Is Copenhagen the pragmatic or actual interpretation of quantum theory?

In summary, the conversation discusses the differences between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory and pragmatism. The Copenhagenists believe that the attributes of unmeasured particles are nonexistent, while the pragmatists view theories as simply mathematical tools for predicting experimental results. The Copenhagenists base their conclusions on the specific structure of quantum theory, rather than abstract philosophical principles. However, the speaker notes that the Copenhagen interpretation may not be fully understood by those who criticize it.
  • #36
I will go on a tangent at the bottom outlining a mechanical model of consciousness for the purpose of illustrating the lack of relevance of QM in the context of consciousness.

Varon said:
Have you studied Parapsychology too? What have you found out? Totally hoax eh?
I have studied the results of many such test of parapsychology. Especially the Princeton PK stuff. Unfortunately all such data to date simply sucks and the intellectual honesty is rampantly self deceptive. Some of these test have been observed in progress with the researcher openly breaking protocol giving feedback to the test taker. Right in front of professional witnesses! When asked about it the response was: "What? That was nothing." Even without these incidence the data just sucks.

Certain other groups asked to have the test repeated for verification with the Princeton groups help. They were told by the Princeton group "We are not interested in proving it works, we are interesting in figuring out what it means"! In fact, like the QM interpretations, what it means is the result of actual test, showing actual effects to explain. Meanwhile they closed their Princeton shop to go into business selling their 'special' random number generators. Robert Jahn was one of the first showing results. Only whenever sample sizes are increased the 'result' would remained about the same in absolute terms while the sample sizes were increased many orders of magnitude. Hmm..

If you want to do parapsychology experiments why not go to triple blinding with built in meta-analysis? That way there are no numbers to fiddle with and you get a 100% or nothing result no matter how small the effect is so long as the sample size sets are large enough to see the effect. Instead they claim a lot of results from a handful of crap data then do meta-analysis a dozen different times on this same crappy data and call all those data sets and each meta-analysis on the crappy data separate evidence of results.

I have no problem with parapsychology research, but the junk that is rampantly called research in that field is outrageous.

Varon said:
I have done that already. I have over 30 neuroscience books and know every part of the brain and every conceivable things about it as well as network theories of neural circuits. All major brain researchers I'm familiar with their works and collect their books and read them thoroughly.. like Antonio Damasio, Edelman, Koch, Gray, Ramachandran.. all of them. So I'm done with brain part. Now just want to study new physics model to get a clue of the Hard Problem.
Gerald Edelman is cool. Where is Daniel Dennett? He may be a philosopher but he knows how to constrain his arguments with empirical data and has some very definite things to say about the so called hard problem.

What do you think "new physics model" has to do with it? "new physics" is not even a model. It is old physics wrapped in a bunch of new age psychobabble. It is about as meaning as caliming I am a faith healer because I made your pain subside and made you feel better. Meanwhile jumping out and saying "boo", with all the adrenaline, heart rate, etc., is somehow no big deal deal and has nothing to do with it. Wrong.

Varon said:
I just want to have idea what interpretation to start out in deriving at the possible full theory. Whether Copenhagen, Bohmian or Many Worlds or others. One hope of Copenhagen is along the line of Zurek Existential Interpretation where quantum stuff is informational. I can't decide whether it is or Bohmian or Many Worlds or even combination of them that can explain the Hard Problem + additional thing.
Even if we derived a "full theory" from some interpretation. We could then take another interpretation and show it works to. It is like saying you want to know which way is "really" up from the center of Earth.

Varon said:
Btw.. if you will read Jeffrey Gray Creeping Up the Hard Problem. You may agree that the Hard Problem is not answerable by present Neuroscience. It is additional.
Jeffrey Gray is not bad. He certainly knows better than to overlook established neural correlates of consciousness and avoids dualism. He adds language, science and beauty to the things not presently provided neural correlates which consciousness requires. In my modeling attempts I use a 2 channel feedback from a Hebbian and anti-Hebbian network as the workhorse. Based loosely on a connection between slime mold intelligence and neuroglia. This models sensory brain function and fits the memory and neural probe data. Our memory is a compression of actual sensory data to fit within preexisting connections. So your memories are not memories of the event itself, but a reconstruction of details based on expectation of details. Hence it crosses over into many memories and makes false memories almost trivial to create. Yet the get consciousness you need to take part of this network and in place of sensory data provide feedback information about brain states as if it was sensory data. It allows your attention to go to your own thoughts in some sense. You then learn to model a theory of mind the same way you model a theory of the world around you through the other senses.

