Have quantum physics’ problems been disgracefully swept under the carpet?

Moreover, this 'positional information' that is somehow coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, and that is also constraining organisms to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium during their lifetime, is also now found to be optimal. As the following recent 2019 article stated, "It’s now known that some form of positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location.,,, when researchers have been able to appropriately determine what cells are doing, many have been surprised to see clear indications of optimization.,,,”

The Math That Tells Cells What They Are - March 13, 2019 Excerpt: It’s now known that some form of positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location.,,, That mounting evidence is leading some biologists to a bold hypothesis: that where information is concerned, cells might often find solutions to life’s challenges that are not just good but optimal — that cells extract as much useful information from their complex surroundings as is theoretically possible.,,, when researchers have been able to appropriately determine what cells are doing, many have been surprised to see clear indications of optimization.,,, “I don’t think optimization is an aesthetic or philosophical idea. It’s a very concrete idea,” Bialek said.,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-that-tells-cells-what-they-are-20190313/

"Optimal" is not just some word that they are carelessly tossing around. When they describe a biological system as being in a 'optimal' state, they mean exactly what they are saying. As the following article states, "Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants."

William Bialek: More Perfect Than We Imagined - March 23, 2013 Excerpt: photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped. “Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” said William Bialek, a professor of physics and integrative genomics at Princeton University. “This is as far as it goes.” … Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-bialek-more-perfect-than-we.html

Moreover, as the following article states, “There are a surprisingly limited number of ways a network could be constructed to perform perfect adaptation.”,,, Moreover, the "amazing and surprising" outcome of the study is applicable to any living organism or biochemical network of any size.,,,”

Math sheds light on how living cells 'think' - May 2, 2018 Excerpt: "Proteins form unfathomably complex networks of chemical reactions that allow cells to communicate and to 'think' --,,, "We could never hope to measure the full complexity of cellular networks -- the networks are simply too large and interconnected and their component proteins are too variable. "But mathematics provides a tool that allows us to explore how these networks might be constructed in order to perform as they do.,,, Dr Araujo's work has focused on the widely observed function called perfect adaptation -- the ability of a network to reset itself after it has been exposed to a new stimulus. "An example of perfect adaptation is our sense of smell," she said. "When exposed to an odour we will smell it initially but after a while it seems to us that the odour has disappeared, even though the chemical, the stimulus, is still present. "Our sense of smell has exhibited perfect adaptation. This process allows it to remain sensitive to further changes in our environment so that we can detect both very faint and very strong odours. "This kind of adaptation is essentially what takes place inside living cells all the time. Cells are exposed to signals -- hormones, growth factors, and other chemicals -- and their proteins will tend to react and respond initially, but then settle down to pre-stimulus levels of activity even though the stimulus is still there. "I studied all the possible ways a network can be constructed and found that to be capable of this perfect adaptation in a robust way, a network has to satisfy an extremely rigid set of mathematical principles. There are a surprisingly limited number of ways a network could be constructed to perform perfect adaptation.,,, Professor Lance Liotta, said the "amazing and surprising" outcome of Dr Araujo's study is applicable to any living organism or biochemical network of any size.,,, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180502094636.htm

On top of all that, and most importantly, this massive ammount of 'optimal' positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryos "from the outside by some non-material method', and which is constraining our bodies to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, is also found to be a property of an observer who describes the system. In establishing this point, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle's location and/or position turns information into energy.

Maxwell's demon demonstration turns information into energy - November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the "Maxwell demon" thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a "spiral-staircase-like" potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html

And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,"

Demonic device converts information to energy - 2010 Excerpt: "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. "This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale," says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

And as the following 2011 article states, "In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,,"

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer's principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that "more than complete knowledge" from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, "This doesn't mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine." The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what's known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says "We're working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Again to repeat that last sentence, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

That statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which happen to explain time itself, even care how I am describing them unless consciousness and/or immaterial mind really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is? To state the obvious, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality. Moreover, since some ‘outside observer’ who is outside the space-time of the universe, is required in order to give us an adequate causal account so as to explain how it is even possible for this immense amount of positional information to somehow be coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, then the reductive materialism explanations of Darwinism are further found to be a grossly inadequate in order to account for biological life. On the other hand, Christian Theism just so happens to give us an adequate causal account for exactly Who this outside observer might be Who is imparting this immense amount of positional information into developing embryos. As Hebrews chapter 4 verse 13 states, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

Hebrews 4:13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

And as Psalm 139:13-14 states,

Psalm 139:13-14 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.

Here are few more verses to further get this point across:

Acts 17:28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

bornagain77

April 27, 2019

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Moreover, the failure of reductive materialism to be able to give an adequate account for the basic form of any particular living organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself. In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remarked that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html

As is hopefully clear to see by now, the, what is termed the 'positional information' of any particular organism simply is not reducible to the sequential information that is encoded on DNA as is presupposed within the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian thought. In fact, as is also hopefully clear to see by now, we must appeal to a 'beyond space and time' cause in order to give an adequate account for massive amount of quantum entanglement/information that characterizes this non-reducible positional information within organisms. To develop this line of thought further, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into multiple different states during embryological development.

Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

The amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method is immense. Vastly outstripping, by many orders of magnitude, the amount of sequential information that is contained within DNA itself. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”

“There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don’t think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.” Doug Axe – Intelligent Design 3.0 – Stephen C. Meyer – video https://youtu.be/lgs6J4LqeqI?t=4575

And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.

In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/ Will Teleportation Ever Be Possible? - video - 2013 https://youtu.be/yfePpMTbFYY?t=76 Quote from video: "There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe."

As to how thermodynamics itself relates to this immense amount of positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method, work done on bacteria can give us a small glimpse into just how far out of thermodynamic equilibrium multicellular organisms actually are. The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,

Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm

,,, Which is equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. 'In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”

“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong - The Creation-evolution Controversy 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894

Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.

Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small - about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html

And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells in the average human body,

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body - 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg "reference man" to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533

Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of positional information that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method.bornagain77

April 27, 2019

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A few more thoughts. I use to naively assume that the information content of a fertilized human egg cell, specifically the information encoded on the DNA of a fertilized human egg cell, was enough in and of itself to explain the entirety of embryological development. But I have now realized that I was wrong in my naive assumption. In making this point clear, it is first important to learn that many lines of evidence have now revealed that the biological form and/or shape of any particular organism is not reducible to the sequential information on DNA.

Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w

In fact, not only does the sequential information on DNA not control the biological form and/or shape of any particular organism, the sequential information on DNA does not even control the shape of the DNA molecule itself. As the following article states, “Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues.”

Tissue-specific spatial organization of genomes - June 21, 2004 Results Using two-dimensional and three-dimensional fluorescence in situ hybridization we have carried out a systematic analysis of the spatial positioning of a subset of mouse chromosomes in several tissues. We show that chromosomes exhibit tissue-specific organization. Chromosomes are distributed tissue-specifically with respect to their position relative to the center of the nucleus and also relative to each other. Subsets of chromosomes form distinct types of spatial clusters in different tissues and the relative distance between chromosome pairs varies among tissues. Consistent with the notion that nonrandom spatial proximity is functionally relevant in determining the outcome of chromosome translocation events, we find a correlation between tissue-specific spatial proximity and tissue-specific translocation prevalence. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC463291/

Likewise, the sequential information of any particular protein molecule does not even explain what final form and/or shape that a specific protein molecule may ultimately take. The following article reveals that the same sequence of amino acids can be folded differently to produce proteins with different three-dimensional shapes. Conversely, proteins with different amino acid sequences can be folded to produce similar shapes and functions.

Not Junk After All: Non-Protein-Coding DNA Carries Extensive Biological Information – Jonathan Wells – May 2013 Conclusion:,, Protein function depends on three-dimensional shape, and the same sequence of amino acids can be folded differently to produce proteins with different three-dimensional shapes [144–147]. Conversely, proteins with different amino acid sequences can be folded to produce similar shapes and functions [148,149]. Many scientists have pointed out that the relationship between the genome and the organism – the genotype-phenotype mapping = cannot be reduced to a genetic program encoded in DNA sequences. http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0009

Moreover, protein folding itself is an unresolved enigma for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists. As the following article states, "the Levinthal paradox states that when one calculates the number of possible topological (rotational) configurations for the amino acids in even a small (say, 100 residue) unfolded protein, random search could never find the final folded conformation of that same protein during the lifetime of the physical universe."

The Humpty-Dumpty Effect: A Revolutionary Paper with Far-Reaching Implications - Paul Nelson - October 23, 2012 Excerpt: Put simply, the Levinthal paradox states that when one calculates the number of possible topological (rotational) configurations for the amino acids in even a small (say, 100 residue) unfolded protein, random search could never find the final folded conformation of that same protein during the lifetime of the physical universe. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/a_revolutionary065521.html

But as the following article states, the unresolved enigma for how a protein might achieve its basic 3-dimensional form, can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair.

Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Today, Luo and Lo say these curves can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair. By conventional thinking, a chain of amino acids can only change from one shape to another by mechanically passing through various shapes in between. But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/

What makes this 'quantum affair' of protein folding troubling for Darwinists, or more particularly, troubling for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists, is that "quantum correlations somehow arise from outside space-time, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,,,"

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php

Simply put, Darwinists, with their reductive materialism, have no cause that they can appeal to whereas I, as a Christian Theist, do have a cause that I can appeal to.

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

In fact, besides proteins, "quantum criticality is now found in a wide range of important biomolecules,,,"

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

Moreover, due to there being a massive amount of quantum entanglement and/or quantum information within the molecular biology of living organisms, it is now known that there is far less ‘random thermodynamic jostling’ within living organisms than was originally presupposed within the reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian thought:

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – video https://youtu.be/LHdD2Am1g5Y

As Jim Al-Khalili states in the following video, “living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero.”

“To paraphrase, (Erwin Schrödinger in his book “What Is Life”), he says at the molecular level living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role. There is something special about the structure, about the order, inside a living cell. So Schrodinger speculated that maybe quantum mechanics plays a role in life”. Jim Al-Khalili – Quantum biology – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOzCkeTPR3Q

bornagain77

April 27, 2019

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BA77 @ #12 'The issue is psychiatric. We have a highly accomplished physicist, who regards the existence of God as preposterous, asserting that the unceasing creation of infinite numbers of new universes by every atom in the cosmos at every moment is actually happening (as we speak!), and that it is a perfectly rational and sane inference. People have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs for less. Now of course Carroll isn’t crazy, not in any medical way. He’s merely given his assent to a crazy ideology — atheist materialism.' Same difference ! Crazy is as crazy does. You were right the frst time. He's as mad as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking-chairs, BA. Don't take my word for it. Ask his dear, old, long-suffering granny in County Tipperary.Axel

April 26, 2019

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How interesting that that second law of thermodynamics should be so quintessentially Judaeo-Christian. Drawing order from chaos - a duty delegated to us. Even the '2' is evocative of the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity ; a figure that I believe even atheist Linus Pauling noted cropped up with extraordinary regularity in biology.Axel

April 26, 2019

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Darwinists try to get around the obvious contradiction in principles, between the second law and Darwinism, by appealing to what is known as the 'compensation argument'. To say that the compensation argument is less than satisfying is to make a severe understatement,

On “compensating” entropy decreases - Granville Sewell Mathematics Department, University of Texas El Paso, El Paso, Texas 79968, USA - 2017 Abstract: The “compensation" argument, widely used to dismiss the claim that evolution violates the more general statements of the second law of thermodynamics, is based on the idea that there is a single quantity called “entropy" which measures disorder of all types. This article shows that there is no such total entropy, and that the compensation argument is not a valid way to dismiss the claim that evolution violates the second law. Note that the article does not argue that evolution violates the second law, only that the compensation argument is logically invalid. http://www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/pe_sewell.pdf

Moreover, unlike the evidence free just-so story telling of Darwinists, Dr. Sewell actually has empirical evidence backing up his claim that the compensation argument is without any true foundation in science. Specifically, empirical evidence and numerous numerical simulations tell us that “Genetic Entropy”, i.e. the tendency of biological systems to drift towards decreasing complexity, and decreasing information content, holds true as an overriding rule for biological adaptations over long periods of time:

