You know, I think I agree with that. Actually, more to the point, modern physics, on which the success of modern computers rests, is itself magical. It works, but nobody really knows how.

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. — Richard Feynman, eminent physicist

I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. — Richard Feynman, eminent physicist

I think that's true, but only because quantum mechanics is misconceived. I think the fundamental seat of reality is the causal, macroscopic reality we inhabit - and that quantum mechanics is a "science" of the frayed edge of reality, on the border between something and nothing.

Physicists assume that there's some fundamental building block - or base substance of reality to be discovered, but there's not.

The nexus of gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, matter and energy, all converge where we are, at this scale.

Quantum particles are very small things that don't quite exist; and the illogical behaviours observed:

EPR appears to be instantaneous communication at a distance. Quantum tunnelling - appears to be passing through solid objects. The double slit experiment - two places at the same time. Quantum indeterminacy - velocity or location, but not both.

...can only be explained in terms of possessing some, but not all of the existential properties conferred upon matter at the macroscopic scale. Hence, reality is where we are, and quantum physics is the frayed edge of reality, where existence bleeds into nothingness.

and quantum physics is the frayed edge of reality, where existence bleeds into nothingness. — counterpunch

But there is some lovely mathematics that relates to this arena of exsanguination. Particle spin associated with the delightful correspondence between points in R3, quaternions, and the matrices of SU(2). I'm dabbling in that now. :cool:

I gladly admit - my understanding of quantum mechanics is a layman's understanding, and the above is more instinct than comprehension. Maybe I just need to put it in a box marked "bollox" because I don't understand it, and it rather makes a mess of philosophy - which depends rather heavily on there being causes and effects.

I am a self taught web programmer and I would like to share my view on the modern day computer. How would you categorize it? I, personally, would put in the category of magic. I am not saying it is not technology. I think that magic and technology can be one and the same. So, to better categorize it, I think it fits perfectly in the category of Magical technology. — elucid

What's your definition of magic? Computers are based on perfectly well understood science and technology. Software runs on the hardware. Hardware is based on electronics, which is based on physics. It's all completely deterministic and not only well-understood, but precisely manipulated by engineers. We can put 60 billion transistors on a chip, and do it well and repeatedly. There's nothing magic about it.

Unless by magic you simply mean awe-inspiring or cool or fun or interesting or something like that, in the sense of Industrial Light and Magic. In the same sense of "Hollywood magic." There's nothing supernatural about movies, but the effect can be magical. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

I think that's true, but only because quantum mechanics is misconceived. I think the fundamental seat of reality is the causal, macroscopic reality we inhabit - and that quantum mechanics is a "science" of the frayed edge of reality, on the border between something and nothing. — counterpunch

It's not so simple. Many great minds, Feynman's included, have been baffled by the discoveries of quantum physics, and it's still a great unsolved question. In fact there are many enormous baffling conundrums in modern science, generally. (I read a fair amount about it, but on the other hand, I'm not credentialled to talk about them, which requires a higher degree in mathematical physics.)

In any case, be assured that quantum mechanics is genuinely baffling, which is a source of great discomfort to many people, for different reasons. It would be far more comforting to scientific realists, and indeed realists of all stripes, were it not so, but Nature has not obliged.

Software runs on the hardware. Hardware is based on electronics, which is based on physics. — fishfry

And quantum physics is what Feynman says 'nobody understands'. Maybe you've just gotten so used to it, that you don't see how baffling it is. Really, it ought not to work, but it does. The famous experimentalist, John Bell, said:

The discomfort that I feel is associated with the fact that the observed perfect quantum correlations seem to demand something like the "genetic" hypothesis. For me, it is so reasonable to assume that the photons in those experiments carry with them programs, which have been correlated in advance, telling them how to behave. This is so rational that I think that when Einstein saw that, and the others refused to see it, he was the rational man. The other people, although history has justified them, were burying their heads in the sand. I feel that Einstein's intellectual superiority over Bohr, in this instance, was enormous; a vast gulf between the man who saw clearly what was needed, and the obscurantist. So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work.

John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), author of "Bell's Theorem" quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein [Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 84].

Incidentally, there's an excellent presentation of Bell's inequality experiments, by Jim Baggott, here.

And quantum physics is what Feynman says 'nobody understands' — Wayfarer

He meant interpretations of quantum physics. Feynman perfectly well understood the physics of it.

