Is Academia Incompatible With A High Consciousness Life?

[Elisabeth]

 

@SOUL I'm calling you out on spreading confusion (and not knowing it). I'll continue a bit, but ... I mean all this kindly, ok? The discussion is inspirative to me, I'm thinking about the meaning of physical and non-physical now.

So your new post, it's still very confusing. 

9 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Elisabeth Firstly they call individual photons quanta, so I guess more than one photon would be called quantum. 

1

Quantum is the singular, so one quantum of energy, two quanta of ch arge etc. (And the "qantum" in quantum physics/mechanics is used as an adjective, as far as I can say with my limited English literacy.) Notice that I speak about quanta of something. A quantum is basically a small chunk with defined size, or the smallest step. It is often left to context and not specified what quanta are we talking about, but a quantum doesn't automatically mean a photon. 

9 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Elisabeth Although quantum mechanics is a completely different set of phenomena and quantum physics is the physics built upon the effects from quantum mechanics which break the rules of classic physics.

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I simply do not understand. A different set of phenomena from what? 

I'd say quantum mechanics is a subset of quantum theory or quantum physics, and forgive me if I've used them interchangeably. If you want to go with quantum physics = the phenomena not described by classical (19.century) theories, I can go with that. 

9 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Elisabeth if I were to address the words you chose to characterize my point starting with mysterious I would have to agree because quantum mechanics are mysterious and from what they work are still a mystery.

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I guess being mysterious is subjective. 

For me, the concepts of "force" or "energy" (not to mention "entropy") taught in basic high school classes are just as mysterious as the concept of the wavefunction. Hence, much of the quantum phenomena are described just as well as the motion of a mass points and just as mysterious. 

I guess what happens during the process of measurement could maybe called mysterious, or just counterintuitive and not well understood.

9 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Elisabeth Finally we come to me saying quantum mechanics are not physical meaning not of classic physics. The reason I say that is because what we call quantum mechanics are really just the effects that we see in the observable universe of classic physics of it's influence since we cannot actually observe what it is that causes the effects of quantum mechanics.

3

I'm still not sure what you want to say, and likely disagree on many levels.

First, I think "non physical" is really a term generating confusion. When Leo talks about non physical phenomena he's probably not talking about quantum mechanics. 

There are phenomena which are really only described by quantum mechanics and are perfectly observable. Take the double-slitt experiment. The interference pattern you see is predicted by QM, and it's mathematics is quite clear. If you insist that there is something "nonphysical" happening as the photons pass through the slits and interfere, well, that's an interpretation. 

I don't think there is something to be discovered which is "causing" the effects of quantum mechanics. I mean, yes, there can be a deeper description - but, then what causes these deeper phenomena? Can you see the infinite regress?

9 hours ago, SOUL said:

@Elisabeth  We don't even have a math that can explain what causes the effects, only a math that explains the effects in the observable universe of classic physics.

 

Of course we can only have math/physics theories that describe observable effects. We can't get deeper by making (mathematical, or any other) concepts. Quantum physics is still physics with all it's limitations. Does that clear up my point a little?

Now, I may be wrong on this one, but from the little I've learned about Penrose and Bohm they were pointed out here, they are very different. 

Penrose is trying to find the origin of consciousness in the brain. He's basically trying to explain with quantum mechanics why we feel self-aware. Maybe they'll even succeed one day, but they are staying within the scope of science. If Leo is to be believed on how reality works, they are going to fail at grasping it. 

Bohm is a real mystic. The ideas behind quantum theory inspire him to see that reality is really fucking weird. (Of course he also tried to take it the other way, but his mathematics seems to be at least partly debunked.) Kind of like Leo uses the ideas of epistemology or mathematical theories of infinity, or like Christian mystics contemplated God. They are not it , but they point the mind into some direction. He might have been going in the direction of enlightenment (or maybe he got lost in conceptual land, I totally don't know). I do believe you can use quantum mechanics in this way, especially if you are an experienced user and thinker. 

Sorry for the length people. We seem to have hijacked the original topic a little, I hope username doesn't mind. 

Edited August 16, 2017 by Elisabeth

[SOUL]

@Elisabeth My apologies for swapping the singular and plural but that doesn't constitute the basis of the confusion you claim I am bringing, in fact you don't attribute it to that so I will move on from it.

Quantum physics, quantum theory and quantum mechanics all come from the phenomena that violate the laws of classic physics and those effects obviously happen in the physical world otherwise they wouldn't be observed. Those physics, theory and mechanics fields of study come from the effects observed in physical world but the source of these effects are not the same classic physics those effects violate and the fields of study on those effects aren't a study of the source of those effects, just the study of those effects as observed in the physical world.

Until we can account for the mechanisms that cause the phenomenal effects we cannot include them in the "observable" category of the known universe. The source of these effects are still quite mysterious and unknown, we just know of the effects in the observable universe from it. This is why I said it isn't physical and what I am referring to is the source of the effects, just to clarify, maybe sub physical could be a phrase used instead. Either way, the fields of study that have sprung up around the discovery of these phenomena explain the effects of them in the physical world and is not the same as explaining the source of the effects itself.

I googled "physical" out of curiosity and in the initial return listed from wikipedia it says, "Physical property, any aspect of an object or substance that can be measured or perceived without changing its identity." What's interesting is that according to this definition the double slit experiment shows something non physical since a photon changes it's identity from a wave to a particle depending on whether it is measured or perceived, aka observed. I'm not saying this is proof of anything but it's kinda funny nonetheless. Also, can we observe dark matter or dark energy? Do we have math in theoretical physics that accounts for them?

I don't know what Leo says about it, I didn't bring him up so if you want to discuss what he says or thinks about it find someone who knows about that... like possibly Leo himself. I think you are creating the "confusion" by your responses to my initial comment all stemming from a single phrase, "isn't physical", which I defined right away as not adhering to classic physics. No matter how you attempt to spin my comment into what it appears you want to argue, it wasn't anything more than just that.

I will repeat the point of my initial reply which was on the thread topic, the tenuous relationship between academia and "high consciousness" is the result of an ideological war over the "right answers". This seems to be inhibiting discovery about consciousness since the scientific community only wants the answer to be reduced to materialistic terms. Yet, there's more and more evidence to support that consciousness has effects associated with quantum phenomena and we are well aware the source of those effects are still as mysterious as the day we discovered them so this is problematic for them.

It becomes increasingly noticeable when advancement in understanding our world and ourselves is hindered because people want their answer to be right, not the right answer to be known because of an ideological dispute.

Edited August 16, 2017 by SOUL

[Elisabeth]

@SOUL Thanks for discussing, I'm out now. Our frameworks seem so different that we're missing each other completely.

[Guest username]

@Elisabeth @SOUL Just for some background, how did you guys learn about quantum physics? Elisabeth studied it formally as a grad student (in progress?), but what about you, soul? Schooling? Autodidact?