Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics

[mdg333]

I want to get a general consensus on what people think the true meaning of quantum mechanics is. Leo often says that quantum mechanics debunks realism which simply is not true. Niels Bohr created a specific, minimalist interpretation of quantum mechanics that is anti-realism (Copenhagen interpretation) but there are several other possibilities about the meaning of quantum mechanics. Here is a convenient chart (I am assuming counterfactual definiteness to be equivalent to realism). Personally, I agree with the determinism Leo speaks of and with the relativism he also speaks of, but in terms of metaphysical realism, I am having a hard time agreeing. Logically, it does not make sense to support relativism and then pretend like there is one possible truth that quantum mechanics is evidencing. Also, in Leo's perception video he very quickly contradicts himself when he says that perception does not exist and that it is an illusion. What the hell is an illusion if perception is taken out of the equation? If you guys want to support or reiterate Leo's logic that would be helpful, or just share your own ideas about what you think quantum mechanics means.

[Leo Gura]

Quantum mechanics is imaginary.

You imagine it right now. See?

If you cannot notice right now that you are imagining quarks and Niels Bohr, nothing in the world can help you. You are lost in your mind and you lack the basic mindfulness skills needed to see it.

You are inside a dream. Stop taking the contents of the dream seriously.

[Adam M]

^ 

Realism makes me laugh.

For anything to be real you must imagine it to be so.

When you're having a dream about your dog, your dog is real to you. When your dream dog is hit by a dream truck, you're sad. Not because your dog is actually real, but because you think it is.

All of reality is mind-dream-consciousness-hallucination-empty-appearance. 

It only seems solid or physical because you imagine it to be so.

[Billy Shears]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Quantum mechanics is imaginary.

You imagine it right now. See?

If you cannot notice right now that you are imagining quarks and Niels Bohr, nothing in the world can help you. You are lost in your mind and you lack the basic mindfulness skills needed to see it.

You are inside a dream. Stop taking the contents of the dream seriously.

@Leo Gura

Then what's the purpose of quantum mechanics if it's imaginary? Why would God bother to create something so complicated? Don't you think it might be God's essence?

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Billy Shears said:

@Leo Gura

Then what's the purpose of quantum mechanics if it's imaginary? Why would God bother to create something so complicated? Don't you think it might be God's essence?

The purpose of it is to manipulate small parts of the dream to make yourself more comfortable in the dream.

It's good for that.

But it doesn't help you understand what reality is. Reality cannot be understood conceptually or with models.

The epistemic value of QM is to show you that you cannot ever understand reality using science. You thought you could use science to get objective answers about reality, and QM showed that the only objective answer is that all scientific answers are necessarily relative and subjective.

QM shows that you are chasing your own tail when you do science.

[mdg333]

@Leo Gura Science is not about manipulating reality, it is about predicting it. You even said in your free will video that you are a proponent of determinism, therefore science can be thought of as the discovery of the underlying deterministic laws that govern the universe.

Edited March 27, 2020 by mdg333

[electroBeam]

15 minutes ago, mdg333 said:

@Leo Gura Science is not just about manipulating reality, it is about predicting it. You even said in your free will video that you are a proponent of determinism, therefore science can be thought of as the discovery of the underlying deterministic laws that govern the universe.

I've got this pet idea for a video game.

I'm gonna make a 3D world, and using some maths magic, get it to generate very cool, awesome patterns in the 3D world. The game will be about trying to discover what those patterns mean, and use those meanings to get through the game.

One pattern might be anti-gravity. where objects are actually expanding from each other, and its not totally obvious in the game through inspection that its happening, you have to investigate it a bit.

Another pattern might be walls waving in a fibonacci sequence.

And a theorem is connecting the fibonacci sequence wall waving pattern with the anti-gravity pattern.

And when people 'discover' a theorem that governs the wavy walls and anti gravity patterns, they can use that to finish the game.

 

And the cool part will be, everyone in the game will think that I preprogrammed that theorem they discovered... but I didn't. They completely made that theorem up. And they could have made 100 different theorems to satisfy the same patterns occuring in this imaginary game.

And you could imagine the creativity such a game will generate by its users. Minecraft 2.0

 

It will be a mirror of the scientific paradigm.

Edited March 27, 2020 by electroBeam

[Inliytened1]

1 hour ago, mdg333 said:

@Leo Gura Science is not about manipulating reality, it is about predicting it. You even said in your free will video that you are a proponent of determinism, therefore science can be thought of as the discovery of the underlying deterministic laws that govern the universe.

What you have to grasp is that science is a part of, or within reality - it is not the whole of reality.  And you ARE reality.  So you cannot capture or prove reality through science because you already ARE it.   Its putting the horse before the cart.   You cannot capture yourself because you are yourself.     That's why you can't pin down light, for example, being both a wave and a particle simultaneously.    And a "particle's" position and velocity cannot be measured simultaneously.  It exists in a superposition or wave function and at the point of measurement collapses into a particular position or velocity - just as light appears as a wave or a particle depending on the experiment.    It points to the nature of reality but it cannot capture the whole of reality because reality is prior to it.  It just is itself.   To grasp this is to collapse into the wave function and become infinite - otherwise known as enlightenment or a non-dual state of consciousness.