Laozi and Quantum Physics -- Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

I'm here actually cause David Pete suggested that I should come and I'm sorry that he is not here he was not so well in his health and couldn't come I enjoyed tremendously Rupert's presentation yesterday and I'm going to lean on him a lot so this first slide what you might into it or shows Vishnu sleeping on the snake Ananta the snake infinite on the cosmic ocean and dreaming all possible worlds or possible universes including like your experience in this moment my experience in this moment or it shows Maria calmly asleep in titania no dreaming of Jane walking the streets of New York Annabelle walking the streets of Tokyo and so on and what what I'm going to focus on is like how come those dreams appear to have kind of a solid reality in them how come there overlap appears to be coherent and pointing to a reality which we call matter so the as I said earlier in the present in my presentation I said it's like in a normal context I would have to spend maybe one hour arguing for the primacy of experiencing but in this context relax Rupert did the job wonderful yesterday and you're already familiar with it so it's just I go straight to the question it's like how does matter arise out of consciousness how come those overlapping worlds appear to have a structure or coherence which we call matter that's the opposite of the standard scientific assumption of our time which is matter is primary and the question is how does consciousness arise out of it so called the hard problem and so we we done fortunately we don't deal with the hard problem at all it's like consciousness is what's there is more you're presently experiencing what I'm presenting experiencing so the question is like how how this like structured nature of consciousness which we call matter how does that arise I'm going to go through very quickly kind of a brief history of Western thought and in in this this picture represents that say the cosmos of primitive people what we call primitive people and it has a darker blue color which may be vaguely distinguished from the background here which is representing consciousness and this central part with a dotted line around it represents the eye the self in in primitive thinking there is no sharp boundary between self and no self the whole world is conscious and the eye has not like a sharp division from from the non-ai we've we've moved away from that and maybe if maybe the first major step away from that is happen about two three thousand years ago with monotheistic religions in which like the notion of a transcendent being beyond the world and of human being having a special relationship with this transcendent being and consciousness being inside the human being or inside God but not in the world the world became like this the fear for human action for human subjectivity but not it lost its soul to two major steps in the in the making of modern cosmology Copernicus moved us to realize that we're not the center of the universe that the universe appears from a point of view and our point of view is not necessarily located at the center another major step in making of our modern consciousness how did we come to this worldview which is based on matter is the cat and this notion of less extends and less Kaja tons as two different dimensions and and the cat started actually from rest Kaja turns from mind as primary realization but the separation he operated actually historically the influence it had on the development of Western thought is that it it freed scientists to deal with the res extensors and forget about risk or attention so focusing on the intrinsic laws of what appeared as out there the that's that's a picture of our world today it's like we're here we're no longer at the center and there's no consciousness out here there's a vast expense expense of inert matter consciousness is present in this little dot in us if at all because we could also one-one current interpretation is that consciousness is not there at all it's some how an epiphenomenon and apparent phenomenon which has no essential reality this word view has strong consequences that's a picture of the world at night that's seen from space and all those lights are like human presences and this this is an astronaut walking on the moon and this is this is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN but also this this is Nigeria oil field and this so there's some very creative consequences of that worldview but very destructive also the paradox is that within science itself that word view which takes matter as being primary and the essential reality of things has appeared to be inconsistent and has come into a crisis with quantum physics some physicists don't take that crisis too seriously but there's an increasing number that is taking it very seriously so what I'm trying next is to give you like a rush course in quantum physics this this is a very famous experiment which is reproduced in all the first year texts of quantum physics it points out some essential features of the theory the experience that consists that there's a beam of particles coming in from the left there and going through a screen with two slits a and B and falling on a photographic plate or some kind of detector on the other side here each each particle leaves one falls on the screen and leaves one specific dot and the question I'm asking myself is that what will be the distribution of these dots what will be the blackening of the of the photographic plate and I can do various experiments here I