Can we be in two different places at once?

[Diamond7]

In the article Fisher is really asking whether the strange properties of quantum objects – being in two places at once, seeming to instantly influence each other over distance and so on – could explain still-perplexing aspects of human cognition. And that, it turns out, is a very contentious question indeed.

Is quantum physics behind your brain's ability to think?

In one sense it’s obvious our brains work on quantum physics: they are made of atoms, after all. But the idea that the human brain is just a massive quantum computer is hugely controversial

www.newscientist.com

 

[Aviel]

Yes, all the born again are 2 places at once.

They are on the earth, in a body, getting ready to be Raptured or die.

And they are "in Christ".. "One with God"... "seated in heavenly places", in the KOG.

 

[stevevw]

I believe that some part of us maybe consciousness that can be in the world and is non local in that it has no boundaries to time and space. Memories, conscious states, can influence reality, change our perceptions and even the objective world.

I believe that two or more people may experience a certain conscious state together or apart. For example how people often think or have a similar experience of feeling about the same thing. We often say its just a coincident but I believe its more than that.

Or how we may be reminded of a past event which instantly comes back to us with the same conscious experience we had even decades earlier. Like we were transported experientially back to that time. Or how new information may reshape our reality into a new one thus changing our world. Or even changing the worlds consciousness about the world and reality.

You could say there are these vibes and I hate using the word as its got bad connotations but its apt for trying to explain how consciousness or whatever it is that we sense beyond ourselevs as real. I don't think its imagination because quite often it has a powerful representation that seems to have deeper associations than being superficial or a byproduct of something else.

This is similar to the more obvious exmaples like OBE which I also think happens and there is pretty good evidence out there from good people, some intelligent in the sense they are not the types to make stuff up. The most interesting part is that regardless of whether the events they experience are factual or not most truely believe it happened on the same level as they believe everyday experiences.

So much so that a big part of the evidnece is the effects these experiences have in changing peoples lives, having life evaluations and it changing them as a person as though something profound happened even if there was no near death involved. Its a very interesting subject and I think it needs more investigation rather than people just fobbing it off.

But the everyday stuff that we call coincidents or "Deja vu" ect are more than this and we have not yet come to understand how we can even work out how to measure this. Science is not always the best method as it devalues experiential phenomena and reduces it to physical processes and programming.

I think conscious experience itself is a real phenomena in the world that can tell us about reality. That sense that cannot be measured in quantity which we know is more than just a epiphenomena or secondary byproduct of the physical world. Its more than that and we need to find a way to understand its role.

Thats why I think consciousness and mind are becoming expanding areas of study and many new ideas about consciousness and mind being fundemental are proving fruitful. Its early days and it is difficult to overcome the scientific materialist paradigm of thinking. But many say science is hitting a wall and maybe we need a paradigm shift in thinking about what fundemental reality is.

Whatever it is I think we have ignored the 'subject and the observer' and seperated this out of the equation. Considering that consciousness is our only direct understanding of the world perhaps we need to incorporate the subjective consciousness back into how we measure reality and maybe we will begin to make progress.

 

[Mark Quayle]

In the article Fisher is really asking whether the strange properties of quantum objects – being in two places at once, seeming to instantly influence each other over distance and so on – could explain still-perplexing aspects of human cognition. And that, it turns out, is a very contentious question indeed.

Is quantum physics behind your brain's ability to think?

In one sense it’s obvious our brains work on quantum physics: they are made of atoms, after all. But the idea that the human brain is just a massive quantum computer is hugely controversial

www.newscientist.com

Can you show some kind of link or citation demonstrating quantum objects being in two places at once? All I've heard of, besides claims by "scientific" periodicals and people talking in fuzzy logic (haha) such as you quote above, is that they SEEM to do so. One showing up here just as one disappears there is not being two places at once.

Seems to me people are getting ahead of themselves.

 

[stevevw]

double post

 

[Diamond7]

Can you show some kind of link or citation demonstrating quantum objects being in two places at once?

We are talking about entanglement. You can run a google search using that word. Everything I do has key words if you want to do a search and research on what I am talking about.

 

[Mark Quayle]

We are talking about entanglement. You can run a google search using that word. Everything I do has key words if you want to do a search and research on what I am talking about.

Yes, I know what we are talking about. My point is that the notion invoked is sloppily done.

