God, Quantum Theory, and Consciousness: Does the Mind of God create reality?

Again, not exactly true. It's just that most academics like to make fun of research outside the mainstream--because their own research is so boring, vacuous; and they're lost all independent ability to think critically and assess rational argumentation that doesn't fall into line with what their own brainwashed professors believe. AKA, Newtonian determinism--which has been falsified since Planck's quantum theory of light resolved the ultraviolet catastrophe more than a hundred years ago. But it takes time for individual scientists to acclimate to the present state of affairs and research: this, however, has always been the case--there is nothing new in human nature going on here; just sheep following sheep.

"Science and the taboo of psi at GoogleTechTalks"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew

Personal experience isn't the same as repeated statistical analysis. People use these methodologies for a reason--because they work.

If you repeatedly showed there was no effect of mind on matter, the entire argument would absolutely fail.

But my point has nothing to do with--and definitely isn't reliant on--these seemingly anomalous phenomena: My point is that, however you spin it, consciousness is intimately intertwined with the construction of physical reality--that much is clear from the science, disregarding all anomalies.

Where does physical reality--the present moment--come from? It's a construct of our minds: This much has been obvious to philosophers for many thousands of years, though we haven't always has the fancy words ("wave function collapse", "quantum decoherence", "bayesian probability", etc.) to describe the situation. But the situation has been the same the entire time: the only thing that's changed is our scientific knowledge and understanding of the situation--basically, the methodological rigor with which we are able to assess and theorize about the strangeness of our cosmos.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

And I suppose you could try to call this an "unprovable" or "untestable" philosophy since what could it possibly mean to know something outside of time?--but this goes to the very nature of science itself: we only know what we can measure in time. Because we are the ones who create time, measurement, as well as the scientific method itself.

Determinism is how we reconstruct the collapsed, bayesian events of the past--but this says nothing of the future, which may be highly uncertain. And it is only the choice of how to observer the experiment--whether to bounce photons off the electron and therefore know its position within a given margin of error or to let the electron's wave function seamlessly go through both slits without outside interaction--that creates the physical reality that we observe.

But why does the wave-particle duality exist at all? Because particulate matter is our personal way of reconstructing past events--but as soon as we stop looking, as soon as we stop interacting with the physical system, it begins to act radically differently than when we were looking. Because we're no longer opening up the bayesian doors, no longer knowing the "hidden variables" of the pilot wave: we're letting the uncertainties play out and self-interact in their waveform pattern--and yet we are the ones who constructed the experiment with the uncertain "particles" (or waves) in the first place. We aren't "interacting" with the experiment to the same extent we were before--but this is only true to a point since we are the ones who created the entire experiment in the first place.

The wave function is still just a mental construct--an abstract mathematical idea.

This might sound like a bunch of nutty solipsism, but that's not the point I'm trying to make at all: The true reality is much more subtle. (And still plenty mysterious and yet to be fully understood.)

If you want to buy one of their devices and do the statistical analysis yourself, I'd encourage it.
http://www.psyleron.com/products.aspx

I have yet to do so myself, but it's on my to-do list.

 

I don't want to interject too much as I don't have much of a scientific background. However in response to this specific claim "Where does physical reality--the present moment--come from? It's a construct of our minds"

I fundamentally have to disagree. In order for a consciousness to exist, there must be something for that consciousness to be aware of. Let us call this reality.

There are three possibilities.

The first is that reality is objective, and our individual consciousnesses perceive reality. Additionally, our individual consciousnesses do not affect reality, they do not change reality. For example, I cannot consciously change the laws of physics, or disappear a traffic jam at my conscious will.

The second is that reality is objective and our individual consciousness can do the above. That is, reality is a 'construct of our minds'.

The third is that reality is subjective.

I would assume you agree that reality is not subjective, the scientific method would not work in a subjective reality. Without analyzing the first possibility, the second possibility is actually a contradiction. It is not possible for reality to both have an objective existence, and an identity that can be altered via the conscious thoughts of individuals. Simply put, in such a world my mind could construct reality as to not have a traffic jam this morning. Your mind could construct reality as to having that traffic jam this morning. Both events cannot occur simultaneously if reality is objective, and we are merely perceiving it. Thus, the inevitable conclusion is that in fact reality is not objective in the first instance. Only then can our consciousness possibly construct reality. This however is still a contradiction, because if reality is subjective, then reality doesn't exist, and it means the consciousness is not aware of reality, but aware of itself. However a consciousness cannot be aware of itself, as that would imply it is an existent and that reality is objective.

