Dean Rickles on quantum gravity, time, QBism, monism, string theory | Thing in itself w/ Ashar Khan

[@Jan96106]

I am part of a totally different academic discipline, and I had never heard of QBism until I watched this video, but I listened, and I looked it up, and found that not only did I understand the general interview Christopher Fuchs gave on it (and many of his other talks), but it helped me understand phenomenology, an area of philosophy that has, for years, escaped my understanding. Of interest to me is that this all seems so intuitive and, if I am understanding it correctly, already fits in with my everyday experience of the world (that has changed, and, I hope, become more nuanced over time), that doesn't really take physics into consideration. In any event I find this really interesting. I also recognize the irony in discovering this theory from a website that calls itself the thing in itself. (As an aside, I don't think this makes his point, but meter in music is problematic for many people. I remember years ago when I went with a musically trained friend to a Beatles' movie, and she got enraged with the audience because they were not clapping with the beat of the song but against it. Many people have this problem. One scientific study says the ability to do so involves three areas: reading, attention, and auditory temporal precision. I had already heard that keeping a beat and, therefore the ability to dance, they believe, is related to linguistic ability. That's why they were experimenting on Snowball, the dancing bird. Birds that have linguistic abilities can dance to the beat. Even in speech, meter is problematic. Trying to do scansion on lines in a poem is not easy; that's probably one of the reasons most literary critics don't do it anymore--also that formalist criticism is out of fashion except for teaching.)

[@idegteke]

I’m confident that no matter how quickly you can go, how skillfully you climb, how strong, resilient and determined you are if you don’t turn precisely in the correct direction before even taking the very first step. The mainstream framework of physics we use does not seem to renew or even substantially change - not for the better, for sure. Physics is more than happy with (and literally insanely proud of) the rockets, computers, weapons, robots and the false but profitable image of reality it has pictured, and is not giving a s* about discovering the truth any deeper.

[@CognitiveOffense]

This was an excellent discussion. Thank you both for your time. I'm adding the Dual-Aspect Monism book to the "to read" pile with significant interest. Based on what was said here it lines up with some of my utterly unrigorous musings astonishingly well. To wax poetic in a comment section on recent headaches: Truth (inherently contingent on the system used to demarcate facts) VS Meaning (derived by something with goals and opinions), All Communication implicitly restricted to Abduction as a confounding factor for any question asked of Nature, the Recursive status of Observer Experience, Reductionism struggling in the face of non-linear dynamics cropping up everywhere (especially biological realms)... these interests all seem to benefit from an informed review of Monism-as-a-Coin. I'm very much looking forward to reading up on the position.

[@Thinginitselfpodcast]

Thank you so much! It's a great book, highly recommend for whenever you make your way trough that pile. Amongst other things, it does a great job of going through the various articulations of dual aspect monism over the decades. I didn't know about how much progress there was in conceptualizing dual aspect monism from Russel to now. Great read! I definitely share the obsession with trying to understand reductionism in light of non linear dynamics. Honestly a question that will take forever to answer fully but the philosophy of science literature has a lot of interesting things to say.

[@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885]

I got Dual-Aspect Monism. The book promotes Basil J. Hiley a lot which is what I also support. I've corresponded with Professor Hiley quite a bit. I think Hiley is way underrated. Professor Rickle's mentions Bohm but Hiley has really built on Bohm. Atmanspacher is friends with Hiley - so that part of the book was probably written by Atmanspacher. thanks

[@tleevz1]

If the universe is a fractal manifestation of source consciousness you can definitely have an observer outside the system, or particular reality. Regarding information, information is just the label we put on any particular manifestation or possible manifestation of source consciousness that we can cognize in this reality. Information is just ice cubes shaped like the alphabet floating in the ocean of all possibilities.

[@wulphstein]

What happens if we take a hadron collider, and redesign it so that it can slam protons into each other at 10^15 times the normal rate, and slam them into each other for an extended duration? Could we tear a hole in spacetime? Would aliens take notice? Would new physics fall into our lap?

[@QBistFuchs]

It is spelled QBism with a capital B ... 🙂, but seriously.

[@Thinginitselfpodcast]

So sorry, fixed!! Are you the real Christopher Fuchs? 😮

[@QBistFuchs]

@@Thinginitselfpodcast Who else would bother makng a niggling comment like this? 🙂 Of course, it's the real me; you can tell by the eyeball avatar. Thanks for posting this video; I enjoyed listening to Dean speak.

[@Thinginitselfpodcast]

​@@QBistFuchs Thank you so much. I will never quite live this down😅

[@QBistFuchs]

@@Thinginitselfpodcast Ah, but it's still not fixed in your chapter list.

[@Thinginitselfpodcast]

@@QBistFuchs Done!

[@goodquestion7915]

Encyclopedic recall (and knowledge), but it seems he let's the "seemings" of the world dominate his reality. The shortcomings of the brain should not be elevated to ontological superstructures of the universe (a la Peterson); in other words we should understand our brains are not perfect sensing devices, so SYNCHRONICITIES are just coincidences detected by a biased brain. I disagree. Reductionism is NOT the drive to represent everything with a single number, but the desire to simplify reality down to the pragmatically useful limit. Reductionism granted him microphones, cars, clocks, and many more things. I can understand his position coming from a need to know the original whole without filters, that's why he knows so much about several intricate subject matters.

[@PinyataSpirit]

I disagree with him: if you damage the brain the mind is lost, not viceversa. His dualism mind-matter sounds extremely old fashioned