The Quantum Woo Zone

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Ryan J, modified 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 12:21 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 12:14 AM

The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 121 Join Date: 2/19/14 Recent Posts
Warning! Dear reader... You are now entering...The Quantum Woo Zone. *Queue The Twilight Zone music* In this thread we disregard respect for the newtonian and mechanical world view and engage in baseless philosophical claims about quantum mechanics and other science. This thread is not meant to be published in Nature and therefore we have permission to use our imaginations and brainstorm silly ideas without fear of their silliness. This is an attempt at playing with the imagination, not a scientific experiment. For those allergic to Woo, enter at your own risk! Or, this is not meant to be a scientific regulatory board, but a thread without constraints to ideas.

There are a lot of interesting ideas attempting to relate aspects of mysticism and science, literally or metaphorically. Let's do that. Share your crazy ideas without restriction!

Recently I was listening to a podcast with Vinay Gupta, and at some
point he starts talking about artificial intelligence, and how in the 90s they tried emulating evolution as a strategy to allow for computers to learn. In this aritificial intelligence experiment, the researchers noted that if there was a way for the 'organisms' to game the system to get the evolutionary prize, they would. This is a preamble explanation to how he approaches the double-slit experiment, where the current understanding of the double slit experiment is that probability fields (or whatever) underlie this universe of which our minds/bodies are built on top of. 

Then he mentions that likely the human decision making process is built on top of this quantum mechanical world, and proposes the notion that if it's possible for the decision making process of the human mind, which is built on this quantum mechanical world, to potentially read and write upon the very probability fields themselves, that this would reconcile notions of precognition such as, "Oh, I have a suspicion this surgery needs to be reevaluated." And then the precognition is spot on, the surgery was botched somewhere in such a way the person couldn't have known and the patient lives. (I have a few real world examples myself, but they're somewhat private, but if it is insisted I will budge and explain.)

Relating it it back to the AI experiment, Gupta talks about evolution being the model for how life as we know it came to be as it is, then the human decision making process, as directed by evolution, will do whatever it can to exploit the system in order to survive/reproduce. Thus examples of precognition are merely something like the human decision making apparatus exploiting probability fields in a fashion that maximize survival and reproduction. I botched my summary of his view, but I'm too lazy to write it well.

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Here's a very fun experiment that is in alignment with how magic is described by Ingram and much of the magical scene. I pulled this from slatestarcodex, which is a great blog, but the writer would be horrified at my using his (skeptic) blog to connect science and magic. In this experiment described below, a magic believing scientist and a skeptic scientist do the same experiment of seeing if people can know if they are being watched from behind without looking. The conclusion is that the magic believing scientist got significant results showing people can, and the skeptic got no significant results. If you think of this experiment as a magic spell, it fits kinda nicely in ways. The blogger is an amazing writer, so I won't summarize him and copy-and-paste:

"Wiseman & Schlitz’s Experimenter Effects And The Remote Detection Of Staring is my favorite parapsychology paper ever and sends me into fits of nervous laughter every time I read it.

The backstory: there is a classic parapsychological experiment where a subject is placed in a room alone, hooked up to a video link. At random times, an experimenter stares at them menacingly through the video link. The hypothesis is that this causes their galvanic skin response (a physiological measure of subconscious anxiety) to increase, even though there is no non-psychic way the subject could know whether the experimenter was staring or not.

Schiltz is a psi believer whose staring experiments had consistently supported the presence of a psychic phenomenon. Wiseman, in accordance with nominative determinism is a psi skeptic whose staring experiments keep showing nothing and disproving psi. Since they were apparently the only two people in all of parapsychology with a smidgen of curiosity or rationalist virtue, they decided to team up and figure out why they kept getting such different results.

The idea was to plan an experiment together, with both of them agreeing on every single tiny detail. They would then go to a laboratory and set it up, again both keeping close eyes on one another. Finally, they would conduct the experiment in a series of different batches. Half the batches (randomly assigned) would be conducted by Dr. Schlitz, the other half by Dr. Wiseman. Because the two authors had very carefully standardized the setting, apparatus and procedure beforehand, “conducted by” pretty much just meant greeting the participants, giving the experimental instructions, and doing the staring.

The results? Schlitz’s trials found strong evidence of psychic powers, Wiseman’s trials found no evidence whatsoever.

