On Nothing in a void.

Speakpigeon said:
Observer? What observer? Observing what? A box? Interestingly boring, I guess.

You would need to say it like this: The longer you wait to open the box, the greater the probability to find a dead cat.
And I still fail to see the "contradiction in terms" you said there was in this situation.

Condition? Sorry, I don't know what condition you're talking about.
EB
Click to expand...
You seem to overlook that Schrodinger intended the thought experiment as a demonstration of the absurdity that an organism can be both alive and dead at the same time, because it is a contradiction in terms.
 
Speakpigeon said:
It seems bees understand the concept of nothing...
So, maybe it's time for humans to catch up?
EB
Click to expand...
Many animals can recognize the difference between more (many) and less (fewer), an inate ability to count. In fact Lemurs can count in this manner as fast as humans.

As far as bees are concerned, they are able to debate very sophisticated ideas, such as "over there is a great source of food and a perfect site to establish a hive", along with giving precise directions and distances.
 
Last edited:
Write4U said:
You seem to overlook that Schrodinger intended the thought experiment as a demonstration of the absurdity that an organism can be both alive and dead at the same time, because it is a contradiction in terms.
Click to expand...
Schrödinger is dead and I can no longer have a live argument with him. That would be a contradiction in terms.
First you claim there's a contradiction in terms in QM and then all you can do to argue your point is to summon up Schrödinger from the dead as an argument from authority.
It's a fact Schrödinger's thought experiment has been a tremendous communication success. It's still live today in the public at large but I think you yourself forget that it was just a moment in time, not the final word. Einstein did the same danse with the so-called "EPR paradox" and now we have Bell's Theorem, very well verified by experiments and widely regarded as falsifying Einstein's view. No paradox. All that's left is the recognition that QM is only contradicting our commonsense understanding of the world. Big deal.
Still, Schrödinger's argument is irrelevant. You won't be able to make the dead argue your claim for you. The only question is whether you can argue your claim.
EB
 
Speakpigeon said:
Schrödinger is dead and I can no longer have a live argument with him. That would be a contradiction in terms.
Click to expand...
Apparently this was discussed during his lifetime.
Erwin Schrödinger was born in Vienna on August 12, 1887 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. He is best known for his work regarding quantum theory, particularly about his thought experiment involving a cat in order to explain the flawed interpretation of quantum superposition.......
Click to expand...
Of course, Schrödinger claimed, that was ridiculous. Quantum superposition could not work with large objects such as cats, because it is impossible for an organism to be simultaneously alive and dead. Thus, he reasoned that the Copenhagen Interpretation must be inherently flawed. While many people incorrectly assume Schrödinger supported the premise behind the thought experiment, he really didn’t. His entire point was that it was impossible.
Click to expand...
http://www.iflscience.com/physics/schrödinger’s-cat-explained/
First you claim there's a contradiction in terms in QM and then all you can do to argue your point is to summon up Schrödinger from the dead as an argument from authority.
It's a fact Schrödinger's thought experiment has been a tremendous communication success. It's still live today in the public at large but I think you yourself forget that it was just a moment in time, not the final word. Einstein did the same danse with the so-called "EPR paradox" and now we have Bell's Theorem, very well verified by experiments and widely regarded as falsifying Einstein's view. No paradox. All that's left is the recognition that QM is only contradicting our commonsense understanding of the world. Big deal.
Still, Schrödinger's argument is irrelevant. You won't be able to make the dead argue your claim for you. The only question is whether you can argue your claim.
EB
Click to expand...
Well, a superposition (from the subjective observer's view) can only exist before the quantum event occurs, although that seems to negate the concept of objective potential (that which may become reality) which is the ultimate determining factor in causality (ability to do work). The result is already an enfolded implicate before the unfolded explicated event by the total of potentials present (David Bohm: "Wholeness and the Implicate Order").
 
