Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

At Medium: Six scientific paradoxes on offer that will “blow your mind”

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Here’s one:

1— The Bootstrap Paradox

Time traveling is a popular concept not only in science fiction like Interstellar but also in fantasies like Harry Potter. But, after reading this, you will realize that the time-traveling parts in those time travel movies are always a paradox.

Imagine you are a time traveler. You decide to meet the great greek philosopher, Pythagoras of Samos, and introduce him to the fantastic relation among the three sides of the right-angled triangle. You introduce and you leave.

Time goes by and he publishes it as ‘The Pythagorean theorem’ and you realize you were a part of the discovery of the legendary pythogorean theorem.

But this leads to an paradox. Who is the founder of the Pythagorean theorem in the first place? Because you helped him, but with a theorem by his past self. But his past self also has someone (your past self) helping!

Dinelka, “6 Scientific Paradoxes That Will Blow Your Mind” at Medium (December 28, 2021)

Don’t miss the other five.

You may also wish to read: Has a 243 year-old puzzle been solved via a “quantum solution”? At Quanta: In a paper posted online and submitted to Physical Review Letters, a group of quantum physicists in India and Poland demonstrates that it is possible to arrange 36 officers in a way that fulfills Euler’s criteria — so long as the officers can have a quantum mixture of ranks and regiments.

