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Biocentrism - How life creates the universe

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Author Topic:   Biocentrism - How life creates the universe
ringo
Member (Idle past 443 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005

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Message 34 of 62 (568856)
07-18-2010 11:37 AM 		Reply to: Message 32 by GDR
07-17-2010 6:34 PM

GDR writes:
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Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?
If your answer is "no", the next question is: Did the universe exist before we started looking at it?
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Our observations suggest that it did.
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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.
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 Message 32 by GDR, posted 07-17-2010 6:34 PM GDR has replied
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 Message 37 by GDR, posted 07-18-2010 12:11 PM ringo has replied
  
ringo
Member (Idle past 443 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005

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Message 44 of 62 (568874)
07-18-2010 2:33 PM 		Reply to: Message 37 by GDR
07-18-2010 12:11 PM

GDR writes:
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I'll just repeat what Linde said in the quote I used above.
quote:
"You may ask whether the universe really existed before you start looking at it," he says. "That's the same Schrdinger cat question. And my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When you open the cat's box after a week, you're going to find either a live cat or a smelly piece of meat. You can say that the cat looks as if it were dead or as if it were alive during the whole week. Likewise, when we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago."
I don't know if it's Linde misunderstanding Schrdinger or Schrdinger misunderstanding CSI but the fact is that we can determine an approximate time of death from present-day observations.
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It's one thing to say that an observer effects the observation - e.g. inserting a thermometer changes the temperature of both the thermometer and the sample. It's another thing entirely to say that the quantities don't exist until measured.
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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.
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 Message 45 by cavediver, posted 07-18-2010 4:29 PM ringo has replied
  
ringo
Member (Idle past 443 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005

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Message 46 of 62 (568880)
07-18-2010 4:46 PM 		Reply to: Message 45 by cavediver
07-18-2010 4:29 PM

cavediver writes:
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Position and momentum as such don't exist until measured - they simply aren't "things" that "exist" - they are answers to questions that are asked.
Maybe "quantities" wasn't the best choice of words since it does imply measurement. Would "properties" be better?
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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I\'m back where I started.
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 Message 45 by cavediver, posted 07-18-2010 4:29 PM cavediver has not replied
  
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