The hard problem will not really be solved till we have the hardware to demonstrate, but I do not see that as a real problem. I also think this biggest technical hurdle is the self organization of the system. Most of the artificial neural hardware uses all kinds of feed forward, feedback, etc., with separate mode for operation and training. Yet self organization of feedback loops through resonance is fairly ubiquitous in nature. Here is a demonstration using only mechanical metronomes, which in effect wire themselves together:

Here is 5 of them doing the same thing:


These metronomes in some ways just did what is common in QM but does not need QM to explain. To encode memories you merely need a more plastic base that allows the synchronization potential between metronomes to vary. The sensory input units merely excite certain metronomes which causes experientially related metronomes to synchronize or excite. The Hebbian learning is the variability in base plasticity, like a memory foam that returns to original shape slowly, while the anti-Hebbian learning is the slow return to the ground state of the base plasticity, not the neurons which do so far faster. This compresses out unimportant details of an experience and preferentially maintains those common features of experience that you are most familiar with. Hence sensory inputs work on exactly the same principle that action outputs work, since an action is merely the activation of neurons in the brain and nervous system.

To get something much closer consciousness you simply need to provide sensory input to the brain from other neural states rather than the primary senses, with a working memory so that manipulating those brain states is no different than playing with a toy fire truck. Fire the neorons and see which other neurons fire in response. Creativity is simply the result of one experience, memory, or notion triggering related neurons and you noticing the connection as a result of watching your own brain states. The anti-Hebbian potential requires you to seek a common systemic model to make sense of the entire world in a consistent way. Belief systems are predicated on the best way to do this.

Hopefully this illustrates why QM and "new science" is a non-issue to the consciousness issue.
 
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  • #37
my_wan said:
I will go on a tangent at the bottom outlining a mechanical model of consciousness for the purpose of illustrating the lack of relevance of QM in the context of consciousness.


I have studied the results of many such test of parapsychology. Especially the Princeton PK stuff. Unfortunately all such data to date simply sucks and the intellectual honesty is rampantly self deceptive. Some of these test have been observed in progress with the researcher openly breaking protocol giving feedback to the test taker. Right in front of professional witnesses! When asked about it the response was: "What? That was nothing." Even without these incidence the data just sucks.

Certain other groups asked to have the test repeated for verification with the Princeton groups help. They were told by the Princeton group "We are not interested in proving it works, we are interesting in figuring out what it means"! In fact, like the QM interpretations, what it means is the result of actual test, showing actual effects to explain. Meanwhile they closed their Princeton shop to go into business selling their 'special' random number generators. Robert Jahn was one of the first showing results. Only whenever sample sizes are increased the 'result' would remained about the same in absolute terms while the sample sizes were increased many orders of magnitude. Hmm..

If you want to do parapsychology experiments why not go to triple blinding with built in meta-analysis? That way there are no numbers to fiddle with and you get a 100% or nothing result no matter how small the effect is so long as the sample size sets are large enough to see the effect. Instead they claim a lot of results from a handful of crap data then do meta-analysis a dozen different times on this same crappy data and call all those data sets and each meta-analysis on the crappy data separate evidence of results.

I have no problem with parapsychology research, but the junk that is rampantly called research in that field is outrageous.

Then you haven't met me and my kind. We are the ultimate data. We don't deal with statistics but direct effect.

Gerald Edelman is cool. Where is Daniel Dennett? He may be a philosopher but he knows how to constrain his arguments with empirical data and has some very definite things to say about the so called hard problem.

I have Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained too.. but I don't like it.. because he tried to redefine consciousness to make it go away.

What do you think "new physics model" has to do with it? "new physics" is not even a model. It is old physics wrapped in a bunch of new age psychobabble. It is about as meaning as caliming I am a faith healer because I made your pain subside and made you feel better. Meanwhile jumping out and saying "boo", with all the adrenaline, heart rate, etc., is somehow no big deal deal and has nothing to do with it. Wrong.

Because of active non-locality which we can wield. It's difficult to describe and it's against forum rule but you can check on distant healing and therapeutic touch or reiki or pranic healing in the internet. My experience is the ultra kind because we can manipulate the bio-field and even map it into our mind forming a kind of synesthesia where we can perceive the bio-field visually and manipulate it directly. But let's avoid this in this forum lest this thead be locked for forum violation ("wild overly spectulative post" and one more I'll be banned already... so if you won't hear from me again.. I'm already banned).


Even if we derived a "full theory" from some interpretation. We could then take another interpretation and show it works to. It is like saying you want to know which way is "really" up from the center of Earth.


