User talk:OMCV/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

We can't respond!

Regarding the CF talk page, you wondered, "what CF proponents like Jed and PCarbonne will think of it." Neither of us are allowed to respond. PCarbonne has been banned for a year, and someone keeps erasing my comments.

I hope they do not track down and erase this one.

Here are some of my deleted comments:

"If you are going to discuss 'Experimental Failures' perhaps you might also mention 'Experimental Successes' and widespread replications. Just a thought.

I do not think that "Energy Comes in Bursts" is correct. It does sometimes, of course, but not always. The word "burst" is sometimes used in the literature to describe continuous high powered energy production, but it sometimes continues for long periods in stable output, so I think the term is confusing and should be avoided. "Skeptics" have sometimes asserted that bursts are always short and might be explained by endothermic chemical heat storage between bursts, but this is incorrect. Many "bursts" are far too large to be chemical, and there are no endothermic storage events. If there were, they would be even larger than the exothermic events following, because they would be shorter, and thus they would be readily observable, and also in violation of the known laws of chemistry. . . ."

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.158.255.197 (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed is free to respond if he stays on the topic of improving the page, and that forms a significant part of his response. This would be helped if he got an account so that messages for him and discussions not related to improving the article could be placed there. A {{notaforum}} tag has been added to the page and I have explained this on the IP talk page, which Jed has blanked. PCarbonne has been banned by the arbcom, a link to the case is at the top of the cold fusion talk page. Verbal chat 15:35, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I did not mean the question about PCarbonne as an insult, I didn't yet know that he had been banned. I won't pretend not to approve of the decision. I think now might be the time to make the CF something more than a battlefield. There needs to be some way to state the situation that satisfies both sides. I think the suggested outline might help with this by compartmentalizing We both want to represent the truth. I saw your response to my question before it was deleted. I think its important to remember that Wikipedia is not the place to peer-review anything. Wikipedia can't even claim to be about the truth, its about reporting verified material with as much of a NPOV as we can muster. I implore you to get an account and learn the conventions of Wikipedia so that you can participate in editing CF constructively. You might actually want to try editing some other things to learn the protocols. You must have hobbies or other things you are knowledgeable about. I've worked on the laboratory glassware, climbing equipment, and other things to get comfortable with the whole system. Good luck with everything.--OMCV (talk) 03:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

I Just wanted to thank you for the way you responded to my last post here. V (talk) 00:39, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I never got back to you but as I said before, WP isn't the place for peer-review. I pointed out that alloying is chemical bonding because it was something I knew about. The way you had stated that part of your assertion was obviously wrong; this makes me question the value of the assertions I know less about. I really have not interest in discussing your theory, hypothesis, or whatever you wish to call it any further. I think its important for you to learn what OR is and the significance of significance as explained in WP:Verify if you keep working on WP.--OMCV (talk) 03:49, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Rock climbing edits

Hey there. Do you have a source for any of your additions to the rock climbing article, or was that entirely original research / your own knowledge? Tan | 39 00:49, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll put a ref in for Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills and maybe some other books. As it was it was just wrong.--OMCV (talk) 01:48, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I totally agree. I'm a climber myself; moved out west from MI specifically to be closer to the good stuff. Thanks for throwing in a reference or two. Tan | 39 02:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Cool, at some point someone should get around to fixing Climbing styles which doesn't look good, in formating terms at the very least.--OMCV (talk) 03:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Rock climbing: Lead vs Free

Hi OMCV,

First, thanks for your numerous edits and general cleanup of the rock climbing pages. They've been needing that for a while.

I have a question about your usage of the terms "free climbing" vs "lead climbing". I was taught to believe that free climbing is the opposite of aid climbing, not a synonym for leading. I believe -- though I'd have to check to be sure -- that several climbing books reflect this usage. Before I go to the books to find out, could I ask what your sources were? I'd like to figure out whether this a regional difference, a universal ambiguity, or just a simple mistake on my part.

Thanks! -Clueless (talk) 01:54, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that "free climbing" involves placing gear solely as a precaution. In contrast in "aid climbing" gear is placed in order to advance. According the intro of chapter 11 in the 6th edition of Freedom of the Hills lead climbing is and aspect of "free climbing" and "aid climbing" but can also be an aspect of "non-technical scrambling". After all "aiding" definitely involves leading. I would say leading is an aspect of all partnered climbing except top roping. I expect that you would be able to find "free" and "leading" treated as synonyms, I'm not sure if its a regional issue or an especially prevalent misconception similar to "free climbing" vs "free soloing" or "bouldering" vs "scrabbling". Actually Freedom of the Hills might add to the problem since the chapters on "rock climbing" are 9. Rock-Climbing Technique 10. Rock Protection 11. Leading on Rock 12. Aid Climbing. Chapters 9-11 apply to "free climbing" while chapters 10-12 apply to "aid climbing". This just shows the overlap in technique between the two styles. I think it would be best if WP used terms in the same way as Freedom of the Hills, its a pretty solid reference. I didn't mean any offense with my comments am happy to help in any way possible.--OMCV (talk) 05:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I stumbled on this discussion the other day and it is now on my watch list. I am concerned that the book you use might be a US POV. I think you should take this discussion to somewhere like Talk:Climbing where you might get a more international set of viewpoints. --Bduke (Discussion) 06:18, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Good point Bduke. I'm happy to see another chemist interested in climbing jargon. However, I really don't think this is like our (Americans) inane predilection towards keeping kcal rather than moving to the more reasonable units of kJ. I'll be interested to see what if any documentation (or reports of oral tradition) there is for "free" = "lead". It should be noted that both Clueless and I are from the US so this specific situation is not yet an international affair. I'm going to move this to the rock climbing talk page since climbing seems a bit general.--OMCV (talk) 15:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

big science

I find it does not help to insult the opposition--even though your comment was certainly understandable. simply treat them as people who have not yet been enlightened, and at least try to pretend they are willing to be educated.  :) DGG (talk) 22:13, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Good point. The way WP functions at times can be frustrating; I do however appreciate the system. Thanks for the reminder.--OMCV (talk) 03:17, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Castleton Tower

Thanks. Nice place, nice photos, nice article. I'd never be able to climb it, but I'd like to sit around in the sun contemplating it. A bit chilly and dark in the wee small hours of London :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 04:07, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Misc.

Thanks for your concern, but I'm fine. :) StonerDude420 (talk) 04:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I was requesting information from you, not asking you how you are feeling. Please be kind enough to respond to the content of my message.--OMCV (talk) 04:35, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I had edited some other controversial articles without signing up, before finally deciding it was worthwhile to do that. My biggest problem here is OR not POV. V (talk) 07:52, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

What does Topic outline of Big Science need?

Hi.

In its deletion discussion, you !voted to merge Topic outline of Big Science with the article Big Science (which has also been nominated for deletion, by the way).

The Topic outline of Big Science is a member of a set of outlines that together make up Wikipedia's outline of knowledge, one of Wikipedia's contents subsystems. These outlines used to be called "Lists of basic topics".

Merging the page into an article will remove it from Wikipedia's outline of knowledge.

I'm in the process of fixing the Topic outline of Big Science, but in order to address your concerns, I need to know what your concerns are...

Why do you feel the page should be removed from Wikipedia's outline of knowledge, and what needs to be done to it in order for it to remain a part of it?

What do I need to do to fix it?

Would you mind returning to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Topic outline of Big Science and explaining your reasons? That would sure help.

Thank you.

The Transhumanist    01:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Fifty Classic Climbs

Hey, I just got my own copy of c and thought I'd pitch in on some of the articles you're creating. I made a citation template for the book: {{Fifty Classic Climbs}} -- just give it the page numbers and you're good to go. Another good source is the AAJ, since they've put all their archives online [1]. Hope to see more route articles! Cheers, Jfire (talk) 05:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That looks great. I'll have to futs with it to figure out how it works. To be honest I've never seen a copy of the Fifty Classic Climbs, I've just seen it referenced in many guide books and discussed in climbers autobiographies. I'm just using the guide books to flesh out the routes I know are on the list. You've inspired me into ordering a copy for myself. Thanks for the support.--OMCV (talk) 06:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Your template works well. In other news I went to buy a copy of Fifty Classic Climbs and cheapest I could find was 80 bucks and up on Amazon. I'm going to keep looking for a cheaper copy. I won't be adding much for a while, good luck with whatever you work on. One other thing, could you confirm the Sierra Club cover to the Fifty Classic Climbs features the Kor-Ingalls Route (Castleton Tower) so we could add the image to that page.--OMCV (talk) 03:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, out of print guidebooks can be surprisingly expensive. I've seen climbers resort to xerox bootlegging in some cases. I paid about $30 for a used paperback of FCC on Amazon. Wait a bit and see if the price comes down again. The copy I have has this cover, which is from the East Buttress of Middle Cathedral, captioned on p. 249: "Dick Long moves up the bolt ladder low on the route. Lower Cathedral Spire dominates the background." Photo credit to Allen Steck. (Incidentally, you will have to upload the covers to Wikipedia rather than Commons -- covers are accepted as fair use here but commons doesn't accept any non-free content. And fair use for book covers only applies to the article on the book itself I believe; it wouldn't be allowed on either Kor-Ingalls Route (Castleton Tower) or East Buttress (Middle Cathedral Rock).)

