Helgoland

 https://www.npr.org/2021/05/27/1000444659/helgoland-offers-a-new-way-to-understand-the-world-and-our-place-in-it

This is one of those books that I can read  to my wife at bedtime and she will certainly fall asleep ... although I'd argue that since the theme of this book is that "reality is relationships" .... not matter, not quarks, gluons, cats in boxes with poison, or many worlds, but RELATIONSHIPS, it ought to be very interesting to women  ... if either we or they knew what a woman is. 

To get a feeling for Rovelli's perspective, imagine of a blue bowling ball that's 10 in. across and weighs 25 lbs. We think those properties — the ball's color, weight and size — are real in and of themselves. If the bowling ball were the only thing in the whole universe, it would still be blue, 10 in. across and weigh 25 lbs. But the lesson Rovelli wants us to learn is that nothing has any properties at all until it interacts with something else. And between those interactions there are no properties at all. What quantum mechanics is teaching us, Rovelli says, is that reality is a vast net of interactions where there are no things, only relationships. "This is the radical leap," he writes, that "... everything exists solely in the way it affects something else."

As a Christian this is quite appealing. Why is God three persons and one person at the same time? Relationship. What makes me spiritually real? My relationship to Christ.  

If you do go and read the book, you need to understand that the ψ symbol means "wave function".

In naming his wave, Schrödinger uses the Greek letter psi: ψ. The quantity ψ is also called the “wave function.”18 His fabulous calculation seems to show clearly that the microscopic world is not made up of particles: it is made up of ψ waves. Around the nuclei of atoms there are not orbiting specks of matter but the continuous undulation of Schrödinger’s waves, like the waves that ruffle the surface of a small lake as the wind blows.

My definition of wave function is likely totally wrong, but hopefully like the "where are we"? With the answer : "we're in a plane". So the wave function is all the places "something" (usually an electron) might be, and even how fast it might be going. If we measure one of those aspects, the function collapses. 

QBism abandons a realistic image of the world, beyond what we can see or measure. The theory gives us the probability that we will see something, and this is all that it is legitimate to say. It is not legitimate to say anything about the cat or the photon when we are not actually observing them.

In the preceding, "the cat" is Schrodinger's cat that in one interpretation of quantum theory is alive and dead at the same time. 

The weakness of QBism, in my opinion—and this is the turning point in this whole discussion—is that QBism anchors reality to a subject of knowledge, an “I” that knows, as if it stood outside nature. Instead of seeing the observer as a part of the world, QBism sees the world reflected in the observer. In so doing, it leaves behind naive materialism but ends up falling into an implicit form of idealism. The crucial point that QBism disregards, I believe, is that the observer himself can be observed. We have no reason to doubt that every real observer is himself described by quantum theory.

There are many books on idealism. Plato is at least one of the originators ... it being the thought that ideas are really all that are "really real" what we "see" is just a projection of a "perfect form" ... our existence, if you will, is "through a lens darkly".  

On 188, we get down to a bit of the "brass tacks" for apparently sentient beings wondering about "Where am I going"? 

Objections to the possibility of understanding our mental life in terms of known natural laws, on closer inspection, come down to a generic repetition of “It seems implausible to me,” based on intuitions without supporting arguments.*131 Unless it is the sad hope of being constituted by some vaporous supernatural substance that remains alive after death: a prospect that, apart from being utterly implausible, strikes me as ghastly

Ergo, we don't have  any real answers to consciousness, but it MUST be some kind of materialistic, quantum, relational "something" ... that is the only answer that "reasonable people" (a mass of poorly understood quantum relations) can accept! Anything else is "ghastly" (in scientific terms), and we certainly can't have THAT! 

If this book sells very well, I'd guess the list of those who read it is much smaller than those who buy it. The list of those that understand it, likely borders on absolute zero ... I don't claim to understand it, but I don't understand that much of Shakespeare either, but I see having tried and failed as superior to never having tried! 

The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli

 https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-meaning-of-time

The link as per usual is to a more detailed professional review. 

