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Author Topic:   The first Universal Law of the Universe
Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


Message 31 of 39 (849782)
03-21-2019 12:19 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by AZPaul3
03-20-2019 11:49 PM


You know everything is/gets/was entangled/intangled.
I need to get this untangled. Does any of this have anything to do with entropy?

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by AZPaul3, posted 03-20-2019 11:49 PM AZPaul3 has replied

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Tanypteryx
Member
Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


Message 32 of 39 (849783)
03-21-2019 12:25 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by RAZD
02-16-2019 1:50 PM


First off, it seems to me that you are applying the term entanglement to interactions between particles that are already described as dependent on other properties.
I think of entanglement as Quantum Entanglement.
from Wikipedia:
quote:
Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently of the state of the other(s), even when the particles are separated by a large distance.
Is “entanglement” going to be one of those words in science that has multiple meanings that really confuse non-scientific minded people, like “theory?” Does it also mean or include Quantum Chromodynamics and molecular bonds?
I thought the way things got entangled was like when a photon is split into 2 photons by a beam-splitter. Measure the polarity of one and you know the polarity of the other.

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy
The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by RAZD, posted 02-16-2019 1:50 PM RAZD has seen this message but not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 33 of 39 (849784)
03-21-2019 1:07 AM
Reply to: Message 31 by Tanypteryx
03-21-2019 12:19 AM


Does any of this have anything to do with entropy?
That's up to RAZD. I wouldn't think so but I'll go RAZD's way to start.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
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mike the wiz
Member
Posts: 4752
From: u.k
Joined: 05-24-2003


