Posts by Martin

Answer to Susan and Cassius:

The Schroedinger equation is - within its range of validity - well supported by evidence. Quantum entanglement is well supported, too, and is already used for secure communication in the sense that any attempt to spy on the stream of information between transmitter and receiver would be detected. Billions of dollars are spent to develop quantum computers, which independent of the specific design are all based on entanglement.

Schroedinger equation and quantum entanglement really point to something VERY weird going on that does not fit with classical physics.

In general, quantum mechanics itself is rock solid with lots of experimental evidence. Future discoveries or an ingenious new theory might lead to a major overhaul but that is not likely to happen any time soon.

For many physicists, using "Shut up and calculate!" as the motto, the quantum woo starts already with any attempt of an interpretation.

I do see some value in interpretation but have no criteria at hand to tell in general how sensical interpretations are different from nonsensical ones.

When an interpretation is used to derive conclusions which are not backed by plain quantum mechanics, that interpretation is most likely nonsensical. Other than that crude indicator, the assessment is case by case.

The most common nonsensical interpretation is to attribute quantum uncertainty or other features of quantum mechanics to the influence of the consciousness of the observer.

(When playing golf with a demolition crane, the uncertainty of the trajectory of the ball is not due to the consciousness of the player but due to the clumsiness of the tool.)

Another kind of woo is when theories which so far have been untestable (i.e. they are not even hypotheses as of now) are misrepresented as factual descriptions of reality (e.g. string theory, multiverse theories). A far-reaching interpretation of such a theory is most likely nonsense to the power of 2 (e.g. an interpretation with teleportation between "parallel universes").

Quantum theory is not the problem but quantum woo is, i.e. nonsensical interpretations of quantum theory create problems by misleading people into wrong beliefs.

I never felt that the study of science was harmful beyond maybe to have wasted some time on studying in detail something which I will never use but that is unavoidable because as a student at university, I did not know in advance whether it will become eventually relevant.

I would like to sue the Catholic Church to give me back many hours of eager study of the Bible and other Christian texts and attending mass when I was a child and adolescent.

The harmful effect of being a Christian child was to distrust and refrain from pleasure and to socially isolate myself from peers who I considered to be mostly "sinners" by whom I did not want to get "tempted".

Luckily, I overcame this before the end of senior high school but I still feel the effect of insufficient socialization in my youth because I still need to make conscious efforts where others behave naturally without conscious effort.

By trusting our emotions I mean that we do not negate the precognitive reaction. In case of doubt what I mean, Don's more precise wording shall override what I wrote.

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With respect to what is pleasure and what is pain, we trust our emotions. This does not create trouble because with respect to the decision what action to take, we use reason overriding emotions to produce results which we expect to be pleasure which is worth the pain we incur during or as a side effect of the action.

Anger is an emotion which I usually try to diffuse and will certainly override with reason when taking action. On occasion, anger may provide good motivation to take action, whereby the action is still decided upon by reason.

Love for trusted friends is an emotion which may sometimes guide my actions with reasoning reduced to sanity checks.

While drafting the paragraph, I did not notice Don's comment. But at first sight, there is no contradiction between his comment and mine.

Welcome here too, Susan!

This seems to be the same as 32 in red.

Regarding "it's natural" in the podcast of episode 30 at 43:34 , I referred to the pursuit of pleasure as the natural choice, and Elayne asserted this, too.

Welcome Philos!

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At some point we should think about a central location for all images of Epicurus known to be in the public domain.

The gallery on this webpage could be that location. We would just need to add a subfolder (or a tag to each PD image of Epicurus?).

Just for clarification:

The truth about something is not a prolepsis (in most cases). During the referred to podcast discussion, my agreement with truth as prolepsis was about the meaning of the word truth, not truth about something, and I thought the other participants were referring to the meaning of the word truth, too.

It is cool that theoretical physicists develop various concepts of a multiverse which are mutually exclusive and that there is considerable public interest in this.

However, those theories (or rather: so far untestable hypotheses) are highly speculative such that I still go with just one universe (of which parts might go or be outside of our horizon of observation and cause-and-effect).

Except for reading the occasional article for physicists who are not experts in this, I largely ignore the multiverse.

I still take a wait and see position on the accelerated expansion of the universe, too, but there is at least some evidence to base that one on.

