Apologies to Einstein Not Necessary—Reply to Paul

Apologies to Einstein Not Necessary—Reply to Paul

(Normally I would reply to a comment using the reply button at the end of the post. Unfortunately, my reply exceeds the 4,000-character limit for replies so I am publishing my reply as a new post which sets no character limits on post size.)

Paul's Comment to Post 8, Apologies Aren't Necessary—Einstein Was Right
It is comforting to learn that Einstein continues to be correct. It seems that physicists for a long time were trying to show that Einstein was wrong about something so that it would lead to fame and fortune.
But if Einstein’s being correct depends on the existence of other universes, suspicions are aroused.
In the case cited I understand that scientists in an alternate universe try the same experiment and their particle appears in our universe. Clever.
However, is there any proof of this amazing performance? Where is this alternative universe? If an alternative universe is created each time there is a decision point, there must be an infinite number of such universes. Given that our universe is ever expanding and is infinite in size itself, all the alternative universes must be infinitely large as well.
Why would God do this? To see if a perfect universe could develop? What would be the characteristics of such a universe? Perhaps for some other reason we do not know?
Now I suppose that the mathematics require the existence of alternate universes. But mathematics is a language. Where is the experimental proof?
Reply, please

Thanks for the comment, Paul. These are tough questions, as I have come to expect from you. They strike at the heart of the hypothesis proposing the multiverse.
I share your respect for Einstein. His knowledge of quantum physics was underrated by many in the scientific community and much of that failure to appreciate that knowledge was a widespread misunderstanding of what he said and believed about the behavior of entangled particles. To my knowledge, he never stated that entangled particles do not exhibit coordinated behavior—that is, when one is measured, the other immediately displays anticorrelated behavior.[1] What he did say, is that there is no "action at a distance"—a measurement of one particle does not cause the correlated behavior of the other particle. This belief was grounded in his extraordinary understanding of and respect for our universe's laws of physics. He knew, better perhaps than any other of his generation, that such a causal connection would require the effect he ridiculed as "spooky action at a distance" and that such action was not allowed by those laws. Unfortunately, Einstein died in 1955, two years before the publication of Hugh Everett's Doctoral Dissertation introducing the theory underlying the multiverse. Einstein could not have considered whether Everett's version of multiverse theory offered an alternative explanation for action at a distance that would not require a violation of the laws of physics.
On to your comment, let me make an important correction to your understanding of what happens when alternate universes are formed. Yes, scientists in an alternate universe perform the same experiment but the particle they observe does not appear in our universe. Nor does the particle our scientists observe appear in their universe. The reason this cannot occur is that measurement of the particle in either universe results in immediate collapse of the associated entangled wave function resulting in a loss of all other information about particles associated with the wave.
So your immediate rejoinder, I'm sure, would be: then how do we know that the particle in the alternate universe displays a value anticorrelated with the measurement in our universe—for example, that it displays an opposite spin—if we cannot observe that particle? That this anticorrelated value occurs has been shown by bringing the teams of scientists together, so to speak, in a laboratory setting, in order that they can operate on their entangled particles conjointly.[2] In order to acquire information about the spins of both particles without collapsing their respective wave functions, application of a unitary transformation (a transformation that preserves their entangled states) is required. This transformation allows each team to rotate the entangled basis of their particle. They can then measure their entangled particles separately to acquire the information they seek and to infer, but not to observe, the value of the other team's measurement. (A similar procedure was used in the Delft University experiment to produce event-ready electrons [3] and is used by computer programmers using a quantum computer. (For an explanation of the relationship between quantum computing and the multiverse, see At the Edge of Time, especially pages 118-121.) [4] Note that this result, while guided by mathematical computations, is obtained by a reproducible experiment, not by mathematics alone.[5]
Where is the proof for the multiverse? We are at the stage in our exploration of the frontiers of knowledge when we will no longer be able to definitively prove or disprove many emerging concepts. However, as with the hypotheses of dark energy and dark matter, we know the multiverse exists because it satisfactorily explains aspects of our cosmos not otherwise explainable.[6] Instantaneously correlated behavior of widely separated particles is one example of a behavior that cannot otherwise be explained.[7]
Are there too many universes for the space they must occupy? Isn't an infinite number just too many? I try (with some success) to avoid using the term "infinite" for I don't find it helpful; the term literally means "beyond number" and yet we treat it, as in my phrase "too many" as a number. I use instead the phrase "beyond number" to remind myself that we don't know how many of something there are. Further, to ask if there are too many universes for the space they must occupy, I think, puts the cart before the horse: the universes are there so there must be space for them.
Why would God create multiple universes? I agree with you that the multiverse was created with purpose; that this is so has become the elephant in the room and arguments to the contrary are becoming increasingly lame and unsatisfactory. One way to view this is attributed to Aristotle: "nature does nothing in vain". Does it not appear that evolution is steering life and the universe inerrantly toward fulfillment of a purpose? You suggest that the purpose of multiple universes is to see if a perfect universe could develop? I would not quarrel with this as a possible purpose.[8]
I welcome other points of view.

