We live in a world governed by causes and effects. Everywhere we look, this causes that, while that in turn causes something else. This determinism both enables science to be successful in explaining things, and allows we humans to navigate our daily life in a predictable fashion.
The only exception appears to be in the realm of quantum mechanics. While there are disagreements among physicists about the meaning of quantum mechanics, the prevailing view is that probabilities rule in the realm of the very small.
So in the case of an electron, for example, it is impossible to say where it is, exactly, before a measurement takes place. All that is known is the probability of the electron being in various locations according to the wave function.
Interestingly, the wave function evolves deterministically, but the outcome of a measurement is probabilistic. Here's what Google's AI summary says about this:
A Letter to the Editor in the May 17, 2025 issue of New Scientist presents an intriguing reason why this state of affairs in the quantum realm is necessary. Though speculative, it makes sense to me.
Getting to the bottom of the quantum world
19 April, p 28
From Bernd-Juergen Fischer,
Berlin, Germany
You say there is no clear reason why the behaviour of subatomic particles can't be governed by deterministic laws, and the fact that they aren't demands an explanation.
Well, here is one: we are working our way down the chain of causality. This will either end or it won't. If it doesn't, then either the search keeps going on and on or causality becomes cyclic and causes may cause themselves.
If, on the other hand, the chain of causality comes to an end, then what? The last part can't have been caused, so it must have been brought about without rhyme or reason, which is a non-scientific way to say randomly.
The fact we find only probabilities in quantum theory shows that, with quantum theory, we have come to the end of the chain.
This seems to assume that quantum theory is the rock-bottom foundation of reality. It may be, but currently there is no viable explanation for how quantum theory and relativity theory fit together. Einstein's equations of space and time, including gravity, which are just as scientifically proven as quantum theory is, don't involve probabilities.
It may turn out that gravity can be included in quantum theory. This seems to be the most common assumption of physicists, that the unbroken smoothness of Einstein's general theory of relativity actually rests upon a deeper law of physics where gravity is quantized by the discovery of an elusive hypothesized particle, the graviton.
In that case, the letter writer could be proven correct. Cause and effect does come to an end in the quantum realm, which now incorporates all of the known forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force.
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THE GREAT SILENCE
In the past days I have put here several times the names and the links to the work of
– Federico Faggin …. the inventor
and
– Benardo Kastrup ….. the explainer
and wondered why there were NO REACTIONS at all and the longer that takes the more noisy that SILENCE becomes.
There can be many reasons for this silence but given the consequences that both honorable gentlemen attach to their findings for the “common physical worldview” is the most probable one.
For me personal it doesn’t matter …I have my coffee and it tastes as it has always done.
But for you honorable gentleman here see if you have the guts to discuss Kastrub’s work …
http://www.bernardokastrup.com
>> Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics: Different interpretations of quantum mechanics attempt to explain this apparent conflict between deterministic wave function evolution and probabilistic measurement. Some interpretations, like the many-worlds interpretation, suggest that the wave function never truly collapses, and all possible outcomes exist in separate branches of the universe. Others, like Bohmian mechanics, propose hidden variables that determine the outcome of measurements, while still maintaining deterministic evolution.<< These two offered explanaitions, in order to escape the consequences for the worldview, are at length and in depth discussed by both Faggin and Kastrub.
Have some coffee …
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/discussing-quantum-consciousness-with-worlds-greatest-minds-penrose-vs-faggin-vs-kastrup/seeing/
when ready maybe for those for whom logic is the touch stone should have another cup of coffee and read:
https://www.essentiafoundation.org/reaching-across-the-great-solipsist-void-in-the-age-of-ai/reading/
Um wrote: “and wondered why there were NO REACTIONS at all and the longer that takes the more noisy that SILENCE becomes.”.
Hehe, that’s so cute Um 😍
I am genuinely curious as to whether this is genuine naivete on your part in presuming even a modicum of intellectual integrity or honesty from the folks here, or if this is pulling our leg with a nod and a wink!?
My dear Um, this is a place where you can be thoroughly knowledgeable and experienced on a certain subject, and back it up with thousands of links from a wide variety of disciplines to support your view, and somebody completely ignorant both intellectually and experientially, will contradict that vast body of evidence even going so far as to make counter factual claims, without a single piece of corroborating evidence or link, based on absolutely nothing other than the confused and incoherent thoughts in their head which are deeply grounded in nothing but ignorance and arrogance.