Most people are aware of Einstein's theory of relativity -- time is relative to your frame of reference.

An aside -- isn't it interesting that everyone seems to accept that Einstein's theory is a THEORY, even though is has been tested in a number of ways -- one being that using very accurate clocks, one "stationary" relative to the plane, and a very fast plane, it can be shown that "time" travels more slowly as "objects|" move faster. 

The scare quotes are because what we "see" is not necessarily "reality". Everything we see is relative to our perspective and speed. From the perspective of the house builder, "the flat earth" is true enough, while we know that from the perspective of an astronaut on the moon, the earth is a sphere. Which is "correct"? It is a matter of perspective. 

 "Science" is ALL theory from a given perspective. It is as correct as the next test, or change of perspective. It is a useful tool, something only to be "trusted" within boundaries of perspective.

I find that to be the useful takeaway from the Rovelli book.

... But in physics, once we start to look at what exactly the difference is between past and future, it’s extraordinarily slippery. In the past, the universe seemed to be in a very peculiar state. Physicists use the expression ‘low entropy’. So because there was this low entropy in the past of the universe, that’s the only source of difference between the past and the future. But low entropy is itself a slippery thing because it implies a state of order!

If the difference between the past and the future is just a natural disordering of things, the question becomes: why were things ordered in the past? Who ordered them? And this is still a mystery.

It reminds me of the quote from Spinal Tap member Nigel Tufnel that is inscribed on the wall at the Stonehenge visitors center which made me laugh out loud: "no one knows who they were or what they were doing ..."

There "seems to be a natural ordering of things" ... nobody knows why, or how. Religion is often derided as "the God of the gaps" ... but so is "science", a proffered replacement for religion. The set of things we don't "know" is much larger than the set if things we at least believe we do. 

Largely, Coke (religion) has been replaced with Pepsi (science), and the marketers have largely made science  "the choice if a new generation". 

Assuming Reality

 https://www.npr.org/2021/05/27/1000444659/helgoland-offers-a-new-way-to-understand-the-world-and-our-place-in-it

Quantum mechanics continues to scream at us that what we think we see and measure are actually not "real" in the sense we think. The electron is BOTH a wave and a particle until we observe it. 

The current materialist worldview says that what we "see" when we move to quantum physics is "nothing to worry about" ... it is all "stuff" (material), all the way down, including us. No "ghost in the machine", we are purely "meat machines", no spirit, no meaning, just random emanations from the big bang and a lot of very unlikely coincidences. One of the current theories for explaining "everything", is that there are something like 10 to the 500th universes, so even the "impossible" (which we seem to be) can (and has) happened, because we believe we are "here". 

So is that "true"?  

To get a feeling for Rovelli's perspective, imagine of a blue bowling ball that's 10 in. across and weighs 25 lbs. We think those properties — the ball's color, weight and size — are real in and of themselves. If the bowling ball were the only thing in the whole universe, it would still be blue, 10 in. across and weigh 25 lbs. But the lesson Rovelli wants us to learn is that nothing has any properties at all until it interacts with something else. And between those interactions there are no properties at all. What quantum mechanics is teaching us, Rovelli says, is that reality is a vast net of interactions where there are no things, only relationships. "This is the radical leap," he writes, that "... everything exists solely in the way it affects something else."

For Christians, this seems to make a part of our faith "observably" true. Rather dangerous idea actually, because we have faith in what is NOT "seen", to only have faith in what is seen at least borders on idolatry. 

"If the physical world is woven from the subtle interplay of images in mirrors reflected in mirrors," he writes, then "... perhaps it becomes easier to recognize ourselves as part of that whole."

All that matters is our relation to God. 

Reality Is Experience

 http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

A likely important article that I may return to and dig deeper into. Apparently the physical universe can be replaced with "a conscious entity" and at least this new model "still works".

As a conscious realist, I am postulating conscious experiences as ontological primitives, the most basic ingredients of the world. I’m claiming that experiences are the real coin of the realm. The experiences of everyday life—my real feeling of a headache, my real taste of chocolate—that really is the ultimate nature of reality.

