Does Reality Exist?

[Jon]

Ah, yes, you don't have to name that thread. I admire your tenacity in that cause, and it tells me you have a quixotic streak in you, but at my age in life I no longer share it. Perhaps twenty years ago...

(LOL)

 

[Madned]

(LOL)

 

 

 

Previously it has been impossible to photograph electrons since their extremely high velocities have produced blurry pictures. In order to capture these rapid events, extremely short flashes of light are necessary, but such flashes were not previously available. With the use of a newly developed technology for generating short pulses from intense laser light, so-called attosecond pulses, scientists at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden have managed to capture the electron motion for the first time.

 

Jon thought you would like this.

[Jon]

Madned, that certainly is interesting. Were any images published or is there a link?

 

I'm not sure if it is the same research institute but I recall seeing some years ago an image which was said to be the first time that Electrons had been seen, and drew attention to their unexpected appearance. We've been brought up on a model of atoms resembling orderly little 'planetary' systems with Electrons orbiting as little spheres. The graphic showed a quite different appearance. In 'false-colour' they resembled fuzzy kind of oval shapes but not perfectly regular ... some rather like they were spongy and distorted by collisions or by squeezing through gaps among them. They were fringed with rainbow borders and seemed to be squirming about the surface of the atom in a more chaotic manner than the popularly held expectation. More like a seething of Amoebas.

 

I'd love to see an image of the latest observations.

 

(later):

 

I've found something!

 

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_rel..._the_first_time

 

 

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

After a hiatus, I've returned. I found articles on some things I mentioned earlier, here are the links:

 

When Branes Collide

 

Light can break its own speed limit, researchers say

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

That is a new one for me tachyon drive I will have to look it up. Seems to fly in the face of old Einstein and the speed of light being an absolute. And to approach it would require all the energy of the known universe to propel a craft to that speed.

 

 

Madned, actually we now know the speed of light is not an absolute barrier, I posted a link elsewhere to an article about that. However, a tachyon drive completely bypasses the issue you describe, the amount of energy required to reach the speed of light. With a tachyon drive, you effectively blink out of reality as we know it, and may operate independently of it. So the tachyon drive becomes like a hall of doors, where as you enter one door, you instantaneously exit another.

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

A young father fresh out of University with a head-ful of Philosophy and Psychology lectures, I knew exactly what all those dots meant.

 

Jon, somehow I'm not surprised you studied philosophy and psychology. There must be something about those two topics that make them go together, a friend of mine has a BS in Philosophy, an MS in Psychology, and her PhD in Comparative Religion. She was an atheist most of her life, but in her sixties became a Christian. Do you think she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up?

 

Here was my little Princess symbolizing on paper a world rich in childhood fantasy, populated by fairytales and fabulous creatures. Every dot had a deep significance to her imaginary narrative.

 

I chuckled when I read this, children do have a rather down-to-earth approach at times. I have none of my own (nor do I want any!), but some of my friends do, so I've observed firsthand what you're describing.

 

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

(LOL)

 

 

Just remember Goethe's statement my heroic friend, against stupidity, even the gods labor in vain. Then again, perhaps that is just the cynicism of my age speaking.

 

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

Jon, a while ago you asked whether it made a difference as to who or what was observing a phenomenon, I did some research, and it does appear that the observer can make a difference, i.e., two people see different things, so they influence what is being observed in different ways. Thus a janitor observing something would likely have a different effect than a physicist observing the same phenomenon. I found an interesting article on this subject:

 

Is the moon there when nobody looks?

 

From a philosophical and intuitive standpoint, this idea of bending reality or even creating a reality simply by observing it doesn't make much sense to most people. Quantum physics has left many scientists, like Einstein, scratching their heads and skeptical. Yet often our intuition fails us, for example, in mathematics, there is a thing called different orders of infinity. I.e., some infinities are larger than others, and while I've heard laymen dismiss such a notion as nonsense, mathematicians can demonstrate it quite rigorously.

[Jon]

That's a MEATY article, AER! I should have found my way to it at a more modest hour of night! (LOL)

 

I look forward to reading the rest of it ASAP. For now, I'm coming to a tentative conclusion that Reality may exist in (at least) two versions: for want of more elegant terms, as Virtual reality and as 'hardcopy'. Whether either is capable of existing independently of the other is what much of the controversy seems to be about. To complicate things, already most exponents at the cutting edge of Physics seem to concede that the Laws of Physics appear to undergo radical change at the scale of the "very small". The macro world would (in my inept parlance) seem to correspond to 'hardcopy', whereas the world of the very small behaves more like mutable signals recorded on mutable media ... or no media.

