A quirk of personality which resulted in one of modern science’s greatest intellects not making a sufficiently powerful statement is found with Erwin Schrödinger’s attempt to refute the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics with his paradox of the cat. I mean it is all a very cute idea, a very nice little silly idea of no particular consequence to any standers-by.
It seems that Schrödinger actually developed this idea from discussions with Einstein, who thought of the criticism first. From the Wiki on Schrödinger’s cat:
“Schrödinger and Einstein exchanged letters about Einstein’s EPR article, in the course of which Einstein pointed out that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states.”
And then many years later:
“In a letter to Schrödinger dated 1950, he wrote:
You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established. Their interpretation is, however, refuted most elegantly by your system of radioactive atom + amplifier + charge of gun powder + cat in a box, in which the psi-function of the system contains both the cat alive and blown to bits. Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.[11]
Note that the charge of gunpowder is not mentioned in Schrödinger’s setup, which uses a Geiger counter as an amplifier and hydrocyanic poison instead of gunpowder. The gunpowder had been mentioned in Einstein’s original suggestion to Schrödinger 15 years before, and Einstein carried it forward to the present discussion.”
And so you see that Schrödinger actually got the idea of how to refute the Copenhagen Interpretation on strictly rationalist grounds from Einstein, but importantly, Schrödinger developed the idea into something a little bit more quirky and less consequential than what Einstein had originally envisioned.
Einstein had the better idea. Instead of something so inconsequential as a cat being dead or alive or alive/dead, what if the superposition was with something much more important? What else can we make dependent upon the status of a “random” quantum nuclear event? Think about it now.
Why not a nuclear bomb? Or a powder keg, as Einstein originally thought? The Copenhagen Interpretation of the superposition of states then requires that the bomb can exist in an exploded/unexploded state until observation is made.
What the hell does that even mean? For some strange reason we feel more readily to accept this idea when put in the quirky cute terms of a cat being inside a box superposed with the status of the quantum event. The cat is alive/dead until observed. How cute!
Is it still cute and acceptable if instead of a cat, we have a megaton nuclear bomb capable of leaving a crater in the Earth hundreds of meters deep? Will the nuclear bomb exist in an exploded/unexploded state until someone looks inside the room it was contained within, at which point of observation it may have been exploded already?
What the hell does that even mean? I actually asked a science colleague about this alternative version of Schrödinger’s cat…and guess what. Just guess now. They agreed that this would be what happened…that the bomb wouldn’t be exploded until it was checked if it was exploded at which point the explosion would have already happened. WTF!?
I’ve been saying it a lot recently…in my book and in recent posts…that scientist’s minds have been destroyed, have been rendered unconscious and unable to think, by the hundred years of accepted cognitive dissonance forming the basis of the core theories of physics and as setting the standard for “intellectual” thought and peer-group acceptance.
These are the types of things that they believe in, and so, this is why scientists can accidentally accept flat Earth in modern physics…because they are conditioned to cognitive dissonance, because they are preconditioned to believe in paradoxical and contradictory and irrational and non-empirical ideas. And they don’t know how to solve such problems. Well, rather, it is that they do not detect any problems with those things, and those problems have in fact become the basis from which they (wrongly) “reason”.
There is a single reason for why science has gotten itself into this ridiculous position, and that reason is that scientists do not understand mathematics or numbers even though science is 100% dependent upon mathematics and numbers. Does this sound ridiculous, to say that scientists do not understand mathematics and numbers? Why would that be any more ridiculous than flat Earth theory as modern physics, and bombs which are exploded/unexploded? Yes, of course scientists are capable of not understanding mathematics and numbers, but use them nevertheless.
It specifically originates in science not understanding the number i, the square root of minus 1: i = √-1.
