New interpretation of QM, with new two-phase cosmology, solves 15 foundational problems in one go.

[Geoff Dann]

For the billionth time....

Will you see the particle marks on the screen when you open your eyes, or will you not see them, Geoff?

Is the screen inside schrodinger's box or outside it when I open my eyes? Or...is the box closed or open?

Only when you acknowledge that my question takes epistemological precedence over yours will you have understood 2PC.

You have not answered my three questions. You still don't understand the idea you're trying to refute with this question.

Under 2PC there is no outcome at all until you open the box. It therefore has nothing to do with the two-slit experiment. ANYTHING could be inside the box, and the argument still works.

 

[marcin]

Whatever the real starting history was (h1o), that information is now lost to us, but it cannot be the one that appears to us now (h1r). That would require a stable, unchanging past, which is ruled out by this model.

Isn't the second, conscious phase of your 2 phase cosmology a stable, unchanging past?

 

[marcin]

Under 2PC there is no outcome at all until you open the box. It therefore has nothing to do with the two-slit experiment. ANYTHING could be inside the box, and the argument still works.

What is this comment about, Geoff?

 

[Geoff Dann]

Isn't the second, conscious phase of your 2 phase cosmology a stable, unchanging past?

No. In phase 2 the past (both the h2 past and the h1r past) is continually being modified by the present. The past "decays" -- it only remains as informational traces in the present. The further away we go from the present, the less well defined the past becomes. All that remains is whatever is required to keep the present coherent, and the further back you go the less there is which satisfies this criteria.

 

[Geoff Dann]

What is this comment about, Geoff?

I have already answered that several times. It does not matter what you ask about the two slit experiment or any other physical experiment you care to dream up. If the experiment is inside Schrodinger's sealed box then, under 2PC, the entire experimental setup remains in a superposition.

Why are you just repeating the same question over and over again? Do you think if you ask it 50 times then I will eventually give in and answer a question which implicitly lets you assume your conclusion?

The only answer I can give you, in a discussion about 2PC, is that your question indicates a failure to understand what we are supposed to be discussing.

This is not difficult to understand. You are debating in bad faith and you are doing it because you have no good faith way of defending your position.

 

[marcin]

No. In phase 2 the past (both the h2 past and the h1r past) is continually being modified by the present. The past "decays" -- it only remains as informational traces in the present. The further away we go from the present, the less well defined the past becomes. All that remains is whatever is required to keep the present coherent, and the further back you go the less there is which satisfies this criteria.

So you're saying that the history after the LUCAS was formed can also change?

 

[Geoff Dann]

So you're saying that the history after the LUCAS was formed can also change?

Yes. Only the present is fully real. The whole past can change, provided it remains consistent with the present. This includes both h1r (the retrodicted or apparent past earlier than 555mya) and h2r (the retrodicted or apparent past between 555mya and now). H1o can't change because it no longer exists, and the same applies to h2o (what actually happened since 555mya rather than what it looks like now).

However, there is still an important difference between h1r and h2r, because their origin is different: h1 started out incredibly fine-tuned on a cosmic scale, and h2 didn't. This may turn out to be empirically detectable, but I am not even going to speculate on how that might be done. At the moment nobody is even looking for it.

 

[marcin]

This is not difficult to understand. You are debating in bad faith and you are doing it because you have no good faith way of defending your position.

Geoff... You refuse to answer the question whether you expect to see any marks on the screen after you open your eyes. You're worse than a child that was caught up lying. You're like a child that doesn't want to open its eyes to see the real world - literally.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Geoff... You refuse to answer the question whether you expect to see any marks on the screen after you open your eyes. You're worse than a child that was caught up lying. You're like a child that doesn't want to open its eyes to see the real world - literally.

OK. Please can I ask you to engage in good faith, and to avoid personal insults.

You haven't added anything to the discussion with this post. I've told you why I am refusing to answer the question, and it isn't because I am being childish or dishonest You, on the other hand....

