Why do you believe?

[Wiccan_Child]

I thought you wanted to debate. To debate you have to choose a side.

And my side is "VRT is an interesting rehash of an old idea, but is unparsimonious and has no supporting evidence". I thought this was obvious

In the most general terms debate happens when two people don't agree on same proposition. I don't have to assert the diametric conjugate of VRT in order to discuss its veracity. I don't have to assert an alternate position of VRT to criticise it.

Further don't forget what my 'debate' remark was in response to: "[Metaphysical] materialism makes an (sic) positive claim: that all phenomena are material interactions. This claim is completely contradicted by reproducible scientific tests of quantum phenomena like entanglement, superposition, quantum tunneling, wave particle duality etc. So I will debate until the bitter end over THAT one."

Since we diverged into discussing VRT, I've been sat poised for when we circle back to this foundational proposition - that tests on entanglement, superposition, tunnelling, and wave-particle duality, "completely contradict" the positive claim of metaphysical materialism (as distinguished from methodological materialism, and the now-defunct historical materialism).

 

[nebulaJP]

And my side is "VRT is an interesting rehash of an old idea, but is unparsimonious and has no supporting evidence". I thought this was obvious

I want to give you some supporting evidence but it would be helpful if I had an example. Do you reckon metaphysical materialism has any supporting evidence? If so what, what is this evidence? If you give me examples, then I will know exactly what you mean by supporting evidence.

Edit: P.S. I haven't even started to respond post 151 yet, but I will.

 

[directorrico]

Yes; I think you need to take more creative writing classes before you try your hand as such poetic flourishes. C-.

LOL
+1

 

[nebulaJP]

And my side is "VRT is an interesting rehash of an old idea, but is unparsimonious and has no supporting evidence". I thought this was obvious

In the most general terms debate happens when two people don't agree on same proposition. I don't have to assert the diametric conjugate of VRT in order to discuss its veracity. I don't have to assert an alternate position of VRT to criticise it.

Further don't forget what my 'debate' remark was in response to: "[Metaphysical] materialism makes an (sic) positive claim: that all phenomena are material interactions. This claim is completely contradicted by reproducible scientific tests of quantum phenomena like entanglement, superposition, quantum tunneling, wave particle duality etc. So I will debate until the bitter end over THAT one."

Since we diverged into discussing VRT, I've been sat poised for when we circle back to this foundational proposition - that tests on entanglement, superposition, tunnelling, and wave-particle duality, "completely contradict" the positive claim of metaphysical materialism (as distinguished from methodological materialism, and the now-defunct historical materialism).

To backtrack, that was too strong of a statement of mine, "completely contradicted." A better way to say that is that VRT explains it much more simply and easily with fewer problems. For example, there are no paradoxes of any kind (by ANYONE'S definition of the word paradox), no optical illusions, no problems understanding observed phenomena due to limits of human perception, no contradictions of any kind whatsoever, apparent or actual.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I want to give you some supporting evidence but it would be helpful if I had an example.

I can't help you on that one

Do you reckon metaphysical materialism has any supporting evidence? If so what, what is this evidence? If you give me examples, then I will know exactly what you mean by supporting evidence.

Falsifiable predictions are a good start, as are logical tests like parsimony.

I suppose the three big (and somewhat connected) pointers to metaphysical materialism are that it's parsimonious, that we've yet to find anything that explicitly contradicts it, and that it stands as the null hypothesis.

Edit: P.S. I haven't even started to respond post 151 yet, but I will.

No rush. I'm mostly interested in the bits about paradoxes anyway.

 

[nebulaJP]

Since we diverged into discussing VRT, I've been sat poised for when we circle back to this foundational proposition - that tests on entanglement, superposition, tunnelling, and wave-particle duality, "completely contradict" the positive claim of metaphysical materialism (as distinguished from methodological materialism, and the now-defunct historical materialism).

You have not put "positive claim" in quotation marks meaning that you are calling metaphysical materialism a positive claim yourself. I agree.

I suppose the three big (and somewhat connected) pointers to metaphysical materialism are that it's parsimonious, that we've yet to find anything that explicitly contradicts it, and that it stands as the null hypothesis.

How do you justify the hypocrisy of a positive claim "standing" as the null hypothesis.

 

[nebulaJP]

I suppose the three big (and somewhat connected) pointers to metaphysical materialism are that it's parsimonious,...

If it was 200 years ago, I would say VRT is less parsimonious than metaphysical materialism, but now that we have GR and QM, VRT is more parsimonious, IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO EXPLAIN THE PHENOMENA. For example, Copenhagen doesn't explain anything. That's the "shut up and calculate" interpretation. Many Worlds does, but MWT is MUCH less parsimonious than VRT. VRT only has ONE other world, so it's more parsimonious.

