Is quantum physics bunk?

[3bob]

the darkly twisted have no true root and thus in the end can not prevail. But She is rooted and also part of the root and will prevail - She is not undone, for her song can not be broken by the unspeakable  

 

the power of killing bodies or deeply enthralling beings is not the full power of death per-se, for the reach of death also reaches those that would or do such things.

 

"Fear not"

[steve]

While Sheldrake correctly identifies the culture of belief systems themselves as being the culprit for the materialistic delusion, he doesnt go further than that - which is to say, he does not identify why everyone has a need to feel they fundamentally "know" what is going on.  This occurs in all areas, it really has nothing to do with how deep or shallow your knowledge of a particular subject may be (and in this case, its almost always of a second hand nature anyways).  In other words, the belief system itself is secondary to the need for self-righteousness.  In those cases when a person is able to accept that they do not know, to whatever degree and for whatever reason - that is specifically the space which allows for real awareness to take place.

 

The methodology of investigation and observation of reality through experimental procedure is technically labeled "scientific", but it is the same as the methods required in any real cultivation work.  It is an effort towards mutual understanding of perception and that which is perceived, and the inter-relationships between them. 

 

I'm of the opinion that the drive to "know" is more mundane and basic than a need for self-righteousness, although I do think you're on to something there as well. I think it is a desire for security. This is why we label everything we encounter - if we have a label for something, we can file that away as something that is understood. If we understand something, we know how much of a threat or opportunity it offers us and this is the foundation for our (illusion of) security. I think this tendency and utility of our mind is how we have become so successful in dominating our environment and competing organisms, in many ways to our detriment as others have so rightly pointed out.

[Taomeow]

The drive to "know" is a reaction to ignorance.  Ignorance is not a natural state.  Natural people are incredibly intelligent and know a staggering amount of truths about the world they live in -- truths not theories -- and what we refer to as "primitive" is defined as such based on a very morbid paradigm of what "knowledge" is. 

 

Long ago, I've been somewhere in the mountains where a "primitive" group speaks a language with 64 cases (compared to 2 in English, nominative and possessive).  Hardly anyone in the world who was not born there can tell what they know because try learning this language -- they send scientists to study and classify it but it's not the same thing as being fluent in one's ability to express anything down to the smallest nuance of change to which we are completely blind because our very language lacks the conceptual power to discern and express these processes.  Well, no one knows if they know (but we assume they don't) that today we all are 11 billion miles away from the place we were in the universe one year ago on this day, due to the Earth orbiting the Sun and the Sun orbiting the center of the galaxy and all of it moving at staggering speeds (0.2% of the speed of light).  But they showed me a village buried under a landslide that was abandoned by all its inhabitants a month before the landslide "suddenly" and "unpredictably" happened.   What did they know?.. 

 

Our science is blind to this kind of knowledge.  It capitalizes on our knowledge of a "need to know" -- we do need to know.  But then the subject matter of our quest to know is expertly thwarted and redirected into the need to know how to make Monsanto wealthier and the like.  We keep knowing things that don't make a dent in how happy our children are, how loving our relationships, how meaningful our day of labor, how to get to that peace of mind the need for which is at the root of our "need to know." 

 

And deep in our heart we know that we don't know, we're just being defensive when we proclaim we do and present this or that formula as proof.  E equals mc square, Einstein said.  But he beat his wife on a regular basis and was arrested for it twice.  What did he know, what did he not know?..  Finding out that e equals mc square didn't make him happier, didn't make his wife happier.  What's the point of knowing it then?..  If your depressed mother is staring at the wall or at the TV screen and sees nothing but bleak despair in either place and has been at it for years, if your Selective Serotonin Receptors Inhibitor-inhibited father looks at you with extinguished eyes of a frozen fish, your wife thinks you're a monster, a bore, a failure or, in the best case scenario, a cash machine, your husband hates you for everything you are or will ever be and lets you know he does with every modulation of his voice, your friend stabs you in the back as soon as you both find yourselves competing for the same promotion, your children are trying not to show how much they summarily despise you ("like, whatever...") -- what do you know?..  What is it that our science has fixed for you once you knew?..  In the best case scenario, it made a better cash machine out of you.  Respect.  I mean the generic "you," of course.  

