Interconnectedness of all things ?

[Cane_Toad]

On the contrary, there is no reason why to think that something is disconnected. Everything is inter-connected. There is a strong school of thought in today's science which is very usefull in providing practical answers in some limiting cases, however,

You can make all sorts of statements like this. Sure everything is interconnected, we all exist in spacetime, therefore we are all interconnected.

The point is whether there is any *meaningful* interconnections in the way that people are describing it. The answer is no. The interconnections that science shows are such that their influence approaches zero in the human domain. QM is an example of this. The interconnectedness ends in the sub-atomic world for all intents and purposes. It could be we learn more someday, but for now, extending QM concepts into the macro world at the human level is pseudoscience at best, and science fiction in most cases.

it has nothing to say about philosophy since it denies its own assumptions that its based on. (Thats why so many contradictions arise as the field advances ...)

What denies... science. This is unclear.

it sure sounds like humans are creating reality by virtue of their consciousness, doesn't it?

That already was shown to be true. (Thats how the contradiction arise which I talk about)

Shown to be true by who, and how? I can find nothing in the QM process that shows any direct correlation or influence between consciousness and phenomena. The only indirect relationship is that a human sets up some lab equipment. Please show me any evidence whether any experiment is different when a human is present vs when a machine does the recording.

If a claim about any phenomena is not being discussed in reputable news and science journals, you can be 99.9% sure that it's a load of bunk, and probably for monetary gain.

the reality is that its vice versa. As a person living daily in this market-advertisement approach to science I can give you numerous examples. Ppl who compete for grants if any here, are not going to even discuss how much good science is killed for political and other than objective reasons, its embarrassing

We are not talking about good science that didn't get its funding. We are talking about claims about "the power of wishing has been confirmed by quantum physics", and stuff like that. Are you actually saying that somebody who is denied funding for the study of how prayer benefits childbirth, is good science? (In fact, this guy did get his funding. Think about that!)

Modern science does not have answers to mystical experience. There are phenomena which these ppl exhibit which modern medicine ( neuroscience) cannot even approach since its philosophy does not permit it to ask those question.

Like what? All the phenomena that I know of which fall into this category are anecdotal, i.e. the people "exhibit" it because they say so. The only thing I've heard of even remotely close is the way hard core meditators can control heart rate and such, but there is nothing paranormal about that.

There is a reason that Randi's $1 million dollar reward for any evidence of the paranormal has gone unclaimed for decades.

For some reference Shannon Moffett, the three pound enigma, book. Also, Will the God go away, book. But more importantly their "surfaces" of applicability do not intersect.

Both these books deal with advances in neuroscience, as far as I can tell by reading the reviews. They do look like they might be making some pretty stupid claims, like "we found a single neuron that exhibits conscious behavior", but that's only book jacket quotes.

Just because somebody with credentials writes a book doesn't make it true, and all too often, it isn't. Sensationalism sells. There are exceptions, like Oliver Sacks, who has written about truly amazing capabilities and problems people have had, but at no point does he depart from an objective viewpoint, and depart into speculation.

If you can show me one example of a guy levitating, bending a spoon, or reading a mind in a controlled setting, I'll gladly change my mind. Until then, I'll go along with the assertion that all known mystical experiences are completely subjective internal neurological phenomena, from all literature on the matter, and personal experience.

Mystisc do not know how to do science right and scientists have nothing close to mystical experiences to say anything of denial of it.

"Scientists have nothing close to mystical experiences", because not a single one in recorded history has stood up to the rigor of replication. Of those that had some basis in reality, i.e. every myth has a kernel of truth, science has explained it and given us a much deeper understanding.

Science doesn't study them, not because their philosophy doesn't allow it, but because when you get it into a lab, it invariably falls apart. There's nothing to study, with the exception of new advanced in medical brain scanning, but that's just revealing how the brain is fabricating mystical experiences. Cool stuff, but it has nothing to do with objective reality.

 

[Cane_Toad]

This kind of reasoning can also go the other way around: ball lightning and also meteors used to be dismissed by science, even though people saw them with their own eyes. Now they are well accepted phenomena, and it is silly to deny their existence. But the successes of science should not be extrapolated religiously into the future, and its failures should not be reason to abandon science.

