consciousness is something that exists outside the dimensions of space and time
That’s absolutely, demonstrably incorrect. It, like all the other processes, is something that exists in observable space-time dimensions that we can observe. It’s a state of matter observable over time. There is no way and no reason to add some more shit on top of that.
there is also the “magical” notion of the observer
It’s only magic if you don’t know what probability is. If we have two marbles, black and white, and blindly take one each and go on our merry ways, and then you need to do the full math about it for some reason, it’s very useful to you to describe a marble in my hand as a 50% black/ 50% white marble. Then later if you look at the one you have, and discover that it’s a white one, the one I have magically, instantly, inexplicably becomes 100% black marble. That’s what, simplifying a lot, a quantum effect is (this specific one is quantum entanglement). And if you forget that nothing actually changed, and it’s just you scribbling some math on a paper, you can start thinking about it in terms of reality bending multidimensional paradoxes. But it’s not, it’s just humans being unable to easily comprehend insanely complex mathematical abstractions.
That’s absolutely, demonstrably incorrect. It, like all the other processes, is something that exists in observable space-time dimensions that we can observe. It’s a state of matter observable over time.
Do you have some source for that? Would love to see how you measure that?
[…] That’s what, simplifying a lot, a quantum effect is
You’re also entirely ignoring the part where matter stops behaving as matter and starts interacting with itself as if you had the white and black marble in your hands at the same time, despite you only having one. This is the “magical” part, because it depends on the presence of the observer whether this effect happens or not.
Do you have some source for that? Would love to see how you measure that?
That’s the thing. You are the one adding an additional entity on top the reality, so you should be the one providing sources for it. We know what a brain is, we roughly know how it operates, we know that if we measure electrical activity we have perfectly working predicting theory, we can stick a person into an FMRA machine, prod a specific part of the brain and make them see purple, flail hands, or hear voices. Now, if you want to reintroduce old discarded theory of a soul into all that, it’s your job to find where it fits and find any way that it will work.
My sources for it is the last century or so of the brain science.
You’re also entirely ignoring the part
Because this part doesn’t exist. It’s hard to overstate how much all of this is just math.
The whole observer effect stems from the fact that we can’t measure quantum particles directly on account of it being too small, so we don’t have a way to know anything about them until we or something else interacts with them, usually in quite destructive ways. So in order for our math to exist, we abstract it away and talk about shit like 0.5 spin like it’s something that can make any sense in real life, just because nobody needs to explain every time that we’re talking about probability of an abstract particle in specific conditions. Because, again, we can only measure its, for example, speed by the fact that it smashed into something else with a specific force, and as you can imagine, its speed after that is quite different.
If we return to the marble example, if my only way to tell a colour of it was to smash it to bits, we can say that the marble is in the state of black-white, but when I measure it, it changes the state to was-black-now-smashed-into-bits, thus demonstrating the observer effect. We can say that because we did a bunch of math and now we need a special black-white state of matter to make our probabilistic equations make sense. But without that, we stop at the black-white state and don’t go any further, because it’s not a thing that actually real.
Matter can interfere with itself in wave patterns that behave as if the matter no longer exists in a single position, but in all possible positions at once. This shows the matter doesn’t even exist in its physical form anymore while it is part of the wave function. “Quantum particles” are not even a thing, because this effect can be reproduced with large molecules too, and there is no apparent upper limit to this: https://science-atlas.com/strange-news/largest-molecules-yet-become-waves-in-quantum-double-slit-experiment/
This effect is real, and waving it away because it’s supposedly “too small” isn’t making it less so. It’s not too small to measure. The article mentions these molecules were fitting slits that were 50nm in size.
As for the brain waves, it seems we’re talking about different things. Of course we can mess with the brain and alter sensory experiences. But experience and awareness are a bigger thing than merely input/output. That’s something I know to be true about myself, but I suppose you can reason that away. I merely pity those who do.
That’s absolutely, demonstrably incorrect. It, like all the other processes, is something that exists in observable space-time dimensions that we can observe. It’s a state of matter observable over time. There is no way and no reason to add some more shit on top of that.
It’s only magic if you don’t know what probability is. If we have two marbles, black and white, and blindly take one each and go on our merry ways, and then you need to do the full math about it for some reason, it’s very useful to you to describe a marble in my hand as a 50% black/ 50% white marble. Then later if you look at the one you have, and discover that it’s a white one, the one I have magically, instantly, inexplicably becomes 100% black marble. That’s what, simplifying a lot, a quantum effect is (this specific one is quantum entanglement). And if you forget that nothing actually changed, and it’s just you scribbling some math on a paper, you can start thinking about it in terms of reality bending multidimensional paradoxes. But it’s not, it’s just humans being unable to easily comprehend insanely complex mathematical abstractions.
Do you have some source for that? Would love to see how you measure that?
You’re also entirely ignoring the part where matter stops behaving as matter and starts interacting with itself as if you had the white and black marble in your hands at the same time, despite you only having one. This is the “magical” part, because it depends on the presence of the observer whether this effect happens or not.
That’s the thing. You are the one adding an additional entity on top the reality, so you should be the one providing sources for it. We know what a brain is, we roughly know how it operates, we know that if we measure electrical activity we have perfectly working predicting theory, we can stick a person into an FMRA machine, prod a specific part of the brain and make them see purple, flail hands, or hear voices. Now, if you want to reintroduce old discarded theory of a soul into all that, it’s your job to find where it fits and find any way that it will work.
My sources for it is the last century or so of the brain science.
Because this part doesn’t exist. It’s hard to overstate how much all of this is just math.
The whole observer effect stems from the fact that we can’t measure quantum particles directly on account of it being too small, so we don’t have a way to know anything about them until we or something else interacts with them, usually in quite destructive ways. So in order for our math to exist, we abstract it away and talk about shit like 0.5 spin like it’s something that can make any sense in real life, just because nobody needs to explain every time that we’re talking about probability of an abstract particle in specific conditions. Because, again, we can only measure its, for example, speed by the fact that it smashed into something else with a specific force, and as you can imagine, its speed after that is quite different.
If we return to the marble example, if my only way to tell a colour of it was to smash it to bits, we can say that the marble is in the state of black-white, but when I measure it, it changes the state to was-black-now-smashed-into-bits, thus demonstrating the observer effect. We can say that because we did a bunch of math and now we need a special black-white state of matter to make our probabilistic equations make sense. But without that, we stop at the black-white state and don’t go any further, because it’s not a thing that actually real.
Regarding the quantum physics part, I was referring to the double slit experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
Matter can interfere with itself in wave patterns that behave as if the matter no longer exists in a single position, but in all possible positions at once. This shows the matter doesn’t even exist in its physical form anymore while it is part of the wave function. “Quantum particles” are not even a thing, because this effect can be reproduced with large molecules too, and there is no apparent upper limit to this: https://science-atlas.com/strange-news/largest-molecules-yet-become-waves-in-quantum-double-slit-experiment/
This effect is real, and waving it away because it’s supposedly “too small” isn’t making it less so. It’s not too small to measure. The article mentions these molecules were fitting slits that were 50nm in size.
As for the brain waves, it seems we’re talking about different things. Of course we can mess with the brain and alter sensory experiences. But experience and awareness are a bigger thing than merely input/output. That’s something I know to be true about myself, but I suppose you can reason that away. I merely pity those who do.