Poll: Is Anything Possible?

[Samcanuck]

I dare anyone to disprove ANYTHING, if you factor in magic, other planets, and alternate dimensions. My logic is that we can't prove that something definitely doesn't exist/ happen somewhere out there. That is the one thing that is impossible. But by all means, try to disprove something to me.
P.S. anyone trying to disprove something visual I?m sick of repeating my self so here goes, maybe x is happening, you just don't realize it.

The lack of existance is my guess. If not, how then can this question be posed?

 

[Abedeus]

No. Paradoxes are not possible. You can't lift yourself up. You can't stop your heart on your own (not talking about slowing down, stopping it, for like 30 seconds) and then restart it on will. And you can't be alive and dead at the same time. Undead doesn't count.

 

[Oktanas]

God can't create a rock that he couldn't lift it above his head.

 

[dietpeachsnapple]

The speed at which this dissolves into futility it staggering. If nothing is impossible, and everything is possible, there is no frame of reference to have a conversation at all. I appreciate the Cartesian doubt, but there comes a point where it is an exercise in semantics as opposed to an exercise of dispelling entrenched paradigms.

Or, in normal English:
This discussion is becoming pointless really quickly. If nothing is impossible, and everything is possible, then this question is entirely pointless, and shouldn't generate as much discussion as it has. You keep saying 'alternate dimensions make everything fine', and we keep saying 'even so, there are limits', so this has become a game of people trying to find a loophole in your rules rather than a thread of people letting their imaginations wander, free of the rules of this world.

Sorry, I'm usually the one with the posts using sufficiently obscure English to deter several readers...

Thank you, I suppose. I felt that my statements were imbued with exceedingly accurate word choice for the purpose of succinctly expressing my stance on the matter. If that is interfered with by that word choice being inappropriate for my audience, then it was, naturally, a mistake on my part.

Not at all; I feel, rather, that any mistake made would in fact have been my own, underestimating the vocabulary available to your readers after stumbling upon an insignificant number of complaints. Naturally, such mistake having been made, I offer an unreserved apology to all who were offended by my assumptions, and indeed to you, after I stripped the soul from your post for the unnecessarily simplistic purpose of increasing its readability. Your word choice was, frankly, sublime, and the resultant bastardisation I must regrettably admit to having created was something of an abomination.

Lest we allow our responses to attain any new levels of bombasticity, I heartily accept your admonitions and embrace you as a brother of pedantics; So rare is the pleasure of eloquent and articulate reply granted. Good day Sir, and may the forces of evil be confused in their search for your whereabouts.

 

[oktalist]

Firstly, thanks for taking the time to form that excellent reply (and exorcising the text formatting from my post, that must've been annoying, sorry). I think I may actually be learning something. Hopefully I'm not losing knowledge from another field to make way for new information in my brains

It's not surprising that there is disagreement on the subject of scaling QM up to molecular levels and macro scales beyond. As I understand it, this exact subject is still one of physics' "big problems".

So you contend that the propability of finding an equal jerk, with exactly the same order subatomic particles, precisely the same collisions within this jerk and with his surroundings, and macroscopic features (such as memory pathways in the brain) is highly likely?

Ok, no, not equal in that sense. Just similar enough as to be indistinguishable at first glance. And I didn't say highly likely, I just said a significant probability, so something more like 1:1010 rather than 1:101000.

But for any particle with an electrical charge, any electrical charge or field sufficient to disturb it would be enough to collapse the wave-function.

(a) Electrical charge is carried by photons, so this interaction is still just one of interfering wave functions. That's why I used gravity to make this point, because it's the only force field without a quantum force-carrier in the standard model.

(b) How much is "sufficient to disturb it"? I guess the answer will be something about changing energy levels, or the Planck energy. But surely even an electron and a proton 1000 km apart are still exerting some influence on each other?

Are you therefore saying you've managed to prove why CERN is useless and make up their results?

Because they fire amazingly fast particles against each other. But if their positions are unknown, how can they ever hope to collide any particles?

