Reality (General)

by dhw, Thursday, November 14, 2019, 12:25 (1835 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: When we get down to the basis of reality we bump into the unreality of quantum actions by the weirdness of what the particles do. You are simply refusing to accept what quantum scientists discover. Why do you try to ignore it and call it a separate reality? We live in one reality even if we cannot interpret what we study contained in one universe.

dhw: Why are you now calling quantum actions unreal? They are part of the material world, and I accept the scientists’ discoveries, but since science cannot explain these actions, I refuse to accept that they are more real than the explicable behaviour of the combined particles of the bus! The current state of our knowledge does not invalidate the reality of the bus! And quantum reality is not a separate reality because it is an incomprehensible part of the material world. It is you who have introduced and believe in a separate reality in the immaterial form of “pure energy”, i.e. God, although we “don’t know what is on the other side of quantum uncertainty”.

DAVID: You argued with Kastner, because she was trying a new approach to figure out what is going on across the wall of uncertainty. Our confusion about quantum mechanics is real and per Feynman, we shut up and calculate by ignoring all the infinities that pop up, and it works! And we don't know why! There is an other reality across the wall that is the basis of our reality. That is why we have the Copenhagen convention and other approaches.

I argued with Kastner because she insisted that the weird behaviour of particles denoted a more real reality than the reality of the bus. Yes indeed, our confusion about quantum mechanics is real – so how does that prove Kastner’s point? You are glossing over the very different reality which you keep proposing: namely, an immaterial one you call “pure energy” or God which lies hidden behind the wall. Quantum physics does not deal with any immaterial “reality”. Until scientists can reconcile the behaviour of individual particles with the behaviour of particles en masse (the bus), we are left with an unsolved mystery. In the meantime, I will trust to my own experience of reality and will refrain from stepping in front of the bus, and will refuse to accept that the unexplained behaviour of individual particles is more real than the explicable and even predictable behaviour of particles en masse.

DAVID: The bus is not the quanta particles. It is only the real result of them to us as you rightly point out. But quantum mechanics is the basis of the reality we perceive, not the real reality behind what we appreciate. I'm playing Kastner's role with you.

I’m not sure what you mean, but this may be the result of my poor grasp of physics. I thought the bus was made of particles. And I thought the reality of what we perceive (the bus) was as close to objective reality as we can get and was explicable and comprehensible, whereas quantum mechanics studies particle behaviour which is also real but which is neither explicable nor comprehensible. So how do we know that quantum mechanics is the basis of the reality we perceive?

dhw: This is not “shutting the mind to the problem of incomprehensibility” – it is a refusal to draw conclusions until the incomprehensible has been made comprehensible, which is the essence of agnosticism. Understanding God’s method presupposes that there is a God. An atheist can say that maybe understanding how quantum physics works will convince us that there is no God.

DAVID: Our reality is created by quantum reality, which is not ours. That is why we do not understand it. That is why the cat is both alive and dead. Your bus is not the cat.

And the cat is not my bus. How does that prove that the theoretical dead-or-alive cat (which I believe would also be made of particles if it existed) is more real than the bus?