Choosing a faith

Of course, if you postulate a superior intelligence of some sort, you're opening yourself up to an infinite regression. When you talk about an "ultimate purpose", you're talking about an alien entity's purpose FOR US - like our ultimate purpose for cows and pigs.

I'll take a stab at this. You became hung up on the word "necessary" when it was only a word Tangle happened to choose in the moment. There are literally dozens of different ways to phrase the question. "Why is worshipping something important to you?" "If there is a higher power in the universe, why should it be worshipped?" "What need would a perfect immortal omnipotent being have for worship by us?" "Isn't a need for being worshipped a form of psychosis, schizophrenia being one example?" "Aren't we anthropomorphizing God when we conclude he's someone to be worshipped?" "How is our need to worship a higher being any different from primitive tribes that worship the land or animals or the water and sun gods and who often include hallucinogens as part of worship?"--Percy

Both have a total lack of evidence. How is it that you're able to to compare their evidence.However, in its favor an "advanced alien civilization" postulates no violations of the laws of nature. Ah, yes, we-cannot-know-the-ways-of-Godism. Someone sins against God but goes on to lead a successful and happy life, then God must have forgiven him, who knows why. But someone else who sins against God, let's say the exact same sin, dies a gruesome death from a terrible disease, then God must have meted out justice, who knows why. A someone else lives a Mother-Teresa-good kind of life and dies of the same disease, who knows why? Babies and children die for no apparent reason (recalling images of bald children appropriate here). God just works in mysterious ways. It's all just part of his wonderful plan.How is all this any different from whatever happens happens, who knows why? Doesn't adding a God to the mix just multiply the rationalizations and ad hoc explanations that must be employed enormously? Some Nazis escaped to Argentina and lived long, happy lives. Other's were dealt with by the Mossad, one even kidnapped, brought back to Israel for trial, found guilty, and hanged. All in a day's work for God, and if you want to know why, just ask any believer.--Percy

I missed this until I saw Percy had replied. As Percy says, the word "necessary" is not necessary. In fact it can be reduced to just two words."Why worship?"

A puff of wind cannot cause a wavefunction to collapse. That's a fairly immediate result of the quantum mechanical formalism. Only an observation causes the wavefunction to collapse. As for what exactly qualifies something to be an observer to do so: at a minimum it's something that can experience/register information and has some capacity of memory and choice. Beyond that a clearer answer isn't available.However you can have a nuke go off and the wavefunction won't collapse in the equations. This is simply due to what the quantum state is, it's a generalisation of a probability distribution. So if somebody rolls a dice in a closed room, the chance of each result is:
[1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6,1/6]
when you learn the result was even, then the distribution "collapses" to:
[0, 1/3, 0, 1/3, 0, 1/3]
because now you know the result was even. This collapse cannot be caused by any interaction with the wind or whatever. A gust of wind passing through the room doesn't really change your probabilities for what the dice role was (it might alter them if you have reason to believe the wind affected the die roll in some way).It's the same in quantum theory. The only difference is that Quantum Theory is probability theory modified to take into account that some variables don't have well-defined values until observation. In regular probability theory you would assume the dice has some result/outcome independent of observation. Quantum Theory drops this assumption.

Decoherence is a little more subtle than that.First the important point is to grasp that the quantum state (called a "wavefunction" in certain special cases) is simply a type of probability distribution. It's not a concrete actual thing like a stone, tree or dog. It's like any probability, a subjective estimate of how confident one is that certain future observations will have certain values.In quantum mechanics not all such observations can be considered to reveal a pre-existing truth. This changes how the calculus of probabilities works.However for certain properties of large scale objects, such as "where is the Eiffel Tower?", the probabilities obey the same rules as classical probability and so can be seen to reflect ignorance of some pre-existing truth.Decoherence is the name for this process where quantum probabilities become classical probabilities. It's an objectification limit. It is as Thomas Banks (professor at Rutgers and Santa Cruz) says in his 2019 textbook "Quantum Mechanics: An Introduction": Decoherence describes this emergence.

