Ark - where are you headed?

[dant]

And of course the C's talked about strobe lights. Perhaps
our 3D reality is really "on" or "off", not continuous but discrete...
So if we are machines, perhaps our senses are digital?

 

[Buddy]

I don't have a problem with the latter as when we think how so many frames per minute in a movie gives us the illusion of smooth movement, so the pace of on and off would similarly fool us into seeing movement.

Julian Barbour's theory, like Zeno's Arrow paradox, reduces to the seemingly absurd idea of reality being little more than "movement by a series of non-movements". You don't have a problem with that? Where is Quantum level connection to reality? :)

Maybe we're all stuck in one place and the Universe is doing the moving whilst flickering on and off? In this case every child would be right. The universe does revolve around me. ;)

Stop me now!

OK. :) Every child? Show me a child who thinks universe revolves around him and I'll show you one who is already psychologically damaged and most likely animating his helplessness and powerlessness. I know many children who never fail to try and include me into all their activities - even to giving me the preferential toys or 'roles'. Not because I'm special, but because they are. To them, activities of life seem best experienced as cooperating units of people living and feeling their interests, activities and relationships. Seems more like 'ensemble identification' as contrasted with ego-centrism. Then again, you were probably just kidding in the first place, eh?

 

[SoCurious]

Hi Buddy, you did notice the wink? ;)

 

[SeekinTruth]

The analogy to movies is interesting because the illusion of movement is created in the mind due to a very small fraction of time between still frames when there's nothing on the screen (when the projector is moving the next frame into position to project -- standard "sync sound speed" being 24 frames per second for film). So there is this aspect of "on/off" in the example of films. FWIW.

 

[ark]

Comes Alain Connes

Alain Connes is one of my heroes. Born in 1947, French mathematician, recipient of Fields Medal in 1982 - an equivalent of Nobel Prize in mathematics. You can see him on the photo below, on the left, busy seeping his soup. Opposite, on the right, we see Daniel Kastler, a mathematical physicist (and a son of Alfred Kastler, Nobel Prize winner in physics for his work on lasers), who was promoting the ideas of Alain when Alain's pioneering work was still relatively unknown. At the same time Laura is engaged in a discussion with other mathematicians:

The subject is:

Noncommutative geometry

Today children are learning binary calculus in schools – it became a structural basis of the computers! Leibniz himself did not do much with his system. Therefore we will leave Leibniz for now and, in our search for a discrete basis of all geometry we will move right into our times. Some 300 years after Leibniz comes Alaine Connes and his pioneering work on noncommutative geometry.

I would like to follow this idea and construct the “Atom of Action” – or “a Groupoid of Action”, because, in the language of contemporary mathematics, the groupoid is what is at the basis of all algebra that is used in quantum physics. To quote Alain Connes himself (Connes, 1994):

… All these constructions yield equivalence relations, or better, groupoids or pre-equivalence relations in the sense of Grothendieck. The noncommutative algebra is then the convolution algebra of the groupoid. It is fashionable among mathematicians to despise groupoids and to consider that only groups have an authentic mathematical status, probably because of the pejorative suffix oid. To remove this prejudice we start Chapter I with Heisenberg's discovery of quantum mechanics. The reader will, we hope, realise there how the experimental results of spectroscopy forced Heisenberg to replace the classical frequency group of the system by the groupoid of quantum transitions.

It sounds almost unintelligible, but I think I will be able to explain the main idea in simple terms.

 

[SoCurious]

It sounds almost unintelligible, but I think I will be able to explain the main idea in simple terms.

Oh I do hope so :)

 

[John G]

It sounds almost unintelligible, but I think I will be able to explain the main idea in simple terms.

Oh I do hope so :)

So we have points, a bunch of which make up a spacetime; and a point can be described by a binary number aka a quantum number and I've also seen these quantum numbers related to group theory which can give vertex coordinates that aren't binary (a long time source of confusion for me) and now we have groupoid actions that handle quantum transitions between the points and if I say anything more I'll either be wrong if I'm not already or quoting more seemingly unintelligible stuff from Connes.