Last edited:
Write4U said:
Apparently this was discussed during his lifetime. http://www.iflscience.com/physics/schrödinger’s-cat-explained/
Well, a superposition (from the subjective observer's view) can only exist before the quantum event occurs, although that seems to negate the concept of objective potential (that which may become reality) which is the ultimate determining factor in causality (ability to do work).
Click to expand...
You're not making much sense here, at least as far as I can tell. You must be competing in an altogether different league from mine.
Write4U said:
The result is already an enfolded implicate before the unfolded explicated event by the total of potentials present (David Bohm: "Wholeness and the Implicate Order").
Click to expand...
Sorry, I have very strict rules as to what constitutes an acceptable explanation and this doesn't comply.
EB
 
Speakpigeon said:
You're not making much sense here, at least as far as I can tell. You must be competing in an altogether different league from mine.

Sorry, I have very strict rules as to what constitutes an acceptable explanation and this doesn't comply.
EB
Click to expand...
Then you better familiarize yourself with David Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". Bohm delved deeper into metaphysics than any other theory I am aware of and he was probably one of the most brilliant physicists as well as philosophers in modern science. You may want to check out Bohmian Mechanics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

p.s. I have no agenda, least of all competition.
 
Write4U said:
Then you better familiarize yourself with David Bohm's "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". Bohm delved deeper into metaphysics than any other theory I am aware of and he was probably one of the most brilliant physicists as well as philosophers in modern science. You may want to check out Bohmian Mechanics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/

p.s. I have no agenda, least of all competition.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link. Not much to do with my original complaint about your claim of "contradiction in terms", though. But never mind.
The link seems really interesting. I personally don't buy QM as it's usually presented and it seems I might be pleasantly surprised by Bohmian Mechanics too, so I'll try to have a close look at it see if I can understand what these guys say.
EB
 
Consider a whiteboard, or a chalkboard in a lecture theatre with nothing written on it. Where is this nothing, actually?

Is it in the difference, so to speak, between something on the board, and nothing on the board? The board itself is a kind of boundary, a bracket around "nothing on the board".
 
arfa brane said:
Consider a whiteboard, or a chalkboard in a lecture theatre with nothing written on it. Where is this nothing, actually?

Is it in the difference, so to speak, between something on the board, and nothing on the board? The board itself is a kind of boundary, a bracket around "nothing on the board".
Click to expand...
There is always something on the board at some level...germs maybe, dust, light...there will never be an absence of something...
Alex
 
Alex said:
There is always something on the board at some level...germs maybe, dust, light...there will never be an absence of something...
Alex
Click to expand...
If there are no symbols of any kind there is nothing on the board. You will need the things you mentioned to be symbolised by writing some symbols where there aren't any yet. Then, you know, you might claim the symbols represent the things.

Unless you detect, physically, these things, you can't represent them. As for light, you can just put that in an ambient background. As for what's "on" the board, it's taken to be in that context a board and it's purpose are meant, the 'things' are notational, symbolic. and "nothing" is the empty symbol or string. Dust, bacteria etc are just background noise which the purpose of a board which is written on, filters out.

Nothing is a matter of perspective I suppose.
 
Xelasnave.1947 said:
Well the title is a mere attention getter.
I want to discuss nothing in general rather than placing it in a void.
The subject of nothing often comes up and yet it could be argued that nothing does not in fact exist.
Some say before everything there was nothing, some say there is nothing on the outside of the universe, some say they have nothing to say rather than to say something.
I ask what is nothing? How should it be defined?
Can nothing exist and does it take up space?
Is there nothing in a void or is a void nothing.
Can you say something about nothing.
Alex
Click to expand...
There is nothing to say about this question. You have to first define "nothing" and then once you do you have your answer.
 
arfa brane said:
If there are no symbols of any kind there is nothing on the board. You will need the things you mentioned to be symbolised by writing some symbols where there aren't any yet. Then, you know, you might claim the symbols represent the things.

Unless you detect, physically, these things, you can't represent them. As for light, you can just put that in an ambient background. As for what's "on" the board, it's taken to be in that context a board and it's purpose are meant, the 'things' are notational, symbolic. and "nothing" is the empty symbol or string. Dust, bacteria etc are just background noise which the purpose of a board which is written on, filters out.

Nothing is a matter of perspective I suppose.
Click to expand...
I would call it a "permittive condition" with a potential which allows for writing with a specific medium such as chalk.
 
Last edited:
Well there we have it. Nothing is something context-dependent at least.
The next sentence has nothing in it.
 