It’s cute to presume otherwise 😋
The best you can hope with some of these folks is, they think they stumbled onto the same thing themself that you’ve been saying for 20 years.
Give em another 20 years or so, when reductive materialism is no longer trendy and ideas like Kastrup’s are considered mainstream, these folks will quickly come round to pretending they thought that all along!
If they live long enough that is.
Baaaaa! 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
On a (perhaps 😁) unrelated note, this seems like an interesting article!:
https://medium.com/@cathryn.law2019/are-we-living-among-npcs-in-a-simulated-matrix-015fbb55295a
@ Manjit
>> I am genuinely curious as to whether this is genuine naivete on your part in presuming even a modicum of intellectual integrity or honesty from the folks here, or if this is pulling our leg with a nod and a wink!?<< Probably the first although I am not that innocent and kind of heart as the man I am now thinking of that gave sat sang in the past and often made us cry with laughter although he no intention to do so. No .. I do respect most of the writers her for their social achievements, their education that has formed them and their unmistakable linguistic talent and skill in expressing themselves .. they are all very knowledgeable .... I can not stand even in their shadow in that regard ... reason to keep mum most of the time. That said, ... there is something else, something psychological ..what does a person do with what he has attained and mastered? What effect has it on his behavior, his character and interaction with others. Let me put it this way .. a via ferrata, helps a lot in climbing safely a mountain and as such very helpful but depending how one uses it, it can also become an kind of turn-around ... you are not longer holding the steel rod but the rods is holding you and keeps you bound to its safety Bernardo Kastrup is addressing that very issue ... renowned scholars unwilling, unable to have their worldview set upside down, clinging to an outdated version ..as you yourself pointed at We are all human and our education and level of intellect does not add or change anything. It is difficult to let go of a worldview by which we feel safe and comfortable or even considering its possibility....maybe .. the greater the mental capacity, the more difficult ... reason for mystics to state ... do not analyse ..and ... you have to pierce the mind with the mind, in order to free yourself from it. [In the office of the psychiatrist and the confessional of the priest, ALL do come, high and low, rich and poor, knowledgeable and ignorant ...even if: "THEY have nothing to share of themselves with those that come"
@ Manjit
I read that artikel .
Whenever society comes up with a new invention, psychologists and others start to use the activity of that invention as a means to understand and explain human behavior. Words like “In and output” are still commonly used at the tables of many a meeting room.
What is described in that article is applicable on ALL human beings. It is related to the “conditioning of the otherwise FREE will” in order to survive in the cultural rain forest to which I use to refer with the word “Public Domain”
In order to function in the public domain we have to learn the “denotative” meaning language and the “Connotative” meaning of words, concepts and language … and …the difference between the two
It has also the do with developing knowledge and the use we make of that developed knowledge. After we have learned to walk, drive a car etc we are so to say driven by our body and our car as everything has become automated so that we can now “walk to and drive to” a place and meanwhile focus on other things.
The artikel reminds we of something I would say in the past about human life ..we are all born with a song. In order to sing that song or melodie we have to learn how to sing, how to play an instrument, all in accordance with the society and culture we live in. Most of us are so preoccupied in “learning” and “becoming better in it” that we forget altogether, that we were learning in order to express our selves…adaptation in stead of participation to and in the public domain …AND … nobody is to blame …nobody and nothing ..it is just how it is. Most people will die without ever even sung their song or played their melody ..again that is not their fault and they are not to blame. Others might wake up from that slumber in the hour of their death others earlier. For those that wake up earlier nit creates a new problem for which, as far as I understand, no society no culture has come up with an satisfactory solution as how to deal with these free ones.
That is part of my opinion
Where time doesn’t exist there is no variation nor cause nor effect, nr uncertainty.
Paradoxically, this is the only truly determinant state.
Where matter (and gravity) exist, time exists, cause and effect exist and you get uncertainty, variance, probability.
“Interestingly, the wave function evolves deterministically, but the outcome of a measurement is probabilistic.”
That’s QM 101. And absolutely, that sentence sums up the nature of the essential weirdness of QM, that Einstein had found so off-putting.
And of course, apart from the two explanations suggested, Many-Worlds and Hidden-Variables, there’s the Shut-Up-and-Calculate school of thought, that refuses to speculate about what we don’t actually know.