BTW, I believe you were correct with the Lost Arrow Spire route -- the description of the route in FCC matches up with what's now called Lost Arrow Spire Tip. I don't know if there's any other route on the spire -- perhaps we should cover both the formation and route at Lost Arrow Spire. Jfire (talk) 04:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice on the covers. I'll shift them to WP tonight. Based on the Yosemite Big Walls supertopo book it looks like the Lost Arrow Spire route was originally the Arrow Chimney which ends with the Arrow Tip but climbs the start there rather then rappelling in to get there. I don't have a book that covers this area. You have the official Fifty Classic Climbs let me know if that sounds right and redirect things as they need to be. Have a good one.--OMCV (talk) 12:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I bought Fifty Classic Climbs when it first came out in 1979. It is sitting at my feet right now as I used it to write my new article about Allen Steck. What a wonderful book for an old climber like me who has only done a handful of climbs at that level. Feel free to include me in any discussion that involves FCC or the history of alpine mountaineering, especially in California. I do also own lots of book about the Alps, the Himalaya and mountaineering in general, but have never done any serious climbing myself outside California. Jim Heaphy (talk) 02:43, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Lost Arrow Spire Chimney

Yes, the place does need to be in the main 'prose' section of the article, otherwise it means nothing to people who don't know or have never visited the place in question, and lacks context. Peter Robinson Scott (talk) 13:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm confused; the state, country, coordinates, and local area are all specified in the "info" box. Its seems that might mean something to people. Including the information in the "prose" and the "info box" seems redundant and I find it exceedingly annoying when that is done on "biography" articles. Could you link to a short article of similar content (doesn't have to be about climbing) as an example of what you think is good form.--OMCV (talk) 13:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to remove the template if you like. I just thought it'd be useful to people like me who don't do climbing and don't know where "Lost Arrow Spire Chimney" is. I'm sure you can appreciate how it could mean any number of places throughout the world! Peter Robinson Scott (talk) 13:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Spin states

Nice work! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 03:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch. I'm sure it needs work, but its a start.--OMCV (talk) 03:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ligand field theory

Hi there. I noticed your brief conversation with User:Gerloch on the LFT user page. I don't know if you know who this man is (assuming his username is not spurious), but he spent his whole career as an inorganic theoretician working with LFT and TM MO theory (type him into Google), and he knows his onions. The reason that I know who he is is because he lectured me whilst I was an undergraduate; I think it fair to say that whilst he's a very clever man, his gift was not necessarily in communicating his work to mere mortals. This is just a heads-up; see if you can get him onside, because he would undoubtedly have a lot to give, especially if filtered through those of us that speak a language that non theoreticians can understand. Chris (talk) 22:33, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

PS: Who are you? It looks like our research interests are not dissimilar. I too do a fair bit of non-aqueous electrochem, synthesis, EPR etc.

Thanks for the heads up I really appreciate it. Its funny how that sort of thing happens. You never know who you're going to run into on here. The only thing I would have done different is write the same ideas with a little more respect. I'll fix what I wrote if he hasn't responded. I hate to say it but I protect my anonymity on here for a few reasons because, a) I'm likely to sound off to a senior chemists without realizing it. b) I don't have tenure. c) I'll make an idiot myself by debating with idiots on stuff like cold fusion and water fuel cells. d) I don't want the cranks I've argued with on cold fusion and water fuel cells knowing who I am. e) I will edit things I would want attached to my name professionally.--OMCV (talk) 01:34, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Electrolysis

I was inspired by your contribution on the talk page of electrolysis of water to add "Electrolysis of aqueous solutions" to the electrolysis article- as your write up was the only explanation in wikipedia for what is one of the most common questions by students. I hope you can improve my effort. Regards --Axiosaurus (talk) 09:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks good but it seems like it might need a different name to distinguish it from the next section. I'll think about it and see if I have anything to add to the section when I have some time.--OMCV (talk) 12:59, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me know if you think the new titles all right. I'm so glad my post got read and inspired something of value, nice work. I made a few other minor changes and I think it looks good. The whole electrolysis is going to need a once over one of these days to clean it up.--OMCV (talk) 03:35, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Electrocatalyst

Can you add an ISBN for that book?

--  Chzz  ►  01:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me know if it looks right now and I'll propagate the reference to other articles that include the bard and faulkner reference.--OMCV (talk) 01:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I've improved on the ref, hopefully.

--  Chzz  ►  01:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks as I go to related pages I'll update the reference.--OMCV (talk) 01:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I've just had a go at improving the article - I am in no way knowledgable about the topic, so I hope you won't be offended - WP:BOLD and all that.

Your new article piqued my curiosity, so I did some readong around the subject. I wanted to make the article a bit clearer to the layman, but I've tried to keep everything you'd writte - just somewhat re-ordered.

I know that, at the moment, the section on ethanol is a bit out on its own, instead of the section you had on 'applications', but hydrogen cells were quite well covered in the rest...anyway, of course it can be expanded.

The only bit I did remove was this;

Each half-cell of an electrochemical cell requires an electrocatalys specific to its half-reaction.

because I couldn't decide where it should fit - I don't really understand it, to be honest.

I won't be at all offended if you revert some or all of my changes - I just hope it gives some dieas for how to improve the article. There's a couple more refs in there that I found useful myself.

Cheers,

--  Chzz  ►  03:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It looked pretty good overall but I ended up changing a lot of it to make sure the language and concept weren't fudged. Specifically the information based off the quick time is questionable, its the same way I would describe electrocatalyst in casual conversation; but the clip also uses various terms too casually for our purposes. The distinction between combustion and electrochemical (redox) reactions needs to be more clearly delineated in an encyclopedia. I tried to do that without making it to complex or long. You did a good job showing where I made things too complex and jagoney before, take a look at it now and see if you can't help it some more in its current form. Thanks for finding all the great references.--OMCV (talk) 05:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite pleased; I think it's been a really good team effort. I will certainly look at it again when I get the chance - maybe try to simplify a bit without detracting, always a very tricky balance. But it's certainly better for our combined editing.

You'll notice I found us a pretty picture. I emailed the lab for permission. Hope you approve.

Cheers, --  Chzz  ►  04:36, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm glad it worked out and the picture is great.--OMCV (talk) 03:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

cold fusion paper

Ooooh, I want to see the offending paper too :) E-mail me a copy, please, I've been arguing with Abd about it, so I'm interested on it. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

E-mail me something through Wikipedia and I'll reply with a non-standard e-mail address.--OMCV (talk) 22:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I got a copy, too, thanks. Enric, don't you think it would have been a little safer to argue after seeing the paper? Ah, well, no accounting for taste.--Abd (talk) 20:20, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Cold fusion mediation

I have been asked to mediate the content dispute regarding Cold fusion. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. You have been identified as one of the involved parties. Please read through the material I have presented there. Thank you. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Response

I've responded to your latest comment. Thanks. Alfonzo Green (talk) 19:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Dude

Please don't edit the article. You don't understand quantum mechanics well enough. I am sorry for violating Wikipedia rules (I honestly didn't notice), but if you get rid of the text, you will be doing the encyclopedia a disservice. This article was in a shambles before I wrote that text, with warring editors on both sides. It was a good compromise, and it is well cited. Please read the sources I gave you, and learn about quantum mechanics.Likebox (talk) 05:17, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, I am sure you are acting in good faith, and I am sorry for reverting you. I only did it so as to get you to respond. Sometimes people won't respond if the text of tha article is unchanged. I don't mind if you keep reverting, but please don't get too pissed off. I was not acting in bad faith--- I sincerely want to compromise. Your text wasn't awful, and I might have some irrational attachement to the previous text, because it was a war to get it in in the first place.

That article was a bitch to write and a bitch to source, and each section has different sources. The mind/body in classical mechanics was sourced from the philosophy literature (following Dennett and Hofstadter), while the physics stuff was sourced from a collection of texts starting with Wigner and including a little bit of the Cini text on Quantum Mechanics without collapse. It is difficult because all physicists are aware of the issue with measurements, but they don't necessarily see it as mystical.Likebox (talk) 05:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi again--- it isn't a personal attack to say that your QM is not strong--- you can learn it perfectly well. I am just asking you to please read the sources and learn more about QM before getting heavy into editing this article, because these issues are subtle. It was hard to write this in a way that is comprehensible, and I fear that by making the philosophy murkier, you make the article harder to understand.

If you have in mind a point of view that QM is just classical mechanics with probability thrown in, then it is a little silly to call that mystical. But that's not what QM is. QM describes nature by a wavefunction. That means that the notion of "probability" is modified to "probability amplitude", which is a new concept without prior precedent. But we still experience the world as classical, plus classical probability, we never see probability amplitudes. Many physicists then make an appeal to the nature of consciousness to explain why that is--- and some people view that as mysticism.Likebox (talk) 21:50, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

About "Citing a whole book" please look at it: the book contains a lot of articles that discuss thought experiments like the copying of an observer. The articles are very long-winded, because they are written to convince a skeptic, but you can just skim them (although they are pleasant to read). The original article is (I think--- I haven't read this in years) "where am I" by Dennett, and "Who am I?" (a sequel). I think they are both reprinted there, with extra commentary. The many-worlds article by Hofstadter is reprinted in "Metamagical Themas" (I am pretty sure). I didn't cite a particular page, because the thought experiment I wrote about is a very condensed summary of "Where am I". That is written as a fable about someone whose consciousness is copied into circuits (if my memory serves me right). I really don't mind if you change stuff here, but please read this literature first. Dennett is a very non-mystical philosopher of consciousness.Likebox (talk) 22:07, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Ghoulas and Where Am I

I don't think "Ghoulas" are at all a good example. The mind is "Where Am I" is disembodied, and copied into something else. The discussion in "Who Am I" considers the case where there is a "backup" or a "copy" of the electronic data, which then separates from the original, giving rise to two consciousnesses. The whole thing is very difficult to imagine, it has nothing to do with genetic cloning, it has to be a complete functional replica of the brain.

This mind/body business is old, but the points of view expressed by Dennett/Hofstadter were new in the 1980s. They were not completely new, though, since they implicitly occur in Everett's work.Likebox (talk) 17:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Your description of the Dennett's work on the quantum mysticism page sounds very much like Ghoulas. The ghoulas is a copy which does not contain the original's stream of consciousness or memories but can be imbued with the consciousness and memories of the original by making the ghoulas do something which fundamentally violates the original's character. Its not very hard to concept to imagine and that why the concept was included in a popular sci-fi book. If you want something similar Dennett's actual writing look to William Gibson whose fiction involves downloading consciousness such as in The Winter Market which was also included in popular sci-fi book because it was easy to understand. Its also a lot like The Lawnmower Man the movie or Ghost in the Shell which are also an easy ideas. But we need two consciousnesses to get really close so perhaps a better analog would be Max Headroom still an easy idea ripe for a mass market.--OMCV (talk) 03:46, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You seem to know a lot of examples: is there an example of the idea of duplicating or copying consciousness before 1957-1962 in either philosophy of sci-fi? This is when the idea arose in quantum mechanics.Likebox (talk) 05:28, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

That was what I could think of off the top of my head. After looking around for early stuff related to Mind uploading and Artificial brain I found:

• Clarke, Arthur C. (1956). City and the Stars, The. Spectra. ISBN 0553288539.
• Neumann, John Von (2000). The computer and the brain. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300084730, 9780300084733. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) which was also prepared in 1956 and first published in 1958.

