ID/Creationism challenge

[randman]

WD, you said this:

Although this is at least the second time you've accused me of claiming that Copenhagen interpretations preserve locality and realism, I very much doubt whether I have ever made such a claim.

You clearly did in this exchange.

When 2 particles are entangled and you can see this principle elsewhere but entanglement is perhaps most clear, they will act as one system regardless of distance (space) and so that also means regardless of time as well. Locality is thus violated.

That's your personal interpretation, your personal metaphysics. You are asserting your personal metaphysics as objective fact, but it isn't.

I said QM (and though you did not quote me on it, I also made clear you could argue MWI as an alternative) shows a violation of locality.

You responded I was asserting my "personal metaphysics." That's a lie on your part. First, it's nothing personal but a reiteration of what a ton of physicists like Zeilinger say and have published in physics journals and what Einstein had a problem with when he realized the theory predicted a violation of locality.

Secondly, it's not metaphysics unless you want to say mainstream physics has moved into metaphysics. Either way, it's part and parcel of peer-reviewed papers in refereed journals and part of mainstream quantum physics, not some "personal metaphysics" of mine.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Indeed, which is something I often see creationists misrepresent. Often they specifically attack carbon dating in regard to aging the Earth and in aging fossils, but carbon dating is used for relatively recent dating, as in archaeology.
What I'd like to see explained sometime by a young earth creationist is why so many different dating methods all correlate with the same figures we'd expect to see. That would take an extensive address however.

What I want them to explain is why all other useful forms of radiation work on the same principles as radiometric dating is based on so well (nuclear power, nuclear missiles, MRI scans and so on) but radiometric dating is guesswork.

Quite frankly, people like Ken Ham shouldn't use anything radioactive, since according to them, radioactivity isn't understood well enough to even be able to date things based on half-life!

 

[Halfcentaur]

Which in and of itself isn't close to being the same thing.

Patterning of scales and feathers is a perfectly understandable and documented, but very rare occurrence.

Trace particulate of cells inside a fossil does not equal them finding blood.

I agree, and I find Randman's portrayal of this exaggerated so far. So far it seems he has a very literal "all or nothing" way of addressing these traces. We know that traces of organic material can be preserved in amber. So why not even consider traces possibly preserved in a new process that involves breaking down fossilized fragments in acid?

 

[randman]

Phil, let's take things one by one and slowly.

Particularly, can you tell us how a thing which exists outside of spacetime can affect things within spacetime?

Certainly, we see this occur via entangled particles. The connection is independent of distance and so time frankly, and yet the particles act as one system.

How that occurs is due to the fact the particle is fundamentally immaterial. It's physical properties are derived from it's fundamental immaterial and informational (non-physical state).

That's what Zeilinger was talking about when he comments ""most physicists are very naive; most still believe in real waves or particles" I cited earlier.

 

[Philosaur]

You have a systematic misunderstanding of quantum physics, to wit:

So you are agreeing with me? You either accept QM violates classical laws of physics such as local realism, or you invoke a myriad of alternative universes to explain it.

WRONG. QM only violates local realism under specific interpretations of the experimental results (such as the CI). The experimental results themselves DO NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS.

Also, you forget one thing. Copenhagen is based on what we observe without adding things we do not. MWI is based on adding a huge new factor, a gazillion alternate universes.

WRONG. Copenhagen is not the pure, unfettered, obviously-more-parsimonious option. It is saddled with ugly concessions that no physicist WANTS to make--like getting rid of localism--in the same way that MWI has the "ugly" feature of multiple universes.

If the choice were as obvious as you seem to think it is, there would be no alternative interpretations.

So if someone says QM shows this. It's not really "interpretation" as you suggest, and they are typically talking about the Copenhagen understanding of what is happening; that is no hidden variables, no alternate universes, etc,.....just what the experiments show.

WRONG. Copenhagen REALLY IS an interpretation. Despite the fact that you replaced "interpretation" with "understanding" above. Real subtle.

