Reality is an Emergent Phenomenon

Science and Technology
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@write4u

I understood how you were using it. You were using it exactly as scientists do. I wasn’t saying that you did anything wrong, just that I hate the practice, which comes from the scientific community itself, not from your whims.

Scientists tend to use the same language with us that they use with each other. Unfortunately many of us don’t understand that it’s not quite “English” as we know it. When they say something doesn’t happen until it’s observed, that’s not what they’re actually saying. There are a whole lot of inferred meanings behind the words that they use. They can safely assume that someone else in their field fully understands that. However, many people do not. In my teens, when I was first getting into physics, I thought that scientists must be idiots to believe that reality was dependent on human beings observing it. The double-slit test was particularly confusing. I thought they were actually saying that “observing” the particle cause the wave to collapse. But it wasn’t “observing” it that was causing the waveform to collapse. It wasn’t the act of a human being “knowing” something. It was the process of measuring the particle. You have to change something to measure subatomic particles. You can’t just look at the light bouncing off of them. You have to set up a field that wasn’t there before, bounce other particles off from it, measure an induced current, detect, absorb and then reemit the particle, etc. And it is that which is changing the outcome. It took me years to figure that out, not being actually trained in physics.

3point, to be fair we knew what write4u was saying because we know that they (how progressive of me) actually know and understand science. But yeah, in normal circumstances unless it’s a scientist talking you don’t know. And if it is a scientist talking then I’m the one who has to explain it to my friends when they want to sit around getting drunk or high and pretend they know things.

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This is why I love scientific narratives. If I understand the narrative then I don’t need to know the mathematics. I’m sure they are correct, but it is the description of the mechanics which to me offer fundamental understanding of complicated subjects.

It is one of the reasons I always try to illustrate my own posits with a reference to a scientific narrative or definition which I believe describes the mechanics of natural phenomena in more formal terms.

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Write4U: This is why I love scientific narratives. If I understand the narrative then I don’t need to know the mathematics. I’m sure they are correct, but it is the description of the mechanics which to me offer fundamental understanding of complicated subjects.
Yup. Science does things right. It's set up so that you can trust it without having to know everything about everything. (And that's handy for guys like me who hardly know anything about anything.)
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Science is gooder than hell. I was explaining science (again) to my JW friend the other day. He STILL doesn’t understand that nothing goes past theory, although I think he actually “heard” it this time. Overall one of our more fruitful conversations. I got to point out (repeatedly) that when someone tells you when they discover that they got something wrong that is a someone you can trust. And I explained that evolution is the most tested theory in science.

The problem with magical thinking is that if you find one single thing wrong you have to throw out the whole belief system, so they try to apply that to science as well and that’s just not how reality works. If I say “There are 10 apples there” and then we count them and find that there are really only 9, they’re still apples. The entire sentence wasn’t wrong, just part of it. And THAT is how reality works. Absolutes are a rarity in the universe, hence the term “The exception that proves the rule.”

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W4U: What actually does happen is that physical reality does go away when there is no one to observe it.
You don't actually believe that do you?
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You don’t actually believe that do you?
I was enjoying some vacation time in a winter wonderland, but a quick skim of this thread tells me, no, he doesn't believe it, not in the sense that often use the word "believe" around here.

When picking out a book for my vacation, I found my old “Quantum and the Lotus”. My memory of it was that the physicist blew the Buddhist monk away on conversations like this, but on this perusal, I’m seeing more agreement than I remember. They agree that “reality” is “illusory”. I’m tempted to just copy 3 or 4 pages of it as my post.

Basically, Matthieu, the physicist, explains the uncertainty principle, noting that we can’t measure the underlying physics of the fields and waves that create what we experience. We might not ever “see” that. Unfortunately, woo-woo artists have taken this and claimed our eyes somehow send out some energy and change the position of electrons. That’s the crap W, C and 3 are complaining about here. Trinh, the Buddhist, sort of thinks that way, not exactly, but anyway, allows himself to be corrected the physicist.

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CC-v.3 said: You don’t actually believe that do you?
I admit that was poorly worded. I was basically citing Anil Seth 's observation that we create our own reality more from the inside out than from the outside in. And for each individual, reality is (slightly) different from another's perception of their reality. We are all hallucinating our realities. Reality is never exactly what it appears to be to us. We interpret the external information with out prior expectation of what our reality looks like.

Our brain has a prior expectation of reality and each brain has a different expectation of reality. My reality is not your reality unless we agree on what we expect reality to be. Then we are experiencing a mutually “controlled hallicination”. This is really a very interesting observation.

