Sometimes, it can help to boil a "problem" down to the simplest case. Suppose we want to measure the spin of an electron, or even suppose that we will have a device that will beep if it's "spin up" or "spin down" (minds are not part of the mystery): AI*:The " collapse of the wave function " is a concept in quantum mechanics that refers to an abrupt change in the state of a quantum system when it is measured or observed. According to the Schrödinger equation, which describes the wave-like behaviour of quantum particles, a particle can exist simultaneously in a superposition of multiple states until it is observed or measured. However, upon observation , the wave function describing the particle's state collapses into a single definite state. This collapse is often described as the moment when the particle's properties become well-defined, such as its position or momentum. The exact mechanism or interpretation of wave function collapse ...

This is an experimental blog post. The idea was to simply talk about a range of issues with the aim of creating a "mind map", then using the map to create traditional posts that are more structured and focused. But along the way, I wondered if I could post the original voice note So, to test this, click on the link below, which will show you a LINK to the audio Store that and play it. Your machine will probably have an app that plays audio. In my case, it's iTunes. This talk can be indexed just like a text essay. In the long run, the plan is to take notes on my own "rant" in mind map form (which can also be shown in the blog). A Random Talk

Notes on a conversation with a friend ... The subject of time has fascinated me since I was a little kid. Time is a real thing - an aspect of the platform that reality is built on. But physics fails to put a finger on the moment we call "now". In one direction, the one we call "future', what will happen is fundamentally unknowable before it happens. That comes out of Chaos theory and Quantum Mechanics. On a more subtle level, we are also unable to know the past in detail. In my experience, philosophers and theology shine no light on these issues, but often claim ersatz credibility by dropping references, especially to Quantum Mechanics, hoping that most of their audience will not understand the reference. On a psychological level, it is not clear why the "present" has any special status when it comes to "knowability". Neurologically speaking, there is no "now", only an experience of what I consider to be a dynamic change in the state of ...

We are constantly getting into trouble by mixing up our mental models (mathematical or not) with "actual reality". One obvious example was our assumption that space is "Euclidean". We really hit the wall with this in Quantum Mechanics, which seems to defy human logic itself (The EPR Paradox). I see it all the time when respectable physicists fail to grasp the idea that the Universe may actually be infinite or disallow actual singularities. My favorite example of this is the canard that someplace in an infinite universe there "must" be another version of me typing an identical e-mail to another version of you. Although the analogy is far from exact, I enjoy thinking about this in the same way I enjoy the proof that there is an infinite number of prime numbers. In my imagination at least, an infinite universe implies an infinite number of "situations" at every scale. The idea that two "situations" are identical is a construct of the h...

I must apologize to the reader in advance for what will seem to be a rather difficult set of ideas laid out in this post. At the outset, I want to lay out some ideas that are basic to me but strange to many. These ideas are developed more fully in other posts in the series and specifically in Zen philosophy an the Western version of it (Mindfulness). I am deeply influenced by Hofstadter and Dennett, whose ideas are strange, radically new and far from obvious. I take it that "mind" and "soul" both refer to the experience we all have of being "something". An essential idea of all religions is that this "something" survives death and is therefore separable from the body. I believe this to be mistaken, but I am left with the problem of "locating" the mind. Skeptics who reject the religious view tend to take it for granted that the mind is an "epiphenomenon" of the brain - somehow arising from the interaction of billions of neurons...

The "R" meme is the most powerful and widely-shared meme: that there is a "real world out there" independent of our minds. This is the intuitive insight that is denied or at least challenged by "Idealism" [1]. Denial of R turns out to be a powerful " intuition pump ". We imagining that the "real world" does not exist at all, and it's "all in our minds". This is a rather strong denial of Idealism, since an Idealist would, I think, admit that the real world exists -- just that we can't know anything about it other than what pops up in our minds. At the risk of spoiling the plot, the view of this blog is that the brain can be thought of as a fantastically complex and specially-constructed knot that intimately ties the mind M to the world R. This connection is so intimate that it is, in practice, impossible to say where mind ends and world begins [2]. In effect, this frames "Idealism" as a discussion about a dis...

John Horgan is a journalist , not a Scientist. A very successful journalist. You can get the thrust of his approach in The End of Science or a short video Soft vs. Hard Targets Interview Science is a vast endeavour and Horgan is bound to miss as often as he hits. His main technique is to go around and interview famous Scientists, then write articles for the layman exposing the flaws in the reasoning of the experts. His main thesis, which he has tirelessly defended for decades is that there nothing fundamentally discovered in Science since, say, the 1950's. This is ridiculous on its face and he's buried with opposition. He's just plain annoying. His response to the critics is Lots of "advances" are simply not true . He especially likes to cite fads in medicine, but these are "straw men". Does proving that some results are false establish that no advances are being made? Anyone who follows the subject is stunned at how often we find answers to questions we...