NOTES
1, See also: Quantum Entanglement, Abstract, line 4.
2. The following explanation is unavoidably complex given the way characteristics of elementary particles are measured. See how do we measure spin
3. See Delft University News and Zukoski, et al, Abstract.
4. Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Pub., rev 2014)., 120-121..
5. For a more complete explanation of this process, see the online version of Cal Tech's Course, Physics 219, Particle Theory, by copying and pasting the following URL into your browser::
http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/ph229/notes/chap4.pdf
6. See Vilenkin and Tegmark.
7. Other examples are presented in Jarrell,
8. I defer here to Chapter 5 of Ibid., esp. p. 140.

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How Do We Structure the Knowledge We Accumulate?

How Do We Structure the Knowledge We Accumulate?

A friend recently suggested to me, "I believe most of us have given thought to how we structure the knowledge we accumulate." [1]
For those of you who, like me, have a bent for living Socrates' examined life, that certainly is true. 
A so-called tree structure of layers of increasing specificity is employed to store information contained in a computer or found online. For example, a computer folder named Time Plans may contain folders for a range of years and within that folder may be folders for each year, and so on, ending at a plan for a particular week. Without this simple and intuitive tree structure, most of the information entered in our computers would, for practical purposes, be lost since each access to information would require a probably lengthy search.[2] 
The database of the mind is vastly larger and includes kinds of information that cannot be stored in a computer database or online. Consider a computer plan for the week a person meets a significant other. This plan typically will contain little of the information stored in the mind such as the sensations and emotions experienced during that week. That this type of information is very important is evidenced by the recent discovery that positive emotions can trigger the "good medicine" of nostalgia. 
http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/10/861.full
Do some of you share the following view? If not, how do you structure information?  
I organize what I know in successively more abstract layers in what seems to me a continual, largely subconscious, search for meaning. I have a great deal of very specific concrete information of a factual nature in my mind. This concrete information is collected within more abstract concepts that make sense of some of this concrete information. I then discover even more abstract ideas that pull these second tier ideas together and provide meaning for them, and so on. 
This way of viewing my accumulated information has served me well, leading to insights that I could not otherwise have experienced. One such example is this: In my early life in rural America, It seemed to me that the cows, geese, and other animals owned by my family displayed affection for their young in much the same way that humans do.[3] This observation worked for me, as a way to understand much animal behavior and saved me from many a flogging as a young child that would have been occasioned by straying too close to a goose protecting her goslings. Later, I came to see this anthropomorphic view of animals as just one application of a principle: accept a theory if, and only if, it helps to understand and predict events in your world. 
Exactly how do we add those layers of abstraction? Unlike the layers of specificity mentioned earlier, which tend to be built, at least in large part, from the top down, layers of abstraction are built by a process of discovery from the bottom up. We collect extensive information and one day, in an "aha" moment of insight, we discover an abstract idea that assigns meaning to some of our accumulated knowledge. A later moment of discovery may occur when we discover an even more abstract idea that assigns meaning to several of these second tier layers of abstraction. Einstein and Infeld described these discoveries as "free creations of the human mind."[4]
An interesting and important point concerning these layers of abstraction is that successive layers of more abstract information are successively less complex. Einstein and Infeld suggested this relationship in connection with their story of a man who is trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch:
In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of such a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. … But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.[5]
Where do these ever-more abstract discoveries end? As Einstein and Infeld suggest in the above quotation, inquiring minds ultimately approach discovery of the first principles of thought: being, meaning, reality, and truth. These first-principle ideas are the highest tier of abstraction possible for the human mind.

