Splendid rationale for diversity, but it doesn’t appeal to me.

I have to try and say something about my view. Rather than Nietszche's abandonment of the whole corpus of traditional philosophy - he called himself an anti-philosopher - I am seeking to reinterpret philosophy in such a way that it is at least compatible with today's world.

Among the fundamental beliefs typical of secular liberal philosophies are that life "began by chance" and that humans are continuous with other species and the product of chance and necessity - chance being the originating factor, and the necessity being that of scientific law.

As I mentioned above my philosophy is more orthogenetic - orthogenesis being 'directional'. I believe there's a direction in evolution, namely, to higher levels of awareness and intelligence. That is strictly taboo in the Darwinian attitude towards the matter. I've learned that the co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, had similar views, and fell out with Darwin over them, but this is politely dismissed as eccentricity on his part, and his later-life turn to what is quaintly called 'spiritualism'.

In any case, what I'm driving at is an idea that is found in various philosophies although rarely made explicit, namely that through sentient beings, the Universe becomes self-aware. And through rational sentient beings, the Universe itself discovers new horizons of meaning.

I see traditional philosophy as the implicit attempt to come to terms with that. So, I see in the decline and rejection of traditional philosophy the rejection of the sapiential dimension of Western thought. Where I see it, is in the traditional role ascribed to nous, intellect, the meaning of which, like so many other fundamental philosophical terms, has been changed so enormously as to no longer be recognisable in the original terms. It is the faculty of nous that is sapiential, capable of wisdom. Which is our ostensible species name, although no longer accurate.

Man's apotheosis is now being sought through space travel, the fantasy of colonizing other planets and travelling to the stars. What is actually needed, is the realisation that we have one and only one spaceship, that being Spaceship Earth, and that it's dangerously over-heating and facing resource depletion. So what is needed is a philosophy not based on consumption, instrumental power and leisure. A philosophy is needed which does realise the value of not having, not consuming - in other words, a renunciate philosophy that is available on a mass social scale. Learning to be at ease without massive consumption. Which is of course impossible to even imagine in the culture in which we now live, although very soon it may become thrust upon us (see John Michael Greer's Collapse Now, and Avoid the Rush.)

So - within this general framework, respect for the traditional understanding of 'the philosophical ascent' and true spiritual apotheosis must be restored, but you won't find that anywhere in the philosophical mainstream, or (dare I say) amongst the postmodernists.

I do want to know a bit more about Husserl's philosophy of maths, although I fear that it's a very dense subject. But I don't feel comfortable with the idea that number is a kind of mental projection. I'm also mindful of the way that mathematical physics is so powerfully predictive. It's not a game or a scheme.

As concepts such a tables, apples, governments, ethics, laws of nature, etc require relationships between their parts, and relations have no ontological existence in the external world (see FH Bradley) but only in the mind (see the Binding Problem and Kant's Apperception and its Unity), such concepts exist only in the mind and not the external world. — RussellA

Amazing that inventions work so well, then. Or maybe they're all in the mind as well?

They (physics forum) have a whole subforum for quantum interpretations — noAxioms

Indeed they do. The current top thread is on interpretations of non-locality. Hey, I could spot the error in the first sentence of the second paragraph straight away, so I must understand something.

I've participated in a few discussions on Physics Forum and even started a thread, but one of the later discussions I posted - I can't remember exactly the substance, but I think it was about the reality of number - was locked immediately on the grounds of being too philosophical (the mod said nobody there had expertise on questions of that kind).

Simultaneous means at the same time, and as noAxioms explained, in relativity theory whether or not two events are simultaneous may be dependent on the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

According to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the effect of one measurement occurs instantly. Other interpretations which don't recognize wavefunction collapse dispute that there is any "effect" at all. However, all interpretations agree that entanglement produces correlation between the measurements and that the mutual information between the entangled particles can be exploited.

But logically, as the superposition refers to all of the elements in an entangled system, then to measure the one is to measure the other.

The strong for Nietzsche overcomes itself , displaces itself , transforms itself. Its strength is in reinvention, not holding onto some self-constant value system — Joshs

Into what, exactly? With the abolition of the celestial hierarchy there's nothing to be transformed into, except maybe a more intelligent (or should we say 'craftier') ape.

Such articles are not accepted as evidence at a site like physicsforums.com . — noAxioms

That's because physics forum gives short shrift to anything the classify as philosophy. I've posted there a bit.

