[mike777]

http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?....html?id%3D6507




http://www.sciencema...ct/315/5814/966

[Al_U_Card]

Maybe not, but biologicals might dissolve it.

[helene_t]

What a hoax.

I understand that a director of biotech company above all wants admiration of biotech research. What I don't understand is why this kind of crap fascinates people. Nature is already fascinating enough as it is. Biotech research is already fascinating enough as it is. Meshing it up with pseudoscience shouldn't serve it well, at least not in the face of a critical audience.

[hrothgar]

In case anyone is seriously interested in whats being discussed, I recommend the following URL

http://www.bottomlay...ayed_choice.htm

[mike777]

Experimental Realization of Wheeler's Delayed-Choice Gedanken Experiment

Yes see my second link in my first post please.

[mike777]

".....What I don't understand is why this kind of crap fascinates people. Nature is already fascinating enough as it is. Biotech research is already...."


Helene, I must admit my one and only formal Biology class was back in the 1960's just weeks after my being at the Democratic convention in Chicago. My memory is a bit hazy, but I do recall the girls being much prettier in that class than in my Chemistry or Physics classes.

As a layman here are some books I found fascinating on this subject and my impressions of what they said on the subject of Emergence as an element of Cosmological Theory.

1) Wheeler's presentation in 1989 at the Santa Fe Instutute, "It from Bit" All things physical are information-thoeretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.

2) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John Barrow and Frank Tipler. Life at some point begins to manipulate the dynamical evolution of the universe as a whole.

3)Infinite in all Directions, Freeman Dyson. Places Life and intelligence at the center of the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

4)Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines. Computers exceed Human Intelligence.

5)Richard Dawkins. River out of Eden and The Selfish Gene. Theory of ascending hierachies of replicators pursuing emergent categories of replication objectives as a tool for the books discussed above.

[Gerben42]

I think it is just sad to see that good Physics is being misused in crazy theories, but quantum mechanics is counterintuitive enough to do so.

Second, note that Mr. Kurzweil's site does not link to the company of Mr. Lanza.

Quantum mechanics is a way of describing the universe. It is, in a way, a mathematical representation of the universe that can be used to make predictions.

Quote

"This landmark experiment showed that a choice you make now can actually influence an event that has already occurred in the past."

Sorry to be harsh but anyone who makes such a statement hasn't got a clue about Physics...

Quote

Lanza: This new theory presents a shift in world view with the perspective that life creates the universe instead of the other way around.

This statement is logically flawed. This would mean that if life in the universe would be destroyed, there would be no more universe. Then where did the life come from? I would give up the Big Bang theory for something better if it was presented, but this creates more problems than it solves.

Let's take a critical look at the conclusion:

Quote

Scientists continue to dismiss the observer as an inconvenience to their theories. Real experiments show that the properties of matter itself are observer-determined. A particle can go through one hole if you look at it, but if you don't look at it, it can actually go through more than one hole at the same time. Science has no explanation for how the world can be like that.

The properties of matter are not observer-determined! A detection collapses the quantum state of the system. This is counterintuitive but this theory is in accordance with the observations. Even thinking that "it can actually go through more than one hole at the time" is incorrect.

Nothing explains how the world can be like this, it just is ok?

[hrothgar]

Gerben42, on Mar 17 2007, 08:49 PM, said:

Quote

"This landmark experiment showed that a choice you make now can actually influence an event that has already occurred in the past."

Sorry to be harsh but anyone who makes such a statement hasn't got a clue about Physics...

After looking over the web pages, my impression is that this is just a fancier version of Schrödinger's Cat.

I could be compeltely off base, though. I never really had a good feel for quantum mechanics

[mike777]

Einstein/Thorne/ Godel speak of general relativity allowing solutions that have closed timelike curves or CTCs. The implications of the potential existence of CTCs imply that the future can actually influence and casually reshape the past.





Einstein/Wigner/Schrodinger mystery

Wigner similar but to paraphrase Schrodinger noted: How can it be that our biologically evolved minds could have acquired the capacity probe deep mysteries such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory that seem utterly alien to the primordial African fitness landscapes that shaped human evolution?

[Winstonm]

Quote

I could be compeltely off base, though. I never really had a good feel for quantum mechanics

Quote

Helene, I must admit my one and only formal Biology class was back in the 1960's just weeks after my being at the Democratic convention in Chicago. My memory is a bit hazy, but I do recall the girls being much prettier in that class than in my Chemistry or Physics classes.

What an incredible coincidence. My last good feel was in the 1960's in biology class.