Notes:
1. Much of the information contained in this post is from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time; Reality, Time, And Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2012, rev. 2014.) See At the Edge of Time.
2. We also use this tree structure to store much of the information in our minds. The information stored in this manner plays a relatively minor role in furthering advances in our knowledge. 
3. That animals have emotions such as love is now a widely accepted view in science.) 
4. Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Evolution of Physics; The Growth of Ideas from Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961) (Original copyright, 1938), 31.
5. Einstein and Infeld, 31.

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Apologies Aren't Necessary—Einstein Was Right [1]

This post is a response to a New York Times article of October 21, 2015, entitled "Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real". The Times article reports a study conducted at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands that questions Einstein's defense of the "locality" principle, which insists that an object can be influenced only by events in its immediate surroundings. Einstein had famously labeled any claim to the contrary as "spooky action at a distance." I feel Einstein is correct despite the findings of the Delft experiment. However, in order to understand what is involved in this difference of interpretation, it is necessary to understand three important characteristics of particles and waves: particles in superposition, entanglement of elementary particles, and collapse of a wave function.
One of the simplest ways to illustrate these characteristics is to conduct a two-slit experiment, as described In the post of October 24, 2015. In the classic version of the two-slit experiment, first done more than 200 years ago, light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another either constructively or destructively. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave.
Other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of elementary particles of light called photons. In the twentieth century, physicists performed a variation of the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. This finding indicated that the photon was interfering with itself by passing through both slits at once! This phenomenon came to be called quantum superposition—the particle simultaneously existed in two possible states at once.
Surprisingly, for the time, when a variation of the two-slit experiment was performed placing detectors at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing the wave pattern disappeared and a single photon was observed. (This was an early indication that our world exists only when it is observed.) This interference of the light waves with each other became known as "entanglement" and the particles associated with them became known as "entangled particles". Disappearance of the wave function and the display of an elementary particle when an attempt was made to detect a particle became known as "collapse of the wave function". (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles such as the electron with the same results.)
A characteristic of entangled particles that defied common sense and has proven to be very difficult to explain is the central question involved in the Delft University study: when one of two such entangled particles is observed, for example its spin (a characteristic of elementary particles having nothing to do with actual spinning) is measured, the other entangled particle will Instantaneously display the opposite spin. This has proven to be true even as the distance between the entangled particles has increased. Increasing the distance between the entangled particles has been done, for example, by splitting the beam of light with a mirror and, in the Delft study, by using two diamonds with entangled photons and placing the diamonds on opposite ends of the Delft University. This separation, 1.3 km (approximately 0.81 miles) constituted a distance the scientists conducting the Delft study felt insured that the particles could not influence each other without violating fundamental laws of physics. Nevertheless, as reported in the NY Times article cited above (See New York Times), scientists involved in the Delft experiment (see Delft study) concede that other attempts to close loopholes may follow their study but they clearly feel that their study is sufficient proof that the spookiness Einstein derided is real, that action at a distance must be occurring. There is, however, a more credible and satisfactory explanation for what is happening here that does not require action at a distance and is consistent with the known laws of physics: the "many-worlds" interpretation of reality.
The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Reality
A remarkable theory developed by Hugh Everett III, is called the many-worlds interpretation (also called the many-universes interpretation) of quantum mechanics.[2] The many-worlds interpretation views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every logically possible quantum outcome is realized. All logically possible alternative histories and futures are considered to be real, each occurring in an actual “world” (or “universe”), each with its own observer.
In lay terms, many-worlds posits that as we make certain critical choices in life, branching occurs such that a number of worlds emerge, one for each of the choices we could have made. Everything that could have happened in our future, but will not, will occur in the future of some other world and everything that could have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other world.
To illustrate the application of the many-worlds interpretation to the question of whether action at a distance occurs, assume that we are a group of scientists conducting an experiment. We have two entangled particles and we measure, say, the spin, of one of the entangled particles. We have made a choice and branching occurs so that one of the entangled particles is in our world and the other is in the world of a group of counterpart scientist. In our world we make one measurement—there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in our world. We know this, for when we measure a particle in superposition we find only one particle. And none of the fundamental laws of physics of our world are violated. Meanwhile our counterpart team of scientists in another world also make one measurement and again there is no action at a distance since only one measurement is made in their world.
Should you accept the many-worlds interpretation as physics or is it metaphysics. Max Tegmark contends:
"The frontiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever more abstract (and once metaphysical) concepts such as a round Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes. Over the past several years the concept of a multiverse has joined this list. It is grounded in well-tested theories such as relativity and quantum mechanics, and it fulfills both of the basic criteria of an empirical science: it makes predictions, and it can be falsified." [3]
You have a choice. You may believe in action at a distance and its difficulties given the fundamental laws of physics or you may believe in the many-worlds interpretation that, while it is not a widely accepted concept with the general public or with the physics community at large,  it offers a credible and satisfactory explanation for the relationship between entangled particles.


Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 66-68. See At the Edge of Time.
2. Hugh Everett III, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Theory Of The Universal Wavefunction, doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1957, 9. Everett’s doctoral dissertation may be downloaded as a pdf file at www.pbs.org.
3. Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes", Scientific American, April 14, 2003.

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Is the Quantum View of our World Believable?

Is the Quantum View of our World Believable? [1]
Quantum physicists have a saying: "If you don't think quantum physics is weird, you don't understand quantum physics." In spite of the fact that quantum physics comes to some conclusions that seem weird by everyday world standards, I choose to believe that its major findings are correct. In particular, I believe a central finding of quantum physics: we bring the everyday world into being by our observations.
Three variations of the famous two-slit experiment (also called double-slit experiment) point to this conclusion. The classic version of the two-slit experiment, done more than 200 years ago, demonstrated that light traveled as a wave. Light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave. Thus, in the classic version of the experiment light was demonstrated to travel as a wave.
However, other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of discrete quantized packets and in the twentieth century, physicists re-performed the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. Light, therefore, was shown to exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties. (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles with the same results.)
The second experiment was a modest but important variation of the classic two-slit experiment. In this version, detectors were placed at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing. It was found that using detectors destroyed the interference pattern on the screen. The behavior of photons thus was changed depending on whether or not an attempt was made to observe them.
The most astonishing of this important triad of experiments, the delayed-choice experiment, was proposed by John Wheeler in 1978.[2] In this experiment the decision whether to turn on or off the detector was delayed (from our perspective) until after a photon had passed the detector. The astonishing part: it was found that the later decision determined what happened at the earlier time. [3]
Wheeler's conclusion: "[W]e, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well."[4] Another way to express this same idea: elementary particles (and the real-world items "composed of" elementary particles) are not there waiting for us to observe them but rather are brought into being by our observations. By our thoughts we bring our world into existence.

Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 2-5 and 27-29. See At the Edge of Time.
2. John Archibald Wheeler, “The ‘Past’ and the ‘Delayed-Choice’ Double-Slit Experiment,” in Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory, A. R. Marlow (ed.) (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1978), 9-48.
3. It may be helpful in understanding the double-choice experiment to read an alternate explanation by Paul Friedlander at AlternateExplanation.
4. Tim Folger. Interview with John Wheeler, “Does the Universe Exist if We’re Not Looking?”, Discover, June 1, 2002. See WheelerInt.

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Are We Being Overwhelmed by Complexity?

