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- Hacker News
- I like the article. And I applaud any physicist trying to come to grips with our conceptions of reality AND reading up on philosophy. That being said, he's neither the first nor will he be the last, nor is "perpectivism" in epistomology a new thing. I like, however, how he is throwing in several streams (I saw James, Nietzsche, Kuhn, and even Rorty and Wittgenstein II) of thought, centered on Kant's ideas of the noumenon and its inaccessibility. I don't think I agree with him, though ;)
If I had to label him, I'd say he is mostly an anti-realist.
by Propelloni - Another Ph.D. physicist here. Any popularization of quantum mechanics (or quantum gravity in this case) can quickly degenerate into potentially foolish, or even harmful, metaphysical speculation. Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]." The frustrating part is that about 100 years ago, quantum mechanics provided a set of rules that didn't have an easy intuitive interpretation (i.e. that quantum mechanics is not both a "real and local" theory.) Yet it is wildly successful for what it does, and the mathematics is crystal clear. (By the way, regular non-relativistic quantum mechanics can be interpreted as having "no reality", no fancy quantum loop gravity needed; see e.g.https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 - more precisely, only correlations exist.)
Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm. So, I guess morality is all a matter of perspective? That can be used to justify anything. We do seem to have an emergent reality (at least the one I am experiencing at the moment) that is held in common - just because the underlying mathematics is hard to interpret doesn't justify "anything goes", or my crazy belief is just as good as your crazy belief.
So although it is fun to think about, don't take "there is no objective reality" too seriously - you still have to go to work, you still have to pay your taxes.
- Most folks don't understand what Physicists mean when they say "Reality doesn't exist at the Quantum level". Words like "Reality", "Illusion" etc. mean quite different things when applied at quantum level vs. classical-macro level.
The best book to get a grasp on the above is Werner Heisenberg's classic Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. The introduction by Paul Davies itself is worth the price of the book since it highlights the main issues quite clearly.
At the fundamental level quantum systems have an inherent indeterminism (as a consequence of the famous uncertainty principle) which is what we find hard to grasp. It does not mean total anarchy but that you can only calculate relative probabilities of the alternatives in the answer set i.e. it is a statistical theory. Thus it can make definite predictions about sets of identical systems but generally cannot say anything definite about a specific individual system.
For example, an electron doesn't exist as a single thing occupying a specific trajectory around the nucleus. It only exists as a set of potentialities occupying an area of space viz. the so called electron shell. Only when a measurement is made does a electron-with-position or electron-with-momentum can be said to come into existence (since before the measurement there are only probabilities and you cannot measure both position and momentum sharply simultaneously). It is in this sense that the Reality of an electron is said to only exist in the Measurement/Observation and cannot be said to exist otherwise.
The other side of the coin is that, Modern Neuroscience tells us that the Brain itself is wired to Construct Reality from incomplete data and we seek/construct patterns where there are none. See for example Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives and watch this Ted talk by Susana Martinez-Conde Reality is made of illusions—and we need them - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzDw07RqCSs
by rramadass - I think the idea of an "external reality that follows certain rules and humans operate in" could itself be a kind of evolutionarily-advantageous belief, even if it's not actually true in a quantum physics sense. In other words, we become capable of science and technology only after assuming there are scientific rules to be found.
There are many concepts like this throughout human history - another one I'm thinking of is the (in the West) monotheistic idea of narrative history/time. By framing time as something that can have a beginning and end, you enable or at least incentivize "progress", and mentally unlock the ability to work toward some idealized future, rather than accepting that time is cyclical and/or without some notion of moving forward.
by keiferski - Carlo Rovelli: 'Time Is an Illusion' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuLaUYQFIwgby vismit2000
- People interested in this subject might enjoy this interview with David Albert [1], as well as this interview with Tim Maudlin [2], who offers a different perspective from Albert. They are both philosophers of physics, or in other words physicists working on the foundations of physics.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR2sMeXLuLw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3riyyEmWwoY
by knubie - This is not radical. His thought is clearly in line with a very old and very mainstream philosophical tradition called "idealism," and I was surprised to see this go unmentioned in the article. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
> Within modern philosophy there are sometimes taken to be two fundamental conceptions of idealism:
> 1. Something mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality, and
> 2. although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge.
Among mainstream philosophical traditions, idealism is IMO the weakest, as it's inevitably solipsistic. Physicalism has become strongest.
by A_D_E_P_T - I have a degree in theoretical physics and a gold medal, which is to say I have endured the requisite intellectual beatings. Often the best interpretations of physical theory are unpalatable to the average person. The idea that there is in fact no objective physical reality is the most egregious offender in this regard. However, it is nonetheless the best conclusion that one can draw given strict adherence to what the mathematical formalism of QM provides. There is simply no physical machinery to support an objective reality, period.
Now, that being said, the remarkable part is that the forgoing conclusion does us zero harm. We can still have the logical predictive fiction that an objective reality exists. What staggers the mind is the corollary that no human has ever erected a truth. Moreover, every intelligent species that ever endeavors to ask these questions will find the same non-answer.
by d4rkn0d3z