"Ontological" -- being ... what IS.  The territory "real" as opposed to the map ... those being words like virtual, representation, metaphorical. This computer analogy gives a good idea why seeing "what is the most useful to the designer, or random chance" makes more sense than the "most realistic detail".

There’s a metaphor that’s only been available to us in the past 30 or 40 years, and that’s the desktop interface. Suppose there’s a blue rectangular icon on the lower right corner of your computer’s desktop — does that mean that the file itself is blue and rectangular and lives in the lower right corner of your computer? Of course not. But those are the only things that can be asserted about anything on the desktop — it has color, position, and shape. Those are the only categories available to you, and yet none of them are true about the file itself or anything in the computer. 

They couldn’t possibly be true. That’s an interesting thing. You could not form a true description of the innards of the computer if your entire view of reality was confined to the desktop. And yet the desktop is useful. That blue rectangular icon guides my behavior, and it hides a complex reality that I don’t need to know. That’s the key idea. 

Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. They guide adaptive behaviors. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be. If you had to spend all that time figuring it out, the tiger would eat you.

It's always intriguing to me that a super intelligent guy, so non-traditional he is willing to question the MOST fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, still finds "evolution " as somehow a worthy explanation for how we came to be (or maybe "not **BE** as in being physical", but rather "be" experience only) in this non-physical reality. It is always possible that the computer desktop "just evolved" after all. Actually, if you are an evolutionist, the development of the computer and the desktop metaphor is simply evolution still operating in what we have no doubt mistakenly labeled "consciousness", meaning "something special", but in evolutionary "reality",  just more evolutionary adaptive algorithms.

 (column author) But if there’s a W, are you saying there is an external world?

Hoffman: Here’s the striking thing about that. I can pull the W out of the model and stick a conscious agent in its place and get a circuit of conscious agents. In fact, you can have whole networks of arbitrary complexity. And that’s the world.

So a mathematic attempt to understand consciousness replaces "the world" with "a conscious agent"  and it all works ... and it doesn't give him any inking that God would fill that "conscious agent" role quite nicely?

The discoveries of quantum mechanics, the mystery of consciousness and things like the insane small amount of information that seems to be coming in through our optic nerves for us to create what we are "seeing" all point to some fundamental misconceptions about what "reality" is -- if it "is" (ontology again) at all! 

"I think, therefore I am" was always tenuous -- perhaps, a universal consciousness is reality and "I" am an illusion. Perhaps when God speaks to Moses and says "I am that I am" he was really de-referencing the THAT!  (C++ programming, the "this pointer" is the pointer to the object itself) "I'm THAT  "I am" ... the ultimate base of existence.  You (Moses) are another "I am", created in my image.

Roger Scruton has covered this philosophically quite well. 

Fundamentals, Ten Keys To Reality

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-theoretical-physicist-gets-down-to-the-basics/2021/01/07/c9e65468-47c7-11eb-975c-d17b8815a66d_story.html 

The book would be better titled "10 Keys to Physics and Physicalist Reality", although the real purpose appears to be "how to convince those inconvenienced by souls that they don't have one". 

Frank is a pure materialist -- it is all "space, time, and matter". He likes to borrow phrases from Christianity, eg "born again", and apply them to materialism. One must be "born again" -- to a "complimentary" reality. Bohr first introduced complementarity --  "it is BOTH a wave and a particle", which always reminds me of the "New Shimmer", which is BOTH a dessert topping and a floor wax! 

Complementarity can be understood as the physics version of dialectics -- the ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and to arrive at the most economical and reasonable understanding of seemingly contradictory information and views. You dialectically can have your cake and eat it too!

Arnold Sommerfeld claimed (p 206); "It is clear that complementarity overthrows the scholastic ontology. What is truth? We pose Pilates question not in a  skeptical, non-scientific sense, but rather in the confidence that further work on this new situation will lead to a deeper understanding of the physical and mental world". 

