Genius defined

[Steverino01]

It is the business of genius to make the difficult easy to understand

Anyone know the source for this quote (or one similar to it)?

[Kunga]

God

[Kunga]

"Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple."

(C.W. Ceran )


"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction".


(Ernst F. Schumacher)

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Nobodies a genius. Genius is just a term used to describe someone who did the right thing at the right time.

[Dan Rowden]

That's not a very coherent observation. Your second statement contradicts your first. Make up you mind, man! Obviously "genius" is just a descriptor, a label, but if you can use it, there are undeniably geniuses.

[Rory]

That's not a very coherent observation. Your second statement contradicts your first. Make up you mind, man! Obviously "genius" is just a descriptor, a label, but if you can use it, there are undeniably geniuses.

Perhaps its more like "no one is a genius there are just different types of genius" ? Like I'm a genius at math, but an absolute retard when it comes to shapes and visual images?

Admittedly those go into the "academic" definition of genius rather than the practical one, but perhaps it could apply there as well?

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Dan,

That's not a very coherent observation. Your second statement contradicts your first. Make up you mind, man! Obviously "genius" is just a descriptor, a label, but if you can use it, there are undeniably geniuses.

"Soul" is also a descriptive term. Given that we can use it - "man, that dude has soul!" - there are undeniably people with soul. When I say that nobody is a genius, I simply mean that genius doesn't describe any particular fixed property. The term, as it is understood, is used to describe a number of unrelated phenomena. The standards one uses to determine a genius can be anything from merely hearing that so-and-so is supposedly a genius - "I learned that Einstein was a genius" -, to using the term simply to describe someone who agrees with you: "Wittgenstein's totally a genius for exposing the semantic nonsense that's always annoyed me in philosophy".

When I say that "nobodies a genius", I'm talking about the term genius in an ontological sense. Obviously it points to something. That "something" though, is often misunderstood as having a lot more substance then it actually does. How a person uses the term genius is a matter of what they've learned, and their personal aesthetics. That may seem obvious to you, but haven't most geniuses just stated the obvious?

(and of course I occasionally tend to seemingly contradict myself. My handle is "Expectantly Ironic".)

[Dan Rowden]

I think this dialogue from Genius News is a pretty good examination of how "genius" is defined and perceived differently by "us" arrogant bastards and most people:

Was Einstein a Genius?

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Dan,

I think this dialogue from Genius News is a pretty good examination of how "genius" is defined and perceived differently by "us" arrogant bastards and most people:

I don't think that anyone here is more arrogant then the next guy. Anyone who's ever put finger to keyboard to express an opinion is arrogant in some way. Nevertheless, I disagree whole-heartedly with the opinion expressed about Einstein in that link you posted. Einstein was intimately familiar with philosophy. His conception of a pantheist sort of God comes primarily from Spinoza. It's true that Einstein didn't produce any great works of pure philosophy, but I think his understanding of the field was much greater then that of your average scientist.

What's with this "Ultimate Reality" business anyways? Why not just use the term "reality"? Maybe because the term isn't synonymous with "my personal views on reality"? Personally, I think to be truly enlightened you have to transcend Ultimate Reality, and break through to Uber-Ultimate Reality. To achieve this you must first free yourself of material noumena-bound illusions, and then once again embrace them with your new understanding, only to slice through this once again to find the inner-absurdity of Truth. Just kidding, of course. You can call whatever you like whatever you like.

[Fate]

I like "A genius is like a smart person's smart person."

Edit: I post, therefore I am.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I see genius as being a superlative of distance, which is wholly relative to circumstance; a cognitive distance measured in lightyears instead of miles. The true genius might as well come from another planet, following a completely different, impossible to discern set of rules while undeniable demonstrating a true and deep understanding or mastery of the essentials.

A mundane example would be within the game of soccer. An often quoted genius in that sport would be Johan Cruijff, sometimes described also as being "from another planet" in terms of technique, insight and oversight of the game. Even as coach he somehow invoked this perception in people. Even now his soccer commentary defies more often than not all common expectation and can throw a TV presenter off balance.

Football is simple, but the most difficult thing is to play simple football - Johan Cruijff

Speed is often confused with insight. If I start running earlier than the others, I appear to be faster - Johan Cruyff

Look, actually he can't play football at all. He's just always in the right position. - Johan Cruyff

The same principle goes with any genius in philosophy. It's so alien to the common state of affairs that it has been described as being daemonic or extraterrestial in nature, while nothing could be further from the truth, really.

