The Battle Bar, Our Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

Zampano
...since you asked for some feedback...

I think it's rather problematic to attempt to explain topics of the metaphysical realm (the existance of God) with phenomens observed in the realm of physics. In this particular example, there are multiple gaps in the logic utilized.

The article assumes that the Schrödinger equation is an accurate representation of what happens in the realm of physics. Which is, of course, not granted. It's just a theoretical construct that - at the moment - serves as the best explanation we have of what happens so far.

From that assumption he describes a problem that appears: The sudden "jumps" in probability from 100 % to 0 % that the Schrödinger equation doesn't describe.

And here, we're arriving at an old philosophical question: Does a falling tree make a sound when no human being is around to hear it?

As paradox, as it might seem, the answer of philosophers such as Kant and Schopenhauer would have been: No. Why? Following Kant, things like "time" and "space" don't exist, but are just parts of the human perception of our universe. Thus, when no human is present to perceive something, it doesn't really happen. Of course, common sense dictates, that a lot of things do actually happen without any human observer, yet, unless some human is there to witness them in one or another fashion (and be it by imagining them to happen), they don't really happen.

This also answers the question, why our universe - from our perspective - has a "history": Even though no humans were present for a rather huge part of it, we are retroactively making it "real", because of thinking about events and trying to find answers about what exactly happened. You could also say: The Big Bang didn't happen, before the first person imagined it to happen.

So the collapse of the wavefunction is not really something to "prove" the existance of god. It's merely a mathematical problem, because Schrödinger's equation just generates results with a probability between 0 and 100 % where human perception does just allow things to be either 0 or 100 %. If there was an instrument capable of making the "Superposition" (the overlay of different conditions of a physical system in QM) perceiveable to human beings, we wouldn't cause a collapse of the wavefunction any longer, because we could perceive things "as they really are".

But thus, a being not bound to the limitations of human perception (read: God) could very well perceive reality in the form of probabilities and hence avoid the aforementioned collapse of wavefunctions entirely - even if he does perceive / know everything.

I, personally, am more of a fan of the decoherence-interpretation, though. It says that the collapse of the wavefunction doesn't need to be postulated, because it will be the approximate value if one considers the inavoidable interaction of a physical system with its enviroment. Which means, if I understood everything right, that stuff eventually happens, even if there is no human (or any other observer) around to check if it did happen. 😉

Interesting read.

So causal interaction is not exactly an easy nut to crack. Early accounts usually posit that for event A to cause event B, A must precede B and event A must always give rise to event B (for some approximation of "always"😉. However, there's an obvious loophole: If I sneeze every time I get scratched by a cat, that doesn't mean that cat scratches make me sneeze. Instead, that's more like a pseudo causal chain. Developing an account of causality that limits this (and other!) edge cases gives rise to a fairly complex picture.

Ok..Are you referring to the big bang as an example? Because we've already established scientifically and religiously that something CAN occur from a steady state.

Describing the various formulations of causal theory is probably not enough to convince you that action at a distance is a bad model. Instead, just look at fundamental (classical) physics. Wherever we find forces acting between objects, there have been "force carrying particles" like photons, sound waves, or even more obscure particles like bosons (that deal with atomic forces). The noteworthy exception is gravity, and gravity is the main stumbling block for our understanding of some parts of Quantum Mechanics. So far, "action at a distance" has always involved something traversing that distance and interacting face-to-face, so to speak.

1. The torah detail is really interesting, given that was kind of a speculative jab on my part. I wonder if the author of that article would respond in the same way to my question about omniscience w/r/t the collapse of a wave function. Really you've got an interesting position and one worth thinking about.

2. God, defined as omnipotent, absolutely could be the source of both mental and physical aspects of the universe. And omnipotence certainly allows for the description of the universe from my last post, where mental interactions happen for less time than physical, and omniscience is limited just enough to let us puzzle out the rules of QM. But that leads to some inconsistencies in the... characterization (?) of the deity. It is not impossible but definitely seems out of character for God to design creation in such a way that human learning requires an interruption in the laws of physics (God withholding collapse of wave function in only cases where humans might observe).

Rather than being an attack on the possibility of God, I guess my post was meant to be an attack on the smoothness of integrating this scripture with this scientific theory.

At my job, the person scheduling shifts completely ****ed up, so me and two of my coworkers get to not do anything for an hour and still get paid.

Like a baws

What a tool.

Originally posted by Emperordmb
At my job, the person scheduling shifts completely ****ed up, so me and two of my coworkers get to not do anything for an hour and still get paid.

Like a baws

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Loving this song at the moment. Amazing film as well.

I love 12 year olds.

PS. Will be taken out of context by various federal agencies.

Originally posted by psmith81992
I love 12 year olds.

PS. Will be taken out of context by various federal agencies.

For making fun of Intrepid? Talk about two-faced.

I don't believe that Bantha works

Luke, did I ever tell you about how I gave your sister to a wealthy noble family so that she would live her life in opulence on a paradise world while you toiled on this forsaken shithole planet with your conservative aunt and uncle? I was a good friend.

An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age where I cut off your father's limbs off and left him to slowly burn to death beside a lava-lake.

The Jedi were guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, who left your grandmother to a lifetime of slavery and rape by savages despite having the capacity to easily rescue her.

Rape is so ****ing prevalent in society. 1 in 3 women are raped. That’s a scary statistic.
But obviously we can’t just castrate a third of the male population since we can’t tell for sure which men are committing the rapes.
The only way to be sure is to do it to all of them. But it does leave a glaring issue…
So, we should farm sperm to continue perpetuating the human race. I say, once boys are about 13 or 14, we get them to jack it a few times into a condom, and ship that stuff off to a sperm bank. Then we neuter them.
It works for dogs. It should work for men.
They’re both ****ing animals after all.
--A Feminist Ranting On Tumblr

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OH HELL YEA

Hans Landa as the head of SPECTRE? I'm in.

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Also there is nothing gay about liking Hunger Games. Shit's awesome.

yeah gays only like the sub-par stuff

That's what i was saying.

Originally posted by |King Joker|

This