(2018-12-24, 08:00 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Some supplementals:
Power Point Slides gathered in a PDF
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I am reading about Circular Theory for the first time. It seems like it draws conclusions in the same track as myself. Any western theory acknowledging the value of the Tao is a step forward!
Reflections from Chris Fuchs, the physicist who came up with the QBism conceptualization of QM:
On Participatory Realism
Quote:In the Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “ ‘I’ is not the name of a person, nor ‘here’ of a place, . . . . But they are connected with names. . . . [And] it is characteristic of physics not to use these words.” This statement expresses the dominant way of thinking in physics: Physics is about the impersonal laws of nature; the “I” never makes an appearance in it. Since the advent of quantum theory, however, there has always been a nagging pressure to insert a first-person perspective into the heart of physics. In incarnations of lesser or greater strength, one may consider the “Copenhagen” views of Bohr Heisenberg, and Pauli, the observer-participator view of John Wheeler, the informational interpretation of Anton Zeilinger and
ˇCaslav Brukner, the relational interpretation of Carlo Rovelli, and, most radically, the QBism of N. David Mermin, R ̈udiger Schack, and the present author, as acceding to the pressure.
These views have lately been termed “participatory realism” to emphasize that rather than relinquishing the idea of reality (as they are often accused of), they are saying that reality is more than any third-person perspective can capture. Thus, far from instances of instrumentalism or antirealism, these views of quantum theory should be regarded as attempts to make a deep statement about the nature of reality. This paper explicates the idea for the case of QBism. As well, it highlights the influence of John Wheeler’s “law without law” on QBism’s formulation.
(2019-04-22, 03:12 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Do Our Questions Create the World?
J.Horgan
The irony is that Wheeler’s it from bit implies that a final theory will always be a mirage, and that truth is something created rather than objectively apprehended. His view comes dangerously close to postmodernism, or worse. In the early 1980s, organizers of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science placed Wheeler on the same program as three parapsychologists. Wheeler was furious. At the meeting, he made it clear that he did not share the belief of his co-speakers in psychic phenomena. He passed out a pamphlet that declared, in reference to parapsychology: “Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke.”
I did a little bit of reading about Wheeler's virulent opposition to parapsychology a while ago, and found it quite interesting:
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...0#pid21060
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...7#pid21067
https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...3#pid21083
His opposition certainly was virulent, but I think it's fair to say that even when he expressed it 40 years ago, it was principally based on evidence that was already more than 50 years old and/or evidence that was entirely mistaken.
There's more on Wheeler's entirely mistaken accusation of fraud against J. B. Rhine in a paper by J. E. Kennedy here:
http://jeksite.org/psi/skeptic81.pdf
(2018-12-31, 09:42 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Reflections from Chris Fuchs, the physicist who came up with the QBism conceptualization of QM:
On Participatory Realism
Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's an interview with Fuchs about QBism:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sci...the-street
People who like this kind of thing may find that this is the kind of thing they like.
I thought what he said about the origins of the Many Worlds Interpretation was interesting. In physics, it was proposed in 1957. But in fiction it was foreshadowed by Jorge Luis Borges in "The Garden of Forking Paths" in 1941. However, Fuchs points out that it was foreshadowed earlier on by
Olaf Stapledon in "Star Maker" in 1937:
“Whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were many creatures and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and all the possible courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.”