[DHodges]

I just this morning started reading a biography of Isaac Newton.

In the preface, his biographer, Richard Westfall, says,

The more I have studied him, the more Newton has receded from me. It has been my privilege at various times to know a number of brilliant men, men whom I acknowledge without hesitation to be my intellectual superiors. I have never, however met one against whom I was unwilling to measure myself, so that it seemed reasonable to say I was half as able as the person in question, or a third or a fourth, but in every case a finite fraction. The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings [....]

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

What's with this "Ultimate Reality" business anyways? Why not just use the term "reality"?

It’s an order of magnitude. On the one hand, reality is that I will die someday, but Reality is that I was never alive to die. Plain reality is that nobody could give a whit if I dropped dead right now, and unless I died in public, nobody would figure out I was dead or find my body for months, but Reality is that anything that happens to one of us, has an effect on all of us. That’s kind of a sketchy couple of examples, but that’s the general idea.

[Dan Rowden]

I just this morning started reading a biography of Isaac Newton.

In the preface, his biographer, Richard Westfall, says,

The more I have studied him, the more Newton has receded from me. It has been my privilege at various times to know a number of brilliant men, men whom I acknowledge without hesitation to be my intellectual superiors. I have never, however met one against whom I was unwilling to measure myself, so that it seemed reasonable to say I was half as able as the person in question, or a third or a fourth, but in every case a finite fraction. The end result of my study of Newton has served to convince me that with him there is no measure. He has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings [....]

And yet, outside of math and physics, Newton was essentially a total weirdo. Go figure.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan,

I think this dialogue from Genius News is a pretty good examination of how "genius" is defined and perceived differently by "us" arrogant bastards and most people:

I don't think that anyone here is more arrogant then the next guy.

That's very egalitarian of you, but I suspect, untrue.

Anyone who's ever put finger to keyboard to express an opinion is arrogant in some way.

My, my, how arrogant!

Nevertheless, I disagree whole-heartedly with the opinion expressed about Einstein in that link you posted.

It's not an opinion, it's a defnition of Genius into which he simply doesn't fit.

Einstein was intimately familiar with philosophy.

That just makes him a scholar; it doesn't make him overly philosophical and it certainly doesn't make him a philosopher or a genius.

His conception of a pantheist sort of God comes primarily from Spinoza.

Sure, but that puts him in a fairly large group of scientific types and of itself is a fairly mundane attainment in philosophical terms.

It's true that Einstein didn't produce any great works of pure philosophy, but I think his understanding of the field was much greater then that of your average scientist.

That may be so, just as it may be so of someone such as Dawkins, but, again, that isn't really saying anything significant.

What's with this "Ultimate Reality" business anyways? Why not just use the term "reality"?

Because people have a nasty habit of associating their mundane, deluded life and perspective with reality. It's just a term used for emphasis.

Maybe because the term isn't synonymous with "my personal views on reality"?

Yes, indeed.

Personally, I think to be truly enlightened you have to transcend Ultimate Reality, and break through to Uber-Ultimate Reality. To achieve this you must first free yourself of material noumena-bound illusions, and then once again embrace them with your new understanding, only to slice through this once again to find the inner-absurdity of Truth. Just kidding, of course. You can call whatever you like whatever you like.

Well, yes, that's pretty much true, but it isn't necessarily true - I prefer that my terms relate to something real.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Eliza,

How can you non-arbitrarily define orders of magnitude about reality? If I see an apple sitting in front of me, I can say that it's a reality that an apple is sitting in front of me. I could also say that it's a reality that I see an apple in front of me, and that the idea of an actual noumenal apple sitting in front of me fall's under the category of that which we cannot know. Due to the way we speak, either statement ends up being equally true, unless it's implicitly stated in the first that a noumenal apple being is what's being referred to. Neither statement describes a greater magnitude of reality, because propositions of the sort can be answered either true or false. Any true statement is the equal of any other true statement from a non-essentialist standpoint.

