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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 11:32 am:   

There was a great documentary on the other day - the lead singer of Eels, Mark Everett, is the son of the guy who came up with the whole concept of alternate universes. In the documentary, he was trying to get to know more about his father by tryingg to understand his work.

The accepted theory prior to Mr Everett senior was that, in the schrongers cat example, the cat was alive and dead at the same time and the act of observing the result of the experiment would define the quantum state. Mr Everett senior decided that observing could define anything and that by observing you merely discovered which of the two alternate universes you were in, the one where the cat lived or the one where the cat died.

It was great. And all set to a soundtrack of Eels music. I wish i'd taped it now.
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 11:42 am:   

And yet...we are never in the universe where the cat dies.

I suppose there must be universes that always have a better outcome and those that always have a bad one.

It was a fun show though. I love his chubby lips.
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Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 12:10 pm:   

"I love his chubby lips."

This unsettled me greatly.
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 12:12 pm:   

You seem quite easy to be unsettled. You should spawn many children and increase Ramsey's fan base.

Or stop taking fear-drugs.

Fearicin. For when you just can't get to a horror book.
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 12:12 pm:   

Take two forms of despair into the shower?

Etc etc.
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 12:16 pm:   

Mmm, just checked and ions do come in positive.

Mental note: Don't use Philip K Dick as a source for physics.
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Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 02:06 pm:   

@ ALBIE

I'm baffled.

I wrote at 1.07PM that there were + and - Ions.
This was on another thread in response to your statement that you were made up of ions.

I'm baffled because at 1.09PM you wrote:

"DICK LIED TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I thought you did a quick search about ions in response to my statement there were more than - ions.

Then I find that you searched this an hour earlier before I told you about this!

I'm intrigued what triggered you to do this search?

I'm baffled by the timeing, it's really grating on me now. Aagh!
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Griff (Griff)
Username: Griff

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.100
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 02:07 pm:   

Come to think about it why did you post about ions on this thread it's the wrong one. Aagh!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.84.40
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 06:31 pm:   

I've always liked the Schrodinger's Cat puzzle.

Another good example is when you have two people, and one is holding up a card from a deck, face towards him.

To the person who sees the card, there is only one possible card it can be - the one facing him.

To the other, there are no less than 52 possibilities.

Two completely opposed realities are shown to exist, at the same time.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.224.127
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 06:40 pm:   

"Two completely opposed realities are shown to exist, at the same time."

But isn't it exactly the same card that is visible to the other guy, whether he knows which one it is or not? One reality.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.16.84.40
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 06:47 pm:   

There's probably some way out of the puzzle, but from my vantage point, one person has but one reality: the identity of the card. He cannot say "This card is the King of Spades" if it's the Jack of Diamonds.

But the other person can say "This card has the possibility of being the King of Spades." And it does. He, in fact, cannot say "This card is the King of Spades," because it only has the possibility of being so, not the certainity.

One has only certainty, without possibility. One has only possibility, without certainity.

It could be what we have is not two opposing realities existing at once, but two opposing UNIVERSES existing side-by-side. Two alternate realities.

If you were to tell a third person that the card was a red card, then you'd have three alterante realities....
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.22.224.127
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 07:44 pm:   

But even if you were to add a fourth person and so on, it still wouldn't change anything about that particular card AS IT ACTUALLY IS. Maybe I'm explaining this the wrong way.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.251.226
Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 11:39 pm:   

But the card is a moot point, Hubert:

If the person who can't see the card, were to walk away from the table, then THE REALITY was that that card contained all the possibilties in the deck.

You are reducing the meaning/value of the faceless side: it is potentiality.

The card's value, is another whole Universe, where value is set, and unchangeable.

You meet someone, get to know "facets" of them, then walk away. Who they ARE, to you, from then on, is the sum of those facets. Reality is in the perceiver's mind.

Shakespeare the person has no reality, aside from the personal potentialities gleaned from his works. For example: gay or straight? Both.

To walk away from a face-away card is merely to choose one form of reality, over another.
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 11:15 am:   

I thought the cat thing was about not knowing if a particle had activated the machine. Because particles act differently if observed.

Wouldn't the cat be observing it?

I thought I got it, now I don't got it.
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Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 83.98.9.4
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 11:29 am:   

"Wouldn't the cat be observing it?"

Not if the poison had been released...
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Albie (Albie)
Username: Albie

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.195.236.131
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 11:38 am:   

But it wouldn't be released, because observation makes the particles act differently.

Maybe if they swapped a cat for a plant.

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