But even taking you at your out-of-context interpretation of the quote, that would apply to everything. Apples are magic because they're made of quantum fields. Tuna sandwiches are magic because they're made of quantum fields. Then there is nothing special about computers in this regard, you're just saying everything is magic because everything ultimately rests on quantum physics, which Feynman made an ironic remark about to make a point about the lack of sensible interpretations.

Fish fry, by "magic" I mean that suppose you take a potato and rub it and it turns into a Lamborghini. Modern day computers are just like that.

Suppose you were to categorize a potato that turns into a Lamborghini when rubbed. I am pretty sure you would categorize it as magic or magical technology.

Not at all. Computers rely on discoveries made in quantum physics in order to operate at all. And computers are indeed 'special', they are one of the most consequential discoveries of the 20th c.

:up:

Not at all. Computers rely on discoveries made in quantum physics in order to operate at all. And computers are indeed 'special', they are one of the most consequential discoveries of the 20th c. — Wayfarer

"Computers are magic because semiconductors take quantum effects into account and Feynman snarked that nobody understand quantum physics" is a poor argument in my opinion. Oranges are magic because nobody knows what life is. Oranges are much more magical than computers, which are engineering artifacts whose early implementations did not depend on quantum physics at all, but were built with standard telephone relays and could, if we so chose, be made out of dominoes. But dominoes are magic because they're made out of atoms which in the end are just probability waves that we don't really understand. It's a terrible argument because it doesn't distinguish computers from oranges or dominoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_computer

Sure. It’s more a reflection, aimed at knocking a bit of the taken-for-grantedness off the world we live in, the notion that we have it all worked out and under control. But it’s obviously a digression from the OP so I’ll leave it at that.

It's not so simple. Many great minds, Feynman's included, have been baffled by the discoveries of quantum physics, and it's still a great unsolved question. In fact there are many enormous baffling conundrums in modern science, generally. (I read a fair amount about it, but on the other hand, I'm not credentialled to talk about them, which requires a higher degree in mathematical physics.)

In any case, be assured that quantum mechanics is genuinely baffling, which is a source of great discomfort to many people, for different reasons. It would be far more comforting to scientific realists, and indeed realists of all stripes, were it not so, but Nature has not obliged. — Wayfarer

Exactly! But on the other hand, there's this great line from the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon says something like:

"I like to think gravity would have been self evident to me without an apple hitting me on the head."

Leonerd responds "You cannot be that arrogant."

Sheldon says "You continue to underestimate me, my good man."

All very funny, but there's a serious underlying point that gives us realists hope. Quantum Mechanics really could be a "looking down the wrong end of the telescope" type mistake. As undoubtedly brilliant as Feynman was, if Quantum Mechanics merely assumes the existence of some fundamental building block, they could be looking at it all wrong.

What if, instead - reality is the nexus of forces and properties, focused at the macroscopic level? QM could be trying to make sense of what becomes ever more blurred the closer they look. After all, there were plenty of brilliant minds before Newton, and gravity wasn't self evident to them - as obvious as it may seem to us now.

Same with Copernicus and Galileo. Many brilliant minds devised elaborate schemes of planetary motion - based on the assumption that the earth is fixed in the heavens, at the centre of everything. My guess is, if it doesn't make sense, try looking at it differently.

What if, instead - reality is the nexus of forces and properties, focused at the macroscopic level? QM could be trying to make sense of what becomes ever more blurred the closer they look — counterpunch

Well, yeah, but then you’re of a generation where this has become evident. I bet, you being the same person, and this conversation being conducted some time in the past, you never would have said such a thing. It’s begun to filter down into culture, as science always does. That is why our life and times are called ‘post-modern’. I maintain that ‘modernity’ was the period between Newton and Einstein, and that when quantum physics came along, it knocked down all of the things modernity took for granted. Hence the sense that nothing has any real foundation or absolute reality which is very typical of postmodernism.

Great anecdote, by the way. And note, ‘the Big Bang Theory’ was called ‘the Big Bang Theory’, and it’s protagonist was a physics student. Very po-mo.

Well, yeah, but then you’re of a generation where this has become evident. — Wayfarer

Sorry, what? What has become self evident? Gravity? Sure! The idea that QM is the science of the frayed edge of reality, based on a faulty assumption? Not so much!

QM continues to assume there's some fundamental stuff - strings, or loop quantum gravity, or whatever, at the basis of reality. What if that assumption is a mistake? Just as, the idea of an earth fixed in the heavens was mistaken. Their math would just be another elaborate celestial mechanics that doesn't make sense - while in reality, earth continues in its orbit.