I'm unsure on what grounds your suggesting that you're not alive (or if it was just an example). By the standard definition of life, we're obviously alive. Now, there isn't some vitalist force animating us, but to suggest as much isn't any more real then to suggest that we are alive by biological standards. It seems to me that you simply presented two different propositions under the guise that they're the same. In reality the term "alive" was simply being used in a different sense in each of your statements. Thus, both statements would share the same amount of reality, if we understand the term "reality" to describe something uninfluenced by aesthetic bias.

Dan,

I'm curious as to how you define "philosopher"? Is it someone with philosophical opinions? That would make almost everyone a philosopher. Is it someone who does a good deal of thinking about analytic philosophy? That would have made Einstein a philosopher. Is it someone who actually publishes in scholarly journals? In that case I doubt anyone here would qualify a being a philosopher.

I've studied a good deal of philosophy, and I find your dismissal of Spinoza's conception of God as "mundane" to be incredibly odd. I'd argue that Spinoza's God is the only conception of the term that makes any sort of sense (although admittedly semantic in it's implications). What philosophers would you consider to be extraordinary?

I will admit that you've peaked my curiosity with the promise of a grandiose theory that isn't mundane in it's implications. I'm hoping you'll explain it to me, because I happen to think that the philosophy of everyone from Plato to Wittgenstein had elements of brilliant insight. Obviously, they weren't right about everything, but they nevertheless asked some amazing questions, and came up with mind-expanding answers to them.

Well, yes, that's pretty much true, but it isn't necessarily true - I prefer that my terms relate to something real.

What's "pretty much true"? My nonsense description of attaining enlightenment, or my suggestion that you can call whatever you like whatever you like? I don't see any good reason to throw some stick into the air and call it "enlightenment". I could define enlightenment as anything from wearing a silly hat, to living an ascetic lifestyle, to formulating a perfectly defensible philosophical system. Regardless of how I define it, I'm not really talking about anything by suggesting how to achieve it. The term is more-or-less defined by it's method of attainment. Thus, to philosophize about enlightenment is to throw a stick into the air, and then happily point to it. Yep, it's up there all right.

If you were talking about my suggestion that you can use whatever terms you like (which I suspect you were), then you're comment that "I prefer that my terms relate to something real" doesn't make much sense. If you call an apple an Apple, or a xoxlax for that matter, it's still the same apple. The term still refers to the same real object.

[tooyi]

Vincent - by Tim Burton

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqS4-zlJLS8

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Expectant,

How can you non-arbitrarily define orders of magnitude about reality?

“Magnitude” refers to “size” or “scope.” Non-arbitrary definitions still contain descriptions, and people tend to understand how they are relative. How big is big? People tend to understand that a big atom is much smaller than a small dog.

If I see an apple sitting in front of me, I can say that it's a reality that an apple is sitting in front of me. I could also say that it's a reality that I see an apple in front of me, and that the idea of an actual noumenal apple sitting in front of me fall's under the category of that which we cannot know. Due to the way we speak, either statement ends up being equally true, unless it's implicitly stated in the first that a noumenal apple being is what's being referred to. Neither statement describes a greater magnitude of reality, because propositions of the sort can be answered either true or false. Any true statement is the equal of any other true statement from a non-essentialist standpoint.

This is where scope comes into play, making a statement either true or false. Example:

In reality, there is no mountain. (false)
In Reality, there is no mountain. (true)

One could get much more verbose than just calling it Reality, but time is better spent on the concepts (as long as they are well understood – and most people do catch on pretty quickly).

I'm unsure on what grounds your suggesting that you're not alive

Because in Reality, there is no “I” to be alive, nor is there life insofar as there is no death to contrast it with – yet there is life as there is existence as there is not “no-life” as there is no nonexistence, except that nothing, not even life, inherently exists. Do you see why it is much more convenient to summarize it as Reality, much as it is convenient to differentiate an “I” for communication?

Thus, both statements would share the same amount of reality, if we understand the term "reality" to describe something uninfluenced by aesthetic bias.

It is all a matter of definitions to understand what is being referred to. You are, of course, free to phrase it however you like As long as meaning is accurately communicated, understanding is achieved.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Eliza,

It seems as if you aren't saying that Reality is essentially greater then reality, only that it refers to a subset of true propositions that can be referred to as "more real" meaning more-or-less "different". I thought you might have been suggesting an essential difference in value between Reality and reality.