Jeffrey Gray is not bad. He certainly knows better than to overlook established neural correlates of consciousness and avoids dualism. He adds language, science and beauty to the things not presently provided neural correlates which consciousness requires. In my modeling attempts I use a 2 channel feedback from a Hebbian and anti-Hebbian network as the workhorse. Based loosely on a connection between slime mold intelligence and neuroglia. This models sensory brain function and fits the memory and neural probe data. Our memory is a compression of actual sensory data to fit within preexisting connections. So your memories are not memories of the event itself, but a reconstruction of details based on expectation of details. Hence it crosses over into many memories and makes false memories almost trivial to create. Yet the get consciousness you need to take part of this network and in place of sensory data provide feedback information about brain states as if it was sensory data. It allows your attention to go to your own thoughts in some sense. You then learn to model a theory of mind the same way you model a theory of the world around you through the other senses.

The hard problem will not really be solved till we have the hardware to demonstrate, but I do not see that as a real problem. I also think this biggest technical hurdle is the self organization of the system. Most of the artificial neural hardware uses all kinds of feed forward, feedback, etc., with separate mode for operation and training. Yet self organization of feedback loops through resonance is fairly ubiquitous in nature. Here is a demonstration using only mechanical metronomes, which in effect wire themselves together:

Here is 5 of them doing the same thing:


Gerald Edelman has also built many machines that simulate basic neural networks.

These metronomes in some ways just did what is common in QM but does not need QM to explain. To encode memories you merely need a more plastic base that allows the synchronization potential between metronomes to vary. The sensory input units merely excite certain metronomes which causes experientially related metronomes to synchronize or excite. The Hebbian learning is the variability in base plasticity, like a memory foam that returns to original shape slowly, while the anti-Hebbian learning is the slow return to the ground state of the base plasticity, not the neurons which do so far faster. This compresses out unimportant details of an experience and preferentially maintains those common features of experience that you are most familiar with. Hence sensory inputs work on exactly the same principle that action outputs work, since an action is merely the activation of neurons in the brain and nervous system.

To get something much closer consciousness you simply need to provide sensory input to the brain from other neural states rather than the primary senses, with a working memory so that manipulating those brain states is no different than playing with a toy fire truck. Fire the neorons and see which other neurons fire in response. Creativity is simply the result of one experience, memory, or notion triggering related neurons and you noticing the connection as a result of watching your own brain states. The anti-Hebbian potential requires you to seek a common systemic model to make sense of the entire world in a consistent way. Belief systems are predicated on the best way to do this.

Hopefully this illustrates why QM and "new science" is a non-issue to the consciousness issue.

I have many books about Memory like Larry Squire Memory and Brain, Arthur Hudson The Physiological Basis And Quantum Versions of Memory And Consciousness, Eric Kandel In Search of Memory , Mari Jibu Quantum Brain Dynamics, Wilber Penfield Mystery of the Mind, Karl Pribram Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing, etc. I have complete collection of the best brain books. This I do to explain my extraordinary consistent experience.

There is no problem that neurons have a part in holding memory. But how is it stored exactly is the issue and the problem. Pribram said it could be holographic (in a local patch by patch manner). How it all work is the mystery. I'll check out the website you mentioned. Say. Do you subscribed to the Journal of Consciousness Studies? I do. If you don't. You will miss so much. All the latest research about consciousness is mentioned in JCS.
 
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  • #38
Varon said:
He took the field in QFT as real ontology. And he believes particles don't really exist. And with it he can explain the double slit experiment using purely the language of QFT and fields.
That doesn't surprise me. I may not like all the language he chooses, but I think it is fundamentally true that the physics we do, and the predictions we make with it, and the understanding we glean from it, can be packaged and repackaged in very many ways, some sounding almost totally unrelated (witness the QM interpretations), yet underneath it all, it is really still the same physics. This is the importance of predictions and empirical tests, and it must be said, the ultimate justification of "shut up and calculate." We have an essentially unique physics, supported by a vast array of different ways to think about what that physics is. We need the ontological constructs to help us visualize what we are doing, but differences in them usually do not imply different physics.

This rule plays out in all fields of physics, even the relatively mundane "classical mechanics." We say these mechanics are underpinned by Newton's laws, but I could easily teach a course in classical mechanics that empowered my students to solve all the same problems as Newton's laws can, without ever mentioning those laws or Newton himself for that matter. The students would hear about Lagrange and Poincare and Hamilton, but no Newton at all-- yet they could solve all the same problems. This is just an important element of physics, and probably all of science-- a lot of roads can lead to Rome. But I will give you my opinions on that interview with Neumaier, in a bit.
 

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