The Quantum World

[ChiefaRoo]

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[ChiefaRoo]

Don't any of you rock heads find this interesting?

[runnercyclist]

I gave it about 20 secs...it wasnt interesting.

That being said, I think I've played the golf course in the background in Scottsdale.

[ChiefaRoo]

I gave it about 20 secs...it wasnt interesting.

That being said, I think I've played the golf course in the background in Scottsdale.

It's just a clip. The entire movie is called What the 'bleep' do we know? It's an interesting documentary. Basically it says that reality can be shaped via observation and that all living things are observers.

[Buck]

Interesting

[Buck]

I gave it about 20 secs...it wasnt interesting.

That being said, I think I've played the golf course in the background in Scottsdale.

You should watch the whole thing.

[ChiefaRoo]

You should watch the whole thing.

The movie has been out for a couple of years. It's really thought provoking. Since KC is looking to have a bad year you might want to buy the DVD and check it out. It wasn't released commercially you have to buy it over the web.

[ChiefaRoo]

Here's the link.

http://www.whatthebleep.com/synopsis/

http://www.whatthebleep.com/whatthebleep/

[mcan]

There are two different versions of this movie out. The old theatrical release, and a new "quantum" version or something like that. The original is very thought provoking and most of the crazy stuff is thrown out at you in a very convincing and supposedly scientific way. The basic premise is that everything we know is wrong, and that humans (by the very act of existing) effect the physical world around them every second.

Basically, according to some Quantum Physicists, the basic building blocks of all matter exist in a quantum field, but not in the way that dishes exist in your cupbord. One particle can exist in multiple places until it becomes observed, at which point it SNAPS into existance in one specific location. Some have postulated that human consciousness acts in the universe as the "observer" that makes reality snap into place. Mystics and New Age gurus have latched onto this idea to justify a human-centric philosophy that we have a seemingly supernatural ability to actually create our own physical reality around us by the simple act of concentrating upon it.

The original version of the movie touches on these topics in a suedo documentary style. There is a fictional story about deaf photographer played by Marlie Matlin, but that story just illustrates some of the concepts that the people being interviewed are talking about. Overall, you are left with the impression that the movie just wants you to think about the "wacky" universe and not take too seriously what your science teacher showed you in school.

The newer version uses the same fictional storyline, but focuses much more on the seemingly supernatural elements of the original. The interviews are all new and more in depth. It becomes quite clear that most of the people in the movie are very New Age mystics who throw around a bit of quantum physics to justify their wacky beliefs. There are a few scientists in the movie though, and one in particular (whos full interview is on a bonus disc) slams the movie for making quantum physics a platform for mystics and new agers. His argument is that, these people might be right, but the physics doesn't justify their thought. He said that the whole idea that consciousness was "the observer" was only briefly discussed among serious scientists and that the idea was quickly abondoned universally.


Overall though, I really like the original movie and think that it's a great way to get people thinking and talking outside the box. There are several parts of the movie that I think make great points (even if they aren't actual science). The stuff about emotions I think is the most interesting.

[mcan]

This clip is from the NEW version. The old version has the double slit cartoon and has all the stuff on the basketball court, but the interviews are different and its in a completely different order.


You can see pretty clearly that most of these guys are using suedo-science and picking and choosing what they say so that they can sell a wacky belief system. The whole idea of thought time-traveling is rediculous and we know that there are two types of sensory response to pain: body AND brain. The body can "feel" pain quickly at the spine and send retreat signals back to a burned or punctured hand before the brain ever even gets the pain signal. There is no such thing as time travel you wackaloons.

[FAX]

Excellent posts, Mr. mcan.

But, I guess the, "there's no such thing as time travel" argument depends on how one defines "time".

FAX

[mcan]

Excellent posts, Mr. mcan.

But, I guess the, "there's no such thing as time travel" argument depends on how one defines "time".

FAX

Thanks. I love thinking about this stuff.

About time though, I don't think there are any "alternate" definitions for time. Time only exists as a man made construction. Apparently there are ways of making time "experience" relative by traveling at different speeds and at different altitudes, but there is no such thing as existing in the future or existing in the past or "traveling" from one to the other. We are all in the present all the time. Past is a memory concept, and future is an idea concept.

[FAX]

Thanks. I love thinking about this stuff.

About time though, I don't think there are any "alternate" definitions for time. Time only exists as a man made construction. Apparently there are ways of making time "experience" relative by traveling at different speeds and at different altitudes, but there is no such thing as existing in the future or existing in the past or "traveling" from one to the other. We are all in the present all the time. Past is a memory concept, and future is an idea concept.

