Criticism of the Quantum Mechanics Video I found on reddit

[Dragallur]

@Dino D See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1/2_%2B_1/4_%2B_1/8_%2B_1/16_%2B_⋯

[Dino D]

2 minutes ago, Dragallur said:

@Dino D See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1/2_%2B_1/4_%2B_1/8_%2B_1/16_%2B_⋯

Great, i get it, very interesting, but now thats a higer level of mathematic for me to understand it really or to have any debate...  especially when applying such stuff to what we call ,,reality" or do I now have infinite number of fingers and lifes where I have infinite number of versions of me Dino (being raped, being a superstar, being smaller, biger, sick, timeless and so on) thats the infinity problem vs one finate outcome... and I cant speek at this at all, this is for high end scientist and mathematicin, but i can ask, and i can filter the given answer with my knowledge, logic and IQ, and I know when I dont understand stuff because its to much for me and my profession and knowlege, as example some high end math, also I know and see superficial analogy and shallow bullshit, claims that cant evan withstand my low level proces of prove and questioning... It would be great to see a debate from Leo, Rupert or anyone with some high end scientist and observe how non duality gets eaten up easily, how non dual analogys get discredited with evidence, or evan better to see how non duality gets support-I WOULD LOVE AND HOPE FOR THAT. but no, it aint happening 

[Dragallur]

@Dino D Yeah I would like to see that too. From personal experience, I can relate to these "ehh... non-dual things":

Determinism
No idea where thoughts come from
Consciousness is quite weird (and I have neat theories on why it exists)
Some form of solipsism seems about the end of what real "truth" I can access to

So I see that you like to criticise this stuff too, have you done meditation and can you relate to some of these things?

[InfinitePotential]

Seems to me that Connor from the Quora post has some personal issues with the notion of spirituality in general.  As for scientific theories not having anything to say about the fundamental nature of reality... this is the "shut up and calculate" approach (what Feynman had to keep reminding his graduate students to do because they were freaking out about all the ramifications of QM).  Sure if you want to solely be pragmatic we can treat scientific theories simply as useful tools that help predict outcomes of experiments, that's one way to go about it and is perfectly valid and useful.  But the questions remains... what is the fundamental nature of reality?  And how is it that quantum phenomena can be?  There is such weirdness and nonlocality in QM (i.e. the appearance of space between objects is entirely illusory, there is no such thing as "time" and "space", they are instead emanations of some more fundamental underlying "stuff"), that it really paints a weird picture in our mind as to what the theory could be telling us about reality.... I mean, if space isn't real then where th is the universe and when did it happen.  It's almost like it's an infinite singularity or something???  And like it's entirely relative???? And that's just one aspect of quantum weirdness.  

But of course, QM doesn't fully capture the fundamental nature of reality.  Like Leo points out continuously: "The map is not the territory".  

The Reddit post and Rational Wiki article both suck and did nothing to "debunk quantum mysticism".  The rational wiki article just showed examples of people making unjustified (in rational wiki's opinion) claims about quantum mechanics and how people can be motivated to do so.  The Reddit post was just an example of how some people can be lame haters.  

 

But I do agree entirely with the Redditor when they said:

"This point is so inane that I don't even know how to criticise it."

Edited March 19, 2018 by InfinitePotential

[abrakamowse]

2 minutes ago, InfinitePotential said:

But I do agree entirely with the Redditor when they said:

"This point is so inane that I don't even know how to criticise it."

And he made a grammatical mistake (inane/insane), so everything he wrote must be wrong.

[Dragallur]

@abrakamowse I do not know if it is a joke, but inane actually is an existing word... (just sayin)

[abrakamowse]

Just now, Dragallur said:

@abrakamowse I do not know if it is a joke, but inane actually is an existing word... (just sayin)

Oh, lol... English is my second language. I thought he was making a mistake. My bad... I will check that word.

[InfinitePotential]

2 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

And he made a grammatical mistake (inane/insane), so everything he wrote must be wrong.

Exactly! I mean how about a little proofreading... some people are so oblivious. 

[abrakamowse]

Ok, I learned a new word today. I never heard that one before. I thought he was trying to say "insane"

[InfinitePotential]

Just now, abrakamowse said:

Ok, I learned a new word today. I never heard that one before. I thought he was trying to say "insane"

I take full responsibility for this mix-up, I thought the Reddit post read "insane", which is what I was agreeing to and thought I had copied and pasted into my post (and am now acting like the Redditor meant "insane" even though we all know he meant "inane"). 