That is why our life and times are called ‘post-modern’. I maintain that ‘modernity’ was the period between Newton and Einstein, and that when quantum physics came along, it knocked down all of the things modernity took for granted. Hence the sense that nothing has any real foundation or absolute reality which is very typical of postmodernism. — Wayfarer

This is quite insightful, and partly why I have problems with QM. But I dispute the coherence of post modern philosophy - with respect to special relativity and QM. As Feynman said "If you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM." But that didn't prevent post modern philosophers, latching on to relativism and quantum uncertainty - as a basis to throw out the "old certainties" with wanton abandon.

In 1962, in his book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible”, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated his famous Three Laws, of which the third law is the best-known and most widely cited: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

Back in the 1980s, Apple published several more-or-less plain language books explaining how the various parts of the Macintosh computer worked. I could understand it. I loved my Mac Plus computer. It came without a hard drive (most people bought one as an accessory--20 megabytes; seemed big at the time); there were two 3.5" floppy drives. I used it a lot.

Even with the explanatory books, there was / is something magical about computers (as long as they are working properly; they become a cursed burden when they are not).

Sometime back in the late 80s or early 90s someone published a study on how composition changes when written by hand, typed, or written on a computer screen. I can attest that there are, as the study found, differences. The ease of editing on screen (rather than paper) helps a great deal with the flow of ideas. (However, almost all of the world's great literature was written by hand.) Add to the screen the ability to look things up in a flash (like the quote from Clark -- which I couldn't remember verbatim) helps too.

QM continues to assume there's some fundamental stuff - strings, or loop quantum gravity, or whatever, at the basis of reality. — counterpunch

Not. Two of the pioneering popular works of philosophy of science in postwar Britain were by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington and they both had a decidedly idealistic attitude. ‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff’, ‘the universe seems more a great mind than a great machine’. It was precisely the concept of the mind independence of reality that was called into question by the early discoveries. Is the probability wave objectively real or a sign of subjective uncertainty? Nobody knows.

I loved my Mac Plus computer. — Bitter Crank

I stumbled into my information technology career, such as it’s been, selling those models!

Not. Two of the pioneering popular works of philosophy of science in postwar Britain were by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington and they both had a decidedly idealistic attitude. ‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff’, ‘the universe seems more a great mind than a great machine’. It was precisely the concept of the mind independence of reality that was called into question by the early discoveries. Is the probability wave objectively real or a sign of subjective uncertainty? Nobody knows. — Wayfarer

I don't buy it. There's an objective reality that exists independently of our experience; and this must necessarily be so, because of the age of the earth and the fact the experiencing intellect comes about as a consequence of evolution.

There is not, "some evil demon deceiving me to believe I have a body" to paraphrase Descartes. But there is a strong tradition of Cartesian, subjectivist philosophers - happy to leap at any scientific basis to refute the existence of an objective reality.

There's an objective reality that exists independently of our experience; and this must necessarily be so, because of the age of the earth and the fact the experiencing intellect comes about as a consequence of evolution. — counterpunch

I don’t want to try and persuade you, but suffice to say that this is just what was called into question by modern physics. Einstein asked his friend Michael Besso ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody is looking at it?’ It was a rhetorical question, but the point is, Einstein - of all people! - felt obliged to ask it.

I do want to try and persuade you, so I'll give it a go. It occurs to me that subjectivist philosophy is disgusting. As an objectivist, at least I believe there's an objective reality that exists, and knowing what's true of reality matters to humankind. The subjectivist does not - but if they do not believe that, then why do philosophy? Why seek to stuff your subjective construction down my throat - making me unhappy, undermining the emotional accommodation with reality everyone has to make in order to get out of bed in the morning? I think truth is possible, and it matters - but what's your motivation? Do you just like contradicting people? Making them unhappy? Stuffing your ideas down people throats and watching them choke? A subjectivist philosopher? That's the lowest of the low.

It occurs to me that subjectivist philosophy is disgusting. — counterpunch

Illuminating response!

Illuminating response! — Wayfarer

That's my job! I'm a philosopher! An objectivist philosopher!
I bring light to the darkness - not darkness to the light!

And is that light a wave, or a particle? Or doesn’t it matter?

This review is relevant to our conversation. It concerns a documentary made by filmmaker Errol Morris about philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn, who’s famous book is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Morris is disgusted with Kuhn on exactly the same grounds that you have expressed.

