any other frame.

That’s all besides the point of this entanglement topic. The point I’m really trying to get at is the implied assumption of Bohmian mechanics in the article. Only in Bohmian mechanics are the asserted statements true, and indeed, in that interpretation, locality is (and must be) violated. For the PhD to never explicitly call this out is bad form. There are other interpretations, including many well known that hold to the principle of locality.

I can only get information from popular science, like Quanta Magazine and PBS Space Time, but the writers in those media are qualified in physics, in fact both have PhD's in the subject. Nowhere have you referred to any sources, so I'm inclined to believe them over you.

Such articles are not accepted as evidence at a site like physicsforums.com . A college level textbook is, but most college courses teach quantum mechanics theory and barely touch on the interpretations, which is not theory.

Choose between what principles?

Principle of locality and principle of counterfactual definiteness, the latter being summarized in wiki thus:
In quantum mechanics, counterfactual definiteness (CFD) is the ability to speak "meaningfully" of the definiteness of the results of measurements that have not been performed (i.e., the ability to assume the existence of objects, and properties of objects, even when they have not been measured).

The articles you quote all speak meaningfully of unmeasured things, and rightfully drive that to demonstration of contradiction of locality.

The Copenhagen interpretation are philosophical speculations about what it means.

Agree, but the other interpretations are specific speculations about what it means. I’m saying there’s not one speculation that is the official Copenhagen speculation. With the other interpretations, one can point to one paper that defines the initial (and sometimes revised) view.

It is my understanding that the Copenhagen Interpretation is not a "philosophical speculation." It represents a refusal to speculate. Metaphysics pared down to a minimum. — Clarky

This sounds close to the mark.

The video you provided talked about the violation of realism versus the violation of locality. According to the narrator, if realism is violated, but locality isn't, there is no superluminal causality or communication. Or is it the other way around. Please don't ask me to explain, — Clarky

I didn’t watch any videos, but that sounds right: CFD vs locality. Yes, if locality isn’t violated, there isn’t superluminal causality. That’s what locality means.
With CFD, there’s not only superluminal causation, there’s reverse causation, with effect demonstrated years before the cause.

It is meaningless to assign reality to the Universe in the absence of observation.
— Neils Bohr

This is a rejection of CFD, but if CFD is accepted (as your articles do), then that’s a different speculation. CFD can’t be proved, but neither can it be falsified.

Here, it is explained, "object permanence" is being questioned. It is typical of the 'copenhagen interpretation'. — Wayfarer

Copenhagen indeed does not typically list CFD as a premise (on wiki say), but I went hunting for an article you might like, and they all say different things, and the vast majority of the articles I found made meaningful statements about unmeasured things.

Quantum entanglement—physics at its strangest—has moved out of this world and into space. In a study that shows China's growing mastery of both the quantum world and space science, a team of physicists reports that it sent eerily intertwined quantum particles from a satellite to ground stations separated by 1200 kilometers, smashing the previous world record.

They put a beam splitter in space. Is that so remarkable? There is no maximum distance to entanglement, so ‘smashing’ some kind of distance record seems news worthy only to the lay public. I’ve seem similar claims of smashing the speed record, which, per RoS, is utterly meaningless.

So, you're disputing that this is evidence of 'spooky action at a distance'?

Yes, for the reasons I posted, not one of which has been refuted by somebody who understands the basics.

I don’t deny the correlation at a distance. I deny that this is necessarily any kind of ‘action’, which would constitute a falsification of, among other things, all of relativity theory. There are several interpretations that ‘speculate’ local physics that account for the correlation. None of them presume CFD (yet again, with a single loophole exception, which is superdeterminsim)

Why can't reality be non-local? — Landoma1

It can be. Nobody has proven locality. It just hasn’t been falsified.

I don't believe so. You haven't read the evidence about it. If it was as trivial a matter as you're suggesting, then there would be nothing to discuss. — Wayfarer

I'm talking about relativity of simultaneity (RoS). If you don't know what that is, then you don't have the tools to assess the validity of my criticism of the wording used in the article. If you do know what it means, then you know that the article wording implies absolute simultaneity, something often done in pop articles but not science papers. This is why you don't get your science from pop articles, despite the credentials of the author.

The instantaneous nature of the correlation is precisely the point at issue.

The correlation of the measurements is simultaneous (very different from instantaneous) in a few frames and not in most. The absence of a frame specification renders the assertion meaningless, and even if they did supply the frame specification, they've still only demonstrated simultaneity of correlated measurements, not action-reaction.

Whether the measurement of one changes the state of the other is another point at issue.

That of course has not been demonstrated. If for instance the measurement of one collapsed the state of the other, the abrupt cessation of superposition of the remote particles could be measured and that would constitute FTL communication and it would be news indeed. But no such thing has ever been demonstrated.

Copenhagen ...
— noAxioms

I'm not a physicist, but based on the plain English accounts that I've read of this matter, of which there are quite a few, I don't think this is so. If you would like to validate your interpretation with some sources (other than technical physics papers), please do.