Unless I've misinterpreted or simplified your views, on an ordinary interpretation of "Where does physical reality--the present moment--come from? It's a construct of our minds", the answer to that question is not 'a construct of our minds', but instead that the present moment comes from our conscious awareness of reality. In fact, even if no consciousnessness exists to be aware of such a moment, such a moment still exists, it is just that no one is there to be aware of it. For example, the phenomenon of me dropping a rock on the ground is not dependent on someones conscious awareness of that moment. Whether or not anyone is aware of me dropping a rock on the ground is irrelevant to the objective reality of that moment.

EDIT: If our consciousness does have a measurable effect on physical reality, this effect wouldn't amount so much to our minds constructing reality, but rather interacting with reality, much like how our hands can interact with reality and produce changes to reality in accordance with the physical laws.

 

All of science to this point absolutely shows that mind has no affect on matter. It's an invincible argument - any conclusion reached doesn't have to agree with any prior scientific canon, and infinite amounts of evidence that doesn't agree with it is just discarded because of the required accuracy of measurements required. One person was quoted as telling them "I wouldn't believe it even if it was true". It may be the cavemen speaking and they can't see outside of the cave, but it's difficult for anyone to believe because it obliterates their worldview and all their prior experiences. Because of that, people are holding the burden of proof extremely high.

If the effects compound like they say.... "we have the technology" as the saying goes, apply it practically. They keep claiming this has huge implications - if that is the case, their production will reflect their data.

 

Is this "reality" a physical reality or a purely mathematical--that is, abstract--reality? I am not saying there is no reality outside of conscious awareness--only that this reality is a purely mathematical construct. Again, I reference the wave function--that which exists without the intervening observer: What is it?

And again, Schrödinger's Cat and Wigner's friend are good to look at to help get this point across.

I think there is in fact another possibility that has gone unaddressed:

The human consciousness relies on the events of the physical body, which relies on the laws of physics to operate. If you could in fact change the laws of physics (which at their basis are only statistically deterministic), you would be killing yourself in the process because you would be destroying your body, from which your awareness stems.

This is more or less what I was trying to say.

Again, I have to disagree to an extent. "Such a moment still exists"...but there is nothing which says only that moment exists. In other words, every moment exists until a consciousness comes into the picture to be aware of only a single moment.

Does a distant planet--a distant part of the universe--exist if no Life, no conscious beings have evolved to observe the system?

Here, I reference quantum history creation--a sort of backward causality. Looking out at the distant universe actually creates the past history that we observe. (And the article is applying the concept to the cosmic scale, but the principle can be seen in the double slit experiment itself if you change the set up slightly. Hawking's A Brief History of Time had a good explanation of this: and he references Wheeler, too.)
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse

I agree...but this is merely Spinozism: The body and soul (mind) are interlinked and cannot be separated as in the philosophy of Descartes. But then again, "The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal." So clearly there is more than mere material existence.

The question is, how does abstract reality (the wave function, unobserved, a purely mathematical construct) become physical reality--seemingly particulate objects, that which we observe in our everyday lives. It is only through the process of observation. Another way to put it would be to ask, why do the laws of physics seem so well suited for our ability to live our lives in the first place? Because--at some fundamental level--Mind (not an individual consciousness, but Consciousness itself) is what gives rise to the cosmos. The mechanism by which this happens is still unknown (but not unknowable; science has given us many insights so far, and it's bringing us closer to more reasonable answers daily).

It's an extremely small effect--why should a bunch of academics change their Newtonianism to fit the quantum picture? It's a much more uncertain, more uncomfortable picture: And it doesn't agree with Copenhagen, which they've been taught (even though it's incomplete--or to be more straightforward, wrong).

Again, you say "All of science." I just referenced a talk at Google and 20+ years of research at Princeton. So clearly not all of science agrees on this point--just all the science that you've personally heard of.

And where is this "infinite amount of evidence that disagrees"?--I've never heard of or seen any of it. If you have research that actually disagrees with PEAR's results, I would love to hear about it. But until I do...

