reacrnn.htm: Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Softice, by Pantheon

Reality cracking

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Softice
~
by Pantheon (October 1998)

With an additional critic by Rancid Moth (November 2000)

Courtesy of fravia's pages of reverse engineering

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Softice... such a title! Of course I liked this essay! BTW, soon or later any reality cracker will have to swallow Heisenberg's cats (and everything correlated), so you better start right now, dear readers... have a good trip in the uncertainity of science, will take quite a while till you'll be back... see you here in a couple of years :-)

Is immortality the lack of events? I don't believe this: immortality is A LOT of events... it is also, maybe, the simple satisfaction that you believe in what you are doing and learning because you see that it works... at least in my -admittedly biased- opinion :-)

If I may add a personal note about our friend Pantheon's 'signing out' line... well: Nietzsche was right (it happened at times) and God wrong, of course...

I just now, after about 2 years of visiting this site, managed to
read articles from your "Reality Cracking" section, and I admit, I 
think I read most of them.  So... here is my own candidate for publication.
(I wrote this with edit.com, so there'll probably be some funky CRs)

                        The exact science of guessing.
                             Futility of argument.

        It is comforting to know that some things in life are certain;
Milk does a body good, Diamonds are forever, and the universe is rapidly
and continually expanding.  I pause a moment to let the reader convince
himself of these thoughts.  To truely crack reality, one must put aside
what is "known" -- I used the quotes to signify that we know for certain
absolutely nothing.  Confuscious said "To know that we know what we
know, that is true knowledge"; I disagree.  
"To understand that we cannot know what we think we know" is a more 
enlightened statement.
        We "know" that time passes at a constant rate.  Siddhartha may
have summed up this argument with a single phrase: "time is not real"; the
concept of time is distorted, it's new meaning has evolved from circular
reasoning.  Time is generally considered to be an interval that
perpetuates life into the future.  Life is measured in time.  Time was 
created by the thought that events happen in an order, not all at one.  
The sun rose, I ate Lunch, the sun set.  The idea of order required an 
event to seperate the other events of daily life.  From the rather 
simplistic example above, the notion of infinite events was born.  
I woke, the position of the sun changed a little, it changed a little 
more...ad infinitum.  In this sense, life was measured in events. Each 
time a set of events repeated, man marked off another portion of his 
life gone.  Where is the guarantee that the sun moved across the sky 
at a constant rate?  The only indication would be that man felt roughly 
the same ammount of fatigue at the end of each cycle.  From this
view it would be indiscernable whether the rate of the sun's travel
influenced the fatigue of the man, or whether the man had accomplished
roughly the same number of events, of course whether or not he started
each cycle with the same ammount of energy was in question, as well as the
nature of energy itself.
        It is possible to take any event or "truth" and find where an
unjustified assumption was made, merely because is fit the current
paragigm.
Let us not forget that fire was once believed to be the release of a
substance called "phlogiston" from the "burning" material, solely
because there was a visible trail(smoke) and the weight of the object was
decreased by burning; this held until a material was found that became heavier
once burned.  Now we believe that fire is the bonding of oxygen to another
substance, even though fire is hot, and heat is generally considered to
be from the breaking of molecular bonds.  Also some materials become
lighter once burned, thus the combination of oxygen must cause a molecule to
become less dense, while other burned substances become more dense.  This is
explained by the theory that "bonds" (also a theory) are of different
lengths because the "electrons that are bonding" (also a theory) are located at
different heights from the nucleis (another theory).  

Even experimentation is invalid based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle 
which basically states that through examination of any subject, we modify 
it's behavior.  A familliar example: Softice.  We use Softice to follow program 
flow, by setting a break-point, we actually alter flow to another program, 
never being 100% certain that the program we were previously running had not 
altered the breakpoint handler to point to itself, giving us a bogus set 
of data.

Here we believe that we necessarily are in softice, just because we've never 
seen a program do such things before.
        We may assume whatever conventions make our tasks easier, but
when we find our selves stumped by an apparent impossibility, we must not
hesitate to toss what we "know" out the window.  An important principle in
discovering the Theory of Relativity is the constancy of the propagation of 
light in vacuuo.  Light moves at a constant speed no matter what the velocity of
it's emitter.  I made a reference earlier to the "fact" that the universe is
constantly expanding.  This was determined by the frequency of the light
emitted by far away stars.  Doppler shift is a principle easily
detectable by the ear, a train whistle approaching has a higher frequency 
than one travelling away from you, the electromagnetic wave is shifted by 
the motion of the emitter toward one end of the spectrum.  