 

[nebulaJP]

Falsifiable predictions are a good start,

The collision of two extremely high frequency light beams alone in a partial vacuum will create a stable, permanent electron. Matter is bottled up light.

 

[nebulaJP]

You are conflating logical paradoxes with veridical ones. The opening line of the article says it best:
"Because of varying definitions of the term paradox, some of the following are not considered to be paradoxes by everyone. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their own article."

I pretty much responded to this comment in post 164 but I will again. A paradox is a paradox is a contradiction. Regardless of whether we're talking veridical, perceived, apparent or false paradoxes or contradictions doesn't matter. In VRT there are none, period. With metaphysical materialism, it is possible to speak of contradictions, apparent or otherwise, between QM, CM, GR, and in other things like the behavior of light. With VRT, there is nothing in any of these areas or the relationship between them that can be even remotely perceived as a paradox or contradiction. Therefore, VRT fits the data better.

 

[nebulaJP]

Wiccan,

Here I'm repeating what I said in a previous post. Metaphysical materialism is more parsimonious than VRT in explaining the phenomenon of you and I sitting in the chairs we're sitting in. I give you that.

However, metaphysical materialism is not an explanatory interpretation of quantum mechanics and VRT is. Copenhagen is an interpretation of QM that adheres to metaphysical materialism, but not an explanatory one. So for explanatory value, it's useless. Many Worlds is also in line with metaphysical materialism and like VRT it's explanatory. However, as the name suggests, it has many real worlds, while VRT has only one (it's just not the one we live in). So, if parsimoniousness is valued, you have to compare apples to apples, i.e. explanatory interpretations of QM, and figure out which is more parsimonious.

 

[nebulaJP]

Yes, it's a paradox, which implies the underlying assumption - that both theories are true - is false. We can conclude, therefore, that one or both theories

You forgot to finish that sentence. Were you going to say one or both theories is false? Never heard that one. In VRT they are both true yet there is no contradiction between them.

 

[pjnlsn]

To backtrack, that was too strong of a statement of mine, "completely contradicted." A better way to say that is that VRT explains it much more simply and easily with fewer problems. For example, there are no paradoxes of any kind (by ANYONE'S definition of the word paradox), no optical illusions, no problems understanding observed phenomena due to limits of human perception, no contradictions of any kind whatsoever, apparent or actual.

And?

The theme of this is that the natural world must conform to our expectations, and so because what you're saying does that, it's more likely, or more accurate. But the natural world need not conform to our expectations.

In any case, you haven't really gone into detail, so no one knows actually whether, apart from the above, VRT is more accurate than any established science, in the relevant context.

 

[pjnlsn]

If it was 200 years ago, I would say VRT is less parsimonious than metaphysical materialism, but now that we have GR and QM, VRT is more parsimonious, IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO EXPLAIN THE PHENOMENA. For example, Copenhagen doesn't explain anything. That's the "shut up and calculate" interpretation. Many Worlds does, but MWT is MUCH less parsimonious than VRT. VRT only has ONE other world, so it's more parsimonious.

Ah, but the interpretations are just that, interpretations. QM itself is the mathematical models. And that's the part of QM, the part which isn't on the frontier, which has been proven.

P.S. And btw, it's perfectly possible that you have two systems of prediction, one for the very large and one for the very small, and that they both happen to work in the contexts that they're supposed to work in. It just means that the more general and complete way to understand the universe will be more complicated than either, when completely spelled out.

But if you're VRT doesn't do that, then it's the wrong direction, because both are proven. To combine them into something far more complicated and general, that's a step in the right direction.

 

[nebulaJP]

In any case, you haven't really gone into detail, so no one knows actually whether, apart from the above, VRT is more accurate than any established science, in the relevant context.

VRT is an interpretation of established science, just like Many Worlds Theory is. It's not a competitor to established science. As I've said many times, I'm getting all this from Brian Whitworth. If you want detail, here:

http://brianwhitworth.com/VRConjecture.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/VRTQuestions.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT1.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT2.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT3.pdf

 

[pjnlsn]

VRT is an interpretation of established science, just like Many Worlds Theory is. It's not a competitor to established science. As I've said many times, I'm getting all this from Brian Whitworth. If you want detail, here:

http://brianwhitworth.com/VRConjecture.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/VRTQuestions.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT1.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT2.pdf

http://brianwhitworth.com/BW-VRT3.pdf

Ah.

Well, if you really want to compare interpretations, then, for one, most of the others are actually complete and reference QM. Perhaps Mr Whitworth wrote the above more for the public than physicists, but there seems to be too many references to 'strangeness' in physics and less acceptance of what, say, QM is (for it is proven) and a lack of a very general conceptualization of that, of how it connects to, say, the relative stability of events on the human-scale.