"prior scientific canon"
AKA, dogma, the results of other people's thinking. Science doesn't have a canon--only experiments and theories. And when the experiments disagree with the theory, we throw the theory out--because it is wrong.

And I just linked you to PEAR's technologies. If you want to run the experiments yourself, please do.

 

I'm going to limit my response because we've reduced it to the same point basically. I'm not in disagreement over the methods or results, assuming they are as bulletproof as they say.

I agree - if this particular theory is correct, the implications are obviously unfathomable. However, after so many decades of research and improvements in technology, there seems to be an adequate environment to test it in the "real world" so to say. I don't feel that their theory is being targeted as they claim, the implications are so high that they have to go further to prove it.

From personal experience, they could very easily just put their money where their mouth is. Give a casino "machine" a large house edge over your random experiment, but not large enough to go beyond the range that these people tested, then run the experiment under the conditions they say produce these outcomes.

For example they say it affects a few in 10,000 (lets say 3) - so the operator is able to make results consistently 10,003 or 9,997 over an incredibly large volume

Make a deal with a casino: You win on 10,001 and under, I win on 10,002 and over. Run that script on a supercomputer over however long of a period of time it would take to create infinite house advantage. Now, have a human "operate" the outcome. The results will return the bettor zero money 100% of the time if the theory is false, the results will give the bettor infinite money 100% of the time if the theory is correct. It's like a 5 minute experiment that will confirm or destroy decades of research, if other scientists don't believe them and have thought of this before, it seems like the deathrattle for the theory.

 

I suggest you read/skim through Karl Poppers book, "The Logic of Scientific Discovery".

Basic summary of the book:

Popper argues that science should adopt a methodology based on falsifiability, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single experiment can contradict one. Popper held that empirical theories are characterized by falsifiability.

The way you perceive spiritual beings is a clear indication that you depend on science for everything that is unknown. Given what I just said to you, you would be foolish to continue following that paradigm.

 

The reality we live in, so physical reality.

This is encompassed in the first possibiity.

Right, but if reality is a construct of the mind, then it is not bound by logic. Think lucid dreaming.

To answer the latter question, yes. It exists because the physical world is objective, and what exists can exist independent of our consciousness.

As to your first point. Reality exists, and is quite big (the universe is massive). As humans with a consciousness, we can only be aware of a small part of reality at any given time (you can call each second of awareness a 'moment'). So to me it's:

Every moment exists.
Consciousness can only be aware of one moment at a time.

With reference to how I defined a moment, it's an abstract concept, I can't be aware of what's happening at your house and my room simultaneously, yet whether or not consciousness is aware of these 'moments' doesn't affect whether or not they exist. The fact that no consciousness is in my kitchen at the moment, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you accept that notion, I don't see a reason why distance would make a difference, be it my kitchen, your kitchen, mars, or a galaxy far far away.

It's too late to respond to this properly, but let me try clarify your position with reference to mine.

I believe that an objective reality (physical) reality exists. I believe that we are existing in it. I believe that our consciousness enables us to be aware of this objective reality. I also believe that this objective reality can exist independently of us. What's your stance on the last claim?

So, you're essentially saying that there is a bigger Consciousness that is giving rise to our reality. So, as an analogy, when someone has a lucid dream, their consciousness is giving rise to a dream world. So in a sense, not that this Consciousness is dreaming, but, their thoughts are giving rise to our world? Is that your view, or are you entertaining that proposition, or have I misinterpreted?

 

You were the one who mentioned "spiritual beings", which is a term you have yet to clearly define--I did not bring this subject into the argument, you did. I am not claiming to know what a "spiritual being" is--only that if such a thing exists, science will have something to say about it.

Are you saying that science has nothing--and can never have anything--to say about that which you consider "spiritual"? If that's the case, I am inclined to tell you that such a being does not exist by definition: If it has ABSOLUTELY ZERO interaction with the Nature, it cannot exist at all. (Or at least I cannot see how it can--if you have some explanation, please do enlighten me. Again, look into Spinoza: Body and Soul, mind and matter, waves and particles and as one singular thing--not two.)

In Greek, the word for spirit is "pneuma", the etherial substances from which ghosts and the like are supposedly made of.

