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  • Immaterialism
    Potential EnFormActionGnomon

    Your Award for finding the needle in the haystack:

    1-43-bae.gif?resize=438%2C438

    The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
    Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.
  • Immaterialism
    HERE BE DRAGONSGnomon

    And they breathe fire into the equations.
  • Immaterialism
    Photons will be all that's left!Dijkgraf

    Given that photons have no mass and no time, Roger Penrose thinks that since no mass will be left at the end of the universe then there is no distance because there is no mass or something like that … and so a new universe can begin since the spread-out photons will be as if they are near each other. Sorry, I don't remember where I saw that, but photons already seem to get emitted and absorbed without traveling in between.
  • Immaterialism
    Imagine a single lonely electron looking for a lonely single proton in a vast inflating space... Reaching out in vain...Dijkgraf

    From time’s shores toward oblivion’s worlds,
    The quantum ‘vacuum’ fields send forth their whirls,
    The sea parting into base discrete swirls,
    Unto stars and life—ephemerals pearled.

    When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
    All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
    The way that all temporaries must go,
    To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

    Only the Eternal Basis stays put
    As potential for all possible books
    In Everything’s Babel Repository
    To author another universe’s story.
  • Immaterialism
    Well sure, I’d consider thatWayfarer

    On Consciousness

    What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
    From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
    The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
    Experience alone is the benefit.

    Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
    While consciousness exists just for itself,
    As the intrinsic, compositional,
    Informational, whole, and exclusive—

    As the distinctions toward survival, 
    Though causing nothing except in itself,
    As in ne’er doing but only as being,
    Leaving intelligence for the doing.

    The posterior cortex holds correlates,
    For this is the only brain region that
    Can’t be removed for one to still retain
    Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

    Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
    And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
    A process fundamental in nature,
    Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.

    The Whole can also be well spoken of 
    To communicate with others, as well as
    Globally informing other brain states,
    Via qualia, about what’s been made.
  • Immaterialism
    At the most fundamental level, massless charges feel so attracted by each other that they only can exist in massive triplets, which can have color and electric charge.Dijkgraf

    Good write-up!

    THE NEAR DECLINE OF PHYSICS
    DUE TO ITS UNDRESSED TERMS

    The quarks, those constituents of the orgy
    Playfully bound within the nucleons’ chamber
    Are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top,
    The last two once being called beauty and truth;

    However, when just one of a type was contained
    It became referred to, say, as a naked beauty,
    And thus nude tops & bottoms their charms revealed—
    To ever be in closeness binding, and bonding,

    So they even tried just u, d, s, c, b, and t
    To prevent some ultimate collapse of physics,
    But the truth of the flavors beneath the veils
    Remained as the sheerest vision preferred.

    So we have these vibrant dancing ladies:
    The naked heavyweight top, charming up,
    Down, the strange beauty of the raw truth,
    And a bare bottom just around and behind.

    They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling
    In the universal dance of stunning motion,
    The polarity sometimes reversed,
    Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.

    And then there are Eden’s many colors,
    In this flower garden filled with flavors,
    Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
    And magenta undulations unstopped.

    Gluons are the bees of the flower beds,
    Carrying pollen back and forth to bond
    The many relationships that make
    This loved world go ‘round as reality.

    Eyed in views that probe the fundamental,
    Quarks strangely swirl in and out of sight,
    Pulsing, throbbing with elemental delight,
    Back and forth—the love-made life of eternity.

    These attractions in the altogether denuded
    In the buff became the strong force manifest
    That these mother-nature-naked terms exposed
    To denote the stark beauty of truth uncovered.


    THE ENTRANCING DANCING

    They were all dancing within love’s treasure vault
    Within the framework of the broadening thought,
    The lights pulsing and the waves reverberating,
    Where the good times had become everlasting.

    Tribal primal field currents were raging
    From speakers of the energy matrix pounding;
    They whirled and twirled as loving gestalts
    Of sentient consciousness knowing no halt.

    There were rhythms of constant contraction
    And expansions of bosom-energy projections
    Converted to scalar waves of blinking attraction,
    As fission and fusion beckoned the connections…

    Ever forming in this Omni-sound emporium,
    Where tone waves vibrated in waves of creation.


