:cool:

As an old math person my suspicion is that "superposition" and "collapse of wave function" is nothing more than experimenting to discover which of multiple solutions of the partial differential equations describing phenomena actually apply in a particular instance. Multi worlds I consider science fantasy.

A rock, in a state, can be described by a wave function. It very probably is not a closed system. — noAxioms

A rock? Is it possible to do this? Over a short time interval my casual guess of 99.999% probability of its state is what a "wave function" might provide.

You have my admiration, Athena. I'm probably a bit older than you, but I witnessed and became involved in that transition from housewife (perhaps with a degree in home economics) to professional (perhaps with a degree in CS). My first wife grew into that transition while we were married, and left and made a career for herself. At first, painful for me, but, nevertheless, the right move for us both.

If you believe in a deity, the language of God is slowly and painstakingly emerging from quantum theory. Archaic priests and prophets are being replaced by theoretical physicists.

Worshiping takes on a whole new dimension.

So stop thinking that if you think something then that's evidence it is true. Try supporting your claims with arguments that have self-evidently true premises. — Bartricks

Has TPF fallen to this level of intellectual discourse? :roll:

They were so disrespected and taken for granted. Today women are no longer tolerating that painful reality as I have until today. This is a serious economic, social, and political problem. We all see that this is going to destroy our nations — Athena

Are you saying this "problem" is due to women being paid a reasonable wage?

Does it matter how early in your life you ask such questions? Do the 'big' existential questions not just get more relevant and deeper as you get older? — universeness

Mostly, one seeks their "niche" in society without a lot of soul searching. If such existential questions persist into old age, one needs to get out of the house and move around, not sit in contemplation of these niggling abstractions - unless one is a real philosopher, seeking conceptual stability amid the chaos. If the latter, then there's always a singularity around the mental corner.

The only singularities I contemplate are mathematical and present no existential threat.

But we are pattern-forming creatures, and this means that we either discard or dont even see most of what impinges on us from the sensory world. Only what can be assimilated to pre-existing pattens we have constructed exists for us. So everything that we do take notice of at either a conscious or pre-conscious level is assimilated to a self , enriching, strengthening and diversifying its bounds. — Joshs

:up: In general, a consumer society is not an Orwellian nightmare. But social media can make it so.

TPF excepted, of course. :smile:

If one wants to know how well a person is flourishing , one needs to find out from them what they want from life in their own terms rather than pretending that some society-wide metric will have any meaning at all. Then one needs to find out if they feel they are achieving their goals relative to their own aims , and respect their answer rather than accusing them of being blindly indoctrinated by social engineering techniques or consumerist thinking. — Joshs

:up:

"rice ball sparkle" sounds like the AI is trying to communicate with us. Could this be an important breakthrough? :chin:

But I think a more accurate picture is that people like Gaetz and Boebert want to make a show of things — Mikie

:up: "Two gun Boebert" represents my district, winning over a Democrat by a very narrow margin. I agree with your assessment. She is the far-rights' AOC.

If these kinds of people cause a US debt default — Wayfarer

Won't happen, but it is scary.

So, my argument is not so much that an individual must be doomed to internal conflict if they live multiple roles but that the commodification of identity, the reduction of identity ideologically to a form of fashion, as if we all happily can be anyone simply on the basis of certain physical and mental skills, capabilities and attributes is a dangerously misleadingly orientation that serves and helps reproduce an increasingly consumerist environment at the expense of sustainable and fulfilling self-development. — Baden

Thanks for the reply. My opinion is that modern consumer society facilitates (encourages) playing multiple roles and thus provides opportunities unthinkable to previous generations. I recall as a child living in rural Alabama seeing farmers trudging behind a mule forcing a plow through the dirt, trapped in their limited worlds. I don't see consumer society as dystopian, but as liberating.

This what you described can happen in any society. But Baden is talking about a consumer society

So unless he buys the latest ski equipment every season, spends half his money on Walmart shit, and consumes his children in Aspic sauce, he is not actually a good example of what Baden was saying — god must be atheist

I hope not. "Buy more to be more". The simple anaesthetic in question. But what I described happens more frequently in a "consumer society" where money may flow more freely and opportunities to diversify one's self are more accessible.

And men improve with age because their hormones change with age — Athena

:rofl:

The proliferation of identities within a self equates to a proliferation of often conflicting purposes that can negate each other — Baden

The important conditional here is "can negate". Is there a critical number of proliferations that must trigger this phenomenon? The statement is overly vague.

Certainly an individual living multiple roles is not necessarily doomed to internal conflicts. Cannot a famous skier be also an effective physicist, while also being an attentive father and husband?

Some people can be successful in multiple capacities, while some can barely handle one. Some, none.

$\exists(x)(Px)\exists(y)(Py)(x=y)$

I use Mathtype and set cut/paste to accomodate Wikipedia, then replace "<m.th>" by "[m.th]".

In this example two empty spaces appear, between exists (x) and the other, exists (.). By closing the gaps one gets the proper symbols. I.e., exists(x) and exists(y).

Odd. Notice that ( ) with a y inside produces a thumbs up: (y)

The past can be the future, the future the past. — neonspectraltoast

Bring in the moderators — Banno

:lol:

How does saying "we" have no proof time isn't linear aid in obtaining proof that time isn't linear. — neonspectraltoast

In a dilation sense time is not linear as speeds approach light speed.