 

[dant]

I did a search for "Alaine Connes 1994 groupoid" and found:
_http://www.alainconnes.org/docs/book94bigpdf.pdf

But the above can also be found in references of:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncommutative_standard_model
+ _http://www.alainconnes.org/docs/book94bigpdf.pdf
+ _http://www.alainconnes.org/docs/einsymp.pdf
+ _http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9603053

Note: A. Connes website & related to website:
+ _http://www.alainconnes.org
+ _http://www.alainconnes.org/en/downloads.php
+ _http://www.alainconnes.org/docs (files)

I also looked for: "Daniel Kastler Math Physics", and found:
_https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kastler
_http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Haag-Kastler+axioms
_http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.cmp/1104271706
_http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&version=1.0&verb=Display&handle=euclid.cmp/1103899545

FWIW,
Dan

 

[Buddy]

Hi Buddy, you did notice the wink? ;)

Yeah, I get it. Maybe I'm just a bit confused over how we can understand the inadequacies of Aristotelian-bound syllogistic thought, the limitations of Newtonian-classical physics, the lack of holism between System 1 and System 2 on a personal level, the errors of black and white thinking (binary oppositional patterns), the fascist nature of our "States" (Nations) suppressing the creativity and emotional lives of citizens - "States" that exist by pathologically growing ever more totalitarian day-by-day, yet we can find the idea of a "binary reality" credible...interesting even?

I think I need to back down, be quiet and lurk more. Apologies to you and Ark for interrupting this discussion. Ain't nothing here about me.

 

[John G]

yet we can find the idea of a "binary reality" credible...interesting even?

This binary is really just continuing the pattern that began with the first division. The law of 3 "gray" really just adds a neutral origin point to an active/passive binary axis. We or a quantum particle or whatever can be this neutral origin point added to the binary active/passive axis.

Via Cassiopedia and from Secret History on Being and Non-Being:

The great Sufi Shaykh Ibn al-'Arabi explains that "imperfection" exists in Creation because "were there no imperfection, the perfection of existence would be imperfect." From the point of view of Sheer Being, there is nothing but good.But Infinite Potential to BE includes - by definition of the word "infinite" -the potential to not be. And so, Infinite Potential "splits" into Thought Centers of Creation and Thought Centers of non-being. It can be said that Infinite Potential is fundamentally Binary - on or off - to be or not to be. That is the first "division."

Since absolute non-being is an impossible paradox in terms of the source of Infinite Potential to BE, the half of the consciousness of Infinite Potential that constitute the IDEAS of non-being - for every idea of manifestation, there is a corresponding idea for that item of creation to NOT manifest - "falls asleep" for lack of a better term. Its "self observation" is predicated upon consciousness that can only "mimic" death. Consciousness that mimics death then "falls" and becomes Primal Matter. What this means is that the "self observing self" at the level of the Master of the Universe is constituted of this initial division between Being and Non-being which is, again, only the initial division - the on/off, the yes/no - of creation. You could picture this as an open eye observing a closed eye. It has been represented for millennia in the yin-yang symbol, which, even on the black half that represents "sleeping consciousness that is matter," you can see the small white dot of "being" that represents to us that absolute non-existence is not possible. There is only "relative" non-existence.

 

[Hesper]

I think I need to back down, be quiet and lurk more. Apologies to you and Ark for interrupting this discussion. Ain't nothing here about me.

Yeah, I thought that was really out of line Buddy, and out of character too. Warning:: Since the opportunity has arisen and I don't want to be hypocritical, I'd like to apologize to you, Ark, for a comment I made in Barcelona. It was off the cuff and intended to be a joke, and I basically said that I "understood" what you'd spent a lifetime working on. I immediately realized that the joke came out wrong and you seemed upset, so I want to apologize for that stupid comment.

Back on topic, this thread and the replies are priceless. One of my biggest regrets is not focusing more on science back in school. Thank you Ark.

 

[anart]

I think I need to back down, be quiet and lurk more. Apologies to you and Ark for interrupting this discussion. Ain't nothing here about me.

Yeah, I thought that was really out of line Buddy, and out of character too.

I don't think it was out of line at all. Buddy was simply expressing his thoughts on the matter and his own frustration. There is nothing wrong with that. He wasn't rude, he wasn't out of line, he was just being honest.

 

[dant]

I agree with Anart that Buddy is sincere, not
out of line at all. I feel exactly the same as Buddy
as well as Laura and many others who feel the same.
But we won't give up, we will continue to fight for the
truth, even if it seems bleak.

 

[Buddy]

Thanks for understanding y'all.

Via Cassiopedia and from Secret History on Being and Non-Being:
[snip]

I agree. 'Objective negation' which creates one 'end' of an excluded middle 'on/off' pattern (of thought) is a hoax, OSIT, and anyone pushing it is probably a hoaxer. "Strobing reality" is a phrase I ran across somewhere describing the action.

