Edgar, Thanks for your response. I welcome the opportunity to discuss topics like this.
In your response below you talked about randomness as if I had disagreed with that. I do agree, in fact believe reality is entirely chaotic (the original of chaos, not the chaos theory meaning). Reality being entirely chaotic there is the potential for patterns to emerge. But also, reality being entirely chaotic, these patterns arise and dissolve, appear and disappear. Human intellect seizes upon these patterns and discards the non-patterned. Human intellect also manufactures patterns where there in reality are none. In either case these patterns are no more significant (in the ultimate sense) then seeing forms of elephants or a face in the shapes of clouds. I am very interested in finishing reading your paper on time so I can better address my beliefs on the illusory nature of time with you. My beliefs are based on my direct experiences with reality in which there appears to be no time, no form, no events, no patterns. I'd like to someday be able to describe that in a scholarly paper such as your paper on time. In the meantime I'll direct my attention to doing something more significant - like washing my bowls. Thanks...Bill! From: Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edgar Owen Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 11:17 AM To: Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [Zen] More on Freedom and causality Bill, An interesting post to which the answer is well yes and no. First of all the quantum world is continuous in one sense, that the wave functions which define everything at the micro level continually persist and just change their forms they never actually 'collapse' or vanish but like ripples and waves in an ocean of ripples and waves gradually lose their measurability in new ripples and waves. So you are correct that in one sense it is only at the classical level at which humans exists that discrete events are picked out and isolated by the human brain from the flux of tao or chi or OE or whatever one wants to call it. This however doesn't negate the randomness at the micro-level. That in my view is caused by the fact that dimensional spacetime is actually created by quantum level processes. So what randomness means is that at the micro-level the creation of points of spacetime are created with some randomness. At an even deeper level we have little units of the building blocks of the universe, things like units of charge and spin, which are continuously reassociating into elementary particles. We may call those things particle interactions, but really they are just reassociations of the elementary units of reality. These elementary units of reality are discrete though in their essence, though continuous in time. Basically if things were not discrete fundamentally then the universe would be continuous and that would mean that infinities would have to exist. There are no physical infinities, infinities are an abstract extrapolation invented by men. Hope that makes sense, if not I'll try to explain in more detail. Edgar On Oct 1, 2008, at 12:07 AM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Edgar, I haven't finished reading your paper on time. All last month I was in the USA visiting my ailing, elderly parents and just didn't have the time to do it justice. Maybe when I'm finished with it and am able to get back to you with comments I will see less disagreement between us on topics such as time and cause-and-effect, but I couldn't let this current post of yours go by without some observations. The bottom line of these observations is that the human concepts of time and cause-and-effect are maya - rational/intellectual constructs/overlays on reality - much like the concept of 'self'. Now to your post: I'm not willing to concede that 'everything is quantum'. In fact if I had to choose a rational label, I would say that 'everything' (reality) is a single continuum not a collection of individual quanta. 'Probabilistic' is definitely a rationalistic overlay which is used to fill in the gap between the highly desired rational state of determinism (cause and effect) and the highly undesirable real state of chaos (randomness). Since reality is a continuum there are no individual 'events' that can be defined and separated by 'time' or connected by 'cause-and-effect'. To answer the question you pose in your last paragraph: >Are the laws of complex emergent events actually determining the fundamental tuning of the quantum >world which seem to produce them, or vice versa? Or is it all locked in an unchangeable time >symmetric network? The long answer is: There are no individual events to which laws could be assigned/discovered/applied. Also, there are no changes (not the same as 'unchangeable') because in order for 'change' to manifest, there needs to be multiple 'events' happening at different points in 'time', neither of which exist. The short answer is: Mu! (and this is not the 'mu' that is the 12 letter of the Greek alphabet.) But, as I stated in the beginning, it's all dependent on what's your definition, usage of and belief in time. If you concede time, you concede all else. ...Bill! From:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Edgar Owen Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 2:12 PM To:[EMAIL PROTECTED];Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com Subject: [Zen] More on Freedom and causality Andy, All randomness in nature is ultimately based in the fact that everything is quantum probabilistic at base. If the quantum world were not probabilistic there would be no true randomness, though there would continue to be many cases where the determinism was not computable. However even the quantum world is not truly random, but random only in ways which converge towards determinism at the classical level, e.g. half lives are predictable even though individual decay events are not. So the upshot is that individual quantum events ensure that events in the universe are not completely determined, but that that non- determinism often tends to converge on outcomes which may well appear deterministic at the classical level, perhaps bounded randomness, or quasi-determinism would be appropriate terminology. This all goes back to my point of which way determinism actually works, backward or forward, bottom up or top down. Do the convergences determine the constraints on the quantum world, or do the constraints on the quantum world determine the convergences at the classical level. Are the laws of complex emergent events actually determining the fundamental tuning of the quantum world which seem to produce them, or vice versa? Or is it all locked in an unchangeable time symmetric network? Edgar __________ NOD32 3478 (20080928) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com __________ NOD32 3484 (20080930) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com ------------------------------------ Current Book Discussion: any Zen book that you recently have read or are reading! Talk about it today!Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Zen_Forum/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
