Can a materialist provide scientific evidence that the material world has an objective existence?

originally posted by: TzarChasm
a reply to: Dalamax

Are you arguing that the planet isn't 4.5 billion years old, or that experts can't confirm no people existed until the last million years? (Assuming neanderthals can be called people)

Of course all those things can be proven! We all know that, I was taught all that fact stuff when I was a kid. Hey, did you know that this is what the Earth looks like in the middle? They cut it in half and had a look (I think this was like in the 50s).

originally posted by: MykeNukem
a reply to: neoholographic

I once asked a 4 year old if something can come from nothing.

He said "No, silly".

Some 4 year old's are smarter than scientists.

Some just can't acknowledge God.

Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 
Rom 1:21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 
Rom 1:22  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools

Excellent points!

Professing themselves to be wise they became fools!

That's the point. The reason these things are clearly seen and understood by us is because God gave us reason. He even wants us to reason together. Imagine that, reasoning with the Creator of All Things!

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: neoholographic
QUANTUM PHYSICIST SHOWS HOW CONSCIOUSNESS CAN CREATE REALITY

mindmatters.ai...

There is a bit of a rebuttal contained in your own link:

In a review of Bryan Magee’s The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1985), Roger Kimball notes that his concept of Will is not exactly encouraging:

An endless and ultimately purposeless striving, the will shows itself as much in the pull of gravity or the germination and growth of plants as in man. In most of the will’s manifestations, then, the question of “intentions” does not arise.

Alan Sokal made an offer to people who think their consciousness or will can create reality without gravity etc:

"Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)"

originally posted by: TzarChasm
No one was there. That's the point.

That's a good point, which is why it makes no sense to over-inflate the relevance of human consciousness in the universe when humans weren't even around for most of the existence of the universe.

It makes rather too much sense that the human ego should attempt to elevate its status in the cosmic picture by appearing more essential than we can actually justify.

originally posted by: neoholographic

originally posted by: MykeNukem
a reply to: neoholographic

I once asked a 4 year old if something can come from nothing.

He said "No, silly".

Some 4 year old's are smarter than scientists.

Some just can't acknowledge God.

Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 
Rom 1:21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 
Rom 1:22  Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools

Excellent points!

Professing themselves to be wise they became fools!

That's the point. The reason these things are clearly seen and understood by us is because God gave us reason. He even wants us to reason together. Imagine that, reasoning with the Creator of All Things!

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

"Reasoning with the creator of all things" That sounds like a brilliant opportunity, what's his contact information so I can DM the big guy? I assume a god can literally make as much time as he wants so there's no reason to play like he's incredibly overwhelmed with obligations.

a reply to: TzarChasm

Of course, you don't provide a shred of evidence that an objective material universe exists.

Let me ask you a question that you must have evidence for to back your assertion. You said:

Literally the last 4 billion years of history preceding the rise of the human race. Not counting the 10ish billion years of astrophysics before that.

How do you know a universe existed before the rise of the human race?

Here's an example Wheeler gave to illustrate the delayed choice experiment.

1. A distant star emits a photon many billions of years ago.

2. The photon must pass a dense galaxy (or black hole) directly in its path toward earth.

"Gravitational lensing" predicted by general relativity (and well verified) will make the light bend around the galaxy or black hole. The same photon can, therefore, take either of two paths around the galaxy and still reach earth – it can take the left path and bend back toward earth; or it can take the right path and bend back toward earth. Bending around the left side is the experimental equivalent of going through the left slit of a barrier; bending around the right side is the equivalent of going through the right slit.

3. The photon continues for a very long time (perhaps a few more billion years) on its way toward earth.

4. On earth (many billions of years later), an astronomer chooses to use a screen type of light projector, encompassing both sides of the intervening and the surrounding space without focusing or distinguishing among regions. The photon will land somewhere along the field of focus without our astronomer being able to tell which side of the galaxy/black hole the photon passed, left or right. So the distribution pattern of the photon (even of a single photon, but easily recognizable after a lot of photons are collected) will be an interference pattern.

5. Alternatively, based on what she had for breakfast, our astronomer might choose to use a binocular apparatus, with one side of the binoculars (one telescope) focused exclusively on the left side of the intervening galaxy, and the other side focussed exclusively on the right side of the intervening galaxy. In that case the "pattern" will be a clump of photons at one side, and a clump of photons at the other side.

Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments.

We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles "have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy," so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago.

www.bottomlayer.com...

When you look at the recent Wigner's Friend experiments which confirmed Wigner's Friend on a microscopic level, how can you say the universe existed as we measure it before human consciousness was around to say we're in this universe or that universe. If all is quantum as many Physicist believe, then the universe wasn't "real" until we observed it.

Say Wigner's Friend in the lab carries out a measurement and gets spin down. He writes it down but Wigner outside of the lab can carry out an interference measurement on the same quantum system and measure interference. So Wigner can conclude his friend in the lab never carried out a measurement.

If Wigner's Friend in the lab calls him and says, "Hey Wigner, I carried out a measurement and it was spin down." Wigner can no longer measure interference. How does a quantum system know whether Wigner is aware of it's quantum state or not?

Wigner collapsed the wave function so to speak and him and his friend can agree that they're in a universe that has a history where Wigner's Friend measured spin down at 2 PM but Wigner's Uncle across the street can still measure interference.

So, until humans came to exist, where's the evidence that we were in a universe with this gravitational constant:



Give me the evidence!

This is just an exercise to show how unscientific it is to say before human consciousness.

This is a reductio ad absurdum argument but it illustrates my point. I can say the universe existed prior to human consciousness because God created it. A materialist can't say the same thing. Look at the age of the universe.

When we measured the age of the universe, it was 13.8 billion years old. But the key point in this statement is WHEN WE MEASURED! A materialist has no evidence that the age of the universe was 13.8 billion years old prior to us measuring it. It could have ben a superposition of 13 billion years old, 10 billion years old, 15 billion years old and 12 billion years old and WHEN WE MEASURED IT, the age of the universe collapsed on 13.8 billion years old. So again I ask:

So, until humans came to exist, where's the evidence that we were in a universe with this gravitational constant:

a reply to: neoholographic

Well, you are stuck in the 90s holographic universe was an idea that has now for the most part dismissed. It all has to do with string theory. Although there currently isn’t any experimental evidence to support string theory, and some evidence pointing against it, it still garners some support. I personally think string theory was a waste of time.

In 1993, Gerard t’Hooft proposed what is now known as the holographic principle, which argued that the information contained within a region of space can be determined by the information at the surface that contains it. Though people misunderstood his principle to our perception of holograms. This isn't what he meant at all he was dealing with mathematics.

OK let's say we have a car there is a road 10 miles long, and it is “contained” by a start line and a finish line. Let's say the speed limit is on this road is 60 mph. So how can we tell if the car reaks the speed limit? Well, we can follow the car recording the entire trip. Or the easier way is to take the start time and end time and we know at 60 mph that's 1 min per mile. If he arrives at 10 min or more he didnt.

The holographic principle applies that idea to string theory. Just as its much easier to measure the start and finish times than constantly measure the speed of the car, it is much easier to do physics on the surface hologram than it is to do physics in the whole volume.

This was warped into somehow people thinking science said the universe is a hologram this is wrong that was never the case.

Most of your interpretations are just wrong and you have no real understanding of the science. And let me say again String theory is garbage and thank god we are finally leaving that mess behind

originally posted by: neoholographic
When we measured the age of the universe, it was 13.8 billion years old. But the key point in this statement is WHEN WE MEASURED! A materialist has no evidence that the age of the universe was 13.8 billion years old prior to us measuring it.

What people talking this way seem to lack is an understanding of decoherence.

We can create laboratory conditions at low temperatures where quantum superpositions exist on small things, and in those cases there is at least some argument that superposition might mean there's not a concrete reality before a measurement is made, but, that's if one applies the Copehnagen interpretation which is in textbooks but it's not known to be the correct interpretation, just the most widely taught interpretation. In other interpretations such as Everett's universal wavefunction, there is no superposition even in the subatomic states.

But even with Copenhagen interpretation, the larger the object and the higher the temperature and the more it interacts with its environment, the harder it is to maintain a superposition of states, so say a cat for example (or a human, or other larger objects in the universe), becomes a material object because of decoherence, as explained here:

abyss.uoregon.edu...