I don’t deny the correlation at a distance. — noAxioms

Thanks for clearing that up. That's what I had thought you were doing. But I still don't think you've come to terms with Einstein's objection, and the subsequent experiments that falsify it.

//ps// and there's no correlation until a measurement is made. That is another important point. It's not as if the correlation pre-exists the measurement - that is precisely what the Bell inequality disproves.//

Here's the wiki article on counterfactual definiteness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_definiteness

That's dead wrong. He doesn't recognize anything transcendent might be more to the point. — Janus

So what's the diff? Anyway, I'm not arguing the case, it's a supreme irony that Nietszche of all people has now assumed the status of Sacred Cow.

isn't it generally argued that it is precisely this separation and our failure to recognize our unity with nature that has resulted in us screwing the environment as just some 'other' to be dominated and exploited? — Tom Storm

The popular view is that the Bible promisses to give man dominion over the earth and that Western culture has exploited that to ransack the planet. But I don't know how much of that is actually preshadowed in the Bible. It was Frances Bacon, one of the forefathers of modern science, who talked of 'putting nature to the rack to reveal her secrets'. That nowadays combines with the generally (and even hysterically) anti-Christian narrative that is predominant in popular culture. Christianity is associated with patrimonial hierarchy where environmental green left politics exalts diversity and equality.

Hence the reverence that is now expressed for first nations peoples and the natural environment. Of course it's a good thing to revere nature and to develop sustainable economics and to treat first nations peoples respectfully. But I wonder if the underlying motivation is that 'nature', and the kind of Rousseavian noble-savage mythology sorrounding first nations peoples is a kind of displaced religiosity. They collectively represent 'The Primordial' - the pure, the unconditioned, the unsullied. Nature has rushed into the vacuum left by the collapse of religion. I suppose the natural wilderness has always been associated with purity, but now its become the literal image of it.

I noticed in studying Eastern philosophies and non-dualism the centrality of the idea of 'separation', 'alienation', and 'apartness' which is at the root of the human condition. The meaning of non-duality is in the overcoming of the sense of otherness or separateness - which requires a complete change of outlook, a different way of life, a true 'metanoia'. In Christian culture that is the original motivation for compassion towards the poor and outcaste, and the sense of Christian fellowship - that 'we are all one in Christ' (Gal 3:28).

But actually going out into nature or living in the wilderness is plainly an impracticality - the overwhelming demographic trend is towards urbanisation. Now the idea of nature has become a substitute for God in secular culture (or one of them.) But it's a mirage, insofar as you're 'one with nature' then you're on your way to becoming compost, same as everything else that lives. A Christian would say that the real source of immortality, the spirit that gives life, is not to be found in the worship of nature.

As far as evolution is concerned, I'm probably inclined to accept an orthogenetic approach - that the existence of life is not 'a fluke', the outcome of the 'accidental collocation of atoms'. I see the existence of life as the realisation of horizons of meaning that could never develop in its absence. We're part of the cosmic story. And the impulse to say that 'we're no different to animals' is to evade the responsibility that this brings.

It does not signify power over others, but power over the self, in order to reach one's fullest potential. — Janus

But Nietszche doesn't recognise anything spiritual. I don't think he understands it at all. What kind of 'empowerment' could he envisage, other than political power, the domination of the strong over the weak? The religious cultures that he abjurs depict fulfillment in terms of divine union or transcending the self, but there's nothing that can be mapped against that in Nietszche's philosophy as there's nothing beyond the ego. Is there?

I still don't see why that's unreasonable. — Landoma1

If you don't see the point of Wigner's essay, there's not a lot of purpose me trying to explain it again.

Nope, never heard of it. Is it a good one?

I miss the Na'vi - did you design your new avatar? Pretty sweet. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Found it googling 'wayfarer'.

The human being as a species does not represent any progress compared with any other animal. The whole animal and vegetable kingdom does not evolve from the lower to the higher—but all at the same time, in utter disorder, over and against each other.

Never understand the pull of Nietszche. My view is that if mankind is unable to acknowledge their difference from and separation from nature, they are unable to take responsibility for their situation and condition.

The will to evolutionary ascent. — ZzzoneiroCosm

was it you I was talking to about Afrikan Spir's book?

I meant to get more of a feel for the Copenhagen interpretation.