The Grunidad won't allow me to read it without registering. I don't want to register. I hate giving out personal information online. That said, I'd rather everyone had to operate in their own name on the internet - then maybe people would be as responsible in the virtual world as they are in the real world. But I'm not giving it up first, and having them sell my data to some phishing operation, and getting phonecalls telling me there's a problem with my internet connection, and we need your bank details! Any chance you could copy and paste?

I didn't think it was paywalled, you can usually read a couple of Guardian articles for free. I will paste it, but first, are you familiar, at least, with Kuhn's book that I mentioned? I don't mean, have you read it cover-to-cover - I haven't - but are you familiar with it?

Khun. Incommensurability. I get the idea, but I don't accept it. Even the Biblical version of planetary motion admits the fact there's an earth and a sun - and motion. Then Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein - each building upon the others work, and the basic perceptions that there are planets in relative motion, present from the beginning, remains throughout. There's no incommensurability, because there's an objective reality we learn to explain better over time. The continuity is an objective reality, refuted by Khun who is, ultimately - just another subjectivist philosopher talking pot shots at the possibility knowledge.

Right, so you agree with Errol Morris.

Forty-five years ago, the inventor of the term “paradigm shift” threw an ashtray in exasperation at a young graduate student in the philosophy of science, and soon afterwards ejected him from Princeton. The ashtray hurler was Thomas Kuhn, and his student grew up to become the documentary film-maker Errol Morris, who has – perhaps understandably – harboured a grudge ever since. This book is his long-brewed revenge.

Morris explains early on that he is worried about post-truth, fake news, the Trump administration’s invocation of “alternative facts”, and so forth, and hopes his book will serve as an “antidote”. But what exactly makes Kuhn a proto-Trumpian?

In his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), he argued that science proceeds in two modes. “Normal” science consists of “puzzle-solving”, finding answers to questions that remain within a certain overarching theory, or “paradigm”. But at certain points, anomalies pile up and a revolution occurs, replacing the previous theory or paradigm with a new one, as when Newtonian mechanics was overthrown by Einsteinian relativity. That is a paradigm shift. And, according to Kuhn, it’s usually messier and less objective than people had previously assumed. In particular, he argued, the criterion for the acceptance of a new paradigm is not some kind of provably superior fidelity to objective truth, but simply its consensus adoption by the community of human beings engaged in scientific practice.

This is all terribly dangerous, Morris says: “Kuhn’s ideas promote a denial of truth,” and if we can’t rely on objective truth in science then we may as well all become White House spokespeople. (I am paraphrasing slightly.) His aim, then, is to refute this “postmodernist bible”. To do so, somewhat eccentrically, he spends a lot of time on the picture of language advanced in the 1960s by the philosopher Saul Kripke, because he takes this to imply that the meaning of words is fundamentally connected to reality in a reliable way, so that scientific language, too, can point to the world unproblematically. There are also some entertaining interviews, laid out documentary-script-wise, with such luminaries as Noam Chomsky, the philosopher Hilary Putnam and Kripke himself, and Morris races off on tangents about Jorge Luis Borges, Pythagorean mathematics and armadillos, and down some deep Wittgensteinian rabbit holes (or duck-rabbit holes) about rules and language.

There’s a really big problem with Morris’s account, and it’s right there in his book’s subtitle: Kuhn did not, in fact, “deny reality”. He simply insisted that we could ultimately never know the fundamental truth about reality, but we could, he thought, make ever more useful predictions about it with scientific theories. This is clear enough even in many of the passages Morris himself angrily cites, as when he quotes Kuhn writing (in 1989) about “the natural sciences, dealing objectively with the real world (as they do)”, or, at the end of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself, where Kuhn writes of the evolution of science as “an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature”. That doesn’t sound like a postmodernist supervillain denying reality, does it? No, because it isn’t.

Morris is also upset about Kuhn’s notorious concept of “incommensurability”. According to Kuhn, competing scientific paradigms are “incommensurable” in that they slice up the world into different sets of incompatible phenomena, but this doesn’t mean, as Morris thinks, that he is saying they can’t be rationally compared at all. In Kuhn’s picture, when assessing theories, the community of scientists decides not that a new paradigm is “true” in that it accurately reflects fundamental reality, but simply that it explains a wider collection of experimental findings than the old one. This was the explicit view of many of the pioneering quantum physicists, who thought that to ask what the mathematics implied about the nature of reality itself was silly. As Chomsky tells Morris, evidently to the latter’s disappointment, it is perfectly respectable to hold the following view: “The world is indeed incomprehensible, it’s a mystery, but we can at least construct intelligible theories.”

