I, as one of those people, think it's that others often misunderstand the balance of evidence. Most often it's not "A, but it could be B, let's discuss" - it's "A, and unless multiple miracles in a row have happened everywhere every millisecond to explain why in all of human history we've seen A when B was actually the case, B is excluded". Or sometimes it's "A and B are both different wordings describing the exact same predictions". Laymen confuse things so much it's often difficult to determine which one it is. That's all once you have discussed things a bit and clarified - to begin with, most of the time it's just "A and B are both fanciful ideas journalists made up and actual professional philosophers somehow confused for real physics". It gets annoying.

In this case, regarding "spooky action at a distance" etc.: nothing about it is new science, nothing is "interesting" (something you'd see in the frontiers), nothing is controversial or unexplained or even hard to communicate - it's all undergrad stuff taught to undergrads for over half a century now. Anyone with actual knowledge is not eager to demonstrate having it, they're just sick of it by now.

> support the "QM doesn't describe reality" side of the discussion more than the "QM does describe reality" side, if I can be forgiven for trying to simplify the conflict in that way.

Sure, if you describe "reality" as what humans are capable of perceiving, then it's hard to argue QM applies. If you hold the position that reality isn't simply what we can perceive but what we can empirically measure, then of course QM applies.

My quibble with the parent comment was their assertion that

>It has nothing to do with the complex macro structures we know as "reality."

Emphasis added.

A computer is undeniably a macro structure. A computer manipulating the rules of quantum mechanics must have something to do with our macro "reality", even if it is rather inconsequential at this time.

Someone else mentioned solipsism above, so thank you for giving me another avenue to research. Gotta say, I am so grateful that this sub responded to my questions with patience and respect <3

Absolutely. Adding it to the list. Thank you!

Yes! Thank you! And I’m glad you touched on what I sorta naively think of as “so what” or “what would knowing the answer change for you?” And moving beyond or setting that aside that has its own value. The book I’m listening to brought this home in a roundabout way, and makes me wonder about “genius,” about how it is not some magical quality but a combination of being able to hold onto the thread while moving around the “so what” questions with, hmm, how to put it…intuition within reason? Reason expanded with intuition? Anyway, I’m incredibly appreciative of the time you put into your response, and you can be sure I’ll be coming back to it later when my poor brain has cooled down.

Well, when I first posted the top comment was inaccurately claiming that the speed of light in the article is wrong. The other top comment was a one sentence dismissal that clearly didn't even read the article, and it has since been removed for this reason.

So yes, I do think my initial assessment was accurate. And no, your comment isn't helpful, simply pointing out an overly dismissive comment is, in fact, overly dismissive, is not in itself being overly dismissive. Some people simply don't want to contribute meaningfully to the discussion, or are flat out dishonest, and there's nothing dismissive about pointing that out.

You are doing an admirable job of recreating the course of philosophical development. I wish I could call it "progress", but this is, I believe, an iconic example which illustrates it is not. Thousands of years before humans discovered the real nature of colors (both as frequencies of electromagnetic radiation differentially effecting the cells in our eyeballs, and as comparative/relative signals processed by our neurological visual systems) Aristotle and other ancient philosophers contemplated the idea or ideal of the conscious experience of color (what today philosophers identify as qualia). But the question of whether "redness" exists 'in and of itself' is more a matter of convention than ascertainable fact. I believe (I'm not rigorously academic so I could be mistaken, and I'm sure I'm not using the "proper" terminology) that the current convention is to say that redness is always applied to something, similar to the idea of size; it is comparative rather than fundamental.

The truth, at least as I see it, is that this epistemic uncertainty is the same in terms of qualia like "redness" and also numbers, but also every other word in every real language. It just becomes most obvious in these two examples, so much so that not even the most neopostmodern of postmodernists can deny that metaphysical uncertainty (whether "red" exists or whether "math" transcends physics or results from it) and epistemic uncertainty (whether "redness" exists or whether "numbers are real") themselves exist (distinct from simple ignorance), and will argue whether they can really be distinguished.

I tried google, but couldn’t find the Jim Johnson you mean.

same here.

This is the one.

Amazing comment.

The Ship of Theseus Paradox is a very old question that came across my mind after quite a while. "If the parts of a ship are replaced gradually, one by one, such that all of the parts are replaced, is it the same ship now?"

I would like to answer this with another question - Over the course of years, if all the cells in your body are replaced by new cells, are you still you? Here, instead of a ship, we have a person, and instead of parts of the ship, we have cells of the body, that are replaced.

