Stephen Wright
New
Something that happens outside the space/time matrix is not physical - by definition. This is also called pregeometry, the structuring from which geometry develops: per John Wheeler ( whom Bynum is referencing).
Puzzling NDE questions
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Neil
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That doesn't make it independent of our observation.
Stephen Wright
New
Right, our (living things's) ability to structure information, as the mental organization of the past and future, is not independent of the ecology of its informational environment. Bynum suggests that observation affects reality at its pregeometric level, the level where the superposition of states actually exists.
This is so simple and basic an arrangement, that most folks are hard-pressed to configure it in the current paradigm of physicality.
Neil
New
So how does it go from an indeterminate state into a determined single state?
Stephen Wright
New
Things are always manifesting in the eternal "here and now". Those things or events leave the future. Pass through the boundary condition of now. And are soon information stored in the past. Manifestation changes the structure of information in the future. This allows random physical events to be an active part of the future.
And further, it allows bio-information objects - those enacted with purpose - to likewise become actual patterns in the informational environment and to be an active part of the total ecology.
Neil
New
So if not by decoherence, and not as the result of our observation (since you are positing realism), how do things manifest "here and now"?
Stephen Wright
New
The manifestation of a reality consisting of at least two generative levels explains more than materialism. Physical processes, events and objects is a given from observation and the source of all data from direct measurement. We know reality from the patterns perceived in the data from physical environs. This picture is balanced by reality also being measurable as to its logic arrangements, ecology from local organization and the communication that is taking place. Floridi calls this environment "infospace".
Materials science and physics have codified units of measure that address the changing structures in reality. How these manifest structures can exists from past states - to be "here & now" - is computable from the universals gathered by science. How in a science manner is answered detail by detail, when information science that measures the generation of order, organizational structure and active communication are included as observables.
I am not addressing the metaphysics of "why" there is a reality and not no-reality.
Observation is surely changing the probability of processes being developed, changing the structure of useful behavior and as feed-back from observation develops into the ecology of a particular environment.
Even W. H. Zurek has cast his thinking in terms of the ecology of the nature environment.
Neil, I am in no way qualified to discuss decoherence.
Materials science and physics have codified units of measure that address the changing structures in reality. How these manifest structures can exists from past states - to be "here & now" - is computable from the universals gathered by science. How in a science manner is answered detail by detail, when information science that measures the generation of order, organizational structure and active communication are included as observables.
I am not addressing the metaphysics of "why" there is a reality and not no-reality.
Observation is surely changing the probability of processes being developed, changing the structure of useful behavior and as feed-back from observation develops into the ecology of a particular environment.
Even W. H. Zurek has cast his thinking in terms of the ecology of the nature environment.
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072
Neil, I am in no way qualified to discuss decoherence.
Neil
New
Okay, but decoherence is at the heart of the matter. The paper that was originally posted posited realism (objective, independent world), and did so based on the faulty idea that decoherence solves the measurement problem.
Decoherence can be thought of pretty simply. The interactions with the "environment" of other particles essentially reduces the possible states of the particle, limiting, for example, of where it can be found. In macroscopic terms, the Schrodinger's cat paradox illustrates the effects of decoherence at the macroscopic scale. Ignoring the question of whether or not a cat can be both dead and alive, what you see is through a decoherence effect the elimination of a whole host of smeared out possible states into essentially a mixture state of two classical outcomes--one in which the cat is dead, and the other in which the cat is alive. Decoherence reduced the quantum states to just these two potential classical states, but never selects between the two.
So if we end up with two different possible classical states, what causes one to be experienced? Decoherence doesn't explain it, because it only results in essentially classical mixture states, but that is not what we experience. The quantum information would describe two different potential classical states, so I'm not clear on what it means to say that the information is "real" because the information also describes a classical state that never occurred. If the outcome is that the cat is dead, then what does it mean to say that the information describing the state of the cat being alive is "real" when it never occurred?
Stephen Wright
New
What is real and casual is the informational state of the cat's survival can interact with its environment. Its probabilistic existence is enough; to have contributed the structure of the outcome. (As the dual-slit experiment shows).
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2012/01/09/144899020/is-the-possible-ontologically-real
Neil
New
But the environment is not separate from the informational state describing the cat's survival.
What causes that particular state to be the outcome?