Heat "death" is somewhat misleading. While we are no more after death, the universe exists without being alive and will still exist when it reaches heat death.

The way I learnt this as a student in a cosmology class, heat death means that there is only infrared radiation and matter in the form of the most stable element (iron in that lecture, nickel according to another reference), and on the way toward there, conditions will become too adverse for any lifeform to survive.

However, this class was taught before the apparent acceleration of the expansion of the universe was discovered, which should be a major game changer.

Another correction of what was mentioned in the thread: The energy will never be used up, it will just be distributed more evenly / the entropy will be much higher.

Here is my take:

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And once we come up with a satisfactory explanation that dispels terror, we can stop our investigation.

We can stop there but we do not have to. Stopping there is OK for those for who do not get much pleasure from studying science or who do not have the time or ability to investigate further.

For Don, me and any other science geek, Epicurus puts no limit on how far we go in our investigation. It is our own decision based on hedonic calculus, with our curiosity and even obsessions driving us beyond Aristotelian moderation.

Welcome Rob!

Welcome, LukeL!

Quote from Could you please elaborate on how the swerve is a precondition for the existence of free will?

In both Democritus' and Epicurus' universe, particles and void are all there is. The distribution and movements of particles determine our reality including our thoughts about it.

In the Democritean universe, the particles behave like hard bodies in classical mechanics. The present and future distribution and movements are determined by the distribution and movements in the distant past. Therefore, the history of the Democritean universe including our thoughts are predetermined. We may still enjoy our pleasures but do so as concerned voyeurs (like sophisticated jumping Jacks who have feelings and are integrated in a moving clockwork), not as agents who invent and choose among options for their actions. Therefore, there is no free will in Democritus' universe.

In Epicurus' universe, a particle may deviate a bit from its mechanistically determined path. Therefore, the universe including our thoughts is no more completely predetermined by the past. Under this condition, free will may be possible.

In which species free will exists and how it arises is still a subject of ongoing research. The conclusions still appear to be speculative.

For the background, there are a number of difficulties with Epicurus' physics:

It is partially refuted, completely lacks the powerful mathematical modeling with which we are familiar and is rudimentary in comparison with what we learned with Galilei, Newton and many other physicists.

I see a strong enough analogy between Democritean physics and classical mechanics that I use classical mechanics for the Democritean universe. Others may see this as too farfetched.

As Epicurus' ethics are based on Epicurean physics, others may reject the whole philosophy because parts of the physics are refuted. I take the refuted parts as similar to refuted or abandoned scientific theories. These theories were stepping stones for the progress to recent science and do not refute the scientific method. Similarly, the refutation of parts of Epicurean physics does not refute the whole philosophy.

To formulate an Epicurean answer, I combine not refuted parts of Epicurean physics with modern science. Others may reject my approach as arbitrary, choose a different approach and come to different conclusions.

Sedley's article referenced by Cassius above is probably a good read for the topic.

I recommend

https://aeon.co/essays/heres-w…8b6167-69491777

although I do not fully agree with it. According to comments on a Facebook forum, it is quite tough for non-scientists though.

Here are Epicurean answers to 2 of the items which you perceive as unappealing and confusing:

We feel empathy with the less fortunate and the downtrodden. If we did not care at all for them, we would feel pain. Helping some of them where we can with reasonable effort increases our pleasure.

Moreover, caring for the less fortunate and the downtrodden may make it less likely that our security and thereby pleasure is threatened by violent revolutions or crimes committed under the pretext of justice for the less fortunate and the downtrodden.

The swerve is not evidence for the existence of free will but a precondition for the existence of free will in the sense of agency. In a materialistic universe, some kind of swerve is necessary to avoid determinism. Pursuing pleasure as the goal makes only sense if we have agency to deviate from a deterministic path.

Epicurus' swerve has modern analogies in quantum indeterminacy and in the measurement uncertainty in classical physics. Instead of the impossible mechanistic description of every particle involved, thermodynamic properties or emergent properties are used to describe reality as we perceive it and do not exclude agency.

Welcome Camotero!

Thanks Don for the link to the singular "they". I was not aware of this usage but will try to get accustomed to use it. When I wrote my comment, I hesitated for some seconds to ponder whether there might be a correct gender neutral pronoun in English and whether it would be as clumsy as the new "er/sie" and other politically correct solutions for gender neutral language in German which I still refuse.