My View on the Modern day Computer
Hello everybody,
I am a self taught web programmer and I would like to share my view on the modern day computer. How would you categorize it? I, personally, would put in the category of magic. I am not saying it is not technology. I think that magic and technology can be one and the same. So, to better categorize it, I think it fits perfectly in the category of Magical technology.
I am a self taught web programmer and I would like to share my view on the modern day computer. How would you categorize it? I, personally, would put in the category of magic. I am not saying it is not technology. I think that magic and technology can be one and the same. So, to better categorize it, I think it fits perfectly in the category of Magical technology.
Comments (47)
I think that's true, but only because quantum mechanics is misconceived. I think the fundamental seat of reality is the causal, macroscopic reality we inhabit - and that quantum mechanics is a "science" of the frayed edge of reality, on the border between something and nothing.
Physicists assume that there's some fundamental building block - or base substance of reality to be discovered, but there's not.
The nexus of gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, electro-magnetism, matter and energy, all converge where we are, at this scale.
Quantum particles are very small things that don't quite exist; and the illogical behaviours observed:
EPR appears to be instantaneous communication at a distance. Quantum tunnelling - appears to be passing through solid objects. The double slit experiment - two places at the same time. Quantum indeterminacy - velocity or location, but not both.
...can only be explained in terms of possessing some, but not all of the existential properties conferred upon matter at the macroscopic scale. Hence, reality is where we are, and quantum physics is the frayed edge of reality, where existence bleeds into nothingness.
But there is some lovely mathematics that relates to this arena of exsanguination. Particle spin associated with the delightful correspondence between points in R3, quaternions, and the matrices of SU(2). I'm dabbling in that now. :cool:
What's your definition of magic? Computers are based on perfectly well understood science and technology. Software runs on the hardware. Hardware is based on electronics, which is based on physics. It's all completely deterministic and not only well-understood, but precisely manipulated by engineers. We can put 60 billion transistors on a chip, and do it well and repeatedly. There's nothing magic about it.
Unless by magic you simply mean awe-inspiring or cool or fun or interesting or something like that, in the sense of Industrial Light and Magic. In the same sense of "Hollywood magic." There's nothing supernatural about movies, but the effect can be magical. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
It's not so simple. Many great minds, Feynman's included, have been baffled by the discoveries of quantum physics, and it's still a great unsolved question. In fact there are many enormous baffling conundrums in modern science, generally. (I read a fair amount about it, but on the other hand, I'm not credentialled to talk about them, which requires a higher degree in mathematical physics.)
In any case, be assured that quantum mechanics is genuinely baffling, which is a source of great discomfort to many people, for different reasons. It would be far more comforting to scientific realists, and indeed realists of all stripes, were it not so, but Nature has not obliged.
Quoting fishfry
And quantum physics is what Feynman says 'nobody understands'. Maybe you've just gotten so used to it, that you don't see how baffling it is. Really, it ought not to work, but it does. The famous experimentalist, John Bell, said:
John Stewart Bell (1928-1990), author of "Bell's Theorem" quoted in Quantum Profiles, by Jeremy Bernstein [Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 84].
Incidentally, there's an excellent presentation of Bell's inequality experiments, by Jim Baggott, here.
He meant interpretations of quantum physics. Feynman perfectly well understood the physics of it.
But even taking you at your out-of-context interpretation of the quote, that would apply to everything. Apples are magic because they're made of quantum fields. Tuna sandwiches are magic because they're made of quantum fields. Then there is nothing special about computers in this regard, you're just saying everything is magic because everything ultimately rests on quantum physics, which Feynman made an ironic remark about to make a point about the lack of sensible interpretations.
Suppose you were to categorize a potato that turns into a Lamborghini when rubbed. I am pretty sure you would categorize it as magic or magical technology.
:up:
"Computers are magic because semiconductors take quantum effects into account and Feynman snarked that nobody understand quantum physics" is a poor argument in my opinion. Oranges are magic because nobody knows what life is. Oranges are much more magical than computers, which are engineering artifacts whose early implementations did not depend on quantum physics at all, but were built with standard telephone relays and could, if we so chose, be made out of dominoes. But dominoes are magic because they're made out of atoms which in the end are just probability waves that we don't really understand. It's a terrible argument because it doesn't distinguish computers from oranges or dominoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino_computer
Exactly! But on the other hand, there's this great line from the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon says something like:
"I like to think gravity would have been self evident to me without an apple hitting me on the head."
Leonerd responds "You cannot be that arrogant."
Sheldon says "You continue to underestimate me, my good man."
All very funny, but there's a serious underlying point that gives us realists hope. Quantum Mechanics really could be a "looking down the wrong end of the telescope" type mistake. As undoubtedly brilliant as Feynman was, if Quantum Mechanics merely assumes the existence of some fundamental building block, they could be looking at it all wrong.
