hereticzero Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 http://csglobe.com/quantum-physics-proves-death-illusion/ Who knew? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pawn Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Makes sense to me. Consciousness and existence are inseparable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenstar Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 I've considered this before, it's not a new hypothesis. Jane Robert's channeled entity 'Seth' goes into some detail about this. (fascinating reading even if you don't buy it). It's not impossible… but I don't know how much it is applicable at the Ego/Id level, which is where the self-image comes from… consciousness may be eternal, but individuality? A large part of our self-image comes from our corporeal experience. Of course maybe what we experience here, in this body, is but a narrow laser view… a small part of the spectrum of possible perception. I don't think this is science yet though, more like philosophy. You can bandy words like 'quantum physics' but without the math it's just mumbo jumbo. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The double slit explanation is exceptionally flawed. You can actually perform the double slit experiment using laser light and fairly basic materials. Additionally, you can "watch" it all day long with your eyes and the photons will not behave like "bullets." You will get a nice interference pattern that will not go away when you "look" at it. Unfortunately, the article fails to point out what really happens when we "look" at particles such as electrons via the use of various detectors. "Looking" in this way requires us to manipulate the setup by placing a detector into the path of the particle, so yeah, we actively perturb the system when "looking" at it in this sense, but "looking" at it with our eyes does not perturb the interference pattern. Therefore, this article is quite dishonest and really takes advantage of people who may not know about this stuff. It upsets me to see so many people try to pass off these ideas that are so wrong a scientific neophyte like me can point them out, but if you manage to use enough big words you can easily lead people away from the real science that is going on, producing real technologies that really change the way humanity progresses. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The double slit explanation is exceptionally flawed. You can actually perform the double slit experiment using laser light and fairly basic materials. Additionally, you can "watch" it all day long with your eyes and the photons will not behave like "bullets." You will get a nice interference pattern that will not go away when you "look" at it. Unfortunately, the article fails to point out what really happens when we "look" at particles such as electrons via the use of various detectors. "Looking" in this way requires us to manipulate the setup by placing a detector into the path of the particle, so yeah, we actively perturb the system when "looking" at it in this sense, but "looking" at it with our eyes does not perturb the interference pattern. Therefore, this article is quite dishonest and really takes advantage of people who may not know about this stuff. It upsets me to see so many people try to pass off these ideas that are so wrong a scientific neophyte like me can point them out, but if you manage to use enough big words you can easily lead people away from the real science that is going on, producing real technologies that really change the way humanity progresses. Wasn't double slit experiment research peer reviewed? (Not as it relates to this article, just on its own) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 http://csglobe.com/quantum-physics-proves-death-illusion/ Who knew? Life is an illusion also. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miekko Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The article linked to in the original post has nothing to do with real QM. From the point of view of proper QM, it's word salad, it's gibberish made to fool the credulous. It "proves" nothing of the sort despite having that word posted in the heading. Further, Robert Lanza is no quantum physicist, he's a medical doctor. His theory seems to be the result of what's sometimes called physics envy in the sciences. Sometimes, physics envy is beneficial - it drives scientists to refine their fields in order to improve the precision of the claims made in their fields, but sometimes, it causes the opposite: scientists trying to claim their field really is where the answers to everything can be found. Turns out Lanza's shtick is of the latter kind, and it's sad to see such delusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jedah Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The double slit experiment does not prove the universe is created through conscious observation. In order to observe electrons, the experiment has to be interfered with in a way much more intrusive than just a camera. This is a common misconception of quantum physics. We don't actually know what the experiment fully implies yet. In other words this article is pure speculation, not proof. csglobe should be ashamed of this yellow journalism. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The double slit explanation is exceptionally flawed. You can actually perform the double slit experiment using laser light and fairly basic materials. Additionally, you can "watch" it all day long with your eyes and the photons will not behave like "bullets." You will get a nice interference pattern that will not go away when you "look" at it. Unfortunately, the article fails to point out what really happens when we "look" at particles such as electrons via the use of various detectors. "Looking" in this way requires us to manipulate the setup by placing a detector into the path of the particle, so yeah, we actively perturb the system when "looking" at it in this sense, but "looking" at it with our eyes does not perturb the interference pattern. Therefore, this article is quite dishonest and really takes advantage of people who may not know about this stuff. It upsets me to see so many people try to pass off these ideas that are so wrong a scientific neophyte like me can point them out, but if you manage to use enough big words you can easily lead people away from the real science that is going on, producing real technologies that really change the way humanity progresses. Wasn't double slit experiment research peer reviewed? (Not as it relates to this article, just on its own) Extensively. In fact, this category of experimentation has been around for a long time and it predates