We’ll you can throw a rock, or eat an apple, but you can surf a wave.

Good pick up. Speculate is the wrong word. But it does concern meanings. You can find Heisenbergs Physics and Beyond on archive.org, it has many conversations with Bohr and Pauli.

…all of which quite different to ‘substance, a material with uniform properties’.

I'm talking about relativity of simultaneity (RoS). If you don't know what that is, then you don't have the tools to assess the validity of my criticism of the wording used in the article. — noAxioms

To do with reference frames and the relativity of time of measurement, I guess.

I can only get information from popular science, like Quanta Magazine and PBS Space Time, but the writers in those media are qualified in physics, in fact both have PhD's in the subject. Nowhere have you referred to any sources, so I'm inclined to believe them over you.

And I can understand what they are saying, whereas I can't understand your objections. For instance:

(the) theory of relativity strongly suggests... the principle of locality, that cause must precede effect. Bell showed that you must choose between the principles — noAxioms

Choose between what principles?

I don't think there is an accepted scientific paper that IS the Copenhagen interpretation. — noAxioms

Of course not. The 'copenhagen interpretation' is not a scientific theory. Quantum theory is a scientific theory. The Copenhagen interpretation are philosophical speculations about what it means. The expression was coined by Werner Heisenberg, one of its advocates, in one of his popular science and philosophy books written in the 1950's

Here is one example quoted by Matt O'Dowd in the PBS video:

It is meaningless to assign reality to the Universe in the absence of observation. — Neils Bohr

Here, it is explained, "object permanence" is being questioned. It is typical of the 'copenhagen interpretation'.

All the articles I've seen linked from this topic contain language that assert the objective reality, which of course must contradict locality, but to disprove locality, one must do so without begging the objective reality since none of the local interpretations list it as one of the premises. — noAxioms

:roll:

But if there was a (remote) empirical test for this having actually happened at the reaction side, a message could be sent via this test, so it would constitute communication. So despite all the assertions, they've not falsified locality. — noAxioms

That is the subject of the first article I quoted in this thread, about the Chinese communications satellite.

Quantum entanglement—physics at its strangest—has moved out of this world and into space. In a study that shows China's growing mastery of both the quantum world and space science, a team of physicists reports that it sent eerily intertwined quantum particles from a satellite to ground stations separated by 1200 kilometers, smashing the previous world record. The result is a stepping stone to ultrasecure communication networks and, eventually, a space-based quantum internet.

So, you're disputing that this is evidence of 'spooky action at a distance'? That is what the article is about. There seems to be some major disconnect here. I know it's a tough topic and I'm not wanting to be discourteous. But I am going to say that I think to all intents, (a) simultaneous and instantaneous mean the same in this context, and (b) how this can happen is a mystery, but it can't be disputed that it does happen. Over and out.

The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment. — Clarky

That is true. But as the article then says. 'the paradox is that a measurement made on either of the particles apparently collapses the state of the entire entangled system—and does so instantaneously.'

I'm by no means suggesting a solution, but I think it's important to at least acknowledge what the paradox is. (Richard Feynman said 'Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'But how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.') That's why I think quantum physics is kind of like sorcery. ;-)

Don't be mislead, the statement you've quoted is wrong in every particular, to my knowledge. Review Matt O'Dowd's PBS Space Time video above, he gives the correct account of the issue, and also of the Copenhagen interpretation.

Quantum entanglement is the physical phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic of quantum entanglement is at the heart of the disparity between classical and quantum physics: entanglement is a primary feature of quantum mechanics lacking in classical mechanics.

Measurements of physical properties such as position, momentum, spin, and polarization performed on entangled particles can, in some cases, be found to be perfectly correlated. For example, if a pair of entangled particles is generated such that their total spin is known to be zero, and one particle is found to have clockwise spin on a first axis, then the spin of the other particle, measured on the same axis, is found to be anticlockwise. However, this behavior gives rise to seemingly paradoxical effects: any measurement of a particle's properties results in an irreversible wave function collapse of that particle and changes the original quantum state. With entangled particles, such measurements affect the entangled system as a whole.

Such phenomena were the subject of a 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, and several papers by Erwin Schrödinger shortly thereafter, describing what came to be known as the EPR paradox.Einstein and others considered such behavior impossible, as it violated the local realism view of causality (Einstein referring to it as "spooky action at a distance") and argued that the accepted formulation of quantum mechanics must therefore be incomplete.