This is the process that science took in handling the number i which they didn’t understand:
1) invent an ad-hoc mathematical trick (the complex conjugate method) to get rid of the number i so that they didn’t have to see it in the equations anymore
2) since they don’t understand the number i, but found a way to get rid of it and hide it, this is therefore considered the correct mathematical solution
How does that logic strike you?
a) don’t understand a fundamental number that comes out of the equations and is found everywhere in the equations
b) think of a way to get rid of and hide the number
c) since the number is now hidden, and we didn’t understand the number, this must be the correct mathematical solution since we no longer need to think about the number or understand it
How about this alternative?
a) here is a very basic fundamental number that is everywhere in the equations, but we don’t understand it
b) let us solve understanding the number so that we can understand what it means, and how to use it
Science did not take the latter approach for, actually, a purely psychological reason. It’s purely psychological why they didn’t attempt to understand the number. It is simply because they are Sensing types rather than Intuitive types on the Myers-Briggs psychological type indicator. That is, they are Empiricists rather than Idealists. It is really that simple. Sensing type = Empiricist; Intuitive type = Idealist.
Scientists are largely fixated on matter, on sensing, and so they couldn’t figure out what to do with a number that didn’t have a direct empirical sense-based consequence. And so their solution was to ignore it, because they didn’t know how to touch it. Too bad they didn’t think about it instead.
If scientists were intuitive, as idealists, they would instead have been more concerned with understanding the number i rather than simply avoiding it because they didn’t know how to immediately touch it. Well, that’s what we’re doing now, with scientists like me, with the few of us who haven’t adopted cognitive dissonance as the standard for truth.
The number i cannot just be swept under the rug and hidden simply because you don’t understand it. That is NOT a solution! You cannot claim to have a valid mathematical solution and subsequent physical insight when your solution to an unknown is to hide and ignore the unknown with an ad-hoc trick; you cannot claim that by way of hiding yourself from what you don’t know that you now have the correct or a valid mathematical answer or physical insight! Could you imagine if mathematics worked that way!? Imagine if that’s how you were taught to solve math problems in elementary school! Well, that’s how scientists have taught themselves…
But it is this “strategy”, if it could be called that, from which the subsequent interpretation of random events and superposition of mutually exclusive states then originates. By not understanding the number i and by hiding from it, it works out that one then must assume that nature is random at its basis level and that exploded/unexploded bombs can exist until they’re observed (at which point it may have already exploded).
The purpose of the existence of logical paradoxes isn’t to embrace them and adopt them as the basis of thought, but to solve them! Especially when you have problems like this where you can trace the paradox back quite easily to its originating point. That is, the logical paradox of exploded/unexploded bombs originates earlier in the logically unjustified “strategy” of ignoring the number i and coming up with an ad-hoc scheme to ignore it. You have a known unknown here, and you don’t know what the result would be of solving the unknown, and so there is no valid extrapolation from the point of the unknown forward. You have to solve the known unknown first, and then you can figure out what the physical consequences are.
Just scan through that Wiki link above on Schrödinger’s cat paradox: to this day, they are still just as confused as ever as to what to do with it, how to solve it, and what it means.
And so, would you like to know what role the number i plays? What is the number i actually trying to tell you?
The number i is telling you about time. The number i is telling you about the time of the quantum event. Once you make this delineation and separation between real and imaginary numbers (real numbers correspond with the spatial aspects of events, imaginary numbers with temporal aspects of events), then you no longer need to take the complex-conjugate (the ad-hoc trick) and you no longer get the illogical superposition of exploded/unexploded bombs. And you no longer need to think that existence is random at the basis level, etc.
Imaging licking quantum mechanics, and solving the randomist interpretation of quantum events. Don’t you think that this will give you tremendously more power over nature than the merely statistical approach?
Science should understand the number i, rather than running and hiding from it, and ignoring it. Doing the latter has resulted in scientists having to accept cognitive dissonance, i.e. irrationality, as their explanation for existence. And this has gone on for a hundred years now, and has resulted in science now even being able to accept flat Earth theory(!) as modern physics. It has become so embedded even as a requirement for peer-group acceptance within academia, that to reduce the cognitive dissonance of the community is to separate yourself from it and to become ostracized and rejected by it.
That will not last.
Climate of Sophistry 
I do understand and do not understand what you are saying, but I will not know which, until I observe myself in the mirror. I am in a superposition of understanding and not understanding, but my mirror-observing self will collapse this, I hope into one or the other, assisted by my IQ, which is an imaginary number. (^_^)
Seriously, though:
i … has always been troublesome to me.