Decoherence explains why we do not routinely see quantum superpositions in the world around us. It is not because quantum mechanics intrinsically stops working for objects larger than some magic size. Instead, macroscopic objects such as cats and cards are almost impossible to keep isolated to the extent needed to prevent decoherence. Microscopic objects, in contrast, are more easily isolated from their surroundings so that they retain their quantum secrets and quantum behavior.

As Sean Carroll explains, we don't need humans to act as "observers" in the quantum mechanical sense of that term. The belief that "observers" have to be human is a distortion of the fact that even a rock can act as an "observer" in a quantum mechanical sense of the term "observer":

Sean Carroll, physicist: "Deep in the heart of almost every physicist is the conviction that (the observer) shouldn't really be important...that the existence of a person, which is what it sounds like when you say the word observer, that shouldn't be part of a real physical theory. There's sort of a minority of physicists who have taken up the radical point of view that no you can't even define quantum mechanics without really taking observers seriously as part of the fundamental ingredients of the theory. The rest of us are trying to say what we really meant all along by observers is something else, some part of the system that interacts with some other part of the system in another way, so I for one am happy to count video cameras, rocks, atoms and molecules in the air as quantum mechanical observers for all intents and purposes."

So this is why things like cats, mice, and larger things are material objects. Decoherence has resulted in them being "observed" by the environment they interact with, so they can't exist in a superposition of states, the condition that some people use to argue that you don't know what something really is until you've "measured" it. The cat is constantly being "measured" as it breathes and interacts with its environment in other ways.

a reply to: dragonridr

You obviously didn't read my post. I talked about the Holographic Universe because it shows how Physicist were looking for an explanation of the universe because there's no evidence to support an objective material universe. Everybody responding got that but you.

Let's look at your faulty premise that the holographic principle is from the 90's.

[Submitted on 15 Aug 2019]

Emergent Gravity in a Holographic Universe

Manus R. Visser

This dissertation investigates thermodynamic, emergent and holographic aspects of gravity in the context of causal diamonds. We obtain a gravitational first law for causal diamonds in maximally symmetric spacetimes and argue that these diamonds are in thermodynamic equilibrium at negative temperature. Further, gravitational field equations, including higher curvature corrections, are derived from an equilibrium condition on the generalized entropy of small maximally symmetric diamonds. Finally, we assign three holographic microscopic quantities to causal diamonds in spherically symmetric spacetimes, and for non-AdS geometries we interpret them in terms of the long string degrees of freedom of symmetric product conformal field theories.

arxiv.org...

SUBMITTED 2019 NOT 1990!

[Submitted on 11 Apr 2019 (v1), last revised 22 Dec 2019 (this version, v2)]

Holography for the very early Universe and the classic puzzles of Hot Big Bang cosmology

Horatiu Nastase, Kostas Skenderis

We show that standard puzzles of hot Big Bang cosmology that motivated the introduction of cosmological inflation, such as the smoothness and horizon problem, the flatness problem and the relic problem are also solved by holographic models for very early universe based on perturbative three dimensional QFT. In the holographic setup, cosmic evolution is mapped to inverse renormalization group (RG) flow of the dual QFT, and the resolution of the puzzles relies on properties of the RG flow.

arxiv.org...

SUBMITTED 2019 NOT 1990!

[Submitted on 16 Sep 2011]

Quantum entanglement from the holographic principle

Jae-Weon Lee

It is suggested that quantum entanglement emerges from the holographic principle stating that all of the information of a region (bulk bits) can be described by the bits on its boundary surface. There are redundancy and information loss in the bulk bits that lead to the nonlocal correlation among the bulk bits. Quantum field theory overestimates the independent degrees of freedom in the bulk. The maximum entanglement in the universe increases as the size of the cosmic horizon and this could be related with the arrow of time and dark energy.

arxiv.org...

SUBMITTED 2011 NOT 1990!