And then, of course, there's the appearance of it being a religious vehicle.

What does VRT actually explain?

P.S. Oh, and then there's the "no true scotsman" fallacy, in effect, in the abstract of the first link. ( "It's insuperior because i've labelled it 'not how objective reality should be' ", in reference to the Big Bang)

(Oh, and, of course, the fairly substantial skewing of cosmological science in the abstract of the first link)

In any case, the bottom line is that it, nor I suppose the rest of them, is unproven.

 

[nebulaJP]

Well, if you really want to compare interpretations, then, for one, most of the others are actually complete and reference QM.

You forgot relatively paradoxical. A billiard ball has a probability greater than 0 of passing through a wall. It's possible. If you need a reference for that, here:

One of the classic examples in QM 101 is to model billiard balls as quantum particles and explain why they don't 'tunnel' through other balls to get into the pocket. The reason is one of scale: billiard balls do have a probability of tunnelling to any point in space (this is as simple as plugging in the coordinates, r, into the equation, and out pops the probability), but the probability of them tunnelling anywhere more than a billionth of their radius away is remote indeed. Electrons, meanwhile, can be expected to tunnel quite far away, relative to the size of an atom.

However, electromagnetic forces prevent solid objects from passing through each other. It is believed by the majority, but not in any way proven, that objects are self contained (they exist in and of themselves) and that they exist continuously. So if the electromagnetic forces exist continuously, how can solid objects pass through each other? This is at the very least, seemingly a paradox, or as Wiccan calls it, a "veridical paradox." Many things do not make sense to the thinking mind and this is one of them.

However, if you let go of self-existent and continuous, it DOES make sense. My belief is that interpretations of natural phenomena are better if they are not in anyway paradoxical. Here is the VRT explanation:

In the digital camp the billiard ball is a program entity with a new instance or existence frame generated every Planck time. So it can pass through a wall if one instance is on one side of the wall and the next frame is on the other side. It doesn't exist continuously, it's a series of still frames or instances.

Care to explain how it's possible for a billiard ball to pass through a wall? Use any interpretation you want. Without the ball being the output of processing and discontinuous it's like explaining how a square circle is possible.

 

[pjnlsn]

You forgot relatively paradoxical. A billiard ball has a probability greater than 0 of passing through a wall. It's possible. If you need a reference for that, here:

I thought you said VRT wasn't in contradiction with estalished science?

Apart from the other problems, especially those of deception and ignorance in the sources you provided, QM is proven, at least the part of it which is not on what could be called the frontier of science.

 

[pjnlsn]

You forgot relatively paradoxical. A billiard ball has a probability greater than 0 of passing through a wall. It's possible. If you need a reference for that, here:



However, electromagnetic forces prevent solid objects from passing through each other. It is believed by the majority, but not in any way proven, that objects are self contained (they exist in and of themselves) and that they exist continuously. So if the electromagnetic forces exist continuously, how can solid objects pass through each other? This is at the very least, seemingly a paradox, or as Wiccan calls it, a "veridical paradox." Many things do not make sense to the thinking mind and this is one of them.

However, if you let go of self-existent and continuous, it DOES make sense. My belief is that interpretations of natural phenomena are better if they are not in anyway paradoxical. Here is the VRT explanation:



Care to explain how it's possible for a billiard ball to pass through a wall? Use any interpretation you want. Without the ball being the output of processing and discontinuous it's like explaining how a square circle is possible.

QM is proven, at least the parts which are not on what could be called the frontier of science, what you reference above not being part of that. That it confuses you or others is irrelevant. And certainly that QM has superseded some other sections of certain fields of science in certain contexts is also irrelevant to it's accuracy.

 

[nebulaJP]

QM is proven, at least the parts which are not on what could be called the frontier of science, what you reference above not being part of that. That it confuses you or others is irrelevant. And certainly that QM has superseded some other sections of certain fields of science in certain contexts is also irrelevant to it's accuracy.

Do you think I'm saying quantum mechanics isn't proven? I'm not saying that at all. It's totally proven. So is relativity. What did I say that's not a part of that?

 

[nebulaJP]

I thought you said VRT wasn't in contradiction with estalished science?

Apart from the other problems, especially those of deception and ignorance in the sources you provided, QM is proven, at least the part of it which is not on what could be called the frontier of science.

It IS established science! It's the Schrödinger equation. Wiccan explained it throughout the whole first half of the thread. It's Quantum Mechanics 101 that it's possible for a billiard ball to pass through a wall. Though the chance is very far remote, the POINT is that it's possible.