… learned a little about how to manipulate it, but it troubled me, every step of the way — just went along with the confusion, like the others, … doing without knowing what my doing was, encouraged not to worry about not knowing what my doing was, because this state of not-knolwing-but-doing was the proper state.
Yes the approach needs to be developed much further.
I did an electronics unit as part of my physics degree. I seem to recall that discipline named that notion as “j” (phonetically Juliet), not “i”. I’m buggered if I can remember the explanation of why the ontology and the subsequent explanatory maths demands it to be so.
Any chance you could supply one of your pithy explanations which expands on the very plausible idea that it is a “temporal” v “spatial” necessary factor? I’m smelling a Heisenberg/Planck influence, but I just can’t recall the derivation of i or j as an essential for explaining and designing systems at the quantum level which we all use in real life.
PS: You need to be Trump’s Globy Warmy adviser.
PPS: When you’ve done that, you deserve a professorship somewhere. You need to get on Twitter and start rolling back this MM Globy Warmy crap. Imagine the freak-outs when you could directly Tweet and expose the astrophysics professors who infest the groupthink with free heat shite. Destroying their explanation of temperatures of adjacent planets due to “muh greenhouse” would be like clubbing baby seals.
Get mainstream Joe. You won’t fail and you will greatly assist the necessary global groupthink reset.
Tim Ball did meet the Trump transition team to advise on global warming, and Tim is well aware of what I present here, and reported that he brought it there in his own way, as best he could. But yes, a face to face with them myself would be great too.
The Mathematical Idealist idea is that all numbers must be ontological, and have the same relevance to reality. One cannot arbitrarily choose some numbers over others, with no actual logical justification or basis. All numbers have equal “weight” in being relevant to reality.
It goes without saying that we know that the real number axis corresponds with space and spatial quantities, material masses and spatial energy quantities, etc. The imaginary numbers axis is, admittedly, more difficult to solve what it means physically.
And yes, calling them “imaginary” or “Juliet” numbers is arbitrary, and the “real” number axis is also poorly named. In Mathematical Idealism, ALL numbers are real, that is, of ontological significance in reality. So, better names could be invented. In fact, calling them spatial numbers (the real number axis) and temporal numbers (the imaginary number axis) might be better, and numbers in general could be considered “complex”, i.e. a combination of real & imaginary (spatial and temporal) numbers, although we typically only ever deal with “real” or spatial numbers.
It is a question of the dimensionality of existence. We have the spatial dimension, of course, and we also have the temporal dimension. These two different and unique dimensions have numbers which associate with them, real & imaginary respectively.
And so in fact, in the Minkowski metric for space time in relativity, we actually denote big S “proper” spatial lengths as dS^2 = dx^2 + (i*dt)^2. Right from there one can derive all of relativity theory…right from simply making temporal distances “imaginary”, that is, temporal distances as corresponding to imaginary numbers.
The fundamental equation of Mathematical Idealism is Euler’s Formula, the equation from which all of ontological mathematics is derived. That is, e^(i*x) = cos(x) + i*sin(x). e^(i*x) would be the Proper distance, and the cos term is movement in the real number axis and the sin term movement in the imaginary number axis. Of course you combine them in quadrature to get the non-complex number answer, i.e. the absolute magnitude, the hypotenuse of the triangle formed between the axis components.
Note the asymmetry of the respective number axes: the real number axis is cosinusoidal, which is even, symmetric about the axis. And the imaginary number axis is sinusoidal, which is odd, asymmetric about the number axis. So there is a symmetry in spatial numbers which therefore allows movement in all “directions” in space. But there is an asymmetry involved with temporal numbers, and this means that movement is possible in only one direction in time, although the rate of that uni-directional movement can be modified.
That is a mere glimpse of some of the basic theory of Ontological Mathematics, and a lot more can be read on it in order to get the full philosophical treatment, and, we are working to demonstrate how to implement this new understanding in science and the equations of QM, and how to empirically infer the ontology and physical significance of imaginary numbers, etc.
