And so, like kudzu, the thread is taken over by the Great Quantum Debate… but Mitch, do you agree with the central point of the original post, that true facts cannot be “weird” or “bizarre” except insofar as we think like primates and not like reality? That we are always faced with a dilemma to eventually discard either the mistaken intuition or the mistaken fact?
As to your quantum-question: as I understand it, the presences of particle species at particular locations are the dimensions of the configuration space, points within which are that-which-exists. There is not only one thing; there are many points within the configuration space, and amplitude relations within neighborhoods of these points, and the dynamics are within these amplitude relations.
There is no reason to try to retain the idea of particle individuality—it has been explained away as a lossy approximation arising from the macroscopic case of configuration spaces. We understand evolutionarily why humans think in terms of individual particles, just as we understand why humans think in terms of flat space, and we know it isn’t true. So, out the window it goes.
For the same reason, there is no legitimate justification for clinging to the idea that a particle must have a single definite “position”—again, this is a lossy macroscopic approximation that has been entirely explained away, regardless of how intuitive humans find it. The points in configuration space do involve the exact locations of species, because these are the dimensions of the configuration space; but it is a very severe mistake to try to identify the observed universe with a single point in this configuration space—as severe as trying to identify the whole universe with a single one of its particles. Computations take place in the amplitude relations among neighborhoods of points—you can’t do anything with just one of them. A cloud of amplitude relations can compute, a single point cannot.
What fools our intuitions is that, relative to the macroscopic level, there are very narrow concentrations of amplitude that look to humans like single points. But this has been explained away by the microscopic theory; to think that there is necessarily a single “real” position is like thinking that there must be a single “real” space of simultaneity.
The issue has been vastly confused by early physicists interpreting the process of multiplying an amplitude cloud into a degree of thermodynamic freedom so that the subclouds are too distant to substantially interact, as “observing” a particle and finding out that it was “really” at a particular spot. But to suppose that physics contains a basic account of “observation” is like supposing that physics contains a basic account of being Republican; it is the projection of a complex, intricate, high-order biological cognition onto fundamental physics. What was previously attributed to “observation” has been explained away as the multiplication of amplitude subclouds into degrees of thermodynamic freedom, which at the macroscopic level we experience as our local subcloud of mutually interacting points having only a very narrow concentration at a particular particle-species-location, giving rise to the ridiculous and illusory experience of things being in only one place.
I am proud to report that it actually does seem absurd to me now that things could be in only one place. They’d fall apart, or be frozen in time, or just blink out of existence—it’s not possible to imagine it coherently, really. And it’s equal nonsense to suppose that things could be nonentangled—how could you possibly see them?
And so, like kudzu, the thread is taken over by the Great Quantum Debate… but Mitch, do you agree with the central point of the original post, that true facts cannot be “weird” or “bizarre” except insofar as we think like primates and not like reality? That we are always faced with a dilemma to eventually discard either the mistaken intuition or the mistaken fact?
As to your quantum-question: as I understand it, the presences of particle species at particular locations are the dimensions of the configuration space, points within which are that-which-exists. There is not only one thing; there are many points within the configuration space, and amplitude relations within neighborhoods of these points, and the dynamics are within these amplitude relations.
There is no reason to try to retain the idea of particle individuality—it has been explained away as a lossy approximation arising from the macroscopic case of configuration spaces. We understand evolutionarily why humans think in terms of individual particles, just as we understand why humans think in terms of flat space, and we know it isn’t true. So, out the window it goes.
For the same reason, there is no legitimate justification for clinging to the idea that a particle must have a single definite “position”—again, this is a lossy macroscopic approximation that has been entirely explained away, regardless of how intuitive humans find it. The points in configuration space do involve the exact locations of species, because these are the dimensions of the configuration space; but it is a very severe mistake to try to identify the observed universe with a single point in this configuration space—as severe as trying to identify the whole universe with a single one of its particles. Computations take place in the amplitude relations among neighborhoods of points—you can’t do anything with just one of them. A cloud of amplitude relations can compute, a single point cannot.
What fools our intuitions is that, relative to the macroscopic level, there are very narrow concentrations of amplitude that look to humans like single points. But this has been explained away by the microscopic theory; to think that there is necessarily a single “real” position is like thinking that there must be a single “real” space of simultaneity.
The issue has been vastly confused by early physicists interpreting the process of multiplying an amplitude cloud into a degree of thermodynamic freedom so that the subclouds are too distant to substantially interact, as “observing” a particle and finding out that it was “really” at a particular spot. But to suppose that physics contains a basic account of “observation” is like supposing that physics contains a basic account of being Republican; it is the projection of a complex, intricate, high-order biological cognition onto fundamental physics. What was previously attributed to “observation” has been explained away as the multiplication of amplitude subclouds into degrees of thermodynamic freedom, which at the macroscopic level we experience as our local subcloud of mutually interacting points having only a very narrow concentration at a particular particle-species-location, giving rise to the ridiculous and illusory experience of things being in only one place.
I am proud to report that it actually does seem absurd to me now that things could be in only one place. They’d fall apart, or be frozen in time, or just blink out of existence—it’s not possible to imagine it coherently, really. And it’s equal nonsense to suppose that things could be nonentangled—how could you possibly see them?