Emergence
Once again on the drive to work, Penelope and I had a very enlightening discussion on the nature of reality (seems like there's a pattern developing here ;-)).
A big topic in "fringe" science is "emergent" behavior or properties.
Many characteristics (behaviors, properties) we observe in the world are stochastic (probabilistic, statistical, "random") in nature. Which is to say they manifest as the accumulation of the properties or behaviors of many individuals, who (observed independently) don't necessarily exhibit the emergent characteristic as individuals.
It's unclear where in the accumulation this transition occurs.
A similar process appears to be in play with the emergence of perceived "reality" from the accumulated quantum wave function collapse provoked by conscious observation.
Science presumes that the particular collapse state of the wave function for a particular quantum entity is random; perhaps it is, but the emergent cumulative effect isn't (or doesn't appear to be); so where is that transition?
Is it truly random? How would we/can we know?
Penelope tells me that there is also an "echo" or "habitual" effect to wave collapse. The "persistence" of the "illusion" of reality (per Einstein); is partly due to a sort of habit that the quantum field gets into from repeated observation and the habit echoes over time so that later observers will encounter similar wave collapse. Otherwise the random nature of wave collapse would result in, effectively, chaos.
Most of my perceived reality is a mere convention of my conception/perception. Beyond a fairly superficial level, there's no way of telling whether another's conscious perception of "the same" reality (allowing for the inevitable variance in location and history) is "the same" down to any given level of detail.
We might collaborate to investigate the question up to some point, but that introduces whole other issues of perception, communication, representation, memory, consciousness itself.
A classic materialist might argue this is sophistry or engaging in grand gyrations, introducing unnecessary (anti-Occam) complications to a purely deterministic process. This stance ignores the deep implications and strong scientific evidential support for quantum theory.
My friends, Reality™ (whatever that may actually mean ;-)) is quantum.
A big topic in "fringe" science is "emergent" behavior or properties.
Many characteristics (behaviors, properties) we observe in the world are stochastic (probabilistic, statistical, "random") in nature. Which is to say they manifest as the accumulation of the properties or behaviors of many individuals, who (observed independently) don't necessarily exhibit the emergent characteristic as individuals.
It's unclear where in the accumulation this transition occurs.
A similar process appears to be in play with the emergence of perceived "reality" from the accumulated quantum wave function collapse provoked by conscious observation.
Science presumes that the particular collapse state of the wave function for a particular quantum entity is random; perhaps it is, but the emergent cumulative effect isn't (or doesn't appear to be); so where is that transition?
Is it truly random? How would we/can we know?
Penelope tells me that there is also an "echo" or "habitual" effect to wave collapse. The "persistence" of the "illusion" of reality (per Einstein); is partly due to a sort of habit that the quantum field gets into from repeated observation and the habit echoes over time so that later observers will encounter similar wave collapse. Otherwise the random nature of wave collapse would result in, effectively, chaos.
Most of my perceived reality is a mere convention of my conception/perception. Beyond a fairly superficial level, there's no way of telling whether another's conscious perception of "the same" reality (allowing for the inevitable variance in location and history) is "the same" down to any given level of detail.
We might collaborate to investigate the question up to some point, but that introduces whole other issues of perception, communication, representation, memory, consciousness itself.
My friends, Reality™ (whatever that may actually mean ;-)) is quantum.
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