If you want to understand "scholastic ontology", which is supposedly "overthrown", this would be a start. Ontology is about "what is" ... what "actually exists", what it means to exist, what category it is, the subject of universals, etc. --like quantum physics,  it is hard to pin down -- it is metaphysics. To attempt to simplify. it is pretty much a "world view" that has roughly three model/ontological positions: 

1. Realism says there is an external reality independent of human perception. ie. if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, it still makes a sound. 
2. Idealism says that reality can only be understood via the human mind and socially constructed meanings -- the unheard tree does not make a sound, and thinking it does shows you are corrupted by the patriarchy. 
3. Materialism says there is ONLY the material world! Spirit and consciousness are illusions. Reality is all just meaningless random "stuff", including YOU! 

The scholastics were Christian thinkers who sought to understand general philosophical problems like faith, reason, will, intellect, realism, nominalism,  etc, and what could be "known" (epistemology). 

The book seems to present a fairly reachable high level understanding of the current "Standard Model" of physics -- Big Bang, Quantum Physics, quarks,  uncertainty principle, etc -- "reality" is just a complex arrangement of "mass, charge, spin" in Frank's mind. (assuming he has a mind -- true materialism calls the existence of "mind" into question!)

Where the book fails is that it is really just description of "stuff" ("matter", particles, forces, etc) that tries to lure one into thinking that if you explain the things we can observe and measure, that is all there is -- ie, placing  your faith in materialism is "being born again". We "know" there isn't anything beyond the observed because we have not observed it -- we "know" there are no black swans because we have not seen one! (there are, there is a book by that title that I read prior to blogging everything)

Of course we really don't know that, anymore than we can know if we have a wave or particle prior to observation. Honest faith in godless materialism philosophically "resolves" to determinism -- human choice - "Free Will" is collateral damage. Frank isn't comfortable with that, so on page 218 he declares that materialistic determinism and free will both exist through the principle of complementarity.  

However, on page 225, he decides that since you have read this book, the evidence for scientific fundamentalism is overwhelming and indisputable. "To deny it is dishonest. To ignore it is foolish." He goes on to deny that there is such a thing as a soul, but then at the bottom of page 227 he asserts that; "When we see ourselves as patterns in matter, it is natural to draw our circle of kinship very far and wide indeed". 

"Natural"? Frank has just provided a view of the MECHANISM of the universe -- he did not say WHY. The answer to why is a matter of faith, no different from the faith of materialism. I believe heaven and hell both exist, and our faith resolves our destination. I can believe that material exists and with the addition of the secret sauce of consciousness/will, it can build cool stuff and blow it up -- scientific materialism will never tell us whether to build a bomb or an MRI.

If you want to understand the current state of physics a bit better, this book is fine, just ignore the metaphysics, Frank didn't get a Nobel there. I'd recommend "The Fabric Of the Cosmos" as a better choice. 

Are Events "Real"?

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-quantum-paradox-throws-the-foundations-of-observed-reality-into-questiona

Anyone that keeps some tabs on what is happening in phyiics knows that questions like "what is reality"? "When is reality"? "What is an event"?, etc appear to be far less certain than we thought.

I'm pretty much a "Many Worlds" guy ... if you see something happening, it DID happen FOR YOU, and it was and is always happening for YOU ... and as this article talks of, that can be true for some number of observers that share that "time/event slice" ...

We have found a new paradox in quantum mechanics – one of our two most fundamental scientific theories, together with Einstein's theory of relativity – that throws doubt on some common-sense ideas about physical reality.

Take a look at these three statements:

1. When someone observes an event happening, it really happened.

2. It is possible to make free choices, or at least, statistically random choices.

3. A choice made in one place can't instantly affect a distant event. (Physicists call this "locality".)

These are all intuitive ideas, and widely believed even by physicists. But our research, published in Nature Physics, shows they cannot all be true – or quantum mechanics itself must break down at some level. 

This is the strongest result yet in a long series of discoveries in quantum mechanics that have upended our ideas about reality. To understand why it's so important, let's look at this history.

I read about it ... I'm not saying I understand it!!