This notion that it's "just what the experiments show" is crap. The experiments show numbers. The experimenters have to interpret those numbers.

The main reason for MWI is the results appear to violate basic principles of physical reality. The simplest explanation is to just accept the evidence indicates particles are not strictly physical in the first place.

WRONG. See above. Copenhagen is NOT the obvious conclusion given the evidence. It is just one of several equally valid interpretations.

That is standard quantum mechanics. I admit you can try to get around it via MWI.

WRONG. Quantum mechanics--no matter how you interpret it--has counter-intuitive implications. "Standard" QM--whatever that may be--does not do away with localism or realism. Certain interpretations of it do this.

 

[randman]

RONG. QM only violates local realism under specific interpretations of the experimental results (such as the CI). The experimental results themselves DO NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS.

More abject confusion on your part. So all the scientific papers disagreeing with you are just WRONG, eh?

Men like Anton Zeilinger conducting quantum teleportation experiments to develop quantum computers are just a bunch of crackpots, cuz this evo says it must be that way?

Copenhagen is not the pure, unfettered, obviously-more-parsimonious option. It is saddled with ugly concessions that no physicist WANTS to make--like getting rid of localism--in the same way that MWI has the "ugly" feature of multiple universes.

Oh my......now you've done and agreed with me after saying all this time I was making stuff up. Have you considered why so many brilliant men either get rid of "physical laws" or invoke a myriad of multiverses?

It's because of what the theory and experiments show. They are not just imagining this out of their backsides as some metaphysical speculation.

 

[Philosaur]

More abject confusion on your part. So all the scientific papers disagreeing with you are just WRONG, eh?

You know what--I give up. There's enough reality for us all to be right!

Men like Anton Zeilinger conducting quantum teleportation experiments to develop quantum computers are just a bunch of crackpots, cuz this evo says it must be that way?

Yes, this evo also declares that chocolate ice cream is the best!!11!!eleven!1

Oh my......now you've done and agreed with me after saying all this time I was making stuff up. Have you considered why so many brilliant men either get rid of "physical laws" or invoke a myriad of multiverses?

Yup, I am now totally in agreement with you! Furthermore, I now understand the need to shoehorn one's personal religious views into the most misunderstood scientific theory known to man.

You think there's a way we can tie the Flying Spaghetti Monster into this? Maybe quantum entanglement is accomplished by his noodley appendages?

It's because of what the theory and experiments show. They are not just imagining this out of their backsides as some metaphysical speculation.

Fantastic!

 

[Halfcentaur]

It's past time you saw the radiant light, Philosaur.

 

[randman]

One humorous aspect to so many materialists advocating MWI is by doing that, you validate Intelligent Design.

if you accept there is a God, MWI says somewhere there is a universe looking exactly like our's that is Intelligently Designed including biota.

If you do not, there is a universe looking exactly like our's where aliens intelligently designed life on earth and intervened along the way and one where they did not, etc,....

The only way to detect this Intelligent Design is to look to see if the world appears intelligently designed (short of meeting the designers). But there is a universe somewhere ID is true where we have not met the designers.

So we have to look at probabilities for something being designed, just as IDers do, and we'd have to see if we can forensically detect design just as IDers do.

If one objects the Designer or designers are not directly observable, then a MWI advocate is hypocritical as the alternate universes they posit are not directly observable either.

 

[chipmunk stew]

I know this isn't in keeping with the spirit of the OP, but you only need two words to debunk creationism/ID:

Male nipples.

 

[randman]

I know this isn't in keeping with the spirit of the OP, but you only need two words to debunk creationism/ID:

Male nipples.

Male nipples are not a problem. Man-boobs are....

But hey, God never said He made it easy here on earth, at least for everyone but Adam.

 

[Pup]

One humorous aspect to so many materialists advocating MWI is by doing that, you validate Intelligent Design.

if you accept there is a God, MWI says somewhere there is a universe looking exactly like our's that is Intelligently Designed including biota.

