it doesn't make sense to talk about effects happening before causes, and it doesn't make sense to talk about a cause in the future effecting the past.
Although quantum effects are fascinating and sometimes bizarre, it is also true that they tend mostly to occur on a sub-atomic level. I personally still believe that there is an actual past, with a definite history, which has some kind of objective reality that is independent of individual observations - but I could be wrong.Really? It seems to me that once time passes, it's gone. History doesn't 'exist' at all, just the stuff that used to be in the past. You can tell what the past was like based on evidence (including memories) but I don't think it exists the same way, say, the sun exists.
grizzled, I'd say that computer "science" is pure mathematics, which is not science (as you noted).Well, in some cases but not all. In a lot of situations you really are doing experiments. Sure, you're doing experiments on idealized mathematical devices, but you don't know the result without testing. It may not be possible to mathematically figure out what the result will be before hand. Or it may be possible but not worth it. Machine learning, in particular involves lots of experiments to see how well algorithms will perform.
In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world ... Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial. Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness.The bits above that I've emphasised in bold are very misleading, I'd say. While its true that, some interpretations of quantum mechanics involve consciousness (the von Neumann/Wigner interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation being the best known ones) there are plenty that don't. Quantum decoherence, Stochastic interpretation, and the Penrose interpretation all have a pretty good go at explaining the whole thing without any problematic pondering of the role of Consciousness. But, perhaps because these theories are a bit less exciting to trip-out on, they don't get discussed as much as the more mind-bending consciousness based theories. And so they are probably not on the radar of the sort of people who write those sort of books. Or is it just more convenient for authors to skip over the more dry, complex and (in my view) likely explanations in favour of the more sexy and marketable ones?
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posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:44 AM on August 20, 2010