can close one slit and leave one open and if I leave let's say solo only sleep I open I will get a distribution somewhat like this with a with a maximum in front of the slit and then fading out on sighs if I may just be open I will get a curve like this now if I can assume that each particle either goes through a or through B then the consequence of that would be that I should see the superposition of these two curves the sum of these two curve all that go through a make this one all that go through B make this one altogether they make but that's not what I see what I see is that when when both slits are open the pattern is this wavy thing here this wavy pattern is typical or when two waves interfere so I'm dealing with a paradoxical situation here in which what I call particle leaves actually specific dot on the screen which is what I expect from a particle but the statistics of these dots is a wave so one first approximation to describing this is like there's a dual particle wave nature maybe the the strongest impact is the realization that I cannot think of each particle as going through either A or B because that would imply this consequence so I'm forced to realize that in some sense it goes through both one more thing if I decide to capture it to catch it in this tricky act of going through both slits and I put a detector next to one of the slits let's say a Geiger counter which is like a device which when a particle passes through it it clicks it gives a signal I put a Geiger counter here and say okay now I will see if it really passes through a or B as soon as I turn on my Geiger counter this pattern disappears and I have actually the superposition of these two as I turn it off I go back to this so that Geiger counter has quite an impact on what's going on here how do how the physicists understand that the model of a particle or a wave by itself does not account for the whole phenomenon the model which was developed is like what we call a particle is actually a cloud of probability it's a cloud of potential potential outcomes of experiments there's nothing substantial there there's like only possible outcomes of observations made on it this was a was a tough one to choose for most people including the creators of the theory themselves and in this picture these two people are Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein who kept discussing these issues how to understand these things for over eight years and during during which time Einstein kept proposing to bore Imaginary experiments and and showing that if you interpret them the quantum physics way you would come to absurd result and Bohr was quite clever in dismounting Einsteins argument but the masterpiece of these imaginary experiments is one that Einstein devised in 1935 and that put Bohr in quite some trouble he wasn't so clear in answering and it's it's called as the EPR or einstein-podolsky-rosen experiment and it's an experiment which brings out an aspect of quantum physics which we now call entanglement which is like nowadays it's like a basic concept widely accepted as like an intrinsic feature of quantum physics but in 1935 seemed like so outlandish that Einstein proposed it as this shows that quantum physics could not possibly be right whatwhat's entanglement in this in this version of the experiment the experiment is done with two particles with spin it could be realized in many different ways but let's say we have a system for example an atom that splits a system with zero spin which splits into parts since the total spin is conserved then those two parts will have correlated spins or one the opposite of the other now spin we don't need to go into what's plane spinning the only thing we need to know is something that can be measured in any of 360 degrees orientations in space and when it's get measured in one specific orientation will give either a result plus one or minus one let's say there's two outcomes entangled it means the following what quantum physics predicts is that however far away if we have like two observers here Alice and Bob each one with their measuring device they can choose to orient it at any possible orientation and they measure each one one particle these two particles with opposite spin moving it moving apart entanglement says the following it's sometimes misunderstood as meaning that there is a correlation between what Alice observers and what Bob's observed almost not quite what what entanglement says is the follower how Alice decides to re-enter apparatus has an influence on the statistics of results that Bob sees however far away they are however instant is however close in time are the orientation of these two apparatus even if like in principle they should be like instantaneous at whatever distance how she decides to orient her apparatus influences his result how he decides to orient us abroad influences her results so um in some ways it's as if these these two systems that we call two things here they're not two things in some ways it's like they're one they keep being one after being separated as I say in 1935 these seems like something so absurd that Einstein proposed it as quantum physics cannot be right at the time the technology was not sufficient to perform the experiment in a cogent way which would mean like these observers being widely separated and time timing being very so narrowly so closed that not even noted that no signal could travel from one to the other but the problem became very interesting in in the 60s when John Bell went back to it and analyzed it in logical terms forgetting about quantum