Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

newscientist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 61 posts

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

#41

Post by meowface »

beaconstudios wrote: post #6

... 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.

Is the "everything is quantum entanglement" theory proposed here really incompatible with materialism? Additionally, is "materialism" perhaps just an overloaded term with no strict definition?

It alters how we think about the fundamental makeup of matter, but it's still a way of describing a material universe that obeys some laws of physics, with no implication of things sometimes associated with non-materialism (dualism, panpsychism, afterlife).

Quantum mechanics already significantly shook up how we thought about matter. Our conception of matter fundamentally being some kind of relation coefficient of information is weird, but still wouldn't be as surprising and paradigm-breaking as, say, some sort of reality where everything is consciousness, a la Donald Hoffman.

It could still be a natural world full of emergent phenomena such as consciousness. Maybe "naturalism" is a term I'd be more philosophically comfortable with for these sorts of discussions.

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

#42

Post by rafaelvasco »

beaconstudios wrote: post #6

... 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.

Not a mistake. But merely something incomplete. Consciousness is the Way.

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

#43

Post by rafaelvasco »

zackees wrote: post #7
beaconstudios wrote: post #6

... 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.

It will always be. Science is by definition always incomplete. Once you know how Everything in the Universe works, you already transcended Science and became a God.

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

#44

Post by sandworm101 »

I see a big red flag whenever a scientific unknown results in scientists questioning the nature of reality. Once upon a time we didn't know how the sun could stay to bright for so long. Some people resorted to the supernatural for explanations. They were wrong (nuclear fusion). Today we cannot understand the movement of particles. Some now question the nature of reality while other debate whether reality even exists without a conscious mind to see it. I take a step back when the scientists resort to the language of philosophers and theologians. Reality is almost certainly more mundane. In decades/centuries to come, when we figure out what is actually happening, those who compared quarks to trees falling in unseen woods might look like the people who saw the hot sun as proof of the supernatural.

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

#45

Post by beaconstudios »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #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 ex…

the point is that what we call distinct objects are not inherently distinct - it is us that draw the distinctions. Also, that our labels for things are not labels of identity, but labels of function/purpose - if I point at an object and call it a "chair", what I am saying is that it can be sat on, not that "chair" summarises its inherent characteristics.

The point being that base reality is not accessible to us, only our perceptions and interpretations of reality. We have no way of knowing what the reality is beyond our perceptions.

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

#46

Post by beaconstudios »

vehemenz wrote: post #39
Viliam1234 wrote: post #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 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 quantu…

This is interesting, does Rovelli lay these ideas out in a book? The idea that quantum mechanics are based in causality but not realism aligns closely with my own metaphysical beliefs based in an interpretation of idealism from a cybernetic (study of nonlinear causality) perspective. It would be interesting to hear his case.

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

#47

Post by marcusKral »

When we think that something is weird, it's just us that are looking at it incorrectly. Quantum phenomenon make perfect sense once you accept that everything is just information, including space and time. So objects do exist, but only as collections of information which we then experience internally as "reality"... a little like simulation theory. We are essentially part of a cognitive field.

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

#48

Post by vehemenz »

beaconstudios wrote: post #46
vehemenz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quantu…

This is interesting, does Rovelli lay these ideas out in a book? The idea that quantum mechanics are based in causality but not realism aligns closely with my own metaphysical beliefs based in an interpretation of idealism from a cybernetic (study of nonlinear causality) perspective. It would be interesting to hear his case.

The idea of RQM was a originally a paper by Rovelli. It is one of the major interpretations of quantum mechanics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_quantum_mechanics

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-relational/

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

#49

Post by slibhb »

beaconstudios wrote: post #46
vehemenz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quantu…

This is interesting, does Rovelli lay these ideas out in a book? The idea that quantum mechanics are based in causality but not realism aligns closely with my own metaphysical beliefs based in an interpretation of idealism from a cybernetic (study of nonlinear causality) perspective. It would be interesting to hear his case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helgoland_(book)

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

#50

Post by beaconstudios »

meowface wrote: post #41
beaconstudios wrote: post #6

... 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.

Is the "everything is quantum entanglement" theory proposed here really incompatible with materialism? Additionally, is "materialism" perhaps just an overloaded term with no strict definition? It alters how we think about the fundamental makeup of matter, but it's still a way of describing a material universe that obeys some laws of physics, with no implication of things sometimes associated with non-materialism (dua…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

Materialism in this case just means that we have access to objective reality. Idealism is not necessarily supernatural, but it does claim that we do not have access to objective reality beyond our perception and interpretation.

The definition of "matter" keeps shrinking the closer we look. It seems that we can never truly know what reality is made of at its lowest levels, and all we have is essentially our own subjective interpretations of what we perceive.

> It could still be a natural world full of emergent phenomena such as consciousness. Maybe "naturalism" is a term I'd be more philosophically comfortable with for these sorts of discussions.

Naturalism is just the idea that there is no supernatural process at work. I'm not talking about naturalism.

Post reply on HN