Message 34 of 39 (850089)
03-31-2019 8:21 AM


Sorry I didn't get back to this thread and don't know how far behind I am, I just wanted to say something in this post, mainly for reading.
I have been thinking more about this issue of improbability for a cell constructing itself, the improbability of abiogenesis.
Because I don't think it is only a matter of improbability. RAZD and other may conjecture some imagined scenario by which a localised congregation of the correct parts may form a cell.
It SEEMS like only a matter of numbers but I don't think it is. So I would like to explain this more so please be patient and read my explanation to understand the philosophical point I am making;
With a solely improbable issue, a truly improbable issue say like winning the lottery, even though it's highly improbable a specific person we choose before the lottery draw, will win, it's improbable based on the available combinations of numbers, players etc. In other words, it's truly an improbable event because it can be made more probable for that person to win. So for example we could increase the chances of the person winning by having them play many more lines, or play all of the available lotteries each week or whatever. Or we may increase the chances of guessing someone's pin number by having 500 attempts rather than only one attempt. I am sure you see my point.
HOWEVER, there are some events which it seems to me we use the word, "improbable" for in a more colloquial sense. It seems there are events which are better described as UNREAL events simply because they are contrary to reality, in that we can't find any rational reasons why the event would occur.
So for example, (don't toy with the example, you can't tweak it) imagine there is a gentle man that exists, let's say he is a Buddhist monk or whatever, and is genuinely the least violent person or one of the least violent people to ever exist. Is it a matter of improbability for us to believe that one day he would decide just from whim to randomly chop to pieces all of his fellow monks?
IT MAY SEEM like an improbable event, but as with the lottery example, an improbable event can become more probable with available time and numbers yet with this example time and numbers will not change the unreality of the event. We innately know some things just don't happen. (you can't say he loses his sanity, remember you can't tweak the example, it is by his choice, by whim he one day decides to do it.)
RATIONALLY we can infer; "there's just no reason to believe it would happen, and it doesn't matter if we know of no examples because waiting for one example won't change the fact that under these parameters it will not occur."
In the same way we all know that none of us will ever march for rapist-day, to celebrate rape. It's not that it's improbable, because if we live for a billion years we know it's simply not in our nature to support such a notion.
CONCLUSION: We know that there are things which just don't happen. It may SEEM like you can say, "we just don't have enough examples", like when we look around and don't see proteins forming by chance outside of life. But in actual fact it has nothing to do with numbers, it's that there just aren't any realistic reasons for some things to occur even if they are technically possible.
It is technically possible we could replace the wheel with a cube-shaped wheel, have it wreck machines, then just replace the machine parts and wheels with new cubed wheels. But that it is technically possible doesn't give it any reason to ever happen.
Now you may protest, "but mike, we know that we have X number of possible amino arrangements, and if you increase the number, however improbable, you may get the correct arrangement."
Of course I am aware of that, but the question is, is it only a matter of numbers like the lottery?
If it is then it's the same for metal naturally creating a car chassis. You may say "there just needs to be enough metal on enough worlds, given enough time, for it to occur".
But the problem is there is no physical reason why it should occur, and coincidentally be perfect for a car's frame, as well as all the other parts coming together which are metal, and getting together locally.
Even if we assume some parts can occur, such as a protein and a DNA, nevertheless this doesn't give nature any reasons to continue the build, so to speak. There would be no goal for these parts in nature. The goal of life can only exist once life does, and to get to that stage there aren't any physical reasons why it would happen altogether at once, or stage by stage.
If it's stage by stage, why would nature collect the correct parts? If it's all in one well, that's basically impossible.
So we know that this, like with the gentle monk, has nothing to do with numbers, it's that there is something that would have to happen contrary to the facts. Just as our monk would never be violent, we know that even if there were a trillion worlds for a trillion years there are no reasons in nature to design something of immense sophistication.
Or are you saying you would believe a car chassis could come about, somehow given enough worlds simply because it's "possible" there may be physical forces that can for example, bore threads into the chassis, of the correct type, so that there are holes on the chassis, 175 holes, all with an 18mm thread and 50mm long?
Obviously the more sophisticated the design is, the more absurdly unrealistic the proposal. So then how sophisticated is a contraflow lung? How sophisticated is a human brain? How sophisticated are the designs in nature? Biomimetics has proven that there is always a design in nature better than our own in whatever area we look at.
CONCLUSION: Rationally, I can't see any reasons so suppose physics would not act as it usually does like the monk. If a protein was created, physics wouldn't single it out and wait for it to become part of a cell, all that would happen half way through the build is entropy. Entropy would break down anything that was built LONG BEFORE it was built.
Abiogenesis is an unreality even if it is technically possible. I am not saying it is possible, I am just saying that if it is technically possible evolutionists then infer that, "it is therefore improbable, and given enough time, eventually probable, and then certain."
I believe that is a false dichotomy. I don't believe that if something is not impossible that "therefore it is only a matter of improbability". I think there are unrealistic scenarios which have nothing to do with numbers. (the monk and the cube wheels).
God created life.
Edited by mike the wiz, : Edit to say. I am not saying this is the strongest argument I have ever made, but personally it's enough for me intellectually that I don't think there are any reasons for nature to act differently in regards to life. I think when we look at abiogenesis NOT happening anywhere, and even in experiments when they try to make it happen, this is because it is simply and UNREALITY. And scientifically if it is an unreality, then so is evolution.

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by Tangle, posted 03-31-2019 9:12 AM mike the wiz has not replied
 Message 36 by AZPaul3, posted 03-31-2019 9:15 AM mike the wiz has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 35 of 39 (850094)
03-31-2019 9:12 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by mike the wiz
03-31-2019 8:21 AM


MtW writes:
God created life.
For someone who boasts about his logical thinking, you're extraordinarily bad at it.
None of your arguments lead to this conclusion. It's a terrible non sequiter and it's obvious that you actually stared with this conclusion and generated a pile of words hoping to arrive back at it.
As far as we know everything in our world is natural. We have yet to find any supernatural intervention anywhere we look. Additionally, every time a supernatural claim is tested it fails. The correct hypothesis is therefor that until shown otherwise, life too is a natural process. That's the starting point, that's why science holds abiogenesis as an idea that requires testing.
The science of microbiolgy is very, very young - it began in our lifetime. Almost everything about it is yet to be discovered, just because we are currently ignorant of a process does not allow you to gleefully claim goddidit - that claim has been proven wrong time after time.
No amount of word games - a square wheel? - a deliberate paradox about a monk that we are not allowed to complain about and car chassis that create themselves - will get you anywhere near understanding the problem. When we hack away the verbiage you're simply repeating the creationist mantra that life can not start itself.
Well we've heard that before and we're just going to have to wait and see what science produces.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

