Philosophy Now Forum

What if the universe is really like a fixed set of all possible arrangements of all the particles in the entire universe, down to the planck scale/length/time/whatever the smallest unit?

As an example, let's suppose we have a universe with just 3 particles, A, B and C. There are different ways to arrange A, B and C.
It could be B,C,A or C,A,B or:

A
B
C

B,A
C

Or:

C
A,B

There are many ways to arrange them. But the number of possible arrangements is limited.

Now, suppose our universe is simply in the length of a planck time (or whatever the smallest unit of time is) a random set of arrangement of all the particles in the entire universe.

You are - as an observer - also made of an arrangement of these particles or to put it in another term, a Boltzmann Brain. It means your thoughts, your observations and even your memories of "the past" is just made of an arrangement of particles inside your brain, making up your memories - false memories that is - of some other arrangements in the past. You wouldn't possibly know if you ended up with memories of an experiment you have never conducted.

In other words, you may observe an electron going through one slit or the other, or not observing them until they created an interference pattern in the double-slit experiment. But what if your "now"-moment's memories of the past is flawed, because your "now" is the only real thing, and your memories may or may not be real, and if they are real, it's for the wrong reason (correlation does not imply causation)?

What I'm trying to say is that memories of anything or any experiment is just an illusion. It's just that the particles in your brain are arranging your memory cells in such a way that you remember stuff, real or not, creating the illusion of time flowing.

You wouldn't possibly know if you end up on Mars 2 sec. from now then become the president of the U.S after 10 sec. because your memory of any past in any given "now"-moment is also random. In other words, you would almost all the time see the world as something that makes logical sense in a way of causality, even though causality is non-existent in the real universe. It's an illusion.

You could - in theory - disappear in less than a fraction of a second and re-appear in another world and believe you've always been in that world for 30 years.

How can we disprove this idea?

I already take the stance that all things are possible and that universes like ours are merely of a subset of universes in Totality that have 'consistent' patterns. Worlds that lack the consistency are just not sustainable to have consistent beings within it as ours. As such, while all worlds exist of all things possible, 'consistent' worlds are those that surive in an evolutionary sense.

There are physicists who already take this view at least in some part. I would avoid the terms of Quantum Mechanics you used where they lack clarity for the reader and to whether you understand them specifically. [like 'plank' scales, etc., since this is not asserting that the units of measure FOR the smallest things are actual physical realities about size.]

"How can we disprove this idea?" you ask.

I think that with regards to some of the foundational parts of both the very small (atomic) and the very large (cosmic), some of what many think is 'scientific' is begging itself. You cannot disprove certain theories WITHIN the present paradigms of science and thus still belongs to philosophy only. [Metaphysics, Ontology}

P.S. Why did you select that name for a title? I didn't see you arguing to abolish anything.

philosopher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 6:03 pm.How can we disprove this idea?

We can't. The mistake that people often make though, is that because we can't prove an idea wrong, it is therefore true. The trick is to provide evidence that it is. Whaddya got?

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 6:54 pm P.S. Why did you select that name for a title? I didn't see you arguing to abolish anything.

Sorry about the title, but lack words to describe my idea.
I feel it is best represented through pictures/graphics.

I imagine it like hundreds upon thousands or millions (any number) of possible games of chess, and each arrangement is a "now"-moment represented in a total multiverse or like a spacetime-slice.

We just happen to witness a series of these "games of chess" as they make sense like a causal flow, and until recently I haven't been able to tell why I world seems causal instead of chaotic.

My explanation why the world seems causal, is because the arrangement of atoms, molecules etc. (from now on I'll just refer to them as particles) that makes up you and me and ultimately our consciousness, memories etc. on each slice of a spacetime, in a gigantic multiverse, not all of them make up the same arragements that will create "you" specifically.

Your "you" is only represented as specific arrangements in a finite series of these slices of spacetimes.
Although not connected to each other through causation (they're just random, non-connected slices of spacetimes, as are all spacetime slices in my idea) to your brain they seem like logical and causal events. You happen to be represented in these series.

So the big question is: If you are just these specific arrangements of particles, on random slices of spacetimes where the same sort of "pattern" that makes your consciousness, my idea predicts that not only should your future and past be equally real to the present, you should also witness randomly shifting back and forth between these slices of spacetimes/arrangements of particles, making your "past", "present" and "future" seem chaotic.