Yet they do this consistently. I wonder why?

Because they observe the results!

They have detectors arranged around the point of intended collision, like in my crossroads example. When they see a particle hit one of the detectors, that's when its wave function collapses and retroactively "decides" what path it took and whether or not it collided, based on the probability of it having done so. Because its wave function interacted with that of its intended collision partner, the two were entangled and so the partner's wave function also collapses at that point, even if it hasn't hit a detector yet. It's at that moment that the many paths that they could follow after exiting the emitters collapse to two single, well-defined paths, giving the appearance that the path was at every moment in their journey well-defined.

At this point you may ask, "so what counts as an observation?" I'll leave that question until the end of this post.

Just because we do not know the exact position, does not mean we cannot tell a small specific area where the particle is extremely likely to be.

I don't dispute that.

They both "observed" each other and collapsed each other's wave functions even though neither had a determinate position?

Both had a determinable position,as by their wave-function: the position is simply not invariant.

Determinable is not the same as determinate. Determinate is closer to invariant. Sorry I don't know the "proper" terminology for this, if there is such a thing. Determinate is what a thing is only at the moment of its wave function collapse.

Their wave functions produce an interference pattern which is the wave function of the combined two-particle system.

And part of this interference pattern is that they do collide. As you say, there is a non-zero possibility. They do potentially occupy the same space-time coordinates at the same time.

...there is not a single moment when all the particles that make up the cat, or even the majority of them, are within a state of superposition.

Ok, so your overall point seems to me to be that a wave function collapse is incurred at any moment where the probability distribution described by a wave function is distributed so as to make its probability of not being at a certain specific position "infinity minus one to one against," to use your prof's colourful misuse of mathematics.

To me that just looks like an approximation, albiet a completely reasonable one, one that would never deviate from the reality in a million universe lifetimes, but an approximation nonetheless. But I don't know, maybe it really is a fundamental law of QM, and answers all my questions. It does pose some more questions:

Are these probabilities themselves quantised? Is there a "smallest quantum of probability," a smaller probability than which is impossible?

Is it possible to speak of a probability of exactly one for some specific attribute of a quantum? That would presumably equate to a wave function collapse, regardless of any question surrounding "infinity minus one."

Matter itself would cease to exist before a cat changes into a dog. So if you want to talk of something like that as 'possible' then sure, there is a non-zero propability of it happening.

Still doesn't mean it would happen, even if given million times the lifetime of the entire universe from Big Bang to whatever end there is.

It seems we are in agreement.

Now I shall return to the question from earlier, "what counts as an observation?" Why does an interaction with a detection plate in the CERN collider count as an observation, with the power to collapse wave functions, while the collision itself does not? I address this here at the end of the post because it's more philosophical than scientific. The answer to the latter question is, neither is strictly an observation, I was just approximating, reducing to a simpler example.

The answer to the former question is, the only thing that counts as an observation is an interaction with any of the quanta within the brain which is currently reading this text. You exist in your own universe in which you are the only entity capable of collapsing wave functions. I exist in my own universe in which I am likewise. These universes happen to coincide.

Contentious? Yes. Relevant? No. Scientific? Probably not. The distinction is largely academic and may have absolutely no bearing on the science; for studying QM for real world purposes it doesn't matter. But this thread has never been about the real world.

 

[Daipire]

Destroying/creating matter is impossible.

 

[Canid117]

We landed probes on mars through the use of the laws of physics. Logic is a method of thought not a rule of the universe. It by itself doesn't rule jack shit.

So if logic does not work on Mars, then it is impossible to have a working electrical circuit on Mars. Why? Because these electrical circuits require not only that Maxwell's equations pan out, but that they also not change.

It is not the logic that rules electricity it is the laws of physics, logic is merely a means of understanding those laws.

1+1 MUST equal two, because otherwise any programming or hardwired switches would fail to engage, or engage when they should not.

Once again logic is merely a means of understanding the universe not the law itself. There is a difference between the law against murder and the police code that lets officers know whats going on.

