Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Stops Here

Ed Glosser said:
First of all, glad you're back!

Second, what if it's not our minds that "transfer" to a mystic plane, but a duplicate that doesn't leave an imprint in the physical universe? Our life experiences would then still be governed by the laws of physics, but a "backup" version of us would retain the memories and then be able to exist in a different reality with completely different laws, if any.
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For such a backup there has to be an exchange of information between the two "planes". The argument in the video is that we have mapped all the area that we interact with and there is no room for a mysterious "energy" or "particle" or anything that could exchange that information.
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm sorry about the special pleading. My bad. Here's some more.

To state that what we experience while alive comes to an end when we die is a huge assumption for which there is no evidence.
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Sorry, but that is completely wrong. I don't think that it is possible to make a statement that is more wrong.

It's not an assumption at all, it's a conclusion. And the evidence leading to that conclusion is the life of every person ever, and everything discovered by every field of science.

Experience is a function of the brain. When the brain dies, experience stops, and the memories and mind of the person are lost.

And what Quantum Field Theory tells us is that we haven't missed anything in reaching this conclusion. There are no new laws of physics that we might have overlooked that could change this.
 
Darat said:
For such a backup there has to be an exchange of information between the two "planes". The argument in the video is that we have mapped all the area that we interact with and there is no room for a mysterious "energy" or "particle" or anything that could exchange that information.
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Right.

Now you can reject Quantum Field Theory, but then you're rejecting the existence of GPS and any computer made in the last 15 years, including the one that runs this forum.
 
PixyMisa said:
Right.

Now you can reject Quantum Field Theory, but then you're rejecting the existence of GPS and any computer made in the last 15 years, including the one that runs this forum.
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Hmmm... given the performance of the Forum are you sure there are no pockets left unexplored? ;)
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm sorry about the special pleading. My bad. Here's some more.

To state that what we experience while alive comes to an end when we die is a huge assumption for which there is no evidence. There is evidence that lack of brain activity and heart activity eventually leads to someone having to call someone because it's starting to smell, but since we cannot tell what is going on with what used to be a person, we just assume that they are not experiencing anything. Sure, they no longer move their body around, but we don't know that they're not experiencing something.
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We can tell. It's called decay. Because they are dead, along with the senses that allow them to experience things.
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm sorry about the special pleading. My bad. Here's some more.

To state that what we experience while alive comes to an end when we die is a huge assumption for which there is no evidence. There is evidence that lack of brain activity and heart activity eventually leads to someone having to call someone because it's starting to smell, but since we cannot tell what is going on with what used to be a person, we just assume that they are not experiencing anything. Sure, they no longer move their body around, but we don't know that they're not experiencing something.
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OK, so you are, in fact, talking about a "soul", or "spirit", or some element of consciousness independent of a functioning neurosystem. No problem.

Where the problem comes in is that you are asserting (or at least arguing the assertion) that such a thing exists. As such it is your onus to provide evidence to support your claim. When you say that we "cannot prove" that the soul does not exist, you are indulging in the fallacy of shifiting the burden of proof:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

Consider the Teapot, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn Living In Your Garage. It is up to the person claiming that either one exists to support that claim; otherwise, the discussion goes into the awful death spiral of "you can't prove a negative"

What evidence are you prepared to offer that the consciousness that was an emergent property of the no-longer-functioning neurosystem in the rapidly-approaching-room-temperature (until it begins to rot) body exists, in any way, now that the body has died? How will you demonstrate such existence? How will you detect it? Measure it? Interact with it?
 
Ed Glosser said:
I'm sorry about the special pleading. My bad. Here's some more.

To state that what we experience while alive comes to an end when we die is a huge assumption for which there is no evidence. There is evidence that lack of brain activity and heart activity eventually leads to someone having to call someone because it's starting to smell, but since we cannot tell what is going on with what used to be a person, we just assume that they are not experiencing anything. Sure, they no longer move their body around, but we don't know that they're not experiencing something.
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Do you want that to be true? I'd be interested to know why? Do you think it would be an improvement on reality? But if it were true, it would in itself be reality, wouldn't it?


ETA: This is one of the most interesting threads I've ever seen on JREF.
 
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PixyMisa said:
I'll answer any questions as best I can, but please bear in mind that I took one semester of this stuff, and that was 28 years ago. So while I'm familiar with the terminology, I only have a layman's understanding of any research in the last 30+ years. (Since the course I took wasn't completely up to date even at the time.)

Okay, let's take astrology as an example. Supposedly the position of the planets at the time of our birth influences the course of our lives in ways that can be predicted using pretty simple mathematics.

Is this possible, using what we know of physics?

Well, the only two forces that work over that sort of distance are the electromagnetic force and gravity. We know immediately that it's not the electromagnetic force, because that's light, and if you live in a big city you don't see that planets much.

That leaves gravity. The force of gravity goes by the inverse-square law, which means that when you double your distance from an object, the gravity goes down by a factor of four.

The planet Mars has a mass of about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons and at its closest approach to Earth is about 50 million kilometres away. If we do the calculations we work out that the influence of Mars on you is about the same as any passing car when you're standing at the crosswalk waiting for the lights to change.

So that means that any effect Mars might potentially have would be totally randomised by the world around you.

What the result Dr Carroll discusses means is that this is the end of the discussion. There are no undiscovered laws of physics that can change this. Astrology is simply wrong.