Later, however, the counterintuitive predictions of quantum mechanics were verified in tests where polarization or spin of entangled particles was measured at separate locations, statistically violating Bell's inequality. In earlier tests, it couldn't be ruled out that the result at one point could have been subtly transmitted to the remote point, affecting the outcome at the second location. However, so-called "loophole-free" Bell tests have been performed where the locations were sufficiently separated that communications at the speed of light would have taken longer—in one case, 10,000 times longer—than the interval between the measurements.

According to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, the effect of one measurement occurs instantly. Other interpretations which don't recognize wavefunction collapse dispute that there is any "effect" at all. However, all interpretations agree that entanglement produces correlation between the measurements and that the mutual information between the entangled particles can be exploited, but that any transmission of information at faster-than-light speeds is impossible.

Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated experimentally with photons, neutrinos, electrons, molecules as large as buckyballs, and even small diamonds. The utilization of entanglement in communication, computation and quantum radar is a very active area of research and development. ...

Paradox
The paradox is that a measurement made on either of the particles apparently collapses the state of the entire entangled system—and does so instantaneously, before any information about the measurement result could have been communicated to the other particle (assuming that information cannot travel faster than light) and hence assured the "proper" outcome of the measurement of the other part of the entangled pair.
— Wikipedia entry on Quantum Entanglement

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. — Zarathustra

Richard Maurice Bucke said that the 'superman' was exemplified in those beings who had broken through into cosmic consciousness, 'as far above normal human consciousness as ours is above beasts.' Whereas Nietszche's Ubermensch was characterised wholly and solely by the will to power. It's hard to see how this wouldn't morph into fascism, although Nietszche's many defenders never seem willing to acknowledge that.

The term essence (essentia) was a Latin invention used to translate Aristotle's Greek ousiai — Fooloso4

'Ouisia' is a form of the Greek word 'to be', and so the word is nearer in meaning to 'being' or 'subject'. It was translated into Latin as 'substantia' and thence English as 'substance' but it has a completely different meaning in philosophical than in everyday discourse.

And the Platonic forms were 'immanetised' by Aristotle as the forms of hylomorphism where they live on to this day. In later Scholastic philosophy, the form of the particular was what was known by the intellect, as distinct from the matter, which was known by sense.

Plato gives us the answer in Parmenides: One who does not “allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will “destroy the power of dialectic entirely” (135b8–c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech. — Fooloso4

This is an important point. It comes out much later with respect to the arguments about universals as the mechanism of meaning. As Plato believes that the objects of reason have a greater degree of reality than those of sense, then they must have something unchangeable as their object.

Could you say that Aristotle's later theory of essence and substance is foreshadowed here?

What is at issue is not simply the problem of Forms but the problematic nature of philosophy. It raises insoluble problems. — Fooloso4

I think, rather, that it indicates problems which can't be solved from the standpoint from which they are posed. In other words, that their resolution depends on reaching a higher perspective, in accordance with the steps of Diotima's ladder. That is something like 'the philosophical ascent'.

I've recently discovered why this notion of 'philosophical ascent' now seems such an implausible ideal. It is articulated quite clearly in this passage (referring to the 'scientific revolution'):

This scientific and philosophical revolution - it is indeed impossible to separate the philosophical from the purely scientific aspects of this process: they are interdependent and closely linked together - can be described roughly as bringing forth the destruction of the Cosmos, that is, the dissappearance from philosophically and scientifically valid concepts, the conception of the world as a finite, closed and hierarchically ordered whole (a whole in which the hierarchy of value determined the hierarchy and structure of being, rising from the dark, heavy and imperfect earth to the higher and higher perfection of the stars and heavenly spheres), and its replacement by an indefinite and even infinite universe which is bound toether by the identity of its fundamental components and laws, an in which all those components are placed on the same level of being. This, in turn, implies the discarding by scientific thought of all considerations based upon value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim, and finally the utter devalorisation of being, the divorce of the world of value from the world of facts. — Alexander Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe

That's the context in which 'the philosophical ascent' is unintelligible, for the simple reason that there is no longer a qualitative (i.e. vertical) axis along which there could be an 'ascent'.