 

An interesting question that this proposition immediately thrusts into my button-down mind is: at what scale of size does a switch-over occur ( assuming there is one ) between Hardcopy existence, and virtual existence characteristic of the quantum realm? When one considers that the macro world consists in vast varieties of components configured in vast numbers of ways, we have 'complexity'. The further down the size-scale we go, the less opportunity there is for variety of structure, but this may instead usher in greater opportunity for complexity of behavior rather than of structure. We end up with more 'uniform' particles free to swirl about in less uniform ways.

 

And that's just particles ... before we even begin to consider forces that come into play.

 

All fascinating! (LOL)

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

That's a MEATY article, AER! I should have found my way to it at a more modest hour of night! (LOL)

 

I look forward to reading the rest of it ASAP.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it. It took me a while to wade through it, the concepts go pretty deep, or as Morpheus asked Neo, do you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

 

For now, I'm coming to a tentative conclusion that Reality may exist in (at least) two versions: for want of more elegant terms, as Virtual reality and as 'hardcopy'. Whether either is capable of existing independently of the other is what much of the controversy seems to be about.

 

It sounds like you're talking about Plato's Forms, or a similar concept. I agree, the question is whether or not the virtual reality and hardcopy reality can exist independently of each other.

 

An interesting question that this proposition immediately thrusts into my button-down mind is: at what scale of size does a switch-over occur ( assuming there is one ) between Hardcopy existence, and virtual existence characteristic of the quantum realm? When one considers that the macro world consists in vast varieties of components configured in vast numbers of ways, we have 'complexity'. The further down the size-scale we go, the less opportunity there is for variety of structure, but this may instead usher in greater opportunity for complexity of behavior rather than of structure. We end up with more 'uniform' particles free to swirl about in less uniform ways.

 

Well, what is popularly termed Chaos Theory (but within mathematics it is called Dynamical Systems) attempts to address some of what you're referring to. Until the advent of modern computers, it was impossible to really explore some of these concepts, but now we have an extension of our brains available that allow us to see into realms previously unexplored.

 

All fascinating! (LOL)

 

I figured you would get a kick out of that article. I enjoyed it too, and just for the fun of it, I'm adding links to other articles here, that while they aren't strictly on-topic, nonetheless illustrate the changing face of science:

 

Planet-hunters set for big bounty

 

The Milky Way is twice the size we thought it was

 

Anyway, let me know when you're done reading the entire article, I'm curious as to your thoughts.

[Jon]

Some interesting reading ahead. Thanks AER. Curiously, until about a fortnight ago I had never come across Plato's "Forms", and even then only in relationship to Venn Diagrams (which I am more at home with from study of Logic). Looks like I've got some catching up to do.(lol)

 

Meanwhile, a digression: The time I spent studying Philosophy produced few 'answers' to anything. Nor was it expected to. The classic questions have been tackled since the Ancient Greeks at least, and a few thousand years have served only to confirm that some things still do not resolve into answers as such.

 

I have concluded that the main virtue of Philosophy is not in the destination, but in the journey. If successful it instills not what to think, but HOW to think. Great training for above all: "mental discipline" ... how to reconcile Divergent and Convergent thinking, with a bonus of cutting through b*llsh*t.

 

Things can get complex enough without leaving ambiguities lying about, so thoroughness of expression, even if painstaking, is vital ... no room for sloppiness.

 

The Universe could pivot on a typo.

 

This need for precision can impose constraints on use of language, often sacrificing 'elegance' for clunky utility ... the anathema of Poets.

 

When things get really deep I still retain a tendency to fall back on such linguisms.(lol).

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

Some interesting reading ahead. Thanks AER. Curiously, until about a fortnight ago I had never come across Plato's "Forms", and even then only in relationship to Venn Diagrams (which I am more at home with from study of Logic). Looks like I've got some catching up to do.(lol)

 

A good friend of mine is a Platonist philosopher, so I hear quite a bit about Plato and Plato's Forms from her. I had taken one overview course in philosophy while in college, but I'm not that well read up on the subject, and did not go into any depth on Plato's Forms there. I find Plato's Forms very interesting as it suggests there is a sort of meta-reality that transcends the physical reality we observe. And I think that is akin your concept of a virtual reality vs. a hardcopy reality.