Are We Being Overwhelmed by Complexity? [Note 1]
Paul's comment regarding the "Ripples in a Pool" post brought to my mind the theme for this Post. In that comment, Paul said that the universe is ever-changing and that increasing entropy is basic to this change—that what is organized gradually becomes disorganized.
To the physicist entropy is a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. In its  more general form, entropy is defined as the degree of disorder or randomness in a system. In either form, the arrow of time is inescapably associated with increasing entropy.
The thermodynamic definition of entropy preferred by the physicist is appropriate for a universe made of matter—the universe we experience every day. However, that same universe, as seen from the quantum level, is not made of matter but of information; from that level, it can be seen that elementary particles are not tangible objects but are bits of information only. The eminent quantum theorist Paul Davies says, “it is easy to be seduced into believing that there really is a little thing ‘out there’, like a scaled-down version of a billiard ball, producing the results of [our] measurements. But this belief does not stand up to scrutiny." The elementary particles out of which matter supposedly is composed, are not really elementary at all. According to Davies, they are of a secondary, derivative nature. Rather than providing the concrete ‘stuff ’ from which the world is made, these ‘elementary’ particles “… are actually essentially abstract constructions based upon … [our] ‘observation events’ or measurement records.”[Note 2]
Entropy in our universe, seen from this quantum-level perspective, likely takes the form of increasing complexity—our world is accumulating more information than we can responsibly, safely, and usefully manage.
Additional complexity is an unavoidable result of change for with change we must now deal with both the old and the new.[Note 3]  Our attempts to cope with this complexity—to maintain order so that the change improves or at least does not lower the quality of our lives—typically involve technological change, which in turn produces more change and complexity. We seem to be in a desperate—perhaps futile—race to deal with the increasing complexity of our world through technological change. Nevertheless, if we are to deal with what from this perspective seems to be a runaway increase in entropy, it is at this more fundamental level that we should focus our attention.
Change frequently is presented as progress—as an unalloyed good or a necessary evil. But sometimes change is followed by enormously complex problems that we are not prepared to handle. Development of atomic energy and the atomic bomb ushered in the atomic age and, as former president Eisenhower pointed out in his farewell speech of 1961 [Note 4] , the awesome destructive potential of atomic weapons led many nations to feel that a continual state of readiness to respond was a necessary defensive measure to protect their citizens from atomic attacks by other nations. This required the maintenance of standing armies and large defense industries with consequent disruptions to the economies and political structures of nations.
How do we avoid similar mistakes in the future? Some changes—and the change discussed in the previous paragraph may be an example—may be unavoidable at the time the go|no go decision is made. Other changes might cause fewer problems for technologies to solve if we identified in advance those changes that will likely present problems and required that they conform to certain standards in the way they are introduced. But the breakneck rate of current change makes it difficult to see in advance of their introduction which changes will result in problems and what the problems might be.
I liken this inability to see the future to driving at night on a country road. We are driving too fast for the reach of our headlights. If we could slow down and allow the road to be bathed in the glare of our headlights as we advance, the ability to see and avoid problems would be greatly enhanced. This more measured pace might be accomplished by, among other things, limiting corporate political influence in democratic forms of government, appropriate regulation of free enterprise systems, and insuring that diplomacy plays a primary role in foreign policy.
We would do well to heed the sage advice of Fred Rogers, host for many years of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, who told us that we should all slow down, that life should be lived at a pace that allows us to discover that “deep and simple” is better than “shallow and complex.”[Note 5]  We cannot change the arrow of time—our universe will become more complex; perhaps we can slow the rate at which complexity increases.

Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 66-68. See At the Edge of Time.
2. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 175.
3. David Deutsch sees unavoidable increase in complexity to be a result of the increasing differentiation of the multiverse of which we are a part. New universes emerge only with change and this change inevitably brings added complexity. Interview with David Deutsch, in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 86. 
4. Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040.
5. See the 2011 DVD, “Mister Rogers and Me.”