My interest in nothing came from thinking about empty space.
After thinking about what may be found in empty regions of space it became obvious that the empty space would indeed contain a great deal.
Folk reject the idea of an ether on the basis that the model of gravity General Relativity does not need it and MM experiment failed to show it.
So from there folk would tend to think that nothing or empty were reasonable descriptions of space.
But when I think about empty space I see it filled with stuff racing by at c from everywhere to everywhere. ..photons and neutrinos must fill the empty space such that is certainly not empty.
And what we call nothing is in fact a piece of everything else in the universe that emits photons or neutrinos. ..I am sure I have said such before but it is worth repeating.
I think that is mind boggling to think nuetrinos from everywhere presumably pass thru each of us all the time.That photons do similar but dont pas thru us.
I wonder if all of this stuff rushing all over could be dark energy.

Alex
 
I think it's really hard to think about an empty space. I think it's really about perception, and what we can and can't perceive.

Since we also perceive thoughts, we can abstract ourselves and our perceptions. Consider a whiteboard in a lecture theatre with noone in it (no perceivers), is there anything written on the board? Do we need to define "written" more exactly?
 
arfa brane said:
I think it's really hard to think about an empty space.
Click to expand...

I think about empty space as folk call it a great deal but I dont think of it as empty in the least.

I visualise what many dont ever think about.

My main hobby is astrophotography and so I sit for hours under the stars and in the past would sleep all day so I could observe and photograph all night, night after night, if clear I am out photographing although these days tend to come in about 1 am.

Have you heard that thing that goes.."it is a wise man who can imagine a straight stick with no ends"..???

We I try to imagine such a stick (which is impossible but fun to try) and you realise that stick will run through many objects out there as you seek to find either end...one stick becomes many tradjectories and then I realise that trajectories are thru every point and are geometrically infinite in number ... I then realise every point out there has at least light coming from everywhere (via an infinite number of trajectories) and each tradjectory would have countless photons travelling along (and other stuff but limiting it to photons gives one an idea of what is rushing all back and forth along each individual trajectory)...and we see a star as a point of light and fail to realize that it will been seen everywhere such that it marks out a sphere at any radius...that is hard to realise because we see only as a point and think nothing more...so sitting under the stars waiting for the camera to expose for an hour or two I have plenty of time to look at the limited section we can see and think what is between the stars...it becomes mind boggling when you realise just how much is there...between objects...it is hard for humans to look at a star and not think its a point of light just for them..stars can be thought of as bubbles with countless layers extending many light years...and of course we see so little but I imagine stuff past what I can observe ... the imaginary lines we call tradjectories are everywhere cteating a thatch work with room for nothing else and each laden with photons and nuetrinos at least... and we see only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum and to try and add what we dont see...can you appreciate why I can not comprehend nothing.

Nothing is indeed full of everything...the term ether is avoided but a similar term needs to be in place to indicate space is not empty.

Go outside if you can see stars from your location and hold up your finger and ask what photons reach it..in fact do this in the day light first...we are trained to see stuff simply via physics so we miss the complexity I feel.

Think of a lens drawing..we only think of the parrallel light paths coming to the lens and being refracted to a focal point ...there is so much more going on as light comes from all directions. ..the physics diagram conditions us to see such a small part of whats going on...

Dont think I am bagging physics in any way.

Alex
 
Suppose we go with the rule of thumb that a void has to have a boundary, even if there is literally nothing in this void.
An idea I've seen says we can represent a 'bubble' of nothing and think about a blind path through the side of a bubble.

Firstly though, we need to accept there is a notion of 'inside' and 'outside' a bubble, which we can represent as a closed curve, a loop, in two dimensions. Now the question is, how does a blind path 'know' about being inside or outside(?), which is to say, globally somewhere in the interior of a closed curve, or in the complement; assuming also a blind path can count boundary traversals.

So how does the path know it starts on the outside of any of the void bubbles in its reality? A godlike observer in the third dimension can determine this, given a finite number of voids, but a blind path sees all points as the same, except for intersections with a boundary. Otherwise it 'sees' nothing, and nothing is a visual aid here, like not being coloured in a map colouring.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top