Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 125. June 27, 2022 continued . . . .
Quantum Weirdness
Matter or Metaphor?
Quantum “non-locality” is another counter-intuitive concept, along with “acausality”. But it’s not so mystical, if you think of super-position, not as a place in space, but as a statistical state of Potential, where all things are Possible but nothing is Actual. In other words, it’s not a part of the space-time world, but a state of mind, where everything is imaginary. That may sound anti-scientific, but it’s the only way to make sense of Quantum Weirdness. That is, to take a non-classical non-material world-view — which, in pre-science days, used to be imagined as an invisible intangible Spiritual realm. But now we can understand it as a Platonic Ideal realm, the sphere of Ideas, of thoughts, of mental images . . . of Information. Yet, its no more magical than the scientific concept of an Energy Field³⁰ : as a causal force that can be detected by the senses only in its effects. For example, lightning is not a thing, but merely the path traced by an invisible electro-magnetic field across the sky. You don’t see the field, only its heating effect on matter, which radiates light energy. Even then, you don’t see the actual light, but just its effects on chemistry in the eye & brain³¹.
Similarly, the events associated with a quantum wave-function are not literally uncaused, but merely the result of immaterial causes. The so-called “wave” is just a metaphor, not the actual propagating peaks & valleys in a material medium. In this case, the medium is abstract Mathematics, which exists only in rational minds. Schrodinger’s equation describes not the imaginary wave itself, but merely the statistical odds of finding a particular effect, upon measurement. For instance, entangle-ment occurs when two particles from the same wavefunction are separated, but remain inter-related by their kinship to the original super-posed mathematical wave. Their apparent location has changed, but their immersion in the non-local non-actual waveform remains unchanged. That doesn’t make sense in terms of classical reality. But it hangs together logically, in terms of quantum ideality, where the essential substance is the causal energy of En-formation : the power to give form to the formless.
Physicists have said that all electrons are identical³². If so, we can assume that they share properties, such as spin & momentum. And, if the waveform system as a whole has neutral properties, the wandering electrons will have to display opposite-but-equal attributes, in order to maintain the balance. Hence, entangled pairs cannot be the same, they must be complementary : positive + negative = neutral. Moreover, Bell’s Inequality theorem denied the “hidden variables”postulate of Einstein’s EPR paradox. "If [a hidden-variable theory] is local it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local." So, scientists were forced to to revise their conventional understanding of Space-Time. As Ball explains, “taking away entanglement in the 2D model is equivalent to unweaving spacetime in the 3D case.”
Blog Post 125 continued . . . .
30. Energy Field : There are two meanings for this term. In material science, it’s an imaginary model of a place in space where virtual particles and invisible forces are described mathematically. In pseudoscience, it’s an imaginary model of spiritual forces described mentally.
31. Can’t see Light : “Despite the apparent oxymoron, we humans can’t see light. We can only see objects that are illuminated by light, not the light itself.” https://colourverse.com/why-we-cant-see-light/
32. Identical Electrons : “Every electron in the universe has exactly the same mass, exactly the same charge, and if you think about it, there's no reason why they'd have to be. In 1940, physicist John Wheeler came up with a novel new theory that might explain why all electrons are identical . . . every electron is one electron moving back and forth through time.” In any case, all electrons that come forth from a single waveform were integral & undifferentiated components of the whole system. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/news/a27731/what-if-every-electron-was-the-same-electron/
33. Bell’s Inequality : “quantum mechanics is incompatible with local hidden-variable theories. The "local" in this case refers to the principle of locality, the idea that a particle can only be influenced by its immediate surroundings,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
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