In Hebrew, the word for spirit is "ruach", which simply means wind or breath. So "holy spirit" could just as well be translated "sacred breath" or "divine wind".

And what does "ghost" mean anyway?

In the King James Bible, "holy spirit" is rendered "holy ghost"--so if the English word "ghost" simply means some sort of divine "breath" or "wind", I am very confused by what it is you're talking about when you say that science cannot answer spiritual questions.

I am absolutely not comfortable talking about "spirits" or "ghosts" or "winds" or "breaths" from a scientific point of view until and unless you can clearly define what you mean: And you have not done so. Science can only falsify a claim if you've defined what that claim is--and the onus is on you to define what a "spiritual being" is since you were the one who brought the term into the equation.

Am I a "spiritual being" or a "numinous existence" or a "breath-like specimen", to render it another way? What does any of this mean?

Again, if you want to add new terminology into the conversation, it is up to you to define what it means.

Spirituality is necessarily a subjective science--but it is a science nevertheless. If one can experience mystical union with the Divine in an entheogenic (drug-induced) state or a sexual state or a meditative state repeatedly, something demonstrable and testable is going on, and science can absolutely run tests to ask what it is that this "spirit" or "spiritual world" is.

You're missing the point entirely. It affects the probabilities of the outcomes--and only the probabilities of the outcomes. So if you run 10,000 binary experiments and analyze the statistics, you'll find effects when a human consciousness is present that are not likely by chance, statistically, in 2 or 3 of the total experiments. But you don't know what individual experiments these are--in fact, because the quantum laws are only statistically deterministic, it's unlikely that your effort had an effect on any of the individual experiments: You only know that your conscious effort changed the probabilities in some yet unknown way.

"Put their money where their mouth is." Research isn't cheap--it took millions of dollars, 20+ years, and countless thousands hours of time to get the results that they did. These anomalies are only detectible with extremely delicate, isolated physical systems--how does a betting game on a supercomputer constitute a sensitive, isolated physical system?

Suggesting a half-baked idea for an experiment is fine. But there is a difference between saying "doing X would be an interesting experiment" and ACTUALLY DOING X AND LOOKING AT THE RESULTS.

And preemptively claiming that your imaginary experiment is "the deathrattle" of a physical theory is not science--it's religion.

DOING an experiment, having it METHODOLOGICALLY VALIDATED by others, and then REPLICATING THE RESULTS repeatedly is science. PEAR did a lot of different types of experiments, and they all converged on the same result. Don't believe them? Again, I point you toward Psyleron, the company they started. You can buy a random number generator for several hundred dollars and run the trials yourself.

That is how science works--how the scientific method works.

Giving a hypothesis, suggesting an experiment, and claiming victory without having done anything is not science--it's lazy armchair philosophy (AKA, faith or religion).

Dreams, for one thing, could well be a quantum phenomena: time acts screwy, causality doesn't work very well, etc. But it is still bound by logic--just not classical logic. It is bound by quantum logic, that which runs a quantum computer, that which runs everything in the universe. How do dream states arise in the first place? Surely, there is some sort of mechanism that can be explained through the scientific method, no?

Again, I point you back to quantum bayesianism. From Nature, "Physics: QBism puts the scientist back into science":
http://www.nature.com/news/physics-qbism-puts-the-scientist-back-into-science-1.14912

But look at a superposition state: A single particle in two places at once. And yet, we never see a particle in two places at once; as soon as we look, the wave function "collapses" and we only see a single state. Bohmian mechanics may resolve this to some extent, but the mystery is still there: reality behaves differently when we're looking vs. not looking--this hardly seems like the "objective", "physical reality" that most philosophers imagine.

If by "us", you mean every conscious observer in the universe (whatever we may have to define consciousness as), I would have to disagree. But this admittedly amounts to a tautology: If conscious observation itself is was constructs physical reality from abstract mathematical reality (i.e., the wave function), then there will always be an objective, physical reality that exists SOMEWHERE because there will always be a consciousness that exists SOMEWHERE. Why there should be a consciousness anywhere at all is the real question: but we cannot answer this until we get a firm scientific grasp on what consciousness is, which, alas, remains elusive to the present day.

