Holy shit Mickey, what did you do to Pluto!?
Determinism is an irrelevant theory because of Gödel’s incompleteness and the Halting problem.
Predictions are always made from inside the universe, thus affect their own results. Therefore, perfect predictions are irredeemably impossible.
Now, can the universe be fully predicted from the outside ? Who cares ! What is outside the universe, by definition, cannot affect it, so the question is irrelevant, again by definition.
The only case where that could hypothetically matter is if there is a one-way gate to exit the universe (if you can come back, then it’s just a weird part of the universe, not truly outside, so the first arguments still stand).
And even then, proving the universe deterministic would at best be just one hint that maybe the “outside universe” is itself deterministic, not even a full proof.
Also, observing the universe without affecting it is a pretty weird concept, with what we know about quantum measurements affecting their own results. Not impossible by definition, but it would look quite different from what we do right now.
According to our current model, we would probably observe un-collapsed quantum field waves, which is a concept inaccessible from within the universe, and could very well just be an artifact of the model instead of ground truth.
But again, this is all irrelevant until someone builds the universe an exit door. That door being one-way only by definition also means there would be no way to know what’s on the other side and if it’s worth crossing (or if it instantly kills you) before you do.
So, if we do build such a door, there would be no way to experimentally confirm it is indeed an exit from the universe, and not just a wormhole with a very far exit, or a long lived pocket dimension, or an absolute annihilator that doesn’t lead anywhere.
According to our current model, we would probably observe un-collapsed quantum field waves, which is a concept inaccessible from within the universe, and could very well just be an artifact of the model instead of ground truth.
It so strange to me that this is the popular way people think about quantum mechanics. Without reformulating quantum mechanics in any way or changing any of its postulates, the theory already allows you to recover the intermediate values of all the observables in any system through retrospection, and it evolves locally and deterministically.
The “spreading out as a wave” isn’t a physical thing, but an epistemic one. The uncertainty principle makes it such that you can’t accurately predict the outcome of certain interactions, and the probability distribution depends upon the phase, which is the relative orientation between your measurement basis and the property you’re trying to measure. The wave-like statistical behavior arises from the phase, and the wave function is just a statistical tool to keep track of the phase.
The “collapse” is not a physical process but a measurement update. Measurements aren’t fundamental to quantum mechanics. It is just that when you interact with something, you couple it to the environment, and this coupling leads to the effects of the phase spreading out to many particles in the environment. The spreading out of the influence of the phase dilutes its effects and renders it negligible to the statistics, and so the particle then briefly behaves more classically. That is why measurement causes the interference pattern to disappear in the double-slit experiment, not because of some physical “collapsing waves.”
People just ignore the fact that you can use weak values to reconstruct the values of the observables through any quantum experiment retrospectively, which is already a feature baked into the theory and not something you need to add, and then instead choose to believe that things are somehow spreading out as waves when you’re not looking at them, which leads to a whole host of paradoxes: the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, the Wigner’s friend paradox, the Frauchiger-Renner paradox, etc.
Literally every paradox disappears if we stop pretending that systems are literally waves and that the wave-like behavior is just the result of the relationship between the phase and the statistical distribution of the system, and that the waves are ultimately a weakly emergent phenomena. We only see particle waves made up of particles. No one has ever seen a wave made up of nothing. Waves of light are made up of photons of light, and the wave-like behavior of the light is a weakly emergent property of the wave-like statistical distributions you get due to the relationship between the statistical uncertainty and the phase. It in no way implies everything is literally made up waves that are themselves made of nothing.
This reminds me of that stupid thing in fallout 4 about possibly being a robot essentially and how it was supposed to be some big deal but I never understood what difference it made
I guess the only part that’s actually important is whether your memories are “real”, in the sense that they relate to real events. Remembering things that didn’t actually happen could cause a few problems.
Also, if I was functionally immortal and ageless, I’d probably like to know ! But I guess you eventually notice regardless.
And of course, the main problem is how synths get there, which is by murdering the person they were modeled after. That part is definitely a problem 😅
not much you can do if your memories are wrong, they are just as real as they where when you started so why change? this is something that hit me real hard as a kid but i just brushed it off eventually
I don’t mean emotionally wrong, I mean like remembering factually incorrect facts. But I suppose that shouldn’t be a huge problem unless the institute scientist who made your memories in particular was a moron/prankster and made you believe some wild shit 😅
There’s a lot of assumptions in saying it’s just meaningless chemicals
- That chemicals are meaningless and lacking intriniic value. Seen from the outside they may appear that way, but evidently from the inside it seems quite different.