Edited March 28, 2015 by Taomeow

[mostly_empty]

Science has given me a much better class of ignorance than I started with; rational thought is a lovely part of the mechanism for correcting mistaken beliefs. Occasionally it even helps me towards some knowledge. Why blame science for the madness of culture? 

Perhaps science cannot help one escape karma, and so asking materialistic (more to the point - "dead") questions takes you down the technological path. I am not sure, from a philosophical point of view, that a sage could not profitably engage in science. 

 

Other comment: 64 cases? Can the Tsez speak with the I Ching like it is a natural grammar? 

[Taomeow]

Science has given me a much better class of ignorance than I started with; rational thought is a lovely part of the mechanism for correcting mistaken beliefs. Occasionally it even helps me towards some knowledge. Why blame science for the madness of culture? 

Perhaps science cannot help one escape karma, and so asking materialistic (more to the point - "dead") questions takes you down the technological path. I am not sure, from a philosophical point of view, that a sage could not profitably engage in science. 

 

Other comment: 64 cases? Can the Tsez speak with the I Ching like it is a natural grammar? 

 

I agree -- science is not to blame for having been replaced with cultural imposters masquerading as such, meaningless memes creating the illusion of "getting somewhere good" while being headed in a random institutionalized direction at any given time and changing it frequently at that.  Science as we know it is not everything science can be by any stretch of imagination -- and the way we know it is in the shape and form of a fundamentalist religion, different from older ones only in that it changes its precepts way more often.  Nothing of what was "science" a hundred years ago is considered science today.

 

Reminds me of a true story -- an episode of a world cognitive neuroscience symposium where a papal nuncio from the Vatican expressed his conviction that what those scientists were doing was writing the scriptures of an alternative religion.  He asked the audience, "You are experts in the matters of consciousness and the brain and the mind.  So, how you go about determining that someone is dead?  There's been many cases in history when someone, e.g., in a deep coma, was buried alive, having been mistaken for dead.  How do you go about avoiding this mistake today, with your scientific capabilities?" The scientists go, well, encephalograph, MRI, CAT scan, PET scan...  how do you in the Vatican go about it?  The papal nuncio goes, well, we've had the same procedure for this for centuries.  When a pope seems to have died, it is my job to take a special silver hammer and hit him on the soles and heels of his feet while asking him repeatedly in a very loud voice, "Are you asleep, your holiness?"  If I hammer his feet like that for an hour and all the present officials take turns yelling "Are you asleep?" and there's no reply, the pope is then considered dead.  

 

The cognitive neuroscientists were rolling on the floor laughing their asses off by then.  The nuncio waited for them to have a good laugh, with a smile on his face, and then said, "you're laughing of course at my silver hammer, a scientifically crude tool, admittedly.  Now imagine how hard your learned colleagues will be laughing three hundred years from now at your encephalographs and MRI and CAT and PET scans..."  

 

As to your other comment:  don't know about the Tsez, but the Balkars whom I meant only had one stone age tribe remaining at the time I was there, which managed to reduce communication with the outside world to a minimum (due to living in a place almost impossible to access) -- and for all I know their grammar might be patterned, like the I Ching, on the natural genetic/cosmic code...  judging by how very sacred-geometrical the patterns they knit into their wool sweaters are...  who knows what those patterns communicate.  Maybe the knowledge of how to embody heng, tao's main virtue...

Edited March 28, 2015 by Taomeow

[voidisyinyang]

 

Great interview with Hameroff and Penrose - their quantum consciousness model has really been validated with hard evidence.

 

Fascinating that ultrasound activates the microtubules with quantum entanglement as the "oneness" of the universe and our brains....