Take a second to reflect on how this makes no sense. Two experimenters in the same laboratory, using the same apparatus, having no contact with the subjects except to introduce themselves and flip a few switches – and whether one or the other was there that day completely altered the result. For a good time, watch the gymnastics they have to do to in the paper to make this sound sufficiently sensical to even get published. This is the only journal article I’ve ever read where, in the part of the Discussion section where you’re supposed to propose possible reasons for your findings, both authors suggest maybe their co-author hacked into the computer and altered the results."

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/
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Noah, modified 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 7:29 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 7:29 AM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 1467 Join Date: 7/6/13 Recent Posts
 Share your crazy ideas without restriction!
My attempt at rationalizing a pragmatic law of attraction:

What exists outside of our perception= probability wave.  
What occurs when we physically look= particle (one outcome on the wave).  
What occurs when we hold a certain thought or image with a certain degree of belief and a certain paradigm to back it up= external reality slowly starts to change to a new particle on the probability wave.  

Everyone sees the same physical world because there are pyschically or collective-mentally-held agreements; this is the "one mind" talked about by mental science.  Each of our individual perceptual processing mechanisms are mini-versions of this bigger, 'one mind,'  We each have a chance to shape our external realities through the wave-to-particle process using intention and attention.  This manifestation process is delayed, not an immediate siddhi, and occurs as the external energy, being essentially one with the mental energy, slowly begins to conform.

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cian, modified 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 9:12 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/5/15 9:12 AM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 62 Join Date: 5/22/15 Recent Posts
Ok this is fun, I wanna play!  

What exists outside of our perception= probability wave.  What occurs when we physically look= particle (one outcome on the wave).  What occurs when we hold a certain thought or image with a certain degree of belief and a certain paradigm to back it up= external reality slowly starts to change to a new particle on the probability wave. 

an analogy for how this might work:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR1f6wziUNQ (I'm on a bus that doesn't let me access youtube, so i hope this video is right)
you know these experiments where you play a 24hz sine wave through some running water, film it at 24fps or strobe it and the water spray looks like a zigzag spiral.

Our minds perform this 'magic' all the time in our perception of the world.
someone looking at that spray of water through a camera filming at 24fps will see a static zigzag.
someone else looking at it through a camera filming at 25fps will see it moving ...umm,forwards? or backwards...
someone looking through a camera filming at 31fps or something might see no special pattern ...

its just that most people's 'cameras' or set to automatic because most humans are lazyasses.  Honing concentration skills finds the manual settings...
so we are all perceiving the world in accordance with our inner 'desires' / inner 'blueprint' / 'personal fps rate' / inner 'expectations ' inner 'beliefs' etc
and so we all manifest EXACTLY what we "wish" for (i.e. exactly what we expect, what our inner 'blueprint' is etc ... they all mean the same thing) all the time, and it is impossible to do otherwise.

However most people are very scatty, ambiguous and mediocre in their deepest inner desires! Often if people really examine their deepest desires, they find they want totally incongruent things and even very harmful things (its common for people to 'want' to have never been born in the first place, so they subconsciously create situations of numbness and morbidity ... the reason they don't suddenly pop out of existence according to the law of attraction (you get what you want) is that they are at the same time afraid to die and want comfort and worldly pleasures)
To perform magick, one must hone their concentration skills 
and one must get in touch with what one REALLY wants!

The universe has more than enough wave-coverage / is flexible enough / has enough information in it that your reality can conform exactly to your wishes/expectations and even if someone right next to you has completely different wishes/expectations it'll work for them too!

Reality's Doors are open guys. Let's play.  


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Ryan J, modified 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 3:45 AM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 3:39 AM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 121 Join Date: 2/19/14 Recent Posts
"In reality there is nothing weird about quantum physics or results of those experiments. "

Dude, I love your post, but dude, "there's nothing weird about quantum physics?" Then what qualifies as weird in your worldview? The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment suggests empirical evidence of retro-causality...

I love the other posts too! Anyways, back to baseless claims and Woo of the highest order: 

Awakening and magic are perhaps properties of the mind orientating itself towards quantum superposition. The more the mind is stuck in a particular worldview the more the mind locks into a state thereby collapsing wave function by which the mind is built on top of. Equanimity is simply the degree to which the mind un-collapsing the wave function and full enlightenment is when the mind will never again collapse the wave function through it's operation, a true groundless ness of the mind which knows omniscience by virtue of quantum superposition that is in all states (all knowing) possible simultaneously.