And yet it don't. When you kick a ball, smash a cup of coffee or otherwise touch something and see it move accordingly, it all feels very causal, right?

Maybe this is because you already do shift back and forth on these spacetime slices/arrangements of "you" from birth to death, but since none of them are connected to each other, you won't notice if you go from one slice to another, say reading this post then randomly goes back to your childhood or fastforward to your death bed. When you see your death bed-slice, you won't think of it as "hey, I thought I was reading philosophers post just a moment ago?" - no, you would instantly feel like it was a long time ago.

Likewise, you wouldn't notice if you went back to your early childhood, you wouldn't think of it as "Wtf am I doing in school? I was reading a forum post just a moment ago...?" - you will lose all memories of your "future" life reading this comment.

The only way your brain makes sense of things, is to line these spacetime slices up into an arrangement of a pattern. A pattern, that makes sense to your brain. A pattern, that feels like causality is real. A pattern of consistent memories of the past, and decision making for the future.

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:11 pm We can't. The mistake that people often make though, is that because we can't prove an idea wrong, it is therefore true. The trick is to provide evidence that it is. Whaddya got?

Double-slit experiment showing the particle going through one slit or the other, creating an interference pattern when we don't measure it beforehand, even when we shoot just one particle at the time. "Schrödinger's cat" and strange correlations of the spin of particles, all sorts of weird anomalies down on the subatomic level.

It's not evidence, but it may be a hint.

I understand you but your thinking is not actually different than an application of set theory with at least one factor, like the 'empty set'. I just wrote this on another thread here just moments ago: Paradox of Number Progression ...

That ordered reality can be constructed of things 'statically' in set theory, those ordered sets are a subset of greater universal sets that contain anything with, or without members that are 'ordered'.

That argument there shows that if you begin with as set, say x = {}, which we can call the empty set, then we get the ordered set of Natural ordering of things. This doesn't mean that all such sets are limited to those. For example, the following is not an 'ordered set' but contains one subset that is ordered:

{ {}, {{}}, { { {}, {{]} }, {{{}}} }

The first three are correctly 'ordered' but the fourth one is not (as a rough example) or, for something more visually acceptable:

P = {1, {1, 2}, 5}
A subset of this is {1, {1, 2} }, which is 'ordered, while the whole set P, or subsets, {1, 5}, or {{1, 2}, 5} within the whole are NOT ordered.

This means that you can represent all realities as distinct elements infinitely in some union of all things in reality, and that only those subsets which contain structual order are ones that create particular worlds that are useful.

So in your example about the structure of "my body", all the facts that elementarily make me up are like puzzle pieces or, better, pixels on a screen. Given that pixels on a screen can create any arangement of colors and shades, most random images are chaotic. But some will happen to look like something patterned. Then you may have two such puzzles/monitors in which most of the pair never have patterns while another fewer have some that have one of them as 'making sense' and the other not, etc.

This is a type of universe that treats all elemental factors as its own 'set', where you don''t have to know what is inside the minimal set other than to assume it unique. Then you can construct any world The ones lacking patterns are 'unfit' for sensible universes and so get excluded. [evolutionary factor] . Of those left that make up 'sensible' images, and in 'sensible orders', one is our own.

[You might like to read Max Tegmark's, "Our Mathematical Universe" or Google this and see one of his videos that summarize it. I prefer a different route and yet to have a book for it but share a lot of this guy's ideas. [I even pre-anticipate some thing he wrote in it with more depth than he thought up himself!]

philosopher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:54 pm

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:11 pm We can't. The mistake that people often make though, is that because we can't prove an idea wrong, it is therefore true. The trick is to provide evidence that it is. Whaddya got?

Double-slit experiment showing the particle going through one slit or the other...

Well, first you have to accept some version of the particle theory of light, and then some version of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. All perfectly respectable, but not authoritative; the fact is we don't know. If you're not familiar with De Broglie's and Bohm's pilot wave theory, it's worth looking at for an alternative explanation.

philosopher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:54 pm...creating an interference pattern when we don't measure it beforehand, even when we shoot just one particle at the time.