I would like to discuss the two phase cosmology. It seems you are only interested in repeatedly asking a question which impliticly assumes 2PC to be false, and then becoming abusive when I repeatedly refuse to answer it.

You are trying to cheat, I am not letting you, and so now you are being abusive.

 

[marcin]

Firing the particles (with your eyes closed) at the screen with no barrier with the slits between you and the screen assumes nothing. Opening your eyes at the end assumes nothing.

 

[marcin]

Yes. Only the present is fully real. The whole past can change, provided it remains consistent with the present.

According to your claim, hubble tension is the inconsistency caused by the difference between your cosmic phases. From our human perspective it's inconsistent.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Firing the particles (with your eyes closed) at the screen with no barrier with the slits between you and the screen assumes nothing. Opening your eyes at the end assumes nothing.

OK...I am going to try a different way of responding.

Imagine for a moment than instead of defending a new form of neutral monism, I'm a subjective idealist. And I am therefore saying "Only consciousness exists. All this stuff is irrelevant, because until whatever it is appear in your conscious experience, then it isn't even real."

Can you see why your questions about barriers, slits and screens is utterly futile? It is like Samuel Johnson kicking the rock and declaring he has refuted it thus -- it doesn't work. There are effective arguments against idealism, but they do not include any arguments involving purely physical apparatus, whether they involve electrons going through slits or boots kicking rocks.

 

[Geoff Dann]

According to your claim, hubble tension is the inconsistency caused by the difference between your cosmic phases. From our human perspective it's inconsistent.

I am not following you. I am saying that the idea that the early CMB figure and the recent supernova-based figure for the expansion of the universe should match up is based on a set of flawed assumptions. Firstly it assumes that a real measurement taken today of objects which are firmly in phase 2 can be compared as equals with measurements taken of objects way back in early phase 1 history (this is false because h1r is not the same as h1o). Secondly it assumes that LambdaCDM is a valid model, which in turn assumes inflation is necessary. In 2PC, all of the reasons for inventing inflation in the first place no longer exist. And if there is no reason to believe inflation happened, then the current CMB-derived figure is wrong, even as an extrapolation. What use is a model-based extrapolation if the model is wrong?

So under 2PC not only do we do not have a valid figure for the expansion of the early galaxy, we have no reason to believe that even if we find the correct h1r figure, it will match the recent figure. Hence there can be no Hubble tension problem. Hubble tension is a problem specific to LambdaCDM. It does not even arise in 2PC, so there is no problem to solve.

 

[marcin]

Geoff... There is a hot and sunny day. You go out and turn your face towards the sun, but with your eyes closed. You can feel the heat of the sun's radiation on your face. Do you think that you are in a superposition with the photons that your skin is absorbing, because your eyes are closed?

 

[Geoff Dann]

Geoff... There is a hot and sunny day. You go out and turn your face towards the sun, but with your eyes closed. You can feel the heat of the sun's radiation on your face. Do you think that you are in a superposition with the photons that your skin is absorbing, because your eyes are closed?

No. If I can feel those photons then the wave function has collapsed.
There is nothing special about vision (which is why I already told you twice that opening my eyes isn't what matters, but the wilful decision to do so is). What matters is whether it has registered in consciousness.

 

[marcin]

No. If I can feel those photons then the wave function has collapsed.
There is nothing special about vision. What matters is whether it has registered in consciousness.

Now image that your face is paralyzed and you don't feel it at all, so you don't feel the heat on your face. Do you think, that your face is in a superposition with the absorbed photons because you don't feel them?

 

[marcin]

(which is why I already told you twice that opening my eyes isn't what matters, but the wilful decision to do so is)

And I'm answering for the second time, that I simplified by equating the opening your eyes with the conscious observation. Are you going to repeat your response to my repeated reply?