It's actually a fairly good analogy that has been made before--and this "bigger Consciousness" encompasses each individual consciousness. And yet, each individual consciousness is in some sense the totality of it. From Schrödinger, the first (and greatest) quantum biologist:

Why should there be multiple "consciousnesses" at all? And how do two "conscious beings" unite in sexual union, ultimately to produce a third "conscious being", separate from themselves?

Schrödinger called this the "Arithmetic Paradox" and believed the only way to solve it is to adopt the Eastern view that all minds are, at the fundamental level, identical. And this makes sense--at least to me: this "new", "separate" conscious being is not in face separate or new at all because his existence is entangled with that of his parents. Memories are stored in the brain, so by creating a new brain, no memories of "the past" will be readily accessible. But your entire physical existence still has a complete memory of all the past--back to the formation of the planet and the Big Bang--because you would not be here without it.

Likewise, if you were to look at the situation the other way, why should you be here in the first place? It is enormously improbable that each individual whose past existence you depend on--every one of your ancestors--should have survived and copulated in exactly the right way to produce you. A single drop of semen has millions of sperm cells in it--and this experiment has gone on for countless millions--indeed, billions--of years, and here we are, and here our parents are, and here our grandparents are. And yet if a single one of our ancestors had died, the entire chain of events would be broken, and we would never exist in the first place.

In fact, the probability of a near infinite sum of enormously improbable events rapidly approaches zero. So again, why should you or I exist in the first place? The Unity of Mind is the only solution I can see or that Schrödinger could see to this Arithmetic Paradox, and it resolves the problem beautifully. There are not two minds between us--there are only two brains, each of which individualizes its own experience based on its past history. The total sum of Mind in the Universe is One--and it is this Unity of Mind which the mystics of the ages refer to as God: the Mind of God, that which creates Physical Reality, that which is more fundamental than Physical Reality.

This is actually the biggest advantage a thinker could have in this debate: Most scientists have become so narrowly focused in their research, they completely overlook the important philosophical questions that are right under their own noses. Again, Schrödinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Planck, Oppenheimer, Einstein, etc. all had remarkably similar views on this topic--yet nobody talks about it physics or philosophy classes. Because the physicists are too busy doing math and the philosophers don't understand math or physics at all. And biologists don't understand physics or math or philosophy. The whole thing is a bad joke perpetuated by "educated" people who lack an education.

"Consciousness is more than computation!" with Stuart Hameroff--based on his and Roger Penrose's theory of OrchOR (orchestrated objective reduction)


We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
—Werner Heisenberg

 

John 4:24 - God is a spirit...

I was talking about God, being that he is referred to as a spiritual being in scripture.

You mentioned particles which is a physical substance, which correlates to physics, which then correlates to science. How can something that is spiritual contain physical properties? That is way beyond my understanding.

Definition of spiritual - of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.

By our definition this spiritual being does not exist in this world.

 

Science is trying to question the world, using physical evidence. Religion is beyond physical. They are in many ways in different realms, yet its funny when religious people claim that they have to be against science, and when scientists claim that you're only a fake scientist, if you aren't an athiest.

There will always be rejection and skepticism. Part of the purpose of faith is removing doubt; clearly, doubt is needed in order for faith to have its purpose.

 

First of all, you've never said anything about Christianity as a particular religious philosophy before, so this is completely new (unless I missed something). All you've done is repeat what I've already said--yes, in a certain way of looking at it, God is spirit. I've established that this is how I'm defining these words:

Again, you said relating to the "human soul", yet all of philosophy, all of science (that is, natural philosophy), and all of metaphysics tries to deal with the soul and body as a single thing. And to great success.

Words are defined by usage, not dictionaries--multiple dictionaries can have conflicting usages, so it's important to have a clear idea what we're talking about before we enter into a debate.

Science has been continually advancing our understanding of the Natural World for hundreds--thousands, really--of years, since our ancestors were first afraid of lightning, of the dark, but fascinated by the stars, decided to leave their caves, settle down in agrarian societies, and ask questions about "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" (Jefferson).

The ancients believed in a God who answered prayers. Today, we see this as a childish fantasy.

The ancients believed in a God who performed miracles. Today, we see this as a fantasy as well--we believe in a God who created Natural Law and does not break it.

The ancients believed in a God who was entirely unknowable. Today, we believe in a God who is "a mathematician of a very high order" (Dirac)--whatever that might ultimately entail; we still aren't sure.