The idea of copying a brain to a computer required the development of computers which happened to be coincidental with the development of quantum mechanics. Ideas like Isolated brain and Brain in a vat have been around a lot longer since computers were not required. Dennett's ideas are not directed at quantum mechanics or classical mechanics, my reading of his "Reflections" at the end of "Where Am I?" makes me believe he was just working out the importance or unimportance of philosophical ideas like Demonic deceivers and "Hilary Putnam's famous "Twin Earth" thought experiment" as well as our potnetial future relationship to more realistic technology. If you wanted to present an authentic "theory/philopshy of mind" derived from a classical perspective (still informed by quantum mechanics) you could talk about Eliminative materialism or perhaps modern neuroscience would be an even better perspective to present. The fact that neuroscience doesn't concern itself with thought experiences like you have described makes your addition more disturbing even before considering the synth.--OMCV (talk) 16:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the example of copying consciousnesses in two is not the exact focus of Dennett's article, he is more concerned with old philosophical questions. But he does mention copying consciousness in the article, which means that the idea is not original. Ideas go through stages:

1. Original--- only one person knows it
2. Not original--- One person publishes, thousands know it.
3. Popularized--- Many published, significant percentage knows it.
4. Common knowledge--- Everybody knows.

This idea is somewhere between stage 2 and stage 3. It's not my own idea. Remember that "Synth" and "OR" are policies for when someone tries to insert their own original kooky ideas into the encyclopedia.

I think what you are identifying isn't "Synth", it's "ignorance" and "imprecise language". I don't know what the term "eliminative materialism" means (I can guess), and I am averse to using jargonny terms for something as obvious as determinism. What you were reacting to, I think, is the identification of philosophical schools with scientific theories like Newtonian mechanics. That's not synth, that's insufficiently nuanced language.

Anyway, I am sure we'll work something out here. I am curious about the copying of brains. None of the examples you give work out the following thought experiment:

1. Make an AI
2. Copy the data into two identical AI's
3. Diverge the copies by presenting a different experience

This thought experiment is important for the following reasons:

1. Everything is deterministic from the outside
2. If you are the unfortunate consciousness inside, there is no way of knowing which way your consciousness will go.
3. If you were forced to assign probability of going one way or the other, it would seem to be 50% for symmetry reasons.

So a completely deterministic system, with conscious observers, can be probablistic from the inside in the case that the observers get copied. This is the idea which Everett presented in 1957, to explain why quantum mechanics is random. Notice that this is objective randomness, but it requires a lot of copying.

I think that this idea was new in 1957. I think it never appeared anywhere in the philosophy literature, despite 300 years of brains-in-vats and three decades of Computer consciousness. Then, all of a sudden, it appears in philosophy in this Dennett paper (although without the emphasis on probablities that is in Everett). So I think it is important to mention in an article devoted to the nature of mind in quantum mechanics.Likebox (talk) 18:59, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I've been very clear that in my opinion the "thought experiment" you presented goes beyond adaptation of Dennett's work (or anyone else's) to the point that it precludes attribution. I think you would even agree with this. Yet if it can't be attributed than its OR, especially if its "complex" stuff that only those with advanced knowledge should be editing. This is not the place to present what you think is your brilliant idea. There are many outlets for self publication, but Wikipedia is not one of them.

Such OR violates Wikipedia policy for good reasons. For example this OR is designed to push a POV that isn't NPOV, even if you claim its only in the efforts to illustrate ideas. Remember thought experiments are seated in specific contexts that must be agreed upon by individuals who participate in the experiment. Since thought experiments are context specific "in-universes content" for the sack of encyclopedia they can not be treated as "truth" must be attributed. In other words to debate How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? the debaters must take the concept of angles seriously and thus the debate it self must be reported from their perspective. This brings me to another point, thought experiments are rarely (if ever) interpreted in only two ways. Limiting your invented scenario to two outcomes is just short sighted and painful to read.

Displaying ownership of such OR is a problem that could eventually put your ability to edit at risk. I have a taste for fringe subjects and will working on such pages its not uncommon for editors which push the constraints of policy to be disciplined. Luckily I, personally, have not had to initiate anything to do with administrative issues but I will be following the guide lines of wp:dispute resolution until this situation is resolved.--OMCV (talk) 02:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

You have to use your judgement about OR. I am 100% sure that this idea is not original, because Dennett's article includes an effectively identical example--- Hubert/Yorick. I follow this guidelines regarding OR: if the idea won't get past peer review in a peer review journal because it's not original, then it's not OR. The reference that the referee would give as a previous precedent would then be the source you cite.

Your interpretation of OR precludes rough paraphrase, or parallel construction, and would make the encyclopedia useless. Remember that the guidelines are designed to make the encyclopedia work better. In this case, the example is not presented to tilt the article toward a certain POV, it is presented because it is a nifty example of the kind of ideas that came out of the meeting of quantum mechanics and philosophy of mind.Likebox (talk) 07:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

This is insane. The point of peer reviewed journals is to present OR the point of encyclopedia is to present well established material in a well attributed way. In terms of what constitutes original research let me quote from Wikipedia:No original research.

"Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. Editors should not make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article to reach conclusion C. This would be a synthesis of published material that advances a new position, and that constitutes original research. "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument in relation to the topic of the article.

You can't paraphrase something as original as Dennett's work to the point that you can't attribute it to Dennett.

1. Dennett never said that consciousness resided in only one of his copies, he never even suggested it.
2. In fact he points out that they are both fully conscious without ever considering that consciousness might stream only one way.
3. Right now the hypothetical reads as if full copies are being made and not two copies of physical minds tied to the same body.
4. Furthermore its a major omission to ignore that the minds are made up of vastly different material one an uploaded mind and the other a Brain in a vat.
5. Dennett never said the two copies differed by only one bit, that claim is based on an unusual interpretation of the "switch".

I'll leave it at that for now.--OMCV (talk) 12:36, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

If it would be rejected by a peer review journal as not original, then it would be appropriate for Wikipedia.

1. Neither did I. I said that each one only goes one way. Neither one feels to be "Yorick" and "Hubert" at the same time. Each one is either "Yorick" or "Hubert"
2. That's absolutely right. That's EXACTLY WHAT I SAY.
3. What difference does it make?
4. No it isn't.
5. He claimed they are different only in the position of the switch.

(deindent)　I think that we are fighting needlessly here, I think this argument is due to miscommunication. It is easy to restate everything in the article in Hubert/Yorick language, using Dennett's language exactly, and nothing would change. But it is written this way because there is a second earlier source for the copying minds business, the 1957 Everett thesis on the many-worlds interpretation and his transcript of his 1962 lecture on the same subject (which I only saw people cite). Those also discuss copying observers and then "splitting" their experience from a common starting point, like Hubert/Yorick after the glitch. This is interpreted as leading to the subjective experience of quantum randomness. Since this hinges oon the Hubert/Yorick thing, it requires a materialistic philosophy of mind.

The point of this section is to compare the standard notions of philosophy of mind in classical/Newtonian philosophy, where the world is a big computer, with the mind in quantum mechanics where the universe is not a computer.Likebox (talk) 17:09, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

What's your beef?

I think I understand: you don't like "the bit" because you don't like the statement that this is "mystical seeming" mind information, not physical information. The article is very careful: it just gives that single bit of mysticism (and it attributes it. You might not call it mysticism. It certainly isn't spoon bending).

If you are Yorick/Hubert, and you were in pain, and I told you I was about to administer codein in vitro to Yorick but do nothing to Hubert (causing a divergence), you could ask yourself "Hmm... am I going to feel better soon?" You could know all the positions of all the atoms in all the world, and you still won't know the answer to this particular question. That's the only point which I am making, a point made explicitly in Dennett's article.Likebox (talk) 21:55, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Stop Harassing

If there is clear consensus that you are right, I'll go along. Until then, I'll fight and fight. Don't construe it as a personal attack--- I just believe this material is valuable.Likebox (talk) 02:50, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Also, don't get jumpy. There's plenty of time and everyone can say what they have to say, then people will make up their mind. We haven't gotten a definitive third opinion yet, and I actually am still trying to convince you that it's ok, and if you don't get upset maybe eventually you'll come to agree. The essential point is to understand that the example is exactly what people call mystical in Quantum Mechanics.Likebox (talk) 02:59, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Please don't presume my point of view. This isn't a matter of personal attacks. After your first couple personal comment I've ignored them and focused on content. This is a matter of properly citing and attributing material, efforts to protect Synth, and edit waring. The Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts has been involved because a resolution should have been reached long ago if all parties behaved reasonably. Recently the discussion has been going in circles. Consider this an opportunity to express your side of the story to a larger audience.--OMCV (talk) 03:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not interested in arguing about Wiki etiquette, and if consensus is that this is synth, I'll (begrudgingly) grit my teeth and go along with it (but I'll try a lot of things first).

But I'll try to explain to you why it isn't synth. I never actually made the synth in question, the one that's making you so upset, in the article. I said it in the talk page, but not quite in the article. The article tries to present neutral sourced stuff. The article is provocatively written, but it doesn't reach conclusions. The reader is allowed to reach their own conclusions. I just presented reasonably well sourced material on mind/body literature, non-quantum and quantum.Likebox (talk) 03:17, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Please read Wigner/Everett before editing

If you are going to edit the quantum part, please read and understand the literature that it is based on. That is Everett's 1957 paper, Wigner's 1961 paper, and there is also an interesting Everett 1962 lecture. These papers are classics in the field, and you have absolutely no familiarity with them. I have not read up on U.S. constitutional law, so I would not presume to edit commerce clause. You have you read about the relevant quantum mechanics issue, why do you feel that you can edit the text willy-nilly?Likebox (talk) 12:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This is very entertaining for you to remind someone one to be familiar with sources.[2] As I have said I find the way Wigner describes the classical approach very fairly and I would not mind seeing a paraphrasing of it as the primary content of the "Classical Mind/Body problems" section. I even find the Everett's paper more than reasonable with its respectful use of qualifiers like "framework", "formal theory", and "metatheory". Ultimately the "probabalistic interpretation" is alive and well in quantum mechanics as are many others and thus any "framework" including the "probabalistic interpretation" must be identified as one of many interpretations. There is no undisputed conception of quantum mechanics. Presenting quantum mechanics as a decided science especially if the presentation is decided towards Wigner and Everett is a completely unacceptable approach. This must be entered into the text of the article and if its done correctly it shouldn't be too cumbersome.--OMCV (talk) 00:01, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Respectfully, I have to say, and please don't take this as an insult, that a probabalistic interpretation of quantum mechanics does not exist. It is something you made up, or someone else made up and you are repeating it. This was my original objection to your edits, and the reason I keep on arguing with you.