Empathy is as close as we can get to each others reality. Relativity alone insures our different subjective experience. I cited an example of the train whistle being perceived differently by each listener due to the doppler effect. Each listener can have a perfect subjective perception of sound in their reality (even with a meter) which is different from another listener who has also a perfect perception (even with a meter).

Hallucination

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space.
This is the internal subjective expectation of reality against which we compare our sensory input.
They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control.[1] Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus (i.e., a real perception) is given some additional (and typically absurd) significance.

Hallucinations can occur in any sensory modality—visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, proprioceptive, equilibrioceptive, nociceptive, thermoceptive and chronoceptive.


Can we say that reality is a relative experience depending on the POV of the observer and no one person has the same subjective reality.

IOW reality is separate from all independent subjective observation. My reality is not your reality.

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@ Lausten

Thanks for the reference to “Quantum and the Lotus”. I’m gonna read that … :slight_smile:

Apparently thers is a free PDF download available.

p.s. I also enjoyed reading “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”.

Some really good “grist for thought” in there.

Again a free PDF may be available.

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I admit that was poorly worded. I was basically citing Anil Seth ‘s observation that we create our own reality more from the inside out than from the outside in. And for each individual, reality is (slightly) different from another’s perception of their reality. We are all hallucinating our realities. Reality is never exactly what it appears to be to us. We interpret the external information with out prior expectation of what our reality looks like.

Our brain has a prior expectation of reality and each brain has a different expectation of reality. My reality is not your reality unless we agree on what we expect reality to be. Then we are experiencing a mutually “controlled hallicination”. This is really a very interesting observation.

Empathy is as close as we can get to each others reality. Relativity alone insures our different subjective experience. I cited an example of the train whistle being perceived differently by each listener due to the doppler effect. Each listener can have a perfect subjective perception of sound in their reality (even with a meter) which is different from another listener who has also a perfect perception (even with a meter).


Well, thanks for reminding me of the type of stuff that eventually got me to write that bit about the “missing Key to NOMA” and the difference between Physical Reality and our Human Mindscapes -

To me all those sorts of musing up there are purely spinning wheels because the most fundamental divide hasn’t been recognized.

Most people, really are clueless when it comes to appreciating deep time and slow evolutionary process that creating this human marvel (that’s destroying our planet biosphere as fast as damned possible - but that’s another matter, not really. Had we a few ounces more appreciation we wouldn’t be engaged in this sociopathic and insane self-destruction.

 

...

In the years and decades since I’ve kept learning more about Earth’s amazing evolution and geophysics and also the scientific process itself.

A process that’s basically a set of rules for gathering and assessing our observations in an honest, open and disciplined manner that all who’ve made the effort to learn can access and trust.

Recently it occurred to me Gould was missing a much more fundamental divide that is crying out for recognition.

Specifically, the Magisteria of Physical Reality vs the Magisteria of our Human Mindscape.

It was then while I was struggling to find and weave the words to explain myself, that it became clear to me - Earth herself was not only central to my conception of reality, but supreme.

After all, heaven and hell had evaporated long ago and human hubris filled me with contempt rather than any shock or awe.

The Earth Centrist’s perspective acknowledges that Earth and her physical processes and the pageant of Evolution are the fundamental timeless touchstones of reality.

Part of Earth’s physical reality is that we humans were created by Earth out of her processes.

Science shows us that we belong to the mammalian branch of Earth’s animal kingdom. Yet, it’s undeniable that something quite unique happened about six million years ago when certain apes took a wild improbable evolutionary turn. …

 

…

Science was so successful that today most people believe we are the masters of our world and too many have fallen into the hubristic trap of believing our ever fertile mindscape is reality itself.

Which brings me back to Gould’s magisterium and his missing key.

The missing key is appreciating the fundamental “Magisteria of Physical Reality,” - and recognizing that both science and religion are products of the “Magisteria of Our Human Mindscape.”

Science seeks to objectively learn about our physical world, but we should still recognize all our understanding is embedded within and constrained by our brain’s mindscape.

Religion is all about the human mindscape itself, with its wonderful struggles, fears, spiritual undercurrents, needs and stories we create to give our live’s meaning and make it worth living, or at least bearable.

What’s the point? I think it’s about better appreciating our ‘frame of reference’ - and especially recognizing that we aren’t the center of creation.

This is important today because some have convinced themselves that they actually have a personal Almighty God in their back pockets, when in fact our Gods are as transient as governments and the human species itself.