[Submitted on 5 Jun 2018]

The Holographic Space-Time Model of Cosmology

T. Banks (Runhetic, Rutgers University), W.Fischler (University of Texas, Austin)

This essay outlines the Holographic Space-time (HST) theory of cosmology and its relation to conventional theories of inflation. The predictions of the theory are compatible with observations, and one must hope for data on primordial gravitational waves or non-Gaussian fluctuations to distinguish it from conventional models. The model predicts an early era of structure formation, prior to the Big Bang. Understanding the fate of those structures requires complicated simulations that have not yet been done. The result of those calculations might falsify the model, or might provide a very economical framework for explaining dark matter and the generation of the baryon asymmetry.

arxiv.org...

SUBMITTED 2018 NOT 1990!

[Submitted on 2 Apr 2019 (v1), last revised 1 Aug 2019 (this version, v2)]

Holographic inflation

Shin'ichi Nojiri, Sergei D. Odintsov, Emmanuel N. Saridakis

We apply the holographic principle at the early universe, obtaining an inflation realization of holographic origin. Such a consideration has equal footing with its well-studied late-time application, and moreover the decrease of the horizons at early times naturally increases holographic energy density at inflationary scales. Taking as Infrared cutoff the particle or future event horizons, and adding a simple correction due to the Ultraviolet cutoff, whose role is non-negligible at the high energy scales of inflation, we result in a holographic inflation scenario that is very efficient in incorporating inflationary requirements and predictions. We first extract analytically the solution of the Hubble function in an implicit form, which gives a scale factor evolution of the desired e-foldings. Furthermore, we analytically calculate the Hubble slow-roll parameters and then the inflation-related observables, such as the scalar spectral index and its running, the tensor-to-scalar ratio, and the tensor spectral index. Confronting the predictions with Planck 2018 observations we show that the agreement is perfect and in particular deep inside the 1σ region.

arxiv.org...

SUBMITTED 2019 NOT 1990!

I can fill up 10 pages of recent published papers on the Holographic Universe. Your assertion is just wrong and I suggest you read the OP fully before you post.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

First, you don't understand Decoherence. Decoherance has nothing to do with what's called the measurement problem because with Decoherence probability remains in the equations. Here's a good paper on this and there's others.

Why Decoherence has not Solved the Measurement Problem: A Response to P. W. Anderson

Stephen L. Adler

We discuss why, contrary to claims recently made by P. W. Anderson, decoherence has not solved the quantum measurement problem.

arxiv.org...

Also, if Decoherence was universal, why in the recent Wigner's Friend experiments can Wigner(observer) still measure interference after his friend has carried out a measurement in the lab. If there was this universal wavefunction, why didn't Wigner's Friends measurement collapse the wave function for Wigner outside of the lab? Where's the evidence of this universal wavefunction?

You talked about many worlds interpretation. Tell me, when do these universes split? When I wake up in the morning and watch ESPN, do I create 2,000 new universes with a version of me watching every one of my cable channels?

How can I make a choice in MWI or have a favorite food? If I'm just subject to branching then why isn't my favorite food Pizza one day then Tacos the next?

Hugh Everett came up with MWI and it was seen as a joke. So much so, he ate and drank himself to death. When scientist realized that the universe was fined tuned for life, they said OH, OH, God is standing there. So they brought Everett's paper back to life.

Tell me, how are these physical universes generated? If I almost get hit by a car while crossing the street, in one universe the car just misses me, in another universe I get hit by the car and break my legs and in another universe, I get hit by the car and I die. Tell me, how are these 3 different physical universes created? Did these three physical universes already exist and were they just waiting for me to get hit by the car?

I have no problem with Decoherence but people don't understand it and act like it's explains everything and it doesn't. It just says why we don't see interference on a classical level, not that interference and other probable states cease to exist.

Lastly, you mentioned Atheist pop scientist Sean Carroll who has gotten destroyed in a few debates I have seen. He compares the observer to a rock. Here's other Scientist from that same program talking about the importance of the observer.







A conscious human observer is different than observers that aren't concious. A non conscious observer interacts with a quantum system and it stores information about the state of the system but it can't do anything with that information unless a human observer extracts that information. Human observers don't need anything outside of ourselves to extract the information that we measure about a quantum system. We're aware of what we measured. We can write books, publish papers and build technologies surrounding it. Ask Sean Carroll can a rock do that.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: Arbitrageur

First, you don't understand Decoherence. Decoherance has nothing to do with what's called the measurement problem because with Decoherence probability remains in the equations. Here's a good paper on this and there's others.