Logic is a fundamental aspect of the universe, the property of being justifiable by reason. It is not a law, correct. But all laws require logic to exist, for if you take that property away, there would be no reason for the laws to apply there while they do here. Why? Because all the laws we have discovered are consistently logical. A bipoler magnet rotating within a coil will always generate electricity. Not just sometimes, or every other day, but every time.

No Logic is the means of understanding the universe. The fundamental principles are things along the lines of "An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force" or "Gravity is the bending of space time by the presence of matter." Those are the laws of the universe. Logic does not rule them, it simply helps us understand them.

Logic can also be defined, for electrical or computer systems as a set of principles underlying the arrangements of elements so as to perform a specified task. With this definition, the situation is the same: no way to command the Mars probe to fire-booster rockets, no way to order it turn it's cameras etc.

Once again electricity is a transference of energy. Not a manifestation of logic because logic has no manifestation. Energy is ruled by the laws of physics, as is the rest of the universe. Logic exists merely within our minds as a tool to understand those laws. In an area with no sapience, there is no Aristotle only Newton.

What is it like to be my intellectual *****?

PS: I fixed some of your spelling errors.

 

[erto101]

A digon, changing the past, Santa Claus, uhmmm.. me giving a shit about alt dimensions...
Come on you can't use that as a argument for anything being possible because there is no way to prove it

But there is also no way to disprove it.

But then you cannot say that anythings possible either 'cos there's no way to (dis)prove it

 

[Reaperman64]

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. I'm all for believing magic exists somewhere.

Out of the four fundemental forces that make up the universe, two have infinite range, gravity and electromagnetism.

That means that every atom in your body is interacting with every other atom that exist in all dimensions at the speed of light. whos to say that if we could find a way to supply energy, we could use these interactions for telekenisis, mind reading, pyrokinesis and all the other far fetched powers...

 

[Yokai]

Considering what we knew 200 years ago and what we know now, I don't think it'd be much of a stretch to say 200 years from now, the vast majority of what we thought was impossible will be a part of everyday life. So yeah, anything's possible.

 

[Zacharine]

Snip

Having just come home from spending 10h at work, I've been rather forcefully reminded of the folly of trying to keep too many pans on the stove.

So, thiis will be my final argument to you regarding logic in this thread. I think this is the best I can formulate it, and if I can't convince you, then so be it. Likewise, I will be reading your response to this, but no further.

So, let us assume logic is not a universal concept, but only a method of thought applied by thinking minds. Therefore, logic would cease to exist beyond thinking minds.

This is what I've gathered from your posts so far and believe this to be a fairly accurate description of your position.

This would mean, that there is no logic in the orbit of Mars, until a thinking mind goes there.

So, let us say we launch a probe there. It is filled with sophisticated electronics, but does not think. It has no mind. It is an object.

However, all that sophisticated circuitry requires mathematics in order to function. But since mathematics is a formalized extension of logic, there is no functional mathematics in the orbit of Mars.

Hence, all that sophistiated circuitry, ceases to function. Because 1+1 must equal two, not square root of five to the power of e, in order to function.

Sidenote: Come to think of it, causality itself is an expression of logic: X, therefore Y. It does not require thinking mind, or life at all, to prove correct. Scientific laws and theories build upon this: We have observed that if X, then Y. Here is the why of it, and formulae to predict it.

And yet this sudden breakdown of electric circuitry does not happen. We have succesfully sent probes to Mars. Possible explanations:
1. The concepts of logic, and therefore mathematics, are universal and do not require thinking minds to function and/or exist.
2. The electric circuit, despite not being a thinking mind, 'brought' the principles of logic with it, allowing the concept of logic to function.
3. Electric circuitry does not require logic, and thus mathematics, to function.

In case 1 you would be wrong.
In case 2 you would be wrong: logic is not simply a method of thought, since it obviously would not require thought to exist. If it requires no thought to exist, why should it require life to exist? If it requires no life to exist, why would it work only on this corner of the universe that we inhabit, instead of being universal?
In case 3, I would be wrong.

