Quantum weirdness: particles or waves (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 21, 2015, 15:32 (3290 days ago) @ David Turell

An excellent review article. The universe is entangled, patterns may apply, and information may be at the root of reality. Read carefully to savor the complexity:-http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/quantum-mechanics-is-putting-human-identity-on-trial-"An electron—any electron—is an elementary particle, which is to say it has no known substructure. ..molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of elementary particles, but elementary particles are the end of the line. They are made of nothing, being, as they are, the most basic building blocks of the material world. An electron is a point, taking up quite literally no space at all. Every electron is defined solely in terms of its mass (tiny), its spin (1/2) and its charge (negative). Those three features comprise in toto the complete and comprehensive identity of the electron, as its want for spatial extent bears no room to house any further attributes.-***-"Some, like Wilczek, say one field. It is no mystery that all electrons look alike, he says, because they are all manifestations, temporary excitations of one and the same underlying electron field, which permeates all space, all time. Others, like physicist John Archibald Wheeler, say one particle. He suggested that perhaps electrons are indistinguishable because there's only one, but it traces such convoluted paths through space and time that at any given moment it appears to be many. Gottfried Leibniz, the 17th-century philosopher, put forth the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, which said if you can't tell two things apart, they are not two things. On one hand, electrons appear to refute the principle. On the other, perhaps the multiplicity of particles—or the multiplicity of the world—is a kind of funhouse illusion.-***-"When you have more and more electrons, the state that they together form starts to be more and more capable of being distinct,” Pesic said. “So the reason that you and I have some kind of identity is that we're composed of so enormously many of these indistinguishable components. It's our state that's distinguishable, not our materiality.”-
"Pesic continues. “Not one of our components—no electron, no proton—has any kind of stamp on it. But together they exist in a state that becomes sufficiently complex that it can then be distinguished from the state of every other person who's composed of the same indistinguishable electrons and protons.”-"“My thingness is in how I'm organized, not what I'm made of,” says Ladyman. “But of course we know that anyway, because we know that the cells in our bodies are getting replaced all the time. Functional organization of structure, not the matter it's made of, is what counts.”-***-"Our identity is a state, but if it's not a state of matter—not a state of individual physical objects, like quarks and electrons—then a state of what?-A state, perhaps, of information. Ladyman suggests that we can replace the notion of a “thing” with a “real pattern”—a concept first articulated by the philosopher Daniel Dennett and further developed by Ladyman and philosopher Don Ross. “Another way of articulating what you mean by an object is to talk about compression of information,” Ladyman says. “So you can claim that something's real if there's a reduction in the information-theoretic complexity of tracking the world if you include it in your description.”-***-"Should such examples give the impression that the real patterns are patterns of particles, beware: Particles, like our electron, are real patterns themselves. “We're using a particle-like description to keep track of the real patterns,” Ladyman says. “It's real patterns all the way down.”-"We are nothing but fleeting patterns, signals in the noise. Drill down and the appearance of materiality gives way; underneath it, nothing. “I think in the end,” says Ladyman, “it may well be that the world isn't made of anything.”-"Even so, we can point to patterns, and assign names. The more complex the pattern, the more we have to potentially gain by compressing its microscopic description, and the greater the case for identity. Consider a brain—with as many neurons as stars in the galaxy linked together through trillions of connections it's the most complex object in the known universe. Try to compress it. Call it by just two words. Call it Martin Guerre. Push further. A single word, a single letter.-Call it “I.”-Comment: Functional patterns run by information