The frequency of light from far away stars is also shifted toward one end 
of the spectrum -- thus, they are rapidly traveling away... correct?  
Not according to the law of propagation of light in vacuuo; which, by the 
way was upheld by the man who did much work with the aforementioned atomic 
theory, Albert Einstein.  It should be noted that the propagation of light 
as such necessitates the Theory of Relativity, which makes such bold claims 
as to say that a man on a train travelling at 40 mph, if walking in the 
direction of the train's travel at 5 mph, has an overall speed NOT equal 
to 45 mph.  

This is due to the slowing of time for accelerated bodies...So much for 
time as a constant.  Thus is it valid to revert our measure of life to 
a number of events before death?  And then is immortality the lack of events?  
I think not. Humans ultimately are arrogant creatures, claiming to control
even that which they cannot possibly understand.  We can afford to take
nothing at it's face value.  Reality crack where you believe necessary,
compromise at only what MUST be cracked, lest your quota of events expire before
you can jot down your findings.

Forgive me for having been longwinded,
Seek Enlightenment, therein lie some truths.
Ayin
(Pantheon)
(Px21)

P.S. I like the new artwork on the site...classy.
-- 
God is dead.  -Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead.  -God

An additional critic
by Rancid Moth, November 2000

fravia+,

I have noticed an article on your site that
for me as a mathematical physicist has faults, and
while it is a noble pursuit to propagate and advance
free knowledge (especially the "flavour" of knowledge
your site seems built around), it is another thing to
publish articles that hold scientific inaccuracies.  I
refer to the "Heisenbergs Uncertainty principle and
softice" written by Pantheon, as I am sure you
probably have guessed by now.
 
I am quite positive that Pantheon had only the best
intentions with such a piece, and the faults are
simply due to a higher mathematical understanding of
the theories he/she writes about, not being present. 
This is in no way a gripe or a personal dig at the
author, but merely just a review of the article to get
his/her ideas on a more stable footing.  I feel if
this is done, the article will become a little more
illuminating and more importantly, correct (as far as
the theoretical physics goes).  So I hope you don't
think I am being rude. I will not recite the whole
article but rather paraphrase certain sections and add
my comments beneath for your reflection.  contents in
square brackets are simply markers for later referral.

"We "know" that time passes at a constant rate[I]. 
Siddhartha may
have summed up this argument with a single phrase:
"time is not real"; the
concept of time is distorted, it's new meaning has
evolved from circular
reasoning.  Time is generally considered to be an
interval that
perpetuates life into the future.  Life is measured in
time.  Time was 
created by the thought that events happen in an order,
not all at one."      [1]

This is a perfectly respectable Galilean point of
view.  it served many a great scientist, and the
reason for this is that it is basically a linear
description for the flow of events.  And as a starting
point for the "invention" of such a parameter, its ok.
 Its a concept that can more intuitively be defined by
a periodic event in an absolute reference frame, that
can measure the occurrences of all other events. 
however we physically know this is incorrect, and we
have a mathematical theory that describes what we
actually observe in nature (and describes it very
well).  And in order to describe what we actually
observe...what actually comes out of physical
experiment....time can not be a linearized global
phenomenon.  And because of that, the above
description [1], particularly [I], is false.  As a
counter example, consider the experiments involving
the ammonia molecule NH3, where the nitrogen atom has
two states that we will call up and down.  these
states arise because of the potential configuration of
the atoms comes out to be a double well.  so the
molecule has its largest probabilities of being in
either the left hand side of the double well, or the
right hand side of the double well...hence two states
(more accurately, energy splitting of the states). 
and what's more, you can make it flip-flop, with
extraordinary accuracy...then it becomes an atomic
clock.  These clocks have been physically observed
running at less clicks in higher gravitational fields,
as was predicted by Einstein's General Relativity. 
This is direct physical proof that time is very much a
non-linear, one measure fits all, concept, but rather
a complicated non-linear description of events that is
tied directly to the amount of matter in the localised
space where the measurements are being taken.  One
only has to study the basics of the Special Theory to
uncover some deep truths as to the connections between
time, space and the speed of light.  Again another
Theory that is verifiable by physical observation, and
again proves [I], and more generally [1] to be
inaccurate.  