 

[Geoff Dann]

Now image that your face is paralyzed and you don't feel it at all, so you don't feel the heat on your face. Do you think, that your face is in a superposition with the absorbed photons because you don't feel them?

OK. This is bad thought experiment, because it assumes that if your eyes are closed and you can't feel your face that your body is somehow not in causal connection with the sun. What is bad about it is the particular example, because the sun is so thoroughly causally connected to everything going on at the Earth's surface. It is therefore practically impossible to isolate yourself from it. If you are aware of anything at all then the causal link with the sun is pretty much avoidable.

This is exactly why the only thought experiment that works (that sheds any real light) is Schrodinger's cat. The reason for this is that the thought experiment explicitly states that there is no causal connection between the system inside the box and anything on the outside.

So if you'd like to reframe your thought experiment with that constraint in place then we can proceed, but any other thought experiment, whether it involves slits and electrons, boots and rocks, or the sun shining in the sky, will not be any use for anything.

Again: what matters is the causal connection between consciousness and the physical system. ANY physical system.

 

[marcin]

OK. This is bad thought experiment, because it assumes that if your eyes are closed and you can't feel your face that your body is somehow not in causal connection with the sun.

Where is this assumption hidden in this sentence?

 

[Geoff Dann]

And I'm answering for the second time, that I simplified by equating the opening your eyes with the conscious observation. Are you going to repeat your response to my repeated reply?

I am going to give you a directly relevant example which will stop all this nonsense in its tracks.

Let's get as close to the action as possible. What about our brains? Are they in phase 1 or phase 2? Are they in a superposition?

Answer: yes.

In 2PC consciousness is emergent from a system consisting of the phase 1 informational structure (which is always in a superposition) and the Participating Observer. Nothing else exists at that level. Both consciousness and spacetime only appear in phase 2. That is to say that what we understand as "brains" -- a physical lump of meat of the sort you will see if you cut your skull open and sit in front of a mirror -- are not the things which collapse wavefunctions. They are the result of wavefunction collapse. They are phase 2 spatio-temporal objects which only exist when being observed by consciousness.

Your "real brain" -- the one which gives rise to consciousness -- is always in a superposition, though that superposition is continually being collapsed whenever you are conscious of something.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Where is this assumption hidden in this sentence?

"if your eyes are closed and you can't feel your face then your body is somehow not in causal connection with the sun".

You can't causally isolate yourself from the sun by closing your eyes or having non-functioning heat sensors in your skin.

 

[Geoff Dann]

And I'm answering for the second time, that I simplified by equating the opening your eyes with the conscious observation. Are you going to repeat your response to my repeated reply?

That is not a "simplification". It critically changes the outcome of the thought experiment. Please, in future, stop "simplifying" in ways that change the logical structure of the argument. That is called "cheating".

 

[marcin]

"if your eyes are closed and you can't feel your face then your body is somehow not in causal connection with the sun".

You can't causally isolate yourself from the sun by closing your eyes or having non-functioning heat sensors in your skin.

That's your sentence. I was asking only about my part of this sentence. Where is my assumption about the causal isolation from the sun in my question, whether you think that your face is in a superposition with the absorbed photons?

 

[marcin]

Geoff, I was simplifying by equating the opening of your eyes with the conscious observation.

OK, that's acceptable if clarified. However, we have some serious discussion ahead of us with respect to time.

That is not a "simplification". It critically changes the outcome of the thought experiment. Please, in future, stop "simplifying" in ways that change the logical structure of the argument. That is called "cheating".

Compare your responses to the same simplfication, Geoff. Moreover, it was the most obvious, colloquial speech.

 

[marcin]

Your "real brain" -- the one which gives rise to consciousness -- is always in a superposition, though that superposition is continually being collapsed whenever you are conscious of something.

If so, why do you have a problem with answering the question about the superposition of your paralyzed face and the absorbed photons? You're not conscious of their heat on your face, so they shouldn't collapse on your face, right?