Bear in mind that at that scale, 'measure' means massively disrupt the trajectory. Heisenberg's uncertainty is not some woo, it is a physical restriction on what can be done with insanely teeny-weeny thingummybobs.

philosopher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:54 pm"Schrödinger's cat" and strange correlations of the spin of particles, all sorts of weird anomalies down on the subatomic level.

It's not evidence, but it may be a hint.

Schrödinger's cat, was not meant to be taken literally, it was just Schrödinger pointing out that there is some seriously batshit consequences if you do.
What "strange correlations" are you referring to?

uwot wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 9:39 pm [

philosopher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 7:54 pm"Schrödinger's cat" and strange correlations of the spin of particles, all sorts of weird anomalies down on the subatomic level.

It's not evidence, but it may be a hint.

Schrödinger's cat, was not meant to be taken literally, it was just Schrödinger pointing out that there is some seriously batshit consequences if you do.
What "strange correlations" are you referring to?

I understood that Shrodinger's cat was originally intended to present what appeared silly to him (et al) with respect to the idea.? Otherwise, it actually was attempting to express what the Copenhagen interpretation implied in the Slit Experiments. That now can also be rationalized by accepting a "multiple worlds' type model without the 'weirdness' of the traditional theory.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmI understood that Shrodinger's cat was originally intended to present what appeared silly to him (et al) with respect to the idea.? Otherwise, it actually was attempting to express what the Copenhagen interpretation implied in the Slit Experiments.

The joke is that if you take a 'classical' view of fundamental particles and think of them as discrete objects, there isn't really a better way to make sense of the experiment.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmThat now can also be rationalized by accepting a "multiple worlds' type model without the 'weirdness' of the traditional theory.

Multiple world theories are just what you are left with, if you take literally Schrödinger's claim that different histories, cat alive and cat dead, this slit or that slit being examples, are "not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously". But as Schrödinger said, "What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space." He did a lot of work on a unified field theory that could have done away with the more outré interpretations demanded by what are essentially 'corpuscular' theories of matter and light. He gave up in the end, but the basic idea is one of the themes explored in my book.

uwot wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:17 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmI understood that Shrodinger's cat was originally intended to present what appeared silly to him (et al) with respect to the idea.? Otherwise, it actually was attempting to express what the Copenhagen interpretation implied in the Slit Experiments.

The joke is that if you take a 'classical' view of fundamental particles and think of them as discrete objects, there isn't really a better way to make sense of the experiment.

One error was to assume that matter represents a point-like object and that light lacks the property of mass. It then gets treated 'quantified' as something that is expected 'normal' for a photon to go through one and only one slit. Whatever the case, where observations appear to infer something 'weird' (paradoxical), I think all you can do is to interpret this as "incomplete".

The use of Bell's Theorem as a means to test Einstien/Podolski/Rosen challenge that gets used to 'prove' the weirdness is also suspect given how I noticed that theorem is an extension of the "Monty-Hall' type problem. Where this statistical puzzle represents 'weirdness' of something mathematical, the solution [2/3 one, if you're familiar] only operates taking the whole challenge as is but represents there is a 'hiden' factor. The puzzle is artificially designed and cannot avoid some hidden deception. In the Bell's Theorem test, the same 2/3 solution, IF it appears as statistically measured, should actually assure you that their result has a 'hidden' factor yet gets treated as proof of the opposite because of the simillar Monty Hall puzzle being presumed as not hiding some deceptive feature.

It doesn't mean that the statistical methods used for QM is wrong but that there is also a similar division of interpretation of statistics itself. I think reality is based on contradiction/paradox. But I think that 'science' is restricted (or should be restricted) to taking the observations descriptively, and should its intepretation imply some direct proof of 'weirdness', it only indicates incorrect interpetation, the 'hidden' factors, and something incomplete.

It is NOT the only possible explanation that has validity. If you posit the structure of matter, energy, and space correctly, the apparent weird conclusions are resolveable back to 'consistency' in some way. I think its hypocritical that many defend the actions of science (particular practices only) as demonstrating weirdness as a virtually certain reality. It presents many fallacies that is used against other poor thinking expected to demarcate science from them.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmThat now can also be rationalized by accepting a "multiple worlds' type model without the 'weirdness' of the traditional theory.