[allinone]

Hint: What is a quantum?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology

 

 

Yoga Vashishtha, the text which states conversations between Vashistha, a rig vedic teacher, and various Gods and Kakbhusundi, a creature which stands outside of normal time and sees all. It recounts the cyclical nature of time, where Kakabhushundi has seen Ramayan 11 times with different outcomes and seen Mahabharat 16 times with different results, but, after seeing Daksha Yagya twice, he did not either care to see it again or saw no point to seeing any more, as it ended the same way each time. Further conversations talk about the atoms or anu at quantum level and inside each quantum level are different universes. A sorrowful queen is shown that her husband is still alive in one of the quantum or atomic universes and ruling wisely and is given the option to join him there. The idea of Heisenberg's Principle is enunciated when a rishi visits and illustrates a decision tree by showing how several parallel universes, with all possible results of a decision, could occur and uses that illustration to explain why he took the decision he did in this universe.

[Marblehead]

I watched a program last night regarding quantum theories and it is still as confusing to me as ever.  (I don't find logic in much of the theories.)

[Brian]

This is a nice introduction -- read slowly and pause as needed:

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html

 

 

 

No, seriously.

[noonespecial]

This is a nice introduction -- read slowly and pause as needed:

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html

 

 

 

No, seriously.

 

Really good so far.

[allinone]

This is a nice introduction -- read slowly and pause as needed:

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html

 

 

 

No, seriously.

 

This is the moment i realize i am not intellectual and prolly evolved from an experiment with apes, not a starseed or from stars.

[allinone]

i understand that there is needed three things to be able to cognize.For an example: eye, eye conciousness and object(others).

 

whilst that eye consciousness is fabrication what arise from the contact of object and the eye

Edited April 1, 2015 by allinone

[Marblehead]

I am still convinced that if you slow a wave down slow enough you will see each particle in the wave.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to present information contrary to this thought in an acceptable manner.

 

Or perhaps when they think they are seeing a wave instead of a particle perhaps what they are seeing is a string.

 

Last night they talked about viewing the particle after it had passed through the double-hole board and believing that they could actually change the past of what the particle did upon entering the double-holes.

 

"Spooky stuff at a distance."

[allinone]

I am still convinced that if you slow a wave down slow enough you will see each particle in the wave.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to present information contrary to this thought in an acceptable manner.

 

Or perhaps when they think they are seeing a wave instead of a particle perhaps what they are seeing is a string.

 

Last night they talked about viewing the particle after it had passed through the double-hole board and believing that they could actually change the past of what the particle did upon entering the double-holes.

 

"Spooky stuff at a distance."

 

if you look things with a nondiscerning mind. A mind what doesn't discern what you cognize, you can't tell what you see or cognize.

[Taomeow]

I am still convinced that if you slow a wave down slow enough you will see each particle in the wave.

 

And I am still convinced that if you slow down the observer, he/she will see that it's turtles all the way down.

 

Edited April 1, 2015 by Taomeow

[Zhongyongdaoist]

And I am still convinced that if you slow down the observer, he/she will see that it's turtles all the way down.

 

 

All the way up too, but nobody seems to have noticed.

[Brian]

"...dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants"

[Marblehead]

How the heck did they get up there in the first place?  Bad move.

[3bob]

no need to slow something down per-se to fully see, besides doing so would introduce differences  - thus synchronizing at the same speed with something can reveal (normally unseen details) as standing still....

 

then extrapolate that idea to:

 

T.T.C. 25.

 

"THERE was Something undefined and yet complete in
  itself,
Born before Heaven-and-Earth.

Silent and boundless,
Standing alone without change,
Yet pervading all without fail,
It may be regarded as the Mother of the world.
I do not know its name;
I style it "Tao"......"

Edited April 1, 2015 by 3bob

[Zhongyongdaoist]

How the heck did they get up there in the first place?  Bad move.