    “THREE QUARKS FOR MUSTER MARK”

    Naked quarks would really love to go wild and dance,
    But there’s only a finite amount of energy and chance;
    So they would spiral out of control,
    Having quite a blast!

    Such they’ve been confined within the proton—
    To last.

    They’re made bottoms-up;
    Can we see them tops-down, a go-go?

    No, for the quantum censor protects the charm show,
    Their strange beauty and flavor bound up and down,
    For the proton is much immune to disturbance around.


    CHARMS

    A new kind of microscope
    That works via gravitational waves
    Has revealed the actual interior
    Of a quark for the first time.

    The charming beauty
    Of the ultimate truth
    Is that ladies are
    In charge of the universe!


    WE ARE MOST FREE WHEN
    WE ARE ASYMPTOTICALLY CO-JOINED

    The strong family unit, as the three quarks,
    Is bonded by the power of its grouping,
    But, loses identity if the home breaks—
    Other pairs soon forming after divorcing.

    Or comes the prison of solitude,
    Chained to isolation with fortitude,
    Floating, lost, without effects of affects,
    Losing the identity conferred by others.

    Within the proton, gentleness becomes strength,
    For the members are free to explore at length,
    Never smothering, but building unity,
    The unit’s direction adding to the one.

    The strong force grows weaker near the quarks,
    And so we may observe them someday,
    Shining in their primordial glory—
    The beginning of all things composite.

    Identity is not lost in the co-joining—
    True loves don’t crowd the hearts of the others,
    But, rather, look outward, in the same direction,
    Close, joined, but don’t block the others’ section.

    It is a seeming arithmetic violation,
    That in summation we become greater;
    We don’t merge, having supported freedom,
    Yet still share the same good vibrations.

    Love matures when partners let it flow beyond,
    Free to wend its way to places dear and fond.
    Love’s butterfly prospers when winds blow free;
    Unconditional love never binds—it bonds.
  • Immaterialism
    Yes. They are fundamentalGnomon

    The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes:

    Sean Carroll on QFT: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf
  • Immaterialism
    It is not at all clear what electromagnetic fields are, nor if there are fields of other kindsWayfarer

    How about a fundamental consciousness field, per David Chalmers?
  • Immaterialism
    Particles move in spacetime, don't they?Dijkgraf

    'Particles' are directly field quanta, so they move along the fields like kinks in a rope.
  • Immaterialism
    This is because quantum fields are not in spacetimeGnomon

    Because quantum fields are Fundamental.
  • Immaterialism
    (Now, what about qualia....?)Wayfarer

    Of course, all the wonders of life and consciousness evolved over a very long time after the cosmic evolution that was also over a very long time, thus both evolutions appearing to be completely natural with no other guidance. So mind-numbingly slow!

    Qualia have to be constructed from the neural correlates.
  • Immaterialism
    I've never heard of "mind atoms" before.Gnomon

    More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta.
  • Immaterialism
    Whereas materialists of all stripes believe that the objects of perception have intrinsic reality - the kind of reality that persists independently of any perception, sensation or judgement. The difficulty with that view is that, even though it seems to accord perfectly with common sense, we can obviously never say of the reality of anything that it persists independently of perception, sensation and judgement, because in order to assess its reality, we have to perceive or sense it. We can presume with sound reason that the object persists in the absence of any perception of it, and act as if to all intents and purposes that this is true, but this is still a presumption, not a demonstrated certainty.Wayfarer

    I think it's a stretch to think that all that goes on is a hoax, such that the senses don't take anything in, that it is a story in a 4D movie in which everything matches perfectly with reality as if it were real. This is describing the block universe, and if it is then I think it all still had to have happened at some point—all at once, I suppose, and then it plays out.

    The block universe would be merely the implementation—the messenger, but the message is still the same. It would be that a difference in implementation that makes no difference to the message is truly no difference.
  • Immaterialism
    Yes. I call it "mind stuff";Gnomon

    I'll take it as something. The word 'immaterial' doesn't seem to be doing any work. It's like 'unstuff' that is still stuff.