Comments
I don't understand why they keep calling time a "dimension". It is clearly not a dimension, but a "variable" which gets added to the 3 dimensions of space to form a particular metric (of s^2 = r^2 - t^2). From special relativity, a car moving on a road is moving in time relative to a pedestrian, yet the same pedestrian has no difficulty still observing and even interacting with all those cars, which we would have to place at different points along the time "axis" if time were indeed a "dimension". And if time is not a dimension, then the notion of traveling back (or forth) in time is kind of meaningless.Eugene
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
09:57 PM
9
09
57
PM
PDT
Of supplemental note, the 'entangled time' findings from quantum mechanics also happen to provide a viable 'mechanism' for 'backwards in time causation' in order to satisfy the 'backwards in time causation' requirement in Dr. Dembski's 'old earth' theodicy, i.e. in reconciling the 'old earth' theodicy problem of death preceding the fall of man.
William Dembski Interview – Finding A Good God In An Evil World – (2011) video interview (death preceding fall – 25:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/81CALS-xZTQ?t=1509 Old Earth Creationism and the Fall, William Dembski – Christian Research Journal, volume 34, number 4(2011). Excerpt: My solution (to Theodicy) in my book “The End of Christianity” is to argue that, just as the effects of salvation at the cross reach both forward in time (saving present day Christians) and backward in time (saving Old Testament saints), so the effects of the fall reach forward in time as well as backward. http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF4344.pdf
Verse:
2 Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.
bornagain77
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
06:46 AM
6
06
46
AM
PDT
In 1935 Einstein had another encounter with another philosopher, Rudolf Carnap. In that encounter Rudolf Carnap approached Einstein with the question of whether it was possible to turn 'the experience of the now' into a scientific knowledge. Einstein’s answer was ‘categorical’. Einstein answered that “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.”
The Mind and Its Now – May 22, 2008 – By Stanley L. Jaki Excerpt: ,,, It was therefore only logical on his part that he, (Rudolf Carnap), should approach, we are around 1935, Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of the day, with the question whether it was possible to turn the experience of the now into a scientific knowledge. Such knowledge must of course be verified with measurement. We do not have the exact record of Carnap’s conversation with Einstein whom he went to visit in Princeton, at eighteen hours by train at that time from Chicago. But from Einstein’s reply which Carnap jotted down later, it is safe to assume that Carnap reasoned with him as outlined above. Einstein’s answer was categorical: The experience of the now cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement. It can never be part of physics. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
That specific answer that Einstein gave to Carnap on the train, “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.” was a very interesting statement, and/or 'scientific' claim, for Einstein to make to the philosopher since “The experience of ‘the now’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of our physical measurements in quantum mechanics. For instance, the following delayed choice experiment, (with atoms no less), demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice with atoms) quantum experiment confirms – Mind = blown. – FIONA MACDONALD – 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. "Quantum physics predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov, a PhD student who worked on the experiment.,,, http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett's inequality stressed "the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it."
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
“Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation – Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables
In further demonstrating the primacy of 'the experience of the now' over time, it is now also found that “quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”
Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past – April 23, 2012 Excerpt: According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as “spooky action at a distance”. The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. “Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events”, says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html
As the following article states, “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”
Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past July 5, 2017 by Lisa Zyga Excerpt: retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another particle) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past. https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-retrocausal-quantum-theory-future.html
To clearly illustrate just how provocative this finding actually is, in the following 2018 article Professor Elise Crullis states that “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time – Feb. 2018 Excerpt: Just when you thought quantum mechanics couldn’t get any weirder, a team of physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported in 2013 that they had successfully entangled photons that never coexisted. Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement swapping’ had already showed quantum correlations across time, by delaying the measurement of one of the coexisting entangled particles; but Eli Megidish and his collaborators were the first to show entanglement between photons whose lifespans did not overlap at all.,,, Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality?,,, The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted. What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter. Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old. - Elise Crullis assistant professor in history and philosophy of science at the City College of New York.,,, https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time
Thus in conclusion, recent experiments in quantum mechanics, (contrary to what Einstein himself thought was possible for experimental physics), have now shown, in overwhelming fashion, that ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of experimental physics. Also of note, because of quantum indeterminism, this 'backward in time causation' found in quantum mechanics does not create any irresolvable 'time-travel paradoxes' as it did in Einstein's relativity. As the following study found, "The loop is avoided by the fact that the choice to abort an event thus forecasted leads to the destruction of the forecaster’s past." and "causality remains intact as long as the future is masked by quantum indeterminism."