Great post.

I'm sure you know that there are two, more or less, traditional ways to "consider" time, Mr. mcan. One is the Newtonian approach describing time as being like a container in which stuff exists. The other is "experiential" as you say.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if time had other fundamental qualities that are yet to be discovered and described. For example, if M-theory (or some variation) proves out, time might be more like an enormous, violent, tempestuous body of water than a string. Water that you could, in fact, traverse if you had the proper sort of conveyance. Einstein's view of an undilutable "space/time fabric" might be well off the mark, in that case. It's not impossible, you know. He was way off on a couple of other "matters".

Personally, I don't think you have to be a wackadoo to imagine such a thing. On the other hand, maybe you do. But, even so, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Not everyone can think outside the box like you, Mr. mcan. But, those who can have the obligation to do so, in my opinion.

FAX

[mcan]

Great post.

I'm sure you know that there are two, more or less, traditional ways to "consider" time, Mr. mcan. One is the Newtonian approach describing time as being like a container in which stuff exists. The other is "experiential" as you say.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if time had other fundamental qualities that are yet to be discovered and described. For example, if M-theory (or some variation) proves out, time might be more like an enormous, violent, tempestuous body of water than a string. Water that you could, in fact, traverse if you had the proper sort of conveyance. Einstein's view of an undilutable "space/time fabric" might be well off the mark, in that case. It's not impossible, you know. He was way off on a couple of other "matters".

Personally, I don't think you have to be a wackadoo to imagine such a thing. On the other hand, maybe you do. But, even so, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. Not everyone can think outside the box like you, Mr. mcan. But, those who can have the obligation to do so, in my opinion.

FAX


I've actually never studied "Newtonian" time, nor have I heard of M-Theory. Obviously I know about Newtonian Physics and gravity and all that macro stuff that the people in this movie seem to ignore or dispute or even laugh at indignantly. I do try hard not to be rigid in my world view and give any and all thought an equal opportunity to pass my bull-sh!t test. My intuition tells me, however, that since time is measured in units that are indistinguishable and undefinable except by movement, that really what we are measuring is movement. When we say someone runs a 4.4 second hundred meter dash, what we really mean is that person goes this distance in the same amount of "time" that a clock's second hand moves that distance. So, we can give the illusion of time travel by manipulating distances, but the "past" and the "future" are nothing but conceptual. In fact, the whole notion of "time" is just a simple way of conceptualizing a ratio of two movements. I secretly laugh inside every time I hear someone conceptualize time with some kind of linear structure.

[mcan]

I just wikipedia-ed time and read about what you were talking about. Turns out other people have had the same intuition that I had. (time isn't a line).

All that college and nobody ever said a damned thing to me about this, so here I was thinking that I was having an original thought. But whatever. Thanks for heads up on the philosophy Fax. And by the way, you can call me Mcan. Mr Mcan is my dad...

[FAX]

I've actually never studied "Newtonian" time, nor have I heard of M-Theory. Obviously I know about Newtonian Physics and gravity and all that macro stuff that the people in this movie seem to ignore or dispute or even laugh at indignantly. I do try hard not to be rigid in my world view and give any and all thought an equal opportunity to pass my bull-sh!t test. My intuition tells me, however, that since time is measured in units that are indistinguishable and undefinable except by movement, that really what we are measuring is movement. When we say someone runs a 4.4 second hundred meter dash, what we really mean is that person goes this distance in the same amount of "time" that a clock's second hand moves that distance. So, we can give the illusion of time travel by manipulating distances, but the "past" and the "future" are nothing but conceptual. In fact, the whole notion of "time" is just a simple way of conceptualizing a ratio of two movements. I secretly laugh inside every time I hear someone conceptualize time with some kind of linear structure.

"Newtonian" time is basically a method of thinking of time as a "container" which holds events and stuff, Mr. mcan. Nothing to it, really. But, when you describe your view that time is measured in "units" that is very much like Newtonian time. It's all based on our perception of change ... sun, moon, dick size, etc. As change occurs, we think of the events as being "contained" in a unit of time. I did that then. I'll do this next, etc.

As for M-Theory, this is not the thread to go into all that because Mr. Simplex3 will most likely steal all my ideas (read Beryllium Spheres) and make a whole new thread anyway. Nevertheless, the basic concept of time as a body of water might go something like this ...

Imagine a big water planet. Big oceans and lots of rivers, creeks, and streams and stuff. The water is time. The water is the same in all the lakes and rivers and so forth. The only difference is that some water is in one place and some water is in another. Now, imagine that there are giant beavers who are constantly building dams and tearing down dams and changing dams all over the planet. We will call these our "Time Beavers".