Because in Reality, there is no “I” to be alive, nor is there life insofar as there is no death to contrast it with – yet there is life as there is existence as there is not “no-life” as there is no nonexistence,

I'm pretty sure I get it now, but correct me if I'm wrong. The term "Reality" works as a qualifier that alters the meaning of certain terms, so that you don't appear to be stating "P and not P", which would violate the law of noncontradiction. Nevertheless, it seems to convey no information beyond that. I'm seriously curious as to what grounds your using in suggesting that there is no life. Suggesting "Reality: not life" and "reality: not not life" is the same as suggesting "P and not Q". It's an empty logical statement.

except that nothing, not even life, inherently exists.

Okay. To understand all of this better I just did a bit of reading on Buddhism. It seems that the denial of the "inherency" of things - when the term is used in this way - comes from a belief in universal causality. There is no logical or empirical reason to assume that all phenomena must be caused. There are microscopic phenomena that appear irreducibly random for all intents and purposes. One could claim that some hidden force is acting upon them, but an insistence on the necessity of this seems to come purely from faith. Is irreducible randomness essentially any more absurd then irreducible order and causality? If so, the reason hasn't yet occurred to me.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Eliza,

It seems as if you aren't saying that Reality is essentially greater then reality, only that it refers to a subset of true propositions

cut off right there, that is correct

that can be referred to as "more real"

I wouldn't go that far

meaning more-or-less "different".

close enough

Because in Reality, there is no “I” to be alive, nor is there life insofar as there is no death to contrast it with – yet there is life as there is existence as there is not “no-life” as there is no nonexistence,

I'm pretty sure I get it now, but correct me if I'm wrong. The term "Reality" works as a qualifier that alters the meaning of certain terms, so that you don't appear to be stating "P and not P"

correct

Nevertheless, it seems to convey no information beyond that.

It is just a delineation. The concept itself has to be understood separately, and it can’t be directly conveyed. It’s one of those “Aha!” moment things.

I'm seriously curious as to what grounds your using in suggesting that there is no life. Suggesting "Reality: not life" and "reality: not not life" is the same as suggesting "P and not Q". It's an empty logical statement.

In order for there to be life, there must be existence. Something must exist for it to be alive, so if nothing inherently exists, nothing is inherently alive. This might be thought of as Life and life, in the same way you now understand Reality and reality. If we break everything down into the smallest sub-atomic particles we see that there is no matter – it is all energy. On that level, there is no real barrier between anything, so we are all one thing – so how can humans be alive but not a rock? Yet we “know” the planet is alive, it has circulatory systems, it breathes, it moves, it grows (meteorites and asteroids are some of its food that cause growth – small growth, but it fits the definition), yet it is essentially a rock – much of it molten rock, but rock.

But that argues the point of how there is Life as well as life, which in a way there is, but I have to point this out because Life is a contradiction of terms. All that is is what is now, and the fact that now is, is Life itself, but that can not be if nothing exists. Life is where duality and non-duality fold over and superimpose themselves on each other – kind of like those “Mind’s Eye” computer generated pictures that if you just look at them, they look like just repeated patterns that are not quite exactly repeated, so if you refocus your eyes, you see a 3 dimensional image.

To “see” this image of Life, you have to do the same sort of thing, but with the concept. Like with seeing the image, you had to relax your eyes to see, now relax your mind by remembering these are all just terms and let go. Can you see it now?

except that nothing, not even life, inherently exists.

Okay. To understand all of this better I just did a bit of reading on Buddhism. It seems that the denial of the "inherency" of things - when the term is used in this way - comes from a belief in universal causality.

I’m glad that a review of Buddhism helped you understand the concept, but to be open with you, I so not come from a Buddhist background. I’m seeing a lot of correctness in Buddhism, but I am only on the path of reason and logic.

There is no logical or empirical reason to assume that all phenomena must be caused. There are microscopic phenomena that appear irreducibly random for all intents and purposes. One could claim that some hidden force is acting upon them, but an insistence on the necessity of this seems to come purely from faith.

I do not insist, I only accept what is apparent.

Is irreducible randomness essentially any more absurd then irreducible order and causality? If so, the reason hasn't yet occurred to me.