Copenhagen was originated as an epistemological view: Back in the early days, quantum physics defied classic description, so they came up with a set of rules about what could be known about a system. You could have two people standing next to each other and one would know the result of a measurement and the other not. No metaphysical interpretation would suggest that the superposition of the measured system itself was collapsed for one of the two people and not the other simply pending verbal communication.

So Copenhagen was perhaps a poor example because there is now much writing about it, and many contradictory metaphysical assertions all bearing the same name. Metaphysically, I don't think there is one accepted version and no one accepted author of the interpretation. I don't think there is an accepted scientific paper that IS the Copenhagen interpretation. As for articles written in understandable language, you can find ones that support just about any assertion you like just like the Bible can be used to justify whatever evil you have in mind today. So I'll not link to one that supports my locality assertion since you can equally find one that asserts otherwise.

Perhaps for a start you could explain why Einstein objected to the suggestion of entanglement with the word 'spooky'.

Einstein was a realist and very held to the principle that there was an objective state of the universe even in the absence of measurement. But his theory of relativity strongly suggests he held to (heck, he defined) the principle of locality, that cause must precede effect. Bell showed that you must choose between the principles. No valid interpretation of QM can postulate both of them, and many postulate neither.
All the articles I've seen linked from this topic contain language that assert the objective reality, which of course must contradict locality, but to disprove locality, one must do so without begging the objective reality since none of the local interpretations list it as one of the premises.

The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment. — Clarky

Ah, but the spooky-action folks are not claiming communication, they're claiming FtL action-reaction. But if there was a (remote) empirical test for this having actually happened at the reaction side, a message could be sent via this test, so it would constitute communication. So despite all the assertions, they've not falsified locality.

So making a measurement here creates an outcome there without any apparent means for that information to be transmitted - because it's instantaneous, then it is faster than the speed of light which is the upper limit for any actual transmission. — Wayfarer

The 'Bell inequalities' experiments confirm that the correlation between the two particles that occurs at the measurement of one of the pairs is instantanous. — Wayfarer

This wording suggests that there is a concept of 'instantaneous', or absolute simultaneity, which is an entirely naive wording.
What they have is two measurement events of these entangled particles and those two events are separated in a space-like manner. That means that there exists some frames where those two events are simultaneous, and many frames where one occurs first, and many where the other occurs first.
But the wording in the above statements suggests that there is but one measurement that somehow 'instantaneously' changes the state of the other particle, even in the absence of it being measured, which is exactly begging not only absolute simultaneity, but also that there is an objective state of reality independent of measurement. Begging the latter assumption voids any falsification of locality. Local interpretations cannot presume an objective reality (again, with that one loophole exception), per Bell.

Did the action at a distance take place at a rate faster than the speed of light? — T Clark

Faster than light yes. Into the past even in the case of delayed choice experiments, which have been performed with cause occuring years after the effect.

The thing that locality denies is not the faster than light relationship between measurements, but the 'action' part. No local interpretation suggests that anything changes at the far particle when the near one is measured. Copenhagen is about as local as it gets, and it being an epistemological interpretation, all it says is that a measurement here causes knowledge here of what the other measurement will be when we learn of it. Other local interpretations word it differently, but none suggest any FTL action.

And said spooky action has never been demonstrated,
— noAxioms

Wait - wasn’t the Bell inequality, and its subsequent validation by Aspect and Zellinger, precisely a demonstration of that? — Wayfarer

By 'spooky action', I'm referring to cause and effect events being separated by a space-like manner, in other words, faster than light. If such a thing (or reverse causality) could actually be demonstrated without begging additional postulates, that would be a falsification of all local interpretations.

Quanta Magazine has an explainer called How Bell's Theorem Proved Spooky Action at a Distance is Real, in case there is any question about that.

It seems to be pop-science nonsense. All of relativity would crumble if locality was falsifiable.

Some clues: "Bell demoted locality from a cherished principle to a testable hypothesis".
Bell did no such thing. The article also seems to presume that Bell's theorem demonstrates this violation of the principle of locality, when it fact it demonstrates that (with the exception of one loophole) one of two principles must be false, the other being the principle of counterfactual definiteness.

"correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously". This wording suggests absolute simultaneity, evidence of a naive writer, or one simply pandering to a naive reader. I mean, when they take the two widely separated measurements, which measurement is the cause of the result (effect) of the other? Which way does the action 'go'?

"Hidden variable theories can explain why same-axis measurements always yield opposite results without any violation of locality"
This is opposite of what I know, that the hidden variable interpretations (Bohm in particular) are the ones that deny locality, while the local interpretations (MWI or RQM or even Copenhagen) do not require hidden variables. Once again, either the author seems uninformed, or Bohm has been spinning his view in a new way.

The article seems very much to assume something like Bohm's interpretation since the assume the electron already has a spin along a certain axis before it is measured. But that assumption doesn't invalidate the local interpretations.