God is a spirit; God is not physical; He eludes our most careful experiments. Our souls are not physical either. And yet we each--our souls, our inner being, our Atman--interact with our physical bodies. Again, look at Einstein's characterization of Spinoza's philosophy. Science (natural philosophy) deals with the body and soul as one thing, and it is through this mysterious union of soul with body, waves with particles, mind with matter that we belong to the mystical unity we call God.

The Jews, who wrote your Bible, have a long tradition of what I will call Spinozism--Spinoza himself was a Jew, though he was eventually excommunicated by his congregation for heresy, as most great saints and philosophers are. And Spinozism is not Pantheism, though most textbooks mistakenly call Spinoza a pantheist (Pantheism is the belief that "God is Nature").

Look at the Zohar, look at Kabbalah. God in all things is what they teach. God acts in the material world through the Natural Law--and yet he eludes us. Much like the single electron or single quark or single graviton (i.e., that which constitutes your entire body, all the heavens, the entire cosmos). God is in a single rock. But God is not the single rock.

The electron looks physical when we're looking at it--but when we aren't, it behaves completely differently, under different mathematical rules. Its true nature eludes us. And this is a SINGLE ELECTRON--what about a body, constituted of many millions of these wavelike particles? We still don't know, and to classify a piece of matter--animate or inanimate--as "wholly physical" or "wholly spiritual" is ludicrous, the same as placing God into these arbitrary human classifications as you've tried to do.

Again, am I a spiritual being or a physical being? Is the electron a point-particle or a wave? You have not answered either of these questions satisfactorily because you're speaking in far too many words, without reference to the underlying mathematical unity of Nature.

The fundamental particles are not particles in the Newtonian sense--they look more like Platonic Ideals. In fact, I'd venture so far to say they are Platonic Ideals, with a satisfactory description only possible in mathematical language.

Single electrons behave like waves, self-interacting...until you look at them, interact with them, at which point they begin acting like point-particles again. And this goes exactly back to this entire dispute I was having with malakadang about unobserved physical systems--is a system "physically real" when there is no observer? And what is the relation of Mind to Nature?

Define faith. "Belief without evidence"? "Belief out of fear"? If that is what you mean by faith, I disagree.

By religion, Planck obviously didn't mean the Christian religion or the Jewish religion or the Hindu religion or Buddhist religion. Today, spirituality would be a better word since organized religion has been used throughout the ages to enslave the masses--and this is absolutely not in line with the scientific and rational values first created by the Ancient Greeks, who were themselves a religious people. (In fact, too religious a people: Remember, they killed Socrates for questioning the gods.)

 

That's what they are fucking claiming, that they can affect the randomly generated outcomes of an isolated logical machine with their minds, and can repeat it. All I've done is ask them to demonstrate their science and place a friendly wager on it. If their science is as sound as they claim, my industry entire industry would be obliterated. I would have starved to death.

Ad hominem, what is wrong with my experiment? It is literally their same test.

TFW I've lived out their experiments for years and can say with 100% certainty from personal expert knowledge that they are dead wrong unless they can pass my test. I actually have done X, I've based my entire existence on it. You say the idea is half baked, but clarify how it is different than the tests they do?

______________________

The theory begs the question from start to finish. One test disproves it, and I'm willing to stake my expert opinion against theirs for every penny I have.

We can create an isolated environment. We can run infinite tests. Saying that one can control a random outcome is one of two things: self defeating, or testable. I've offered the same test I've offered thousands and thousands of times before.

 

Well this is unfortunate.. My phone rebooted as I was typing. I'll try to reiterate what I said..

Science, just like religion, are methods of understanding the world better. Neither are right, or wrong definitely. Science can't prove anything, I'm sure you're aware of that. We've created fundamentals to live by to pave the way for the unknown. Some scientific facts are fundamentally true.

There was an open letter addressing citizens not to wait on science for everything because science itself can't prove anything. Here is the quote.

"All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter

I quoted christianity because the verse is blunt. I'm pretty sure all religions view God as something of spiritual nature. The soul is a spiritual essence, science cannot fathom something that is not seen since the scientific method begins with observation.

My bible? Where did I give off the impression of following any religion? Because it was quite clear that I am indifferent.