Regarding the link, I think it's one thing to say that the potential positions and paths of an electron is ontologically real in some sense, but I am not so clear on how this makes sense when considering the nearly classical mixture states of macroscopic objects that are the result of decoherence. I'm still not seeing how it makes sense to say that the information describing the cat as being dead is "real" when the outcome is that it was alive. Does that mean that our experience is then not real?
Stephen Wright
New
Examples might help. We have an approaching hurricane and we have a number of weather services forecasting its path. As for the Carolina's coastline; it is in super-position as to hurricane damage or not. A wide range for evacuation is given and the storm comes in with only a narrow segment of the coast getting a powerful storm-surge. Some percentage of the coast gets a hurricane, some areas no hurricane damage and some coastline gets a boundary condition of both.
The informational state of the hurricane did not manifest for many who evacuated. Their movement was the environment - responding to the hurricane's information about a future state. The answer is stochastic - true/kinda true/ not true - relative to the mutual information (locality in this case) of where you were when it hit. Chaos runs the show - but there will be a predictable number of deaths and deaths saved related to the success of the evacuation.
In this thought experiment all are saved, the total entropy of the storm was lowered by a lowered amount of lost life (expected to be 5 in simulation).
For those who evacuated areas missed by the storm; it was the information gained about the storm that never came, which was the cause of their behavior.
Neil
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I don't think I understand. Are you saying the information of something that didn't happen was just as real as what happened?
Stephen Wright
New
I am not quite sure there is a real-o-meter to quantify how real an event is. The "gold-standard" for real is to have dated photos of it on a scale. Some structures in reality are not so specific. Hurricanes are quantified by wind speed and by damage left behind.
What I am saying is the real-world probabilities that don't happen -- do have a role (maybe much lessor role, maybe not) in structuring reality, just as the poor folks who evacuated and did not experience a hurricane. Information and its communication play a role in reality.
Neil
New
When you say some "structures in reality," it seems to me that you are in agreement about an objective world independent of us. Is this the case?
And I am still not clear I understand how you are saying what we experience emerges from the probabilities of quantum theory.
Stephen Wright
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I am not so big on emergence as a defined process. Again, I see the world as fundamentally a field of stochastic results.
As to structural realism, I think it gets to the heart of matter of what science wants to measure.
Neil
New
But we don't experience a field of probabilities; we experience a single outcome.
In the quote, there is reference to "the objective state of affairs." I don't see how there can even be a claim to an objective state of affairs without an objective solution to the measurement problem, of which there is none.
Stephen Wright
New
Our 5 senses are evolved to give a definite answer for future behavior, as best as they can. Your stipulation for "objective affairs", which are real and untouchable by our minds is belief in the eye, as the most reliable source for reality. Supported by math and logic; I see our ability to understand as the best source. An ability that comes from informational processes.
Our ability to understand - is where the logic of probability comes to our aid. Bayesian instincts are among the best of methods used in understanding "best course of action". Don't living things appear to be able to have the ability to choose future courses of behavior from their environment from knowing the past? The detection of probable plans by the understanding happens as the mind builds an information object and then uses active behavior to enforce its execution.
Our eyes see one "real" world, by our minds can understand events and processes on many levels of abstraction. When living things have an intent to survival, it changes the structure of the informational environment and possible futures.
Supported by pattern recognition and logic; living things do directly affect the structured information and the potential affordances in an environment.
Neil
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I am asking what determines one outcome of a quantum experiment over another. The math only gives probabilities. To claim objectivity one must have an objective way for that single outcome to arise.
Stephen Wright
New
Why would I answer your question "what determines" when I clearly have stated there are multiple levels of interaction, so that while some events are so structured to appear determined by physics - there is jiggle-room - at the boundaries between the past and future. There is objectivity without determinism, in that minds don't have mass or exert force. Minds change real-world probabilities; using negentropy from biological information.
I would reject the idea that objectivity cannot be inferred when there are both real physical objects and real informational objects to quantify. Single outcomes occur naturally as an interplay between process, structure, activity and substance.
Neil
New
But the quantum mathematics would calculate that from the interplay between process, structure, activity, and substance, that you would have a mixture state of different possible outcomes. Why do we only experience one of them? If the world exists independently of our observation, there must be a solution to the measurement problem. What is that solution? The original paper said decoherence, but this is not true, which is what prompted this topic.