physics or any physics and just reasoning in putting in like abstract logical assumption and looking at the consequences for the results of this experiment and the assumption that Bell put in our realism to assumptions he call them realism and locality realism means that spin is actually a property belonging to the particle it's it's not in my eyes it's in the thing out there locality means that any consequence at a distance must correspond to some kind of signal that travels from one to another so there is like no instantaneous distance action at a distance without signals without some kind of edge now these two ideas taken together realism and locality are a pretty good description of what we mean by an object a thing a thing is something local and realistic as intrinsic properties interacts through actions and that's that's quite interesting because barbell steer theorem shows us that the consequences predicted by quantum physics and the consequence is predicted by realism and localities don't overlap they're different so that the experiment in principle offers us a way to distinguish between quantum physics on one side and any realistic local theory on the other so the technology was there to perform the experiments in 1980 and the experiment fully agreed with the predictions of quantum physics and not with realism and locality so no matter what Theory might in the future replace quantum physics it won't be a realistic local Theory set it more roughly the world is not made of things there is no theory that describes the world in realistic local terms one one big open problem in quantum physics is the fact that in spite despite the fact that the theory is extremely accurate in a vast field of phenomena the description of the basic act of observation has remained problematic in almost a hundred years since the beginning of the of the theory and it has remained problematic for I believe deep philosophical reasons the problematic nature of it is to describe what what's commonly called like the collapse of the wavefunction which means the following as I said like the way we describe this is like a cloud of probabilities like a superposition of potential outcomes I could this cloud could be like more days or more or more sparse depending if it's more dense there's a higher probability of finding electron layer or less to find it in another place but all those it's not that the electron is either here or there the electron is in some sense like everywhere in the cloud at the same time and yet when it hits the screen it hits in one point when I put a Geiger counter here it either click so does not click so how do I understand that how do I go from that superposition of potential outcomes to one definite specific outcome the trouble with that is that that transition is incompatible with like basic basic assumptions of the theory so quantum theory can never describe the transition from a superposition of states to one definite outcome within within that superposition peculiar situation like we have a very good theory this very good fear is unable to describe its own basic phenomena so like how do we observe reality in in the last almost hundred years people have proposed various ways of understanding and trying to fit in the collapse and they are still trying but let them say the modern understanding of it or they say the majority view on it is the collapse is not really there so that leaves us with it with the with the problem of understanding how does it appear to be there why do things behave as if it's there and I want I want to suggest a jump which I'm not going to take but I'm going to just skirt around you can play with between the superposition of all potential reality and the experience of a specific world between Mary asleep in taking Yano and Jane walking through the streets of New York why does the wave function appear to collapse even though it's not a way to reformulate the question is why there are two equivalent descriptions on one level there's the description of the uncollapse wave function in which all possibilities are simultaneously present and on the others there's the description in which like one specific outcome I was working on this problem long time ago late late 60s early 70s and he developed into the the understanding of this phenomenon which is like nowadays by most physicists considered let's say the fairly standard understanding of it which is called decoherence i'm not going to go into the details of it though because i was never fully happened happy with that understanding so I went back to rethinking in a more like viewing it as a consequence of some basic philosophical assumptions and there are some experiments in quantum physics which hint us give us a hint in how to understand this phenomenon one are one of these experiments is called the quantum eraser it could be described this way I'm not literally describing how it's done but like catching some essential features of it suppose that instead of having a Geiger counter here when the particle passes through here it causes a secondary particle to be generated and shut and and to shoot off where it will be revealed why am I doing this because then I could play with this I could let's say if the secondary particle is shut off from here it's the information about the electron passing through the slate is there it's it's captured in this secondary particle that I have generated but at this level quantum physics can also erase information so what happens is that as long as this particle contains the information about the electron goes through