Once you start to understand the first part of this post, you will come to a better realization of the world. Science can very much destroy the world, especially at the rate it's going in.

 

You haven't asked them to do anything; you've merely written a post on an internet virtual goods forum about your own personal experiences in life. And you've claimed this disproves decades of research conducted by Princeton University's Dean of Engineering. Again, this is lazy armchair philosophy--not empirical research. What was your control group? Where are your statistics?

Do you even know what an ad hominem argument is? It would be a personal attack on you--But I didn't attack you, I attacked your experiment. Nice try.

And again, you clearly don't understand the method by which "random numbers" are generated on a computer. I'll give you a hint: They aren't random--they are pseudorandom and generated based on algorithms. Math.random() is not a random number generator. Thermal effects will change the results. The physical state of your machine will change the results. You aren't dealing with an isolated physical system--not even close. java.secure.SecureRandom() isn't a random generator either; it's just a bit more cryptographically secure than Math.random().

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/Math.html#random()
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/security/SecureRandom.html

One test never disproves anything, just like one test never proves anything--again, you're completely misusing the scientific method and the entire concept of statistical analysis. And again, I don't think you understand what begging the question is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

You clearly don't understand the concept of randomness. Take another look at the video on Bohmian mechanics at the beginning of the thread. Is random ever truly random? "God does not play dice." Others have created isolated, seemingly random environments to test their ideas--and they've spend millions of dollars and many years of their personal time to do so: You, however, have not.

You're confusing the scientific method of rational inquiry and experimentation with the scientific theories that the application of said method has produced.

I agree that spirituality is important. I disagree that the method of empiricism has nothing to do with spirituality. Again, why don't we believe in miracles anymore? Why don't we believe in ghosts? Why don't we believe in the power of prayer? It's because the scientific method absolutely has something to say in this regard.

The scientific method is the method of free inquiry. Asking questions can only give us more data. What you mean to say is that individual scientists can destroy the world--and this might well be true. But these scientists aren't acting as scientists if they're building bombs--they're acting as engineers. And individual engineers are human beings, the same as the rest of us; their actions are no more emblematic of the scientific method of asking questions than your personal actions or my personal actions.

I reiterate: I agree that spirituality is important--that was the entire point of the post in the first place. But the Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, base their entire existence on repeated subjective experience--and this is a form of experimentation and therefore encompassed by what we mean by the scientific method in the West. In the West, we make an arbitrary distinction between the spiritual and scientific: "non overlapping magisteria", to quote Stephen Jay Gould. It is my position that this is absolutely wrong--contrary to the facts.

According to Schrödinger, the founder of the wave mechanics, we need "some blood transfusion from the East to the West to save Western science from spiritual anemia." When a religion makes an empirical claim, it makes a scientific claim. And when a religion makes a scientific claim, we can test it.

The issue comes about when "spiritually anemic" engineers--that is, human beings with no reverence toward life--start preaching their own religions. They have no empirical proof for their claims, but because the public thinks of science and religion as existing in these two artificially constructed and separate spheres, they don't recognize that what the engineer is preaching is in fact a religion. They mistake it for science, which it absolutely is not: Marxism is a good example of this. "Scientific socialism"--except that every socialist state that has existed in recorded history has failed. There is nothing scientific about this; it is counterfactual and therefore faith based and therefore an infantile superstition--not science.

The danger is not that the scientific method--rational argumentation--will encompass spiritual experience; the danger is that it won't.

 

Don't play semantics, I've asked their theory to defeat my test. I obviously don't expect a response because the test clearly defeats the fallacy ridden premise.

I've hosted and witnessed an extreme number of randomly generated independent games, more than anyone on this site. And likely more than these scientists. Trillions upon trillions wagered for the better part of my adult life.

It's ad hominem via the fact that you accept their opinion as experts but not mine. The experiment you attacked was the one you are using for evidence. I say that humans can't alter random processes, they say they can. Random processes are by definition the most testable form of science.

It doesn't matter - virtualizing the environment is a necessity for the experiment in order for measurements to be meaningful at all.

You don't understand the concept of randomness, I'm an expert at it. Sorry. I've spent my own fortune and many years of my personal time on it. You however have not.