Whenever a Time Beaver changes the flow of water, time itself is modified ... it flows a different direction, or stops flowing, or becomes agitated and eddys are created. The Time Beaver bastards are hard at work making changes, because that's what they do. We live in one of the streams that just so happens to run fairly smoothly in a particular direction so we "perceive" and "observe" time as coming from somewhere, existing in the "now", and moving past us down the stream. As long as we don't have to face the horrible possibility of Time Beavers, that's all we know and all we care to know. Beware the Time Beavers.

FAX

[KC Jones]

The Movie was produced by a new age cult. The lady with the husky voice was actually channeling a warrior priest from 25,000 ago from the lost continent of Mu or some shit like that.

[mcan]

"Newtonian" time is basically a method of thinking of time as a "container" which holds events and stuff, Mr. mcan. Nothing to it, really. But, when you describe your view that time is measured in "units" that is very much like Newtonian time. It's all based on our perception of change ... sun, moon, dick size, etc. As change occurs, we think of the events as being "contained" in a unit of time. I did that then. I'll do this next, etc.

As for M-Theory, this is not the thread to go into all that because Mr. Simplex3 will most likely steal all my ideas (read Beryllium Spheres) and make a whole new thread anyway. Nevertheless, the basic concept of time as a body of water might go something like this ...

Imagine a big water planet. Big oceans and lots of rivers, creeks, and streams and stuff. The water is time. The water is the same in all the lakes and rivers and so forth. The only difference is that some water is in one place and some water is in another. Now, imagine that there are giant beavers who are constantly building dams and tearing down dams and changing dams all over the planet. We will call these our "Time Beavers".

Whenever a Time Beaver changes the flow of water, time itself is modified ... it flows a different direction, or stops flowing, or becomes agitated and eddys are created. The Time Beaver bastards are hard at work making changes, because that's what they do. We live in one of the streams that just so happens to run fairly smoothly in a particular direction so we "perceive" and "observe" time as coming from somewhere, existing in the "now", and moving past us down the stream. As long as we don't have to face the horrible possibility of Time Beavers, that's all we know and all we care to know. Beware the Time Beavers.

FAX


The Wiki I just read about Newtonian time explained it a bit differently, but I think I get it. (they said that Newton saw time the same way we think of it on a timeline) Events are "contained" between a beginning and an hypothetical end and are infinately divisable much like space is infinately divisable on a line. But he saw "real" time as very much an entitity that all events had to pass through flowing from the future through the present and funneling into the past.

My personal belief is that this is an illusion at best, and is just plain stupidity at worst. That's how film works... Not life.

As for the Beaver analogy. The idea that there are more dimensions to ANYTHING, whether it be space or time is interesting for sure. It's tough to take thought like that out of the conceptual (spiritual?) and into the practical though. Basically, it could never be a valid theory because it's not falsifiable. You'ld just have to wait for some revalation to come along and prove it.

[mcan]

The Movie was produced by a new age cult. The lady with the husky voice was actually channeling a warrior priest from 25,000 ago from the lost continent of Mu or some shit like that.


Not really produced by those people. It was concieved, and put together, and funded by three different people who were interested in finding out more about these wacky aspects to science... You're right though, that lady is out there. In the movie, they don't show her talking about her invisible friend, but she comes off as spooky and just taking herself a bit too seriously. But then you watch the full interview on the disc, and about 2/3s of all of those guys come off as crazy people with a new age religion to sell me.

BUT! Even those people do have a few cool thoughts bouncing around in there, and the other 1/3 are great to listen to.

[tiptap]

The observer in Quantum theory is NOT an intelligence that directs existence. And to borrow from the water analogy from Fax, time does flow and you might get back eddies, when time runs backward. And at very small scale this is more likely to find volumes that this is the case. And the wave characteristics of matter is not found in intensity but is related to the wavelength. The observer was the interception of the wave function and asking for information such as which slit the particle went through. One had set up an experiment that ascertained by collapsing the wave function for its position. Not the scientist that set up the experiment.

As far as the example given between the cortical and finger stimulus example, most brain response to stimuli is cascaded and a single stimulus at the brain does not duplicate the input from the nerve stimulus in the finger.

[Groves]

Get ye to a video store and rent this: PRIMER

[ChiefaRoo]

My God there are some intelligent and thoughtful people on this board. I knew it! Good read fellas (even you tip toe).

[Extra Point]

Dr. Quantum's no Trip Fisk!!!!