In Morris’s partial defence, more scholarly critics have long taken Kuhn to task for seeming to be vague about his central terms and using them in apparently different senses in different places. But this book’s central and rather hysterically repeated accusation, that Kuhn thought reality didn’t exist and science was merely a social power game, is just plain wrong. Whenever something sounds a bit relativist, Morris pounces on it and reads it as though it is saying the most ridiculous thing possible: the principle of interpretive charity is here everywhere absent. It’s a particular shame, since in his films about Robert McNamara or Donald Rumsfeld, Morris beautifully withholds authorial judgment in order to allow the subjects to damn themselves. In this book, though, he does the opposite, going on a flamethrower rampage from the start in an attempt to reduce everything to smouldering ash. The cause of truth is not thereby advanced. — Steve Poole

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/the-ashtray-by-errol-morris-review

So, I agree with Kuhn. I don't question that there is a reality shared by all, but I say that reality transcends what can be objectively known. This has what has been suggested by modern physics, specifically because of what is known as the observer problem, the fact that the role of the observer has to be taken into account in observation.

My view is not 'subjectivist'. Rather, it's that both subject and object are poles or facets of a larger reality - which is pretty much what transcendental idealism says. So we're not, by means of science, homing in on a final, single reality, because that reality, whatever it is, transcends science also.

I have less disagreement with Khun's argument than the arguments the concept of incommensurability supports. I cannot count the number of times I've had it thrown in my face that "science doesn't know anything" - with Khun cited as the source. That's obviously not so.

Scientific principles can be applied to create technologies that work - and work better, the better the technology accounts for the underlying scientific principles. Like steam engines and thermodynamics. If the laws of thermodynamics were false - steam engines wouldn't work. It's not "just a theory."

There's a great deal of misunderstanding, and deliberate obfuscation around the truth value of scientific knowledge. And there's a concerted philosophical crusade to deny objective reality, and the possibility of objective knowledge. So, it may be wrong that:

Kuhn thought reality didn’t exist and science was merely a social power game, — Steve Poole

But there are plenty of people who do make exactly those claims, and cite Khun as a source.

That's obviously not so. Scientific principles can be applied to create technologies that work - and work better, the better the technology accounts for the underlying scientific principles. Like steam engines and thermodynamics. If the laws of thermodynamics were false - steam engines wouldn't work. It's not "just a theory." — counterpunch

I mentioned that above. It works - but we don’t necessarily understand the principles. ‘Spooky action at a distance’ is proven, in fact it’s now used for cyber security technologies. But nobody can explain why doing something here produces an immediate consequence there, without any intermediary or contact being possible. It just does. Hence, ‘shut up and calculate’ in physics - don’t ask ‘how can it be like this’, simply use it for the amazing power it provides. So, it is ‘like magic’ in that respect. (Or maybe sorcery, but they’re basically synonyms.)

And there's a concerted philosophical crusade to deny objective reality, and the possibility of objective knowledge. — counterpunch

I agree with that, and I too despise ‘post-modern relativism’, that we each have our own ‘truth’. But I’m not seeking to say that science is only or merely a social construction, either. As you say, misreadings and misunderstandings abound on all sides. There is a ‘middle path’ which avoids such extremes, and I think Kant is pretty close to that.

I mentioned that above. It works - but we don’t necessarily understand the principles. ‘Spooky action at a distance’ is proven, in fact it’s now used for cyber security technologies. But nobody can explain why doing something here produces an immediate consequence there, without any intermediary or contact being possible. It just does. Hence, ‘shut up and calculate’. — Wayfarer

Right, but we're in the realm of QM again where (in my view) the possibility of objective knowledge may be hampered by the lack of existential properties. It's not possible to know the velocity and location of a quantum object if it doesn't have one (or the other) of those properties.

Spooky action a a distance, is really just the double slit experiment from another angle. The object passes through both slits at the same time because it's in two places at the same time; lacking the existential property of location conferred on objects by the focus of forces at the macroscopic causal nexus. "Doing something here produces an immediate consequence there" because the object is in both places - or rather, not quite present in either place, at the same time.

That's what I think anyway!!

More to the point, given the current understanding, the macroscopic and quantum realms are not reconciled; such that, it's philosophically unsound to draw implications for the possibility of knowledge on the macroscopic level, from observations on the quantum level. Just because we don't know the mechanisms of spooky action at a distance, doesn't invalidate our knowledge of the mechanisms of steam trains.