The only interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the probabilities in the wavefunction are genuine statistical probabilities familiar from statistics is Bohm's interpretation. If you mean "Bohm's interpretation" when you say "the statistical interpretation", please say so. There is no other accepted probabilistic interpretation. It is just plain incorrect to intepret quantum mechanics as classical mechanics plus uncertainty.

Actually I took "probabalistic interpretation" from (Hugh Evertt, III (1957-07). ""Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Mechanics". Review of Modern Physics. 29 (3): 454–462. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.29.454. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)). I realize the terms describing the interpretations has changed and been codified since 1957, thanks for correcting. What I meant, and I think what Everrtt's meaning would now translate into, is treating the QM as a mathematical formalism. This use of language is hardly the source of our original conflict.--OMCV (talk) 03:49, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I am familiar with that article. What he calls the "probabilistic interpretation" is what is called nowadays the "Copenhagen interpretation". What you seemed to be calling the "probabilistic interpretation" was the idea that "the uncertainty principle adds a layer of probablity or uncertainty to the structure of the world, but that it is all deterministic underneath, we just don't know certain information". This is what is incorrect. The uncertainty principle does add uncertainty to position/momentum, but there is no way to imagine that they are secretly determined underneath it all, we just can't know them.Likebox (talk) 04:10, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

While I agree that there uncertainty principle represents a property of matter as demonstrated by the Bose–Einstein condensate the temporal evolution of wave functions is deterministic as demonstrated by the experiments related to the Bose–Einstein condensate. My reading of this is that reality is made of waveforms which have position and velocity characters which vary inversely to each other but the whole system evolves in a deterministic way. The determinism isn't based in position and velocity but rather the evolution of the waveform as demonstrated by the Bose–Einstein condensate experiments. Furthermore as an experimentalist I will no sooner accept Schrödinger's cat as evidence of realities nature any sooner than I accept "a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it" as evidence of realities nature. I would be interested to know what school of thought most closely aligns with these views.--OMCV (talk) 04:26, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I am sorry: that sounded like a personal attack. I don't mean it that way. I am sure you have great stuff to contribute to the page. But the issue that "quantum mechanical treatment of measurement is mystical" is discussed ten thousand times in the literature, by different people in different ways. This page is so far only a sampler, written with the lowest-common-denominator of ideas, the ones that pretty much everyone agrees on.

Choosing how to phrase something like "quantum mysticism" in a lowest-common-denominator way is hard. If you believe in Copenhagen, you can say "because measurement is not described by quantum mechanics", but that leaves out many-worlds/decoherence. In many-worlds you say "because the observer's mind keeps splitting". In decoherence you say "because a consistent history is always defined backwards using future knowledge gained from observations". But it's always the same extra data: the outcome of measurements. These are not part of the theory, but are extra information tacked on to the theory as the observer discovers them via measurements.

In Bohmian interpretations, where there are hidden variables, there is no mysticism at all. Quantum mechanics is just the same as statistical mechanics. But in Bohmian interpretations there's the extra "particle positions" which determine the results of all future measurements, and are unobservable otherwise. So this type of interpretation turns the extra information into honest extra variables which are uncertain, and postulates a dynamics on this hidden information. This type of interpretation is currently not popular, because it doesn't describe physics locally.

This extra information is just called "The results of measurements" in Copenhagen, it is called the "observer specification" in many worlds, and it is called the "consistent history" in decoherence. It's all the same data.

If you don't want to read the original literature on this stuff, I can tell you whats the main ideas. But it would be time consuming, and I would probably explain it much much worse than the classic papers.

The page could use a lot more stuff, in my opinion. It could use more Copenhagen interpretation, but this means you have to treat it carefully, because there are a bazillion different Copenhagens out there. There's Bohr's version of Copenhagen, which has no unified source (you need to read his scattered papers, which I haven't done) which views quantum mechanics as a theory of knowledge about the world, and separates classical and quantum realms. There's the so-called "ensemble Copenhagen" which denies that QM describes reality at all. There's the "shut up and calculate" Copenhagen, which does not admit philosophical questions as valid. The lowest common denominator is only that the results of measurements are not part of the theory, but are extra data.

Also please forgive my blunt way of speaking. I am not used to politeness.Likebox (talk) 19:59, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

We can work from here. I understand you have been at Wikipedia but I don't know the breadth of material you have worked on. An important things to learn is that Wikipedia is not a textbook WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. We don't present material as a cute story that has been fudged down to the lowest common denominator in hopes that high school student and undergraduates will read the material. Wikipedia is a reference encyclopedia. That means we are explicit what material presented and how its attributed. There's no boiling material down to what people should be getting out of it. Now if there is a relevant textbook or review article we're are more than welcome to provide its summation with proper attribution.

What you just wrote above would be a better way to present material in the text (once it includes references) than what is presented now. Its a complex subject and we can't use language that makes it seem overly simple. From my perspective the nature/role of uncertainty, the nature/role of the observer, and nature/role of determinism are among the most contended subjects between the different interpretations of quantum mechanics especially as QM relates to quantum mysticism. The article needs to be careful to state and reference which interpretation the text is using when ever the text invokes uncertainty, the observer, determinism and even the nature of wave functions. For example in quantum mysticism single appearance in the NYTimes there is the comment "Many physicists today say the waves that symbolize quantum possibilities are so fragile they collapse with the slightest encounter with their environment." (Overbye, Dennis (2006-03-14). "Far Out, Man. But Is It Quantum Physics?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2009-08-27.) You can debate that and say "what environment everything is wave functions." and logically you would be right but it doesn't change the fact many physicists to see wave functions as symbolic. Anytime you discuss wave functions it must include both the idea that they are considered real and that they are considered symbolic. That's enough for the moment.--OMCV (talk) 23:41, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

The "fragility" the NYT article is talking about is called "decoherence", and what it means is that you can't measure phases in the wavefunction when there are many particles moving around randomly in the environment. It does not mean that the wavefunction actually "collapses". According to the rules of quantum mechanics, wavefunctions never collapse except for during an observation. That's the mystical part.

The reason I slightly disagree with you is because there are sort of three classes of interpretations:

1. Copenhagen/Many-worlds/Consciousness-causes-collapse/Decoherence-Consistent-Histories --- these are standard
2. Bohmian (stochastic) --- this is unpopular because it is nonlocal and adds unobservable data
3. Instrumentalist/Shut-up-and-calculate --- no philosophical questions allowed

Class 3 is not mystical, but is also not-not mystical, because it doesn't do philsophy. So class 3 is irrelevant. In class 1, quantum mechanics is considered complete, in class 2, quantum mechanics is considered as a statistical description of something else. Class 2 is not mystical, but class 2 has other problems.

The explanation in the article is designed to summarize what is considered mystical in all the class 1 interpretations. It's always the same thing. Wavefunctions do not collapse without observers, and it seems that this is a dualistic mystical component of physical law.Likebox (talk) 02:29, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

What I meant by "disagree" is only that it is possible to kill many birds with only two stones. There are only two cases to deal with, class 2 interpretations a-la Bohm/DeBroglie/Einstein, and class 1 interpretations a-la Bohr/Everett/Wigner/Gell-Mann/Hartle/Hawking. All the class 1 interpretations are mystical in the exact same way, and all the class 2 interpretations are non-mystical, but not standard.Likebox (talk) 02:36, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

You don't find presenting from the perspective of Class 1 to be dishonest when much of science (if not most of it) operates under Class 3 assumptions.--OMCV (talk) 04:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Class 3 is a minority position, within physics and without. Science does not usually operate within class 3 assumptions. If you say that, you don't realize how restrictive class 3 theories are.

For example, in chemistry, "class 3 atomic theory" would say that water behaves as if it were made of hydrogen and oxygen under electrolysis, but that does not mean that there is "really" a hydrogen and oxygen atom inside there. It just means that for the purpose of the electrolysis experiment water behaves in this manner. But that leaves out, of course, that water also behaves this way under nuclear resonance experiments. In a class 3 description, you would end up saying "Well, whaddayaknow! Water also behaves like oxygen and hydrogen in this experiment too"

The answer in chemistry, and in biology, and in classical physics is that class 3 assumptions are overly restrictive, and we can make the class2/class1 assumption that "water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen" without reservation in all circumstances, because that's the way it really is underneath it all. This assumption is almost universal within physics. People in physics usually have the hubris to think that what they give the best-possible description of a system, where everything that can be known about the system is known, then they are describing the system as it really is.

Quantum mechanics, in the Copenhagen interpretation, leads to a separation between "best possible description" and "a description of reality". Bohr is explicit about this (and Heisenberg, and a majority of physicists for 70 years), he explicitly believed that the quantum wavefunction is the best possible description of a system. There is just no more that can be known about it, period. That's not a tepid class 3 assumption, where you say, "gosh this system seems to be described by a wavefunction", that's a strong class 1 assumption: the quantum state is a complete description, like the classical position and momentum.

But then you have the problem that this so-called complete description fails to predict with certainty the outcome of all experiments, even though it is the best possible description. There are two different ways to reconcile yourself to that:

1. OK, that's how it is. We have full information, but still the world is unpredictable.
2. No good. There must be more information in the system that's hard to extract. The wavefunction, despite appearances, is not the best-possible description of the system.

These two approaches define class 1 interpretations, and class 2. In class 1 interpretations, you have the wavefunction is a best-possible description, and class 2 says, no, there's more hidden information.