You keep saying that you want to buy a several hundred dollar piece of equipment to test it yourself, that's fine. But I've already gone so many lightyears beyond that and can tell you that you are the one in the cave looking at the wall, not me.

You do realize who you are talking to, right? Your entire argument is an appeal to tradition: these scientists have been doing this too long and spent too much money to be wrong. Guess what, so have I, and my test will either confirm or obliterate their claims and have reality shattering affects if they are right, or things will stay the same like they are and I'll be right.

Fun playing the no lose argument right?

 

"Opinion as experts"?!? I don't give a damn for anybody's credentials--I care about the data. They have data; they have experiments; you do not.

It absolutely does matter! Math.random() does not produce a random walk of data!

No, please enlighten me. What is your experience with random number generation that gives you such insight?

I don't care about tradition! I don't care about credentials! I don't care about money! I care about data!

My ONLY point is that their research is actual research--empirical, scientific, repeatable.

 

Then why hasn't their theory been repeated on a meaningful scale? The implications, as we've mentioned ad nauseum, would be universe shattering.

It is their claim that they can produce normal results with a control group and abnormal results with the only difference being human mind interaction. This is testable with the test I gave to "absolute 100% scientific certainty" by mathematics. The fact that they haven't passed that test with anyone else leads the conclusion that they wouldn't pass it with me. All the explanations they give always seem to stop short before they get to the part where they prove themselves right.

 

Because it relies on extremely sensitive physical systems and a LOT of trials--that's why it's so expensive to do such research in the first place.

Real randomness is based on noise—what you're talking about has to do with seeded results, pseudorandom sequences. Conscious observation cannot—will not—affect pseudorandom sequences because they are by definition not random! You’re suggesting a completely different experiment that is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Measuring the position of a molecule in Brownian motion is random; measuring the position of a photon in the double slit experiment is random; what you are discussing is NOT RANDOM—it is algorithmically-based and relies on an initial value.

All cryptographic sequences can be broken given enough computational power because the data they produce DOES NOT FOLLOW A TRULY RANDOM WALK—it only looks like it does for small enough sequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk

And what qualifies as a "meaningful scale"? 20+ years of repeated, demonstrable research is not a "meaningful scale"? Again, look into what PEAR actually did before blindly criticizing their experiments. You're engaging in faith-based bigotry, not science.

 

I don't care what specifics are applied to ensure randomness.


I am claiming that if the even playing field is applied as they say, human mind interaction will not affect randomness.

Their claim is that it DOES affect randomness.

In the case of electrons being waves or particles, we have the same issue where something is logically or mathematically "broken". The slit experiment can be tested over, and over, and over, and over, and over and we get the same anomoly.

They are saying that they have done their own equivalent experiment over and over and over and say that to an extreme degree of certainty, humans can affect randomness. This breaks our physical worldview again like it did with the atom.

Am I willing to bet my whole worldview they are wrong? Absolutely. Occam's razor says no to their claims. If I'm wrong, I'll immediately recant. However, the absence of the implications leads me to believe the absence of the valid premise.

 

Quantum effects related to consciousness would explain the entire thing. It's only a mystery to the biologist and the psychologist (both of whom share a deterministic, Newtonian worldview--that is out-of-date and incorrect). The physicist (in this case, Robert Jahn) has a theoretical model--we just don't know enough about consciousness yet to go into the mindbody and see what exactly could actually be causing the effect in terms of the psycho-physical structures related to conscious perception.

And it is the exact the same problem as that of the atom: This research supposes a nonlocal, atomic theory of consciousness. Why does anybody believe that consciousness is localized within the brain? There is no evidence for this belief--it's just commonly assumed to be the case without cause. In fact, StrongAI has failed to give us anything near a conscious robot, and there is no compelling reason to believe it will magically succeed in the near future: I would argue this is strong evidence against a classical mechanism for consciousness.

Go for it. Not my problem and not science.

Quantum theory still hasn't explained the mechanism by which observation takes place, and it is in desperate need of a reformulation--this time with the conscious observer playing the key role that he does.

I'll put in the Dirac quote from the beginning of the thread and be done with it:

Penrose has proposed nonlocality within the brain with his OrchOR model--consciousness as fundamental to spacetime geometry. Physicists don't like it, but these people aren't conducting real science anyway.