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jackeheart
JackHeart


Registered: 10/02/07
Posts: 27
Loc: Nevada City, CA
Last seen: 14 years, 10 months
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Icelander]
#7633300 - 11/13/07 11:17 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Been fallowing this post and its an interesting debate.
As far as randomness goes... There is a book called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart, read it last year. In this book she documents hundreds of experiments over the past 40 years where people were asked to alter the outcome of tests that were supposed to bring up random variables. The most basic example was to have 2 lights illuminate randomly, one or the other. Then have the subjects try to will with their minds to make one come up more then the other. There were many other examples of much more elaborate experiments, but they all had a overwhelming results of the people having some sort of control.
Take this for what you will, but I think this is just another example of QM working on a higher level, not just partials, or atoms. Shoot me for saying this, but I think what we call random, is just are inability to see the order.
Additionally, and sort of rhetorical, what are we implying to think everything is Deterministic? Or even the idea of free will for that matter?
PS, Diploid, I love your response to the attractive male experiment.
-------------------- What boundlessness the pit of consciousness travels toward an infinite being. The cave is full of tumultuous obstacles, webs seemingly inescapable. There lies the path of knowledge forming thick and thin quantum fluctuations of living operations. And its inescapable quality of beauty is far beyond the reflection of its depths. Further I fall diving head first downwards into a black hole, plunging with intension to ascension.
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Diploid
Cuban



Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: jackeheart]
#7633433 - 11/13/07 11:57 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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There is a book called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart, read it last year. In this book she documents hundreds of experiments over the past 40 years where people were asked to alter the outcome of tests that were supposed to bring up random variables.
I think you're referring here to Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab (PEAR).
Unfortunately, after decades of finding nothing, they started to loosen their experimental protocols and then started fudging their data to show results. None of this work was was done with sufficiently-rigid protocols to qualify as science; whenever they did proper science, the positive results vanished.
James Randi offered the lab $1 million if they could reproduce their results under proper observing conditions. They refused.
Other groups attempting to reproduce PEAR's results have been unsuccessful. For these reasons, they were never published in any peer-reviewed science journal. Princeton finally shut down the lab in 2006.
Quantum Mechanics is very strange. It is undeniable that this strangeness, for better or worse, is real. It is a part of nature. But although there is a beautiful strangeness in the world, there is no magic.
P.S., What, you don't think Michael Jackson is attractive??
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
Edited by Diploid (11/14/07 04:41 PM)
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undergrounder
fluffy bunny



Registered: 11/10/06
Posts: 1,394
Loc: Sydney
Last seen: 1 year, 7 months
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Re: free will vs. determinism [Re: Diploid]
#7633610 - 11/14/07 01:45 AM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Quote:
Did you study?
Yeah but i came back to procrastinate just a little more..
Exam is over now so yay!
I do object to the way QM seems to be cited as proof of just about every weird new age theory. The argument goes "QM proves that life is weird, therefore my weird theory of X is true".
I think my posting on this thread was juts an output of anxt about my philosophy exam. Or perhaps it was me trying to avoid my existential responsibilities.
I shall now fade back into philosophical obscurity until next semester's exams...
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RIP Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
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OrgoneConclusion
Blue Fish Group



Registered: 04/01/07
Posts: 45,414
Loc: Under the C
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Quote:
The argument goes "QM proves that life is weird, therefore my weird theory of X is true".
Congratulations. You are now ready to write a best-seller. All you need now is for Deepak Chopra (I refuse to use the doctor prefix) to write your preface and you are good to go.
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