———-
“If, on the other hand, the chain of causality comes to an end, then what? The last part can’t have been caused, so it must have been brought about without rhyme or reason, which is a non-scientific way to say randomly. (…) The fact we find only probabilities in quantum theory shows that, with quantum theory, we have come to the end of the chain.”
This New Scientist Letter-to-Editor correspondent, I’m not sure where he’s coming from. If he’s himself actually someone who works closely with QM research, and is voicing a strand with ongoing scientific discussion about the hows and wherefores of QM, well then I wouldn’t know about that.
But if this letter’s simply from a lay correspondent, then, well, I don’t know. He seems to be channeling Aquinas here, even though he hasn’t overtly tried to steer the argument towards God.
I’m not sure what he means by chain of causality coming to an end. …I mean, the workings of QM may be found in future to break down into even finer components, or it may not, sure. But even if it does not, even so: within the teensy-tiny scales where QM does operate, there’s causality, the same as at our larger levels of reality. And even if true randomness does obtain QM — which is debatable, and debated, but even assuming it does — even so, it is not one single event, there’s multiple events happening, some apparently random, and others connected via overt mechanisms of causality. It’s an ongoing thing, a flux as it were.
The bit about the chain of causality coming to an end, and the part about this last not having been caused? Like I said, I’m not sure what the correspondent to New Scientists means by saying that. And I’m not sure he himself does either.
(Again, unless he’s himself a scientist, and what’s more a scientist voicing not woo but a serious ongoing discussion about how QM breaks down. If that last is what is the case, then that’s outside the range of my ability to comment-off-the-cuff coherently about.)
(Looked up the letter writer’s name. Doesn’t seem to be connected with QM research. The only entry that immediately came up refers to a professor in History. So, not a physicist, apparently.)
(Even so, does the letter open up a discussion there, at NS? A response from the editors, maybe, as sometimes happens? Or maybe other informed readers chiming in with their responses, either in agreement or else disagreement? If so, then that might throw some more light on that direction of thought, maybe.)
“Benardo Kastrup ….. the explainer
and wondered why there were NO REACTIONS at all and the longer that takes the more noisy that SILENCE becomes”
Just noticed this.
What the fuck, Um. You’re simply lying.
Here:
In the last thread discussing quantum stuff, about a month ago, you’d mentioned Kastrup.
Whereupon I immediately responded, clearly enough, in this comment of mine: link: https://churchofthechurchless.com/2025/06/quantum-theory-is-still-largely-unexplained-but-thats-how-science-works?cid=6a00d83451c0aa69e202e860eca5e0200b#comment-6a00d83451c0aa69e202e860eca5e0200b
Whereupon you said you’re an ignoramus — your descriptor, that you went out of your way to apply to yourself — and are not equipped to understand any of these discussions, and that people using words to convey abstractions are “thieves”.
Whereupon I asked you who the “thief” in question might be, there in that particular context, given that what we were discussing is Kastrup, and it seemed to me that you seemed not to regard Kastrup as the “thief” in question.
Whereupon you retreated to your usual “I’m an abstract painter, and if you can’t understand I can’t help it, just have some coffee” shtick.
———-
It’s really a completely silly waste of time and effort, this kind of “analysis” of Book-of-Punishment (Neil Stephenson, Anathem reference, that I’ve used before) halfwittery. But I’m taking the trouble to do this, Um, because this is you.
What the fuck, man? You cannot possibly have forgotten, unless there’s something actually so wrong with your head that it needs immediate attention, like dementia or whatever. And if there is, and maybe you are, then all respect for a legit ailment, absolutely! But, if not, then this is simply a barefaced lie, given that I did start discussing Kastrup with you, and when I did it was you that immediately backtracked away into your usual halfwittery.
…Sure, I realize you’re probably aiming these comments on this thread not at me, but at Brian. But even so, fact remains you’re lying, and lying barefacedly. You demonstrably have no interest in actually discussing Kastrup. And yet you go to town here, beating your chest over Brian (I assume it is Brian) not discussing your Kastrup. …That’s …either literally demented, else a complete lie.
What the fuck, Um. …And, no doubt, cue now for some more halfwittery about drinking coffee, or things being not what they appear, or your-reaction-is-independent-of-me, or some other faux-wise nonsense.
