Psience Quest

(2017-09-10, 01:15 AM)E. Flowers Wrote: [ -> ]That would explain why this sentence is written in something similar to Old English...

That's your best. Are you waiting for the non humans to speak up to tell you it's not anthropocentric? Are you still claiming it is not?

(2017-09-10, 01:16 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Opinion piece of interest I think.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-ste...88798.html

There, fixed that for you (also, quite obsolete given adavances in quantum biology, but... Whatever).

You should probably look up what both Bohm and Heisenberg said straight from the horse's mouth.

(2017-09-10, 01:19 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]That's your best. Are you waiting for the non humans to speak up to tell you it's not anthropocentric? Are you still claiming it is not?

Are you serious? Is this even an argument?

(2017-09-10, 01:23 AM)E. Flowers Wrote: [ -> ]Are you serious? Is this even an argument?

https://youtu.be/Lvcnx6-0GhA?t=34s

(2017-09-10, 01:20 AM)HE. Flowers Wrote: [ -> ]There, fixed that for you (also, quite obsolete given adavances in quantum biology, but... Whatever).

You should probably look up what both Bohm and Heisenberg said straight from the horse's mouth.

Quote:his idea was that "a machine" could cause the collapse.

So you know a machine can't cause wave function collapse. How do you know that? Now that leaves consciousness. So whose is it. The bespeckled guy or gal in the lab coat or my neighbors dog Spot who's at home? For 10 years I listened to most members of skeptiko prattle on how consciousness is fundamental. I'm absolutely certain they didn't have in mind pig consciousness or some such.
You might check before you implicate knowledge of someones position like Bohm and Heisenberg

Quote:In his book "Physics and Philosophy", Heisenberg writes: ..the space-time events in the body of a living being which correspond to the activity of its mind, to its self conscious or any other actions, are (considering also their complex structure and the accepted statistical explanation of physico-chemistry) if not strictly deterministic at any rate statistico-deterministic.

To the physicist I wish to emphasize that in my opinion, and contrary to the opinion upheld in some quarters, quantum indeterminacy plays no biologically relevant role in them, except perhaps by enhancing their purely accidental character"Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the `possible' to the `actual,' is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory.

As for Bohm from what I've read he did not mix consciousness and QM. Now have I delivered?

(2017-09-10, 01:54 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]So you know a machine can't cause wave function collapse. How do you know that? Now that leaves consciousness. So whose is it. The bespeckled guy or gal in the lab coat or my neighbors dog Spot who's at home? For 10 years I listened to most members of skeptiko prattle on how consciousness is fundamental. I'm absolutely certain they didn't have in mind pig consciousness or some such.

No. And they most certainly didn't have human consciousness in mind either. If you still (inexplicably) think so... IDK, maybe only someone as patient as Bernardo can actually explain the difference between an individual ego (or strand) and the fundamental aspects under that paradigm.

(2017-09-10, 01:54 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]You might check before you implicate knowledge of someones position like Bohm and Heisenberg

That quote is taken out of context (and it also belongs to a book published 20 years before his death) and without a link to the source it's hard to know how it was being used. Heisenberg argued against an active role for the observer (I made reference to active/passive being the real question a couple of pages ago, so this should not be new to you), he also suggested the existence of a "chain" in the act of observation (I will explain more about this in a bit). Well, at least he did so publicly, his correspondence with Bohm is much more philosophical (Heisenberg once described discussing this for hours with Bohm and being so dumbfounded by the absurdity of the implications that he went to a park in order to clear his head).

Anyways, cutting to the chase (no pun intended)... When discussing the eponymous and highly relevant "Heisenberg cut" (which is entirely subjective, BTW), Heisenberg said:

Werner Heisenberg Wrote:In this situation it follows automatically that, in a mathematical treatment of the process, a dividing line must be drawn between, on the one hand, the apparatus which we use as an aid in putting the question and thus, in a way, treat as part of ourselves, and on the other hand, the physical systems we wish to investigate. The latter we represent mathematically as a wave function. This function, according to quantum theory, consists of a differential equation which determines any future state from the present state of the function... The dividing line between the system to be observed and the measuring apparatus is immediately defined by the nature of the problem but it obviously signifies no discontinuity of the physical process. For this reason there must, within limits, exist complete freedom in choosing the position of the dividing line.

(http://aip.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1063/1.3567426)

And this, Steve, is the answer to the riddle. The "cut" is the critical point in which the collapse happens. Heisenberg considered both the measuring apparatus and the human, two interconnected parts independent of the system being investigated (ergo, his note on it being an extension of the tester) and established the cut as a distinctive (and, worse, entirely subjective) point in which the chain transcended from one the next. Do you understand the context?

Of course, this is without taking under consideration that Heisenberg posited particles as an abstract object of sorts, best expressed in this particular quote: "The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts." or that he favored Platonism: "I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language."