Religions, heaven, hell, science, political beliefs, even God, they are all products of the human mindscape, generations of imaginings built upon previous generations of imaginings, all the way down.

That is not to say they are the same thing, they are not! Science is dedicated to honestly and objectively understanding physical reality while religion is concerned with the human imagination and our soul and spirit and our struggles through short life. They are different, but both are necessary human inventions.

Still, both are destined to be swept away by the hands of time, while Earth and life will continue its dance. …

https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2019/12/bringing-it-back-to-earth-centrism.html


I’ll admit I find it very weird that people can spend pages ostensibly discussing if time is real or not, or convincing themselves that matter is all empty space, never entertaining the energies at work within atoms makes “empty space” (in any way, shape, or form that the human mind imagines.) a meaningless concept, or rationalizing that sound is meaningless unless it is heard. It all seem silly, luftgeschäft.

Yet I bring up this pretty fundamental concept about our perspective with implications for our perception and it’s silence.

 

 

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3point14rat said: Am I wrong in thinking that the particles we observe/measure continue to exist beyond our observation/measurement of them? Does the wave function actually collapse, or are they merely interpreted by the observer as to have collapsed into a single eigenstate? (In other words, does an electron really collapse, or are we saying it collapses as a simple way of saying ‘we got what we could from it and now it’s gone”?)
IMO, it's the other way around, it's the wave function that collapses and a particle (electron) emerges (double slit experiment shows this phenomenon).
Atoms and molecules follow the rules of chemistry and physics, even when they're part of a complex, living, breathing being. If you learned in chemistry that some atoms tend to gain or lose electrons or form bonds with each other, those facts remain true even when the atoms or molecules are part of a living thing. In fact, simple interactions between atoms—played out many times and in many different combinations, in a single cell or a larger organism—are what make life possible. One could argue that everything you are, including your consciousness, is the byproduct of chemical and electrical interactions between a very, very large number of nonliving atoms!
These interactions form very specific patterns with very specific values and potentials.
So as an incredibly complex being made up of roughly 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, you'll probably want to know some basic chemistry as you begin to explore the world of biology, and the world in general.
Matter and elements
The term matter refers to anything that occupies space and has mass—in other words, the “stuff” that the universe is made of. All matter is made up of substances called elements, which have specific chemical and physical properties and cannot be broken down into other substances through ordinary chemical reactions. Gold, for instance, is an element, and so is carbon. There are 118 elements, but only 92 occur naturally. The remaining elements have only been made in laboratories and are unstable.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/chemistry--of-life/elements-and-atoms/a/matter-elements-atoms-article

And that’s why 26 elements do not exist in nature. These unstable elements are formed all the time, but they decay immediately and disintegrate into simpler patterns.

Note: it appears that there are particles which are not considered to be matter. They are the constituent parts of matter, but not matter in and of themselves. The electron neutrino has zero mass and cannot be considered matter. I guess it is a quantum of sorts.

Besides quarks, the other fundamental building block of matter consists of leptons. The most commonly known lepton is the electron, which together with protons and neutrons form atoms and molecules, out of which everything around us is made. These two building blocks and their interactions form the ''standard model'' of particle physics.
https://www-d0.fnal.gov/Run2Physics/WWW/results/final/TOP/T05D/T05D.htm
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Apparently thers is a free PDF download available.
I often don't look for those because they can be spam sites, but epub is a good one. Cool. The section I was talking about is around pg 84. M is the monk, T is the physicist, sometimes it's hard to tell.
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I reread this from the top and like π’s perspective the best.

@3point14rat | January 21, 2020 at 8:21 am

This is how I’ve always thought about this stuff:
– An electron has characteristics. We can measure one at a time. Our inability to measure more than one characteristic doesn’t mean the electron only has that one characteristic, it means we can only determine one characteristic.

– We say ‘collapse’ and ‘eigenstate’ and infer that things don’t exist outside of observation, as a way of communicating what we know and don’t (can’t) know. But those words only relate to our knowledge of a particle, not the particle itself.

Am I wrong in thinking that the particles we observe/measure continue to exist beyond our observation/measurement of them?

Does the wave function actually collapse, or are they merely interpreted by the observer as to have collapsed into a single eigenstate?

(In other words, does an electron really collapse, or are we saying it collapses as a simple way of saying ‘we got what we could from it and now it’s gone”?)


Makes me think of an analogy - the difference between the ‘map’ and the ‘territory’.