 

Flying.  The matter is beyond dispute.

 

Flying Tortoise this I know,

Because Microsoft tells me so:

 

 

It's been the desktop on my laptop for years.

[Marblehead]

Because Microsoft tells me so:

And we all know that only the truth can be put on the internet.

[Taomeow]

All the way up too, but nobody seems to have noticed.

 

I most certainly did. 

 

Which is why I maintain that the world of Houtian we live in is best approached from the foundation of the Luoshu math and all the physics flowing out of it.  (And pre-Big-Bang Xiantian, that's the anti-physics of Hetu.) 

 

When Zhen-Thunder in the Northeast explodes and gets all of the forces of creation that were sitting there doing nothing (you don't feel like doing anything in perfect balance) to shuffle and reposition and start rotating around the double torus of existence-nonexistence (sic), that's the point (repeated many infinities of times, and to be repeated many more) when the Turtle gets a kick from the celestial Dragon-Horse.  Things really speed up after that. 

 

Which is why, like I said, the observer has to slow down or she will never see this sequence simultaneity.  See, to see this sequence, one must enter it.  You, yourself, have to merge with the Turtle in stillness and sit like that for as long as it takes for the Dragon-Horse to get bored and kick you.  What did you (the generic you) think motion-in-stillness and stillness-in-motion routines are?..  Physics!!! 

 

And the only way to learn real physics is be it.  There's no observer.  There's no place in the universe to stash him away and drill a peep hole in the rest of the universe to observe it through while remaining unnoticed, "carry on, I'm not really there, I'm an objective observer, I'm not part of what I'm observing, I'm nowhere to be found in the universe I'm observing..."  Whoever told you this is the holy cow we all should worship as "the scientific method," whoever told you "real" science is done like that, has taken you for a ride.  Slipped in very faulty, very very damaged logic -- have you noticed?.. 

 

No, the observer and the observed are one.  You are it or no physics for you, young lady/man.  Only technology.  I.e. what you can do if you externalize it.  That's no science.  That's tinkering.  You can make an atom bomb based on a theory slapped together of expensive and impressive ticky-tacky and blow something up, granted.  But you can't become a universe with ticky-tacky physics.  You need the real thing for this.   

 

Edited April 2, 2015 by Taomeow

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I most certainly did. 

I figured you probably did, but I wanted to see if I could coax you into sharing it with us.

[forestofemptiness]

Science, as a methodology, doesn't require one to believe that one is somehow separate from the universe. In fact, laboratory conditions are typically designed with this in mind to minimize the impact any specific scientist has on the experiment.

 

The suggestions here is that somehow science isn't a valid method of knowledge because it isn't perfect or complete. I would argue that ANY method of knowledge isn't perfect or complete. The sum total knowledge possible is probably infinite, so any knowledge, compared to infinity, will be found lacking. Does science have all the answers? Of course not. Does this mean that the answers it does have are invalid? No way. 

[mostly_empty]

Science, as a methodology, doesn't require one to believe that one is somehow separate from the universe. In fact, laboratory conditions are typically designed with this in mind to minimize the impact any specific scientist has on the experiment.

 

Well.... sort of. The philosophers critique this sort of thinking on a variety of grounds. A somewhat daoist response would be to note that the laboratory "isolation" of individual causes is actually MAXIMIZING the impact of whichever scientist does the research. If you think that who you are does not relate to the choice of controls you impose to generate an experiment, then you should be careful to compare and contrast the methods you have chosen to those used all around you in nature.

 

Again though, this doesn't mean that experiments aren't really good learning opportunities. A well founded observation in an experiment may share something quite remarkable with the well founded observations attained during qigong; the common denominator rests in the ability to observe and think. Speaking about my colleagues more than my own work (tongue in cheek!) I will say that science in any flavour works better when we put in the effort to think clearly.

 

Does science have answers for us? The good news is that it does offer a path to better answers then the ones we have.

 

Cheers.