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Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

newscientist.com

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#11
post #7

... and science starts to come round to a metaphysics that was at the root of taoism and hinduism thousands of years ago. Materialism was, and continues to be, a mistake.

or physics is broken.

so we should be more willing to hold onto materialism than science?

Or are you suggesting that quantum mechanics is a bad model?

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#13
post #7

... and science starts to come round to a metaphysics that was at the root of taoism and hinduism thousands of years ago. Materialism was, and continues to be, a mistake.

or physics is broken.

Or physics is perfectly fine, and so is materialism.

Quantum weirdness, remember, is defined by physics. It's tested by physics. And it's perfectly compatible with materialism. The problem is in people's understanding.

Full disclosure - I'm no subscribing to finish reading the article. But what it sounds like is "if we change our philosophy to match physics, physics is easy". Quantum physics has always made sense. The only issue was that it wasn't intuitive.

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#14
post #2

Way back in 1781 Immanuel Kant discussed this (without considering quantum implications, obviously) in "Critique of Pure Reason". He coined the term "noumenon" to describe a thing as it is, not as it is perceived.

And Plato before him had his cave.

For a while now, I’ve been intrigued by the possibility of literally unthinkable thoughts; something that is outside the capacity of human neural architecture in the way that HTML is outside [0] the capacity of RegEx?

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying taoism's longevity comes from the application of superior models of physics?

I'm saying that it's funny how we're coming back round to something that used to be accepted. That makes materialism the abberation, not idealism. This is metaphysics, not physics. Physics is a set of models about what should happen in response to specific events (modelling cause and effect); metaphysics is about trying to understand the nature of reality.

Even people coming up with stories about greek gods were "about trying to understand the nature of reality.". That phrase is far too vague to be usefull

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that it's funny how we're coming back round to something that used to be accepted. That makes materialism the abberation, not idealism. This is metaphysics, not physics. Physics is a set of models about what should happen in response to specific events (modelling cause and effect); metaphysics is about trying to understand the nature of reality.

Even people coming up with stories about greek gods were "about trying to understand the nature of reality.". That phrase is far too vague to be usefull

sure, but I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough to explain metaphysics in a short form. Perhaps I should just link to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#19
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or physics is broken.

Or physics is perfectly fine, and so is materialism. Quantum weirdness, remember, is defined by physics. It's tested by physics. And it's perfectly compatible with materialism. The problem is in people's understanding. Full disclosure - I'm no subscribing to finish reading the article. But what it sounds like is "if we change our philosophy to match physics, physics is easy". Quantum physics has always made sense. Th…

I kinda agree with this, one thing I'd add is that what is "intuitive" is what matches our intuition, honed over millions of years to...survive wild animal attacks, throw spears accurately and not fall out of trees.

There isn't really any reason to expect physics to match our intuition, when our intuition isn't built for dealing with the sorts of things modern physics deals with.

Re: Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist

#20
I can only see the introduction, but it already shows some confused thinking.

Whether something exists, and whether you call it X only because there are humans who call it X, those are two different things. On a planet without humans, stones exists, but no one is there to call them "stones". So they don't really exist, is that what the article is trying to tell me?

Also, the stones do not exist, because only atoms exist, mwa-ha-ha-ha! Or maybe just someone equivocates "exists" and "is not made of smaller components".

The example with red color, again confuses "this object reflects red light" with "there is an eye that perceives the reflected red light". Also, good point that things can't reflect red light if they are in complete darkness.

Does anything of the above have anything in common with quantum physics?

Would adding quantum physics to this confused thinking make it any more meaningful?

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