So here is the simple thing. Show me how to build an electric circuit (of any complexity) that does not rely on any mathematical principles (and thus logic) to function. Do that, and I'll accept that I was wrong.

Or, alternatively, show me a fourth possibility.

And if you hadn't gathered it by now, I'm not exactly a native english speaker. When I write in a hurry, some typing- and grammatical errors are to be expected.

 

[Zacharine]

It's not surprising that there is disagreement on the subject of scaling QM up to molecular levels and macro scales beyond. As I understand it, this exact subject is still one of physics' "big problems".

Exactly. A problem as in: "None of the QM stuff fits any macro-scale experiments or observations. According to all experiments, it works on the very small, and only the very small. As in, (sub)atom small. How the heck do we make any of this fit relativity, gravity or electromagnetism, or vice versa?"

 

[Disconnected]

Well if you take into account 6th and 7th dimensions, etc, that suggest alternate realities where the laws of physics are different, I guess things could be possible. But certainly not in this one. We can't even be certain alternate realities exist.

 

[the Dept of Science]

P /\ ¬P

 

[Canid117]

Snip

Having just come home from spending 10h at work, I've been rather forcefully reminded of the folly of trying to keep too many pans on the stove.

So, this will be my final argument to you regarding logic in this thread. I think this is the best I can formulate it, and if I can't convince you, then so be it. Likewise, I will be reading your response to this, but no further.

So, let us assume logic is not a universal concept, but only a method of thought applied by thinking minds. Therefore, logic would cease to exist beyond thinking minds.

This is what I've gathered from your posts so far and believe this to be a fairly accurate description of your position.

This would mean, that there is no logic in the orbit of Mars, until a thinking mind goes there.

So, let us say we launch a probe there. It is filled with sophisticated electronics, but does not think. It has no mind. It is an object.

However, all that sophisticated circuitry requires mathematics in order to function. But since mathematics is a formalized extension of logic, there is no functional mathematics in the orbit of Mars.

Hence, all that sophisticated circuitry, ceases to function. Because 1+1 must equal two, not square root of five to the power of e, in order to function.

Side note: Come to think of it, causality itself is an expression of logic: X, therefore Y. It does not require thinking mind, or life at all, to prove correct. Scientific laws and theories build upon this: We have observed that if X, then Y. Here is the why of it, and formula to predict it.

And yet this sudden breakdown of electric circuitry does not happen. We have successfully sent probes to Mars. Possible explanations:
1. The concepts of logic, and therefore mathematics, are universal and do not require thinking minds to function and/or exist.
2. The electric circuit, despite not being a thinking mind, 'brought' the principles of logic with it, allowing the concept of logic to function.
3. Electric circuitry does not require logic, and thus mathematics, to function.

In case 1 you would be wrong.
In case 2 you would be wrong: logic is not simply a method of thought, since it obviously would not require thought to exist. If it requires no thought to exist, why should it require life to exist? If it requires no life to exist, why would it work only on this corner of the universe that we inhabit, instead of being universal?
In case 3, I would be wrong.

So here is the simple thing. Show me how to build an electric circuit (of any complexity) that does not rely on any mathematical principles (and thus logic) to function. Do that, and I'll accept that I was wrong.

Or, alternatively, show me a fourth possibility.

And if you hadn't gathered it by now, I'm not exactly a native English speaker. When I write in a hurry, some typing- and grammatical errors are to be expected.

If you don't want to debate anymore then there is no more fun to be had. So I will just fix your spelling errors instead. The red underlines means you spelled it wrong. Why does no one ever bother to use spell check? Interesting argument though.

 

[Anti-gravity]

slamming a revolving door is very impossible

 

[Plank of Wood]

slamming a revolving door is very impossible

I did it once, actually. It was awesome.

 

[AWDMANOUT]

Of course anything is possible.

http://www.dallasvoice.com/instant-tea/wp-content/uploads/obama3.jpg

 

[Anti-gravity]

slamming a revolving door is very impossible

I did it once, actually. It was awesome.

Holy shit really?!