This wording suggests that there is a concept of 'instantaneous', or absolute simultaneity, which is an entirely naive wording. — noAxioms

I don't believe so. You haven't read the evidence about it. If it was as trivial a matter as you're suggesting, then there would be nothing to discuss.

the wording in the above statements suggests that there is but one measurement that somehow 'instantaneously' changes the state of the other particle, — noAxioms

The instantaneous nature of the correlation is precisely the point at issue. Whether the measurement of one changes the state of the other is another point at issue.

Copenhagen is about as local as it gets, and it being an epistemological interpretation, all it says is that a measurement here causes knowledge here of what the other measurement will be when we learn of it. — noAxioms

I'm not a physicist, but based on the plain English accounts that I've read of this matter, of which there are quite a few, I don't think this is so. If you would like to validate your intepretation with some sources (other than technical physics papers), please do.

Perhaps for a start you could explain why Einstein objected to the suggestion of entanglement with the word 'spooky'.

I think all participants here know about the statement of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Shouldn't we, rather, speak of it's reasonable effectiveness? — Landoma1

You can't be sure they will, but just in case, here is the essay you're referring to.

Why Wigner says it is 'unreasonable' is because of the sense in which mathematical conjectures sometimes produce completely unforseeen predictions which turn out to be true - that 'mathematical concepts turn up in entirely unexpected connections', as Wigner says.

Wigner gives some examples, but admittedly they are difficult to understand unless you have some background - after all, Wigner was a Nobel laureate in mathematical physics, for discoveries derived from mathematical symettries, which I presume few here would be familiar with. But that said, one of the examples he gives is this:

This (case) originated when Max Born noticed that some rules of computation, given by Heisenberg, were formally identical with the rules of computation with matrices, established a long time before by mathematicians. Born, Jordan, and Heisenberg then proposed to replace by matrices the position and momentum variables of the equations of classical mechanics. They applied the rules of matrix mechanics to a few highly idealized problems and the results were quite satisfactory.

However, there was, at that time, no rational evidence that their matrix mechanics would prove correct under more realistic conditions. Indeed, they say "if the mechanics as here proposed should already be correct in its essential traits." As a matter of fact, the first application of their mechanics to a realistic problem, that of the hydrogen atom, was given several months later, by Pauli. This application gave results in agreement with experience. This was satisfactory but still understandable because Heisenberg's rules of calculation were abstracted from problems which included the old theory of the hydrogen atom.

The miracle occurred only when matrix mechanics, or a mathematically equivalent theory, was applied to problems for which Heisenberg's calculating rules were meaningless. Heisenberg's rules presupposed that the classical equations of motion had solutions with certain periodicity properties; and the equations of motion of the two electrons of the helium atom, or of the even greater number of electrons of heavier atoms, simply do not have these properties, so that Heisenberg's rules cannot be applied to these cases. Nevertheless, the calculation of the lowest energy level of helium, as carried out a few months ago by Kinoshita at Cornell and by Bazley at the Bureau of Standards, agrees with the experimental data within the accuracy of the observations, which is one part in ten million. Surely in this case we "got something out" of the equations that we did not put in. — Eugene Wigner, Unreasonable Effectiveness...

I take it that this means that the equations in question made predictions which were not even contemplated in relation to the original problems they were supposed to solve. And there have been other such cases in the history of science. Take for example Paul Dirac, another Nobel laureate in physics:

The father of antimatter was the remarkable English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), considered by many to be the greatest British theorist since Sir Isaac Newton.

His research marked the first time something never before seen in nature was “predicted” – that is, postulated to exist based on theoretical rather than experimental evidence. His discovery was guided by the human imagination, and arcane mathematics.

For his achievement Dirac was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1933 at the age of 31.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17111-how-dirac-predicted-antimatter/

that’s how I understand it too. This idea of there being permanent, unchangeable objects - the original meaning of ‘atom’! - no longer holds. So the answer to the question ‘does the electron exist’ just is the wave-function. The answer it gives is again a distribution of possibilities, not a yes/no. ‘Exists’ doesn’t apply. ‘Does not exist’ doesn’t apply. (Does that ring a Bell?)

Of course! All of what we are talking about ‘fell out of the equations’ so to speak. Superposition, for instance, about which it’s difficult to form any kind of real concept.

I've struggled with the whole idea. — T Clark

And you wouldn't be alone in that, but I've long since reconciled myself to it.