- “We” are not some other unseen brain behavior (not a crazy idea since we’ve never seen consciousness working in the brain)
- We are within the brain
- The brain exists at all
- Any knowledge exists at all (dubious as Mickey points out)
Perish like a dog it is then. There is no tearing down reality without you inside of it.
Brains are electro-chemical btw, not just chemical
And what organ told you that, hmm?
Occam’s razor defeats Plato’s cave. There’s no reason to think that the world we experience would be just metaphysical shadows on the wall. The burden of proof is on Mickey’s shoulders.
Oh yeah and Cogito Ergo Sum. So there is one bit of definitely provable knowledge.
Occam’s razor is a rule of thumb not an absolute rule of the universe.
If you go with Cogito Ergo Sum, I think that’s the stance Mickey is taking. You only know for sure of your own consciousness, everything else could be a delusion of the senses. You know, like shadows on a cave wall or whatever.
Yes, and my response to what Mickey said was that why would we think that we’re in the cave looking at shadows? Why should I complicate my view of the world with the added baggage of metaphysical idealism when materialism works just fine to explain everything I see? Sure our perception of the world is limited to our senses and measurement techniques, but the scientific framework we’ve built onto that base appears very consistent and functional with its predictive power. It’s definitely not omniscience, but it works.
I only brought up the Cogito argument to point out that Mickey is incorrect in saying that no certain knowledge exists.
I think one of the points Mickey would make is you can’t entirely trust the scientific framework because it’s still coming from our flawed senses. Even if everything adds up, it could still be a lie. Solipsism and all that.
I don’t think anyone is talking about metaphysical idealism, but conceptual things shouldn’t be written off because they are inconvenient. Numbers aren’t physical, but I doubt you’d say they don’t exist and therefore should be ignored, unless you’re the most extreme materialist.
Eliminative materialism isn’t my thing no. Emergent materialism is what I roll with. So the human mind and culture and numbers are things that exist as emergent properties of other things.
Sure it could all be a lie with us living in the matrix or so on, and it’s fun to entertain such thoughts every now and then. But I won’t accept it as truth without a better reason than “but technically it’s possible”.
Now I’m not sure you get what the allegory of the cave is about. It’s literally trying to explain that our perception can’t be 100% trusted.
I know. The matrix (or any other metaphysical idealism for that matter) is an example of a situation where we cannot trust our perception for knowledge about the true nature of the universe (much like the allegory of the cave), although taken to the extreme. The epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Plato’s cave are very much intertwined.
But you’re assuming, from what I’m reading through your comments, that these shadows are cast by metaphysical forces, and I’m interpreting the allegory as how our senses are ultimately something we can’t trust completely.
As accurate as science may seem, it is ultimately based on these senses. It’s the best way we can understand the physical world, but science, wisely, always has a caveat at the end of every law and discovery: “… As far as we know.”
This is a good thing, it means that nothing is held sacred and everything can be tested and questioned again.
“Cogito ergo sum” reaches too far. Discarding Occam’s razor, all we can truly state 100% is that thinking exists. Does it need a thinker ? No, the “thinker” may be an emergent property of the thoughts instead of their basis, thus an illusion too.
That’s not what I believe personally, but I think it’s a valid argument.
An interesting take, but surely there would still have to be some substrate to facilitate the thinking (a thinker)? A brain in a jar might not be what you think of yourself, but whatever is thinking the thoughts which you consider your own, definitely has to exist.
But then what perceives the illusion? How can the whole concept of an illusion have any meaning without a thinker to perceive what isn’t true?
The decision that your brain’s decisions are due to chemical reactions, which itself would be due to chemicals reactions, is self-referential but not circular reasoning.
Or, as I love to say: you feel what you feel, it’s what you do with it that matters
Those old cartoons really didn’t hold back, huh?
No, Mickey–I will perish like a duck.
The universe could just as well be made of only one type of matter. The fact that certain particles attract each other is miraculous in and of itself. It’s what facilitates complex matter and ultimately life. It’s also a funamental law upon which brains have evolved. It’s everything but absurd.
I think the usage of the word absurd in this context entails the third definition of the word here:
I think a critical part of being a human is the ability for those chemicals to induce such feelings, the ability to wonder and see beauty is something special
I still think Death said it better in Hogfather.
