I'm not qualified to opine within any particular discipline but fortunately my lack of expertise extends even to my humility.  So I will opine anyway.


Everyone should at least be able to agree that we are all groping in the dark.  Our understanding of everything is restricted by our limited and limiting perspective.  Oh, and smoke and mirrors too.

Is OP still amongst us or have we driven him away?

Very unlikely he'll return to respond to questions. Shit and run most likely.

(May 8, 2015 at 6:50 pm)whateverist Wrote: Very unlikely he'll return to respond to questions.  Shit and run most likely.

But there's an intro thread. We basically talked him into this one.....

(May 8, 2015 at 8:03 am)reasonablerob Wrote: Premise 2) An infinite regress of finite, impermanent causes seems logically impossible...

I dunno. Mathematics is chock full of infinite recursion and infinite series that manage to converge toward something.

I don't know that quantum mechanics obviates causality as the wave function is completely deterministic. Only the place where the particle pops an interaction remains uncertain. That thing where we get all the way back to the Planck era, just a wee 10^-43 seconds after the shit hit the fan, but that wee little moment is separated from t = 0 by as vast a gulf as the one between our time and the Planck era. Leaving us in the Dark Ages.  

Nonetheless, Archimedes had his lever he could move the Earth with. He just lacked something to stand on. I haven't seen a good "cosmological" argument for deity or no deity; they seem to be unrelated subjects. Even if a first causal event were established, however, why would we suppose anything we might call a "deity" would have to be this event?

Assuming we don't subscribe to many worlds, the wave function only evolves deterministically until you measure.

I think I can finally settle this debate. I have some evidence of this "prime" and its actions at the beginning of the universe:

http://youtu.be/thTpPa70Na0

(May 9, 2015 at 3:39 am)Alex K Wrote: ...the wave function only evolves deterministically until you measure.

..., then it "collapses." I'm guessing that after collapse, it's not a wave (probability function) anymore, but a data point. However, there's no difference between a probability function and any other integrable real-valued function in math, except of course the integral from - to + infinity of the former is always 1. You know more about the multidimensional case than I do; I'm all 1-D.  

I don't think the dimensionality of space makes a big conceptual difference at that point. In copenhagen, the collapse doesn't mean that the wave function is gone, it is merely projected down to a new function which is zero except for those parameter values compatible with the result of the measurement. Experimental resolution plays an important role here, me no expert on the intricacies of that. But the randomness comes in where it is decided which possible measurement result of those that could come from the previous wave function, are actually realized.

(May 9, 2015 at 10:28 am)Alex K Wrote: In copenhagen, the collapse doesn't mean that the wave function is gone, it is merely projected down to a new function which is zero except for those parameter values compatible with the result of the measurement...

That makes sense, if there is uncertainty in the measurement per Heisenberg. But what about this cat that's neither dead nor alive? I thought I could hear it meowing in the box....