Within all class 1 information, there is the problem of observation. If an observing device is treated as a quantum mechanical system, then the best possible description of the measuring device is as a superposition of classically different states. The information about which classically different state is "actually" realized is not in the wavefunction, but is extra data. This extra data is not described by the theory, because the theory does not have any more data than the wavefunction.

Where does this extra data come from? Copenhagen says "It comes from the fundamental difference between the large macro-world and the small micro-world. The large world is classical, the small world is quantum. Quantum mechanics does not describe people or devices, it only works for atoms. This is complementarity. Get used to it." Many-worlds/CCC says it comes from the superposition of observer states, that the observer's mind cannot be superposed, it "splits" instead, like Hubert/Yorick after the glitch. Either way, there is something mystical going on: either the big world is not described by quantum physics, which is weird and dualistic, or else the laws of consciousness add extra information to the "best possible" description that the theory provides, information which tells you whether you are Hubert or Yorick, but again and again, millions of times a second.

In class 2, the extra data is part of the theory. You might think that class 2 is common sense, but it's not. The reason is that the extra data introduced in Bohmian interpretations is pretty much unobservable, and only serves to turn probability amplitudes into statistical probabilities for different outcomes during measurement. It's like you shoved all the data describing reality into a bunch of random unobservable variables.

So the vast majority of physicists belong to class 1. A significant minority (incuding Einstein) are class 2. Very, very few are class 3.Likebox (talk) 04:47, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Your understanding of the philosophy of science is bizarre at best. Science is not dedicated to explain the "big" picture, meaning of life/reality, or undertaking a top down approach (with the exception of some theoretical physicists). The vast majority of scientists assume that they use models to describe empirical observations. They don't believe their models are the "truth" and thus they keep studying and trying to refine their models.

The intersection of quantum mechanics and chemistry is a great example of this continued effort. So far the physicists have not been able to solve anything more complex than a hydrogen like atom. These solution have been extrapolated to systems involving more than one electron to make approximate calculations through computational chemistry. As it stands computational chemistry has been a bit of a disappointment since it has a hard enough time getting the right answer even when it knows the answer from empirical results.

As a chemist I assume something called "water" exists but I also assume I only have a model of water's true nature. Actually chemists have many models for water some times they use molecular orbital theory sometimes its more appropriate to consider bonds in water Newtonian oscillators (Molecular vibration), at other times we just look at water as nothing more than a bulk dielectric or liquid with a specific density. Most scientists are not waiting for theoretical physicist to come to their rescue (we have already briefly discussed emergence implications on reductionism and I don't think we disagree here). Actually most of science doesn't expect very much form physics and thats why we spend the vast majority of our research budget on biology (0.75$ of every dollar in the US) since even starting from a basic approach biology yield more significant tangible results.

I would say outside of theoretical physics most of science considers quantum mechanics to provide a model to explain experimental results but doesn't believe its the truth. This also brings us to the importance of empirical observation/experiments vs thought experiments. Most of scientists place a great deal of importance on empirical observation/experiments and very little importance on thought experiments which are considered tools to test the boundaries of theoretical frameworks. Flipping the importance of these ideas is common for the lay person.--OMCV (talk) 17:38, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... this might be a question of different communities have different standards. But I really do believe that physicists, when they describe a molecule by a wavefunction, believe that it is the best-possible description. That's not exactly the same thing as saying you have a description of its "true nature" (whatever that means), but it's close.

The point is that if the wavefunction is the best-possible description of the world, it most certainly not the best possible description of my experience, because even if I had a description of the whole world's wavefunction three days ago, and a good computer, I wouldn't be able to say what I had for lunch yesterday! So the so-called "best-possible" description of matter is less good than my own best-possible description of my own history. That sounds like mysticism to many people. The data associated with my observations is better than the so-called best possible description of the material universe of which I am made.

In chemistry, very little of this comes up. The approximations chemists use of core electrons and outer electrons, and a little bit of orbital hand-waving plus phenomenological potentials is sufficient for most of their purposes. But I am sure that nobody doubts that a quantum mechanical description of atoms would be essentially exact (ignoring small relativistic effects and nuclear size).Likebox (talk) 03:49, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

As it happens the so called "best-possible solution" is completely useless for many chemistry problems and we need to use other models that give better approximation. You're right quantum mechanics is likely our most exact description of an atom but as it stands no one can solve a quantum mechanic description for a multi-electron system without making gross approximations. Chemist and other scientist treat most of their theoretical models and frameworks the same. There is no reason to attribute more exactness to an inaccessible quantum mechanical description than the kinetic theory of gas. They are both models with known flaws it just that the kinetic theory is vastly more useful (and accessible) than the quantum mechanical descriptions in a lot of situations. You are right its different standards. For example string theorist are an embarrassment for many physicists I talk to and I certainly wouldn't call them serious scientist. The importance of falsifiability of theories is lost on some theoretical physicists.--OMCV (talk) 11:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, you are saying something definite here, but something that should lead you to avoid editing something called "quantum mysticism". You are saying that quantum mechanics is one type of approximate description, kinetic theory another type, and neither can call itself closer to the true nature of the objects. That's fair, but if you take that point of view, none of these theories has anything to say about the true nature of the material universe, which will be mysterious forever. Then you shouldn't introduce your point of view into "quantum mysticism", because this article is about the philosophical nature of the world as it is suggested by taking quantum mechanics seriously as a true description of nature.

Most physicists believe that quantum mechanics is what is "really going on" underneath it all, that it is very close to what nature is on a fundamental level. Those who take a class 2 interpretation say there's something else going on underneath quantum mechanics, because they philosophically can't bear to think that quantum mechanics is everything.

You can easily redefine the kinetic theory as an approximation technique for a particular quantum mechanical system, since quantum mechanics reproduces classical mechanics with appropriate approximations. Also, the statement "no-one can solve ... for multi-electron...without gross approximations" is incorrect for Helium, where you can solve the ground state and lowest excited states using paper and pencil without major approximations. We could probably do the same for Lithium, but nobody has done it for heavier atoms.

But that's like saying, "it's hopeless to know that there are atoms bouncing around, because we could never solve for the behavior of so many atoms!" It's true, but irrelevant. The nature of many experiments are explained by atoms bouncing around.

As for string theory, its proponents are the best physicists in both stature and skill, while most of its opponents are the least capable and most ignorant. That doesn't mean its correct of course. The reason it is most likely correct is the same reason General Relativity turned out to be right: we humans actually are capable of making theoretical progress in the absence of experimental data.Likebox (talk) 19:06, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

What makes you think that you can pronounce who can edit what? That's a wholly inappropriate comment. I'm not offended but it makes it hard to take you seriously and you will not last on Wikipedia if you approach conversations this way. As you may note I've taken a greater issue with how classical mechanics is approached in the offending article and one or two places where the many worlds interpretation is presented as the primary interpretation of quantum mechanics. At the moment I mostly care about a bit of OR that has nothing to do with my feeling on quantum mysticism or quantum mechanics.

Let me know when you can solve the QM states for heavier atoms and molecules we can probably line up at least one noble prize for you. You may be right that helium is an exception that is easy to solve but I know dihydrogen is a test case for computation chemistry programs and hydrogen like atoms says "The Schrödinger equation of atoms or atomic ions with more than one electron has not been solved analytically, because of the computational difficulty imposed by the Coulomb interaction between the electrons."

I never said anything is hopeless I would say that computational approaches usually take more time and effort than empirical experimentation only to yield less reliable results. The more computational chemistry that has been produced the lower the chemistry community's expectation have become for computational chemistry. I should have figured you would be enamored with string theory. I will admit General Relativity is impressive but one of its greatest features was that it was presented in a form that could be experimentally verified.--OMCV (talk) 02:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The "classical" stuff is mostly about the "ordinary" mind body problem, and the world "classical" should probably be read as "ordinary". The emphasis on many-worlds is because the "mystical" nature of the extra information has an exact classical parallel in many-worlds, namely Hubert/Yorick. In other interpretations, the extra information is just postulated to come from nowhere. Many-worlds gives a reason why it just comes from nowhere.

In my opinion, since I find most philosophical questions to be only playing with definitions, the Copenhagen interpretation, the Many-worlds intepretation, the Decoherent Consistent Histories, and the Consciousness Causes Collapse interpretation are identical interpretations. But even if you don't agree that they are identical, you can still agree that they share the same property of having extra data associated with the observer. This is what people in science call "quantum mysticism".

All I meant by the comment "Why edit the article?" is that I don't think that the point of view you want to include is necessary. It would only distract someone interested in the material. It would be like putting in a solipsist position in the article on sociology. Yes, to a solipsist all sociology is nonsense, but that's not particularly important or illuminating information to someone who wants to know what sociology is about.

About the science comments: you bring up an interesting point. Is it possible to solve for the atomic structure of atoms today? The first attempts were made in the 1930's, when computational power was essentially zero. I disagree about the significance of this project. Even if you were to solve it, you would not get a nobel prize. It would probably reveal no new physics or new chemistry.

About "analytically", it is probably impossible to solve these problems analytically, because the class of analytically solvable problems is a very special class. There are paper-pencil methods which are based on successive approximations (that's not a strike against them--- everything involving real numbers is defined by successive approximations, including the real numbers themselves), that certainly work for Helium. This is the "variational principle", and it is easy for di-hydrogen too. That means that you guess a functional form for the ground state, then change the parameters in your guess to minimize the energy. At the end, if you have guessed well, you are near the lowest energy state, which is the ground state of Helium. I have a feeling that the ground state energy of Helium is now known to about .01% accuracy by this method, and the ground state wavefunction to about 1%. It might be much better than that.

I would guess that the same method, if automated with a good collection of test functions, could solve the wavefunction for up to about 10 electrons to 1% accuracy by computational algebra. The reason I say about ten electrons is because beyond that point you are in such a large number of dimensions, and the effort grows exponentially.

But you could probably solve for a full shell of eight electrons, which might allow you to bootstrap to higher atoms by some version of Hartree-Fock approximation. But since you want an exact description, you would need to find a systematic expansion where you include entanglement order by order. That might be interesting to think about a little. The quantum chemistry people usually use a different approximation, density functional theory, which is not good for strongly entangled electrons like in an atom.