“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Genetic Entropy – references to several peer reviewed numerical simulations analyzing and falsifying all flavors of Darwinian evolution,, (via John Sanford and company) http://www.geneticentropy.org/#!properties/ctzx Also see Dr. Behe's new book "Darwin Devolves"

In their compensation argument, Darwinists claim that the second law of thermodynamics does not contradict Darwinian evolution as long as you have energy entering the ‘open system’. In this case the open system is the Earth. Yet, one of things that Darwinists do not tell you is that the energy allowed to enter the atmosphere of the Earth is constrained, i.e. finely-tuned, to 1 trillionth of a trillionth of the entire electromagnetic spectrum:

8:12 minute mark,,, “These specific frequencies of light (that enable plants to manufacture food and astronomers to observe the cosmos) represent less than 1 trillionth of a trillionth (10^-24) of the universe’s entire range of electromagnetic emissions.” Fine tuning of Light, Atmosphere, and Water to Photosynthesis (etc..) – video (2016) – https://youtu.be/NIwZqDkrj9I?t=384

Moreover, even though the energy allowed to enter the atmosphere of the Earth is constrained, i.e. finely-tuned, to 1 trillionth of a trillionth of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, that still does not fully negate the disordering effects of pouring raw energy into an open system. The disordering effect of raw energy is made evident by the fact that objects left in a warm sunny environment are known to deteriorate much more quickly than objects that are left in a cold environment. The following video, at the 46 minute mark, clearly illustrates that just pouring raw energy into a ‘open system’ actually accelerates the rate in which a system deteriorates

Thermodynamic Arguments for Creation – Thomas Kindell (46:39 minute mark) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1yto0-z2bQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=2799

To offset this disordering effect that raw energy has on objects, the raw energy from the sun, which I remind is already finely-tuned to 1 in 10^24, must be further processed to be of biological utility. This harnessing of raw energy is accomplished in biology by the elaborate process of photosynthesis which converts sunlight into ATP. To say that the elaborate process of photosynthesis defies Darwinian explanations is to make another dramatic understatement:

Evolutionary biology: Out of thin air John F. Allen & William Martin: The measure of the problem is here: “Oxygenetic photosynthesis involves about 100 proteins that are highly ordered within the photosynthetic membranes of the cell.” http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7128/full/445610a.html

Moreover, in regards to how entropy relates to biology in particular, advances in quantum biology have now shown that Darwinists are not even on the correct theoretical foundation to properly understand biology and entropy in the first place

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology - video https://youtu.be/LHdD2Am1g5Y

As Jim Al-Khalili at the 6:52 minute mark of the following video states, "living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role. There is something special about the structure, about the order, inside a living cell."

",,and Physicists and Chemists have had a long time to try and get use to it (Quantum Mechanics). Biologists, on the other hand have got off lightly in my view. They are very happy with their balls and sticks models of molecules. The balls are the atoms. The sticks are the bonds between the atoms. And when they can't build them physically in the lab nowadays they have very powerful computers that will simulate a huge molecule.,, It doesn't really require much in the way of quantum mechanics in the way to explain it." At the 6:52 minute mark of the video, Jim Al-Khalili goes on to state: “To paraphrase, (Erwin Schrödinger in his book “What Is Life”), he says at the molecular level living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role. There is something special about the structure, about the order, inside a living cell. So Schrodinger speculated that maybe quantum mechanics plays a role in life”. Jim Al-Khalili – Quantum biology – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOzCkeTPR3Q

Thus not only do Darwinists apparently not have nearly a good understanding of the second law as they falsely imagine themselves to have, but their supposedly 'good understanding' of exactly how the second law was suppose to operate within biology, i.e. "the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules", has now been empirically shown to be completely wrong. It is amazing how easily, and how often, Darwinists are led completely astray into completely false foundational presuppositions by their apriori acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a somehow unquestionable axiom within science. Extreme gullibility must be a prerequisite for being a Darwinist. As the bible itself states,,,

Romans 1:22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,

bornagain77

April 26, 2019

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Apparently some people with a self-proclaimed good understanding of the second law somehow think that the general principle behind the second law,,, i.e. the "natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state.,,,"

What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics? By Jim Lucas - May 22, 2015 Excerpt: The Second Law also states that there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state.,,, The Second Law also predicts the end of the universe, according to Boston University. "It implies that the universe will end in a ‘heat death’ in which everything is at the same temperature. This is the ultimate level of disorder; http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/py105/Secondlaw.html

Apparently some people with a self proclaimed good understanding of the second law somehow think that the general principle behind the second law does not contradict the general principle behind Darwinian evolution,, of "complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time."

Darwin's Theory Of Evolution Excerpt: Darwin's general theory presumes the development of life from non-life and stresses a purely naturalistic (undirected) "descent with modification". That is, complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time. https://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

If some people with a self proclaimed good understanding of the second law really think that those two principles do not contradict each other, might I suggest their supposedly 'good understanding' of the second law is not nearly as good as they have deluded themselves into believing it is? As Granville Sewell asks, "So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation?"

Why Tornados Running Backward do not Violate the Second Law – Granville Sewell Professor of Mathematics at University of Texas – El Paso – May 2012 – article with video Excerpt: So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation? https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-tornados-running-backward-do-not-violate-the-second-law/ Video: Why Evolution is Different – Granville Sewell – April 7, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_nlfaXU46Y

And please note that the principle behind the second law, i.e. entropy, actually IS A LAW of science whereas the principle behind Darwinian evolution, i.e. simple to more and more complex, certainly IS NOT A LAW of science. In fact, there have never been any known universal laws in science that have ever corresponded to what Darwinists claim for their theory. And is thus other primary reason why Darwinian evolution fails to even qualify as a testable, potentially falsifiable, science. As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”

The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/0004D8E1-178C-10EB-978C83414B7F012C.pdf

In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468

Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”

“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf

bornagain77

April 26, 2019

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Brother Brian- No one says that the second law of thermodynamics and evolution are incompatible. It refers to BLUIND WATCHMAKER evolution. And anyone who thinks that BWE can produce new proteins via new genes has a very poor understanding of the mechanisms behind BWE. Also the claims of BWE are untestable and as such outside of science. The point is it doesn't matter about the second law. BWE is total nonsense. And it is always deceitful and equivocating cowards who switch the context from "Darwinian evolution" to "evolution".ET

April 26, 2019

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BA77

Over the years here on UD, Gordon Davisson has also often times tried to unsuccessfully defend his Darwinian belief that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is somehow not incompatible with Darwinian evolution, (or at least defend the possibility that entropy is not directly defeating to Darwinism).