Ball lightning and such were dismissed for good reason: they are extremely rare and difficult to produce. Science was correct in dismissing them until actual evidence was found. This is not a refutation of the scientific process. New and wonderous things are continually found. This doesn't mean the science of the past was somehow faulty because it didn't know about it.

So there is interconnectedness in qm? Is the proposed interconnectedness of the universe a claim that can be investigated through physics?

If you can find such a thing, let us know. I haven't found it anywhere.

Ur last statement may be true for some people, but it is also true that many mystics have been experiencing interconnectedness for thousands of years, so the very reason this is part of mysticism, is because of those experiences (they also used logic).

People have experienced sleep and dreams for thousands of years. No operational difference.

 

[loseyourname]

So there is interconnectedness in qm? Is the proposed interconnectedness of the universe a claim that can be investigated through physics?

The causal mechanisms at work are vastly different. The interconnectedness in QM occurs non-locally. Entangled particles exert some influence on each other without exerting any force we can detect, at a distance. The kind of interconnectedness we're talking about with things like the Butterfly Effect - a single mutation in the 1200s in England could conceivable have led to almost all parts of the world speaking English today - relies entirely upon well-understood, efficient causation, the old billiard ball physics. One thing happens, another thing happens, and so on and so forth like so many dominos until the effect is eventually much, much larger than the cause. A single stroke of luck 5 billion years ago, some kind of lightning bolt hitting the primordial soup, may very well have catalyzed the assembly of the first organic polymers and led to all life as we know.

In this latter way, it is events that are all connected. If you go far back enough through the causal world-line that is the personal identity of all existing objects, including yourself, they eventually all converge. We all come from the same stardust. This does not, however, mean that all macroscopic objects experience quantum entanglement. It also does not mean that the mystical thesis about interconnectedness is correct, if I take that thesis correctly to mean that all objects are still really one object, or one substance, connected in the sense that we all have access to a common field of experience. There is nothing in QM that would lead one to rationally conclude that the theory of the boundedness of conscious entities is wrong. Just as importantly, if the theory actually is wrong, and mystical experience is correct, there is no reason to believe that anything from QM explains why the theory is wrong. Postulating that quantum entanglement explains the existence of an unbounded field of common conscious experience can be appealing, because to the outsider is just says "all things are connected," which is exactly what many mystics say, and it's mysterious and spooky. Mysterious and spooky ideas are always popular explanations for unexplained phenomena, but this is simply a huge reach. In fact, quantum entanglement does not say that all things are connected. That's just a misrepresentation by people with a mystical agenda, or people who misunderstand what is actually being said. It only proposes that entangled subatomic particles are connected through some kind of spooky-sounding, possibly non-local form of causation. It says nothing whatsoever about the larger objects made up of these particles.

 

[Cane_Toad]

There is no god, and the world is matter.

Well...just as long as you recognize that we don't know that is true either. All we know is that we can't find any scientific evidence for any such deity.

There might be a God. It's not disprovable. The universe may already have blown up, but we just haven't received the light from the explosion. That isn't disprovable either, but why should we act as if either were valid?

The point is that a savvy human knows the extend of his knowledge. When you make a statement like the above, just be sure to say quietly to yourself, "As far as I know". That's just a personal preference, though. Use anything you like to keep your mind open, but vigilant.

 

[Cane_Toad]

It's not just entanglement that suggests connectedness at the QM level, to me. It's also the way that everything exists and interacts through probability, superposition, etc. Everything is packaged into quanta, but at the same time flits about as amorphous waves that can ghost through walls. Matter that condenses into a single state (virtual particles now too).

The strangeness of it all just breaks open the boundaries of expectation that I have about what's possible.

 

[hadeka]

so ,, as large objects are formed by smaller ogjects (electrons, and sub-atomic particles in general) ,, how they don't have the same behaviour of the sub-atomic particles ??!
How ??!

Can gravity be the explanation ??! just an idea ...

as it affects large objects, and can not let them to exist in many places at once ...
But it cannot control small (sub-atomic) particles .. so they behave randomly ...
just an idea ..

But the main question, is how do the big objects don't get affected (and have the same behaviour of sub-atomic) by the behaviour of sub-atomic ??!

Thank you for your patience and your nice replies Cane_Toad.

