Do we have freewill ? is it biblical ?

It has occurred to me the one argument that clenches free will, at least for the religious types. Without free will, sin cannot exist. Sin is the taking of actions against God's will. If we do not have free will, then we could not go against God's will. Anything that we do wrong is directed by God, and thus is at His will and thus is not a sin.

 

If you add the ability to travel back in time and have any influence on the past, various paradoxes arise.

With god, omniscience can mean that God already knows how all the decisions were and will be made, and at the same time he is taking an active role in answering prayers, etc. - taking part in those decisions. Many see that as not consistent with with free will.

 

Christians want it both ways. They claim that God has this perfect plan that includes a four year old getting brain cancer and yet, through prayer, we can derail this perfect plan by having God fix problems that are supposed to be part of the perfect plan.

 

No, it isn't.

 

Particles can't. Waves can.

Only if you don't know exactly where it is.

Only if you're talking about a lot of them.

Photons can't think.

They don't necessarily take the quickest route.

 

What's saved?

 

Oh, but that's the thing... They can, and they have, and it's an experiment that's been repeated many, many times and you could do it tomorrow and get the precise same result if you had access to the proper equipment. When I wrote my paper on the topic the largest molecule that had done the experiment with was a C60 molecule called a 'buckeyball' but I recently read that record has been smashed by something even bigger but it's late and I'm too lazy too look it up because it doesn't matter. Just doing it with electrons is enough to prove the concept, and keep in mind... This is firing them at that apparatus one single electron, photon, buckeyball, or whatever the newest 'champ' is particle at a time.

At first it appears completely random, but give it long enough, and the interference pattern emerges. At least until you put detectors at the slits, and force the p-wave to collapse there, at which point the interference pattern collapses, too, and it acts like you would expect a bulletproof barrier with two vertical slits to act when fired on with a gun. The bullets that go through neither slit just get blocked, and when they do go through, you end up with two lines behind the slits.

That is what happens when you collect the 'which slit' data.

But it gets even stranger, because it turns out you can have the which slit apparatus present, turned on, running, collecting data, recording that data, and then, if you erase it at the right time in the right manner, you still get an interference pattern, even if it's after the fact. Look it up, it's called a delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, and there are videos of it all over YouTube.

And it's all explained by the simple idea that the photon, electron, larger molecules or particles, buckeyball, or current champ bits of "stuff" only exist as a calculated probability until such time as they are observed. That is how a single particle interferes with itself, because there is a greater than zero chance it went through the left, and a greater than zero chance it went through the right, so the computational mechanism of the universe allows it to behave as if it went through both simultaneously, and subsequently interfere with itself.

Quantum tunneling and a host of other things demonstrate the same concept. The particles are calculated, not actualized, at least not until they must be because of observation.

You really should know this if you want to do down this path with me.

A lot of them, yes, to allow for the pattern to emerge from just a single point that appears random, but is only pseudo-random. But they are fired one at a time. You can also fire them a lot at a time and get the same result, but the thinking was, well, if there's billions of them per microsecond, it's easy to comprehend why all of those might interfere with each other, which is why someone (I do not know who, or if history even remembers) decided to do it one at a time, to remove that possibility.

Obviously they cannot think, so you are right on at least one thing. But they do take the quickest route, every single time, and my hypothesis as to why is the same as the double slit. All possible routes are calculated, and only the fastest one is actualized. But yes, the fastest route every. Single. Time.

 

They can't think, but they can spot what is ahead of them and calculate a fastest route?

Sorry, I really don't believe that's what is happening. Photons can't change their direction. They can't calculate. They have no rest mass, so there is nowhere to put this ability to calculate. There are infinite possible routes between two points, so again calculation isn't happening.

 

It's not the photon that is doing the calculating, just like it's not the electron or the C60 molecule 'deciding' to go through both slits and interfere with itself.

It is the underlying 'code' that is literally running our universe simulation. You are right, photons cannot change their direction, but when they go through a different medium, the atmosphere, or the water, or a prism, or whatever, their trajectory is altered. But, as I said, no matter how many different mediums they pass through, say a light from a distant star went through another galaxy, then the ort belt, then the gravity or outer atmosphere of Jupiter, then the air, then straight through an airplane, back to the atmosphere, then through a window, then the glass on a fish tank, into the water, and through the different waves and pulses of motion in that water... Every medium alters it's direction and speed, even if only by one millionth of a millionth of a degree, but still, whatever the fastest path happens to be is the one it ends up traveling.

Why? Because, I think, all hypothetical paths are calculated, and then the one that happens to be fastest is the one that is 'realized' here in the 'real' world. The other calculations are no longer necessary and are discarded.

BTW, this information, all of it that I've discussed with you, is not just me, some random anonymous internet stranger talking out of his ass. This is all well known physical properties of the universe that has been experimentally proven over and over again, and that you can do yourself with the right equipment, though I will concede that is the hard part. But go enroll in a quantum physics class at your local university, and I'm sure at least some of this stuff will be standard parts of the curriculum, and others you might be able to request to use the lab gear to try it. Not everyone agrees with my conclusion of a calculated simulation, but most who do not, don't have an alternative explanation.

