So says quantum physicist Antoine Suarez at The Big Questions Online:
It is not that free will follows from quantum physics but rather the other way around: quantum physics follows from free will.
Let me begin by referring to experiments. …
Thoughts?
Dr. Suarez also recently took Richard Dawkins to task for a blunder that Dawkins made in logic.
Is Richard Dawkins proving the existence of God after all? – Antoine Suarez – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIXXqv9zKEw
From the referenced article:
“It is compatible with physics that a mind outside space-time can purposefully control quantum randomness.”
A mind outside space-time? What could that possibly be?
Also of note to free will, is this rather easy way to defeat the Turing test:
Which is especially interesting to learn given that material processes have never been seen creating functional information:
And all of the preceding is consistent with Godel’s incompleteness theorem. As Godel showed, if numbers are included, there cannot be a ‘complete’ mathematical theory of everything. A fact that Hawking himself had conceded but seems to have subsequently forgotten,,
How all this this plays out for Darwinian evolution was illustrated by Chaitin. Here is what Gregory Chaitin, a world-famous mathematician and computer scientist, said about the limits of the computer program he was trying to develop to prove that Darwinian evolution was mathematically feasible:
Here is the video where, at the 30:00 minute mark, you can hear the preceding quote from Chaitin’s own mouth in full context:
Moreover, at the 40:00 minute mark of the video Chaitin readily admits that Intelligent Design is the best possible way to get evolution to take place, and at the 43:30 minute mark Chaitin even tells of a talk he had with a friend who pointed out that the idea Evolutionary computer model that Chaitin has devised does not have enough time to work. And Chaitin even agreed that his friend had a point, although Chaitin still ended up just ‘wanting’, and not ever proving, his idea Darwinian mathematical model to be true!
Related quote from Chaitin and Dembski:
Also of interest,,
Thus we have countless thousands of intricate algorithms working in precise harmony with one another, at a level of control and precision that easily exceeds what our best programmers have ever achieved in any man-made computer program, all coordinated to stunning degree all to keep biological life living. Yet there is no single algorithm from which all the other algorithms may be derived. This severe limit especially includes the Random Mutation & Natural Selection Algorithm of Darwinism:
What could the ‘free will’ source for all this integrated logic possibly be?
of note: ‘the Word’ in John1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos is the root word from which we derive our modern word logic
http://etymonline.com/?term=logic
Music:
From the article:
The spiritual has been proven both actual (via science & experience) and necessary (via logic), both in several different ways. Only deep, anti-theistic denial or some nihilistic addiction can blind one to these facts.
Coincidentally, I’ve been thinking about this question lately.
I devised a variation of the famous double-slit experiment that involved, instead of a human, a curious and highly observant pussycat . . . perhaps even Schrödinger’s in the in-between-life-and-death state (fully enclosed).
Then, I read that the diffraction pattern collapses whenever there’s even a potential for observation. This included a camera that recorded and immediately erased any observation!
My conclusions were that all things are connected, the universe is fundamentally mathematical (as evidenced by the immediate and retroactive collapse of probability distributions), and we’re likely living in a simulation of reality.
“The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Proverbs 16:33
Oh, and this verse is not about divination, by the way. God is way too crafty for that. 😉
Here are a couple of experiments that provide solid backing to Dr. Suarez’s article:
Can quantum theory be improved? – July 23, 2012
Excerpt: Being correct 50% of the time when calling heads or tails on a coin toss won’t impress anyone. So when quantum theory predicts that an entangled particle will reach one of two detectors with just a 50% probability, many physicists have naturally sought better predictions. The predictive power of quantum theory is, in this case, equal to a random guess. Building on nearly a century of investigative work on this topic, a team of physicists has recently performed an experiment whose results show that, despite its imperfections, quantum theory still seems to be the optimal way to predict measurement outcomes.,
However, in the new paper, the physicists have experimentally demonstrated that there cannot exist any alternative theory that increases the predictive probability of quantum theory by more than 0.165, with the only assumption being that measurement (*conscious observation) parameters can be chosen independently (free choice, free will, assumption) of the other parameters of the theory.,,,
,, the experimental results provide the tightest constraints yet on alternatives to quantum theory. The findings imply that quantum theory is close to optimal in terms of its predictive power, even when the predictions are completely random.
http://phys.org/news/2012-07-quantum-theory.html
In the preceding paper, it was shown in the paper that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will, or consciousness, as a starting assumptions in Quantum Mechanics!
in the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is falsified by the fact that present conscious choices effect past material states:
Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past – April 23, 2012
Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a “Gedankenexperiment” called “delayed-choice entanglement swapping”, formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice’s and Bob’s photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice’s and Bob’s photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor’s choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. “We found that whether Alice’s and Bob’s photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured”, explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study.
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-q.....ction.html
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,
A strong argument, but . . .
Being contrarian here, if your choices were indeed deterministic in the past, it might explain why the consequences in the present seem retroactive.
I still believe in (mostly) free will and entanglement, but for other reasons.
Non sequitur
Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice Experiment:
Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles “have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy,” so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory.
http://www.bottomlayer.com/bot.....choice.htm
“Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel”
John A. Wheeler
Alain Aspect speaks on John Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Experiment – video
http://vimeo.com/38508798
My second conclusion implies that the collapse of probability distributions is not caused by sentient observation (hence my idea of employing an observant pussycat, perhaps followed by a bird, spider, or fly, depending on the outcomes) but rather a mathematical change of state …if you can swallow that. 😉
It would be an interesting experiment.
#9 Maybe.
#10 Ok, I’m impressed by the billions of years, but if everything is rigidly deterministic, it might as well have been a been a billionth of a second; “nature” would know about the telescopes in advance from the beginning.
IMHO Any materialistic notion of determinism is absolutely crushed by these findings. Now, if you were still set in arguing determinism from a Theistic perspective I believe Calvinism would be your cup of tea. Anyways, this is my last post on the subject as I’m off to bed:
Mandisa – Esther – Born For This – music video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxFCber4TDo
Personally, I think determinism is blown away by chaos theory.
No, I’m not a Calvinist, I was just being a little contrarian. 🙂
Good night.
‘“Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel”
John A. Wheeler’
This is why I eschew the whole question of the age of the earth. I am inclined to believe that the existence of what we cast as the ‘laws’ of physics etc, enabling theistic scientists to study and understand our world, naive, classical physics, are really an indulgence on God’s part towards us, in order to enable us to exercise our intelligence, initially, in a worldly and merely analytical way, and then for us to discover that this knowledge, widely held to be strictly autonomous and not consilient with religion, requires to be underpinned by the kind of faith in an over-arching rationality which only unitive, spiritual knowledge can offer, in the face of an ocean of paradoxes, and only to those who feel humble in the face of such ineffable mysteries.
It’s literally now a case of, ‘the game’s up’, boys and girls.