Initially let me clear, my ignorance on this subject knows no bounds. I have read authors such as Brian Greene, Hawking etc because I find it fascinating.I'd like to ask a couple of questions.
1/Does your statement mean that some form of consciousness, be it human or whatever, is required to collapse the wave function?2/If there is no observer to observe in the universe, then does anything as we know it exist?Thanks

Yes, I know Ψ is a probability function without any material form. That has nothing to do with the measurement problem or your interpretation of “observer”. And I submit wave functions do not collapse but evolve to include your observer and all his charts and graphs.Your interpretation is Copenhagen. The math is wonderful but the interpretation is muddled and incomplete. Accordingly to your definition, the first hydrogen atoms in a condensing cloud could not decohere to form the classical object we call a star. No Copenhagen certified observer present.There are other more realistic views.Yes, decoherence is key to classical structures and that has been going on in this universe (trillions of stars and planets) for quite some time. All without any “something that can experience/register information and has some capacity of memory and choice” to observe. Just other particles banging into them.Decoherence does occur when two entangled systems hit each other. You have seen this in the lab wonderfully observed and recorded. We know decoherence is required for these classical systems to form. And we have an entire universe full of the results with no PhDs having been involved for billions of years.Your interpretation, Son Goku, is not complete.Yes, a puff of air with its speeding molecules banging into everything or the condensing of a hydrogen cloud with its particles banging into everything does force decoherence with the result being stars.

To be clear the wavefunction is not some actual object like a wave or tree etc that is somehow physically affected.The wavefunction is a mathematical construct that represents the knowledge of a living being and its collapse represents the acquisition of knowledge by such a being.Various terms are used in the literature for such a living being. Observer, Agent, IGUS and many more. Quantum Theory does not make statements about the universe in the absence of observers. To quote Wolfgang Pauli in Handbuch der Physik 5(1): Square brackets indicate my insertion for clarity.

The second part of the sentence indicates you aren't fully understanding the implications of the first part.If somebody rolls a dice in a room, then I have a list of probabilities given above as:
1/6[1] + 1/6[2] + 1/6[3] + 1/6[4] + 1/6[5] + 1/6[6]
that is a 1/6 chance for each number.If I walk into the room and see the result is "2" then my probabilities are:
1[2]
i.e. it is certainly 2.However to somebody outside the room the probabilities are:
1/6[1, Goku saw 1] + 1/6[2, Goku saw 2] + 1/6[3, Goku saw 3] + 1/6[4,Goku saw 4] + 1/6[5, Goku saw 5] + 1/6[6, Goku saw 6].So whether the probabilities collapse or "evolve and include the observer" depends on whose probabilities we are discussing. Just as in classical probability. What textbook are you getting this from? Have you seen actual decoherence calculations? Decoherence and collapse are two completely different things. They don't result in quantum states of the same form.
You need far more than entanglement to get decoherence, most entangled systems don't show any decoherence at all. I was answering a question about collapse, not decoherence. You're mixing up two separate aspects of the formalism here. Okay what is this "problem" and what is the actual incompleteness. Can you point to some aspect of the mathematics that actually displays this incompleteness. All the features I am discussing are present in classical statistics as well for the most part.

I don't fully agree with the picture painted in this post. Let me just say a few things. We had the same level of wealth as most countries in Europe until the invasions by Britain in the 17th century. We weren't always a poor country, but made poor by British colonialism.Most of the churches and religious buildings you mention are either:(a) Built by and for wealthy British colonists
(b) Built under patronage by Gaelic lords before British invasionsand not really by the people living in poverty in the 18th and 19th century.I'm no fan of the Catholic Church here, but to me what you saw in Cork tells a story about Imperialism rather than religion.

I'm not picking on Ireland, I could go to almost any city in Europe and see the same thing. My point is more general - the wealth of the church was obscene and came from the laity, many of which lived in poverty.In my tiny English village there are two large ancient churches and one modern one plus a nunnery. Every little village in England has at least one church, usually more. I wonder what could have been done with all that wealth instead?

To be clear I didn't think you were, in fact I don't really see how it could be understood as "picking on Ireland". I'm just saying the actual events surrounding what you saw are not what you might think. Most of the people who funded those churches were wealthy and those in poverty around them in fact had little access to religion at the time.

Decoherence, as I understand the math I've seen, causes what you call collapse. It resolves the wave function into classical probabilities. The math is in the density matrix calculations.And please excuse my faux pas in confusing superposition and entanglement. I get both ways at times. I'm not so good at regurgitating that in my present addled state. If you and admin allow I would answer with a Sabine Hossenfelder video. She explains it better than I ever could.She gets over the basics and gets into the good stuff at about 4 mins in.

I don't know how it could be seen to since the states following decoherence and collapse/projection are not the same.