[MD] Dog Dishes and Direct Experience

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

Hi Mark...

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 11:54 PM, 118 <ununoctiums at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> I enjoyed your perpetual machine story, I thought it was apropos.  However, I read into it perhaps more than was intended.  In my opinion, you were referring to Faith.  It seems to me that we survive on faith.  For example, I do not need proof through the night that the sun will rise in the morning.  In fact, it is not something that I think about.  This is synonymous with faith, in my opinion.  It would be no different from the certainty in a perpetual motion machine in a mountain.

Dan:
Thank you... the story was meant to be light-hearted and yet perhaps
contain a tiny kernel of wisdom as well.

Your sentence: "it is not something I think about" is perhaps what I
intended by offering my silly little story. Faith is as good a word as
any when it comes to concepts like object permanency: a belief that is
not based on proof. And of course we all survive on faith. When I
drive down a two lane highway at sixty miles an hour I have faith that
the drivers coming the other way will not suddenly veer into my lane.
But sometimes they do...

>Mark:
> On a different subject, the quantum mechanical interpretation of measurement defining a photons properties is nothing mystical as some have been lead to believe.  The duality of form for the photon results from an interpretation of the data.  The photon can be interpret based on the math used.  Therefore the duality is a property of the method of interrogation, and not a property of the photon.  Physicist are somewhat bewitched in that they think the equations ARE the photon, rather than an interpretation.
>
> The analogy that comes to mind is that of the three blind men touching different parts of an elephant and each coming up with a different interpretation of what they are in the presence of.  Physicists can be likewise blind.  So, I do not read to much into the Copenhagen stuff, it is simply blind physicists touching a photon.
>
> Since the QM model does deliver contrary results of form, the thing to question is the math, not the photon.  It is also not appropriate to make this result more than it is, simply an incomplete model.
>
> Any measurement is artificial, since concepts such as Pi are something we make up to interpret a circle.  I have no doubt that a better model for quantum mechanics will come around that will stand our current model on its head.  It is just a matter of time.  Unfortunately science tends to enter into periods of consensus complacency.  It takes a paradigm shift to shake it up.  The same can be said for metaphysics, IMO.
>
> The important thing, IMO, is not to mistake the scribblings of a physicist for reality (what ever that may be).

Dan:
I tend to agree...

Thank you,

Dan