Why Decoherence has not Solved the Measurement Problem: A Response to P. W. Anderson

I didn't claim that the measurement problem had been completely solved, so you appear to be making a strawman argument that I claimed the measurement problem was completely solved, and you're showing it isn't. That paper you reference actually starts out with some strong arguments by physicists for why they think decoherence is relevant. Then the paper says we don't have an exact solution to the measurement problem as one particular person had claimed. But the other arguments are that decoherence is relevant even if it's not yet an exact solution to the measurement problem.

What I said is you can't find a cat in a superposition of states, and decoherence is the reason, and nothing in that paper that I could find contradicts that. In fact the whole point of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment is that it should be obvious to people who aren't stupid that cats are not simultaneously dead and alive at the same time just because you put them in a box etc. The fact that we haven't figured out the last detail mathematically of exactly why cats aren't dead and alive at the same time in quantum theory, is not any kind of proof that cats are somehow dead and alive at the same time, but your "anti-materialist" view tends to lead to such an absurd claim.

Lastly, you mentioned Atheist pop scientist Sean Carroll who has gotten destroyed in a few debates I have seen. He compares the observer to a rock. Here's other Scientist from that same program talking about the importance of the observer.

Sean Carroll already acknowledged in the quote I cited previously that you can find a small minority of physicists who claim rocks can't be "observers", so the fact you can find some of these small number of physicists is not something Carroll disputes.

There are more formal attempts to address this issue in the literature, but Carroll appears to be right that "observer" doesn't have to men "conscious human observer", since we've proven that a detector in the double slit experiment can collapse the wavefunction the same when a human is around as when the human isn't around.

Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)

It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement... Some of the experimental results that are already available suggest falsification of the first hypothesis. Thus, the suggested link between human consciousness and collapse of wave function does not seem viable.

If you want to make your point, how about posting a paper demonstrating that a cat is in a superposition of states of being dead and alive at the same time? The whole point of Schrodinger's cat experiment is that it's should be obvious to everybody but idiots that the cat is not dead and alive at the same time as the measurement problem might infer, but your argument seems to be, the measurement problem isn't solved, therefore the cat is dead and alive at the same time in a superposition of states. It's obviously not, even if we haven't solved the measurement problem yet. If you don't think decoherence largely explains why the cat isn't dead and alive at the same time like most physicists seem to think, you're entitled to think that, but you're still stuck with the fact that no experiment has ever shown a cat to be in a superposition of states of dead and alive at the same time.

a reply to: neoholographic

You proved my point in each paper you cite they are using the holographic principle to create a model. Its used to simplify the math involved. None of these are claiming the universe is a hologram or there is no reality. It's simply a way we can do math without having to go into great detail as I explained earlier with the car. When making a model of the universe data points can get out of hand quickly.

The exception is the paper on The Holographic Space-Time Model of Cosmology. This paper is discussing the storage of information. This principle explains three-dimensional phenomena influenced by gravity on a two-dimensional flat space that is not influenced by gravity. This is not a real representation of our universe, but it is close enough to help researchers study its basic aspects. It converts our 3D universe two a 2D model. Again the math becomes easier. No One is claiming the universe is a hologram this was a misinterpretation from science writers. We had this same discussion in my class as one of the students thought as you do.

a reply to: neoholographic

No one understands decoherence, Foundational discussions of quantum theory have a tendency to talk about the
‘conventional’ or ‘orthodox’ or ‘standard’ interpretation of quantum mechanics.It is not generally very clear what is meant by this however there are 2 main principles

The Measurement Algorithm. Observable quantities are represented by self-adjoint operators; the possible outcomes of a measurement of some observable are the eigenvalues of an operator. The approach was codified by John von Neumann it represents a measurement where the physical system can be measured by a self-adjoint operator on that Hilbert space termed an "observable".

We could create an entire thread on this alone however I don't think people would find the math interesting.

Now the second the Projection Postulate. While in the absence of measurement, a system evolves unitarily and deterministically, according to the Schrödinger equation, when a measurement is made the system evolves stochastically,
with its state vector being projected onto the eigensubspace corresponding to the actual measurement outcome. This is what he was referring to and you just failed to understand his point. This means things don't just disappear because we don't measure or see it.

