Is The Uncertainty Principle Incompatible With Determinism?

Interesting discussion, I listened to about the first hour so far. I find the questions Harris pose are on point to pretty much every topic brought up. I find Tegmark good at explaining a lot of the findings in Physics and Cosmology however I get kind of lost in the multiverse part.

I will note that I did hear Tegmark use the term "Spaghettified" at one point, which is obviously clearly more evidence for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

Seeing patterns...making patterns......electrical activity in all of our brains with millions of connections like in a computer.....bring heart and soul into it, and everything has a different meaning for everyone......
Someone once said to me..."I don't understand how you connect the dots..."
I found that an odd thing to say....but I think it has to do with everyone's brians being different.....is all....

 

There seems to be a fine line between "heart and soul" and willful ignorance. However, It seems aspects of the quantum world such as uncertainty foster boldness in more radical interpretations.

 

I don't think I understand what you mean. Do you not feel things beyond the physical?

 

My main point regarding real vs. unreal is that there is no cut and dried, hardcore line dividing ANY of it. There's no distinct dividing line between the room that you're in, the thoughts that you have about the room that you're in, the actions that you take in the room that you're in, the thoughts that lead you to take the actions in the room that you're in, the fantasies that you daydream in the room that you're in, the fantasies that then turn into poetry that you write down in the room that you're in, etc.

Dividing in this way is as silly as actually acting like that your neighbor's yard connected to your yard isn't ACTUALLY the same piece of land. The hallucination of it actually being separated by some line is real, however. Especially in the West. But since it's just a hallucination, then I guess that separate properties aren't a manifest part of reality

 

Well, it is different....You want catch me peeing in their yard like i do in my own yard at times to keep the coyotes away....

 

What part do you not understand and what are you referring to when you say "things beyond the physical". Like ghosts, leprechauns and flying teapots?

 

The Flying Spaghetti Monster as an idea and concept is as real as the idea and concept that a piece of land separated by some imaginary line are two different properties or pieces of land. Are ideas and concepts not real, or are somehow removed from reality?

 

I didn't say idea and concept..

 

Not really the point. I could dress up as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, find a jet-pack, and call myself The Flying Spaghetti Monster, and could gather a mass amount of people to agree with me. Is it still not real?

 

Please do that!! Get a Jet pack, fly to Mercury and Call us when you're there

 

I don't think so....

now , let us sing the teapot song....

No, I just do not understand what you meant,......I understand heart and soul....but what do you mean by willful ignorance?

 

The point is is that there's no dividing line between imagination and reality. Art is a perfect example of that. My analogy with property is another perfect example of that. People literally collectively agree that there is a separation and ownership of different chunks of land, and since it is so strongly collectively agreed upon, even though it is pure imagination, there is an actual reality to it.

 

Like not attempt to expand their knowledge or consider other views on a topic and just rely on confirmation bias. This doesn't necessarily even need to apply to this thread in particular, it's just something I notice forum formats are kind of susceptible to, I think it can detract from very interesting discussion at times.

 

Maybe our brains are like the universe in mini scale....We are born of this universe, I think....i hope...lol.........but your black holes or novas or any term that you can relate to when speaking of the universe is in different places or something...or different times lapses.....or maybe some connections for some burned out.....interesting concept....that is all....I throw out these far fetched ideas.....is all....as they come into my brain...

 

Obviously directed at me at least in this particular case. I'm just trying to express how I feel. Feel free to disagree with me. But I find it interesting that I piss people off so much. It always starts with me suggesting an idea, only for the idea to get mocked, and then everyone is surprised when I go further into my point or perspective.

 

Possibly some interesting analogies and parallels can be made.

 

Well, I've probably said all of this before but what the shit, I'll say it again. I don't need any belief in God to understand that determinism is flawed. Both beliefs require an unfounded assumption of perfection. God assumes a perfect consciousness and determinism assumes a perfect physical universe. I haven't seen anything to indicate either, rather much more to the contrary. A universe expanding out of control while containing scattered exploding hot balls of plasma with crater scarred dirtballs and gasses orbiting around them hardly seem to indicate any perfection.

Determinism assumes that if you could make and exact replica of our universe accurate to every quantum position down to the planck level, and go ten years into the future, that both universes would still be identical. Again, there is nothing to indicate that this would be the case. The slightest degree of imperfection would introduce random changes that would grow exponentially with time. We live in a universe where we now know that empty space is boiling with chaotic quantum activity. For crying out loud, Pi is an irrational number. If perfection existed then the entire universe would be at an absolute perfectly balanced singularity and none of us would ever exist.

I would think that there is a intrinsic degree of real uncertainty with all space-time-energy. It is an extremely small measure of uncertainty, maybe something like Planck length divided by the cube root of Pi. Even if we had such a tiny uncertainty factor (~1.5X10^-35), there is inversely far more quantum particle interactions taking place inside one human brain every single attosecond (one quintillionth of a second). This would introduce real observable changes in human interactions of our copied universe, in not years, but I would suspects hours to maybe even just a few minutes of time separation.

 

This certainly means something about reality, when you actually consider what irrational numbers are. They are real numbers, but they cannot be expressed with exact certainty. The number e, and √2, as well as π are irrational, the only true representation of them is e, √2 and π respectively. These numbers occur in physics quite often, but what is even more interesting is functions that have no real solution and instead the solutions are complex numbers, or imaginary numbers sometimes irrational as well ... think something like (1 - i√2) / 2. What is that exactly, WHERE does that exist in space exactly? There is also the issue that even roots have two solutions, positive and negative .... and if you throw a negative number under a square root sign, or raise it to any fractional exponent with an even denominator you end up with these complex, or imaginary numbers which are often irrational as well (if it can't be factored and simplified to a real number, it is irrational). AFAIK these are some of the reasons for some of the strangeness in physics, stuff like supersymmetry and why particles exist in pairs, have opposite charges, and antiparticles, stuff like that.

Then you have the problem with infinities, which totally breaks equations, as does the number zero which leads to a solution that can't be defined. This particular issue may eventually be solved, but the issues in the preceding paragraph explain things mathematically but it still doesn't make much sense and seems to go against what we think reality should be like but it is infact exactly this strange, no matter how much we might want to think "it couldn't really be this way".

 

How many shamans does it take to enlighten a bulb ? 2zany many