GD

“Unsuccessful” only in the sense that I haven’t convinced you.

I think this is a very accurate statement of the case. In my experience, those who think that the second law of thermodynamics and evolution are incompatible either have a very poor understanding of thermodynamics and/or a very poor understanding of the mechanisms behind evolution. Rather than try to find BA77's argumement as to why they are incompatible maybe BA77 could summarize his argument in a couple short paragraphs.Brother Brian

April 26, 2019

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For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.

More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html

Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last remining major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:

Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm

And yet now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.

Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).

Challenging local realism with human choices – A. Zeilinger – 20 May 2018 Abstract: A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings. While technology can perfect the first two of these, and while technological randomness sources enable device-independent protocols based on Bell inequality violation, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human free will could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ~100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on the 30 Nov. 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole, gamification of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04431

Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.” Of one final note, the denial of the reality of free will by atheists has always been a self-defeating argument for atheists to try to make.

Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html 1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD

But alas, even though the denial of the reality of his own free will renders any claim from the atheist that he is even making a logically coherent argument in the first place null and void, the atheist is apparently more than willing, so as to prevent a 'divine foot in the door', to forsake rationality itself just so that he does not have to accept the reality of God into his life. Basically, atheists, with their rejection of free will, have chosen insanity over sanity because of their apriori bias against God. So much for Godon's claim that I was being unfairly biased in my weighing of the evidence. Moreover, not only does the mental attribute of free will make its presence known in present day experiments is quantum mechanics, but also the mental attribute of the 'persistence of self identity through time', and/or 'the experience of the now' also makes its presence known in present day experiments in quantum mechanics, and indeed is what gives us a hand and glove fit for inferring that immaterial mind must be central to any correct understanding of quantum mechanics that we may wish to have. You can see that hand and glove fit between consciousness and quantum mechanics starting around the 9:30 minute mark of the following video:

How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=569

Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.

(April 2019) Overturning the Copernican principle Thus in conclusion, the new interactive graph by Dr. Dembski provides a powerful independent line of evidence, along with several other powerful lines of evidence, that overturns the Copernican principle and restores humanity back to centrality in the universe, and even, when putting all those lines of evidence together, brings modern science back, full circle, to Christianity from whence it originated in the first place. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-dembski-and-colleagues-create-an-updated-magnifying-the-universe-tool/#comment-675730 Colossians 1:15-22 The Supremacy of the Son of God The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—

bornagain77

April 26, 2019

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Gordon Davisson states

"I think you should take a serious look at the possibility that it might be you that’s being blinded by your biases."

Really??? Too funny, a Darwinian atheist, of all people, asking someone else to consider the possibility that they may be blinded by their apriori biases? Speaking of which, since in your atheistic materialism there is no "I" and/or "you", (i.e. no agent causation and/or no immaterial minds), in the first place to take a serious look at anything, perhaps you care to tell us exactly how a person taking a serious look at anything can even be possible in your worldview?

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let's Dump Methodological Naturalism - Paul Nelson - September 24, 2014 Excerpt: "Epistemology -- how we know -- and ontology -- what exists -- are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, "We cannot know that a mind caused x," laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won't include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn't write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact. "That's crazy," you reply, "I certainly did write my email." Okay, then -- to what does the pronoun "I" in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse -- i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss -- we haven't the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world -- such as your email, a real pattern -- we must refer to you as a unique agent.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set090071.html

Or perhaps you would care to try to explain how it is even possible in your atheistic worldview for the material brain to even contemplate immaterial mathematics in the first place?

What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? - M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html

As Berlinski rightly noted, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…

An Interview with David Berlinski - Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html

And as Godel himself noted, “Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.”

“Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.” - Kurt Godel

As well, Albert Einstein, of relativity fame, and Eugene Wigner, who won a Nobel prize for quantum symmetries, are both on record as to considering it a miracle that man is able to accurately model the universe using mathematics: Specifically, Einstein stated “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way,,, That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.”

“You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands. There lies the weakness of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but “bared the miracles”. Oddly enough, we must be satisfied to acknowledge the “miracle” without there being any legitimate way for us to approach it.,,,” - Albert Einstein – On the Rational Order of the World: a Letter to Maurice Solovine - March 30, 1952 http://inters.org/Einstein-Letter-Solovine

And along that same line, Eugene Wigner stated “,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here,,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

Here is a question for you Gordon Davisson, "How many miracles are allowed in your atheistic worldview?" Let me help you with the answer, the answer is zero miracles! As Lewontin stated, "we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”

"we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” Richard Lewontin - 1997

Zero miracles are allowed in your worldview and yet here we have two giants of science, Einstein and Wigner themselves, openly claiming that it is an outright miracle that the human mind is able to comprehend the universe with immaterial mathematics. The funny thing about miracles, is that once you are forced, by the applicability of mathematics itself, to allow that 'divine foot' in the door then there is absolutely no reason, scientifically speaking, why miracles, (i.e. the Agent causality of God and even the agent causality of man), should be forbidden as a rational explanatory principle in science. Only someone with a severe irrational apriori bias against God would even try to attempt to argue otherwise..... Enter Gordon Davisson and his atheistic Darwinian brethren. Moreover, although there is much confusion in the genral public over various interpretations in quantum mechanics, as Steven Weinberg points out in the following article, those various interpretations in quantum mechanics all boil down to just two possible interpretations. The realist approach and the instrumentalist approach respectively. Weinberg, after dismissing decoherence as a plausible explanation, states that, “Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways. For reasons I will explain, neither approach seems to me quite satisfactory.”

