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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 18 2019, @10:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-reject-your-reality-... dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956__

Study: There may be no such thing as objective reality

Everyone is entitled to their own facts. That's not an opinion. At least, according to a new quantum mechanics study.

What we view as objective reality – the idea that what we can observe, measure, and prove is real and those things we cannot are theoretical or imaginary – is actually a subjective reality that we either unravel, create, or dis-obfuscate by the simple act of observation.

A smarter way of putting it can be found in the aforementioned study, "Experimental test of nonlocal causality" conducted by lead author Martin Ringbauer and an international team of physicists and researchers:

Explaining observations in terms of causes and effects is central to empirical science. However, correlations between entangled quantum particles seem to defy such an explanation. This implies that some of the fundamental assumptions of causal explanations have to give way.

Also at The Conversation


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @03:48PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @03:48PM (#921541)

    "Everyone is entitled to their own facts. That's not an opinion. At least, according to a new quantum mechanics study."

    "Proclaiming to be wise, they became fools"... In the real world, facts match the definition of "Fact", which is: a thing that is known or proved to be true.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:23PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 18 2019, @05:23PM (#921587) Journal

    And that's the basic problem. The belief that you can absolutely prove some things to be true. You can establish reasonable grounds of certainty, with error bounds, and that's the best that is EVER possible.

    Informally, we decide something to be a fact when the cost of being wrong is a lot less than the cost of additional verification. And this is a subjective judgement. The experiment is an attempt to establish limits to certainty which we can never exceed, no matter how much effort we put into it. I'm going to mark the result "uncertain", and live with the uncertainty, despite the fact that the published results agrees with my general position. Because I'm quite willing to live with a lot of uncertainty, and don't feel the need to call everything "true" or "false". (Logical entailment requires not only that the premises be true, but that no logical steps were made along the way. Both are always uncertain...though sometimes not very.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 18 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Monday November 18 2019, @07:07PM (#921632)

      But you *can* prove things to be true. For example: "if I detonate a blasting cap within your skull, you will die". Run the experiment, and if you die, I've been proven true. Your death is a fact (an objectively observed data point)

      What you *can't* prove is general principles. I could do that blasting-cap experiment to a billion people, and it would (presumably) always end with them dead - but it would not prove anything. It would build a large body of evidence supporting my claim, but support is not proof. There's always the possibility that some quirk or skill of the next person would allow them to live on unharmed. It's unlikely, but not completely impossible, and thus I've proved nothing. Otherwise known as the white crow problem. I can claim that all crows are black - but to prove it I would have to individually verify that every crow that ever has or will exist anywhere in the universe is black. Discovering even one white crow would disprove my hypothesis.

      Which is why science doesn't deal in proofs. It does however deal in facts. Observable, verifiable, objective statements about events that have happened. Otherwise known as "data points". They are the foundation upon which all scientific advancement is built. But the theories that grow from that - the generalizations from collections of fact to inviolate principles? That's always unproven, and always will be (and that *has* been proven). Science is about developing models of those inviolate principles (assuming that they do actually exist) through successive approximations. The only "proof" relevant to science is that a new theory is more accurate over a wider range of conditions than the old one.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday November 18 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 18 2019, @08:17PM (#921659)

        I can claim that all crows are black

        You could, but it would be unbelievably stupid to make that claim in a universe where you can get video/image/text results for "albino crow" from Google in under two seconds.

        Therefore, you must inhabit a different universe to me, which is clear proof of macro quantum effects on reality as claimed in the summary, or maybe of something else.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY_r5Re8gjE [youtube.com] - white crow in my universe, probably 404 in yours...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @11:05PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @11:05PM (#921729)

          I can claim that all crows are black

          You could, but it would be unbelievably stupid to make that claim in a universe where you can get video/image/text results for "albino crow" from Google in under two seconds.

          Therefore, you must inhabit a different universe to me, which is clear proof of macro quantum effects on reality as claimed in the summary, or maybe of something else.

          Interestingly, you proved GP's point for him. He stated (as you quoted) that he *could* make such a claim. However, no such claim was made. Your "point" (whether through ignorance or a *failed* attempt at snark) was that he would be foolish to make such a claim, since his argument boils down to "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," which is objectively true -- as you made perfectly clear.

          I suggest reading some Descartes, friend.