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

newscientist.com

31–40 of 61 posts

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

#31

The most interesting thing, to me, is that if you abandon materialism, what does it say about Consciousness? Consciousness can't come from material if it doesn't really exist. So is material "created" by Consciousness?

Consciousness is not a material phenomenon anyways. To me it seems plausible that consciousness and matter are produced by the same code.

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

#32

The most interesting thing, to me, is that if you abandon materialism, what does it say about Consciousness? Consciousness can't come from material if it doesn't really exist. So is material "created" by Consciousness?

People have proposed the idea that consciousness is the building block of the universe and not matter. See Itzhak Bentovs book Stalking The Wild Pendulum.

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

#33

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 ex…

What about Dirac's words ~ there being a fundamental size where any experiment will disturb the subject non negligibly, thus science can never speak causally prior to quantum measurements.

This has little to do with humans. The photon is irreducible yet is our (anyone's) smallest investigative tool.

Would you ever modify the meaning of exits in this context? The planet with rocks could be traveled to by something physical. In QM, the causal relation is broken due to measurement by any physical object we know of, down to fundamental particles.

If there is no physical setup -> it does not exist. Right?

Or maybe Popper is 100% wrong?

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

#34

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 ex…

What I'm gathering from the introduction of the article is all properties are emergent behaviors that are particular to the observer. In the case of the stone, the atoms in the stone, observe and interact with each other, the atoms themselves come it being because of on the interaction of their subatomic particles.

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

#35
I have been wondering lately if it is possible that humans may have a quantum signature that they leave behind on everything they touch and that it may be possible to detect that signature. I was imagining a technology that could isolate the signatures and identify the person who hand sewed my shoes, for example.

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

#36
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.

Doesn't Kant then go on to explain, in which phenomenal objects are said to conform to the mind of the subject and, in turn, become products of human cognition.

(Kantian noumena) of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects. The article, as it appears, all relations, including those between nonhumans, distort their related objects in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal footing with one another.

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

#38

The most interesting thing, to me, is that if you abandon materialism, what does it say about Consciousness? Consciousness can't come from material if it doesn't really exist. So is material "created" by Consciousness?

Check out nonduality. It’s amusing that we insist that consciousness, which we experience firsthand, must be created by matter, which we experience indirectly. The image creating the screen.

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

#39

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 ex…

I don't see any confused thinking here.

This is not run-of-the-mill ontological reductionism; this is a rejection of ontological realism, which nearly everyone takes for granted (including you, from the sound of it), but many philosophers do not.

The connection between ontological anti-realism and relational quantum mechanics (Rovelli's brainchild) is pretty straightforward. I think Rovelli is arguing that the quantum measurement problem is only a problem if we assert things ontologically, in terms of what's exactly here and there, rather than an expression of a relation between the measuring device and the system.

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

#40

The most interesting thing, to me, is that if you abandon materialism, what does it say about Consciousness? Consciousness can't come from material if it doesn't really exist. So is material "created" by Consciousness?

Yes. The only way to solve the riddle is to accept that everything comes from Consciousness.
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