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics - Steven Weinberg - January 19, 2017 The trouble is that in quantum mechanics the way that wave functions change with time is governed by an equation, the Schrödinger equation, that does not involve probabilities. It is just as deterministic as Newton’s equations of motion and gravitation. That is, given the wave function at any moment, the Schrödinger equation will tell you precisely what the wave function will be at any future time. There is not even the possibility of chaos, the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions that is possible in Newtonian mechanics. So if we regard the whole process of measurement as being governed by the equations of quantum mechanics, and these equations are perfectly deterministic, how do probabilities get into quantum mechanics? One common answer is that, in a measurement, the spin (or whatever else is measured) is put in an interaction with a macroscopic environment that jitters in an unpredictable way. For example, the environment might be the shower of photons in a beam of light that is used to observe the system, as unpredictable in practice as a shower of raindrops. Such an environment causes the superposition of different states in the wave function to break down, leading to an unpredictable result of the measurement. (This is called decoherence.) It is as if a noisy background somehow unpredictably left only one of the notes of a chord audible. But this begs the question. If the deterministic Schrödinger equation governs the changes through time not only of the spin but also of the measuring apparatus and the physicist using it, then the results of measurement should not in principle be unpredictable. So we still have to ask, how do probabilities get into quantum mechanics?,,, Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways.9 For reasons I will explain, neither approach seems to me quite satisfactory.10 http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf

Weinberg rightly rejects the ‘realist approach’ to quantum mechanics because of the many irresolvable problems inherent within the ‘many worlds interpretation’ (such as properly deriving the Born rule), but, on the other hand, it is interesting to note the main reason why he rejects the ‘instrumentalist approach’ to quantum mechanics:

“The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,” - Steven Weinberg - The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics - January 19, 2017

In short Weinberg, an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.bornagain77

April 26, 2019

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Gordon Davisson @11 I have not given you my interpretation of QM - maybe I have none. Hence "we're all in the same boat" (your claim) won't work. Btw, perhaps there's no such thing as "wave-particle duality". What's a QM particle anyway? What about s a QM wave? Of course I'm right about determinism - it's 100% and most definitely dead AS OF TODAY - no ifs and buts. You're also glossing over your mission impossible: free will is compatible with up to 99.(9)% determinism, but determinism [philosophy] is not compatible with ANY free will. I need not rule out any fantasy out there. The burden is on you to prove, not on anyone else to disprove. Thanks BA. You keep up the good work too.Nonlin.org

April 25, 2019

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Here's an interesting quote from Rovello's book:

“[QM] oes not describe things as they “are”: it describes how things “occur,” and how they “interact with each other.” It doesn’t describe where there is a particle but how the particle shows itself to others. The world of existent things is reduced to a realm of possible interactions. ... Reality is reduced to interaction. “Quantum mechanics teaches us not to think about the world in terms of “things” that are in this or that state but in terms of “processes” instead. A process is the passage from one interaction to another. The properties of “things” manifest themselves in a granular manner only in the moment of interaction—that is to say, at the edges of the processes—and are such only in relation to other things. They cannot be predicted in an unequivocal way, but only in a probabilistic one.”

His book does not mention consciousness once. The quote above supports Gordon's point: that is the interaction of different quantum events that produces the "things" we experience. It doesn't take a conscious observer to "collapse the wave form" (or whatever understanding one has of what happens): it just takes an interaction with some other part of the world. I agree that mostly likely the quote News offers is correct: "that the wisest course at present is accepting a pluralism of interpretations, or “at least humility.”, but I offer Rovello as a legitimate voice in the discussion.hazel

April 25, 2019

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Bornagain77 @ 10:

Over the years here on UD, Gordon Davisson has also often times tried to unsuccessfully defend his Darwinian belief that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is somehow not incompatible with Darwinian evolution, (or at least defend the possibility that entropy is not directly defeating to Darwinism).

"Unsuccessful" only in the sense that I haven't convinced you. But is that due to my not making a solid case, or you you refusing to accept anything that doesn't fit your views? Funny thing is that almost all of the competent physicists and chemists agree with me, and not you. I think you should take a serious look at the possibility that it might be you that's being blinded by your biases. But you're actually talking about something completely different here:

In short, experiments in Quantum Mechanics have now demonstrated that, (directly contrary to what Gordon Davisson and other Darwinists apriorily believe), entropy is not a property of a system, but is a property of an observer who describes a system.

This has nothing to do with evolution or "uphill" vs. "downhill"; the second law has essentially the same implications no matter which definition you use (or rather, it had better be the same, or else you're going to have trouble matching the last century-and-a-half of research, usage, and testing). You appear to be arguing that it does have something to do with consciousness having a special role in the universe, which is a completely different question from evolution. But you're wrong about it implying a special role for consciousness, because: A) It implies that observers are special to themselves, not in any objective sense. That is, to me, my observations and knowledge are special but yours aren't; you're just another part of the universe. To you, yours are special, but mine aren't; I an just another part of the universe. To a third observer, neither one of us is anything special. B) Even more importantly, there's no implication that the observers being talked about are conscious observers. A non-conscious observer might seem like nonsense to you, but to the physicists actually working on this it seem to consider it entirely normal. Worse, when they run experiments to test these ideas, they actually use non-conscious "observers". This means that they are specifically not showing something special about consciousness. Let's look at some examples of non-conscious "observers". In your video (or at least, the linked paper version), you cite the quantum zeno effect, in which continuous "observation" prevents something from changing state. You cited two experimental demonstrations of this effect. In the first experiment (phys.org summary, actual paper), they used used a laser beam to "observe" atoms' positions via fluorescent scattering:

The fluorescence emitted by the atoms can, in principle, be captured by a detector and thus constitutes a position measurement of the emitting atom. [...] We introduce a position measurement rate Γm which we define to be the scattering rate of photons from the imaging beam, and note that this underestimates the actual scattering rate since it neglects the spontaneous emissions during the subsequent recooling of atoms to |D>.

...I don't see anywhere that they bother to mention whether they actually captured the emitted photons or what the detector's efficiency (if any) was, let alone whether they had a conscious observer watching the detector's output. If conscious observation were required, all of these things would've been critical elements of the experiment, but they left them out. Furthermore, to show that conscious observation is a critical part of this, they would've had to compare runs where they had the laser on but no (running) detector vs. runs where the laser and detector were both on but no conscious observer was watching the detector vs runs where laser, detector, and conscious observer were all there. Instead, they just looked at how the effect depended on the laser's intensity (and hence the "position measurement rate" defined in the quote). In the second experiment you cited, an interaction-free version of the quantum Zeno effect (paper) they also used a laser beam as the "observer". The descriptions are a bit hard to follow, since they sort of turn the observer/observed relation backward, and use whether a Bose-Einstein condensate remains in an unstable state to detect whether it's being "observed" by a laser:

In our experiments, we employ an ultracold gas in an unstable spin configuration, which can undergo a rapid decay. The object ["observer" -GD]--realized by a laser beam--prevents this decay because of the indirect quantum Zeno effect and thus, its [the laser beam/"observer"'s] presence can be detected without interacting with a single atom.

Again, the quantum Zeno effect happened without any sign that a conscious observer was involved, let alone necessary. In fact, it's pretty clear that they didn't have an actual conscious observer watching the laser, because they were using the Bose-Einstein condensate to tell whether the laser was on or off. The last example I'll discuss is one you cited in your comment #11 where "quantum knowledge" can allow deleting data to absorb heat rather than producing it (ScienceDaily summary, actual paper). Here there are explicit (if hypothetical) observers involved. Three of them: Alice, who knows something classical about the state of the system; Bob, who doesn't, and Quasimodo, who has a quantum memory that's entangled with the state of the system. But they never discuss whether these "observers" are actually conscious, only how their states relate to the system. When analysing Quasimodo's interactions with the system, "he" is treated as a normal quantum system. Furthermore, there's a (somewhat fanciful) picture of "him" in figure 2, where he's shown as a rectangular box with two robotic-looking arms (and the desciption starts "An observer, here represented by a machine with a quantum memory, Q, erases a system, S."). So, basically, you've latched onto the term "observer" and assumed it has to do with consciousness, but the actual physics -- in all of these cases -- is the same whether the "observer" is conscious or not.Gordon Davisson

April 25, 2019

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Thanks to News for posting about Becker's book, and to Gordon Davisson for his posts. I decided to buy Becker's book and will try reading it. (I just read Rovello's "Reality Is Not What It Seems", so this will be an interesting comparison, perhaps.)hazel

April 25, 2019

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As to pilot wave theory:

The quantum world remains weird: Remembering the doomed “pilot wave” October 16, 2018 French physicist Louis de Broglie (1892-1987) hoped that quantum mechanics could be brought within the same frame as classical physics via pilot wave theory, which envisioned “concrete particles, always with definite locations, that are guided through space by real pilot waves.” Apparently not. But a series of bouncing-droplet findings since 2015 has crushed this dream. The results indicate that Couder’s most striking demonstration of quantum-like phenomena, back in 2006 — “the experiment that got me hooked on this problem,” the fluid dynamicist Paul Milewski said — was in error. Repeat runs of the experiment, called the “double-slit experiment,” have contradicted Couder’s initial results and revealed the double-slit experiment to be the breaking point of both the bouncing-droplet analogy and de Broglie’s pilot-wave vision of quantum mechanics. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-quantum-world-remains-weird-remembering-the-doomed-pilot-wave/ Einstein vs quantum mechanics, and why he’d be a convert today – Margaret Reid – June 13, 2014 Excerpt: In a nutshell, experimentalists John Clauser, Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat and colleagues have performed the Bell proposal for a test of Einstein’s hidden variable theories. All results so far support quantum mechanics. It seems that when two particles undergo entanglement, whatever happens to one of the particles can instantly affect the other, even if the particles are separated! http://phys.org/news/2014-06-einstein-quantum-mechanics-hed-today.html

As well a new experiment (re)confirmed that “entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.”

Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html

Of related interest: Another insurmountable problem for pilot wave theory, i.e. Bohmian mechanics, is that it simply doesn’t mesh with Quantum Electrodynamics, (i.e. Quantum Mechanics as applied to Special Relativity), which is regarded as one of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science.

Bohmian mechanics, a ludicrous caricature of Nature - Lubos Motl - July 15, 2013 Excerpt: There's no way out here. If you attempt to emulate a quantum field theory (QED) in this Bohmian way, you introduce lots of ludicrous gears and wheels – much like in the case of the luminiferous aether, they are gears and wheels that don't exist according to pretty much direct observations – and they must be finely adjusted to reproduce what quantum mechanics predicts (sometimes) without any adjustments whatsoever. Every new Bohmian gear or wheel you encounter generally breaks the Lorentz symmetry and makes the (wrong) prediction of a Lorentz violation and you will need to fine-tune infinitely many properties of these gears and wheels to restore the Lorentz invariance and other desirable properties of a physical theory (even a simple and fundamental thing such as the linearity of Schrödinger's equation is really totally unexplained in Bohmian mechanics and requires infinitely many adjustments to hold – while it may be derived from logical consistency in quantum mechanics). It's infinitely unlikely that they take the right values "naturally" so the theory is at least infinitely contrived. More likely, there's no way to adjust the gears and wheels to obtain relativistically invariant predictions at all. I would say that we pretty much directly experimentally observe the fact that the observations obey the Lorentz symmetry; the wave function isn't an observable wave; and lots of other, totally universal and fundamental facts about the symmetries and the interpretation of the basic objects we use in physics. Bohmian mechanics is really trying to deny all these basic principles – it is trying to deny facts that may be pretty much directly extracted from experiments. It is in conflict with the most universal empirical data about the reality collected in the 20th and 21st century. It wants to rape Nature. A pilot-wave-like theory has to be extracted from a very large class of similar classical theories but infinitely many adjustments have to be made – a very special subclass has to be chosen – for the Bohmian theory to reproduce at least some predictions of quantum mechanics (to produce predictions that are at least approximately local, relativistic, rotationally invariant, unitary, linear etc.). But even if one succeeds and the Bohmian theory does reproduce the quantum predictions, we can't really say that it has made the correct predictions because it was sometimes infinitely fudged or adjusted to produce the predetermined goal. On the other hand, quantum mechanics in general and specific quantum mechanical theories in particular genuinely do predict certain facts, including some very general facts about Nature. If you search for theories within the rigid quantum mechanical framework, while obeying the general postulates, you may make many correct predictions or conclusions pretty much without any additional assumptions. https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/bohmian-mechanics-ludicrous-caricature.html