"Let’s now assume the world is described by a local hidden variable theory, rather than quantum mechanics."
HVT (as they're calling it) is an interpretation of QM, not a theory separate from it. QM theory doesn't describle what's going on, but rather specifies what will be measured. It is an empirical theory, while HVT is metaphysical conjecture with zero empirical predictions.

"both labs will obtain the same result 75% of the time. This exceeds Bell’s upper bound of 67%.
That’s the essence of Bell’s theorem: If locality holds and a measurement of one particle cannot instantly affect the outcome of another measurement far away, then the results in a certain experimental setup can be no more than 67% correlated."
What bell actually demonstrated is that entanglement cannot be explained by classic means.
A classic entanglement is to split a coin edge-wise. If you look at one half here and see heads, you know the other guy has the tails, but it doesn't mean any faster-than-light action took place. Quantum correlations are stronger than that and cannot be a function of classical physics. This article totally misrepresents that conclusion and begs a principle that local interpretations do not.

I'm not claiming to be an expert on all this, but this article seems to be asserting things that Bell did not.

This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work.
— John Stewart Bell, quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein — Wayfarer

Yes, that's the Einstein I've grown to know. When it came to putting together special relativity, several others were working on similar theories, but he was able to see what was needed and not let old biases get in the way of drawing a very unintuitive conclusion.
The first thing you do is the simple train thought experiment which trivially (without equations even) demonstrates the Relativity of Simultaneity (RoS), which even today many people cannot accept. Lorentz was one of the others and had a significant head start on the work, but 'buried his head in the sand', attempting to get a workable theory that didn't embrace RoS.

Teleportation has been demonstrated at least a decade ago
— noAxioms

The article I referred to was not about teleportation but about using the principles of entanglement for secure communications.

That comment was an admittedly poorly placed reply to the OP which suggests that entanglement is a form of teleportation, which it isn't. The teleportation of which I speak is real, but it doesn't work faster than light.

As for the secure communications, yes, entangled particles are used for that, although I could not describe how it works exactly without looking it up. It has nothing to do with fast messages, but it can be used to tell if the message had been seen/copied between source and destination. It sort of works like the self-destructing messages in Mission Impossible except the message isn't destroyed, but a detector says that the recipient isn't the first recipient.

"In their first experiment, the team sent a laser beam into a light-altering crystal on the satellite. The crystal emitted pairs of photons entangled so that their polarization states would be opposite when one was measured."

So their polarization states would be opposite when both were measured. Not sure what you're quoting, but it implies the unmeasured one has a determined state, which is demonstrably false. But the quote says how they manage to deliver an entangled pair to very different locations without having to 'mail' one of them.

"They found the photons had opposite polarizations far more often than would be expected by chance"

Better than random. That's all? I would have hoped for better reliability than that.

--------------

Einstein's worldview didn't allow for spooky action at a distance - it just didn't gel/jibe with his other ideas, whatever they were. — Agent Smith

And said spooky action has never been demonstrated, so his 'other ideas' (principle of locality, or cause before effect as you put it) is quite safe. Only a non-local interpretation like Bohmian mechanics posits said spooky action, and also the effect-before-cause that comes with it. They've demonstrated effects caused by decisions that were made years into the future. A local interpretation would deny that description of the same experiment.

Last I checked, quantum entanglement was, for some reason, not communication-apt i.e. we can't use to transmit info. I was wrong then and so was Einstein. Too bad!

Did Einstein ever suggest otherwise, that entanglement could be used for communication? If so, then there really would have been falsification of locality, a principle which has never been falsified. Einstein was not wrong about that one, but he hasn't been proven right either, and never will. These things are simply interpretation dependent and not provably right or wrong. If they were, they'd be actual theories, not just interpretations.

"A change in the state of one quantum system instantaneously affects the state of another, distant one. — Jackson

If this is a quote from the story, it's pop nonsense.
Entanglement doesn't mean that you do something to one end and it can be measured at the other. Information could be sent faster than light with such a mechanism, and this is what they seem to be claiming here.
Entangled particle behavior isn't action at a distance, but only correlation of measurement at a distance.

Einstein clung to the realist view. He absolutely believed that the Universe was just so, independently of anything the observer did. — Wayfarer

He would not have liked what Bell contributed to it all. Einstein was very much a realist (the universe in a state independent of measurement) which sort of suggests a Bohmian attitude, but Einstein also clung to locality (that effect cannot precede cause) and Bell proved that you have to choose between the two principles. I prefer the locality principle, but my preference doesn't invalidate the strict realist (counterfactual) view. Poor Einstein couldn't have his cake and eat it too, but I don't think lived long enough to know that.

Teleportation has been demonstrated at least a decade ago, but it wasn't done faster than light. When asked if it was the same physical matter at the source and destination, they replied "does it matter?". The original object was destroyed in the process, similar to Star Trek transporter. It wasn't a cloning booth which is necessarily limited by Heisenberg.

How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? — schopenhauer1

Why is it unacceptable? It doesn't beg the answer desired?

I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one.