 

I see you've studied logic, I wasn't aware Venn Diagrams could be introduced in that sort of course. I had taken two logic courses in a philosophy department (one dealing with scientific evidence and reason, very fascinating subject, and that is where I was introduced to Occam's Razor), but unfortunately they never discussed the use of Venn Diagrams in logic.

 

Meanwhile, a digression: The time I spent studying Philosophy produced few 'answers' to anything. Nor was it expected to. The classic questions have been tackled since the Ancient Greeks at least, and a few thousand years have served only to confirm that some things still do not resolve into answers as such.

 

Agreed, in fact, when I read some of the Socratic dialogs, they never really proved anything, but rather Socrates challenged people to think about what they took for granted. And he helped lay some ground rules for logical discourse, I saw that in action when I served on a jury years ago.

 

I have concluded that the main virtue of Philosophy is not in the destination, but in the journey.

 

A friend of mine would like that, she puts an expression of that sort in her e-mail signature.

 

If successful it instills not what to think, but HOW to think. Great training for above all: "mental discipline" ... how to reconcile Divergent and Convergent thinking, with a bonus of cutting through b*llsh*t.

 

Unfortunately many people don't seem to like using their gray matter. What you're referring to in cutting through nonsense sounds similar to a principle applied by Scotland Yard, they call it looking for the essential clue. Find the key thread in any situation, and follow it, that will take you to the answer.

 

Often understanding the problem is the most difficult part of solving it. I have found that many problems were quite simple once they were clearly understood, but achieving that understanding requires slicing through what the military refers to as the fog of war. That part isn't always easy. Especially if one is surrounded by people who don't grasp that concept, and they simply fly off in all directions until they find one that doesn't have a brick wall at the end.

 

Things can get complex enough without leaving ambiguities lying about, so thoroughness of expression, even if painstaking, is vital ... no room for sloppiness.

 

The Universe could pivot on a typo.

 

This need for precision can impose constraints on use of language, often sacrificing 'elegance' for clunky utility ... the anathema of Poets.

 

As a mathematician, I can fully empathize with your sentiments. I personally greatly value both brevity and precision of thought. Indeed mathematics itself is language compressed. One of the interesting challenges of AI (Artificial Intelligence) research has been how does one represent knowledge to a computer? And how that knowledge is represented is critical as to its usability, a cumbersome, sloppy approach will result in relatively useless information. Just think how far we would get if we had to calculate the trajectories of deep space satellites using English sentences as opposed to mathematical equations.

 

You'd be interested to know mathematics has established (via Chaos Theory) your point re: the Universe could pivot on a typo. In the 1960s, a scientist was running a weather simulation on a computer, for some reason he had to stop it at some point (I think the computer crashed), and restart the simulation picking up at a point some days earlier. He truncated one of the numbers from the restart point, and the truncation took place at something like the thousandths place, quite small. Well, after a few days, he had a radically different result from the original simulation. All it took was the little initial change in starting values to produce an entirely different result.

 

From a practical standpoint, technical computing has to deal with this challenge all the time, and people writing mathematical software must exercise great caution that a minute error at the beginning of a long, complex chain of calculations doesn't completely screw up the end result. Chaos Theory explores this phenomenon, and codifies it.

 

When things get really deep I still retain a tendency to fall back on such linguisms.(lol).

 

You have a more poetic touch my friend. I tend more toward prosaic ways of putting things.

 

I wouldn't call any of this off-topic though, if we're going to discuss the nature of reality, then we need some tools with which to proceed. Consider Abraham Lincoln's statement: ""If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe."

 

I found a fascinating article on the New Yorker site about Kurt Godel, which discusses his work on the incompleteness of axiomatic systems, as well as his proof, using Relativity, that time is a mere illusion (if you're short on time, see page 4 of the article for that part):

 

TIME BANDITS

 

From what I've read, Godel's proof that time itself is illusory is something that is rarely discussed in either philosophy or physics, I suspect in part because people find it disturbing. It utterly shatters our notions of what reality is, for to us, time is part of physical reality. Yet Godel says (to borrow one of your words) our notion of time is hogwash. It is actually an artifact of the limitations of our human senses. So in effect, it appears we're creating a time-based reality by the very act of our observing it.