A more detailed critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) is here,

A Critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2hoU4jaQQ

And whereas the atheist has been stymied time and again in his preferred MWI and hidden variable theories by advances in quantum theory, On the other hand, recent advances in the experiments of Quantum Mechanics fit hand in glove with what we should apiori expect if consciousness and information is the ultimate substratum of the universe:

How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas

Thus contrary to what Gordon Davisson believes, we have very good experimental reason to favor the consciousness and/or information theoretic interpretation of Quantum Mechanics over his atheistic/materialistic interpretations:

Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: “In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum mechanics http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf 48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw 49:28 mark: "This is now my personal opinion OK. Because we cannot operationally separate the two. Whenever we talk about reality, we think about reality, we are really handling information. The two are not separable. So maybe now, this is speculative here, maybe the two are the same? Or maybe information constitutive to the universe. This reminds me of the beginning the bible of St. John which starts with “In the Beginning was the Word”.,,, https://youtu.be/s3ZPWW5NOrw?t=2969

bornagain77

April 25, 2019

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Gordon Davisson may not consider it possible to experimentally distinguish which interpretation in Quantum Mechanics is correct, but I certainly consider it possible to do so. For instance, The irresolvable problem of deriving the "Born rule” within the MWI is discussed at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video:

A Critique of the Many Worlds Interpretation – InspiringPhilosophy – video https://youtu.be/_42skzOHjtA?t=273

Moreover, Many Worlds (MWI) denies the actuality of wave-function collapse:

Quantum mechanics Excerpt: The Everett many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes.[43] This is not accomplished by introducing some new axiom to quantum mechanics, but on the contrary by removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics#Philosophical_implications The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

Yet, contrary to MWI, the following experiment shows that the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,,

Quantum experiment verifies Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' - March 24, 2015 Excerpt: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein's original conception of "spooky action at a distance" using a single particle. ,,Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators,, report their use of homodyne measurements to show what Einstein did not believe to be real, namely the non-local collapse of a (single) particle's wave function.,, According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances,,, ,, by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, scientists have used homodyne detectors—which measure wave-like properties—to show the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,, This phenomenon is explained in quantum theory,, the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected.,,, "Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle," says Professor Wiseman. "Einstein's view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points. "However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices." "Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong." http://phys.org/news/2015-03-quantum-einstein-spooky-action-distance.html

As well, besides that experimental refutation of MWI, MWI is just plain insane.

Too many worlds - Philip Ball - Feb. 17, 2015 Excerpt:,,, You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More – it requires a parallel you to measure it. Once begun, this process of fabrication has no end: you have to build an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wavefunction collapse, but at the expense of making another universe.,,, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy/ Atheist Physicist Sean Carroll: An Infinite Number of Universes Is More Plausible Than God - Michael Egnor - August 2, 2017 Excerpt: as I noted, the issue here isn’t physics or even logic. The issue is psychiatric. We have a highly accomplished physicist, who regards the existence of God as preposterous, asserting that the unceasing creation of infinite numbers of new universes by every atom in the cosmos at every moment is actually happening (as we speak!), and that it is a perfectly rational and sane inference. People have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs for less. Now of course Carroll isn’t crazy, not in any medical way. He’s merely given his assent to a crazy ideology — atheist materialism —,,, What can we in the reality-based community do when an ideology — the ideology that is currently dominant in science — is not merely wrong, but delusional? I guess calling it what it is is a place to start. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/atheist-physicist-sean-carroll-an-infinite-number-of-universes-is-more-plausible-than-god/

If sanity is to count for anything in science, then MWI should rightly be rejected. But Darwinian atheists have never let sanity stand in their way before, so I hardly think they will do so nowbornagain77

April 25, 2019

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Nonlin.0rg @ 10: You say there's no "experimental basis" for either the de Broglie-Bohm or Many-Worlds interpretations; you're sort-of right, but the same is true for all of the viable interpretations of QM. Including yours. Basically, the situation is that we have a number of very different interpretations of QM that all make indistinguishable predictions, and hence there's (at present) no experimental way to choose between them. To claim that this is a huge problem for dBB or MWI but somehow not a problem for your favorite interpretation is straight-up special pleading. There's no evidence for either of them (relative to any of the other still-viable interpretations), but there's no evidence against them either, so the only reasonable conclusion we can draw is that we just don't know. As the quoted review says

The book’s final section sketches some of its current research and concludes modestly that the wisest course at present is accepting a pluralism of interpretations, or “at least humility.” “Quantum physics is at least approximately correct…. We just don’t know what that means yet. And it’s the job of physics to find out.”

So, you might be right about determinism, or you might be wrong. But the claim that you do know, or that the other possibilities have been somehow ruled out, is clearly and unambiguously wrong.Gordon Davisson

April 25, 2019

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Nonlin.Org at 9, contrary to what Brother Brian may say about your posts, that was a very nice response. Short, sweet, and concise. Over the years here on UD, Gordon Davisson has also often times tried to unsuccessfully defend his Darwinian belief that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is somehow not incompatible with Darwinian evolution, (or at least defend the possibility that entropy is not directly defeating to Darwinism). Yet, Quantum Mechanics has now, in no uncertain terms, recently further defeated any possibility that Gordon Davisson, and other Darwinists, had of finding a workaround between the contradictory notions of 'downhill' Entropy and 'uphill' Darwinian evolution. In short, experiments in Quantum Mechanics have now demonstrated that, (directly contrary to what Gordon Davisson and other Darwinists apriorily believe), entropy is not a property of a system, but is a property of an observer who describes a system. As the following article states, "In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer."