This means that it is the same ship after all...

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Please keep in mind our first commenting rule:

> Read the Post Before You Reply

> Read/listen/watch the posted content, understand and identify the philosophical arguments given, and respond to these substantively. If you have unrelated thoughts or don't wish to read the content, please post your own thread or simply refrain from commenting. Comments which are clearly not in direct response to the posted content may be removed.

This subreddit is not in the business of one-liners, tangential anecdotes, or dank memes. Expect comment threads that break our rules to be removed. Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.

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Reassembling the Social is a fantastic introduction to Actor Network Theory that dispels a lot of misconceptions and clarifies a lot of points in a very readable way. Genuinely blew my mind as a sceptical, anti-bullshit grad student.

Apologies up front for a wall of text.

Yup. Love the rabbit hole.

So many good sources of info.

Sabine H. explained observation so my brain could grasp it... fascinating stuff.

We humans somehow distinguish ourselves from the universe... but we're all the same stuff.

I wrote this a while back. Help me refine it, if you want. Poke holes as you see fit. All good.

So, to be fair to Dr. Harry V. Cliff, here is the full quote: "Based on the laws of physics, I don't see how there can be free will. To be clear, the universe doesn't appear to be deterministic - quantum mechanics tells us that the future is unknowable - we can only ascribe probabilities to outcomes. But that doesn't mean there's any room for free will. There is no way to decide the outcome of a quantum event, it just happens according to probabilities, so how could you ever make a genuine choice?"

Other thoughts re: free will which are rolling in my head (my glib guesstimations) on the topic, with quantum mechanics floating around in the back of my mind...

I think it is fair to view having free will as a 1 or a 0. You have it, or you don't. There's no in-between. Even if you have only a tiny bit of free will, the switch is flipped and the free will light turns on, albeit possibly burning very dimly. 1 or a 0.

Can we assume that with free will, that there arrives a point where your brain makes a choice?

For example. two cups are placed in front of you, under a veil. One is a color you like (red), and one is a color you hate (yellow). You get to make a choice and pick up the one you prefer when the veil is lifted. So, when the veil is lifted, you see the cups, process which one you like, and reach for the red cup. Free will, right?

But, barring about a thousand other logical reasons/discussions discussed on the web related to free will's why/why not, I like to focus more on a quantum aspect.

Think you and I agree that we, with our free will, have zero control over the probablistic outcomes of subatomic particles. Nothing we can do about it.

Earlier, /u/DoodDoes stated: Quantum particles are the silt, Subatomic particles are the sand, atoms are the pebbles, molecules are the stones, you are the riverbed in which they lie. Quantum mechanics dictate everything about you, because you are made of quantum particles. If something like quantum tunneling or entanglement does impact our consciousness, the impact is either unnoticeable or is incorporated into the intended function of us. Atoms having charges and being effected by waves of all sorts in the electromagnetic spectrum are both things that impact our ability to think and also our proclivity to age. but atoms only do things because subatomic particles do things, and subatomic particles only do things because quantum particles do things. (love it).

We've got roughly 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms in a human body, all doing what they do as a result of quantum interactions, and the interactions can result in ungodly energy state changes (the typical vibrational frequencies range from less than 1013 Hz to approximately 1014 Hz), per second. All of which we have zero control.

The sheer amount of subatomic interactions, atomic vibrations, etc is so fast that if we were to view human activity from a subatomic perspective of time, humans would appear frozen for years.

So, while you may see your snap decision to pick the red cup as free will, changing that 0 to a 1, in that fraction of a second (to you), an incalculable amount of matter interactions has occurred over which you possess zero control.

You are never in control of these interactions. Never.

"you" aren't even you.

the amalgamation of gray matter you call a brain is telling you that you are "you", and it is just a part of everything, doing what it does. quantum particles doing things.

>What do you think condensed matter physics is, if not the application of quantum mechanics to macroscopic systems?

The term "systems" seems a bit of over-reach, in line with your original premise. It may be common for people to assume that quantum mechanics is intrinsically limited to sub-atomic systems, but that isn't important. What is important, for the purposes of this discussion, is that condensed matter physics is a specific sub-domain of physics, rather than all of physics itself, which exemplifies the fact that QM doesn't literally explain how or why classic physics ("Newtonian physics" was the iconic representative) arises from the principles of QM. In theory we "know" it must, but as it has not yet been convincingly demonstrated in general cases, insisting that conjecture is fact is problematic. At least as far as philosophy goes, which is not restricted to even presuming that classic physics accurately describes "the macroscopic world".