As for string theory, it is not that I am "enamored" of it, rather, it really is a consistent quantum theory of gravity, which is consistent with the holographic principle. It might be the only way to construct holographic theories of gravity. If so, it would be uniquely determined. A theory of classical gravity which obeys the equivalence principle, has a reasonable energy density, and obeys deterministic equations is also uniquely determined in four dimensions, and this is GR.Likebox (talk) 18:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree that semantics is big part of philosophy but you have to be careful equivocating when editing Wikipedia. Different sources used different language for many reasons some times the differences don't matter other times they are very important. We should respect our source's enough not to twist their word with equivocation.

One of the most common uses of computational chemistry is to calculate the reactants, intermediates, transition states, and products of reactions in hopes to model the mechanism of the reaction. Computational is fair about modeling these things when they know the answer but I have yet to hear of a situation where a computation chemist suggested a structure or reaction to a synthetic chemist that resulted in an advance in research efforts. Their predictions are dubious. I'm guessing multiple small errors add up pretty fast, but you could probably identify the specific problems easier than I could, I've never bothered to study the subject in detail.

The extra data associated with the observer form my perspective simply extra data that is unmeasurable. If quantum mechanical information was more immediate I might change my mind. As I said before chemists are more practical and consider science a collection of models which vary in value depending on the question at hand. "Quantum mysticism" isn't widely respected in science and its just silly to suggest that "Quantum mysticism" is respected or even considered seriously.

Its important that the article presents material from NPOV which means the main stream point of view. That doesn't mean the specific perspectives of quantum mystics can't be discussed, those opinion just need to be cited and attributed. If classical mechanics or quantum mechanics are discussed they must be presented from a mainstream perspective (WP defined NPOV) or properly attributed as a specific POV, just as sociologist and solipsist must be treated with a similar respect and weighting on their respective pages. I'm not the one who saw a need to have the classical intro but I do see a need to have it presented fairly.

It terms of what you meant by "Why edit the article?" it hardly matters. Its expected that editors direct their commentary at article content and not other editors unless they are saying something positive. This avoids implied meanings and overtones.--OMCV (talk) 12:33, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

(deindent) I mostly agree with you, so I mostly want to address this Einsteinian comment you made: "The extra data associated with the observer form my perspective simply extra data that is unmeasurable".

That is a position some people take, but that makes your interpretation of quantum mechanics nonmystical and "Type 2". There is a huge problem with this type of position, which you should be aware of.

The problem is called Bell's inequality, and it says this: suppose you believe that the results of observations are simply hidden data. Suppose you also make the very natural assumption that this hidden data is local, which means that the hidden data that determines a measurement over here can't change instantaneously in response to the hidden data determining a measurement over there, where "over there" could be the Andromeda galaxy. Then you are in conflict with quantum mechanics and with experiment.

The reason is explained in the Bell's inequality page, but I will repeat the argument. Suppose you have two electrons, whose spin value along any axis is exactly one bit of information. There are many directions that you can measure the spin, which are tilted with respect to each other at certain angles. If you have electrons which have a net total-spin zero, then no matter which direction you choose, the spin of the two electrons is always opposite.

If two variables A and A', like the spin of the two electrons along some axis, are always opposite, then A determines A', and the "unmeasurable data" which determines A also determines A'. Same for two variables B and B' which are always opposite, and two variables C and C'.

If A and B' are 99% opposite (meaning that in 99% of measurements they come out opposite), then, since B and B' are always opposite, you can conclude that A and B are 99% the same.

If B and C' are 99% opposite, then, since C and C' are always opposite, you can conclude that B and C are 99% the same.

But if A and B are 99% the same, and B and C are always 99% the same, then you can conclude that A and C are at least 98% the same (this is Bell's inequality).

Within quantum mechanics, A and C in this situation are 96% the same, which is impossible to reconcile with hidden local data. So if you have a class 2 interpretation (hidden data determines the outcome of measurements), you have to believe that it is nonlocal hidden data. Most physicists find this type of nonlocality harder to swallow than mysticism.Likebox (talk) 13:22, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if I explained it well above--- I didn't get feedback. I have been familiar with the stuff for a long time, and I think it helps a lot to explain it to a person who is not familiar, because if you just learned it, you know what's confusing, and you can improve the quality of the exposition in the relevant articles.

To clarify--- the experimental situation for Bell's inequality (in the most transparent form) is this: you make two electrons with total spin 0, but each one has spin 1/2 individually. One really inefficient way to do this in real life is to take a helium atom in its ground state and knock out the nucleus with a very high energy alpha particle (in real experiments people always use photons instead of electrons, but it's the same idea). The two electrons then shoot out to two distant measuring devices, which can then measure the spin of both electrons along three different nearly parallel axes A,B,C.

1. If both devices measure the spin along A, they always get opposite answers. If electron 1 has positive spin along the A axis, electron 2 has negative spin along this axis, all the time, always.
2. ditto for direction B
3. ditto for direction C

So far, this is not mysterious--- you could say the electrons have hidden data which determines the outcome of the measurement, and this hidden data, which the two electrons sort of conspiratorially agreed on ahead of time, gives opposite answers for direction A,B, and C.

Here are the surprising predictions of quantum mechanics:

1. If you measure the spin in direction A for electron number 1, and the spin in direction B for electron number 2, you get the same answer 99% of the time (you can adjust the angle between the A and B so that this is true).
2. If you measure the spin in direction B for electron number 1, and the spin in direction C for electron number 2, you get the same answer 99% of the time (the angle between B and C is the same as the angle between A and B)
3. If you measure the spin in direction A for electron number 1, and the spin in direction C for electron number 2, you get the same answer 96% of the time (the angle between A and C is twice the angle between A and B).

This is surprising, because from the observation that A on electon 1 and B on electron 2 are 99% correlated, you can conclude that the hidden data determining the B direction spin is 99% the same as the hidden data determining the A direction spin.

Likewise, the hidden data determining the C direction spin is 99% the same as the hidden data determining the B direction spin.

But then, you can conclude that the A direction answer and the C direction answer only disagree at most 2% of the time. The reason is that A and B only disagree 1% of the time, while B and C only disagree 1% of the time, and if the two sets of cases were they disagree are disjoint, then A and C disagree 2% of the time. If they are not disjoint, then A and C only get more correlated, so that A and C can in the worst-case-scenario have to be at least 98% the same.

But the quantum mechanics gives 96%, essentially because the probability is a square of a wavefunction amplitude, and the amplitude is linear in the angle. So if you believe that there is hidden data, the moment you measure A, the hidden data determining the C measurement on electron number 2 has to be constantly nonlocally aware of what is happening to electron number 1, so that it can change to get the right statistics when you measure the A direction. This is called "spooky action at a distance", following Einstein.

So type 2 interpretations have "spooky action at a distance", type 1 interpretations have "quantum mysticism", and physicists basically are forced to choose.Likebox (talk) 20:53, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Again sorry for my absence but I've been busy.

My first response is that the Bell's theorem sounds like a goofy logic problem unrelated to practical models of reality similar to say the Boltzmann brain. So I checked the Bell's theorem grounding in experimental evidence and it looks like folks think it holds up.

So its fair enough to say my idea of unmeasurables is not consistent with mainstream quantum mechanics of the moment. In fact I'd probably even agree with the mystical interpretation once the a semantically equivalent term is used in the place of the scientifically horrifying term "mystical". On the other hand the idea of unmeasurables and incomplete theories is very consistent with the vast majority of science, including my own work. After all its only the theoretical physicist who ever have the... what the word... to presume they know everything. Despite this I hope I've made it clear I feel no need to give theoretical physics an extra special place in the scientific community. I share this point because I think its a common feeling in the larger science community (beyond theoretical physicist). For example take something like the Boltzmann brain which like much of physics does not consider compounding effects of sequential events. It wasn't physics which found the value of 1) replication with heredity 2) mutation and 3) selection. But physicists shouldn't be ashamed they missed a fundamental aspect of reality as important and consistent as any of Newton's Laws, after all in a world where emergence plays a significantly role it is expected to find important features at all scales of reality; not just the very large, very small, very hot, very cold, very fast, and very slow to which modern physics is relegated.--OMCV (talk) 01:19, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

The word you are searching for is "hubris". Yeah, you're right. Physics is full of hubris. I like that. The difference between "Bell's inequality" and "Boltzmann's brain" is that Bell's inequality is a rigorous theorem, which rules out all local hidden variables models, while "Boltzmann's brain" is contingent upon the way in which consciousness is attached to reality. In this way, Boltzmann's brain is "statistical mysticism", I guess.

I appreciate your thoughtful comments, and thank you for reading about this and talking seriously--- Bell's inequality really is a shock for anyone who has a "hidden data" point of view. I personally didn't get so spooked by it when I first learned it, because I always had a "mystical" view of quantum mechanics. The word "mystical" in this context means contingent upon the precise nature of the relation of conscious experience to the material world.

But the mysticism of the mystics, meditation, astral travel, and all that, is not about the material universe (at least if the mystic isn't pushing some hokum). It's based on the idea that our experiences are not directly tied to external material conditions, and can be modified by introspection. When that introspection is directed towards an end, the result is meditation. If the end can be communicated and the practice reproduced in other minds, then it is a school of meditation or a philosophy. Since internal experience is hard to study reproducibly with instruments, the effects of meditation on mental activity is not yet a part of science, although there were some people who put Buddhist monks in MRI machines and got some interesting results recently.

In that sense, the mystical activity is just like any other creative activity, where the internal mind is altered by reflection which is mostly not contingent on external circumstances. The point of the quantum mysticism page is only to point out that the quantum mechanical description of nature, at least in standard interpretation, places the experience of the observer in a strangely central position. It does not give a reduction of the experience to purely material circumstances, but has this "extra ingredient", the splitting mind, or the classical mind, or the collapse-inducing mind, depending on your Many-Worlds/Copenhagen/CCC philosphy.