———-
Again, I’m taking the trouble to say this, because this is you, Um. Not some …manjit, but YOU. And I hadn’t expected this level of outright dishonesty from you.
Clearly, then, the inscrutable-wise-man persona is no more than a front for halfwittery. And the halfwitted-but-vulnerable-and-gentle persona is again simply a front for unabashed dishonesty.
Fuck. I’m completely, entirely done with this.
———-
To think that I’ve wasted so MUCH time here, in this place, exchanging notes solemnly with these …specimens. Halfwitted liars spending hours and hours on end talking complete nonsense with one another. And latching on to the easy target of religion and spirituality, in order not to be held to account and be thought of as knowledgeable and wise.
But yeah, that was a stage. A stage I probably needed to pass through in order to clearly see the religious nonsense IRL for the utter halfwittery that it actually is. That all of this could be such utter, unmitigated bilge, religion IRL I mean to say, that …well, it did need that process, I guess, for me to arrive at that in-retrospect elementary understanding.
So yeah, it is what it is. No regrets.
@AR
>> But yeah, that was a stage. A stage I probably needed to pass through in order to clearly see the religious nonsense IRL for the utter halfwittery that it actually is. That all of this could be such utter, unmitigated bilge, religion IRL I mean to say, that …well, it did need that process, I guess, for me to arrive at that in-retrospect elementary understanding.<< Religion, like anything else humans are involved in like politics, science, art, etc is nothing by itself, it is what humans do with it. that matters.... and nothing human is alien to what can be observed. Fortunately we are all free to ATTRIBUTE meaning and value to what is according our liking and devote ourselves to it and yes we do not all like coffee and / or this or that coffee- brand.
Oh my goodness, this is heady stuff… 😅
We still live in a world where all of the world’s major religions paint God as vindictive and judgmental. Humanity is still several thousand years from beginning to awaken. We certainly are no where near enlightenment, however, there is a strong sense of discontent with the current view of a judgmental “god”.
We’re beginning to see that a god like that can’t quite heal society with all of its ills.
Perhaps in another two thousand years people will readily accept that killing for food is barbaric and that the phrase “God is Love” was (and is) most certainly lost on the civilizations living in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
I’m an extreme optimist. I believe in the power of Love and that only Love is true strength. That said, I know that humanity is still a few thousand years or more from becoming awakened. That might seem disappointing but in the grand scheme of things a few thousand years is relatively short.
All that really matters is what you do in this moment.
@ Buzz
“Killing for food”
How will sentient beings survive without killing something?
I’m definitely not opposed to science and like to read up on latest findings, but I do find that quantum physics is a bit far removed from my realm of interest and understanding, maybe because much of it rests on the hypothetical – and even the theoretical doesn’t say much to me about everyday reality. And even um’s Benardo Kastrup doesn’t help!
Take for instance modern medicine. I know it mostly works for our ailments (seeing as though I would be dead by now without it), but I don’t really know how it works – apart from reading up on the layman’s guide to what it consists of and its effects. But really, it’s all a bit of a mystery – which I take on trust. I would take the word of quantum physicists if it wasn’t for the talk of possibilities and maybe’s.
Brian does seem to have a good grasp on the subject of quantum physics and no doubt some of it makes sense to him. I suppose my take on reality is limited to the world of my senses and reasoning to some extent. So, I have to leave the world of quantum physics to the physicists and go along for the time being with what they say of reality.
Similar to what the Buddha is quoted as saying “Of that which the wise (pandita, scholar) in the world agree upon as not existing. I too say that it does not exist, And, of that which the wise in the world agree upon existing. I too say that it exists.” – for the time being, simple because it doesn’t alter his basic message of suffering, it’s causes etc.
@ Ron E.
Kastrub is kind of modern Al Ghazali in the sense that in order to deconstruct an viewpunt expressed by a scholar of that time, took upon him self to first graduate in that field.
Both Faggin and Kastrup, argue to the scientific worldview that is used time and again here to justify this or that [ spiritual] opinion.
“Again, I’m taking the trouble to say this, because this is you, Um. Not some …manjit, but YOU. And I hadn’t expected this level of outright dishonesty from you.”
Appreciative Reader
Hehe. Absolutely priceless!
I didn’t quite catch that AR, could you please write another 10,000 words to say and add absolutely nothing whatsoever on any level except expressing laughably misplaced ignorance?
Cheers! 😂