 

[hadeka]

**EDIT** >>> And what do you think about the effects of shapes ??1 such as pyramids for example ... ?!

 

[PIT2]

Ball lightning and such were dismissed for good reason: they are extremely rare and difficult to produce.

Obviously not, ball lightning and meteors existed regardless of them being rare and hard to reproduce.

People have experienced sleep and dreams for thousands of years. No operational difference.

Speaking of dreams:

The three most common criteria given for judging what is real are (1) the subjective vivid sense of reality, (2) duration through time, and (3) agreement intersubjectively as to what is real. Each of these can be related to specific brain functions. But it may be demonstrated that all three of these criteria determining what is real can be reduced to the first—the vivid sense of reality.

If we conclude that reality is ultimately reducible to the vivid sense of reality, what are we to make of religious and spiritual states that appear to the experiencing subject to be more real than baseline reality, even when they are recalled from within baseline reality? If we take baseline reality as our point of reference, it seems that there are some states that appear to be inferior to baseline reality and some states that appear to be superior when these states are recalled in baseline reality. And this is the crucial point. These different experiences of reality appear more real than baseline reality when recalled from baseline reality. Thus, individuals almost always refer to dreams as inferior to baseline reality when they are recalled and discussed within baseline reality. The same is true of psychotic hallucinations—after they are cured by phenothiazines or other psychotropic medications. A person having emerged from such a psychotic state will recall it as psychotic. The same cannot be said of many religious and spiritual states, which appear to be more real than baseline reality and are vividly described as such by experiencers after they return to baseline reality.

This is true of a number of such states including ABSOLUTE UNITARY STATES (Newberg, d’Aquili, and Rause 2001), “cosmic consciousness” as described by R. M. Bucke (1961), certain trance states, hyperlucid visions (usually of religious figures, religious symbols, and dead persons), and near-death experiences (Newberg and d’Aquili 1994). So real do these experiences appear when recalled in baseline reality that they often alter the way the experiencers live their lives.
http://www.andrewnewberg.com/pdfs/2005/NeuroscienceReligionReview.pdf

 

[Cane_Toad]

so ,, as large objects are formed by smaller ogjects (electrons, and sub-atomic particles in general) ,, how they don't have the same behaviour of the sub-atomic particles ??!
How ??!

They do have the same behavior. However, what happens is that when you get a lot of them, you start to get averaged behavior. It's a little like what happens with air pressure. A single a molecule only has the ability to bounce around, but once you get a whole bunch of them, then suddenly, you have an air mass that can exert pressure, have currents, whirlpools, etc. Another analogy is an orchestra. Once you add up all the sounds of the instruments, you have a piece of music which supercedes any single instrument.

Atoms, and some small molecules have been shown to have wave functions and interference just like sub-atomic particles. However, the bigger the object, the smaller the fringe distance, so finally you just can't detect the quantum effects any more. Look into "decoherence", which is this process of the quantum effects disappearing as we approach the macro level.

Can gravity be the explanation ??! just an idea ...

Gravity is a ball of wax I haven't cracked open yet. The theories aren't fully worked out on the quantum level anyway.

It isn't the main player in your question, though.

Thank you for your patience and your nice replies Cane_Toad.

 

[sneez]

You can make all sorts of statements like this. Sure everything is interconnected, we all exist in spacetime, therefore we are all interconnected.

The point is whether there is any *meaningful* interconnections in the way that people are describing it. The answer is no. The interconnections that science shows are such that their influence approaches zero in the human domain. QM is an example of this. The interconnectedness ends in the sub-atomic world for all intents and purposes. It could be we learn more someday, but for now, extending QM concepts into the macro world at the human level is pseudoscience at best, and science fiction in most cases.

You must not fully understand QM. QM and GR explicitly show that we cannot talk about independentness. EXPLICITLY!

Shown to be true by who, and how?

Read arxiv physics paper concerning QM. There are many papers showing the contradicion of the theory. One that comes to my mind is "is moon there when no one is looking" where it is acknowledged with note to "contradiction" that moon (yes macroscopic moon) is not there when no one is looking.

We are not talking about good science that didn't get its funding. We are talking about claims about "the power of wishing has been confirmed by quantum physics", and stuff like that. Are you actually saying that somebody who is denied funding for the study of how prayer benefits childbirth, is good science? (In fact, this guy did get his funding. Think about that!)

