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Re: Cleanup in Isle, Too, and some physics

Hi,

> I'm not sure if anyone made this point on the long atheist/Christian debate,
> but quantum mechanics breaks down the minute you go beyond the subatomic.

Um, no, it doesn't.  It becomes computationally prohibative to try to apply
them in detail, but the principles are absolutely valid.

> In short, "quantum physics" is just that, not a root for understanding
> anything beyond that.  Applying it to ethics or epistemology is a bit daft.

I disagree.  In fact, I disagree so strongly, I am not even sure where to
begin.  The whole reason I'm a scientist; the reason I went for the physics PhD
in the first place, was for those moments when I look around me and I *see* the
quantum dance manifesting in macroscopic behavior.  For the rush I get when I
visualize the photons passing through my eyes and the wonder at how billions of
those individual impacts (quantum phenomena, every one) somehow yield
understanding of my environment in my brain.  Quantum mechanics is the most
accurate physical theory ever devised (by humans, anyway), and describes the
fundamental building blocks with which we are made.  A building may be more
than just bricks, but any architecht or engineer will tell you that the
building stands or falls based on the properties of those bricks.

When you understand, I mean *really* understand, Quantum Mechanics and
Relativity, it totally affects the way you look at the world around you.  To
me, they make it a much more vibrant, wondrous, and magical place.  Merely
because the billions upon billions of interactions on the scales we usually
interact with tend to mask the wonders of the quantum world doesn't mean they
are any less real. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth: that it is our
common sense and habitual experience that is the illusion because of the
limitations of our perceptions.

> they fall just fine when you kick them off a desk.

There is nothing in QM to suggest a machine shouldn't fall off the desk.  Just
the opposite: QM would predict that the odds of it not falling are so miniscule
as to be effectively zero.


-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu        http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Go to red alert!"  "Are you *absolutely* sure, sir?  
It does mean changing the bulb."			    - Red Dwarf

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