FWIW, Henri Louis Bergson agrees with our "Being and Non-being" a hundred years ago. Check this out:

"This long analysis has been necessary to show that a self-sufficient reality is not necessarily a reality foreign to duration. If we pass (consciously or unconsciously) through the idea of the nought in order to reach that of being, the being to which we come is a logical or mathematical essence, therefore non-temporal. And, consequently, a static conception of the real is forced on us: everything appears given once for all, in eternity. But we must accustom ourselves to think being directly, without making a detour, without first appealing to the phantom of the nought which interposes itself between it and us. We must strive to see in order to see, and no longer to see in order to act. Then the Absolute is revealed very near us and, in a certain measure, in us. It is of psychological and not of mathematical nor logical essence. It lives with us. Like us, but in certain aspects infinitely more concentrated and more gathered up in itself, it endures.

...and here's the meat:

"Now, if we could prove that the idea of the nought [zero, NOT, Nothing], in the sense in which we take it when we oppose it to that of existence, is a pseudo-idea, the problems that are raised around it would become pseudo-problems. The hypothesis of an absolute that acts freely, that in an eminent sense endures, would no longer raise up intellectual prejudices. The road would be cleared for a philosophy more nearly approaching intuition, and which would no longer ask the same sacrifices of common sense."

"Let us then see what we are thinking about when we speak of "Nothing." To represent "Nothing," we must either imagine it or conceive it. Let us examine what this image or this idea may be. First, the image.

"I am going to close my eyes, stop my ears, extinguish one by one the sensations that come to me from the outer world. Now it is done; all my perceptions vanish, the material universe sinks into silence and the night.—I subsist, however, and cannot help myself subsisting. I am still there, with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface and from the interior of my body, with the recollections which my past perceptions have left behind them—nay, with the impression, most positive and full, of the void I have just made about me. How can I suppress all this? How eliminate myself? I can even, it may be, blot out and forget my recollections up to my immediate past; but at least I keep the consciousness of my present reduced to its extremest poverty, that is to say, of the actual state of my body. I will try, however, to do away even with this consciousness itself.

I will reduce more and more the sensations my body sends in to me: now they are almost gone; now they are gone, they have disappeared in the night where all things else have already died away. But no! At the very instant that my consciousness is extinguished, another consciousness lights up—or rather, it was already alight: it had arisen the instant before, in order to witness the extinction of the first; for the first could disappear only for another and in the presence of another. I see myself annihilated only if I have already resuscitated myself by an act which is positive, however involuntary and unconscious. So, do what I will, I am always perceiving something, either from without or from within. When I no longer know anything of external objects, it is because I have taken refuge in the consciousness that I have of myself."

"If I abolish this inner self, its very abolition becomes an object for an imaginary self which now perceives as an external object the self that is dying away. Be it external or internal, some object there always is that my imagination is representing. My imagination, it is true, can go from one to the other, I can by turns imagine a nought of external perception or a nought of internal perception, but not both at once, for the absence of one consists, at bottom, in the exclusive presence of the other.

But, from the fact that two relative noughts are imaginable in turn, we wrongly conclude that they are imaginable together: a conclusion the absurdity of which must be obvious, for we cannot imagine a nought without perceiving, at least confusedly, that we are imagining it, consequently that we are acting, that we are thinking, and therefore that something still subsists.

Excerpted from Henri Louis Bergson's "Creative Evolution", Chapter 39, pg 272-278

Bergson's work was called "absurd" by his own classicist contemporaries, but I suspect that was due to his being 100 years ahead of his time.

[quote author=dant]
But we won't give up, we will continue to fight for the
truth, even if it seems bleak.[/quote]

Chin up :). We just need a metanoia.

How about:

tl;dr: "either/or" == less optimum. "Both/and" == better.

 

[SeekinTruth]

I'm looking forward to Ark's simple explanation of the main idea. :) While I had a little bit of a basic math and science background a long time ago, I've forgotten most of even that basic knowledge. So non-math expressions / explanations are really helpful for me, as I'm sure they are for many others.

One more thing. I have even a harder time getting my head around mathematical concepts that a too theoretical. Whenever I did well in maths, it was when I could get concrete applications of the concepts that helped my understanding and remembering them. And whatever I do still remember, is because situations have continued to come up all these years where I can use these basic math skills to solve an everyday problem. So I'm looking forward to the non-math ways of explaining such complex and abstract ideas where I can try to grasp them in a more "philosophical" way where the math skills are lacking. :)