Accommodating Retrocausality with Free Will - 2016 Excerpt: Retrocausal models of quantum mechanics add further weight to the conflict between causality and the possible existence of free will. We analyze a simple closed causal loop ensuing from the interaction between two systems with opposing thermodynamic time arrows, such that each system can forecast future events for the other. The loop is avoided by the fact that the choice to abort an event thus forecasted leads to the destruction of the forecaster’s past. Physical law therefore enables prophecy of future events only as long as this prophecy is not revealed to a free agent who can otherwise render it false. This resolution is demonstrated on an earlier finding derived from the two-state vector formalism, where a weak measurement’s outcome anticipates a future choice, yet this anticipation becomes apparent only after the choice has been actually made. To quantify this assertion, weak information is described in terms of Fisher information. We conclude that an already existing future does not exclude free will nor invoke causal paradoxes. On the quantum level, particles can be thought of as weakly interacting according to their past and future states, but causality remains intact as long as the future is masked by quantum indeterminism. Quanta 2016; 5: 53–60. Conclusions Moving to the quantum realm, a similar paradox can be solved via the quantum indeterminism, which is understood to protect free will. This resonates with previous findings of Georgiev [7]. Furthermore, we discussed the strength of information transmission, where the terms strong and weak are related to strong (projective) and weak values, respectively. When information about a future event is buried under quantum indeterminism it cannot violate free will. Similarly, encrypted information, such as the one available through weak measurements, does not violate causality. The existence of free will in these time symmetric models was conjectured to resonate with a dynamical notion of time. http://quanta.ws/ojs/index.php/quanta/article/view/44
bornagain77
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
06:46 AM
6
06
46
AM
PDT
Of note, Gödel held that such self-refuting logical contradictions inherent in time travel were sufficient, in and of themselves, "to undermine the Einsteinian worldview from within."
The God of the Mathematicians - The religious beliefs that guided Kurt Gödel’s revolutionary Ideas - by David P. Goldman - August 2010 Excerpt: In a Festschrift for Einstein’s seventieth birthday in 1949, Gödel demonstrated the possibility of a special case in which, as Palle Yourgrau described the result, “the large-scale geometry of the world is so warped that there exist space-time curves that bend back on themselves so far that they close; that is, they return to their starting point.” This means that “a highly accelerated spaceship journey along such a closed path, or world line, could only be described as time travel.” In fact, “Gödel worked out the length and time for the journey, as well as the exact speed and fuel requirements.” Gödel, of course, did not actually believe in time travel, but he understood his paper to undermine the Einsteinian worldview from within. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/the-god-of-the-mathematicians
The main flaw in Einstein's reasoning seems to be that he envisioned time to be an actual physical entity. Yet if we treat time, (via common sense), as it really is, i.e. “a numerical order of change in space" and as "only a mathematical quantity of change that we measure with clocks", then it is found, via a comparison between "photon clocks' and 'atom clocks', that it "confirms Gödel's vision: time is not a physical dimension of space through which one could travel into the past or future.”
Physicists continue work to abolish time as fourth dimension of space - Lisa Zyga - April 14, 2012 Excerpt: “The rate of photon clocks in faster inertial systems will not slow down with regard to the photon clocks in a rest inertial system because the speed of light is constant in all inertial systems,” he said. “The rate of atom clocks will slow down because the 'relativity' of physical phenomena starts at the scale of pi mesons.” He also explained that, without length contraction, time dilation exists but in a different way than usually thought. “Time dilatation exists not in the sense that time as a fourth dimension of space dilates and as a result the clock rate is slower,” he explained. “Time dilatation simply means that, in a faster inertial system, the velocity of change slows down and this is valid for all observers. GPS confirms that clocks in orbit stations have different rates from the clocks on the surface of the planet, and this difference is valid for observers that are on the orbit station and on the surface of the planet. So interpreted, 'time dilatation' does not require 'length contraction,' which as we show in our paper leads to a contradiction by the light clocks differently positioned in a moving inertial system.” He added that the alternative definition of time also agrees with the notion of time held by the mathematician and philosopher Kurt Gödel. “The definition of time as a numerical order of change in space is replacing the 106-year-old concept of time as a physical dimension in which change runs,” Sorli said. “We consider time being only a mathematical quantity of change that we measure with clocks. This is in accord with a Gödel view of time. By 1949, Gödel had produced a remarkable proof: 'In any universe described by the theory of relativity, time cannot exist.' Our research confirms Gödel's vision: time is not a physical dimension of space through which one could travel into the past or future.” http://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html
Given the high level of respect that Einstein has earned over the years, some people might be shocked that anyone would dare question Einstein's view of time as being a physical dimension of space. But this is not the first time that Einstein's conception of time as being a physical dimension of space has been seriously questioned. Before we get into the prior 'serious' questioning of Einstein's conception of time as being a physical dimension of space, it is first necessary to list the properties of the immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with the view that the mind is just the material brain. Dr. Michael Egnor, (a brain surgeon, and professor), lists six properties of the immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with the view that the mind is just the material brain as such, “Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,”
The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor – 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: – Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity (through time),,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html
As to more clearly defining the specific mental attribute of the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity (through time)’, (which may also be termed ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), it is important to note that we each have a unique 'subjective' experience of being outside of time. In fact we each, seemingly, watch from some mysterious outside perspective of time as time seemingly passes us by. Simply put, we very much seem to be standing on a stationary island of ‘now’ as the river of time continually flows by us. Yet this creates an irresolvable paradox for reductive, (atheistic), materialists. Dr. Suarez states the irresolvable dilemma for reductive, (atheistic), materialists as such, (paraphrase) “it is impossible for us to be 'persons' experiencing 'now' if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time."