Even Einstein was apoplectic about the whole idea, exclaiming something like "You mean the moon doesn't exist if I'm not looking at it??" Well, yes and no. If literally nobody is looking at it, then it would exist only as a probabilistic calculation that maybe would show up on a telescope in some distant solar system, at which point the p-wave would collapse into a yes or no answer about if it exists or not. But it is so large, and has been observed by so many different forms of conscious minds, both direct and indirect, for millions of years, so the p-wave of it's existence will be on the order of 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999%, and then some more 9s. Now, exactly where in it's orbit or spin it might be, if the earth were to become completely uninhabited and all records of it's existence destroyed, that may be a bit more flexible.

But what works for the micro also works for the macro, just different orders of magnitude on the probability functions. I.E., a much smaller bell curve, with almost zero until the top dead center where it's all those 9s, then back to almost zero. Not exactly zero, but so close as to be pretty irrelevant. But I just remembered, even if earth gets destroyed, say by some alien death star, our extra solar probes went out there with basically a map of the solar system, but then again, if earth is destroyed, the moon would fly off in some unknown direction, perhaps to orbit Jupiter (if that's still here), perhaps a stable orbit around the sun, perhaps straight INTO the sun, or even completely out of the solar system entirely, to wander intergalactic space as a lone, large, round rock with no light side at all.

 

Your buckyball is a wave. The purpose of the experiment was most likely an attempt to measure the buckyball's wavelength

No. You get a single slit diffraction pattern

This is the best one I've found.

They exist as waves. Better to describe them as discreet waves rather than particles. The discreet waves goes through both slits unless forced to go through only one slit.

If this were true, no diffraction or interference pattern would ever occur.

 

You speak as if Christians are a monolith. You're speaking about a specific sect of "Christianity" which is heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.

However, you seem to really dislike Platonic thought. I'm not a big fan either.

 

WRONG!!! Man, do some research before putting your foot in your mouth. A 'buckeyball' is 60 carbon atoms put together in a lattice type matrix that looks something like a soccer ball when visualized, which is where the name came from in the first place. However, I wrote my paper in the early 20-teens, apparently while I was spending my days fighting just to stay alive, science was progressing and since then, the largest they have successfully done the experiment with now is C284.H190.F320.N4.S12. That is 284 Carbon atoms, 190 Hydrogen, 320 Flourine, 4 Nitrogen, and 12 Sulfer atoms, which combine to have about 5,000 each of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

And here I was impressed with 'just' 60 carbons!

They may have a measureable wavelength, which is of course either why they can be used for the DSE, or may just be a computational byproduct of it, but they are relatively HUGE but still tiny bits of matter, just like all the Carbon, Hydrogen, and other atoms that when put together in the trillions of trillions of trillions make up your 'physical' body.

And it's actually pretty amazing news that I wasn't even aware of, but since you are attempting to argue with me about something it appears you know nothing about, you should have done enough research to have been telling that to me, not me having to do your work for you.

As impressive as that is, it really doesn't matter, because if it's a single electron, a C60 buckey ball, or that monstrosity, the point is we are outside the realm of waves and into the realm of matter. Matter that has mass, which photons lack. The whole point of the LHC is to take these atomic and subatomic particles and smash them into each other at 99% of C, and then study whatever the resulting smashed up particles are made of in an effort to complete the model of reality. There was a time it was thought that atoms were the smallest thing (and even that idea was controversial at first), then once that was a well known fact, they discovered, wait... We have these sub-atomic particles called protons, neutrons, and electrong that make atoms. Then came the up quark and the down quark, and the Higgs boson, and so forth, and I don't know how complete our knowledge is yet, but I suspect we're just scratching the surface, and someday the up-quark is going to be well known to be make of sub-quarkic particles, which are made of something else, and so forth.

But... As interesting as all of that is, it's not relevant to the point here, and that is that depending on where you make observations, those little bits of matter don't always behave that way. Only when we measure them at the 'right' point in time/space do they collapse into matter as we understand it.

I have no idea what a 'single slit diffraction pattern' is, but when you do NOT take 'what slit did the particle goes through" measurements, you get a diffraction pattern, when you do make that measurement (with exceptions), you get 2 lines like bullets out of a gun being fired at a bulletproof barrier with 2 slits big enough for bullets to pass through. You can, however, make it turn back into a diffraction pattern by taking the measurement, but then either not recording that data, say on a hard drive somewhere), or recording it, but destroying it soon enough.

But, when you do NOT take the what-slit measurement, and you send the particles through, whether they are a single electron, the C60, or the Monstrosity (my name for it), you eventually get this:




As for that woman in your video, this whole branch of science is now where the idea of an atom once was. Controversial but on its way to being known fact. As you can see in the photo above, there is some overlap, yes, but it is not as blobbish as her little diagram makes it out to be. Now, if you take the Image above and stop it after 10, or 20, or even 100 particles, yeah, it may in fact look more like her blob, but when you give it time to develop, like a fine wine, the distinct and unmistakable interference pattern emerges, just as if you were doing the experiment with millions of photons being blasted at the screen all at once. She is likely not the only one on her side of the controversy, but the number of serious scientists who are is shrinking, if indeed there are many serious scientists who still think that at all.