This message is a reply to:
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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 36 of 39 (850095)
03-31-2019 9:15 AM
Reply to: Message 34 by mike the wiz
03-31-2019 8:21 AM


Good attempt, Mike.
But failure.
You know from your studies that we know with a great deal of confidence what chemistry can do and how it does its thing, electrons, bonds, thermodynamics, etc. You know we are closing in on a number of plausible abiogenic routes.
We do not have an answer, yet, but we have near a century of data and study pushing us toward a useful solution.
Your study in probability is the usual creationist trope of incredulity in the face of religious fervor and not from any respect for the science or the enormity of the numbers especially when viewed in parallel instead of in series. Yes, Mike, the reactive probabilities are in those large numbers.
BTW, this "first cell" thing has got to go. That first cell may have been but an evolutionary development by a life system already in operation for quite some time ... like centuries.
But the point is, Mike, we may not have an answer but we do have a lot of info on this subject.
God created life.
You have what? A gaggle of ancient stories retold, re-written and embellished x1000 by a small tribe of desert nomads seeking to find their way in a difficult and wondrous world of which they were totally ignorant?
Doesn't even begin to compete.
The universe created life through unguided natural chemistry.
Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

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 Message 34 by mike the wiz, posted 03-31-2019 8:21 AM mike the wiz has not replied

  
Son Goku
Inactive Member


(3)
Message 37 of 39 (856938)
07-04-2019 10:52 AM


Quantum Theory
Just because Quantum Mechanics came up in this thread I thought I'd clear up a few things. There are a few interpretations of quantum theory so I'll just explain things from the perspective of the majority view of Copenhagen-style interpretations and mention some others at the end. I think QM makes more sense when compared with regular probability and betting. I've divided the post in two. The first part just deals with the basics of Probability and QM, the second part deals with entanglement.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Firstly Quantum Mechanics uses probabilities. Probabilities are essentially a way of "managing" one's knowledge. Before somebody rolls a dice you give a probability of 1/6 to each number. If they roll the dice and you don't see the result, but you're told it was even, the probability gets updated to 1/3 for all the even numbers and 0 for all the odd numbers. The list of all the probabilities in quantum mechanics is called the quantum state.
This is all "state collapse" is in Quantum Mechanics. You observe something and then you update your probabilities. Quantum Mechanics also requires an observer for the same reason probability theory in general does. Not for mystical reasons, but because it makes reference to some agent and what they've learned. If I learn a fact but you don't, my probabilities change but yours do not. Just think of the dice example and somebody who doesn't learn it was an even number. So to a certain degree the theory is subjective as it takes into account the knowledge of a given agent.
One difference between Quantum Theory and regular probability is that the probabilities never go completely to 0 or 1, i.e. you never become certain of what will happen and won't happen for every experiment you could do. There is always some doubt. In regular probability it is possible in principle to eventually learn enough to remove any doubt, although it might be too difficult in practice. The fact that you will always have doubt in Quantum Theory is called the Uncertainty Principle. There is a minimal level of doubt possible (our technical jargon for minimal doubt is "pure state")
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entanglement is a type of correlation. Nothing more.
In regular probability if two things are correlated their probabilities aren't just a combination of those for each considered on its own. There's an extra element due to their connection. However if you do enough analysis eventually you'll learn the "cause" of what is linking them and their probabilities will go back to being separate, because the only remaining doubts will be concerning each one on its own. The link has become a deterministic fact.
A very simple example would be if a computer rolls two virtual dice and adds the same common number to both of them. At first you have to model their results together, but once you learn this number you can go back to modelling them independently because the only remaining doubt concerns their individual rolls.
Entanglement is a special type of correlation between two quantum systems where basically even when you've attained minimal doubt you still haven't learned the common element that connects them and so your remaining doubt isn't just about them individually and you have to keep describing them together.
For a long time some people weren't sure if this was a problem. Whatever is connecting their results denote all the mathematical structures necessary to model it with the variable , then we just assume that the values of this are inaccessible to macroscopic study. They are "Hidden Variables". However in 1964 and more strongly in 1976 John Bell showed that such a cannot exist. What ever connects quantum systems like this is not some kind of mechanical process amenable to mathematical description.
There are some caveats to Bell's result. Three special cases his proof doesn't cover where you could recover a mathematical/mechanical understanding.
  1. He does assume that every experiment has a single outcome. Remove this and his proof doesn't go through. Allowing experiments to have multiple outcomes is Many Worlds
  2. The could violate Einstein's Relativity, returning to a world to having a Newtonian structure of absolute time.
  3. The could involve interaction between past, present and future in some sense.
However these are doubted by the majority. The first one has failed to match experiment since it was conceived in 1957. Every attempt to do so fails in some manner or is circular for technical reasons. The latter two are subject to a problem uncovered in this 2012 paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.4119) verified independently by others later. They require enormous fine-tuning.
So the majority opinion today (as was the conclusion of Bohr and others by the early 1930s) is that whatever is going on to connect them is not mechanical or not amenable to mathematical description. This goes hand in hand with later discoveries (e.g. Kochen-Specker theorem) that the properties QM describes (Momentum, Position, Energy, etc) seem to be properties of our experimental devices not of microscopic objects themselves.
So QM is about how you "bet" on macroscopic impressions of the microscopic realm, but doesn't directly describe the microscopic itself which seems to be non-mechanical/non-mathematical.

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by AZPaul3, posted 07-04-2019 11:40 AM Son Goku has replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 38 of 39 (856946)
07-04-2019 11:40 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by Son Goku
07-04-2019 10:52 AM


Re: Quantum Theory
Remember laymen are dangerous.
A disturbance in a quantum field seems non-mechanical because we *don’t yet* know the mechanisms involved or is it that we *cannot ever* know the mechanisms involved?
And I thought QM had a comprehensive mathematical treatment that yields exceptionally accurate results but it’s just that nobody understands why?

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
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Son Goku
Inactive Member


(3)
Message 39 of 39 (856954)
07-04-2019 12:05 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by AZPaul3
07-04-2019 11:40 AM


Re: Quantum Theory
A disturbance in a quantum field seems non-mechanical because we *don’t yet* know the mechanisms involved or is it that we *cannot ever* know the mechanisms involved?
Closer to the latter. Although in order to not identify "knowing" with "have a predictive mathematical description of" I would phrase it as "There is no mathematical description of what is going on".
In the philosophy of physics people tend to use "mechanical" to mean something which can be completely described by a collection of mathematical variables which evolve under some algorithm or mathematical rule. Quantum systems seem to not be mechanical in this sense.
Also in this majority Copenhagen reading of quantum theory there are no "disturbances in quantum fields", quantum fields are just mathematical tools to describe impressions in our devices.
And I thought QM had a comprehensive mathematical treatment that yields exceptionally accurate results but it’s just that nobody understands why?
It does give an exceptionally accurate account of what the probabilities are for our detectors to develop marks, or other forms of macroscopic impressions to form, in various situations.
For example the chances that a plate placed next to a silver oven and a magnetic solenoid with develop exposure marks in various locations.
It does this with great accuracy. However it seems to say almost nothing of the microscopic realm itself behind it all.
There is a famous (within theoretical physics) textbook by the late Julian Schwinger where he actually derives the structure of QM by considering just silver ovens and types of plates and manages to get out the whole structure of the theory without postulating particles in any form or really any descriptive statements of the microscopic world.
Unsurprisingly it's called "Quantum Mechanics: Symbolism of Atomic Measurements"
Edited by Son Goku, : No reason given.

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