 

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CC-v.3 said : Makes me think of an analogy – the difference between the ‘map’ and the ‘territory’.
Yes but in the zeal of drawing conclusions about differences instead of what they have in common.

The territory is human reality, the map is the human description of the distinctive features of the territory.

But in a mathematical universe all things can be accurately described by human mathematics of relative values and orderly functions. The territory is also the map.

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But in a mathematical universe all things can be accurately described by human mathematics of relative values and orderly functions.
Hmmm, that's a mighty big conceit, isn't it?

Or is this a mind experiment sort of thing? In the best of all worlds . . . etc etc

Don’t most of our explanations contain gaps and oversights?

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CC-v.3 said : Don’t most of our explanations contain gaps and oversights?
Not for practical purposes. Our mathematics can describe a lot of things in exquisite detail, but we live in a world of gross physical expression.

As Tegmark observes , the universe can be described by 23 relative numerical values and a handfull of equations.

That’s the beauty and power of mathematics. Our discovery that things work mathematically is man’s all time greatest accomplishment. Mathematics work the same at all levels from galactic scales down to Planck scale. Beyond that there are no practical uses for mathematics for us.

We do know that in theory all matter consists of three fundamental particles and things work by 4 fundamental forces. What is so difficult about that?

Our problem is in finding proofs that our mathematics are correct. That why we have laboratories. We don’t invent things there, we copy things there.

We can put men on the moon. Stop and for a moment consider the mathematics involved. That’s awesomely accurate. This stuff is becoming routine, everyone is shooting rockets up in space for various purposes.

As one astrologer observed; “if we ask the universe the right question using the right mathematics, it will give us a correct mathematical answer”. We already communicate with the universe with our symbolic mathematical language. Its all a matter of understanding the basic information.

And as a the Mars Rover engineer noted, “we don’t need to build thing perfectly right, we need to build them just right enough”. The universe allows for approximation, as long as the math consists of accurate calculation of values and functions which we have observed and applied to the mathematics.

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There is an ultimate reality. We do a great job understanding things to a degree that lets us build planes and computers and nuclear plants/bombs, feed close to 8 billion people, extend human life beyond it’s natural length, find the Higgs boson, and lots of other things, both good and bad.

But there are things we don’t know: how reality came into being, how all of history unfolded, how our mind works, many details of how our bodies and life in general works, about stuff that’s really far away, where an electron is and how fast it’s going, and much more. We also don’t know what we do know in more detail (there will always be more decimal places that are beyond our measuring devices and our willingness to calculate them.)

I can accept our shortcomings in knowledge. That’s why I have no problem with knowing we aren’t able to make certain measurements. It’s when we treat our knowledge as a close-to-perfect representation of reality that we get into trouble. Our species is still in it’s teenage phase, thinking it knows and can do more than it actually can. We need to remember how much we don’t know and that our limits are simply another aspect of the reality of ‘reality’.

In the platitude, “Reach for the stars… but keep your feet on the ground”, both parts are equally important.

All that being said, I love reading the thoughts of you folks. My thoughts are based almost purely on my version of ‘common sense’ and little data or news on these topics. Without the educational background or book/article reading you all do, my opinions don’t carry much weight, even in my own eyes.

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Maybe that’s why it’s easier to relate to your thoughts than some others. Tons of education and book learning is great, but just like with food you gotta process all of it and sometimes it contains garbage that winds up building up and being unhealthy for a person.

@3point14rat There is an ultimate reality. ...

It’s when we treat our knowledge as a close-to-perfect representation of reality that we get into trouble.

Our species is still in it’s teenage phase, thinking it knows and can do more than it actually can.

We need to remember how much we don’t know and that our limits are simply another aspect of the reality of ‘reality’.

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CC: "...and sometimes it contains garbage that winds up building up and being unhealthy for a person."
Oh, I'm very sure that Write4U has no garbage in his head. Lots of people are fed misinformation or misinterpret correct information, but Write4U isn't one of them.

Most of you in this forum have some sort of ‘specialty’ (although you’re all well rounded) and Write4U is my go-to-guy for all things mathy and physicsy.

If I don’t understand what he says, it’s likely either my failing or he didn’t say it quite right even though he is correct.

Write4U, sorry for the 3rd person stuff, it’s just easier to write that way.

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Wow, ty.

If I take the liberty to be critical of other more esoteric proposals, I behoves me to consider all of my own speculations critically and try to keep things grounded in reality.

It is why I always try to offer a link to an example or to a more formal narrative that uses the same fundamentals.