here the superposition of these two curves is there and when I erase this information I go back to this so the fact I'm I'm going quite quickly through this but the fact that the word appears classical to us it appears either or either through a or through to be this type of result is connected with information being somehow recorded as soon as that information is erased I'm back in the superposition of all possibilities why why is this significant in a philosophical way because all our experience of the world happens let's say is structured in such a way that we appear to be located within the world and within a body we are experiencing the world from within a body which means like all our experiences are correlated with a happening a change a process something in a body so all our experiences are connected to a recording of information and that's the reason why the word appears classical to us it appears either or it appears like solid reality okay this this is tricky and subtle so I'm sure we'll have to to discuss and investigate it further and so on I've been struck by how densely and beautifully the first chapter of the daodejing speaks about all this that's of course one way of reading it but the first verse of the damaging says Dow K Dow fate Chang down the Dow that can be spoken is not a constant Dow or is not the eternal now or is not the ultimate Dow which can be taken on one level as a reminder of the the postmodern realization that that all our discourse about reality is a model is a map is the map and the map is not the territory so we are only comparing Maps and my greets formulation is this is not a pipe it's a picture of the time we forget we take pictures for pipes but the the reading of this of the Daoists is quite different from the reading of postmodern thinkers if if language does not capture reality if reality is beyond all maps then the postmodern think I said well let's not talk about reality anymore and we just focus on discourse and how discourse create into subjective worlds and the taoist went the other way if this course does not catch reality and forget about discourse and experience reality so one one sense in which like the first verse of the Dada Chi can be read is just this but there's this deeper levels to it there's the deeper levels to it which has to do with the second verse of of the daodejing is Ming coming Fei Jiang Ming all naming that can be named is not constant naming what what does where does lots of mean by naming I think it we can take it at various level at one level is like mental representations of reality and that's quite obvious how to read it at that level but I would like to propose that it has a deeper level and the deeper level is like the apparent split that in in experience happens between subject and object so it's like the fact that experience is structured in some ways that we perceive ourselves as objects as a subject confronting a world out there so it's like let's take for a moment that naming points to this to this split the next verse says without naming his the origin of heaven on earth naming is the mother of the 10,000 things so out of that primary split subject/object rise all the apparent multiplicity variety of reality the word of ten thousand things and he connects that to to desire and no desire which like as soon as soon as I'm in that split and I'm identified with this subject confronting the world out there then I moved by desire desire is the basic motion of the separate self and it will be like desire for concrete objects and ultimately as Rupert pointed out desired for its own ultimate nature but the being being in naming being in that identified with that split is in itself intrinsically frustration or suffering that's what Buddha points out with his first noble truth existence is suffering and existence as Rupert said yesterday's is ex sister standing out as soon as I stand out as separate I'm bound to be frustrated and a metaphor that I like very much is that of the ocean and the wave just just from a strictly scientific point of view there are no separate objects in the universe there are only fields permeating the whole space-time and superposing interacting I'm a superposition of the spheres in this moment here so it's like the way there's no ultimate reality in itself it's not even like a specific mass of water it's just a pattern moving through the ocean if I'm as a wave I'm identified with my wave mass I am bound to suffer because the wave dissolves in the ocean dissolves in other ways so um Lao Tzu says therefore without desire you experience the mystery or you experience the wonder with desire you experience the boundaries the ten thousand things our embodied existence our joys and struggle but then the really interesting point is the last verse last verse of the first chapter the Tao Te Ching cuz lotsa is not recommending stepping out of the world where else could you go he says these to the to being like naming and no name desire and desirelessness he says these two are eyes together but we call them different names holding them together is the secret of Secrets it's the guy at the gate of all wondrous wave an ocean okay let's essentially you

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 34,597

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Keywords: Shantena Augusto Sabbadini, Quantum Physics, Lao Tzu, EPR Apparatus, Albert Einstein, Niels Henrik David Bohr (Academic), Tao Te Ching (Religious Text), measurement

Id: YcKbpMIelMo

Length: 41min 6sec (2466 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2015