But it also would mean there are universes that are not intelligently designed by God, and that therefore a god is not necessary for a universe to exist.

That would mean that God is neither omnipotent nor omnipresent, since there are universes in which he doesn't exist and over which he has no control.

Unless, of course, one defines God as some sort of uber-designer who designed all the universes but who exists apart from them. From there it's turtles all the way up.

 

[Aitch]

I know this isn't in keeping with the spirit of the OP, but you only need two words to debunk creationism/ID:

Male nipples.

Well, you've got to have something to...
1. Practice with.
2. Stop your string-vest riding up.

 

[Dinwar]

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a problem with the accuracy of carbon-13 dating either, it's just that beyond a certain point it becomes pretty much impossible to detect to any useful degree, so it has a limit as to how effective it is at dating really ancient stuff.

Not entirely true--Pleistocene/Holocene transition fossils can be identified via C13 dating on the soils they were found in. But generally yeah, fossils are dated using other means--uranium series dating, for example.

The REAL issue here is that multiple dating methods all agree on certain ages, and do NOT require the same assumptions. For example, magnetostratigraphy, radiometric dating, sedimentological evidence, biostratigraphic evidence, and other forms of dating all agree tht the K/Pg extinction occured 65.4 million years ago (with the understanding that extinctions have a local component, which accounts for much of Gerta Keller's observations). Radiometric and thermoluminescence datas show the Pleistocene/Holocene transition as 10,000 years ago. And within radiometric dating there are multiple types (fission track dating, for example) and multiple serieses of elements and multiple arangements, all of which cancel out each other's biases. Often what a Creationist argues is evidence that radiometric dating is flawed is in reality evidence of complex geologic activity--remember, the key concept in radiometric dating is "closing temperature", and different closing temperatures means that a single rock can record multiple events (all of which are typically then ground-truthed stratigraphically).

Oh, and the exact same techniques are used in medicine on human time scales. So we have direct evidence that they do in fact work.

Any attempt to show that radiometric dating doesn't work is based on ideology at this point, and a failure to research the methods. The subject you want to look into, if you're curious about this, is issotopic geochemistry. I'll warn you, though, I've seen this topic give more than one person a mental breakdown. It's HARD--it STARTS with nuclear physics, and gets more complex from there. The simplistic crap peddled by Creationists doesn't even begin to touch on what's really going on.

 

[Philosaur]

It's past time you saw the radiant light, Philosaur.

I feel so much better now that I've navigated the ship of my understanding between the Scylla of logic and the Charybdis of science. I am now docked safely in the marinara-drenched bosom of Il Papa Pasta.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

What I want them to explain is why all other useful forms of radiation work on the same principles as radiometric dating is based on so well (nuclear power, nuclear missiles, MRI scans and so on) but radiometric dating is guesswork.

Quite frankly, people like Ken Ham shouldn't use anything radioactive, since according to them, radioactivity isn't understood well enough to even be able to date things based on half-life!

Randman? Anything?

 

[W.D.Clinger]

randman has not provided any scientific evidence for Intelligent Design or Creationism.

Because randman has transcended the boundaries of rational discourse, I'll limit myself to documenting some of his recent falsehoods. That's why this post is so long.

Either quote where WD claims this, or prove to us that you don't eat babies.

(Hey, if you can insist WD defend something he didn't assert, then I can insist the same of you.)



Also: You are STILL missing the point. No one is claiming MWI is better than anything else. Everyone is trying to drive point the (apparently massively complicated) point that each interpretation is valid. But, because you put CI on a pedestal, when we try to level the field, as it were, you see it as an attack on CI--and by extension--your whole "theory".

Wrong. I flat out said you could use MWI as an alternative, but WD derided Copenhagen as metaphysics and said a bunch of other bs.