    Since the universe has atoms, 'mind' would be of atoms.
  • Immaterialism
    Since "immaterial" literally means "not made of matter"Gnomon

    Wouldn't it still be the stuff of something to be able to be?
  • Immaterialism
    No. I'm implying that your either "material" or "immaterial" formulation is fallacious because "immaterial" is neither an intelligible nor a corroborable option compared to – negation of – the material.180 Proof

    Well said!

    The transcendental temptation can now be thrown out of the stained-glass window. In short, the elementary ‘particles’ are physical, and because they are directly field quanta the quantum fields that they consist of must also be physical. The quantum vacuum overall field is continuous as the Simplest and thus it is Fundamental, and so its mathematics becomes the Theory of Everything. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) gives us all of physics and all of our devices.

    All is Purely Physical

    All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
    In the stars our atoms are slowly grown
    From the quantum field elementaries—
    Omar’s knot of how human fate is sewn.

    Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
    What inside their doings would be else wise?
    Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
    What their secret patterns hidden away?

    The light atomic elements were Banged,
    And the stars made more, on up through iron,
    And the rest were from collisions/novae;
    So, what unknown secrets would they contain?
  • What underlies everyday life is completely known!
    Sounds as if you talk about God!Raymond

    Hail to 'God' the Simpleton!
  • What underlies everyday life is completely known!
    We want to see you suffer more for your philosophy.Bitter Crank

    No suffering; only joy. My own slant on QFT that goes all the way:

    ‘Nothing’ Cannot Obtain;
    The Simple Fundamental Something is Ever


    Something is and a lack of anything isn’t.

    To be Fundamental the Something cannot have parts, else the parts would be more Fundamental, and so there cannot be an infinite regress of lesser and lesser parts. Composites cannot be Fundamental. ‘God’ is out; impossible. Neither can be a lasting template of the lesser ever having to come from the greater, ad infinitum. The logic herein matches the cascade from the least to the greater that’s seen in our universe.

    There cannot be a sequence in time from a lack of anything to Something because ‘Nothing’ has no time, nor anything; thus the Something cannot appear spontaneously, as if there was ‘Nothing’ and then there became Something, and besides, ‘Nothing’ cannot have being anyway.

    Thus the Fundamental Simplest Partless Something has to be ever, as Eternal; it has no alternative. It is also Continuous because there cannot be any spacers of ‘Nothing’ in it and it is also Eternal because it cannot be made of parts that it can’t have and because it cannot broken into parts because there aren’t any. It is ungenerated and deathless. It was there before the Big Bang and exists ever after. The Bang was from the Something. A ‘Beginning’ and ‘End’ to the Something is impossible. This shows the multiverse.

    Why isn’t the Something Still, never doing anything? If the Something has Stillness, then naught would happen. Scientifically, the uncertainty principle indicates that ‘Stillness’ is impossible. The Something is ever in motion; it is energetic. We don’t need all the proof when we have the truth.

    From what can it form entities? It can only form entities of itself, as that’s all there is. In short, its motion as fluctuations makes for a wave nature that allows the elementary forms to be quanta of its excitations at stable rungs that grant some persistence. See Quantum Field Theory (QFT). We know that the elementaries of a type are identical and so that also tells us that they are directly quanta forms, plus that they can be annihilated shows us that they are secondary.

    Why are the elementaries so minuscule? The Something as the simplest is lightweight and then so must be the elementaries.

    Can the metaphysical creep back in as a hyperphysical substance to be the Something? No, the elementaries are physical and they are the quanta of the Something and so the Something is physical. What the elementaries go on to form is also physical. There can’t be anything esoteric about matter and forces.

    What of the fluctuations of the Something that don’t reach a quantum energy level? They are the so-called virtual particles that ever come and go.

    Can the virtuals ever persist more? If there was inflation, it would drive them apart quicker than they could annihilate.

    What is the Something? It has to be the quantum ‘vacuum’ fields, for the proposed absolutes of time, space, and particles making fields have fallen by the wayside.

    Are there things? The quantum ‘vacuum’ is the only thing; all else are events. A tree is a long event; the sun is a longer one; a proton’s life is very long; photons don’t decay on their own. Events come and go.