Somewhere in that epic response is the exact point where I fell off at the failed attempt of understanding RMS in AC theory.
If you could wrap this up with a jargon-free explanation of the direct relationship of your convincing description of the above and its relationship to Pi you would truly become The God Emperor Of The Universe. . Must Pi, as a non-dimensional physical constant, be an ingredient of how we keep observable things observable, and unobservable (to human senses) things unobservable?
Again – Heisenberg: Position/time/energy.
Great Stuff Joe.
The best physical interpretation of i is to account for phase in cyclic processes such as alternating current. You don’t really understand i until you can define the square root of i. 🙂
http://www.historyscoper.com/mathematicianscope.html
Minus 1 🙂
And yes…the phase…which is about time relations.
@historyscoper I conceded my lack of understanding of “i”/”j” in my last post. Your linked ‘explanation’ is so long that I can’t be arsed to scroll through it. CTRL-i or CTRL-j were equally unhelpful. You may have some great ideas; however, I don’t want to slog through a Tolstoy to get to them. Consider this.
We are still allies.
Yes the Heisenberg quantities become Fourier pairs in ontological mathematics, and the Fourier pairs are of course all about that Transform of which Euler’s Formula is the basis. The better you isolate a tiny fraction of the wave, the less you can infer about the rest of the wave. The better you measure the whole wave, the less localized you are inside the wave. Etc.
And sure: e^(i*Pi) + 1 = 0. In other words, an entire gamut of all mathematical operations, fundamental constants and numbers can equal nothing. In nothing, therefore, can be everything. Just as the esotericists have long said.
Wot? (Sound of my brain expanding). Go on then Joe, why the necessity of the “i”, followed by “+1” to make this a description of reality? Which incorrect failure of understanding, cognizance or acceptance does this necessarily correct and how?
I realise I’m asking a lot but I now you’re up to it.
*know Grrrr
I don’t believe in nothing.
Existence necessarily means things.
Nothing, therefore, if we speak of it as existing, must be something too.
What is this something, then, that nothing must be? My answer is that it is an expanse of somethings, so small and so close together, that human perception cannot grasp the things that we must say are there. The fact that senses cannot grasp these things is not sufficient for minds to deny them. We simply must realize the limits of senses, yet not dismiss the continuity between sensing and thinking.
A logically consistent grasp of reality, in my view, requires a logically consistent concept of thing or stuff. The most familiar stuff to our senses that allows this logically consistent grasp of existence is a fluid.
I believe that the live-dead cat is symptomatic of refusing to conceive of reality beyond the senses.
If the Copenhagen quantum folks were truly sensory oriented, then I think that they would have gone another way that did not remove the humanity of the senses from their interpretation of their tools. Truly sensing people would refuse to give up a relationship with senses after a certain point. Rather, they would create a continuity that mirrored the senses in higher thought.
Sorry Tom-Not That Tom, I think I’m getting lost on you.
All I can say is that Euler’s Identity is considered one of the most mysterious, “magical”, and amazing equations of all of mathematics. Everyone, at some point, becomes stunned by its existence, and its meaning, and what it must mean.
Well it does actually mean something. It means that existence is nothing…and nothing can prevent the existence of nothing, since nothing requires nothing, hence, an existence of nothing exists…HOWEVER, nothing is a very special kind of nothing…it is a nothing which balances all of its parts to nothing. Nothing, then, becomes infinite existence, if it balances to zero. Something like that.
“I believe that the live-dead cat is symptomatic of refusing to conceive of reality beyond the senses.”
God! Yah man, that is 100%, spot on, precisely and infinitely, the exact crux of the matter.
Your single sentence is the summary of some 3 million words and 100 or so books of the philosophy of Idealism.
Alas, though, they were so wedded to their senses that they decided that if their senses are not sensing something, then the something no longer exists since it is not being sensed. It WOULD have been more consistent to say that the senses must be predicated on something “out there” that kept on actually existing…but, they took their senses as the definition of that which can exist alone.
It WOULD have been more consistent to say that the senses must be predicated on something “out there” that kept on actually existing…but, they took their senses as the definition of that which can exist alone.