The Wikipedia link for quantum metaphysics is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_metaphysics​

That link redirects to the Wikipedia article on interpretations of quantum mechanics, which lists the Copenhagen interpretation as the first of these fourteen named examples:

• Copenhagen interpretation
• many worlds
• consistent histories
• ensemble interpretation
• de Broglie-Bohm theory
• relational quantum mechanics
• transactional interpretation
• stochastic mechanics
• objective collapse theories
• von Neumann/Wigner interpretation: consciousness causes collapse
• many minds
• quantum logic
• modal interpretations of quantum mechanics
• time-symmetric theories

To state that these interpretations (and others) are metaphysical alternatives is accurate. By regarding that accurate statement as derision, randman appears to assert that the philosophical issues addressed by these interpretations are unworthy of serious consideration. If so, then randman's contempt for philosophical interpretations should include the Copenhagen interpretation, because it comes first on the list.

I do not share randman's apparent contempt for metaphysical intepretations of quantum mechanics. When I say that modal or many-worlds or Copenhagen interpretations are metaphysical, I am not deriding them. I am identifying their intellectual character and explaining their relationship to the "shut up and calculate" science of quantum mechanics.

For example, I stated:

When 2 particles are entangled and you can see this principle elsewhere but entanglement is perhaps most clear, they will act as one system regardless of distance (space) and so that also means regardless of time as well. Locality is thus violated.

That is standard quantum mechanics. I admit you can try to get around it via MWI.

WD responds with total bs.

I stated, correctly, that the violation of locality perceived by randman is not implied by the hard science of quantum mechanics, but by the Copenhagen interpretation in which randman so fervently believes. With several of the other metaphysical interpretations that are listed above, including but not limited to the many-worlds interpretations, locality is not violated. Hence the violation of locality is subjective and metaphysical, not a matter of hard science.

That's your personal interpretation, your personal metaphysics. You are asserting your personal metaphysics as objective fact, but it isn't.

He obviously has no idea whatsoever if he is going to say this my "personal metaphysics." That's why I quoted scientists like Zeilinger who shows repeatedly a violation of locality, local realism, etc,...... That's why the term "non-local" is used. His suggestion I made this up is asinine and wrong.

The Copenhagen interpretation dates back to 1927 or so. If randman thinks I was accusing him of having invented that interpretation, he is mistaken. I was stating the rather obvious fact that randman has accepted some variation of the Copenhagen interpretation as one of the things he personally believes.

He then says this:

Virtually all physicists accept the reality of objective reality

That's completely wrong again. Quantum physicists like Zeilinger of the dominant Copenhagen school of thought and maybe many in MWI do not accept the concept of objective reality.

He then blathers on and on about a "general sense of objective reality" which shows he never understood the term in context in the first place. No one is saying the universe does not exist when they say objective reality is incorrect.

By saying that virtually all physicists accept the reality of objective reality, I was answering Einstein's highly relevant question to Abraham Pais by saying that virtually all physicists believe the moon exists even when they are not looking at it.

I might be wrong about that, but randman's last sentence above suggests he concedes that point. If so, then I happily admit to having no clue as to what randman means by objective reality, in or out of context.

WD, you said this:

Although this is at least the second time you've accused me of claiming that Copenhagen interpretations preserve locality and realism, I very much doubt whether I have ever made such a claim.

You clearly did in this exchange.

When 2 particles are entangled and you can see this principle elsewhere but entanglement is perhaps most clear, they will act as one system regardless of distance (space) and so that also means regardless of time as well. Locality is thus violated.

That's your personal interpretation, your personal metaphysics. You are asserting your personal metaphysics as objective fact, but it isn't.

I said QM (and though you did not quote me on it, I also made clear you could argue MWI as an alternative) shows a violation of locality.

You responded I was asserting my "personal metaphysics." That's a lie on your part. First, it's nothing personal but a reiteration of what a ton of physicists like Zeilinger say and have published in physics journals and what Einstein had a problem with when he realized the theory predicted a violation of locality.

