particles and connections (General)

by dhw, Sunday, February 05, 2017, 11:03 (2847 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw:I shan't pretend to have understood the article, or anything else about quantum mechanics, but I have looked at other sites and you and BBella are quite right that quantum folk believe that all particles are connected. Thank you. Needless to say, I remain very much in the dark. BBella believes that even a distant star that she knows nothing about not only affects her but is also affected by her. I mentioned a pebble on a beach in Australia as another example. I'm sure BBella will answer for herself, but I don't know if you, David, also subscribe to the interconnectedness of all things. Taking my example of the Australian pebble, what "effect" do you think it might have on you? If it has no effect on you, and if you have no effect on it, and if you don't know it exists, what is the nature of the connection?

DAVID: You may not understand the article, but remember, even Feynman said no one undertands quantum mechanics. The key is to understand that the particle are seen by us on our side of reality, not the other reality where they come from and where they connect. I have no idea if an Australian pebble and I have a connection, but I've avoided posting the current debate as to whether the universe is a hologram, based on quantum gravity, since it is an unanswerable proposal at the current state of knowledge. Remember our empty vacuum space has virtual particles that pop in and our of 'our' existence. It is empty only until they appear! They must be from somewhere and it is at that level that they are connected. To me that rules out the pebble and I.

Many thanks for this response, which is reassuring for me as a layman. My disagreement with Ruth Kastner, which applies to several of the quantum theorists whose articles you have quoted, was her and their suggestion that quantum reality is more “real” than the reality we think we know. Other folk like Susan Blackmore use subjectivity as another tool with which to undermine our beliefs in the reality of our reality. The fact that we cannot “know” objective reality does not mean that all our perceptions are wrong, and the same applies to the apparent realities of the quantum world. Such thinking totally ignores all of human experience and, for that matter, all the other sciences. Anyone who doubts the reality of the reality we perceive subjectively, regardless of the weird behaviour of “virtual” particles, should try stepping in front of a bus.

However, I am now applying a similar approach to BBella’s concept of interconnectedness. It creates a wonderful mystique, but what does it actually mean? WHAT is connected, and in what way? It is one thing to say we feel kinship with all our fellow creatures, or we feel that we are part of something far greater than ourselves, but it’s quite another to say we are “connected” to distant galaxies, or pebbles on a far-off beach. I take Sheldrake’s morphic fields and morphic resonance very seriously, as I do psychic phenomena, but I see these as extensions of our realities (personal and general), not alternative realities and not in themselves universal, i.e. a species may have a morphic field, but that does not connect it to other species, let alone other galaxies. The ultimate field would be some sort of God, and again I can understand perfectly well that a believer will feel “connected” to such a being. But I can’t even begin to feel that I myself or even a possible God is “connected” to a pebble on a beach. And so I wonder what is the nature and even the significance of this interconnectedness?