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Where do numbers come from? + Quantum superposition could unravel ‘grandpa paradox’

#1
C C Offline
Where do numbers come from?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/...come-from/

EXCERPT: When I was addressing this lunacy about how God exists because minds and mathematics are supernatural, I was also thinking about a related set of questions: biologically, how are numbers represented in the brain? How did this ability evolve? I knew there was some interesting work by Ramachandran on the representation of digits and numerical processing, coupled to his work on synesthesia (which is also about how we map abstract ideas on a biological substrate), but I was wondering how I can have a concept of something as abstract as a number — as I sit in my office, I can count the vertical slats in my window blinds, and see that there are 27 of them. How did I do that? Is there a register in my head that’s storing a tally as I counted them? Do I have a mental abacus that’s summing everything up?

And then I realized all the automatic associations with the number 27. It’s an odd number — where is that concept in my cortex? It’s 33. It’s the atomic weight of cobalt, the sum of the digits 2 and 7 is 9, the number of bones in the human hand, 2 times 7 is 14, 27 is 128, my daughter’s age, 1927 was the year Philo Farnsworth first experimentally transmitted television pictures. It’s freakin’ weird if you think about. 27 isn’t even a thing, even though we have a label and a symbol for it, and yet it’s all wrapped up in ideas and connections and causes sensations in my mind.

And why do I have a representation of “27” in my head? It’s not as if this was ever useful to my distant ancestors — they didn’t need to understand that there were precisely 27 antelope over on that hillside, they just needed an awareness that there were many antelope, let’s go kill one and eat it. Or here are 27 mangoes; we don’t need to count them, we need to sort them by ripeness, or throw out the ones that are riddled with parasites. I don’t need a map of “27” to be able to survive. How did this ability evolve?

MORE: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/...come-from/



(video) How quantum superposition could unravel the ‘grandfather paradox’
https://aeon.co/videos/how-quantum-super...er-paradox

INTRO: The ‘grandfather paradox’ has long been one of the most popular thought experiments in physics: you travel back in time and murder your grandfather before he’s ever born. If you’ve killed your grandfather, you’ve prevented your own existence, but if you never existed, how could you have committed the murder in the first place? Some physicists have avoided the question by arguing that backwards time travel simply isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, or by asserting a ‘many worlds’ interpretation of the Universe. But could the concept of quantum superposition remove what seems so paradoxical from this tale of time travel and murder once and for all?
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
If I were to travel back in time then would not the physical components that comprise me then be occupying two places at once? In the time I'm returning to, those particles could exist anywhere. If particles from one time come in contact with themselves in another time then what happens? Imagine going back in time equipped with the means to prevent asteroids from slamming into Earth 65 million years ago. If tt is possible then I think we somehow move around as shadow observers, slightly out of phase. If that's what they mean by juxtapose then I can go for that.
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#3
Secular Sanity Offline
Twisted Time Travel (short story)

Life was torture for me.  I felt worthless.  Life was worthless.  The universe was heartless.  There’s no point to my existence.  The only reason I’m still alive is because I don’t have the courage to end it.  I don’t have any friends outside of work.  One of my colleagues invited me out to lunch.  He introduced me to a friend of his, Aaron O’Connell.  He’s an odd character.  A quantum physicist with bad hair.  He tells us about an experiment that he’s just completed, and in the future, he hopes to experiment with living creatures.

He invites us back to his house to smoke a bowl.  He’s fascinating.  For the first time in a long time, I find something interesting.  He says that he was able to place a macroscopic item in a superposition.  He found a way to isolate an object from our perceived world.  That’s what I found interesting.  Riding the waves. It sounded like a preferable state for me.  Isolated from the world with no worries.  He went on to say that if the object is kept in an isolated position, it’s capable of being in any and every position at once, without time, matter, or space, but if it comes in contact with light, air, or heat, it once again assumes its only possible position.  

All of us were pretty stoned by the time he got around to telling us about Schrodinger’s cat and the grandfather paradox.  He thought that he may be able to move a macroscopic object back through time.  I confess my suicidal thoughts.  Tell him how I wish I was never born.  If I could go back in time and kill my grandfather, I would.  He says he wants to show me something in his basement.  There’s a small box. He points to it and says, "Well, here’s your big chance.  Can you squeeze into it?" 

The next thing I know, I’m on a farm.  My face is covered in dust.  I notice a familiar looking man on a tractor.  Damn!  It’s my grandfather.  I tell him that I’ve traveled a great distance.  He says, "It’s time for my second meal of the day, boy.  You hungry?"  He tells me to come on up to the house.  He’ll have his wife rustle up some grub.  He hollers, "Goeie Mie, we’ve got a visitor." 

I noticed a grandfather clock.  It’s the exact same clock that my mother had in our living room.  I used to love listening the bells chime.  It was about the only thing that I liked as a child.

As we were finishing our meal, I start contemplating on how I should kill him.  My grandmother, who I’d never met—she had died before I was born, brought us some whiskey.  She didn’t talk much.  She just kept staring at me with an odd little grin.  Almost as if she knew something was up.  I wondered if she’d noticed a family resemblance.  