Nothing: God's new Name - Antoine Suarez – video Paraphrased quote: (“it is impossible for us to be 'persons' experiencing 'now' if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as 'persons', we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. i.e. We must refer to God!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOr9QqyaLlA
Likewise, Stanley Jaki states the irresolvable dilemma for atheistic materialists as such, “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”
The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind’s baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
And ‘the experience of ‘the now” (and/or 'the persistence of self identity through time'), also happens to be exactly where Albert Einstein got into trouble with leading philosophers of his day and also happens to be exactly where Einstein eventually got into trouble with quantum mechanics itself. In 1922 Einstein had a rather heated disagreement with philosopher Henri Bergson over what the proper definition of time should be. Specifically, Bergson held that "was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water." It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception." Whereas Einstein flat out stated that “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”
Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time – Wednesday 24 June 2015 Excerpt: The meeting of April 6 was supposed to be a cordial affair, though it ended up being anything but. ‘I have to say that day exploded and it was referenced over and over again in the 20th century,’ says Canales. ‘The key sentence was something that Einstein said: “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”’ It’s hard to know whether Bergson was expecting such a sharp jab. In just one sentence, Bergson’s notion of duration—a major part of his thesis on time—was dealt a mortal blow. As Canales reads it, the line was carefully crafted for maximum impact. ‘What he meant was that philosophers frequently based their stories on a psychological approach and [new] physical knowledge showed that these philosophical approaches were nothing more than errors of the mind.’ The night would only get worse. ‘This was extremely scandalous,’ says Canales. ‘Einstein had been invited by philosophers to speak at their society, and you had this physicist say very clearly that their time did not exist.’ Bergson was outraged, but the philosopher did not take it lying down. A few months later Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect, an area of science that Canales noted, ‘hardly jolted the public’s imagination’. In truth, Einstein coveted recognition for his work on relativity. Bergson inflicted some return humiliation of his own. By casting doubt on Einstein’s theoretical trajectory, Bergson dissuaded the committee from awarding the prize for relativity. In 1922, the jury was still out on the correct interpretation of time. So began a dispute that festered for years and played into the larger rift between physics and philosophy, science and the humanities. Bergson was fond of saying that time was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water. It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception. Einstein would say that time is what clocks measure. Bergson would no doubt ask why we build clocks in the first place. ‘He argued that if we didn’t have a prior sense of time we wouldn’t have been led to build clocks and we wouldn’t even use them … unless we wanted to go places and to events that mattered,’ says Canales. ‘You can see that their points of view were very different.’ In a theoretical nutshell this expressed perfectly the division between lived time and spacetime: subjective experience versus objective reality.,,, Just when Einstein thought he had it worked out, along came the discovery of quantum theory and with it the possibility of a Bergsonian universe of indeterminacy and change. God did, it seems, play dice with the universe, contra to Einstein’s famous aphorism. Some supporters went as far as to say that Bergson’s earlier work anticipated the quantum revolution of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by four decades or more. Canales quotes the literary critic Andre Rousseaux, writing at the time of Bergson’s death. ‘The Bergson revolution will be doubled by a scientific revolution that, on its own, would have demanded the philosophical revolution that Bergson led, even if he had not done it.’ Was Bergson right after all? Time will tell. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/science-vs-philosophy-and-the-meaning-of-time/6539568
In fact, as the preceding article touched upon, the disagreement was so heated between Einstein and Bergson, (over what the proper definition of time should be), that that disagreement ended up preventing Einstein from ever receiving a Nobel prize for relativity.
Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations! – Jimena Canales page 1177 Excerpt: Bergson temporarily had the last word during their meeting at Société française de philosophie. His intervention negatively affected Einstein’s Nobel Prize, which was given “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” and not for relativity. The reasons behind this decision, as stated in the prize’s presentation speech, were related to Bergson’s intervention: “Most discussion [of Einstein’s work] centers on his Theory of Relativity. This pertains to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly.”51 For a moment, their debate dragged matters of time out of the solid terrain of “matters of fact” and into the shaky ground of “matters of concern.”52 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3210598/canales-Einstein,%20Bergson%20and%20the%20Experiment%20that%20Failed%282%29.pdf?sequence=2
bornagain77
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
06:44 AM
6
06
44
AM
PDT
Some of these aren't really paradoxes, just confusions. Ravens and Apples starts with a pure propositional logic statement, then takes it as "evidence" for a factual relationship. Logic doesn't work that way.polistra
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
04:19 AM
4
04
19
AM
PDT
Time travel in fiction will always have problems, with most ignoring the paradoxes. There seems to be an inability to grasp a paradox has occurred or no interest in addressing the obvious problems. One of the biggest flaws that I have seen on any given movie dealing with time travel is, Back to the Future, Part 3. When he goes back to the old west to save Doc, he uses a time machine that Doc has left for him. Since there was already one Delorean used by Doc, there would be two when he went back to save Doc. All the parts needed to fix the second would be on the first.BobRyan
January 27, 2022
January
01
Jan
27
27
2022
01:16 AM
1
01
16
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply