Reality

I need to pen these down, they are intriguing ideas that occurred to me as I was reading this book titled "The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum physics was reborn".

The epic fight between Einstein and Bohr: Over how theory describes reality. Does reality exist independently of us, or do we create it with our senses? We have no ability to determine whether 1 of them is the truth, because we do not interact with reality directly. We always do so, through a lens, through a veil. When we try to measure our surroundings, when we try to probe, we invariably affect the surroundings with our probe. If we looking for a particle, we will find a particle. If we are looking for a wave, we find a wave. In short, you always will 'see' what you want to 'see'. In a sense, we are creating information when we probe something. I suppose you can call this reality creation. 'Alternate realities' through MMORPGs like World of Warcraft are a step in this direction. The argument that reality is created through us, and does not exist independently seem to be rooted in the observation that if you cannot see something, even if its there, why should we bother about whether it is there? If a tree falls in the Amazonian forest, without me here in Singapore hearing it, why should I bother about its existence? Someone may come to me with news of this tree's fall, but since I did not personally hear the fall of the tree, that guy may be bluffing me. This view is very tantalising to accept, since it appeals to our laziness in mind. Sweep everything we do not know under the rug. It helps alot too that this view is extremely successful. We base our knowledge on what we can gather with our 5 senses, and make our predictions on data that comes in via our senses. The problem is that we know concretely that it is possible for things to exist outside of our sensory range. The electron is somehow moving within the atom, but we just cannot see it. To abandon the goal of trying to figure its movement, but rather try to predict the probablity of its future movement based of data of past positions, no matter how successful, is to fail the spirit of inquiry of physics: Why? and How?

And then there's the problem of your senses being deceived.

If reality does exist independently of us, then how to we grasp it, that which we cannot see, feel, or hear, and therefore cannot verify the truth of it?

Language is a very inadequate thing, just like the models used to describe real physical phenomenon. Since they are simplified versions of the real thing, to aid our understanding of it. To fully describe it, it must necessarily have the full complexity of the real thing, at which, the model, or word would have become that object itself, and we would fail to understand it, since it was because of the complexity of the object that we first had difficulty understanding it. Quantum theory may be one such theory, its inadequacy may be the maximum amount of understanding that we can reach, and it was done so by abandoning causality, by abandoning the restraints of language and the preconceptions that came with language.

Discreteness and continuum do not mix with each other at all. We do not just see it in the wierdness of quantum theory, we can see it in number theory already. Our failure to properly express irrational numbers, transcendental numbers because of the use of discrete number system illustrates this.

Mass is actually energy, but it appears to be to be special energy. For example, gravitational interactions require that mass be present, in the sense that energy in the form of mass. Other forms of energy won't do. It appears that these types of energy carry label?

Einstein's judgement on Bohr's physics[quantum theory] was like the old Sufi story of the seven blind men and the elephant. "An elephant," says the first, who has felt the flapping ears on a hot day, "is like a fan". "No, no, no, that's not right at all," says the second, who once got in the way of the tail swatting a fly. "An elephant is like a rope." The third, who has stumbled against the strong leg, says, "She is like a tree." The fourth, who has felt the warm, smooth task, declares her like a spear. The fifth, who walked by while was bathing and was doused by her trunk, finds the elephant more like a hose. The sixth blind man muses that we must always speak of this ineffable creature in "classical" terms, like hose and tree, and these terms must be used in "complementary" ways, depending on waht we are measuring: the elephant will not simultaneously feel like a fan and like a rope, but both are needed for the complete description. "We must, in general, be prepared to accept the fact," he says, "that complete elucidation of one and the same object may require diverse points of view which defy a unique description."
The seventh blind man is the mahout, and he walks away laughing.
Einstein was not the mahout, but he could hear the laughing: "Subtle is the Lord," he said, "but He is not malicious."