    So, we and all the temporaries that the Permanent Something forms are consigned to oblivion? Yes, even the universe, but the Permanent ever remains and all is of its fields.

    Well, there’s no ‘Separation’ at heart, but we and all as field forms must fade, the universe unwinding like a spring, no matter our grand complexities that outdo in scale that of the Simplest. We always knew that the Theory of Everything (TOE) would be boring in its simplicity.

    What if a universe just doesn’t work? Some will, like ours does, although ours is not near to the best or near to the worst. It’s just OK.
  • What underlies everyday life is completely known!
    Posting a link to an article about a 'deep' topic and then asking, "what do you think?" is the easy and lazy way of doing things. We want to see you suffer more for your philosophy.Bitter Crank

    It is right on and correct and is in accord with so much that I've posted on the subject of QFT. I only just now discovered his article of a year ago.
  • Double Slit Experiment.
    So not being able to see them doesn't mean you can't imagine them to fly in space. The photons can't be seen but they still are there. Like a hidden force of nature.Raymond

    Particles are a product of our imagination, although useful at times as a model when there are little perturbations about. The photon shown in a Fenyman diagram between pairs of electrons is virtual, not to be confused with virtual particles in fields. This virtual photon is actually a disturbance in the photon field caused by the electron fields. All interactions involve quantum fields at heart, not particles but as sometimes for short. Photons and electrons go through two slits to form an interference pattern because they are directly field quanta.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    What's the difference between these fields and convenient math?theRiddler

    Not too much; the math is not complete.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    then forget where you parked your car?Gnomon

    It's that I know where I parked my dream car but it isn't there any more. In last night's dream, I went back to where I parked my motorcycle but there was a giant electric fan in its place. Also, sometimes the neighbor hood streets and houses turn into a place I never been to; such creativity in the subconscious to model all that, making it as I pass through!

    Train to be a ninja to gain focus.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    Do you see fully fleshed-out Qualia in your dreams?Gnomon

    Yes, full, although now and then there are some slight mistakes, and my car never remains where I parked it.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    How can physicists be so blind that they don't see that there is more elemental stuff than quarks and leptons?Raymond

    The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
    Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    those conceptions from perceptions are what we call mental "symbols" representing reality.Gnomon

    Plus, in our imagination we see very dim qualia that have about 90% transparency, and full qualia in our dreams.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    quantum bubblesRaymond

    The Literature of the Cosmos

    The quantum vacuum field waves are the strokes
    That write the elementaries’ letters
    As the Cosmic alphabet for wording
    Of the elements and the forces that

    Phrase the molecules’ interactions
    Unto the cells’ sentences that make for
    The lives’ paragraphs of the species that
    Experience the uni-versed story,

    In a book from Babel’s Great Library,
    The epic tales of the temporaries,
    Their glorious triumphs and sad failures,
    Amid complexity’s unwinding spring.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    mental imageGnomon

    Of course, the subconscious also determines what gets into consciousness and then structures it from its parts but then it becomes a unified whole and is no longer reducible and it is this whole of qualia that perhaps then more easily becomes a reference focus for the subconscious if qualia are the highest point of the brain's own invented symbolic language.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    at least currently seems to be the case, that there is no such solid foundations that matter is built on,Reformed Nihilist

    Well, the foundation has been found; it's the quantum 'vacuum' and its fields that form matter, but that doesn't mean there is some expected deep meaning to it; no meaning is still a find.

    To continue, there is the Permanent along with the temporaries that it necessarily forms that are doomed to fade away until more are forthcoming.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    So, the conscious Mind has no role in human behavior?Gnomon

    It's probably a focus short cut that other subconscious areas can use for reference to what's going on.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    A particle is a funny thing.Raymond

    A neutrino walks through a bar.
  • Global warming and chaos
    He will, without remorse, and firmly, strictly, and justified, bestow humanity with his Ivory Bashing, and catastrophe will descend from His untouchable and unshakeable Sacred Realm, cleansing the Earth from a God-forgotten species, unwillingly to bath in His immaculate light and conform to His unquestionable Will. Brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and prey together. Let's ask the Great Annointed to release us from our pagan ways, and to restore his blissful order before too long. Oh unparalelled Being, our blessed King and Savior! Bless Thou Glorious name, leading us to Ultimate Victory.Raymond

