quantum mechanics: Kastner\'s brilliant blog (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, July 21, 2013, 12:36 (4144 days ago) @ rekastner

Sorry for popping in and out of the conversation, but it has been a busy week. 84+ hour work week and finals to boot!-
>Rek: My point is simply this: there is no proof or categorical demonstration anywhere that shows that it is not possible to gain objective knowledge about reality (where the latter is not limited to the world of appearance). Of course there are arguments in favor of that view, and it can be very compelling, but that doesn't make it assertable as a truth. One can give evidence/arguments for this claim, but one can also find strong evidence/arguments against it.
> -> In fact QM is a prime example of a piece of knowledge that scientists were decidely NOT looking for, but was forced on them by the inner workings of nature.-Actually, I think this IS demonstrable. First, consider the way our senses and the brain works. Your eye is sensitive enough to detect a single photon, yet you will never see one with your naked eye because your brain can not focus and interpret data to that degree. The same could be true for any of our other senses. What YOU experience is an unconscious interpretation of data. So that rules out objective knowledge from first party experience. -What about objective knowledge from a third party then? First, any instrument will only detect what it is designed to detect, so unless you can build a sensor that can detect everything, it is safe to assume that you will never have a complete and accurate picture of any one event, but rather an observation of an event that was biased before it was ever observed because of the limitations of the designer and the observer. -Further, we understand nothing in a vacuum. What I mean is that no one tidbit of knowledge that we ever gain is completely referenced, but instead builds upon knowledge that we have acquired else where. Even our 'instinctive' understanding is shaped this way, which is why, for some, pain is pleasure or pleasure is pain. ->Rek: > And certainly there are many people who see what they want to see, but this doesn't demonstate that it's impossible to see what we don't want to see, or to be surprised by what we see because we weren't looking for it. In fact, Heisenberg and Planck are key examples of scientits who firmly believed that the world was as classically conceived and yet who were forced, by the fact that their preferred theories (which are forms of knowledge) failed to describe the evidence, to an alternative very strange theory -- quantum theory.
> -The requirement is not your personal desires, but rather your personal bias, which is slightly different. A bias may not be intentional, or even based on desire. It could, for example, be from a lack of understanding or from the simple absence of relevant raw data. A classic example was the belief that the world was flat. It was not that the people WANTED to believe it, but rather that they simply lacked the data, as well as the understanding of the data they did possess, to come to any other conclusion. -Knowledge of an objective reality has the pre-requisite of a complete data set. Without the complete data set your knowledge will always be skewed and inaccurate, and there for is not objective because it is biased by your own limitations in understanding. The catch 22 is, you will never know if you have a complete data set unless you already possess a complete data set, or at least some criteria detailing what would constitute a complete data set, which in return requires the prerequisite knowledge of the complete data set. There is know way around it. Objective knowledge is impossible for humans to achieve.

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.