With the quantum eraser experiment there appears to be the modification of the past history of the universe to reconcile the collapse of the wave function or however the experiment works. This seems to turn over the notion of sequential time, quite compatible with the notion of time as illusion as realized by advanced practitioners.

Back to equanimity as proportional quantum superposition of the mind, this perhaps could allow for the shifting of probability waves to alternate paths. Magical skill may be a property of a certain structure of parts of the human mind coupled with a sort of superposition of this mind that allows for significant flexibility in the probability waves, coupled with retrocausality would shift the universe enough to pull off seemingly improbable events, say, correctly guessing cards in poker far beyond blind guessing. Lust, in a magical sense, attachment to outcome, is this structure of the human mind collapsing the wave function into a particular determined reality before and during the magical act of intention, removing the shifting potential via quantum super position. That is, collapsing into a sort of clockwork universe, versus the open ended probability wave. So, the more the complex structures of the mind 'lust' for a result, they collapse the domain of possibility/probability and lock it into the current world path the person is already on, changing absolutely nothing by virtue of remaining on the same train track of destiny they were already on in the first place. Factors like the structure of the mind of the practitioner determines how intelligent/sophisticated the probability manipulation is, as one reason why some people seem to get it and others don't for various magical abilities. I learn mathematics slowly, but some learn fast, it's simply genetics.

Notions of how magic work are simply a sort of going from collapsed mind to superposition mind over and over. Structures latch on to preloaded mythologies of Christianity and Buddhism, say one interacts with a benevolent spirit they label as an angel. It's not that angels exist, that magic exists in any particular way, but that as the mind loosens it naturally gravitates towards a meta-stable ground. "I know magic works like so and so." Because the mind has not totally fallen off the cliff into groundless ness, it still clings on to in subtle undetected ways a very loose collapse. Loose enough for magical things to occur, but still subtle ground by which one assumes the cosmos works according to any particular religious mythology. I suspect magic is beyond all systems and patterns, to declare it works this way or that way is to collapse oneself into a train tracked destiny, a partial superposition collapse. It may be useful to work with, but just to note I personally suspect no one understands this stuff.

Wow, that was crazy! I later want to throw in notions of retrocausality, strong-emergence and non-linear interdependence to argue for a sort of quasi-freewill that is freewill that is in flux and existing on a spectrum not binary, but I'll get around to that later. Like, a notion of freewill that isn't standard and can't simply be looked at directly, thus why one must bring in notions of retrocausality.

Bringing things a few levels back down to earth but still in Andromeda, a fun metaphor for the process of awakening is a journey of worldview experience as this very sequential, clockwork, deterministic Newtonian theatrical mechanism to a very non-temporal, non-spatial, non-mechanical magical open freedom of possibilities by which one knows all possibilities by virtue of a metaphorical superposition of mind. Perception of omniscience is awareness abiding in superposition.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 8:44 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/6/15 8:44 PM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
Noah S:


Everyone sees the same physical world because there are pyschically or collective-mentally-held agreements; this is the "one mind" talked about by mental science. 