I did not say anything of that junk. I am working at top of reasearch and I know how funding is working. I don't know how you twist my comments...

Like what? All the phenomena that I know of which fall into this category are anecdotal, i.e. the people "exhibit" it because they say so. The only thing I've heard of even remotely close is the way hard core meditators can control heart rate and such, but there is nothing paranormal about that.

You have no idea what I am talking about. You think you read some comments to book you know what is "mysticism" ? (Those were examples of books that came to my mind.) You already have preconcieved conclusions and judgements on this topic so don't ask. Since one of my favorite books is the frindge watcher by Gardner and I am very big fan of his debunking nonsense I would never subscribe to this nonsense you imply I am arguig for. Mysticims and spirituality is not about bending spoons and bull**** like that.

 

[Cane_Toad]

**EDIT** >>> And what do you think about the effects of shapes ??1 such as pyramids for example ... ?!

Well, I think you know the answer to pyramid power by now. Have you found any controlled studies that show results? Do the claims follow from proven principles? Are the results measurable, and to what accuracy and precision, or are they open to the interpretation of the individual (i.e. "placebo effect")?

As a bigger question, geometry has great influence on almost all disciplines, architecture, optics, molecular biology, biological structures (fractals, golden ratio), etc. etc.

It's hard to say where the whole pyramid thing really started, though there's an argument that it grew out of people's desire to make big piles of dirt to memorialize their dead. As time went on, it was found that various height to base ratios didn't collapse as much. Eventually, you had rich kings/pharoahs who wanted a really, really big thing to memorialize themselves, and of course the only thing that fit the bill was a pyramid, given the building materials that they had. Then the kings assigned their religion to the structure, since of course it was going to house them in their afterlife, and of course, as kings they were "living gods", and presto, pyramids become magical.

 

[metacristi]

Hi all ..

I have a question please.

Poeple that believe and practice mystical, and paranormal experiences,, claim that there is a scientific evidence that support their experiences.
This evidence, is that according to quantum physics, everything in the universe is interconnected, and according to that sub-atomic particles can exist in many places at once .. and that everything in the universe is interconnected by the universal energy ...

So, is that all real ??! yes or no ??! and why ?!

thank you ... and waiting for your reply ...


Hadeka.

Well there is clearly a huge leap from quantum entanglement till the idea that all minds are interconnected (Bohm's holographic hypothesis for example is very 'far' from experiment) so the answer can be only no, those claims of epistemological privilege are unfounded, at this time at least (not to mention that there are still enough debates regarding the meaning of quantum entanglement and even energy).

But I would certainly not rally to the view that 'there is no place for metaphysics in science, other than as something to be explained away' the mark of scientism...metaphysics could be of help sometimes...indeed as Popper showed well the so called 'metaphysical research programs' had their importance in the shaping of modern science (he even went to say that without some of them certain breakthroughs would have not been possible at the time when they were made)...

Science needs indeed some weak authoritarianism but certainly not dogmatism...some metaphysical ideas (including religious ones) may indeed become part of an extended science of tomorrow (there is no necessity in this of course), seemingly 'metaphysical' assumptions can become very well at least partially justified 'at their time' when other 'background' assumptions are sufficiently prepared for this...Since there is, really, nothing at this time against the idea of universal interconnections I think we should refrain from deriving too strong conclusions, some 'no go' theorems* here and at this time could only hamper scientific progress...

The fundamental error of these new age people (holding that all minds are interconnected) is not the fact that they venture far from the existing scientific methodologies but their dogmatism (they firmly believe that their interpretation - based on their subjective experiences I agree - is the only correct one and that all rational people should hold the same)...or is clear that they should have used their hypothesis as being merely a research program which could be, potentially, promising in the future (that is openly recognizing that it has no epistemological privilege at the moment, preserving a healthy dose of fallibilism)...as Bohm, for example, did...


* automatically I am reminded here by the problem of strong emergence, 'decrees' of some physicists like ''By definition, there are no emergent properties. ‘Emergent’ properties can only appear if interactions are approximated or neglected. The idea of ‘emergent’ properties is a product of minds with restricted horizons, unable to see or admit the richness of consequences that general principles can produce.'' (MotionMountain course pg. 692) cannot, certainly, be of help...(or Motl's cheap rejection of Bohmian mechanics mainly ''because it tries to change physics'' and so on)