 

Now, if something like time itself is a mere illusion, then, perhaps that suggests there is an indeed an underlying reality which we do not yet perceive. I believe that fits with your notion of a virtual reality, and what we see is an imperfect hardcopy version. Anyway, it's an interesting thought to munch on. And now I have to get to bed, we're moving forward an hour here in the US.

[Jon]

AER, I'll pick up on one issue for now and get back to the many others ASAP.

 

The question of language is a very real one. Even striving for rigidly disciplined standards of expression to represent elusive Scientific concepts can lead us astray and limit progress. The reason, as is well delineated in a recent New Scientist article is that whereas our experience shapes our language, our language also shapes our experience and can blind us to some ways of looking at Reality. An incestuous 'vicious circle' sets in between perception and language that can forever exclude insights that may lie outside that circle. The structure of noun-based languages like English can give rise to quite different perceptions than from verb-based languages.

 

This is never more so than in Quantum Physics.

 

Even when Einstein was still with us, he and his colleagues knew that they were constrained by language when discussing Quantum Physics. Some researchers are now turning to quite different cultural languages hoping for a breakthrough to revitalize Quantum Physics that has reached a bit of an impasse at present. This search includes study of some native American languages such as Blackfoot, Micmac and Ojibwa that seem to focus on the flux of a situation rather than on the objects performing within that flux. Some might describe it as a more 'global' experience of Reality. Events at the Quantum level seem to be more of that nature and if we can get our westernized brains around such an alien concept it is hoped that our pattern of thought might admit entry to understandings that so far are locked out by the prejudicing effect that words themselves can have on ideas.

 

Anyhow, the article is linked below, but I apologize for the fact that it is incomplete because it is on a subscribe-to-view-all system. I do not subscribe because I get the Hardcopy publication and anyway if I subscribed to every site that invites me to, I would have to sell my computer to finance them! (lol). You might want to make that decision for yourself. If not, LET ME KNOW;

I can scan the Hardcopy and post it here as a sequence of images. The link:

 

http://tinyurl.com/36qmuc

 

It is from the January 5, 2008 issue, NO: 2637 with a cover that looks like this:

if that helps in any way, perhaps where back copies are sold. It's fairly recent.

 

Well worth a read.

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

Jon, I'm afraid I've taken a bit longer than intended hiatus, but I'm back now. Part of my absence was due to a trip on the Rhine River, where I had the opportunity to do some reading.

 

The question of language is a very real one. Even striving for rigidly disciplined standards of expression to represent elusive Scientific concepts can lead us astray and limit progress. The reason, as is well delineated in a recent New Scientist article is that whereas our experience shapes our language, our language also shapes our experience and can blind us to some ways of looking at Reality. An incestuous 'vicious circle' sets in between perception and language that can forever exclude insights that may lie outside that circle. The structure of noun-based languages like English can give rise to quite different perceptions than from verb-based languages.

 

I don't have access to New Scientist, although perhaps I should buy it? I have heard about these issues, and attempts to find better ways of expressing some of the mind numbing ideas in quantum physics. I see they are tackling yet another sticky problem in their latest issue, the question of where did all the antimatter go.

 

Part of my reading were issues of Scientific American and Discover that discussed cosmological issues such as the apparently unending expansion of our universe. The reality for our distant descendants will be most unpleasant if the expansion of the universe continues unabated. Although Discover magazine had an article further exploring this idea of universes colliding, causing cosmic explosions such as the Big Bang. Interesting stuff.

 

Anyway, I need some time to collect my thoughts as to where we were. But for the moment, here is a fascinating article:

 

Science hopes to change events that have already occurred

 

In essence, according to quantum physics, it is possible for an observer in the future to alter events in the past. That is another amazing result, and again raises questions of what is reality?

[Billy the Kid]

Reaslity does exist, if you find it let me know so I can see for myself!

[Guest Ancient Evil Reborn]

Reaslity does exist, if you find it let me know so I can see for myself!

 

Now that is the challenge, how do you find it? Seriously, I can post an explanation of reality from a quantum physics perspective, but I would respectfully ask to be allowed to punt until I recover from jet lag. As I get older, I find transatlantic flights agree less with my system. Could be the reality shift of "time travel" is getting to be too much for me.

 

 

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