Reason would not follow from randomness. “Randomness” is only the inability of a mind to comprehend all of the factors involved. Enough analysis even shows that the roll f dice is not truly random. Factors include what position the dice were in when the person picked them up, how many dice clinking against each other, shaking with one hand, two hands, how many fingers of what size are exposed to the dice, shaking in a shaker, how long they are shaken, perhaps how vigorously they are shaken… and even these factors occur for reasons upon reasons – too many factors to compute, so it is called “random” even though truly, it is not random at all.

[Dan Rowden]

Dan,

I'm curious as to how you define "philosopher"? Is it someone with philosophical opinions? That would make almost everyone a philosopher. Is it someone who does a good deal of thinking about analytic philosophy? That would have made Einstein a philosopher. Is it someone who actually publishes in scholarly journals? In that case I doubt anyone here would qualify a being a philosopher.

I mean "philosopher" in the Nietzschean sense. I'll assume for now, since you say you have studied philosophy, that you'll know what I mean.

I've studied a good deal of philosophy, and I find your dismissal of Spinoza's conception of God as "mundane" to be incredibly odd.

It's not a dismissal of Spinoza, but of the "Spinozian" pantheistic view that God = Nature that many humanistic scientists adopt. It's something, to be sure, but really not that much. I'm not so much dismissing it as putting it in perspective. It's a view that even one of modest intellect and sanity ought naturally adopt. I rather doubt that any of these scientists, including Einstein, has as sophisticated a view of it as Spinoza did.

I'd argue that Spinoza's God is the only conception of the term that makes any sort of sense (although admittedly semantic in it's implications).

Spinoza is one of my favourite thinkers in the western tradition and in my personal top 6. But I like Spinoza for many more reasons that just his view of God and Nature as synonymous. He was a well rounded thinker as any genuine philosopher ought be and lived a life that well reflected his thinking.

What philosophers would you consider to be extraordinary?

From the "western" tradition? - Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Socrates, Weininger, Spinoza and bunch of lesser lights who were better than average but less than extraordinary. I won't bother listing them unless you really want to know.

I will admit that you've peaked my curiosity with the promise of a grandiose theory that isn't mundane in it's implications.

Perhaps what I have is a mundane theory that is grandiose in its implications.

I'm hoping you'll explain it to me, because I happen to think that the philosophy of everyone from Plato to Wittgenstein had elements of brilliant insight.

Hmm, not so sure about Witty, really; I think he's overrated. But certainly many philosophers have had brilliant insights (however, many of them just built on the backs of people like Plato, which, to his credit, Kant admitted) but without an integrated view these insights don't amount to all that much.

Obviously, they weren't right about everything, but they nevertheless asked some amazing questions, and came up with mind-expanding answers to them.

Some did, some didn't. Others also weighed humanity down with ultimately meaningless questions that kept false lines of philosophical thinking going for millenia, in the same sense as Aristotilean physics did with science.

What's "pretty much true"? My nonsense description of attaining enlightenment, or my suggestion that you can call whatever you like whatever you like?

Both those things. We can label and define things as we please. We can build an entire philosophy or religion out of this but it doesn't necessarily relate to anything real. Religion generally is like this; the New Age movement is the very embodiment of it. My contention is, even though you were being satirical, that this is what happens most of the time. But it doesn't mean that we can't construct a nomenclature and lexicon that has utility and relates to that which is real.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Eliza,

Reason would not follow from randomness.

It seems unlikely that order would emerge from a completely arbitrary system, save for the appearance of order every now and again, but it very much can come from a system that's grounded in probability distributions. I'm not even sure a perfectly deterministic system makes much sense. You'd need some sort of circularity or endless regression or whatnot.

“Randomness” is only the inability of a mind to comprehend all of the factors involved.

In quantum mechanics all of the factors can be comprehended and controlled for, and we still find random events. The number a pair of dice lands on may only appear to be random, but the time it takes for an atom to decay is objectively random, in that there aren't any further forces acting on it that could reveal it to be a deterministic system. Now, of course, there could be hidden variables in play, but such things aren't seen as necessary anymore. It seems that God actually does play dice with the universe.

Double Slit Experiment

I'll address the other part of your post later, btw. No time at the moment.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Eliza,

If we break everything down into the smallest sub-atomic particles we see that there is no matter – it is all energy. On that level, there is no real barrier between anything, so we are all one thing – so how can humans be alive but not a rock?

I'm not sure what you mean by saying that everything is energy on the sub-atomic level. Energy just describes a property of particles. I'll admit that the term "matter" isn't really precise enough to get much use in serious science these days, but that doesn't change the fact that there are particles which have properties beyond energy.