I was nervous.  My hands were trembling.  How was I going to murder him?  I hadn’t really given it much thought.  My heart was pounding and I was having trouble breathing.  My throat was burning and it felt like it was closing.  I felt myself sliding out of my chair.  At first, I thought it was the whisky, but when I looked up at my grandmother, her grin widened.  I heard the bells chime.  High noon.  

The Hour of Noon

"Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. - Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sand-glass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon".—Nietzsche


Making sense of a visible quantum object - Aaron O'Connell
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
SS.....Always liked TED. O'Connell like many others talks about particles being in two places at the same time. What about same particles from different times existing at same time? (Not sure if I'm phrasing this correctly, hope you get my drift)
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#5
RainbowUnicorn Offline
[quote pid='11554' dateline='1495334621']
(video) How quantum superposition could unravel the ‘grandfather paradox’  
https://aeon.co/videos/how-quantum-super...er-paradox

INTRO: The ‘grandfather paradox’ has long been one of the most popular thought experiments in physics: you travel back in time and murder your grandfather before he’s ever born. If you’ve killed your grandfather, you’ve prevented your own existence, but if you never existed, how could you have committed the murder in the first place? Some physicists have avoided the question by arguing that backwards time travel simply isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, or by asserting a ‘many worlds’ interpretation of the Universe. But could the concept of quantum superposition remove what seems so paradoxical from this tale of time travel and murder once and for all?
[/quote]

if conception of life is the Gravitus of attoms then lack of gravitus does not equate to lack of attoms.
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#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
I tend to think of life as all life forms everywhere. If I think of life's grip on the cosmos and as a fail safe measure evolving a life form that can send life back in time, then it's trying to do what must be done to maintain itself, never suffering complete eradication even should the universe die in another time. Life is pretty special stuff when you think of it.
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#7
Secular Sanity Offline
(May 22, 2017 06:42 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: SS.....Always liked TED. O'Connell like many others talks about particles being in two places at the same time. What about same particles from different times existing at same time? (Not sure if I'm phrasing this correctly, hope you get my drift)

Yep, photons.  

Do you think this is a correct statement, Zinman?

Nothing happens at once.  At once is not everywhere.  Only light is everywhere and everywhere at once.


Hey, C C changed her avatar.  Nioce!  Big Grin
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#8
Zinjanthropos Offline
CC has to stop reminding whites that it's all their fault. lol

Do I think your quote to be correct?

Nothing happens at once: as in everything doesn't happen at once? Otherwise when nothing happens it will be at once(the same time).

At once is not everywhere: if nothing is happening then it's the same everywhere at once. Once being a measure of time and everywhere is an area/volume of space

Only light is everywhere and everywhere at once: everywhere? Does BB singularity count as everywhere and everything in one neat little package. If so then yes, all still here in a bigger package, or so it seems.
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#9
Secular Sanity Offline
(May 22, 2017 10:03 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Do I  think your quote to be correct?

Nothing happens at once: as in everything doesn't happen at once? Otherwise when nothing happens it will be at once(the same time).

At once is not everywhere: if nothing is happening then it's the same everywhere at once. Once being a measure of time and everywhere is an area/volume of space

Only light is everywhere and everywhere at once: everywhere? Does BB singularity count as everywhere and everything in one neat little package. If so then yes, all still here in a bigger package, or so it seems.

Nah, relativity and Feynman’s QED.  

Remember that discussion about photons not experiencing time?  Well, the indeterminacy of the path is realized by a quantum particle existing in all possible paths simultaneously, or metaphorically speaking, the single particle simultaneously take all possible paths.

I have few…um…so-called spiritual friends.  I just came up with it to put it on candles for gifts.

You print out a quote or picture, place it on the candle, and put a piece of ordinary wax paper over it.  Heat it up with a heat gun, pull off the wax paper, and voila!  Big Grin
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#10
Zinjanthropos Offline
(May 23, 2017 02:59 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(May 22, 2017 10:03 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Do I  think your quote to be correct?

Nothing happens at once: as in everything doesn't happen at once? Otherwise when nothing happens it will be at once(the same time).

At once is not everywhere: if nothing is happening then it's the same everywhere at once. Once being a measure of time and everywhere is an area/volume of space

Only light is everywhere and everywhere at once: everywhere? Does BB singularity count as everywhere and everything in one neat little package. If so then yes, all still here in a bigger package, or so it seems.

Nah, relativity and Feynman’s QED.  

Remember that discussion about photons not experiencing time?  Well, the indeterminacy of the path is realized by a quantum particle existing in all possible paths simultaneously, or metaphorically speaking, the single particle simultaneously take all possible paths.

I have few…um…so-called spiritual friends.  I just came up with it to put it on candles for gifts.

You print out a quote or picture, place it on the candle, and put a piece of ordinary wax paper over it.  Heat it up with a heat gun, pull off the wax paper, and voila!  Big Grin

Just remember, you asked.  Wink I always like Feynman's explanation but ....

It's context. Thought it was a trick question.

 I mean if nothing is happening then nothing is happening everywhere. How can there be something happening anywhere when nothing's happening?

At once is a moment in time, not a volume/area of space. 

If the universe contains everything then it stands to reason anything hasn't gone anywhere. Is it leaking?

Feynman had some cool diagrams.
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