Physicists bid farewell to reality?

Nature ^ | 4/18/07 | Philip Ball

[Erasmus]

Before painting them, Picasso liked to get his models shiftfaced.

[MHGinTN]

Yes, I learned that from Lisa Randall's book, Warped Passages. Boy would I like to spend an evening with her, over dinner and drinks, discussing physics principles and cosmologies. ... Don't get the wrong idea, I'm old enough to be harmless but I have not gone to sleep, mentally. And I can afford the meal, any where.

[RunningWolf]

That would in the world of teenagers when ‘the party principle’ is engaged ;)

[MHGinTN]

Reminds me of the absurd assertion that a fleet of monkeys banging away on typewriters for eternity will reproduce the Shakespearean sonnets. Only an agenda driven fool believes purpose is supplant-able with random chaos. No quantity of eternity would not allow the transition for random does not transition into purpose. OTH, if one only needs sufficient letters on paper from which to cipher codes, the task is completed in a human lifetime.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

Quantum theory suggests that disturbing one particle can instantaneously determine the properties of a particle with which it is 'entangled', no matter how far away it is. This would violate the usual rule of locality: that local behaviour is governed by local events.

One can say the same for classical mechanics. Say you have a isolated system with zero angular momentum, and it separates into two systems S1 and S2. You measure the angular momentum of S1 and it turns out to be L. Surprise surprise! S2's angular momentum is now -L! How did S2 know it's angular momentum had to be -L?! S1 must have magically transmitted information to S2! Or maybe S1 and S2 are mysteriously entangled! But in general people know better than to talk this way.

[Ethan Clive Osgoode]

The problem arises when pseudo-intellectual idiots get hold of something as beautiful and mysterious as quantum mechanics and try to pack humanism on to the back of the sleigh. Because the location of a subatomic particle can not be determined, right and wrong cannot be determined.

In a similar vein, some insist that 'Santa Claus can materialize out of the vaccuum' and 'pterosaurs can suddenly poof into existence and snatch your kids away' are implications of quantum mechanics.

[Cincinatus]

"we have to give up the idea of realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today."

Are you sure these guys aren't working on climate modeling rather than QM?

[djf]

Let’s hope they are really, really small ones.

That way I can put up one of them sticky fly ribbon thingies.

[JamesP81]

bttt

Does this mean that if I wish really really hard, dims will not only cease to exist, but will have never existed in the first place?

[GregoryFul]

funny! I read it.

[Erasmus]

Reminds me of the absurd assertion that a fleet of monkeys banging away on typewriters for eternity will reproduce the Shakespearean sonnets.

Sure, its's an intellectually delectably absurd image, but in what way would it be untrue? The point was that any random process would eventually, given infinite time, come up with every string of letters written by mankind up till now.

Only an agenda driven fool believes purpose is supplant-able with random chaos.

Sorry, but I cannot for the life of me see in this example any agenda. Maybe because I understand that it's true, and it didn't matter what 'works' were chosen to illustrate the point.

By the way, although I guess my choice of the phenomenon of flying monkeys made it sound as if I were being derisive I meant it literally, and I confess to no agenda.

< }B^)

[MHGinTN]

“... any random process would eventually, given infinite time, come up with every string of letters written by mankind up till now.” I don’t particularly agree with that assertion ... random process, even with infinite time to generate patterns, will not necessarily create the particular pattern that is the entirety of the Shakespearean Sonnets. Why? Because even random processing, over infinite time, loses randomness to fall into patterns with deadend value thus derailing the generation of continuing randomness. But the fairy tale sounds nice if you want to believe in the ‘divinity’ of randomness.

[ChessExpert]

'spooky action at a distance'. Quantum theory suggests that disturbing one particle can instantaneously determine the properties of a particle with which it is 'entangled', no matter how far away it is. This would violate the usual rule of locality: that local behaviour is governed by local events.

This is easy to demonstrate in real life. A guy walks behind an attractive girl. He stares at her, thinking there is no way she will know. But she knows! She turns around, and immediately looks at the one person who was looking at her. Clearly, particles in their brains are entangled.

[dr_lew]

You are correct, sir!

I would only add that many of the familiar properties of everyday objects are pure manifestations of the quantum. My favorite example is metal, aluminum foil to be specific. What a strange sort of cloth! Classical physics offers no explanation whatsoever of its properties, only a phenomenological description. When you look at a shiny piece of metal, you’re staring straight into the depths of the Fermi sea.

[ffusco]

Einstein was declaring that God’s creation had laws that govern it’s appearance and behavior, that reality was predictable and that observable phenomena was not random. The idea that God did not intervene in the course of events, except in the good deeds of righteous men. The scientific method used as a way to know reality is based on this assumption. You imply an unknowable, random universe.

[ChessExpert]

Reminds me of the absurd assertion that a fleet of monkeys banging away on typewriters for eternity will reproduce the Shakespearean sonnets.

An eternity is a very long time.

Some mathematicians took a look at this and concluded that the sun would die before a team of industrious monkeys, periodically replaced, would produce any of Shakespeare's plays.

[theFIRMbss]

42

[MHGinTN]

The universe would pass into cold death too ...

[Erasmus]

More like, the Sun would live and die a billion times.