 

[Diamond7]

Yes, I know what we are talking about. My point is that the notion invoked is sloppily done.

Yes I agree, the author does not have a very good understanding of what he is talking about. Is this article better?

Molecules in Two Places at Once: Quantum Superposition

Scientists have been able to observe larger molecules that occupy two places at once, an experiment that has once only been possible with light particles in the double-slit experiment.

www.sciencetimes.com

The reason I am interested is because we can instantly be anywhere in the universe and this is a way to explain how that is possible. We can not only be anywhere, we can be anytime. As they say God is outside of time. He does not heal memories, He can go back in time to heal at the beginning at the source.

In Back to the Future they looked into the idea we could go back in time and change the future.
Interacting with your past self can cause problems. Better to let God do it.

 

[Diamond7]

people talking in fuzzy logic

I had a rice cooker with fuzzy logic that cost over $100. It did make better rice but when it broke I bought a $15 rice cooker even though the sensor is not very good at all and sometimes ruins the rice but my wife can manage to use it better than I can.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Yes I agree, the author does not have a very good understanding of what he is talking about. Is this article better?

Molecules in Two Places at Once: Quantum Superposition

Scientists have been able to observe larger molecules that occupy two places at once, an experiment that has once only been possible with light particles in the double-slit experiment.

www.sciencetimes.com

The reason I am interested is because we can instantly be anywhere in the universe and this is a way to explain how that is possible. We can not only be anywhere, we can be anytime. As they say God is outside of time. He does not heal memories, He can go back in time to heal at the beginning at the source.

In Back to the Future they looked into the idea we could go back in time and change the future.
Interacting with your past self can cause problems. Better to let God do it.

"Recent advances in experimental physics have allowed very large molecules to exist in two places at once. While physicists have been able to do this for quite some time with smaller particles, this is the farthest we've successfully achieved in replicating this effect on a larger scale." Lol, this quote brings to mind something I heard several years back, something like, "Due to recent scientific advances lightning can now have up to 1 million volts!" Miracle-workers, these!

I see no proof there that anything is actually two places at once. Just saying... —But I'm no authority on the subject. It simply makes no sense to me.

 

[Diamond7]

I see no proof there that anything is actually two places at once. Just saying... —But I'm no authority on the subject. It simply makes no sense to me.

That is why this is quantum physics and not classical physics. I had a friend with a PhD in physics that knew NOTHING about quantum physics. Most of what I know about physics has to do with light. We are taught if you control light you can control reality.

Einstein questioned whether the universe was a clockwork (deterministic) or a craps table (random), seeking simple rules underlying nature.

This was a running discussion I had with my dad who believed in the random theory. My son is a computer engineer and he tells me that random does not exist. There are just things that are to difficult for us to understand.

 

[Stephen3141]

Subatomic particle characteristics, are very different than supertonic object characteristics.

To connect this subject with Christians doctrine...

-- the Bible presents that we live in a shared reality
-- the Bible presents "lying" as misrepresenting our shared reality
(this would be impossible, if we did not perceive a shared superatomic reality)

This post reflects a misunderstanding of the difference between
the characteristics of subatomic particles, and superatomic objects.

 

[Diamond7]

the Bible presents that we live in a shared reality

Science says we have subjective and objective reality.
In the Bible we are to have the mind of Christ.

 

[Simon_Templar]

Can you show some kind of link or citation demonstrating quantum objects being in two places at once? All I've heard of, besides claims by "scientific" periodicals and people talking in fuzzy logic (haha) such as you quote above, is that they SEEM to do so. One showing up here just as one disappears there is not being two places at once.

Seems to me people are getting ahead of themselves.

To begin with it is helpful to realize that there are some things in science which are understood in one sense, but not in another.

We know, for example, what gravity does, and we have accurate math to describe the effects of gravity. We don't entirely know what gravity is, or why it is.

At a certain level, much of the universe is just a black box. We can describe its behavior, but we can't see the inner-workings.

This is especially true of some of the core ideas in quantum mechanics.

One of those ides is "superposition".

This deals with the fact that quantum systems exist in a probabilistic state until they are observed, or interacted with by outside forces. In this state called superposition, it is impossible to know where individual particles are located. We can only determine probabilities of where they are located.

This also means that it is possible to think of the particle as being in multiple places at once. Whether the particle IS actually in multiple places at once is, at this point, unknown and probably unknowable.