Multiple world theories are just what you are left with, if you take literally Schrödinger's claim that different histories, cat alive and cat dead, this slit or that slit being examples, are "not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously". But as Schrödinger said, "What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space." He did a lot of work on a unified field theory that could have done away with the more outré interpretations demanded by what are essentially 'corpuscular' theories of matter and light. He gave up in the end, but the basic idea is one of the themes explored in my book.
[/quote]Yes, that is one resolution I agree is better. And that he says that 'material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations..." is why I similarly proposed that the 'point-like' treatment of mass, for example, is in error,

Light being both a particle and a wave to me is not conflicting when understanding that the 'structure' is just not correctly known. [...thus incomplete again.]

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2020 11:09 pmOne error was to assume that matter represents a point-like object and that light lacks the property of mass. It then gets treated 'quantified' as something that is expected 'normal' for a photon to go through one and only one slit. Whatever the case, where observations appear to infer something 'weird' (paradoxical), I think all you can do is to interpret this as "incomplete".

Yeah, I think some version of Quantum Field Theory is going to have the last (or at least next) laugh.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmThe use of Bell's Theorem as a means to test Einstien/Podolski/Rosen challenge that gets used to 'prove' the weirdness is also suspect given how I noticed that theorem is an extension of the "Monty-Hall' type problem. Where this statistical puzzle represents 'weirdness' of something mathematical, the solution [2/3 one, if you're familiar] only operates taking the whole challenge as is but represents there is a 'hiden' factor. The puzzle is artificially designed and cannot avoid some hidden deception. In the Bell's Theorem test, the same 2/3 solution, IF it appears as statistically measured, should actually assure you that their result has a 'hidden' factor yet gets treated as proof of the opposite because of the simillar Monty Hall puzzle being presumed as not hiding some deceptive feature.

Sounds interesting. Can you be more specific?

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmIt is NOT the only possible explanation that has validity. If you posit the structure of matter, energy, and space correctly, the apparent weird conclusions are resolveable back to 'consistency' in some way. I think its hypocritical that many defend the actions of science (particular practices only) as demonstrating weirdness as a virtually certain reality. It presents many fallacies that is used against other poor thinking expected to demarcate science from them.

Dunno if it's hypocritical, but I think what you are describing is the common error of crashing epistemological and practical instrumentalism into the realms of ontology - certain stripes of mathematical realism for example.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmLight being both a particle and a wave to me is not conflicting when understanding that the 'structure' is just not correctly known. [...thus incomplete again.]

That's something else I cover in the book, the 2019 Christmas Edition is still available for a while: https://www.amazon.com/Einstein-train-o ... 329&sr=8-1

Quantum mechanics is no longer based on the location of elementary particles, as classical mechanics does, but only on the probability of their position. It more assumes that interaction / "measurement" (mathematically the affect of a particular operator) does not change this probability, that is generally possible only for some (discrete) configurations of probability/density of positions. Mentioned operator of evaluation(“measurement”) gives generaly only discretete spectrum of values. We can see similarity to eg a flute: If we blow (measure) into flute we get discrete possibilities of reply. The more energy we give the higher discrete freqency we get. As a direct analogy we can find eg blowing of photons (electromagnetic radiation) at atoms. Discrete spectrum of frequency of photons is a response...

In addition, QM does not distinguish individual particles as separate objects at all. This is consistent with the assumption that such particles are only certain reproducible, unaddressed local configurations of physical space.

Now we can imagine how the Future “blows” hot stem particles of aether against the cold surface of History, against us...

uwot wrote: ↑Sun Jan 05, 2020 11:18 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmThe use of Bell's Theorem as a means to test Einstien/Podolski/Rosen challenge that gets used to 'prove' the weirdness is also suspect given how I noticed that theorem is an extension of the "Monty-Hall' type problem. Where this statistical puzzle represents 'weirdness' of something mathematical, the solution [2/3 one, if you're familiar] only operates taking the whole challenge as is but represents there is a 'hiden' factor. The puzzle is artificially designed and cannot avoid some hidden deception. In the Bell's Theorem test, the same 2/3 solution, IF it appears as statistically measured, should actually assure you that their result has a 'hidden' factor yet gets treated as proof of the opposite because of the simillar Monty Hall puzzle being presumed as not hiding some deceptive feature.

Sounds interesting. Can you be more specific?