Decoherence indeed explains why everything in our universe is not in a superposition. And it is one of the possibilities as he stated.

a reply to: neoholographic

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” ― Werner Heisenberg

I concede there is a creator. What is it? Who knows. I don't claim to understand much about about science, although I like it and have at least glimpsed most if not all those idea's, theories, hypothesis , what ever.

My focus has been on what kind of creator do we have. You don't need to be a genius to see it. But there is a catch, most people can not see it. Because they were designed not to, or at least that is the best explanation I can come up with.

You of course have heard of the cycle of life. It's not very pretty, actually it closely resembles a vampiric cycle. Most everything on the planet has to suck the life energy out of something else. And if it isn't actively trying suck the life energy from something else, it is dependent on it dying so it can survive. It all gets recycled, a self sustaining fully recycling machine could be a beautiful thing. Except it is quite horrific, imagine being eating alive, there is a pleasant thought. But plants don't feel pain, do they? Their not intelligent, or are they? Yet animals clearly feel pain and do seem to suffer, especially when they are being eaten alive by another animal.

Then you have humans top of the food chain, err maybe, maybe not. Why would god/creator make humans so undeniably hard headed? It's almost as if it enjoys the conflict. From our perspective, or at least mine. Something with enough power to create the entire universe, even if it is a illusion/simulation or real. Would clearly have the ability to communicate what it wants from humans. It could do this in a number of ways, the easiest would be a clear precise message to each and every human simultaneously. Or it could make some bibles that defy the laws physics. It could glow, it could float, shoot it could read its self to you. But you have none of that. You have each religion fighting the other. In a lot of cases you have them killing each other. And lets not even talk about the untold human suffering on the planet.

I can only come up with two explanation why this is. Either god is indifferent or it's flat out evil. Neither explanation is very comforting.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

First, you haven't provided a shred of evidence to support materialism in anyway. Here's the title of this thread.

Can a materialist provide scientific evidence that the material world has an objective existence?

You haven't provided a shred of evidence that refutes anything that I posted or supports an objective material universe.

You then went on a tangent about the observer and many worlds but you haven't provided a shred of evidence to support many worlds. I asked you several questions about MWI and you didn't answer. You respond talking about Shrodinger's cat and decoherence but if the cat is dead or alive as you say then in which universe is he dead and which universe is he alive? How does this splitting occur and how many splits occur daily for each individual? How can anyone make a choice in MWI? Here's some questions I asked that you never answered:

Tell me, when do these universes split? When I wake up in the morning and watch ESPN, do I create 2,000 new universes with a version of me watching every one of my cable channels?

How can I make a choice in MWI or have a favorite food? If I'm just subject to branching then why isn't my favorite food Pizza one day then Tacos the next?

Hugh Everett came up with MWI and it was seen as a joke. So much so, he ate and drank himself to death. When scientist realized that the universe was fined tuned for life, they said OH, OH, God is standing there. So they brought Everett's paper back to life.

Tell me, how are these physical universes generated? If I almost get hit by a car while crossing the street, in one universe the car just misses me, in another universe I get hit by the car and break my legs and in another universe, I get hit by the car and I die. Tell me, how are these 3 different physical universes created? Did these three physical universes already exist and were they just waiting for me to get hit by the car?

You're the one who brought up MWI. Stop obfuscating andanswer the questions please.

Decoherence just explains why you see a live cat or a dead cat. It doesn't explain where the probabilities go. That's a matter of interpretation and anyone who acts like this issues are resolved is just lying.

Many Worlds makes no sense as a physical theory. There's no evidence that an objective physical universe exists and secondly, how are all these physical universes generated when 7 billion people on the planet make a choice? MWI says we're subject to the deterministic evolution of the wavefunction. So as humans, we don't make any choices. It's just the splitting of a universal wave function as it evolves.

So again I ask, how can you have a favorite food in MWI when you're not making a choice to have a favorite food, you're just subject to splitting of the universal wave function.

Where's the evidence that the wave function is physical? Here's a paper that says otherwise.