quantum mechanics by about 100 years. It was first performed by Young in the early 1800's and was used to establish the wave theory of light. It wasn't until the 1920's that de Broglie would propose the concept of a "matter wave" that the experiment would be done using electrons. The original experiment was performed by Davisson and Germer in 1927 where they fired electron beams at a Nickle crystal. An accident however, changed the surface of the Nickle and basically, the electrons were able to scatter off of in a way that demonstrated they had a wavelength. The wavelength that they measured closely matched de Broglie's predictions. Additionally, Schrodinger had published his now famous "wave equation" paper a couple of years before this experiment. In it he used de Broglie's idea to create an equation that uses the wavelike properties of an electron in an atom. The predictions of this equation were verified because it could be used to calculate the light emission spectrum of Hydrogen atoms. Instead of this double slit equals afterlife pseudoscience crap, the real story demonstrates the rich tapestry of many ideas that eventually came together to form the foundation of modern quantum theory. The actual story is fascinating and spans the first few decades of the 1900's. Actually, it's still a work in progress, but the major foundational work occurred from about 1900 to the mid 1930's. This is a more complicated and rich story than the crap that this article discusses. I'm not sure but I would venture to sat the entire site is probably full of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory articles. I wouldn't take it too seriously, but many people probably do unfortunately. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 LANZA'S THEORY OF BIOCENTRISM AND THE AFTERLIFE "It is the belief that life and biology are central to reality and that life creates the universe, not the other way round." . . . If Lanza's consciousness creates his reality, why doesn't he test his mind's power over reality and do what Zeno failed to do? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes (see Arrow paradox) Zeno claimed that an arrow never reaches it's target because motion in time is impossible. So, why didn't he test this by standing between the archer and the target? So why doesn't Lanza perform a similar test - where his leap off a twenty story building doesn't kill him? The Matrix was great entertainment, but (as already mentioned) Lanza is full of bs. Thanks, BAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pawn Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 He's not talking about an afterlife. He's saying death is an illusion. Which is really not all that profound, considering that almost everything we perceive is an illusion of sorts. You guys mentioned "afterlife" and "individuality" which are also both illusions. As midnite rider says, life is also an illusion in the sense the article uses. Consciousness and existence are inseparable, it's impossible to have one without the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bornagainathiest Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 Hello Pawn. I suspect that you're using certain words (illusion, perceive, consciousness, existence, inseparable) in a frame of reference that we don't share with you, nor properly understand. Therefore, it'd be very helpful if you could explain to us how you define and use these words. Thanks, BAA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miekko Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 He's not talking about an afterlife. He's saying death is an illusion. Which is really not all that profound, considering that almost everything we perceive is an illusion of sorts. You guys mentioned "afterlife" and "individuality" which are also both illusions. As midnite rider says, life is also an illusion in the sense the article uses. Consciousness and existence are inseparable, it's impossible to have one without the other. Waffle and assertion without any validity is all you have, apparently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 He's not talking about an afterlife. He's saying death is an illusion. Which is really not all that profound, considering that almost everything we perceive is an illusion of sorts. You guys mentioned "afterlife" and "individuality" which are also both illusions. As midnite rider says, life is also an illusion in the sense the article uses. Consciousness and existence are inseparable, it's impossible to have one without the other. Waffle and assertion without any validity is all you have, apparently. It sounds like he's making Epicurus's argument. In a philosophical sense, I agree and see it as a healthy way to view death. When alive we know only life and when dead we don't exist, therefore we never really die -- i.e., if you can't sit back and reflect on it after the fact, it causes you no pain, suffering or anything else. Calling this an illusion seems like word play though. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Moderator florduh Posted January 3, 2014 Super Moderator Share Posted January 3, 2014 Christians and others with unfounded beliefs are notorious for inappropriately twisting science to its purpose when convenient, and ignoring/denying science when it runs counter to the preconceived belief. I think Deepak may have been one of the first to distort QM for his purpose. I second Ravenstar's endorsement of the Seth Material. It's a crash course in woo. Highly entertaining and a fascinating insight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The problem I have is with all the false assertions and misrepresentations presented in the article. Aside from the double slit example, another one is the bit about light. It seems to suggest we can actually change the nature of the light we see. Regardless of how we interpret or talk about colour, we would not change the nature of light if we experienced different colours. Say I was colour blind and was not able to experience the colour red as other people do. Does this mean that I can fundamentally change the wavelength of say a beam of light emitted in the 680 nm wavelength (red colour). Not at all. Even if I experienced it as being green, the wavelength, frequency and energy of said light would not change. Changing the way a person experiences the world, does not change the way the world works. Our minds and bodies are part of the universe and as such, bound to follow the limits and principles of the universe. There is no real evidence to suggest that our consciousness is outside of the universe or exempt from the rules that everything else follows including the matter and energy that makes up our body. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mymistake Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 What if I am just a brain floating in a vat and all of you are figments of my imagination? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 I've considered this before, it's not a new hypothesis. Jane Robert's channeled entity 'Seth' goes into some detail about this. (fascinating reading even if you don't buy it). It's not impossible… but I don't know how much it is applicable at the Ego/Id level, which is where the self-image comes from… consciousness may be eternal, but individuality? A large part of our self-image comes from our corporeal experience. Of course maybe what we experience here, in this body, is but a narrow laser view… a small part of the spectrum of possible perception. I don't think this is science yet though, more like philosophy. You can bandy words like 'quantum physics' but without the math it's just mumbo jumbo. Probably more of a philosophy than science, I agree, until/unless I actually experience it myself. I've wondered if death might be similar to disconnecting all sense organs from the brain. You would still have a sense of you even if you had no sensory input. Of course the brain would also be dead if the body was dead which would complicate this assertion. :-) And of course there is the fact that with enough brain damage your consciousness is impaired or can become null and void. Same thing during a seizure. Then again maybe these problems with brain-consciousness are shed when we die and we 'go back' to just being the self-aware universe. :-) Maybe the part of the universe that calls itself me at the moment is so 'immersed' in being me that it enjoys all experiences, including brain damage, Alzheimers, altered consciousness, lack of consciousness, etc. And then upon death it just disconnects.... It's not science nor is it backed up by anything but my imagination. :-) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The double slit explanation is exceptionally flawed. You can actually perform the double slit experiment using laser light and fairly basic materials. Additionally, you can "watch" it all day long with your eyes and the photons will not behave like "bullets." You will get a nice interference pattern that will not go away when you "look" at it. Unfortunately, the article fails to point out what really happens when we "look" at particles such as electrons via the use of various detectors. "Looking" in this way requires us to manipulate the setup by placing a detector into the path of the particle, so yeah, we actively perturb the system when "looking" at it in this sense, but "looking" at it with our eyes does not perturb the interference pattern. Therefore, this article is quite dishonest and really takes advantage of people who may not know about this stuff. It upsets me to see so many people try to pass off these ideas that are so wrong a scientific neophyte like me can point them out, but if you manage to use enough big words you can easily lead people away from the real science that is going on, producing real technologies that really change the way humanity progresses. Wasn't double slit experiment research peer reviewed? (Not as it relates to this article, just on its own) Extensively. In fact, this category of experimentation has been around for a long time and it predates quantum mechanics by about 100 years. It was first performed by Young in the early 1800's and was used to establish the wave theory of light. It wasn't until the 1920's that de Broglie would propose the concept of a "matter wave" that the experiment would be done using electrons. The original experiment was performed by Davisson and Germer in 1927 where they fired electron beams at a Nickle crystal. An accident however, changed the surface of the Nickle and basically, the electrons were able to scatter off of in a way that demonstrated they had a wavelength. The wavelength that they measured closely matched de Broglie's predictions. Additionally, Schrodinger had published his now famous "wave equation" paper a couple of years before this experiment. In it he used de Broglie's idea to create an equation that uses the wavelike properties of an electron in an atom. The predictions of this equation were verified because it could be used to calculate the light emission spectrum of Hydrogen atoms. Instead of this double slit equals afterlife pseudoscience crap, the real story demonstrates the rich tapestry of many ideas that eventually came together to form the foundation of modern quantum theory. The actual story is fascinating and spans the first few decades of the 1900's. Actually, it's still a work in progress, but the major foundational work occurred from about 1900 to the mid 1930's. This is a more complicated and rich story than the crap that this article discusses. I'm not sure but I would venture to sat the entire site is probably full of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory articles. I wouldn't take it too seriously, but many people probably do unfortunately. I would agree that the wave/particle nature of photons does not equal life after death. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The problem I have is with all the false assertions and misrepresentations presented in the article. Aside from the double slit example, another one is the bit about light. It seems to suggest we can actually change the nature of the light we see. Regardless of how we interpret or talk about colour, we would not change the nature of light if we experienced different colours. Say I was colour blind and was not able to experience the colour red as other people do. Does this mean that I can fundamentally change the wavelength of say a beam of light emitted in the 680 nm wavelength (red colour). Not at all. Even if I experienced it as being green, the wavelength, frequency and energy of said light would not change. Changing the way a person experiences the world, does not change the way the world works. Our minds and bodies are part of the universe and as such, bound to follow the limits and principles of the universe. There is no real evidence to suggest that our consciousness is outside of the universe or exempt from the rules that everything else follows including the matter and energy that makes up our body. If the frequency of a train whistle is measured to be 1000 hertz inside the locomotive but 950 hertz as it passes by a pedestrian and 1050 hertz as it approaches another pedestrian then what is the true frequency? It's a variety of frequencies and we just call it the doppler effect and arbitrarily decide it's 1000 hertz because humans like to have certainty. Ah, I'm going to have to look up relativity and clock time in airplanes vs on the ground...I love reading about that crap. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midniterider Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 What if I am just a brain floating in a vat and all of you are figments of my imagination? I'd rather be a pair of boobs. And at least one hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted January 3, 2014 Share Posted January 3, 2014 The problem I have is with all the false assertions and misrepresentations presented in the article. Aside from the double slit example, another one is the bit about light. It seems to suggest we can actually change the nature of the light we see. Regardless of how we interpret or talk about colour, we would not change the nature of light if we experienced different colours. Say I was colour blind and was not able to experience the colour red as other people do. Does this mean that I can fundamentally change the wavelength of say a beam of light emitted in the 680 nm wavelength (red colour). Not at all. Even if I experienced it as being green, the wavelength, frequency and energy of said light would not change. Changing the way a person experiences the world, does not change the way the world works. Our minds and bodies are part of the universe and as such, bound to follow the limits and principles of the universe. There is no real evidence to suggest that our consciousness is outside of the universe or exempt from the rules that everything else follows including the matter and energy that makes up our body. If the frequency of a train whistle is measured to be 1000 hertz inside the locomotive but 950 hertz as it passes by a pedestrian and 1050 hertz as it approaches another pedestrian then what is the true frequency? It's a variety of frequencies and we just call it the doppler effect and arbitrarily decide it's 1000 hertz because humans like to have certainty. Ah, I'm going to have to look up relativity and clock time in airplanes vs on the ground...I love reading about that crap. lol The type of measurement we are talking about assumes everybody is making the measurement from the same inertial frame. For example, measuring the wavelength of light while sitting "still" in a lab next to the source of the light. It's not about certainty but rather it's about what frame are you making the measurement from. In the example, both measurements could be correct depending on the frame. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 Speaking to the original subject I was thinking the guy was trying to say that if I died that I might be alive in some other universe so I'm not really dead since I am alive "somewhere" as it were. But I also thought, if that's the case, there has to be a time when I'm dead in every universe unless we can somehow rule out time (that is to say that all things happen simultaneously). In that case there's always a "me" that is alive somewhere in some loose sense of the concept. But does any of that matter? I'd still be dead and gone in every way that mattered to the me that's typing this (unless this is "Quantum Leap" where I hop from me to me through quantum magic). That's like saying that in some alternate reality somewhere there is a "me" of sorts that is the benevolent ruler of the Milky Way. Who cares? That's not really this me. That's some other guy. Like a twin. What do I care what he's up to? And if most anything is possible that means we all kind of take turns in our own realities so there are "you's" that get to rule the galaxy too. I'm not so special anymore. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Margee Posted January 4, 2014 Moderator Share Posted January 4, 2014 It sounds like he's making Epicurus's argument. In a philosophical sense, I agree and see it as a healthy way to view death. When alive we know only life and when dead we don't exist, therefore we never really die -- i.e., if you can't sit back and reflect on it after the fact, it causes you no pain, suffering or anything else. Calling this an illusion seems like word play though. Good points Vigile. Ya still gotta die somehow and that's not an illusion. I think its going to hurt.....I wish they could make the dying part an illusion..... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pawn Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 First of all, I agree that the article as written is blatantly misleading. The Dr. makes some absurd assumptions based on some quantum mechanics theories. Firstly, the double-slit experiment, while fascinating, DOES NOT conclude that human cosnciousness alters the pattern, rather that an observation detector placed within the experiment alters the action of the photon. Even, when no human is watching the experiment, the presence of the detector alters the outcome of the quantum event. Its still amazing, and scientists don't all agree as to WHY this happens... WHat fascinates me about quantum physics, is the Observation EFFECT... as far as I know (I am not a quantum physicist, and there are only a few such people on the planet that do quantum research) , there is such an effect in quantum physics called the Observer Effect, and it is not entirely clear as to the relationship between observing a quantum event, and altering a quantum. We do know that observing a quantum event, often alters the outcome of the event! For another example beyond the double-slit experiment is Quantum superposition Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that holds that a physical system—such as an electron—exists partly in all its particular theoretically possible states (or, configuration of its properties) simultaneously; but when measured or observed, it gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configurations. Perhaps, even more bizarre is the quantum Zeno effect. The quantum Zeno effect is a situation in which an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. Now, I'll be the first to admit that there is a lot of controversy over the Measurement Problem in quantum physics, and the theoretical physicists who work on this stuff don't even have a consensus as to why the Observation Effect happens. We do know as I stated above, that THERE IS NO NEED FOR A CONSCIOUS OBSERVER, only a detector of some sort to 'observe' the event. So I will politely apologize for agreeing with the article, as it truly is poorly written, and jumps to some radical conclusions that lack real logical deduction. What I was referring to is best kept to philosophical discussions... the nature of consciousness and how it relates to reality itself. Thanks for keeping it REAL guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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