h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Arnie,
I will have a look at your links in a bit. There's someone in the house with flu at the moment, so I'm replying and also running about.
It interests me that QM particles can transmit info to each other faster than the speed of light - in fact instantly. That can't be "waves" can it?

Just got back online after an ISP crisis that's left me without internet for five weeks, and taken a quick scan of this thread. My first impression is that there's a lot of confusion to do with the way we categorise things for different purposes. More on that later when I've had time to think.

But briefly
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Although it's hard to explain, I think that the "implicit metaphysics" of eastern religions, especially Buddhism, are more conducive to thinking about modern science than the metaphysics of monotheism are. But this doesn't get you as far as a concrete theory.

Noggin

>>"If you took a brain and split it right down to it's basic components, you'd only have atoms and electrons. Now these atoms and electrons must live near the boundary of the "known physical universe" and the "quantum universe" and might therefore be sensitive or aware of some things going on in the quantum universe mightn't they?"

Thing is, the 'things going on in the quantum universe' are just very simple interactions between particles. By definition they don't have a complicated higher-level structure when looked at at the quantum level. It's only when classical levels of complexity and interaction are looked at that complicated patterns can emerge, and by that point, quantum effects are hopelessly smeared out, mingled, and lost in the noise.

One could talk about the sound of a symphony being made of movements of individual air molecules, but the movements of individual molecules are a pointless scale to contemplate the symphony on. It's only at much larger scales that anything significant can be seen. playing around with a few molecules will have no meaningful effect on the whole.

>>"What I'm really driving at is that things such as these voices are "physical" on the cellular level"

To the extent that the voices exist, they do so on a much higher level than the cellular. You can't meaningfully think about the classical-scale bulk chemical reactions in a cell, let alone the billions of molecules that make it up, holding some little bit of 'voice'.
You can't think of an individual knot having some property of 'tapestry' except from the perspective where you know that knot is a component of a tapestry. It's just meaning you have projected onto it from a massively higher-level viewpoint.

>>"And so, when an invisible particle from outer space travels through my brain a couple of atoms in my brain might be able to register its passage mightn't they? Perhaps in the same way that an instrument in a box at the bottom of a disused coal mine?"

Possibly. However, since there's no information content to speak of in a particle, all that would seem likely to happen would be a little 'noise' and/or some cellular damage.
A punch in the head probably has the same effect magnified countless times.

>>"It interests me that QM particles can transmit info to each other faster than the speed of light - in fact instantly. That can't be "waves" can it?"

Entanglement is commonly misused by people who don't understand it to justify wishful thinking about telepathy, etc.

Thanks, Potholer.
In the orchestra example we instantly know when somebody plays a wrong note in the middle of a symphony, or somebody coughs or unwraps a sweet and in the tapestry example we may notice a cigarette burn or a worn patch.
Things that are out of the norm, despite being part of the big picture, often stand out don't they?
In the iron filings example I mentioned in an earlier post what always got my attention was not those filings which congregated at the ends of the bar, but those stubborn two or three that refused to go the way of the rest. Just tap the paper, my Physics teacher would say to me.
Maybe that's what the Dalai Lama is seeking, the unseen force that taps the QM paper.
Entanglement sounds interesting. I'll 'Wiki' it.

The reason why some iron filings don´t align is just because of friction and such. If you suspended the filings in a liquid such as oil I don´t think you would get that problem.

Sorry if I misled you Xanatic,
I realise that there's the friction of the paper and other factors in the poor example I've given but what I'm actually trying to say is that there's always the exception that proves the rule. And in QM it's not possibly to be dogmatic about this and that since we don't know what the rules are to a greater or lesser extent and we seem to be taking a certain amount on trust. I wonder if the day will ever dawn when we get beyond QM.
Once upon a time the Tibetan's were the world's most advanced scientists because they said that an atom was 1/24,000 the size of a rabbit. Know we're dealing with magic rabbits in hats with secret compartments that we can only begin to imagine. It's a bit like David Copperfield and Alice in Wonderland combined.
On 'my space' is a quote from Richard Feynman, one of the most respected scientists of all time, about all this.

That should read "...advanced QM scientists..."

>>"In the orchestra example we instantly know when somebody plays a wrong note in the middle of a symphony"

Only by looking from a very high level of organisation compared to the movement of individual molecules.
*We* have an appreciation of 'music'.
Air molecules don't and can't.
Notes don't and can't. At the level of a note, there's no such thing as 'wrong', it's an entirely meaningless concept. It's only when we attempt to make a temporal pattern out of note sequences that things can seem wrong or out of place.

