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This is a bit speculative, but I suspect quantum theory is essentially god's programming language. It seems to crop up everywhere we look, like in psychology, b
by akvadrako 8y ago
This is a bit speculative, but I suspect quantum theory is essentially god's programming language. It seems to crop up everywhere we look, like in psychology, biology, machine learning, computer science and general probability.
- jonny_eh 8y ago> essentially god's programming language That metaphor seems to confuse people more than it clarifies. Did you perhaps mean "nature's programming language"?
- pluto9 8y agoWhat's confusing about it?
- redmaple 8y agothat there is no God. Hail Satan!
- stochastic_monk 8y agoWhat is a deity from the perspective of quantum computing? It seems to be forcing one’s own opinions on essentially an imagined character.
- zaarn 8y agoA debugger. It can change state arbitrarily, introspect all the data and step forward in execution.
- squirrelicus 8y agoAll abstraction is imagined. When someone uses the word God in this context, it's obvious the abstraction is about the root forces that cause reality to manifest. There is no controversy here.
- Retra 8y agoIf there is no controversy, then there is nothing being said.
- coldtea 8y agoThat's controversial. If there's no controversy, you can still say tautologies :-)
- squirrelicus 8y agoWat We can say things that aren't disagreements. We can even disagree without controversy.
- smhost 8y agoClearly, the controversy is about whether reality needs a cause in order to manifest.
- coldtea 8y agoWhy wouldn't it? Everything else does...
- smhost 8y agoWhy would it? "Everything else" may behave the way it does because it's embedded within reality. But reality in itself isn't "in" anything, so it may or may not have the same properties as ordinary objects. So it may or may not be legitimate to carry out that final inductive step. Who knows. Who cares.
- pluto9 8y agoDo you ask that question when you hear Einstein's quote, "God doesn't play dice"? I suspect not, because everyone understands that it's a poetic way of expressing the belief that the universe isn't random. So why do you have such a pedantic and uncharitable interpretation of GP's comment, which obviously uses the word "God" in a similar way? You seem to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the word "God". Your personal preference for the most secular language possible is not a valid reason to pick apart GP's phrasing.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoFirst, he was wrong, and second, he said that in a very different culture. This isn’t the 1920s.
- pluto9 8y agoWow, this discussion is going nowhere fast. > First, he was wrong I agree. And that's completely and totally irrelevant. I have no idea why you even mention it. Obviously what matters is that his meaning is clear. > Second, he said that in a very different culture. This isn't the 1920s. So your objection to GP's phrasing, in spite of it being completely inoffensive and having a perfectly clear meaning, is "because it's $CURRENT_YEAR".
- akvadrako 8y agoTotally irrelevant but I wouldn’t agree Einstein was wrong. QM without collapse is actually a fully deterministic theory. And it makes sense that the universe doesn’t play dice - because there is no source of randomness available. It’s a functional language.
- pluto9 8y agoYes, I suppose saying Einstein was wrong is too strong. It's more correct to say there's no evidence (so far) that he was right. Quantum collapse certainly appears random, but if we eventually find a deterministic cause, Einstein will be vindicated. It's impossible to prove that a process is random. > there is no source of randomness available I think that's going beyond what we can be sure of. We have no evidence that there is randomness, be we also have no evidence that there isn't. QM may be fully deterministic if we disregard collapse, but as far as I'm aware, we can't do that. Collapse is still something we have to contend with given the current state of our knowledge.
- qubex 8y agoI’m an atheist and even I get what his meaning and am I unperturbed by his choice of terminology.
- repsilat 8y agoProbably, though it could also be a way to say "The language in which algorithms from 'The Book'[1] are written." It would be fun if quantum computing were equivalent to classical (less fun -- probabilistic) models with comparable complexity, just more intuitive. I guess lots of complexity conjectures can be phrased that way, though -- P vs NP for sure. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_from_THE_BOOK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_from_THE_BOOK
- Retra 8y agoThere isn't any compelling reason to favor one person's fiction over another's. We can invoke memetic references to magic mechanisms all day long and accomplish little.
- repsilat 8y agoErm, that's a little abstract for me, but I guess you're saying that aesthetic judgements of programs aren't worth much from a theoretical perspective? If so, I'd say, - It didn't really seem like anyone in the comment thread was trying to make a "compelling" argument for anything -- we're just chatting here. - If we were interested in that sort of thing, we might note that minimal program size is a good measure of language complexity/information, and that "algorithms from the book" and different models of computation that might make programs easier to write are both "objectively interesting" from an information-theoretic standpoint. EDIT: oh wait, I get it, you weren't being constructive, you just came here to make fun of a religion nobody was talking about. Never mind.
- kybernetikos 8y agoI think 'nature' would be confusing here, since we also use it for the concrete, manifest nature. As used here, and in many other phrasings, and by analogy with religon, 'god' is probably meant to be the principles and forces underlying manifest nature.
- akvadrako 8y agoAnd if nature was a programmer, I don’t see how that’s different from god.
- qubex 8y agoIn your paradigm ”nature” is what ”god” ”programmed” with his ”quantum language”.
- akvadrako 8y agoNot really. I think nature = universe = god. Again, a bit speculative.
- PinkMilkshake 8y agoDeepak Chopra, is that you?
- extralego 8y agoI’d assert that nature == universe == god is an incredibly sober rationalization. As a literary interpretation, it’s acute.
- jonnybgood 8y agoMore like Baruch Spinoza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
- 8y ago
- QML 8y agoPerhaps they meant it in the sense that the Higgs Boson particle is sometimes referenced as the “god” particle. It works in the comparison that quantum computing often sensationalized by media.
- pharrington 8y agoWell yeah, quantum mechanics in general is the theory of quantized probabilistic physical systems, so it makes sense that apparently probabilistic systems with an apparent finite set of component states that can only discretely change in magnitude can be modeled with the theories that were developed to address precisely that. I suspect the cause of your surprise is actually inverted (as in, it's not surprising that alot of high level systems work like that, but rather that the most fundamental elements of matter/energy do.)
- selestify 8y agoBell's theorem says that no other theory with local hidden variables (which do away with randomness) can explain all the things QM explains.
- akvadrako 8y agoNot quite. A similar thing does surprise me; that quantum theory was discovered when researching particle physics and is only recently making inroads in other fields. That it applies to physics too is expected, because one way to characterise the quantum language is that it defines what one system can possibly do or say to another system. The source of those limitations is not yet completely clear, i.e. it hasn't been satisfactorily axiomized. But we can get close and it seems it's a logical restraint based around self-consistency. Assuming the universe must be self-consistent, it must also obey QM.
- analog31 8y agoI have to quibble a little bit, pointing specifically at psychology because it's first in your list. I don't know if there's an "official" demarcation for what comprises a quantum theory. But there's no psychological experiment or theory that hinges on the value of Planck's constant, or that demonstrates a shortcoming of classical mechanics.
- jl2718 8y agoBiology neither. Anybody that is telling you that quantum coherence properties are relevant for low energies states at room temperature is frankly uneducated in the matter.
- akvadrako 8y agoSome human behavior is more naturally modelled in QT than classical probability theory.¹ The major difference between quantum and classical is that you can have incompatible variables which don't have a shared probability space. Nothing to do with physics. Also, with natural units Plank's constant is 2π, so it does show up a lot. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.00418.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.00418.pdf
- asimpletune 8y agoI think you mean the “MIX” assembly language.