In the end Heisenberg's compared his career to the voyages of Christopher Columbus, shifting away further and further from Newtonian physics as he grew older, but it can be better summarized in his now infamous quote "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you..." What he wrote in the 1950s is not necessarily his final stance on a particular subject, it's good to keep this in mind when discussing both Heisenberg and Einstein, fickle as they were.

(2017-09-10, 01:54 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]As for Bohm from what I've read he did not mix consciousness and QM.

That is nuts. Basil, one of his partners in crime, elaborates on that here: https://www.interaliamag.org/interviews/basil-hiley/

Furthermore, the Dalai Lama once labeled Bohm a "scientific guru" and commented that it was precisely his interest in the connection between consciousness and QM that drove him (see "The Essential David Bohm" by Lee Nichol). Without getting into his more philosophical study on the matter (which is quite elaborate)... Bohm formalized his speculation on the matter by first implying that his "implicate order" held some fundamental relation to it (mind and matter as yin and yang), he also worked in a little idea called "holonomic brain theory", which focused on the non-locality of certain elements of consciousness and in the brain as some sort of holographic construct.

(2017-09-10, 01:54 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Now have I delivered?

In the end... No, you haven't, boy. I asked for a paper demonstrating that a machine can actually cause the collapse and you posted articles and a book quote, none of which describe any experiment supporting the hypothesis.

Edit: Just to make a little comment about the importance of reading on those early years where Schödinger/Heisenberg debated Einstein/Planck. That is widely available and in the public domain, and aids in giving an enormous insight on how the role of mind was treated those early years.

(2017-09-10, 01:53 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]https://youtu.be/Lvcnx6-0GhA?t=34s

:-D

I've never really grasped the finer points of all this stuff about the collapse of the wave function.

On the topic of the thread, does anyone have any opinions on whether in a double-slit experiment it would be possible to distinguish some kind of psychical wave function collapse effect from microPK in general (and, if so, how)?

(2017-09-10, 01:16 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]An article of interest I think.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-ste...88798.html

Nice job Steve001, you found an old article which was written by a guy Victor Stenger, who late in career became known a a famous religious and spiritual (I'm sure he saw them as the same thing) skeptic. He was famously sued by Uri Geller for liable. Oh,, keep in mind, this was written in 1992, so is 25 years old. Not exactly up to date in terms of our knowledge of things. I'm sure you dug it up out of your skeptics dictionary, or encyclopedia or bible or whatever you guys call it. 

Great job steve001 you brought some important and objective new information to the table for us to all see and digest. Soooo helpful.

On to the merits of what was said ...
The author provides a detailed history of modern science. Very well done, in terms of the raw dry facts of one particular point of view but totally wrong in terms of the quotes and thoughts about some of the greas in QM. In addition it fails to touch on a single one the huge number of things we well know of that show conventional thinking is in error.  

Also the author states in his pissy, and dismissive way, that the only reason Lanza and his type hold these views because:  "The myth of quantum consciousness sits well with many whose egos have made it impossible for them to accept the insignificant place science perceives for humanity". What a misinformed, close-minded, intentionally misleading, arrogant dickhead.

He then says- If Bohr and Heisenberg had spoken of measurements made by inanimate instruments rather than “observers,” perhaps this strained relationship between quantum and mind would not have been drawn. For, nothing in quantum mechanics requires human involvement. Given his PhD, he knows perfectly well that we have proven beyond a doubt that somehow these measurements DO require a conscious observer. He has decided to ignore that fact and pretend it doesn't exist because, well see note above...

This author is a good example of what Max Planck said: "science progresses one funeral at a time". This guys died in 2012 RIP. So one idiot down. Unfortunately people like Steve001 are trying to keep the rotting corpse alive on life support.

I will not go any further into the merits Steve001, but if this article reflects your view on things, you have a lot of blanks to fill in with your story, as this article ignores a lot of proven work. It's like you are arguing in support of the traditional model of the atom with a nucleus and orbiting electrons.  Wake up man: that was proven wrong decades ago.

I think there are a number of problems involved in dissecting a paper in this way.

1) Researches may check for a possible problem without actually stating that fact in the paper. I think it is only fair to ask the author of the experiment for his response before discussing the supposed flaw on the internet.

2) Reports of experiments supporting a ψ effect can expect to be rigorously refereed. If the referees didn't find fault, it is rather unlikely that others will.

3) Ideally (in normal science) if a potential explanation for an effect is suggested, another experiment would be performed to test if the explanation was adequate to explain the effect. When discussing ψ, it all too often seems that a potential flaw - however implausible - is enough to allow sceptics to abandon the research with a sigh of relief.

It is unclear to me, why we would expect the sound level to vary between the periods of mental focus, and the relaxation periods. I mean, given the number of replications, the sound explanation doesn't seem likely unless there is a specific reason to expect more sound (less efficient interference) while the mediators were focussed.

David