The article is correct - information cannot be transmitted faster than light. Yet in the Bell experiments, the correlation between separated particles is instaneous. So, information is not being transmitted between the two particles, and yet the correlation is happening. By what means does that correlation happen, in the absence of tranmission of information? You see the question? Something done in one place seems to have an instaneous effect on something in another place. Hence, 'spooky action at a distance'.

Did the action at a distance take place at a rate faster than the speed of light? — T Clark

'Instantaneous' means 'no time'. That's why Einstein couldn't accept it.

Does the experiment described contradict that? — T Clark

The 'Bell inequalities' experiments confirm that the correlation between the two particles that occurs at the measurement of one of the pairs is instantanous.

If not what's the big deal. — T Clark

That's why it's a big deal. Hence Niels Bohr's oft-quoted statement, 'Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it.'

(For the attribution of that quote, it's in Werner Heisenberg's book Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, in the chapter on Positivism, Metaphysics and Religion. It relates to a lecture Bohr gave to representatives of the Vienna Circle when they came to Copenhagen. Bohr felt by their polite applause and lack of questions that they didn't understand what he was telling them, 'otherwise they would have been shocked by it'. I think this still holds true.)

But information is not travelling anywhere. It's not as if the properties of A are being communicated to B - that B can be 'informed about' A. That's the whole problem!

Have a look at the interview pinned to my profile page of Christian Fuchs who has originated an interpretation called Quantum Baynsianism (QBism for short, article name A Private View of Quantum Reality.) Some relevant passages:

QBism... treats the wave function as a description of a single observer’s subjective knowledge. It resolves all of the quantum paradoxes, but at the not insignificant cost of anything we might call “reality.” Then again, maybe that’s what quantum mechanics has been trying to tell us all along — that a single objective reality is an illusion....

Schrödinger thought that the Greeks had a kind of hold over us — they saw that the only way to make progress in thinking about the world was to talk about it without the “knowing subject” in it. QBism goes against that strain by saying that quantum mechanics is not about how the world is without us; instead it’s precisely about us in the world. The subject matter of the theory is not the world or us but us-within-the-world, the interface between the two.

I find that highly persuasive, because it lines up so well with phenomenology, as distinct from objectivism. Objectivism is 'what you see looking out the window'. Phenomenology is 'you looking out the window'. So it includes the observing subject.

So what is being called into question is not reality, but a mind independent reality - the purported reality that exists 'out there now', always already there that we either perceive, or not. That is what is called into question by quantum mechanics. But, he goes on to say:

It’s said that in earlier civilizations, people didn’t quite know how to distinguish between objective and subjective. But once the idea of separating the two gained a toehold, we were told that we have to do this, and that science is about the objective. And now that it’s done, it’s hard to turn back. I think the biggest fear people have of QBism is precisely this: that it’s anthropocentric. The feeling is, we got over that with Copernicus, and this has got to be a step backwards. But I think if we really want a universe that’s rife with possibility with no ultimate limits on it, this is exactly where you’ve got to go.

So again, what is being called into question is scientific realism, but in a very specific sense, one which I think is peculiar to what you could call the early modern or modern period.

that the results can be used to make a life. — Banno

Only when imbued with the breath of life, and that sure ain't made from clay. ;-)

Followers of religion never seem to present things in this way. They always seem to be happy to take God's side against humanity, trading on only the "bad people" being in hell. It is an isolating posture - only YOU are going to hell if you remain a bad person. — RolandTyme

I think there's other ways of seeing it. The depiction of God as a vengeful parent punishing people for not bending the knee is something of a caricature, albeit a caricature based on many generations of religious enculturation. But from a broader perspective, if there are, as religions say, other realms of existence - heavens and hells - then it figures that your destination is the trajectory set by your actions in this life. Within that landscape, religious icons represent archetypal forms. And you don't want to casually dismiss the possibility of hell, from the relatively priviledged perspective of a human existence, when it might be unimagineably dreadful, especially if, when you fetch up there, you know deep down that it might have been avoided. And you will never be 'happy with oblivion', for reasons that ought to be obvious. Maybe the truth is that we're 'condemned to existence', and the kind of existence we have, is very much dependent on the qualities we bring to the living of it. That's what I hope the religions would teach, and insofar as they do, they're right on the money.

Hanson will scrape in, it seems, but she’s going to be very much on her own.