Proper time change as speed approaches c.

Photons have magnitude and direction in the sense that they have an extent (vector length) and move in the direction of their momentum. Is this not correct? — universeness

Those little wiggly buggers have lives of their own, the intricacies of which are beyond me. I was just checking to make sure you were not defining VFs by a specific example. :cool:

But ontologically, if 'two' fields are totally co-extensive, there's a sense in which they are one thing, no? — bert1

Consider two force fields in the complex plane, one f(z)=2z+3 and the other f(z)=1-z. When computing work done in moving along the same contour (path) in the plane, the results are different. Are these fields "one thing"?

Biological fields? Who knows? :chin:

Evolution: A Game of Chance Observations :smile:

3. Vector fields, these describe spin-1 particles like for example the photon-field — universeness

You are giving this as an example of a VF, right?

Rather than Greta Thunberg diatribes, This is the sort of progress I like to see.

It is an error to think evolution involves chance. — Banno

Evolution: A Game of Chance

Otherwise, the universe might not have "come to be" at all but rather eternally transforms (e.g. A. Guth) from one 'configuration of physical constants' into another (e.g. R. Penrose's 'conformal cyclic universes') whereby, occasionally, sentient metacognitive agents evolve and interpret their universes in perspectival terms (e.g. a personified fluke aka "creator") — 180 Proof

:up: You have a way with words, my friend.

My pet philomathosophy notion is infinite chains of causations having first causes. Beyond that, at each link the chain is joined or influenced by neighboring chains. As for chance being a first cause in any such complex of chains, it depends upon your mathematical model, like it does in quantum theory. More later perhaps, when I've thought this out better. (not easy at my age) :cool:

Truly a depressing thread. :shade:

Paywall problems with the New Yorker.

CNN:

The steel mill that looms over low-slung neighborhoods in Pueblo, Colorado, is a rare bright spot for American manufacturing. Once part of the state’s largest private employer, pumping out steel that was used to build rail lines across the Western US, it is now in the midst of a major expansion and recently became the world’s first steel plant to run almost entirely on solar power.

As we gain in wind and solar, we lose in our most dependable source, hydroelectric power, as Lake Mead and Lake Powell continue to dry up. Almost all of Switzerland's energy comes through hydroelectric, and the government is telling its citizens to cut back on the use of their EVs.

but there's more (I think). — Agent Smith

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

:yawn:

Furthermore, the issues you raise are avoided in quantum computer science that is grounded in alternative mathematical foundations for QM that are constructive, computable and usually finite, such as Categorical Quantum Mechanics that is the underlying foundation for the ZX calculus. — sime

I continue to learn things in my old age . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX-calculus

But I have nothing to do with category theory in general. Too lofty and fluffy for me. :roll:

So, would it be possible to have a physics that requires complex numbers, i, but not the Reals? — Count Timothy von Icarus

IMO, no. For example, 5i x 6i = -30. You lose multiplication and division.

I am a convertibilitist valuationist. — god must be atheist

Aren't we all, though! My lexicon grows by leaps and bounds from TPF.

To justify an act is to appeal to some form of authority external to ones' self.

Where are those damn aliens? :groan:

This has got to be
a record for a thread
about
what cannot be said.

A Guinness World Record?

Well done, ! :starstruck:

A Bit More Readable Version . . .

It's a much more complicated subject than I had imagined.

What these experiments demonstrate is that a local-relativistic universe must be based on complex-valued amplitudes — Andrew M

Feynman's path integrals involve ${{e}^{i\theta}}$ heavily and I suspect that the simple evaluation of products of terms like these: ${{e}^{it}}\cdot {{e}^{is}}={{e}^{i(t+s)}}$ compared with their counterparts in sines and cosines plays a huge role in application of theory.

In his "QED" he explains that the "arrows" he describes (vectors):

Arrows on a plane can be "added" by putting the head of one arrow on the tail of another, or "multiplied" by successive turns and shrinks.

Complex numbers and their properties facilitate this.

Again, this is an almost trivial argument for convenience rather than necessity.

(If you are a real quantum physicist, speak up and clarify this issue :chin: )

Hypotheses -> Conclusion

The old CS adage, garbage in = garbage out.

G'nite :smile:

Why? — Agent Smith

Because the hypotheses are nonsense. You're just playing with math equations.

But if it pleases you to do so by all means continue.

Thanks for the reference. At the end, the author adds:

We must be careful, however, in assessing the implications of these results. One might be tempted to conclude that complex numbers are indispensable to describe the physical reality of the Universe. However, this conclusion is true only if we accept the standard framework of quantum mechanics, which is based on several postulates. As Renou and his co-workers point out, these results would not be applicable to alternative formulations of quantum mechanics, such as Bohmian mechanics, which are based on different postulates. Therefore, these results could stimulate attempts to go beyond the standard formalism of quantum mechanics, which, despite great successes in predicting experimental results, is often considered inadequate from an interpretative point of view

. . . given that aliens exist & Aliens will contact us in the next 10 years? — Agent Smith

This turns the whole conversation into probababble. :roll:

I believe I'm a fly. — Agent Smith

And you very well may be. My condolences.

However, you may exist as only a possibility in another philosophical realm where the word "you" can mean annihilation by fly-swatter. Or not. This is serious stuff.