Some of Leo's claims ARE silly and inane too though.

[abrakamowse]

2 minutes ago, InfinitePotential said:

Exactly! I mean how about a little proofreading... some people are so oblivious. 

Lol...  inane is like nonsense or silly, right?

[Dino D]

@Dragallur yes, i answered some stuff here in this topic - An argument AGAINST the inifnity of awareness -

I meditate, i did some breathing, mdma, i didnt went deep, so I'm not really authenitc, i had one no self experience from leos guided meditation, there is aslo a topic on that that i posted...

the next period I'm quiting this mental mastrubation and I will practice more, i stopped because i got to much insomnia, chackras, kundalini or whaever, i couldn sleep right for one year after stoping meditation, because of spiritual practice, crazy stuff   now i meditate only sometimes, i think I'm much more ready now for my shadow work

[Dragallur]

1 minute ago, Dino D said:

the next period I'm quiting this mental mastrubation

Nice, I wish you good luck on your journey!

[cirkussmile]

How can one go deeper than enlightenment? No one can describe it but we surely have our own ways of describing it. That's right... Describe.

 I'm enjoying this without popcorn

[Elisabeth]

The reddit guy didn't make much sense. 

I rather like the rational wiki article he links, although it's unnecessarily harsh, because having studied QM at master's level I'm painfully aware how most people who are trying to use QM (or really, any kind of science) to justify spiritual beliefs are utterly misrepresenting and misusing it. 

The rational wiki admits that there's limiting cases which are not totally out of line

Quote

 

Strong quantum woo might be defined as literature that pretends maintains that quantum physics has just proved what ancient mystics already knew all along. There is some literature exploring the intersection of quantum physics and religion which falls short of making such grandiose claims. (...)

Many respectable quantum physicists, including David Bohm, Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli, have noted the similarities between mystical and quantum worldviews.

 

 That's where Leo falls. Leo has been careful and represented QM rather accurately. It's true that a "particle" is no longer the basic object in QM and especially quantum field theory (a highly theoretical branch that the blogger likely hasn't reached despite his degree in physics). It's also true that the division between an "observer" and a "system" creates a lot of interpretation problems. It's also true that QM is a mere symbolic language, a map to the possible underlying reality, and that QM using of "wave functions" or a "fields" doesn't imply there is such a thing literally  (I guess you could make the point with a "mass point" or "force" of Newtonian mechanics just as well).  

I'm not sure if QM conclusively debunks materialism as Leo sais, I'm not ready to let go of my objective reality

I don't think that QM implies there being an infinite number of universes, much less absolute infinity, but it also obviously doesn't disprove it. 

I do think that contemplating QM can help people (especially physicists) see that reality is much weirder than it seems to be at the first glance. 

I'm certain that QM does NOT imply the possibility of being enlightened or becoming aware of absolute infinity. (Leo's not claiming that but since he connects those two topics into one video it could seem so.)

[Joseph Maynor]

Leo is using results in Quantum Mechanics primarily to challenge the Materialist Paradigm, right?

So, keep that in mind.  Maybe a lot of these issues are irrelevant and a distraction to the main point Leo is trying to make in the QM videos.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[abrakamowse]

I think QM has proved that materia is not what we thought it was... as Niels Bohr said:

 

Quote

 

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

Niels Bohr

 

 

Edited March 20, 2018 by abrakamowse

[Joseph Maynor]

5 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

I think QM has proved that materia is not what we thought it was... as Niels Bohr said:

 

 

It challenges thinking of matter as a substance.  It also challenges the Materialist Paradigm.  It shows us that our metaphorical ways of explaining things do not actually correspond to the way reality is.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[SOUL]

It's the same song again...again and again....

Materialists eliminate the possibility and mystics exaggerate the potential....

.....yet both are 'wrong'.

[abrakamowse]

7 hours ago, SOUL said:

It's the same song again...again and again....

Materialists eliminate the possibility and mystics exaggerate the potential....

.....yet both are 'wrong'.

There's no one to have it wrong or right, hehehe... you are right.

 

There's only finger pointing to the moon