The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view from counterfactual quantum cryptography

Akshata Shenoy H., R. Srikanth

Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches to wave function ontology, that are based on realist models of quantum theory, here we recast the question as a problem of communication between a sender (Bob), who uses interaction-free measurements, and a receiver (Alice), who observes an interference pattern in a Mach-Zehnder set-up. An advantage of our approach is that it allows us to define the concept of "physical", apart from "real". In instances of counterfactual quantum communication, reality is ascribed to the interaction-freely measured wave function (ψ) because Alice deterministically infers Bob's measurement. On the other hand, ψ does not correspond to the physical transmission of a particle because it produced no detection on Bob's apparatus. We therefore conclude that the wave function in this case (and by extension, generally) is real, but not physical. Characteristically for classical phenomena, the reality and physicality of objects are equivalent, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. As a concrete application of this idea, the nonphysical reality of the wavefunction is shown to be the basic nonclassical phenomenon that underlies the security of CQC.

arxiv.org...

Here's an experiment that sent particles from point A to point B without the transmission of a particle.

Direct counterfactual communication via quantum Zeno effect

Significance

Recent theoretical studies have shown that quantum mechanics allows counterfactual communication, even without actual transmission of physical particles, which raised a heated debate on its interpretation. Although several papers have been published on the theoretical aspects of the subject, a faithful experimental demonstration is missing. Here, by using the quantum Zeno effect and a single-photon source, direct communication without carrier particle transmission is implemented successfully. We experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of direct counterfactual communication with the current technique. The results of our work can help deepen the understanding of quantum mechanics. Furthermore, our experimental scheme is applicable to other quantum technologies, such as imaging and state preparation.

Abstract

Intuition from our everyday lives gives rise to the belief that information exchanged between remote parties is carried by physical particles. Surprisingly, in a recent theoretical study [Salih H, Li ZH, Al-Amri M, Zubairy MS (2013) Phys Rev Lett 110:170502], quantum mechanics was found to allow for communication, even without the actual transmission of physical particles. From the viewpoint of communication, this mystery stems from a (nonintuitive) fundamental concept in quantum mechanics—wave-particle duality. All particles can be described fully by wave functions. To determine whether light appears in a channel, one refers to the amplitude of its wave function. However, in counterfactual communication, information is carried by the phase part of the wave function. Using a single-photon source, we experimentally demonstrate the counterfactual communication and successfully transfer a monochrome bitmap from one location to another by using a nested version of the quantum Zeno effect.

www.pnas.org...

You talked about this universal wave function and MWI without a shred of evidence to support it. Let me ask you this:

If Decoherence is the answer to Schrodinger's cat, when exactly does the cat decohere? How can the cat decohere into a live state or a dead state prior to a quantum event occuring?

So you have the wavefunction of the radioactive source including both a live cat and a dead cat. There's no quantum event yet, just the wavefunction describing these probable states. You said Decoherence solves this. Tell me, exactly when did the states of the cat decohere to one universe or the other? How did the states of the cat decohere to one universe or the other prior to a quantum event occuring?

a reply to: neoholographic

If the world has no objective existence then it is a figment of imagination or an optical illusion shared by all of society, aka mass psychosis. But that doesn't make sense either because up until roughly 3.7 billion years ago there was no life anywhere and it took another 3 billion years for humans to emerge and give our planet an actual name or invent language to describe the universe. How does a universe precede the minds that fabricated it? 🤔

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: Arbitrageur

First, you haven't provided a shred of evidence to support materialism in anyway. Here's the title of this thread.

You haven't provided a shred of evidence a cat is not a material object. The quantum superpositions your sources talk about are typically based on experiments with subatomic particles in isolated conditions, for which you might argue for lack of "material existence" depending on how you define that term, but, you haven't proven it extends to cats etc. Nobody has proven that and the whole idea behind the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment is that it doesn't extend to cats, even though we are still struggling with the complicated quantum mathematics to prove exactly why that is so, via "the Measurement Problem".

You then went on a tangent about the observer and many worlds but you haven't provided a shred of evidence to support many worlds. I asked you several questions about MWI and you didn't answer.