Secondly, it's not metaphysics unless you want to say mainstream physics has moved into metaphysics. Either way, it's part and parcel of peer-reviewed papers in refereed journals and part of mainstream quantum physics, not some "personal metaphysics" of mine.

As can be seen from the above, there is not a microgram of truth in randman's repeated accusations that I claim the Copenhagen interpretations preserve locality and realism. I didn't even mention Copenhagen in the quotations randman offered as his alleged proof of my claim, and randman didn't mention Copenhagen in the quoted remarks to which I was responding.

Perhaps randman thinks I should have known that randman believes the Copenhagen interpretation so strongly that he thinks it is hard science, or that all who do not share his personal belief in that interpretation should be cast into outer darkness. If so, I can only weep and gnash my teeth.

In what follows, randman is quoting Philosaur:

RONG. QM only violates local realism under specific interpretations of the experimental results (such as the CI). The experimental results themselves DO NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS.

More abject confusion on your part. So all the scientific papers disagreeing with you are just WRONG, eh?

Men like Anton Zeilinger conducting quantum teleportation experiments to develop quantum computers are just a bunch of crackpots, cuz this evo says it must be that way?

No. Philosaur meant exactly what he said: That QM violates local realism only under certain interpretations such as Copenhagen. Under certain other interpretations, such as modal or many-worlds interpretations, locality is not violated.

randman's reaction to Philosaur's correct statement was ignorant. Yes, any scientific paper that disagrees with Philosaur's correct statement is wrong on that specific point, but scientific papers very rarely make sweeping claims about local realism under all metaphysical interpretations of quantum mechanics. Such sweeping claims are far more common in the popular literature, which is presumably where randman obtained his impressions of quantum mechanics.

Copenhagen is not the pure, unfettered, obviously-more-parsimonious option. It is saddled with ugly concessions that no physicist WANTS to make--like getting rid of localism--in the same way that MWI has the "ugly" feature of multiple universes.

Oh my......now you've done and agreed with me after saying all this time I was making stuff up. Have you considered why so many brilliant men either get rid of "physical laws" or invoke a myriad of multiverses?

It's because of what the theory and experiments show. They are not just imagining this out of their backsides as some metaphysical speculation.

All viable interpretations of quantum mechanics agree with experiment, because interpretations that disagree with experiment are not viable.

No viable interpretation of quantum mechanics agrees with our common sense, which means our common sense is wrong. Different interpretations of QM salvage different parts of our common sense while giving up on others. The Copenhagen interpretation gives up on locality, while modal interpretations (may) abandon determinism and many-worlds interpretations abandon the notion of a fixed unique objective reality (which, judging from one of his comments above, may have nothing to do with randman's personal notion of objective reality).

None of those interpretations are pulling things out of their backsides, but randman's apparent insistence that the Copenhagen interpretation be accorded special status can only be done by pulling that belief out of his core being.

 

[randman]

In stating what standard QM shows, I did not present a "personal metaphysics" as you claimed. You know that and tacitly admit that by listing things from wiki I did not write. As you got that wrong, I wonder whether it's worth reading the rest of your post.

 

[PixyMisa]

So you are agreeing with me? You either accept QM violates classical laws of physics such as local realism, or you invoke a myriad of alternative universes to explain it.

No, wrong. Quantum Mechanics predicts different results to classical physics. And Quantum Mechanics is right and classical physics is wrong no matter which interpretation you apply, because they all predict identical results.

Now, you want to talk about MWI and insist that's better

Not "better". Empirically identical.

 

[PixyMisa]

Which in and of itself isn't close to being the same thing.

Patterning of scales and feathers is a perfectly understandable and documented, but very rare occurrence.

Trace particulate of cells inside a fossil does not equal them finding blood.

They're not even sure if it is trace residue of the original creature. They have some markers for hemoglobin and protein, but that's all, and the work hasn't been independently reproduced.