The same thing goes for homeopathy, for reincarnation, magic, psychic powers, and so on. Once we show that they contradict the laws of physics, that is it. If any of these things were real, even if we hadn't worked it all out yet, we would have found a subatomic particle that we hadn't expected.

There may be subatomic particles we haven't found yet, but they're in the other part of the diagram - the part that corresponds to galaxies, exploding stars, and atomic nuclei. The part where we spend our lives has been fully mapped out.

As an analogy - there are almost certainly creatures in the depths of the ocean that we didn't expect and have yet to discover. But there aren't any living in your bathtub.
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Thanks for being a good sport. I saw you posted a follow-up, but this is just in reply to post #54:

I don't think astrology is about the planets influencing our lives. Rather, the events in people's lives correspond with the movements of the planets, which doesn't require any type of field. It's like the airtime of the final episode of Game of Thrones corresponding to your girlfriends yoga class. One doesn't affect the other. They clashing is just a lucky coincidence that means she won't be there to ask annoying questions.

Psychic abilities and past life memories is just information revealing itself on schedule. Homeopathy is still snake oil.

Whenever the term randomness is used to fill in the gaps, you can be pretty sure the part where we spend our lives hasn't been fully mapped out. To a rabbit crossing a railroad track, the appearance of a train is random.
 
PixyMisa said:
The duplication process would also be a field interaction under Quantum Field Theory, and we'd see the corresponding particle.

The point here is, our brains and bodies and senses are made up of normal matter. Whatever you think the mind or soul might be, it has to interact with our bodies, and that interaction would show up as a particle. This is the hypothetical "Xilbot" particle that Dr Carroll discusses. If Xilbots existed, we would have found them. We haven't, so they don't. (By the same token that there are no krakens lurking in your bath.)
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This is in response to post #56, or was it #57? Christ, I'm in over my head here. I'm sorry for bogarting the thread. Here we go:

Like I said in a different post, I think, the interaction in question may well be exactly what we are experiencing in the physical world. Physics is physics, after all, so if there can't be a Xilbot then there is no Xilbot.

FYI, you don't wanna see what's in my bathtub.
 
Darat said:
For such a backup there has to be an exchange of information between the two "planes". The argument in the video is that we have mapped all the area that we interact with and there is no room for a mysterious "energy" or "particle" or anything that could exchange that information.
Click to expand...


Unless it's all in the mind?
 
PixyMisa said:
Sorry, but that is completely wrong. I don't think that it is possible to make a statement that is more wrong.

It's not an assumption at all, it's a conclusion. And the evidence leading to that conclusion is the life of every person ever, and everything discovered by every field of science.

Experience is a function of the brain. When the brain dies, experience stops, and the memories and mind of the person are lost.

And what Quantum Field Theory tells us is that we haven't missed anything in reaching this conclusion. There are no new laws of physics that we might have overlooked that could change this.
Click to expand...


Unless the brain is like a radio tuner. If you didn't have a radio, the signal would still be out there, but you'd never know.
 
Ed Glosser said:
Unless the brain is like a radio tuner. If you didn't have a radio, the signal would still be out there, but you'd never know.
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That is precisely the example Dr Carroll uses in his lecture, the hypothetical "Xilbot" particle. If there were such a signal, we would know.
 
Slowvehicle said:
OK, so you are, in fact, talking about a "soul", or "spirit", or some element of consciousness independent of a functioning neurosystem. No problem.

Where the problem comes in is that you are asserting (or at least arguing the assertion) that such a thing exists. As such it is your onus to provide evidence to support your claim. When you say that we "cannot prove" that the soul does not exist, you are indulging in the fallacy of shifiting the burden of proof:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

Consider the Teapot, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn Living In Your Garage. It is up to the person claiming that either one exists to support that claim; otherwise, the discussion goes into the awful death spiral of "you can't prove a negative"

What evidence are you prepared to offer that the consciousness that was an emergent property of the no-longer-functioning neurosystem in the rapidly-approaching-room-temperature (until it begins to rot) body exists, in any way, now that the body has died? How will you demonstrate such existence? How will you detect it? Measure it? Interact with it?
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I consider the teapot every day, my friend.

Okay. I've avoided the question of evidence, because we all know that song and dance a little too well. There are things I consider evidence within the field known as parapsychology, or consciousness studies, but I respect that the scientific community, and you skeptics, are not convinced by that evidence. It convinces me, but not you. I have to respect that, I feel.

What I'm fascinated by is the claim in the video. I don't want to discard it, but I can't ignore my own experiences of reality either. You're free to, though!

BTW, you don't wanna know what's living in my garage.
 
Ed Glosser said:
Unless the brain is like a radio tuner. If you didn't have a radio, the signal would still be out there, but you'd never know.
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Even without a radio in your possession, the standard model explains what kind of radiation,or waves, can exist, and can be detected. Heinlein's Fifth Column is fiction; if there were a "new family" of forces out there, if they can interact with us, we can detect them; if thhey are outside the standard model to the point that we cannot detect them, they cannot interact with us.

To change that, you need to offer evidence of what as-yet-undetected forces would be at work, and in what way(s) those forces could affect us.

BTW, random, double-blinded testing demonstrates conclusively the fact that astrology has no predictive ability, any more than hepatomancy does, and for the same reasons. No forces; no causes--no effects.
 
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