A belief is not evidence of anything. I have beliefs too. They are not evidence either. Humans cannot observe the results of a double slit experiment directly, their sensory apparatus is too crude to see anything of this sort. The role of humans is in interpreting the readouts of machines that perform the experiment, human consciousness is involved in setting up the machines, but is not illuminating anything during the experiment as far as what goes on with the slits and beams of light themselves. Most quantum mechanical experiments of this kind take place where information of the effects of the experiment could not even reach a human observer before the experimental session is over. So the human observer has no direct effect whatever on the results. The fact, as we interpret it however remains, that light acts as a wave and as a particle. Here is what Einstein said of it (regarding classical physics and quantum physics): 'It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do'. -------------- From Wikipedia: 'The particle-like behaviour is most evident due to phenomena associated with measurement in quantum mechanics. Upon measuring the location of the particle, the particle will be forced into a more localized state as given by the uncertainty principle. When viewed through this formalism, the measurement of the wave function will randomly "collapse", or rather "decohere", to a sharply peaked function at some location. For particles with mass the likelihood of detecting the particle at any particular location is equal to the squared amplitude of the wave function there. The measurement will return a well-defined position, (subject to uncertainty), a property traditionally associated with particles. It is important to note that a measurement is only a particular type of interaction where some data is recorded and the measured quantity is forced into a particular eigenstate. The act of measurement is therefore not fundamentally different from any other interaction.'
'Following the development of quantum field theory the ambiguity disappeared. The field permits solutions that follow the wave equation, which are referred to as the wave functions. The term particle is used to label the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group that are permitted by the field. An interaction as in a Feynman diagram is accepted as a calculationally convenient approximation where the outgoing legs are known to be simplifications of the propagation and the internal lines are for some order in an expansion of the field interaction. Since the field is non-local and quantized, the phenomena which previously were thought of as paradoxes are explained. Within the limits of the wave-particle duality the quantum field theory gives the same results.' -------------- Saying the universe is based on consciousness is like trying to say the head side of a coin is based on the tail side. This results from the attempt to explain a single phenomenon in terms of a dualistic conceptual framework which splits the single phenomenon into apparently separate and seemingly incompatible phenomena which the mind is unable to reconcile logically. A scientist will accept the paradox as factual and admit he/she cannot understand it, while a cult-based mind will take one side of the paradox and promote it to the exclusion of the other. The universe and our awareness arise together. Without the universe, there is no knowledge of awareness; without awareness, there is no experience of the universe, and thus no knowledge that we exist is possible. Its both a and b, not just a or just b that lies under the hood. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : Xeno, I believe the universe is based on consciousness. Some of the recent scientific discoveries are hinting to this very possibility. For example, there is the famous double slit experiment of light beams which shows that light is both a wave and a particle at the same time. The corollary to this experiment is even more astonishing in that this duality can be affected by an observer. If the light photons are counted and observed by a human being, the light that goes through the slits always become particles as shown by the pattern on the background screen. If the counter is turned off, the light that goes through the slits show its wave form on the background screen. There was an additional experiment to show the odd property of light. This time the scientists recorded the information gathered from the same experiment. However, they erased the information relating to the counter without looking at the information recorded for the background screen. Ideally, the recorded information should have shown the particle signature on the background screen. But that was not the case. Instead, the recorded information showed the wave signature on the background screen. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <anartaxius@...> wrote : Is the author in saying we are the 'first cause' saying anything different from saying 'consciousness is the basis of the universe and reality'? A materialist would say consciousness is an emergent property of evolution, while an idealist would say the reverse, that the material world is dependent on mind or on consciousness. But all we really know, in the absence of evidence, is that consciousness is coincident with all our experience, that it is inseparable from any possible experience we could have. That does not allow us to choose between one or other of these two alternatives. We never know anything without the world that gives us a mind that can think and reason about it, and we can never know the world without consciousness, it is all inseparable, these divisions into physicality and spirituality are conceptual mappings of the mind, they are far more arbitrary than is usually realised; they are artificial divisions in an interconnected whole. So the spiritual folk are clueless about the scientific view of reality, while the scientists are clueless about the reverse, and there is no way to pick one version or the other either on the basis of experience or on the basis of evidence. Unity only shows you that consciousness and matter are inseparable as a timeless experience, and because the experience is timeless, it tells you nothing about sequence, or beginnings and endings, and so cannot tell you whether matter or consciousness came first. Science gives us an idea of how things are, while spirituality gives us a sense of why, but it is a wordless answer, one that cannot be translated into speech. The distances and barriers to travel in the universe are quite profound; so far we know really nothing of the possible kinds of travel that would surmount those barriers. The stuff of science fiction, such a warp drives, wormhole travel, are undiscovered. Travelling near the speed of light is lethal due to effects of radiation. Life spans of biological organisms, so far as we know, is very short compared to travelling slowly across the cosmos. As a species ourselves we seem close to destroying ourselves by various methods of our own devising. Maybe other organisms on other worlds, should they exist, are equally incompetent, and thus we have no knowledge of them nor they of us. We do not know yet whether an ecosystem on another world would have any compatibility with our biological systems. That is, whether another world, if it had life, could be lived on without first razing the world of its living things and replacing them with our own. The same would go for an alien civilisation looking to colonise Earth. It seems possible now to find planets easily enough within the local neighbourhood, but getting to these worlds is a significant challenge, it would take many, many human lifetimes with our current knowledge (about 20,000 years to get to the nearest star, which may have one Earth-sized planet, with a surface temperature of 1200°C). We need more knowledge of life. The best bets now would be to find that information (which may not exist) on Mars, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, and Enceladus, places we can get to fairly easily because they are within a billion miles of Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_esq@...> wrote : The author of this article states it is so. But he appears to be clueless to the idea that consciousness is the basis of the universe and reality. He also states that we may be alone in the universe. What do you think? Why the Earth Will Never Be Invaded http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-the-earth-will-never-be-invaded_b_6879216.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-the-earth-will-never-be-invaded_b_6879216.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592 Why the Earth Will Never Be Invaded http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-the-earth-will-never-be-invaded_b_6879216.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592 Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles. But they have ignored a critical component of the cosmos because they ... View on www.huffingtonpost... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/why-the-earth-will-never-be-invaded_b_6879216.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592 Preview by Yahoo