>Scientific models aren’t concerned with how or why.

I would dispute half of that. Scientific models are entirely about how, and necessarily unconcerned with why. But the nature of language (capable of absurdity as functional, which logic and mathematical systems are not) makes the distinction itself less certain than scientists and scientificists are capable of addressing.

>In fact, mathematically the only distinction between the two arises entirely from the fact that in classical mechanics [x,p] = 0 and in quantum mechanics [x,p] = ihbar.

I would say that the notation arises from the distinction rather than the other way around. But the direction of the teleology itself is a philosophical matter, not a scientific consideration, because as I said, science is all about how, not about why.

>You’re right that we don’t fully understand the mechanisms by which macroscopic systems lose coherence

Bingo.

>But that doesn’t mean we don’t know that, regardless of those details, quantum mechanical behavior necessarily reduces to classical mechanics in appropriate macroscopic limits

Actually, it genuinely does mean exactly that. While it is not a possibility that science needs to deal with at the moment (though I might wonder why 0 is not the same as ihbar) it is one that must be considered philosophically, lest we assume that science is omniscient by definition.

But of course, and I may be mistaken about this and please enlighten me about your reasoning if I am, I presume you meant classic physics reduce to QM, rather than the other way around, which is what you actually typed. I think the idea that quantum behavior necessarily reduces to Newtonian mechanics is absurd, isn't it?

>We cannot derive the stress tensor for a chair when I’m sat on it using quantum mechanics (which we could do using classical mechanics) because it’s simply much too complex a feat.

I don't mean to sound flippant, but that is an awfully convenient excuse. Which is to say that since you cannot demonstrate that you can perform such a feat, it remains conjecture rather than knowledge, faith rather than fact, a valid supposition but not a foregone conclusion, that it actually can be done.

> But the neat thing about physics and math is that we can often prove things to be true in general more easily that we can actually do something for a specific, complicated case,

And the unfortunate reality about logic (physics and math) is that we can often make presumptuous assumptions without demonstrating their validity in practical cases. "Often", after all, does not mean 'always', and whether the instant case is such an example requires empirical demonstration or else it is simply not convincing, all the more so because of the specifically confounding results that differentiates QM from classic physics.

>This is one such case, where mathematical proofs of the correspondence principle between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics exist.

As I've said all along, your conjecture is true in principle and theoretically. And also as I pointed out, it remains an act of faith to suppose that means it is true in reality.

>My comment has nothing to do with physical realism

Then it, quite arguably, has nothing to do with the discussion, in a way very analogous (or perhaps entirely identical) to whether QM "has nothing to do with" actual reality, but only mathematically models particular systems in scientific laboratories. I don't fault or question your principles, and I realize that discoveries founded on quantum mechanics have provided real results in terms of useful engineering results. But I still insist you are overstating the case of their applicability, since functional utility in restricted examples does not actually prove general accuracy in all instances, even with further theoretical bases to support the belief that QM fully explains why Newtonian physics arises from quantum interactions.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

Also, never got an answer as to why Keynes was wrong about that 15 hr work week. Seems like a glaring hole in your "just study economics" argument when you can't be bothered to even recognize the contradictions by those same economists.

A lot of unanswered questions.

Equity is the value you have of something, the share of it. Am I wrong on that? I don't think so.

A terrible loss. My main inspiration for getting into STS / climate change. RIP Bruno

What are you specifically contradicting? My use of the word equity? Me saying labor provides all the value? If it's that one, can you show me how it doesn't and what the owners do that that therefore deserves 90%? You keep ignoring that question.

Laboratory Life

Jesus Christ... No. It isn't. I can't tell if you are being purposefully dense or are genuinely incapable of following, but it's pretty clear that you just plain aren't going to understand at this point, so this is where I stop responding.

I believe such stance does not come from moral philosophy but from positivism who tries to skirt everything according to observatory science.

So it's just permission. That's it. That's what you believe is equal to ~90% of the work?

>don't understand what equity is... Labor has nothing to do with it.

Equity is value. Who has it? The value of an enterprise is it's productivity. How can you say labor has nothing to do with equity if they're the ones that are creating the productivity that makes it all valuable in the first place? Even the management is labor. That makes no sense.

>What you are saying is equivalent to "why does the guy who paid to have a house built for his family have all the equity in the house? He didn't do any labor to build it. It should be the construction workers' house."

No, it should belong to public which the construction workers would be part of. That's what it means to have public ownership. That's called socialism. It builds houses and creates science.