One of the difficulties involved is that it is impossible to observe a system in a quantum state like this because as soon as the system is observed, or interacted with, it collapses out of super position into a normal state and we can see where the particles are. Part of the problem here is that quantum systems are so small that even the tiniest interactions change the system, thus they can't be observed without changing the system.

The classic thought experiment for this was Schroedinger's (sp?) cat. A cat is put in a box with a lethal poison. The poison is rigged to go off based on the atomic decay of an isotope, which is unpredictable. Thus those of us outside of the box cannot tell whether the cat is alive or dead. The cat can be thought of as both.

Physicists disagree about how that should be interpreted.

One of the major experimental proofs related to these ideas is the double slit experiment. The experiment deals with the conundrum that light can be thought of as both a particle and a wave, and when designing experiments, it behaves as either one, depending on the how the experiment is designed.

The short version, is that the experiment proved (or appeared to prove) that a single photon of light passed through two parallel slits at the same time, thus seeming to prove that it was in two places at once.

It is worth noting that quantum mechanics and the principles involved ONLY function at the level of particles (IE. Extremely small scale). Quantum mechanics don't function at the macro level.

Thus it almost appears as though there is a different set of rules for extreme microscopic world and for the macro world in which we live.

Another way of saying this would be.. particles seem to behave differently, than things which are made up of particles. Which, now that I think about it, actually fits really well with Aristotelian Hylomorphism...

 

[Mark Quayle]

Science says we have subjective and objective reality.
In the Bible we are to have the mind of Christ.

Can you show me some evidence of science saying we have subjective reality? Actually, I'm not even sure what is meant by that —"perceived reality", i.e. what we take to be real? What would that consist of —our thoughts on it, our concepts of it, our descriptions of it, or what? Is science saying merely that we have concepts of what is real? Or are you talking more along the lines that science says we can make reality real?

 

[Mark Quayle]

This deals with the fact that quantum systems exist in a probabilistic state until they are observed, or interacted with by outside forces. In this state called superposition, it is impossible to know where individual particles are located. We can only determine probabilities of where they are located.

In the veterinary hospital waiting room, "Mr Shrodinger, I'm afraid we've got both good news and bad news..."

 

[Mark Quayle]

To begin with it is helpful to realize that there are some things in science which are understood in one sense, but not in another.

We know, for example, what gravity does, and we have accurate math to describe the effects of gravity. We don't entirely know what gravity is, or why it is.

At a certain level, much of the universe is just a black box. We can describe its behavior, but we can't see the inner-workings.

This is especially true of some of the core ideas in quantum mechanics.

One of those ides is "superposition".

This deals with the fact that quantum systems exist in a probabilistic state until they are observed, or interacted with by outside forces. In this state called superposition, it is impossible to know where individual particles are located. We can only determine probabilities of where they are located.

This also means that it is possible to think of the particle as being in multiple places at once. Whether the particle IS actually in multiple places at once is, at this point, unknown and probably unknowable.

I'm pretty sure you do realize that the fact that "it is possible to think of the particle as being in multiple places at once" doesn't even imply that it is in multiple places at once. But, I'm wondering if you can see the question of the "Immanence of God", "in whom we live and move and have our being," being relevant here.

One of the difficulties involved is that it is impossible to observe a system in a quantum state like this because as soon as the system is observed, or interacted with, it collapses out of super position into a normal state and we can see where the particles are. Part of the problem here is that quantum systems are so small that even the tiniest interactions change the system, thus they can't be observed without changing the system.

Of course.

The classic thought experiment for this was Schroedinger's (sp?) cat. A cat is put in a box with a lethal poison. The poison is rigged to go off based on the atomic decay of an isotope, which is unpredictable. Thus those of us outside of the box cannot tell whether the cat is alive or dead. The cat can be thought of as both.

Physicists disagree about how that should be interpreted.

One of the major experimental proofs related to these ideas is the double slit experiment. The experiment deals with the conundrum that light can be thought of as both a particle and a wave, and when designing experiments, it behaves as either one, depending on the how the experiment is designed.

The short version, is that the experiment proved (or appeared to prove) that a single photon of light passed through two parallel slits at the same time, thus seeming to prove that it was in two places at once.