As an aside, while Bell's theorem does rule out local hidden variables, it is a mistake to be so lightly dismissive of the idea of nonlocal hidden variables. There is no contradiction with relativity: if you formulate using the right nonlocal variables, the theory can be relativistically invariant (Bohm's theory can be applied to field variables instead of position, to make a Bohmian field theory). The idea that the fundamental laws of physics should be formulated locally has been convincingly refuted in recent years, by the holographic principle and the AdS/CFT correspondence. There is hope that within massively nonlocal models like these, hidden variables might become natural again.Likebox (talk) 01:53, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

edit break

In one of Dennett's ted talks and papers he makes an interesting quote of fellow name interesting Lee Siegel

"I'm writing a book on magic", I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No", I answer: "Conjuring tricks, not real magic". Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.

Words like "magic" and "consciousness" fail at times and I think your use of the word "mystical" to mean "contingent upon the precise nature of the relation of conscious experience to the material world" is a failure. Just as surely as the free will theorem's [3] uses an absurd definition of free will to garner attention (definition:"the experimenters’ choice of directions is not a function of the information accessible to them"). Although I must say that I approve of the authors statement "We don’t know (if free will exists), but will prove in this paper that if indeed there exist any experimenters with a modicum of free will, then elementary particles must have their own share of this valuable commodity." But back to the word "mystical" I wouldn't use the word mystical for what you are trying to say I would just say "observations are observer dependent". For me "mystical" means "more than theory and observation" which means I will never agree with a theory being mystical based on my understanding of language. With that said I respect other interpret both reality and language differently and thus the existence of the idea of Quantum Mysticism. I feel no need to push my POV at the Quantum Mysticism page but I do see a need to present material fairly. I'm sad to see you push the material I've spent time to fairly identify as Synth. I would ask you to go back to the literature and find material that allows you to voice the ideas that you feel are missing. If Wigner can present the classical perspective fairly rather than reinventing it as some sort of twisted dualism I think Wikipedia can do the same.--OMCV (talk) 03:14, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

(deindent) Wigner did not consider copying observers as an allowed operation. This issue was only raised in the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps you would be happy by seprating Wigner from Dennett? As I said, it's not exactly dualism--- it's no more dualistic than the notion of software vs. hardware. You can have the same program running on a mac or a PC, and that's not mysterious. But it is "dualistic", because you distinguish between the hardware and the software. For Dennett, mind is just a type of software.Likebox (talk) 20:50, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

First, we have established on this page uploading a consciousness was formally considered as early as 1956.

Second, the mind/body problem is historically a question closer to soul/creation. That is a the historical framing conversation. A "classical observer" according to the hard sciences is a deterministic materialistic world resolves this question as early version of mind/body by calling everything creation. Wigner acknowledges this accurately. The softer science did not fully resolve this question. I actually had psychology text as an undergraduate that seriously debated whether psychology was a science. In these soft fields the soul "hide" in what it is to be human and have a "mind" or "consciousness". Dennett I'm fairly certain is contending in the talks/paper I cite above that this place the soul has gone to hide the "software" is just another form of matter as the hard sciences concluded with the "classical observer" long ago.

Third, your presumptions to speak for Dennett is appalling. From what I've seen, Dennett dances around the issues of mind and body very carefully avoiding simplistic answers like the mind is software. He wouldn't be a very successful of interesting speaker/writer if that was his level of discourse. Dennett seems to using the idea (established by many others) that the mind is a difference engine (and all difference engines can be simulated as a touring machine) to play with philosophical ideas. As it turns out software is very hardware dependent historically the same software will not run on Mac and a PC without either a rewrite of the software or the use of a second piece of software as an emulator for at least one machine. Actually the difference between a Mac and PC is mostly software. Its also worth noting that hardware can be designed to contain what we think about as software for the sake of convenience. But let me work to my last point, while it might be useful to distinguish between software and hardware at no point does software exist without hardware. Software always exists within a hardware. The implied independence of dualistic systems such as software vs hardware is about as important as distinguishing between a trains versus railway tracks. Useful at times but both systems can not be separated and remain functional wholes.--OMCV (talk) 02:52, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree with you on nearly all points, but these points are not difficult to understand. Software and hardware are two concepts, and Dennett identifies mind with software. This is exactly his position, there is no subtlety, and his "level of discourse" is just a form of language which allows this idea to be expressed in the dead tree publishing world, which is obsessed with pompous language. There is no need to use big words for simple ideas on Wikipedia.

As far as "uploading a mind" discussed in 1956, the issue is not uploading the mind. The issue is uploading the mind and keeping the original, so that the consciousness is duplicated. This is the important idea, and this idea does not appear anywhere in philosophy or in fiction before Dennett's essay. It appears in Everett's thesis, and in the related physics literature, and it is original to the physicists.Likebox (talk) 14:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

So make so many claims that you are sure of, have you ever read "The City and the Stars". It would seem that any time a copy is made and the original isn't destroyed in the process what you describe occurs and this happens in "The City and the Stars". Please tell me where in Evertt's thesis or a physics article this discussion takes place. Or are these discussion hidden with code words so that only an equivocating true believer can translate these discussions into their true form.--OMCV (talk) 13:17, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not encoded. I don't have the Everett thesis handy, but the discussion is where he talks about quantum measurement producing many branches, where the observer on each branch has the same history, but sees a different outcome for this one measurement. That's not a side issue--- it's the main point.Likebox (talk) 00:52, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that searching or interpreting the literature is your strongest suit. So here is a quote from the paper Everett based on his thesis:

Thus with each succeeding observation (or interaction), the observer state "branches" into a number of different states. Each branch represents a different outcome of the measurement and the corresponding eigenstate for the object-system state. All branches exist simultaneously in the superposition after any given sequence of observations.‡ The "trajectory" of the memory configuration of an observer performing a sequence of measurements is thus not a linear sequence of memory configurations, but a branching tree, with all possible outcomes existing simultaneously in a final superposition with various coefficients in the mathematical model. In any familiar memory device the branching does not continue indefinitely, but must stop at a point limited by the capacity of the memory.

What defines an observer? Isn't every particle in a system an observer. Why can't the branching continue indefinitely? Everett may have solved the question of why a world based in quantum mechanics looks classical on our scale but I think his first mistake is giving the observer special status. Its interesting to note that the Free Will Theorem has application here since it basically states every particle has some proportional quality of an observer. But back to Everett's paper.

Process 1: The discontinuous change brought about by the observation of a quantity with eigenstates f1, f2, , in which the state y will be changed to the state fj, with probability |(y,fj)|2.

Process 2: The continuous, deterministic change of state of an isolated system with time according to a wave equation dy/dt = бy, where A is a linear operator.

This formulation describes a wealth of experience. No experimental evidence is known which contradicts it.

Not all conceivable situations fit the framework of this mathematical formulation. Consider for example an isolated system consisting of an observer or measuring apparatus, plus an object system. Can the change with time of the state of the total system be described by Process 2? If so, then it would appear that no discontinuous probabilistic process like Process 1 can take place. If not, we are forced to admit that systems which contain observers are not subject to the same kind of quantum-mechanical description as we admit for all other physical systems. The question cannot be ruled out as lying in the domain of psychology. Much of the discussion of "observers" in quantum mechanics has to do with photoelectric cells, photographic plates, and similar devices where a mechanistic attitude can hardly be contested. For the following one can limit himself to this class of problems, if he is unwilling to consider observers in the more familiar sense on the same mechanistic level of analysis.

Wouldn't it be easier to assume that there is something wrong with the way Process 1 is stated than to decide that an observer obeys different rules than the system. Especially since the observer is made of the same material as the observer system? I'm not retreating to hidden variables but rather the idea we don't know enough yet or don't know how to phrase things.

Back to the point, to quote you "The issue is uploading the mind and keeping the original, so that the consciousness is duplicated. This is the important idea, and this idea does not appear anywhere in philosophy or in fiction before Dennett's essay. It appears in Everett's thesis, and in the related physics literature, and it is original to the physicists." The sort of branching universe ideas in Everett's work is very different from "uploading the mind and keeping the original". If you can't see those differences you have no place editing on this sort of subject matter.--OMCV (talk) 03:08, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

(deindent) Be patient about my memory: The last time I read this paper attentively was twenty years ago. I know the contents, though.

What you are quoting are the correct passages. The branching tree of observers that Everett describes is Hubert/Yorick, a million times over. The notion of "copy" and "original" is blurred, because the observer keeps splitting, and you can't call one the "original" and another the "copy", but whatever, it's the same idea. It's closer to "copy all the atoms relative positions and velocities", which is why I used that wording in the article.

An observer in quantum mechanics is put into a superposition of states with different memories. These states are interpreted by Everett as observers that exist simultaneously whose "mind" or "stream of consciousness" goes both ways. Just like Hubert/Yorick after the glitch, the observer doesn't feel both paths, but rather randomly becomes one or the other observer. The situation is subjectively random, random from the inside, but deterministic when looked at from the outside. Just like Hubert/Yorick.

The quantum mechanical description produces these superpositions, and Everett's way is one method of making sense of it. Another method is "process 1" and "process 2" (which is called Copenhagen). It is very difficult, if not impossible, to modify quantum mechanics so that process 1 becomes a physical process, because process two is a complete description of all the physics, and process 2 is exactly linear and exactly deterministic. Process 1 is not linear and not deterministic. If you modify quantum mechanics by making a physical nonlinear process, usually you don't get what you want. Instead, you get interactions between different "worlds". This is an old debate, and most physicists say that there is no problem, it's just philosophy.Likebox (talk) 04:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I just want to add, since you are making a wrong statement above, that Everett's idea about the observer is exactly the same as the idea of Hubert/Yorick. Everett points out that the observers in quantum mechanics have a physical description that branches out, that they get "cloned" all the time, and the clones go off in different directions, and that each such cloning moment appears subjectively random to the observer involved. There is no dispute about this. This is what Everett is saying.

It is so close to what Dennett is saying, that in fact Dennett might have borrowed the idea from Everett indirectly.Likebox (talk) 05:28, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Dennett's biggest issue is the location of self and he also indicates that his story is based on or a response to a philosophical text called "Rational Homunculi" by Ronald de Sousa (1976) here is a quote "But here is something stranger: Dr. Juggle and Dr. Boggle, too, take turns in one body. But they are as like as identical twins!". Dennett's work isn't about splitting universes its about identity of self furthermore Dennett explicitly warns against taking his story to seriously.