Yes, the senses must be predicated on someTHING. Otherwise, the senses are NOT real, and if the senses themselves are NOT real, then there is NOT any reality to sense. Yet, we still speak of existence of the senses, as if they ARE real, thus, creating a perpetual contradiction, … dissonance …, which is okay to accept, but the act of accepting is a REAL choice. Where does that acceptance exist? What is the substrate of that acceptance of dissonance? Dissonance must have a substrate.
Dissonance must exist, or we could not sense it. Thus, we are back to the contradiction, which indicates a poor choice of approach.
From an email:
“Loved the Shrodinger’s Cat write up… really good. I’ve often thought of that and just dismissed it as me not understanding quantum physics. Meanwhile, it’s just typical mindless idiocy from modern science. They expect us to act all bewildered about these questions, then expect us to revere them because they can’t understand reality.”
My reply:
That is exactly the point…that’s the outcome they wanted. In order to insulate their little castle, their stupid little position from analysis from “regular” people.
The truth is that their ideas are simply stupid, and they’re merely getting away with pretending that they’re the smart ones for believing in them.
All a sham!
Sorry if my plug to my history of mathematicians threw you. It’s for serious study when you get the time, not a link to a quick explanation of i, which I find easy to understand as the y axis of a polar diagram, i.e., a unit circle with angle (0…2pi) and magnitude 1, e.g.:
i = i + 0 = (pi/2) angle, 1 magnitude
1 + i = (pi/4) angle, sqrt(2) magnitude
sqrt(i) = (pi/4 angle), 1/sqrt(2) magnitude.
Any physical process that endlessly cycles can be represented by a polar angle, where the angle becomes the phase, such as in alternating currents, which electrical engineers use all the time when designing generators and motors.
It’s not about i, it’s about how physics has come unglued and turned into mathematical science fiction or metaphysics. It took a hardcore atheist to put it best, Woolsey Teller. His neglected writings are still worth enjoying, e.g.:
https://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/miscellaneous-notes.html
https://essays-of-an-atheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/mysticism-in-modern-physics.html
I’m redoing all of physics from the ground up to get rid of this moose hockey, but it’s only a background task for my modicum of spare time so don’t hold your breath:)
Oops!
.sqrt(i) = (pi/4 angle), 1 magnitude.
This is a great article Joe. Love it.
“Destroying their explanation of temperatures of adjacent planets due to “muh greenhouse” would be like clubbing baby seals.” -Tom not that Tom, This brought me great mirthiness.
JP, one of my hypotheses on this issue in science in general is that these failures are an outcome of the dismissal of merit based pursuit- ie, when Joe Bob gets out of high school he decides to goto Engineering School because he not only showed an interest, but also the aptitude. Today and for quite some time we (as a society, largely the libtards) have promoted this notion that EVERYONE must goto college. Beyond that we (libtards at the wheel again) have gone further and said there aren’t enough minorities/women in “science et al, must has more, not fair, white & asian nerds bad, keeping Grug out of silicon valley nerds club” , denying that the individual should show the interest and the merit to be pursuing the desired outcome in order to engage in it. This is having and will continue to have a profound negative effect on the output of Science (medicine included). These people aren’t capable of producing new knowledge as yet undiscovered from the quixotic grasp of the Universe and God. Some of them are capable users of existing knowledge (tools), but they don’t have a real grasp of what they are doing. What they do provide frequently is bad science, poorly understood experimental outputs and trashy opinions on things that they don’t actually understand. But we should all listen because “muh scientist (black/latino/female/lgbtqasdf whatever ridiculous flavor of the month leftist qualifier you like) can’t be challenged”. This is actually the ANTITHESIS of science.This outcome of lowered standards and the destruction of meritocracy is going to have a terrible price and we are only now beginning to see it and only some of us at that.
James Damore was fired from Google for making the observation that many minorities and women are not interested in the skills/knowledge that would land them in Silicon Valley and supporting it with Science. Goolag promptly threw out the science replaced it with their PC trash emotional “Reeeee” and fired the guy. Several months later the CEO (Pichay and another exec IIRC) stated somewhere (Twaddle IIRC) an opinon that said effectively exactly what Damore had posited. I am sure Damore’s attorney will lap it up in court at some point.