It is worth noting that quantum mechanics and the principles involved ONLY function at the level of particles (IE. Extremely small scale). Quantum mechanics don't function at the macro level.

Thus it almost appears as though there is a different set of rules for extreme microscopic world and for the macro world in which we live.

Another way of saying this would be.. particles seem to behave differently, than things which are made up of particles. Which, now that I think about it, actually fits really well with Aristotelian Hylomorphism...

I think Aristotelian Hylomorphism has a lot in common with quantum physics. It is only A way to look at things. Too often, in other discussions —not just in physics and science— we seem to have the false confidence that our point of view, or our worldview, or our mental constructions, or our definitions and so on, are THE actual way of things; in some cases it seems to be assumed that our defining something IS the very thing itself, as though us naming it inducted it into reality! "We have proven it. Therefore it is real!" Science says we prove nothing, but must continue throwing new empiricism and past data, concepts, axioms and principles and laws and logic at it.

 

[Diamond7]

Can you show me some evidence of science saying we have subjective reality? Actually, I'm not even sure what is meant by that

Growing up I would ask my parents a question and they would always say look it up in the dictionary. Objective is something we all agree on. This is the purpose of peer review journals. Subjective reality is subject to just the individual. We see that here on these discussions where each individual has their own personal beliefs. Then there are beliefs that we all can agree on.

• Subjectivity comes from the concept of a unique conscious experience possessed by an individual, including feelings, beliefs, and desires.

 

[Stephen3141]

Science says we have subjective and objective reality.
In the Bible we are to have the mind of Christ.

I have no idea where you are getting the idea, that the Bible presents
2 different realities (what is objective, and what is subjective).

It is true that we each perceive our shared reality, with our senses,
and in slightly different ways (we are each, bodily, in a different location
in our shared reality).

But the Bible presents the idea that we ALL perceive the same shared reality,
and this is the basis of the Bible's definition of "lying" (bearing false witness
about this shared reality). It is BECAUSE we all do live in this shared reality,
and BECAUE our senses are basically accurate, that God holds us
morally-ethically responsible for what we say about this reality. ("Freedom
of speech" in America, allows us to say whatever we want. BUT, God will
hold us responsible, if we misrepresent our shared reality, in what we speak.)
---------- ----------

That our shared reality (or Kant's things-in-themselves, if I am reading him
properly), is different from our perceptions of this shared reality. But even a
non-Christian like Kant, embraces the concept that ALL human beings
perceive this shared reality IN THE SAME WAY (even though non human
species may perceive this reality in different ways). [Kant's Critique of Pure
Reason, Penguin, p. 75]

Because all human beings perceive this shared reality in the same way (given
that each of us is in a different physical location, or location in time), this is
the basis of being able to have a fair rule of law, and sound moral-ethical
model, and a shared concept of "justice".

It is NOT, as you imply, that our "subjective" perceptions of reality are so
different, that we do not have a shared reality.
---------- ----------

The other point that should be made, is that the uncertainty noticed by
physicists in the actions of subatomic particles, applies to subatomic
particles. Not to superatomic objects. It is an unsound argument, to
assert that superatomic objects must always behave like subatomic
particles, and be in multiple states at the same time. As human beings
perceive superatomic objects, we all perceive them the same.

(This is the problem with the argument of Schrodinger's Cat -- which
physicists take to explain that superatomic objects may be in multiple
states, at the same time. (In this case, the cat may be alive and dead
at the same time.) As the Bible projects God's moral-ethical code upon
superatomic objects, we ALL see these things in the same way. When we
see the cat, it is DEAD XOR ALIVE, and not both at the same time.

I think that Christian apologists, must make these points, in order to
explain that the biblical ME system applies to superatomic objects,
and that ALL human beings perceive these objects and actions in the
same way.

We should not make the fake distinction between "objective" and
"subjective" realities.

But we can distinguish between seeing and hearing accurately...
and bearing false witness about our shared reality.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Growing up I would ask my parents a question and they would always say look it up in the dictionary. Objective is something we all agree on. This is the purpose of peer review journals. Subjective reality is subject to just the individual. We see that here on these discussions where each individual has their own personal beliefs. Then there are beliefs that we all can agree on.

• Subjectivity comes from the concept of a unique conscious experience possessed by an individual, including feelings, beliefs, and desires.

In other words, "reality", in the term, 'subjective reality', is not really reality, but only what one considers to be real.