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Ripples in A Pool Revisited

My post of August 28, 2015, asked a series of questions about those ripples in a garden pool that many of us enjoy creating at one time or another. The ripples travel the length of the pool and return, over and over—for how long? If no one else makes waves in the pool, would our ripples continue traveling back and forth from one end of the pool to the other forever?
The intuitive answer, I believe, is "yes". In the absence of some opposing equal or greater force, the ripples will continue to diminish forever, never reaching, but always approaching, the zero point. That intuitive answer, I believe, is correct, but the logic for the answer is faulty because it fails to take into account an important point—we live in a quantum world. Let me explain.
It is important to establish first that the waves are waves of energy, not waves of water—no water travels the length of the pool—only the energy provided by your initial push travels the length of the pool and returns. (To see this for yourself, drop a cork in the water prior to starting the ripples—the cork will remain at the end of the pool where you dropped it.)
This is important because we live in a quantum world and one of the most important features of a quantum world is that energy is made of fundamental units, indivisible packets, rather than being divisible to a vanishing point. As the successive waves lose more and more of their energy, they eventually will reach that minimum size necessary for energy to exist in our time-and-space world and at that point will simply disappear. Are they gone forever?
It is well-established that at the quantum level time does not pass but is. Just as in our three-dimensional world you do not say that space passes, it simply is, in the many-dimensional quantum world time (one of the many dimensions) does not pass but is.[1]  Those ripples will be there forever, tucked away in their own segment of time. But I must attach a proviso to this answer.
The proviso: The ripples will be there as long as our time-space world continues to exist. Is that forever? I will answer that question pragmatically: It is forever in every sense that matters to us as creatures of time and space.
That established, does it matter that the ripples will be there forever? Very much so since, by extension, we can say that all those "ripples" created by things we share our world with—now, in the future, and in the past—will continue to exist forever. Our ancestors and descendants and the "ripples" they create, will continue to exist "forever".
I would very much enjoy discussing this "forever" question with you. Please comment.

Note 1. See Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time, 2014, p. 34. See At the Edge of Time.

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A Comparison of Realities

A Comparison of Realities
Compare the realities of the rapidly-emerging virtual reality experience, of our everyday reality, and of the reality the mystic sees. Today's VR experience can seem very real but, experts predict, it will pale in comparison to VR of the future. Virtual Reality will not just be about games. (See Wall Street Journal.) “By the 2030s, virtual reality will be totally realistic and compelling and we will spend most of our time in virtual environments ... We will all become virtual humans.…. this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.” (See The Atlantic.)
In spite of the compellingly-realistic nature of the upcoming VR experience, when we return from the VR experience to our more-real everyday environment, we will see that VR is not as "real" as is our everyday world—from the vantage point of our everyday world we will see that the VR experience is not the "real" world. For a fuller discussion of this point, see: [1]
Is there an even more "real" world beyond the world we experience every day? Persons who have practiced mysticism contend that there is. Mystics contend that the reality they see is the ultimate reality and that our everyday world is only virtual. From the vantage point of the reality the mystics discover, they see that our everyday world is not the "real" world.
I am sure I have turned off those readers, including the self-proclaimed "hard scientists", who believe that any mention of mysticism means I have lost all claim to be objective. However, an impressive number of scientists believe otherwise.
Paul Davies, an eminent theoretical physicist in his own right, believes that mysticism may provide answers to ultimate questions that our modern-day sciences cannot answer. He says:
“… many of the world's finest thinkers, including some notable scientists such as Einstein, Pauli, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Eddington, and Jeans, have also espoused mysticism.  My own feeling is that the scientific method should be pursued as far as it possibly can.  ….  It is only in dealing with ultimate questions that science and logic may fail us.  I am not saying that science and logic are likely to provide the wrong answers, but they may be incapable of addressing the sort of [ultimate] questions we want to ask.” (Paul Davies, The Mind of God, (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1992, 226)
I believe that as more and more of us experience the immersive technologies of the VR experience and see how difficult it can be to decide if an experience is real from within the reality itself, we will become more acceptant of the idea that the mystics may be right: our everyday world is itself a virtual reality that is so real that we can discover its virtual nature only by experiencing the true reality of the mystical experience.
Please share your thoughts about any of the realities discussed above. If you are, or share the beliefs of a "hard scientist", tell me what, from your viewpoint, I am failing to see. If you are a mystic or have practiced mysticism, please share your experience.

Note 1.
Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.) See especially pages 11-17, of At the Edge of Time.

Next post on a bi-weekly schedule: September 25, 2015.




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Ripples in a Pool

Ripples in a Pool[1]

Last summer, my wife and I, together with several other families, went to Chanticleer, a nearby estate and botanical garden that is open to the public. One of the group, Keith and I, went for a pre-lunch walk through the garden. We passed a pool that, as I recall, was about 10 feet wide and 25 feet long. As many people do, Keith started ripples in the pool and we watched them travel the length of the pool and return, over and over. The ripples raised for us, as I suspect other ripples have done for many other people in the past, an existential question: If we came back next week and, assuming no one else made their own waves in the meantime, would the ripples still be there, traveling back and forth from one end of the pool to the other?