I really don't think it matters if truly empty space exists, or if everything is fundamentally connected. What makes things different is a difference in properties. Regardless of whether these properties emerge out of one fundamental substance or an infinite number, they still exist. We would say that humans are alive because they're characterized by a set of phenomena that we refer to as "life". Rocks don't demonstrate such behavior.

I really don't think about the universe in a third-person perspective. Everything can be reduced to appearances, so I tend to understand things in terms of their appearance. It doesn't matter what this-and-that fundamentally is - if such a concept even makes sense - so much as how it relates to me. Now you can say that the Ego is an illusion and yadda yadda, but the self is whatever phenomena you happen to define as such.

We can say that everything is one, but I don't find anything particularly profound about that notion. If we define the universe in such a way that we understand it as single entity where any local effect necessarily effects the entire system, we've simply defined our way to truth. Local effects don't necessarily have an effect on every component of the system, thus we have to take the system as a thing in-and-of-itself to allow for the statement "everything is one" to be true. Of course, suggesting that everything is one is the same as suggesting that every component of my body is "me", is the same as suggesting that particles interacting in a particular way is an "atom"; but such things strike me as obvious. To dwell on it is to dwell on the fringes of essentialisms corpse.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I'm not even sure a perfectly deterministic system makes much sense. You'd need some sort of circularity or endless regression or whatnot.

How so?

I'm not sure what you mean by saying that everything is energy on the sub-atomic level. Energy just describes a property of particles.

Really try to comprehend the meaning of E=mc^2, as it is A=A, not just the formula.

Energy is mass * a constant squared. The constant used for calculations is the speed of light in a vacuum, but that is not precise, and it has recently been proven that the speed of light decreases over time. Obviously, in "light" of the particle-wave theory, a photon isn't quite massless, but it's pretty close - so the formula works well enough. The true constant would be more like the true speed of time, which we can not measure.

Sure, we can divide time up into arbitrary units and measure those units, but we can not measure time because it does not travel on a source to destination path (which is why the true nature of time is incomprehensible to most people). The speed of light in a vacuum is pretty close because there is hardly any mass to a photon. I believe science still calls photons "massless" - but that obviously can not be so - even shown in Feyman's experiments.

I believe that photons eventually decay as they use their own mass for the energy of travel, much like your car uses gas to run. Energy actually is the mass itself times the constant squared - and the only true constant is the constant of time. Energy exists, as does time, and looking at it from a philosophical perspective, that is what we are.

Local effects don't necessarily have an effect on every component of the system, thus we have to take the system as a thing in-and-of-itself to allow for the statement "everything is one" to be true.

Yes, there are local events that have so much more impact on a local "thing" that more distant "things" would not notice them - like your toe would not notice if you had a thorn in your finger - but that does not mean there is absolutly no effect. We are supposed to be able to tune out the irrelevant, and there is actually a term (which has slipped my mind) for those who can not - which is a serious handicap for those with lower or average IQs. Existence is replete with patterns, so I suggest that the larger scope may be of the same pattern as the smaller representative scope displayed in life forms.

Of course, suggesting that everything is one is the same as suggesting that every component of my body is "me", is the same as suggesting that particles interacting in a particular way is an "atom"; but such things strike me as obvious. To dwell on it is to dwell on the fringes of essentialisms corpse.

True. It doesn't really (pardon the pun) "matter." ;)

[David Quinn]

ExpectantlyIronic wrote:

In quantum mechanics all of the factors can be comprehended and controlled for, and we still find random events. The number a pair of dice lands on may only appear to be random, but the time it takes for an atom to decay is objectively random, in that there aren't any further forces acting on it that could reveal it to be a deterministic system. Now, of course, there could be hidden variables in play, but such things aren't seen as necessary anymore. It seems that God actually does play dice with the universe.

That's good logic. I saw that man on the stage perform magical tricks. It looks like he really does engage in magic. Now, of course, there could be hidden variables in play, but such things aren't seen as necessary anymore. In fact, I choose not to believe in hidden variables anymore. Thus, it really does seem that magic is real. QED.

When they say that logic disappears in the quantum realm, do they mean the actual physical realm itself or what occurs inside the heads of the quantum physicists when they start looking at this realm?

-