Also wanted to put on the record here that I WAS WRONG about Albanese. IN the early part of the campaign I expressed doubts about his capacity, but I have been proven completely mistaken on that.

So for me, it is a pity that Einstein's idea doesn't work. The reasonable thing just doesn't work. — Wayfarer

That quote was attributed to me, but they were not my words, it was a quote from John Bell.

Establishing an attitude that accepts or denies a theory and be prepared to work with it is NOT so great a challenge. — Rocco Rosano

That is not too far from the advice to 'shutup and calculate' - don't worry about the fact that it's weird, just use it.

It's a challenge to realism.
— Wayfarer

How? — Agent Smith

The very short version is, non-locality means that when you measure the properties of a particle in one position, the properties of the entangled particle are also fixed by that measurement at that instant of measurement, regardless of the distance between the two. So making a measurement here creates an outcome there without any apparent means for that information to be transmitted - because it's instantaneous, then it is faster than the speed of light which is the upper limit for any actual transmission. See this entry.

//PS// - I had questioned NoAxiom's claim that 'all relativity would crumble' if non-locality was falsifiable. As the video below explains, this is because it suggests that causal relationships seem to propogate at faster than the speed of light, so in that sense, this claim is correct.//

Good for you.

You need to offer more on your concept of 'immaterial space'. — universeness

The first uncaused cause was immaterial space. — val p miranda

Just like that! Rabbit out of hat. No further explanation needed, or worth pursuing. Move along.

You’re confusing your food processor with your word processor again, Smith.

What 180 says is right. See https://aeon.co/ideas/i-believe-because-it-is-absurd-christianitys-first-meme

It seems to be pop-science nonsense. — noAxioms

Sorry but I believe Quanta’s article has it right, I think you’re the one misunderstanding the issue. (My physics is rudimentary but my English comprehension is ok.)

All of relativity would crumble if locality was falsifiable. — noAxioms

It's a challenge to realism. That's what is 'spooky' about it.

evidence of a naive writer — noAxioms

"Ben Brubaker is a freelance science journalist whose writing has appeared in Quanta Magazine, Scientific American and The Conversation.... He has a PhD in physics from Yale University and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado, Boulder."

In other words, Wayfarer, I see a sort of dominance here of the people who get their way when they like the status quo... They will justify it by saying, you NEED this. Those are some hefty implications there.. mainly of the comply or die variety. How do you justify complying? Well, make it into something of a value/moral dimension whereby the current reality is something people NEED to work through, even if it doesn't conform to their preferences — schopenhauer1

Your OP is predicated on the premise that fulfilling preferences, or desires, or needs, is the summum bonum, the only real good. But I'm questioning that. Take Buddhism, for instance: first noble (let's say "basic") truth is that existence is dukkha ("sucks", in the vernacular). And why? Because we don't get what we want, or don't want what we get, and everything we know and cherish is bound for old age and decay. But that's only the first stop. The argument then develops over the remaing three - the cause, the end, the way to the end, none of which involves getting what you want.

Not sure what you're quoting — noAxioms

https://www.science.org/content/article/china-s-quantum-satellite-achieves-spooky-action-record-distance

‘Better than random’ I took to mean a re-confirmation of the Bell inequality i.e. if there had been no entanglement demonstrated then results would have been random.

And said spooky action has never been demonstrated, — noAxioms

Wait - wasn’t the Bell inequality, and its subsequent validation by Aspect and Zellinger, precisely a demonstration of that?

These things are simply interpretation dependent and not provably right or wrong. If they were, they'd be actual theories, not just interpretations. — noAxioms

Quanta Magazine has an explainer called How Bell's Theorem Proved Spooky Action at a Distance is Real, in case there is any question about that.

There's no dummy's guide to the Parmenides, if that's what you're asking. It's one of the foundational texts of the whole tradition of Western metaphysics. Notice that in text above and below the examples you've quoted there's a whole set of references - more than a dozen, in fact. Drill down, there's a link to an enhanced bibiography. So taking those examples out of that context is, I'm afraid, a hopeless task, because they’re not algebra or even exercises in symbolic logic. They are an attempt to discern the underlying meaning of Parmenides by representing the arguments in symbolic form, so they can only be understood in the light of the debate about the nature and reality of the Forms. (I’m no Plato scholar, but I did get through two years of undergraduate classes in philosophy without encountering material as difficult as that.)