Not sure if the "no rules without exception" is a good idea to try and use on the laws of nature. We may not know exactly how quantum mechanics work, but there are still things we can rule out. After all unlike reincarnation and other tibetan concepts, you can test it again and again in a lab. We know that just because an electron can tunnel through a wall, it doesn´t mean a human can do the same.
As for the rabbits, I don´t know how big tibetan rabbits are but I´d imagine something that was 1/24000 of a rabbit would still be the size of many biological cells. Nowhere near atomic. So that doesn´t make them QM scientists, or even nuclear scientists. It just makes them bad guessers.

Pythagoras did relate musical scales, i.e. air, to maths, atonal notes excepted.

>>"Once upon a time the Tibetan's were the world's most advanced scientists because they said that an atom was 1/24,000 the size of a rabbit."

If they didn't do any experiments, and didn't explain their conclusions, in what way were they 'scientists'?

'Size of a rabbit' rather conjures up mental images of volume rather than length, so 1/24,000 of a ~1kg rabbit would be the order of a twentieth of a gram, dimensions being a cube about 3.5mm/side.

Even thinking of linear dimensions, taking a rabbit, ears and all to be about a foot long, a particle 1/24,000 smaller in linear terms would have dimensions of the order of 12.5 microns, or roughly 1/4 the width of a human hair.

To me, a hair comparison seems a rather smarter comparison to have used than a rabbit one, if that was the scale they were thinking of.
However, something that size would likely be about the limit of unaided human vision, so 'atom' would be basically equated to 'just too small to see'.

Xanatic,
The ancient Tibetans mean the rabbit seen on the Moon to be more precise. So equivalent to a dime at arms length say, split into 24,000 parts, would be pretty small. It's their idea of it that matters and the fact that they had already grasped the concept. In Babylon we were still dealing in fig leaves and trying to build towers to heaven.

Potholer,
I just love that 1 kg. rabbit of yours! Very visual.

Where we see the "man in the moon" is where they see "the rabbit".

>>"The ancient Tibetans mean the rabbit seen on the Moon to be more precise. So equivalent to a dime at arms length say, split into 24,000 parts, would be pretty small. It's their idea of it that matters and the fact that they had already grasped the concept."

The concept that there's some size below which things can't be divided further isn't a radically inventive or profound one.
It's one of the two possible answers to the question:
"Can I keep cutting something for ever and ever and ever?"
which I guess numerous children through history have asked.

Unless there's a *reason* for choosing one answer over another, it's not a scientific decision to pick either answer.

The unscientific *reason* for choosing to believe in it probably comes from the results of their meditations, perhaps enhanced due to living at high altitude? Certainly some of the mountains are thought holy. I suppose someone like Aldous Huxley with his mescalin, peering through "The Doors of Perception", would be a modern equivalent.

The Dalai Lama feels that QM and his own philosophy are coming towards a meeting on common ground. Only time will tell if he is right.

>>"The unscientific *reason* for choosing to believe in it probably comes from the results of their meditations, perhaps enhanced due to living at high altitude?"

What makes them 'scientists', then?

>>"The Dalai Lama feels that QM and his own philosophy are coming towards a meeting on common ground."

If living on an island of science in a sea of religion, were I expecting a meeting on common ground, I wouldn't be expecting to get my feet wet.

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The big bang is definitely an odd man out here. It is a scientific theory. Although well supported by the evidence it could be discarded and replaced in the light of new observations. In that sense it has always been 'in doubt'.

The other propositions in the list are not like that. Their truth (or otherwise) cannot be confirmed or refuted by additional evidence. They are purely conceptual, and have meanings that can only be elucidated by their relationship to other concepts. A sentence like "Could we just be imagining everything?" only *appears* to have meaning. The concepts employed don't hang together in a consistent way.

Noggin

True they are not 'scientists' in the accepted dictionary sense of the word although the Dalai Lama is very probably this planet's most open-minded 'religious' leader. Even as a child he studied the heavens through his telescope and was always eager to learn of the world beyond Tibet.
In his book he instructs his own followers to abandon any long-held beliefs which are demonstrated by science, including QM, to be false. Who else would go that far? As for wet feet, I guess his Holiness is rowing towards you as fast as he can!

Noggin,
It's possible for a dream or nightmare to appear real to the person having it. In the same way, as William Shakespeare hints, we may only be dreaming at another level when we are awake.