    Good jokes ongoing.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    I'm a Mysterian. There are no answers I'm particularly interested in. I just understand that reality is ineffable, to a delineating degree.theRiddler

    Well, now it's effable, but what are you interested in?
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    That means on one side there is a different force then on the other. What's different in between?Raymond

    Sorry, it pushes the plates together:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    There is no empty space?Raymond

    All is field, plus 'Nothing' cannot be.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    What are field points and how can they oscillate? Are it not the excited wavefunctions that show oscillating behavior?Raymond

    Field points are just the moving continuous points of a field that can be assigned a value. The excitations of a field oscillate, too, as the sums of the harmonic field point oscillations and can make for a stable lump of stuff called a particle.

    These wave functions go along deterministically until someone wants to measure something or until they interact with something else. Whoever wants to know both the location and the momentum of a particles is out of luck due to these not being arithmetically commutable due to the uncertainty principle. I and adding this stuff in just to show that we know more about what goes on.

    So, some measurements often only return a probability about a particle's doings, but they are statistically deterministic in that the probabilities add up to one, which is called unitarity. After all, we don't know all the quantum math, plus we can't even then take the whole universe into account, plus the elementaries aren't point particles but are spread out field waves that have a volume…
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    Virtual particles are a weird ingredient of empty space. One might even argue that it's the source of dark energy. For sure it has a different effect on empty space as normal, real matter does. The negative energy contributions give negative curvature. It is said that the vacuum fluctuations have a very high energy, while in fact it should be negative.Raymond

    Well, there's no empty space because all is field, and there's no inert space as Newton had it as a background who's only quantity was value. Einstein got rid of Newton's absolute space, achieving background independence, and there is still no space because quantum fields serve as what used to be called 'space' and are everywhere.

    Yes, the 'vacuum' energy could be the source of the push of dark energy, the fuel that ever keeps on giving. In the Casimer experiment the 'vacuum' pushes two plates apart.
  • The project of Metaphysics... and maybe all philosophy
    As I understand it, at every point in spacetime operator valued distributions are assigned and these operators excite states in a Fock space of particle states. All these states have frequencies and wavelengths and can indeed be seen in the light of oscillators, or rotating complex vectors. But are there really operators present that excite a particle state? Is not a particle state, and it's demise, propagation, or creation what comes first? Are it really creation, destruction, or propagating operators, that govern?Raymond

    I think that the approach of having creation and destruction operators is just another way to model the quantum fields. The fields oscillate on their own; it's not like that there are little springy oscillators attached to field points.
  • Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
    the virtual fields could be pulled into real existence. Quantum bubbles pulled into reality. inflation would be solved.Raymond

    Well, we know that the universe grew very large in a hurry, which could already be called an 'inflation' as a normal word and that there is a humongous, even extravagant amount of material, like 2x10**76 or so particles, indicating that material is very easy to come by. The 2x part is to include antimatter, and the 10**76 part began as 10**85 because there are now ten billion photons for every proton and so there were 10**9 or so annihilations of matter and antimatter early on.

    The proposed inflation would have driven the virtual particles and their anti-particles faster than they could recombine and annihilate. We still need a lot of positive kinetic energy to have come forth and gravity can supply it because its negative potential energy can grow more negative without bound. This doesn't violate the law of energy conservation because the net energy amount remains constant, as zero or near zero.

    The quantum fields are lightweights and and probably don't have enough energy, although they got predicted to have energy that was 121 orders of magnitude too large, which was the most embarrassing notion in science, perhaps because they should have instead looked to gravity for the energy.

    If we find a lot of gravity waves way back that have a lot of b-mode polarization then we can better hone in on what kind of inflation there was. Inflation also flattens the universe, which makes it work out better than it having curvature. I don't know if the new telescope does any of that WMAP kind of stuff.

    (There's no 'true vacuum' because all is field.)

PoeticUniverse

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