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer's principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that "more than complete knowledge" from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, "This doesn't mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine." The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what's known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says "We're working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Again to repeat that last sentence, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Of course Gordon Davisson, being the faithful Darwinist that he is, will completely ignore these recent experimental results that directly falsify his apriori belief about entropy being a property of a system and not of an observer, but regardless of his apparent religious devotion to Darwinism, quantum mechanics, or more specifically quantum information theory, has now shown, in no uncertain terms, that entropy is not a property of a system, as reductive materialists a-priorily believe, but is a property of an observer who describes a system.,,, The implications of these recent experimental findings also go to the heart of the Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism debate. The following video, starting around the 17:00 minute mark, goes into a bit more detail as to exactly how these recent findings from quantum information theory defeat the Darwinian worldview:

How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1034

bornagain77

April 24, 2019

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Gordon Davisson @8 Except there's no experimental basis whatsoever for the Pilot Wave interpretation as there is none for the Many-Worlds interpretation. The scientific method requires experimental evidence, not wishful thinking. You can't just posit "hidden variables" and "evolution" when all known evidence is to the contrary and most certainly CAN'T REFUTE something without said experimental evidence. Determinism may have looked good to Laplace, but IS DEAD as of today. Don't hold your breath for it's return. Meanwhile: Determinism is self-defeating as lack of Free Will would render all decisions illusory. The Sun, the dead, and the rocks do not decide anything, so why would a determinism proponent decide any more than these entities? And without decisions, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘worry’, ‘fair’, ‘guilt’, ‘self’, and so on do not make any more sense either. Convincing others that Free Will is not true makes absolutely no sense if Free Will were indeed illusory. Free Will is a function of the living. Randomness and Determinism apply equally to the inorganic, but only the living (organic) has Free Will. Anything less than 100% combination of Randomness and Determinism is not sufficient to disprove Free Will. That's right, 100% is your Mission Impossible!Nonlin.org

April 23, 2019

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Eugene@2: There are several interpretations of QM that address the origin of randomness (whether it's real or illusory). In the transactional interpretation, the amplitude of the offer and confirmation waves provides a fairly natural explanation of the Born probability rule. (I seem to recall that the Born rule was actually the original inspiration for this interpretation.) In the De Broglie–Bohm (/pilot wave) interpretation, on the other hand, the randomness is only apparent and is really due to not knowing the actual position of the particles involved (this is known as a "hidden variable" in the lingo). According to this interpretation, the wave function evolves pretty much like standard QM, and the way the particles follow the wave, they spend most of their time in the densest part of the wave, so if you sample many similar setups you'll find that the proportion of times you find a particle at a position is proportional to the square of the wave amplitude at that point (i.e. the Born rule). BTW, this also refutes Nonlin.org@7's claim that quantum physics "utterly demolishes determinism." We cannot know if we "can have a perfectly deterministic setup", because we don't necessarily control (or know about) all the variables. If there are hidden variables, they're likely to be different for each run of the experiment, and can thus explain why we get different results each time. And this isn't the only deterministic explanation consistent with the QM results. The Many-Worlds interpretation is objectively deterministic (i.e. the evolution of the universal wavefunction is deterministic) but subjectively random (because which part of the wavefunction -- which "world" -- each of us sees is subjectively random). There's also the possibility of superdeterminism, which basically denies that it's meaningful to talk about what could happen, just what actually does happen. This means that questions like "why did we detect the particle here instead of over there?" are meaningless, and you can't ask the relevant questions. Pretty much everyone (including me) rejects this idea, but we can't actually prove it's wrong.Gordon Davisson

April 23, 2019

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One thing is certain: Quantum Physics utterly demolishes determinism. http://nonlin.org/free-will In the double slit experiment, one can have a perfectly deterministic setup, yet every time the experiment is repeated, it cannot be known (except statistically) where the particle will end up even if the setup is calibrated to the n-th degree. This is totally different than the deterministic systems (hereby invalidated!) where the normal distribution of outputs can be narrowed by tightening the inputs / set-up with the theoretical conclusion that perfect inputs / set-up will result in perfect outputs (determinism).Nonlin.org

April 22, 2019

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MatSpirit, My 2017 Physics Essays article includes a little history of my 2011 AML article: www.math.utep.edu/Faculty/sewell/articles/pe_sewell.html I did not ask for or receive any money for myself from Applied Mathematics Letters, just wanted them to acknowledge publicly what the editor told me in his e-mail, that it was not withdrawn because of errors, but because he "concluded that the content was more philosophical than mathematical." And they did acknowledge this.Granville Sewell

April 21, 2019

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Does it not make sense from a Christian perspective that the deeper that physicists penetrate the nature of matter at the quantum level, the more paradoxical it will become, until it can no longer be recognised as belonging to any area of empirical science ? Or do you all think that it will continue to progress, albeit haltingly ?Axel

April 21, 2019

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By the way, what's that about a "kill fee"? I remember when Barry was triumphantly telling us that he got money out of the journal that decided that publishing Granville Sewell's piece on the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be too painful for the reputations of all involved, theirs and Dr. Sewell's. Do you suppose Dr. Sewell had signed a "letter of agreement"?MatSpirit

April 20, 2019

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Speaking of Inference Review, here's what Sabine Hossenfelder says about it: February 2, 2019 at 11:43 pm I was contacted by someone from Inference some years ago. They asked me to write an essay for them and made a pretty good financial offer. I put a lot of effort in this and submitted the piece as requested. After some while I received a revision from an anonymous editor who had garbled up my argument so badly and misrepresented my opinion so much that I could see no common ground and just refused to agree it be published. Luckily I hadn’t signed the letter of agreement, so I had no trouble pulling out of this. (Otoh, I didn’t get the kill fee either.) I then shortened the piece and published it elsewhere. By now I have dealt with quite a number of editors at many different publications and let me just say I have never seen anything remotely like this. Normally they are are little more… restrained. Also, while it’s rather common that fact checkers and copyeditors remain anonymous, I don’t know any other place where they don’t tell you who is the editor. In any case, if you have been wondering why I never share or comment on anything from that magazine, now you know why. I got away with the impression that this magazine’s editors have a rather heavy hand. http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10814MatSpirit

April 20, 2019

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I don't think I have seen a single paper (besides the "Many worlds" interpretation) attempting to at least touch on the subject of where the randomness in QM could be coming from. Who rolls the dice?Eugene

April 19, 2019

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Of related interest:

How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas

bornagain77

April 19, 2019

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