I didn't mention "many worlds" or "MWI" at all! Not even once! I barely even mentioned Everett's universal wave function and even that was not a core part of my argument, so if you think it was you need to re-read my posts. My argument stands even under the Copenhagen interpretation. "Many worlds" was not Everett's original idea, despite many attributions to the contrary; his idea was a universal wave function in a single, quantum universe. It was Bryce DeWitt who came up with the "Many Worlds" terminology which Everett said was not his idea. So this should suffice as an answer to why mentioning Everett's original universal wave function doesn't necessarily imply "Many Worlds", though I can understand why you might jump to that idea since it's a common misperception:

arxiv.org...
From a 1976 philosophy paper on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, by Levy-Leblond
"To me, the deep meaning of Everett's ideas is not the coexistence of many worlds, but on the contrary, the existence of a single quantum one."

Everett agreed.

"In a letter to Levy-Leblond (Barrett 2011), Everett indicated that he quite agreed with Levy-Leblond’s argument and emphasized that the many worlds terminology was not his."

a reply to: dragonridr

You make these statements that are just lies. You did this the last time we debated. You said:

No One is claiming the universe is a hologram this was a misinterpretation from science writers.

This is just false. You say these things in a vacuum without a shred of evidence. Here's a conference with t'Hooft, Susskind and others talking about the universe as a Hologram.



Here's a lecture from Susskind talking about the universe as a Hologram.



Here's Physicist Brian Greene and others talking about the universe as a hologram and the 3rd dimension is an illusion.



So Scientist, not just science writers are talking about the holographic universe. This isn't the point of the thread though and I wish you had read the thread title before you posted. It says:

Can a materialist provide scientific evidence that the material world has an objective existence?

It doesn't say:

The Universe is a Hologram

I mentioned the Holographic Universe along with other things to show that Scientist have to come up with these theories because there's no evidence that an objective material universe exists.

You're proving the point of my thread because you haven't provided a shred of evidence that there's an objective material universe.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Again I ask:

If Decoherence is the answer to Schrodinger's cat, when exactly does the cat decohere? How can the cat decohere into a live state or a dead state prior to a quantum event occuring?

So you have the wavefunction of the radioactive source including both a live cat and a dead cat. There's no quantum event yet, just the wavefunction describing these probable states. You said Decoherence solves this. Tell me, exactly when did the states of the cat decohere to one universe or the other? How did the states of the cat decohere to one universe or the other prior to a quantum event occuring?

Also:

If Everett isn't talking about many worlds in his original paper, tell me the mechanism in his original paper that reduces all probable states to zero except one?

Also:

If consciousness has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, you must know what consciousness is to speak in such absolutes. A conscious observer can extract information about a quantum system and it's aware of the information extracted unlike a measuring device. Tell me the exact nature of this and why we're aware of the quantum state being measured if human observers are no different than rocks. You must have the evidence to speak in such absolutes.

a reply to: neoholographic

No physicist has ever stated that in Schrödinger's experiment the cat is simultaneously alive AND dead. The correct interpretation is that the cat is EITHER alive OR dead.

People constantly make the mistake of confusing the superposition of the wavefunctions, or the state vectors, with an alleged superposition of being alive AND dead. They are different things. One thing is the wavefunction of an object, and quite another the object itself.

In physics, the connection between the quantum entity (whether it is an atom or a cat or your boyfriend) and the wavefunctions representing the various states of being is not a physical identity or equivalence. When an observation is made, only one of the observable possibilities are seen, with the probabilities corresponding to the magnitude of the wavefunction for each state making up the total wavefunction.

So no, there are no entangled states of being. There are entangled wavefunctions. That's all.

a reply to: neoholographic

The simple answer is that you think you're leading a horse to water, but you are the horse trying to prove the water is a hologram and so is your bridle. Meanwhile the farmer is baffled that his horse can talk and apparently is on drugs.

a reply to: Direne

You said:

So no, there are no entangled states of being. There are entangled wavefunctions. That's all.

Show me the equation that shows there's no entangled states of being. The most you can say is, when you make an observation, you see one probable state. Where's the evidence that other probable states of the wavefunction cease to exist? The only thing that explains this is consciousness collapsing the wave function.

If consciousness doesn't collapse the wavefunction, what happens to other probable states of the wavefunction and why are they no longer entangled because you can't observe interference. Are you saying your observation is reality?