You may not like my conclusions, and I'll even concede that a better explanation than the 'simulated universe' theory may yet come along that fits the data better, but it hasn't yet. Just calling it 'duality' is saying, 'I don't have an f-ing clue how it works, so I'll give it a fancy name and make fun of people who think it means what it actually means'.

I've done a lot of research and work in this area, and I have a published paper to my name, indeed I have the Psi character, along with the entirety of Schrodinger's Equation that is the math behind psi tattooed on my body because of my self-trained interest and experience in this area. But I've always been more interested in winning the war, than in worrying about small unit tactics on a single battlefield, so I let others deal with the math while I try to understand just WTF all the math is telling us, if we would just pause to listen.

And it is my conclusion, along with a hell of a lot of other people, virtually all of whom have more formal training and parchments than do I, that it is telling us that what we perceive as real is, as Einstein once said, "an illusion, albeit a persistent one." He, I, and all the others could be wrong, but unless and until I see a better interpretation, or more pertinent data and/or experimental evidence of something different, I'm sticking with my story.

But that could change yet today, if some new discovery hits the sphere of my knowledge before I sleep, which seems unlikely, but cannot be ruled out. That is how science works. First it's heretical, then it's controversial, then it's almost political, and eventually if an idea survives all of that, it enters the realm of common knowledge. We're not there yet, but it seems we are well on the way.

You do not seem to know what you are talking about, at all. You think my idea is nuts, so you reject it out of hand, find one video from a nobody (and of course, virtually all of us, including myself, are nobodies) who thinks she sees something different. Who knows, perhaps she is right. But I am not even convinced enough to give her any further thought. Einstein, Feinman, Bohr, Campbell... those were one-time nobodies that became somebody. Very few ever accomplish that, and while I had an experiment designed in my head I was about to pitch to a major Uni, I should have written it down, because my death/near death, and missing years of time cumulatively has rendered my knowledge of that gone. I know I had what appeared to be a great idea, but what that idea was got lost to whatever it was that happened to me, which even the medical experts cannot explain. Of course, at first I didn't even remember how to write, and that came back, did a lot of my upper body motion and strength. But while I will never be whole again, maybe, just maybe I can re-remember what I once designed in my head, but foolishly thought 'Hey, I'll never forget something this important!'. I suppose you could say that was foolish.

Go figure. Or, as the saying goes, 'shut up and calculate'.

 

It's a wave. A larger size just makes the wavelength of the combined smaller.

If someone has no idea what a single slit diffraction pattern is, then he or she has no idea what's happening in the double slit experiment.

An interference pattern and a diffraction pattern are two different things.

Some very emotional writing here. I didn't find anything of substance to respond to.

 

This idea of calculation of fastest path is just not what is happening.

There is no place where such calculation COULD happen. It's certainly not in the photon, as photons have zero rest mass. Plus, there is no knowledge of what it might pass through or near in the future.

And, any notion of "fastest" would have to include knowledge of the destination. But, photons do not have a destination.

What happens is that a photon travels on its initial path until something modifies its direction or speed.

 

A piece of matter with mass, even if it is a tiny mass, is not a 'wave' it is a 'thing'. 'Things' with mass should NOT create diffraction patterns (or interference patterns, same difference), but it is experimentally verified countless times that they do. That is because that matter does not exist until it HAS TO, which is when it is somehow measured, detected, or observed.

This is why when the 'which slit data' is measured and retained, the calculated p-wave collapses into matter (but only for an instant) but after that, it can only do one thing... move directly to the detection screen from whichever slit it went through. When that data is not measured, collected, or retained, it can and does go through both, because its location is not yet fixed, and the p-wave is large enough to cover both slits, so that is how it is calculated. The CALCULATION (not the matter) goes through both, interferes with itself (from a mathematical perspective) and lands in a pseudo-random point on the screen that, after enough time, develops into an interference pattern.

But when it MUST go through one or the other (because we look) it does, and the interference pattern disappears.

If matter only exists as matter when we look at it, the underlying system is like (meaning all my language is metaphorical) a computer simulation.

 

Exactly. And yet, it does. Because it is calculated, and whatever is fastest is actualized.

 

LOL - you haven't said anything that supports your view.

- There is no place for such a calculation to be made.

- A calculation of "fastest" would necessitate knowledge of the destination, something that doesn't exist.

 

Not within our time and space dimension, true. Then again, during the brief time I was deceased, whatever "I" was then was not in this dimension, either.

And yet, my claim is true. It's known as Fermat's Principal, and it's nothing new. This explanation isn't either, but compared to when it originated, it actually is, if for no other reason than the very idea of a virtual reality or simulated Universe (two terms that mean the same thing) simply didn't exist until our technology advanced to the point that we started making them ourselves.

It's not the only explanation, just the most likely, and the one that most physicists agree with, even if a lot of them won't say so out loud because people like you shout them down as being quacks.

 

OK. I'm out when people discussing physics decide that physics is irrelevant to the conversation.