RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Wed, 07 Jan 2015 23:10:02 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 8:01 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

On 1/7/2015 7:37 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 11:40 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

On 1/6/2015 11:41 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:

So, even what we think of as "nothing" is an existent entity or "something". 

 

If only through the "we" which think about that nothing. 

 

Is anything possible at all without an observer?


What we think is nomologically possible is relative to some theory of the 
world.  All the scientific theories of the world I know of include the 
possibility of the world existing prior to any observers.

 

But do any of them describe how these worlds exist without any observer 
present. It is one thing to include a possibility – e.g. not exclude something; 
quite another to show how.


They retrodict how they existed: Astronomers can describe how hot the sun was 
and where the planets were before humans existed to observe them.

 

Yes… in an ordered system, but even something as eminently predictable as a 
planetary orbit becomes more difficult to predict at great removes of time, due 
to subtle effects of three body dynamics, which (especially when operating 
within transit through a gravitational keyhole can induce a butterfly effect).

  Paleontologists can describe what some dinosaurs were like before humans 
existed. 

To some extent, but only to the very limited extent that we can deduce from 
preserved fossil evidence. To say there is a lot we don’t know about the 
dinosaurs is somewhat of an understatement.





The concept of the “observer” is also pretty loosely understood  and can mean 
many things…. Quantum measurement is kind of along the lines of what I was 
intending… not necessarily a self-aware conscious observer. 


Up until the (misnamed) recombination era there were no classical objects to 
observe - as well as no observers.

 

Agreed --- perhaps first-combination would have been more appropriate – and 
though a separate event photon decoupling is what gave us those baby pictures.






Isn’t there some debate on the importance of the observer in Quantum Physics 
with some arguing that the observer and the particular system being observed 
somehow become mysteriously linked so that the results of any observation seem 
to be determined in part by actual choices made by the observer. 


That was an idea of von Neumann, that collapse of the wave function was caused 
by conscious perception.  It was taken up by Wigner and Schroedinger proposed 
his cat experiment as refutation of the idea.  Wigner later dropped the idea.  
Bohr always held that what was measured was determined by the instrumentation 
and instrumentation was necessarily classical.  So in that case what was 
measured was determined by the choice of instrumentation - but nothing 
mysterious about it.  Chris Fuchs and the "QBists" take the wave function (and 
other mathematics) to be subjective descriptions of first person knowledge; so 
obviously the wave function changes when you learn some new bit of data.

 

Concepts such as point of view or perspective, communicatability etc. seem 
important for any theory of something from nothing, whether this is a 
mathematical one or a physical based hypothesis 

Such as the notion of a random quantum fluctuation, allowed by Heisenberg’s 
uncertainty principle, in which a small empty space can come into existence 
probabilistically due to fluctuations in the metastable false vacuum. This 
small bubble of space most often disappears again almost instantly, but if it 
can expand to a sufficient size then a universe is born (or so it hypothesizes).

Honestly, I am not pretending to have any answers here…. I am asking questions, 
trying to make sense of nothing.

-Chris

 

 

 



Brent

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