But isn't that a big assumption that we all see the same world?  Maybe you we all see very different worlds but out of agreement, we only mostly talk about things that are more in common.  But today I saw millions of things and did not talk about any of them with anyone.  Maybe for the guy in the car behind me, it was raining and then there was an earthquake but for me, it was sunny and fair.  You'd never know if you didn't talk to the guy and even if you did, you may not end up talking about those things.  If he did say something that was divergent from your experience, you'd perhaps argue, assume he was nuts, etc.  He'd say the same about you.  How do you know that when you open a newspaper, you read the same thing as the guy next to you?  You can't really know how universal reality is or isn't.  In fact, people argue about what happened all the time.  But when you argue, how can you be so sure you are right?  Why do different people like different color, houses, environments?  Maybe they see something very different from what you see.  Maybe this place is a a dream world and you are just not yet lucid yet so you don't realize it.  In a dream, there is nothing special about magic, you can easily do it once you realize you can easily do it.  You can fly or materialize items out of thin air.  But only if you become really lucid in the dream.  Most dreamers do not become lucid though, they spend the whole dream trapped in the dream events, thinking they came to school without pants or are running late to their apppointment or whatever.   If someone came into their dream and tried to tell them the pants were not a real problem and here let me materialize some free pants in your favorite color, they would most likely think that guy was crazy and run away!  It's their dream that pervades their mind so I don't think you'd be able to force pants on the person unless he was willing to accept such a reality in the first place.  You might be able to materialize pants on your end, but you can't make him see them on his end would be my guess.  Certainly in 'waking' reality, I have seen people just totally mentally block out something they just could not accept, like maybe their child is not a well behaved genius, or that their boyfriend is just using them for the money or that politician XYZ is actually not truthful, or that their husband actually meant well when he did that, or whatever.   Ever wonder why we often dream about less than fun stuff?  Why don't we alway have fun dreams?  Maybe it's the same reason we don't have fun 'waking' experiences all day long either.  Maybe dreams and 'reality' aren't all that different, maybe it's just all in your head..
--Eva
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Stick Man, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 10:59 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 10:59 PM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Wiseman and Schlitz ? Thanks, will read about.
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Stick Man, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:02 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:02 PM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
What happens when they both share duties in the same experiment ?
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Stick Man, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:11 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:09 PM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Hmmm, if the neuroscientists are right, and we construct our physical reality with our brains, taking as a base material some numenous unknowable physical reality and sculpting a 3D Technicolour Smell-o-Vision life experience, isn't it a little silly to expect two brains to agree on what reality is - because neither are actually right ?
Except that, of course, the account of Wiseman and Schlitz's experiments are a construct of my brain, and therefore I may be seeing or not seeing all sorts of shit in it.
Eva Nie, modified 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:38 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/11/15 11:38 PM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 831 Join Date: 3/23/14 Recent Posts
John:
Hmmm, if the neuroscientists are right, and we construct our physical reality with our brains, taking as a base material some numenous unknowable physical reality and sculpting a 3D Technicolour Smell-o-Vision life experience, isn't it a little silly to expect two brains to agree on what reality is - because neither are actually right ?
Except that, of course, the account of Wiseman and Schlitz's experiments are a construct of my brain, and therefore I may be seeing or not seeing all sorts of shit in it.
You could sculpt it with the same material you sculpt your dreams from.  Those feel real too don't they?   I have felt all the regular sensations in dreams although I don't specifically remember smell except that at least a few times I remember very clearly tasting specific items, and taste other than the 5 basic tastes (salty, sweek, bitter, sour and umame) must also include smell.  See?  All the mechanisms are already demonstrated.  ;-P

And yes, I agree, if that is how it works, then it would seem logical that each person would have his or her own version of experience with there being no one universal experience. 
-Eva
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Stick Man, modified 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 12:09 PM
Created 8 Years ago at 6/12/15 11:50 AM

RE: The Quantum Woo Zone

Posts: 396 Join Date: 9/23/14 Recent Posts
Eva M Nie:
John:
Hmmm, if the neuroscientists are right, and we construct our physical reality with our brains, taking as a base material some numenous unknowable physical reality and sculpting a 3D Technicolour Smell-o-Vision life experience, isn't it a little silly to expect two brains to agree on what reality is - because neither are actually right ?
Except that, of course, the account of Wiseman and Schlitz's experiments are a construct of my brain, and therefore I may be seeing or not seeing all sorts of shit in it.
You could sculpt it with the same material you sculpt your dreams from.  Those feel real too don't they?   I have felt all the regular sensations in dreams although I don't specifically remember smell except that at least a few times I remember very clearly tasting specific items, and taste other than the 5 basic tastes (salty, sweek, bitter, sour and umame) must also include smell.  See?  All the mechanisms are already demonstrated.  ;-P

And yes, I agree, if that is how it works, then it would seem logical that each person would have his or her own version of experience with there being no one universal experience. 
-Eva

So, why don't our esteemed physicists start off with this before they launch into quantum physics and double slits and start quibbling about reality ?
I find it rather confusing that they argue so vehemently about whether consciousness affects matter etc even while the psychologists are saying it's all a mental phenomenon anyway.

And now you mention it - I don't remember dreaming smell either.

So I want to know which of these isn't a construction of the conscious brain - maintained by, created by or suspended in consciousness.

1) Space
2) Time
3) Matter
4) Energy
5) Causality
6) Maths and physics symbols, maths & physics ideas, maths & physics thought experiments, m&p books, m&p teachers
7) Physics instruments
8) Physics instrument readings
9) Physicists
10) The body
12) Neurons and the brain
13) Arguments between physicists
14) Ideas about external reality beyond sensory input
15) Philosophers and their books

Then we can sort out which bit of conscious experience are affected or not affected by consciousness.
That last line was my little joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTxPlUnDQ1U

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