"Also some materials become
lighter once burned, thus the combination of oxygen
must cause a molecule to
become less dense, while other burned substances
become more dense.  This is
explained by the theory that "bonds" (also a theory)
are of different
lengths because the "electrons that are bonding" (also
a theory) are located at
different heights from the nucleus [II] (another
theory).  "    [2]

Some materials do become lighter, or heavier when they
undergo the process of combustion.  this is far far
away from my area of expertise, so I will not infringe
on the comment about the length of bonds, but I am
assuming it to be an inaccurate description as length
at this scale doesn't mean anything.  what I can tell
you is that [II] is completely wrong.  Electrons do
NOT have a measurable distinct height from the nucleus
of an atom.  its a common mistake that students make,
they see an ENERGY diagram with various increasing
bars, indicating certain energy states of electrons
surrounding the nucleus, and assume that it also
corresponds to a relative distance.  This stems from a
rather poor description that is fed to students
(particularly chemistry students) of the shell model
for an atom, where they talk about inner and outer
most electrons.  What they mean is the electrons that
occupy the lowest and highest energy states.  This
whole situation is rather bleak in the education
systems, where books are still being published with
these inaccurate, interpretations of what can be a
very clear and intuitive theory, IF taught properly
with an ounce more knowledge and dedication than that
which comes from a bachelor of education degree! 

"The frequency of light from far away stars is also
shifted toward one end 
of the spectrum -- thus, they are rapidly travelling
away... correct?  [III]
Not according to the law of propagation of light in
vacuuo;[IV] which, by the 
way was upheld by the man who did much work with the
aforementioned atomic 
theory, Albert Einstein.  It should be noted that the
propagation of light 
as such necessitates the Theory of Relativity, which
makes such bold claims 
as to say that a man on a train travelling at 40 mph,
if walking in the 
direction of the train's travel at 5 mph, has an
overall speed NOT equal 
to 45 mph.[V] "                     (3)

[III] yes correct.  you get red Doppler shifting of
the spectrum indicating the recession of the galaxies.
 [IV] not correct.  Here Pantheon, I assume is
referring to the fact that the speed of light is
constant.  The fact that the speed of light is
constant, and that it incurs a frequency shift via
Doppler effects has nothing to do with one another. 
the Doppler effect is only modifying the lights
frequency and not its speed!

[V] is not such a "Bold" claim, In fact its a very
logical and well proven experimental fact.  One of the
main intuitive reasons why the speed of light has to
be a constant in all frames, is simply the
conservation of causality.  imagine if you will, two
bicycle riders, approaching each other at some cross
roads.  there is also an observer in a tree "above"
the crossroads.  now, if one of the bicycle riders
were to travel faster than the speed of light.  lets
also say that they collided, what would the observer
see?, he would see one of the bicycle riders topple
over apparently from nothing!, since the "image" of
the other rider is still chasing the actual physical
presence due to the fact that he is moving faster than
light.  so where is the cause and effect?  and the
answer is, you no longer have any...the second law of
thermodynamics is violated and we now no longer have a
definite direction for time!  physical proof?  again
atomic clocks perfectly synchronised, one stayed on
earth, and one went whizzing around in a satellite at
huge velocities.  when they retrieved both of them,
they were no longer in synch.  this not only proves
the lorentz transforms (I.e. time, mass and length,
change when travelling at high speeds) but also
disproves the well known flawed, twin paradox,
physically!

"So much for 
time as a constant"

by the article's own definition, it was never a
constant...rather I think this should read "So much
for time passing at a constant rate",  in which case
the author is now contradicting the first definition
he/she gave...refer to arguments for (1).

These corrections might seem rather pedantic, but
fortunately that's how mathematics, and physics are. 
They are both the very very pedantic quest for finer
and finer details, and more elegant explanations.  The
scientist must apply a certain amount of
dispassionate, and impartial rigour to arguments and
theory, which is exceptionally difficult to do and is
in it self an art.  but in order to do this, one must
first have a strong grasp on the fundamental ideas and
principles of the theory, and I think Pantheon is
confused on a few issues.  you might tell me that
"hey...maybe he is right and you are wrong, after all
these are just theories and opinions, and thus no one
opinion is right or wrong!"  To which I would have to
answer, that while yes, one can argue to a certain
degree that in general there is no right or wrong
opinion or theory or natural philosophy about the
world, there is however physical fact!  And the
definitions in the article generate natural philosophy
that is INCONSISTENT to physical observations and thus
negate the majority of its arguments simply from proof
by contradiction.

regards
Rancid Moth
[rancidmoth(ALT+64)yahoo.com]

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