"The story you have just read not only isn't true (in case you wondered) but couldn't be true. The technological feats described are impossible now, and some may remain forever outside our ability, but that is not what matters to us. What matters is whether there is something in principle impossible -- something incoherent -- about the whole tale. When philosophical fantasies become too outlandish -- involving time machines, say, or duplicate universes or infinitely powerful deceiving demons -- we may wisely decline to conclude anything from them. Our conviction that we understand the issues involved may be unreliable, an illusion produced by the vividness of the fantasy.

....

Since several of the most remarkable features of "Where am I?" hinge on the supposition of independent synchronic processing in Yorick and Hubert, it is important to note that this supposition is truly outrageous -- in the same league as the supposition that somewhere there is another planet just like Earth, with an atom-for-atom duplicate of you and all your friends and surroundings,* or the supposition that the universe is only five days old (it only seems to be much older because when God made it five days ago, He made lots of instant "memory"-laden adults, libraries full of apparently ancient books, mountains full of brand-new fossils, and so forth)."

Dennett declares he finds the twinning argument to be as reasonable as the five day old universe (which would mean our memories of this argument would have mostly been fabricated by God. While Dennett is talking about identity and consciousness Everett is talking about explicitly defined observers. While these observers include what is often a called consciousness it also includes many other things as declared by Everett.

"The question cannot be ruled out as lying in the domain of psychology. Much of the discussion of "observers" in quantum mechanics has to do with photoelectric cells, photographic plates, and similar devices where a mechanistic attitude can hardly be contested. For the following one can limit himself to this class of problems, if he is unwilling to consider observers in the more familiar sense on the same mechanistic level of analysis."

Everett is basically saying that the reader can imagine an observer as a person and/or a photographic plate while I make my point but at least give me a chance to make my point. Its a physics argument about measurement, while measurement is related to observation it not the same thing. Everett ideas are very different from the work of Dennett.

The argument that Dennett and Everett are talking about the same thing is lacking in all ways. Thinking the two are the same isn't even a simple minded mistake since it take metal gymnastics to equate the two. There are people who see connections everywhere and its clear that Likebox is one of those individuals. Despite this I must assume at this point of the argument Likebox, you are arguing solely to defend your synth or perhaps you are simply trying to "win" at the expense of the encyclopedia.

PS If you are looking for a work of fiction related to Everett's ideas one of the more famous examples is Dune (1965) in which Muad'Dib and his descendants guides the future by selecting the "gold path" which borrows explicitly from the idea of a branching universe. Which is related to the "Guild Navigator" methods of guiding space craft.--OMCV (talk) 11:52, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

What you are doing is misunderstanding Everett's paper in much the same way that many popular sources have. Everett does NOT split the universe upon measurement, the universe is always described by one giant wavefunction in an enormous configuration space. The only thing he does is point out the an observer's memories are split during the act of observation, because the observer becomes entangled (Everett uses the word "correlated" for entangled) with the system. He then interprets this as a split path for the consciousness.

This idea is NOT related to Dune, which I have read. It is not related to other science fiction ideas, which begin with Borges "The Garden of Forking Paths". Everett's idea is that all the splitting is psychological, not physical. It is only related to cloning an observer and following the two copies until they diverge.

Now that you understand the material, and see that it is not Syhth, please stop attacking it. It's tiresome to repeat the arguments. Your claim that the material is original to me is flattering, but absolutely false.Likebox (talk) 16:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for welcoming me

I really appreciate your kind remarks about my initial articles, and hope you will continue the exchange on my talk page. Jim Heaphy (talk) 02:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, the Norman Clyde article is amazing. I'll be in touch.--OMCV (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the BioBox on Robert L. M. Underhill. Where did you find his birth and death dates? Jim Heaphy (talk) 02:04, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I found it in a memorial at searchable online access, the only problem is that I don't know which issue it came from. Maybe you can figure out how to locate that info.--OMCV (talk) 11:55, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of Material Without Consensus

Is vandalism. Do not do it. If you are going to do something constructive, welcome. If you are just going to delete sourced material because you don't like it, go away.Likebox (talk) 17:10, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh Lord

Don't get the AUTHORITIES involved! This should be sorted out by us talking until we know the whole story, then seeing if we still disagree, and if so, getting some knowledgable people to render an opinion. This stuff is subtle, and the Wikipedia bureaucracy has all the subtlety of a ballpeen hammer.Likebox (talk) 14:07, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Stop Being A Pest

I understand you want to delete the material, but deletion has a higher threshhold than inclusion. If you were adding text with new information, you would be taken seriously. You have two 3rd opinions now that support inclusion: Count Iblis and Michael Price. I know that these editors understand quantum mechanics. You balance these against two off-the-cuff comments (including yours, I might add) by outsiders that say "Hey, this looks like synth to me". Since I write in an idiosynchratic way, everything I have ever edited ends up looking like OR or synth to people who don't know the field.Likebox (talk) 18:08, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

On policy RfC

Policy RfC is only for prospected changes to policies and guidelines (keeping your problem there gave the impression you wanted to change policy to suit your purposes, what is clearly not what you intended).

There's an OR noticeboard too - maybe even more suitable then the Fringe theory noticeboard where I placed the item. For the time being I'd keep it there though: one doesn't want to give the impression one would be forum shopping, isn't it?

Those kind of noticeboards attract the "right kind of people" far better than the policy-writing in-crowd. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Joining You In Help For Quantum Mysticism Page

Hello, OMCV. I have responded to your call on the RFC portal and have put a comment at its talk page. I hope to give a hand and, perhaps, a new perspective to assist in that article's evolution. Cheers. --☯Lightbound☯ ^talk 16:08, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for taking up the challenge. I would say I look forward to your input Lightbound but I've already been impressed.--OMCV (talk) 02:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Those aren't personal comments

"Your prose sounds illiterate to my ears" is a statement of opinion about the prose in the article, not about the person. Similarly, "you guys don't like what I write" is also a statement about likelihood of reversion/deletion, not so much about the people. Neither should be construed as a personal comment: e.g. "You are an illiterate!", or "You hate me!", they are only blunt assessments of the situation.

I did read the new text, and it's full of philosophy jargon, which I find imprecise, illiterate, and obscure. Philosophy jargon certainly wasn't how Wigner, Everett, or even Dennett phrased it, and I don't know how it helps. On the other hand, this material seems to be leeching into the philosophy department, whether I like it or not, and that may mean that I will have to get used to their infernal language! Well, what can you do. Thanks for the warning.Likebox (talk) 02:47, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Dennett's position on thought experiments

Whether Dennett has at some point voiced opposition to thought experiments in general, I am not sure. I know that he opposes thought experiments whose results are dependent on an intuition which is stretched to the point that it becomes invalid, and this is indeed something he has said many times. He believes that these situations abuse the intuitive process, and I agree with him on that by the way.

The classic thought experiments that Dennett opposes are Mary's room, because of its false intuition that it is possible to "know everything that there is to know about the human response to red" without knowing what the red quale feels like. The other thought experiment he opposes is Searle's chinese room, because it is abusing a false intuition that if a system run by a human being understands chinese, then the human being must understand chinese. He explicitly says that thought experiments can be used to abuse intuition in this way.

But Dennett's thought experiment in "Where am I" is not of the same sort. He is not abusing an intuition to reach a conclusion, he is setting up a situation where the rule that each observer has a unique future extension is incorrect. There is no intuition about what happens in this situation, because it is so weird. It certainly is not an incoherent ramble.

Even if he were to stand up today and say "I disown 'Where Am I'! I can't believe I wrote that!" It would still be an OK source. You would just have to add the statement "Dennett has disowned this line of argument in ..." to the article. But I am sure he hasn't disowned Where Am I, since it is philosophically consistent with his other work.Likebox (talk) 16:04, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

This is getting tiresome

The Dennett material is not misattributed. You have had the opinion of several people that it is Ok as it is, and I have explained all of your concerns. Your continued opposition is therefore inexplicable. What is still unclear?Likebox (talk) 04:35, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Consensus

I want to thank you for reading patiently and putting up with me until we came to consensus. I think the last version which I think we both agreed on was very good. Unfortunately the whole article has been evicerated since then by lightbound, and I think that is a shame.Likebox (talk) 05:24, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

At no point did we come to consensus. Where did you get such an idea? I have been away from WP due to other obligations. My patience with you has been overly generous. You have reverted every edit I have ever made to "Quantum mysticism" either immediately or after a convenient delay. Nearly all of your arguments/exchanges on the talk pages have been specious, personal, and/or uncooperative from my point of view. You have demonstrated a high level of ownership that will eventually be broken by the nature of WP. I strongly support the version of Quantum mysticism that lightbound has developed over earlier versions.--OMCV (talk) 04:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I moved the science to another article.Likebox (talk) 23:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Check out some of Likebox's other greatest hits at Halting problem and Godel's incompleteness theorems. While the arb for Quantum mysticism may not get off the ground this certainly isn't the first time (And certainly won't be the last) that this "editor" has pitched a tantrum to try to get his way (which, he'll be the first to tell you is completely obvious and how could anyone possibly not see it!?) Don't give up! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.101.114.82 (talk) 21:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't "pitching a tantrum", I was trying to argue forcefully. I did not convince the majority, and I left. That's part of the normal editing process. If you don't like it, why are you on Wikipedia?Likebox (talk) 21:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Overpotential

overpotential values

.

Yes, it is not optimal that the values are unsourced. The origin of the data in the table is the graphics in commons shown to the right. The graphics has an annotation (in German) "source of the data unknown since 27.01.07", and Author= Niko lang. I simply copied the table from the German wikipedia to conserve typing and in hope that the can be gradually improved. This article cried for some numbers.

Unless that source is found, one should consider replacing the numbers with better sourced ones.

Thanks for spotting the wrong decimal separators. Cheers. Stan J. Klimas (talk) 11:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration for Quantum Mysticism

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Quantum mysticism article and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, --☯Lightbound☯ ^talk 21:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Likebox

There is an ANI thread about Likebox:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ANI#User:Likebox_and_tendentious_re-insertion_of_original_research

Since the thread mentions your joint involvement with him in a recent arbitration request, you might wish to comment. 69.228.171.150 (talk) 04:08, 21 October 2009 (UTC)