We need to get back to individual merit culturally and QUICKLY. This every kid gets a prize shit is going to destroy us.
The current libtard anti-western culture hammer crushing the round peg through the square hole is going to have some very bad consequences and we are only just getting the frosting on the outside of the box. I am pretty sure the cat is going to be dead.
Very, very well said Matt. Precisely what I mean, and what the underlying message of all of this is about. Spot on.
One thing which I have noticed is how much these people identify their personality, their person, their persona, etc., with “science” and “being a scientist”. The result is that when you criticize science or question positions in science, they actually take it very personally and as personal offence. Yes, to the point that I cannot present to them science’s own diagrams of a flat Earth and ask them whether it truly makes sense or not. They just can’t bear it. It seems to shake their personal foundations so deeply.
I mean sure, I identify with science, with being a scientist and being a philosopher too…but I don’t take criticisms of scientific and philosophical concepts *personally*.
So yeah…that’s the whole IQ difference I guess right there…are you actually spiritually a scientist or philosopher, or is that just your persona, the identity you wish to preset to the world.
Anyway…it all really seems to provide them their personal identity, and so when you question science, it’s very personal because it must feel like their identity is being disrupted. They want the identity, not the actual spiritual and philosophical and rational and emotional and meritorious responsibilities which come with actually having that identity…or something.
Anyway, yah…everything is becoming diluted with mediocrity.
Mediocrity is equality taken to its current, ridiculous, politically-correct extreme.
Idiocracy is the ensuing form of government.
In the movie Idiocracy, Mike Judge envisioned science becoming solely directed towards increasing “boner” size and duration. In fact, it has become directed towards 1) flat Earth, and 2) turning boners into vaginas and vaginas into boners. Who needs a giant boner when you can have your own vagina!?
Since we’re on the subject, … the idea of “sexual fluidity” is an extension of live-dead-cats philosophy. The dissonance is acceptable and encouraged. I am both male and female, and it cannot be known which until a liberal, post-post modern philosopher decides what my personality inventory best represents, and the surgeon transforms me accordingly. The sexuality function will then collapse onto my appropriate gender identity.
Thank you Copenhagen for clearing that up.
Haha nice! Great diagram Robert! That’s awesome.
And yah that’s funny about the gender thing…why not be both man and woman at the same time…that’s totally consistent with Copenhagen!!!!! LOL!!
Hello Joe,
As a chemist, I’m glad not to have to worry about such mathematical/physical conundrums.
Still, I wonder, can you have — in that box — both an exploded atomic bomb AND a live cat?
Hah yah, exactly! Great question.
Klaus K,
… both an exploded atomic bomb AND a live cat?
{exploded-bomb/live-cat, exploded-bomb/dead-cat, unexploded-bomb/live-cat, unexploded-bomb/dead-cat, …………… infinite-stages-of-explosion-non-explosion/infinite-stages-of-near-death-near-life}
It’s insane enough with just the cat. Now why do you want to add a damn bomb?
And here’s another complication — the OBSERVER. Is the observer of the exploded-bomb-dead-cat alive to see it? — if no, then does it even exist? — now the question doesn’t even apply, because asking stupid questions requires a living stupid observer.
Ah yah that’s excellent…if nothing is alive and life is merely an emergent epiphenomenon…then what relevance is an observer? An observer is just dead matter arranged in a particular but random way…so WTH? An observer is just food rearranged. So can we put a piece of broccoli to be the observer? Or does it have to be broccoli plus milk? Or what? What all food do we need to put on a plate beside the cat-bomb that the food can then be considered the observer?
SO INCOHERENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God these people are mad. They just do not think.
Can’t any dead matter be the observer since by their standards there is no life or mind? Good lord.
I guess the idea is to keep the mind in an unending loop.
Looping mind is the purpose of life. Oh, but I forgot, purpose is not an acceptable concept. So, we cannot state looping mind as a purpose. We must just accept looping mind as the non-real reality of being-non-being-existence-non-existence.
I feel so much better now. NOT !
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