Have you asked this or a similar question about your own ripples in a pool? What was your answer then—did you think they would still be there when you returned? Under similar circumstances how would you answer now?

Suppose you changed some of the "givens" of the question; would your answer be the same?  Does the time before Keith and I return make a difference in your answer? Does the length of the pool affect your answer—for example, suppose the pool is "infinitely" long?

Will the ripples be there forever? If you think the ripples will or will not be there forever, what do you men by "forever"? What have the ripples to tell us about the meaning of forever in our world?

Notes
1. If you enjoy this kind of thinking, you might enjoy reading my book, Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.). See: At the Edge of Time.

Next post on a bi-weekly schedule: September 11, 2015.




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The Importance of Reasoned Experience

The Importance of Reasoned Experience

I would like to share with you some ideas about something we all have opinions about: the value of experience. Experience to me is a great teacher but I don't believe all experience is equally so.

From my past experience (no pun intended) with company selection of new employees, I know that years of experience is a poor predictor of candidate success. Studies show that people differ greatly in how well they learn from job experience. I believe the same holds for life experience. Some of us learn much from life experience; some of us learn little. I further believe that the difference between those who learn from experience and those who do not is that, for the quick learners, life is a reasoned experience. They insist on a cause, explanation, or justification for events over the course of a lifetime. As a child these inquirers often drove their parents nearly mad by continually asking "why".

As a result of their need for understanding why events occur, the inquirers become progressively more knowledgeable throughout their lives. And some of them become the people in a culture who are looked to for advice in their time and who serve as vehicles for the transmission of lore, the body of traditions and knowledge typically passed from person to person by word of mouth by participants of a culture.

This lore, built largely on collective reasoned experience probably has the potential to give a culture and its members an evolutionary advantage. Do you sense that individuals steeped in a culture with a powerful lore tend to achieve more during their lifetimes than do individuals whose cultures have less powerful lores? And does a powerful lore help a culture itself to thrive and survive over long time periods.

A form of reasoned experience that we seldom consider is the so-called "thought experiment". Not really an experiment at all, the thought experiment is selective observation, typically but not exclusively by scientists, of events occurring in imagined circumstances. For example, Einstein used a thought experiment to develop his Special Relativity Theory. In the thought experiment, Einstein imagined that he was traveling at the same speed as a light ray. He then used what he saw in his imaginary experience to develop his Special Relativity Theory. A reading of Martin Cohen's book, Wittgenstein’s Beetle and Other Classic Thought Experiments, indicates that most of the important advances in knowledge of the past had their genesis in a thought experiment. I hasten to add that "real" experiments were then used to confirm the thought experiments. And this suggests what I believe is the proper role for the experiment. [1]

The experiment can be properly seen as a powerful way to further our learning through reasoned experience. However, while experiments then have an important supportive role in furthering the advance of knowledge, they are not the primary drivers of advances in knowledge that we often appear to assume they are.

What are your thoughts concerning reasoned experience?
Notes:
1. The thought experiment is described in a broader context in my book Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.) See especially pages 33-37. See At the Edge of Time.

Next post on a biweekly schedule: 8/28/15

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The Rate of Aging

The Rate of Aging[1]

Okay, you "metaphysicists", here's an article that should get your juices flowing. The Wall Street Journal recently reported research that showed some people appear to age much more slowly than others. 

What is happening here? Is chronological time passing at a different rate for study participants?
If so, does this suggest that individual differences in the rates at which time passes may be more common and much greater than we have thought? We know, for example that people living at different altitudes move through time at measurably different rates as do people traveling in an airplane and stationary people on the ground. But these are minute differences that can only be detected with atomic clocks.
Are there causes for differences that we did not previously suspect?
What evidence is there to support or refute your answers?
Notes
1. See pages 79-83 of Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, 2014.) See At the Edge of Time

Next post on a biweekly schedule: 8/14/15


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