Anyone got any Mind Blowing Questions?

[Tomo009]

Given quantum butterflies and whatnot; if you were to make an exact copy of the Earth circa 1935, down to the subatomic level (without getting into the whole Heisenberg observer effect thing, just to simplify matters), and run it again, without any further external input, would it arrive in the same version of 2010 that we have now? Would the carbon-copy inhabitants of this second Earth experience the same twentieth century that we did? Or would free will, or the illusion thereof, create a subtly different world? Would the Manhattan Project have been a quantum fluke in Oppenheimer's brain away from not discovering nuclear fission? Would the Enigma deciphering have been a similar chance in Turing's brain away from kicking off the computer age? Aside from the immediate impacts of these on the Second World War, what would a 20th century without nuclear power or computers look like?

Basically, if you rewind reality and hit play again, do you get the same result? I'm hoping not, because I like the idea that my will is my own rather than a predetermined set of chemical processes, but my brain is a set of chemical processes, and there's nothing else that makes me "me." Impossible to find out really, unless someone creates a way to go back in time and create a quantum xerox of the solar system.

But wouldn't everyone act the same way? They still have the same nsture/nurture as they are following the same string of chaos theory. So wouldn't everyone be affected and act the same? Resulting in the same events occurring?

 

[Varcolac]

I don't know. You'd have to put your Earth #2 in a different point in spacetime to the original, so the different context might subtly alter things. Even a difference in gravity or cosmic rays might have a small effect (incredibly small, but still there). It'd be interesting.

 

[Zehailiu]

@Jbroll
Thanks for that very lengthy write up, it's assuming the 4th dimension is time, how is it different if we assume N spatial dimensions and 1 Time dimension where N > 3? ^^

@Varcolac
Given the uncertainty principle I think it depends on the determinacy of those earth circa 1935 particles (or really the universe circa 1935 particles) under the affect of quantum fluctuations because these fluctuations exist everywhere and is believed to have affected the structure of the universe shortly after the bigbang and caused the formation of galaxies.
So I think it's safe to say if quantum fluctuations are deterministic, and you have succeeded in copying every particle of the earth in 1935, then you might have a chance of arriving at the same 2010. But if it's not, you definitely won't arrive at the same 2010, and freewill may not have had anything to do with that.

 

[vampiregenocide]

You bought a Halo *book*? Halo as in the video game series?

Jeff

Yeah. They're good books.

 

[JBroll]

Couldn't understand a word of the post 2 up, but what I know is, its not really possible to conceive what a 4D object actually would like because it is out of our understanding. What we can do though is see what a 3D "shadow" of said object would be, just as we can see a 2D shadow of a 3D object.

ie. The tesseract, the shadow of a 4D "cube"

This is dead wrong. I just explained how to do it. I have to do it regularly as part of my studies, and if it's not beyond my understanding I'm pretty sure most or all people can pull it off... I've already fiddled with several pentatopes and a hexateron today and I haven't even had my coffee yet.

"Picturing" a four dimensional object (if we agree that time is the fourth dimension) is impossible because it ties into the Uncertainty Principle. You can't know the exact physical characteristics of an object while at the same time observing said object's passage through time, as said object is constantly changing at the atomic level.

This is also dead wrong - the above doesn't have anything to do with the uncertainty principle.

Goddamn, I leave for one evening and it's back to physics-word salad...

Silentrage, given n+1 dimensions (n space, 1 time) you can see an n-dimensional object and 'glue' an n+1 dimensional object together in the way described above.

Jeff

 

[pink freud]

This is dead wrong. I just explained how to do it. I have to do it regularly as part of my studies, and if it's not beyond my understanding I'm pretty sure most or all people can pull it off... I've already fiddled with several pentatopes and a hexateron today and I haven't even had my coffee yet.



This is also dead wrong - the above doesn't have anything to do with the uncertainty principle.

Goddamn, I leave for one evening and it's back to physics-word salad...

Silentrage, given n+1 dimensions (n space, 1 time) you can see an n-dimensional object and 'glue' an n+1 dimensional object together in the way described above.

Jeff

How can one picture an object except outside of time? Unless there is zero atomic movement an object is constantly changing, thus the only way to observe an object's physical characteristics at a given point is exactly that, at a point in time. If the Uncertainty Principle states that we cannot know location while simultaneously knowing movement, it is equally true that one cannot know the exact position of every atom of an object without observing it at a single point in time.

 

[JBroll]

This stuff is *NOT REAL*. The Uncertainty Principle refers to *MEASUREMENTS OF REAL THINGS*. (On top of that, they're either tiny or oddly-moving things - ever notice how not everything looks like a fuzzy superposition of metathings?)

Because what I described was ENTIRELY IMAGINARY, and NOT REAL, the Uncertainty Principle has nothing to do with it AT ALL. If you're going to try to use physics ideas, you need to be much more careful about how and why you apply them.

Jeff

 

[Zehailiu]

@pink
I think you're forgetting the fact that we still don't know how the probabilities of constituent subatomic particles become the observed definite macroscopic object, one that does have a measurable position and momentum.


Ok, in the spirit of the thread, shall we include a mind-boggling question once in a while?
Here's mine, if you make boots out of vagina, would they be impossible to wear out?

 

[Razorgrin]

Here's mine, if you make boots out of vagina, would they be impossible to wear out?

Mind = blown.

 

[MFB]

Were Chuck Norris jokes ever funny?

 

[JBroll]

@pink
I think you're forgetting the fact that we still don't know how the probabilities of constituent subatomic particles become the observed definite macroscopic object, one that does have a measurable position and momentum.

I'm not sure that's right.

MFB... Chuck Norris once told a good Chuck Norris joke.

(The real question is now whether or not jokes about Chuck Norris jokes were ever funny. Whee.)

Jeff

 

[josh pelican]

The real question is now whether or not jokes about Chuck Norris jokes were ever funny. Whee.

Jeff

The answer is no.

I said it.

 

[vampiregenocide]

The answer is no.

I said it.

There is footage of Chuck Norris talking bout the jokes about him, and he finds them very funny, even cleared up a few facts.

 

[joelozzy]

 

[joelozzy]

Were Chuck Norris jokes ever funny?

 

[Zehailiu]

@jbroll
i think this is the latest breakthrough on that subject?
Sign in to read: Quantum states undergo natural selection - physics-math - 25 July 2007 - New Scientist

 

[JBroll]

Do you happen to have the full article handy? Since it's from a general-audience publication and it's three years old I wouldn't be too sure that it's the latest breakthrough.

Jeff

 

[Zehailiu]

Ah shit, I remember seeing an article with a similar title that was just published on sciencedaily 2 weeks ago.

But anyway, what I mean is ( and maybe this is because I don't really understand decoherence or quantum mechanics at all) there seems to be no tangible or intuitively understood mechanism by which a quantum superposition of states becomes a single coherent macroscopic reality, besides the MWI which is entirely non-ontological and therefore does nothing for me.

 

[JBroll]

Let me know if you find the recent one.

Say what you want about MWI, but from what I've been told it fits phenomena like quantum computing better than the other mainstream theories - your own philosophical preferences shouldn't get in the way of science, and right now MWI is viable (despite non-physics-based complaints) and can give practical results on top of that.

Jeff

 

[Zehailiu]

Well I trust your opinion on that better than my own, maybe I'll know better once I study some of the math involved.
I think what bugs me is that MWI can't really be experimentally proven, but as I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing in science as long as the math is solid and it helps to predict other experimental results?