I initially challenged the Monty Hall problem with the "2/3" solution in many places, this site one of them a long while back. What I wanted to show is that the solution is only conditioned upon the way the question was set up or to the conditions within the question. While we can create scenarios in puzzles or riddles that 'trick' one into some illusive answer, statistical intepretations are more often abusively used in practice to achieve some desired end, be it just a clever wording trick used to test one's capacity to reason or to something applied in a real-life issues to appear true in context but without validity if one looks closely at its conditions.

Bell's Theorem was a form of utilizing the Monty Hall problem to the real test that Einstein, Podolski, and Rosen had published before that challenged how the Copenhagen interpretation that permited the idea of quantum entanglement to exist could not be so in a thought experiment. The main issue regarded a 'hidden' factor that should exist before separating the particles involved in entanglement.

Bell's Theorem reversed the role of the Monty Hall problem in that it set up the EPR challenge to 'fit' with the conditions similarly of the game play. If you could find a means to do the experiment by recording the stats of determing states of each separated particle was and came up with the magical 2/3 as an aveage, that number was supposed to prove the validity of the entanglement as having "action at (any) distance" (or rather, communicating instantaneously in violation of the limited speed of light)

I discovered the comparison as I saw no where that this was done. And given they presumed that the 2/3 result is proof of the reality of quantum entanglement without the cheat (no hidden factor), yet the Monty Hall problem it appears to model only has the 2/3 result due TO a 'hidden factor', then I question the validity of using Bell's Theorem as they had in proving that entanglement actually occurs. I believe it was either a cheat itself or naive insight to the comparison.

If you are interested, I can restart a thread on this more directly. Before I was only beginning with the concern of statistics alone.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmIt is NOT the only possible explanation that has validity. If you posit the structure of matter, energy, and space correctly, the apparent weird conclusions are resolveable back to 'consistency' in some way. I think its hypocritical that many defend the actions of science (particular practices only) as demonstrating weirdness as a virtually certain reality. It presents many fallacies that is used against other poor thinking expected to demarcate science from them.

Dunno if it's hypocritical, but I think what you are describing is the common error of crashing epistemological and practical instrumentalism into the realms of ontology - certain stripes of mathematical realism for example.

In skepticism against religious thinking, many fallacies in thinking charged against the religious arguments are hypocritically being embraced by the same people in science that utilized these arguments to separate (demarcate) the issues from science. Thus, for those scientists who use the same kind of fallacies as though they were perfectly sound reasoning is problematic. I'm completey non-religious and pro-rationalsim (including science). But I believe we still need to look at our own favored 'sides' of the issues to be sure that we do not use the same kind of faulty reasoning.

Example: "God of the Gaps" is a famous skeptical 'fallacy' charged against the religious arguments that asserts, for instance, that evolution theory is flawed given there are gaps in the archeological fossil record, therefore it cannot be true. The counter question to them is how they figure the opposite, ....that something could suddenly exist wholesale as a living being without causation. The answer is something like, "God works in mysterious ways".

Now do you remember the comment charged against Einstein regarding QM when he said that "God does not through dice"? ...."Einstien should stop telling God what to do." (Which person I can't recall at the moment). This kind of answer would be a "God works in Mysterious ways" type.

With regards to Cosmology, I see the Big Bang's interpretation similarly skipping over from the apparent singularity to the point at which we suddenly have some fixed quantity of material. I would charge we have a 'gap' of confusion there but also given that we cannot ever prove the singularity is a literal origin (and is logically unsound) then we don't even have a 'gap' but an infinite chasm. Those who might presume the Bang is real to me is of one similar to assuming we came into sudden existence by a literal Adam (or Eve). Yet a similar reversal to my concern is also, "The Universe works in mysterious ways".

While I may be incorrect about certain factors, it is still important to recognize that if the kind of fallacies are used to argue against irrationalism, why is this NOT paramount to keep out of within the institutes of science.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2020 10:26 pmLight being both a particle and a wave to me is not conflicting when understanding that the 'structure' is just not correctly known. [...thus incomplete again.]

That's something else I cover in the book, the 2019 Christmas Edition is still available for a while: https://www.amazon.com/Einstein-train-o ... 329&sr=8-1

Yeah, I'll have to check it out for the "Amazon.ca" version. Thank you for that. I still hadn't had a direct need to buy your first one since you gave it to me. Now I have a reason to do so AND will add a comment.