What if, instead - reality is the nexus of forces and properties, focused at the macroscopic level? QM could be trying to make sense of what becomes ever more blurred the closer they look. After all, there were plenty of brilliant minds before Newton, and gravity wasn't self evident to them - as obvious as it may seem to us now.
Same with Copernicus and Galileo. Many brilliant minds devised elaborate schemes of planetary motion - based on the assumption that the earth is fixed in the heavens, at the centre of everything. My guess is, if it doesn't make sense, try looking at it differently.
Well, yeah, but then you’re of a generation where this has become evident. I bet, you being the same person, and this conversation being conducted some time in the past, you never would have said such a thing. It’s begun to filter down into culture, as science always does. That is why our life and times are called ‘post-modern’. I maintain that ‘modernity’ was the period between Newton and Einstein, and that when quantum physics came along, it knocked down all of the things modernity took for granted. Hence the sense that nothing has any real foundation or absolute reality which is very typical of postmodernism.
Great anecdote, by the way. And note, ‘the Big Bang Theory’ was called ‘the Big Bang Theory’, and it’s protagonist was a physics student. Very po-mo.
Sorry, what? What has become self evident? Gravity? Sure! The idea that QM is the science of the frayed edge of reality, based on a faulty assumption? Not so much!
QM continues to assume there's some fundamental stuff - strings, or loop quantum gravity, or whatever, at the basis of reality. What if that assumption is a mistake? Just as, the idea of an earth fixed in the heavens was mistaken. Their math would just be another elaborate celestial mechanics that doesn't make sense - while in reality, earth continues in its orbit.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is quite insightful, and partly why I have problems with QM. But I dispute the coherence of post modern philosophy - with respect to special relativity and QM. As Feynman said "If you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM." But that didn't prevent post modern philosophers, latching on to relativism and quantum uncertainty - as a basis to throw out the "old certainties" with wanton abandon.
Back in the 1980s, Apple published several more-or-less plain language books explaining how the various parts of the Macintosh computer worked. I could understand it. I loved my Mac Plus computer. It came without a hard drive (most people bought one as an accessory--20 megabytes; seemed big at the time); there were two 3.5" floppy drives. I used it a lot.
Even with the explanatory books, there was / is something magical about computers (as long as they are working properly; they become a cursed burden when they are not).
Sometime back in the late 80s or early 90s someone published a study on how composition changes when written by hand, typed, or written on a computer screen. I can attest that there are, as the study found, differences. The ease of editing on screen (rather than paper) helps a great deal with the flow of ideas. (However, almost all of the world's great literature was written by hand.) Add to the screen the ability to look things up in a flash (like the quote from Clark -- which I couldn't remember verbatim) helps too.
Not. Two of the pioneering popular works of philosophy of science in postwar Britain were by James Jeans and Arthur Eddington and they both had a decidedly idealistic attitude. ‘The stuff of the world is mind stuff’, ‘the universe seems more a great mind than a great machine’. It was precisely the concept of the mind independence of reality that was called into question by the early discoveries. Is the probability wave objectively real or a sign of subjective uncertainty? Nobody knows.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I stumbled into my information technology career, such as it’s been, selling those models!
I don't buy it. There's an objective reality that exists independently of our experience; and this must necessarily be so, because of the age of the earth and the fact the experiencing intellect comes about as a consequence of evolution.
There is not, "some evil demon deceiving me to believe I have a body" to paraphrase Descartes. But there is a strong tradition of Cartesian, subjectivist philosophers - happy to leap at any scientific basis to refute the existence of an objective reality.
I don’t want to try and persuade you, but suffice to say that this is just what was called into question by modern physics. Einstein asked his friend Michael Besso ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody is looking at it?’ It was a rhetorical question, but the point is, Einstein - of all people! - felt obliged to ask it.
Illuminating response!
That's my job! I'm a philosopher! An objectivist philosopher!
I bring light to the darkness - not darkness to the light!
The Grunidad won't allow me to read it without registering. I don't want to register. I hate giving out personal information online. That said, I'd rather everyone had to operate in their own name on the internet - then maybe people would be as responsible in the virtual world as they are in the real world. But I'm not giving it up first, and having them sell my data to some phishing operation, and getting phonecalls telling me there's a problem with my internet connection, and we need your bank details! Any chance you could copy and paste?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/31/the-ashtray-by-errol-morris-review
So, I agree with Kuhn. I don't question that there is a reality shared by all, but I say that reality transcends what can be objectively known. This has what has been suggested by modern physics, specifically because of what is known as the observer problem, the fact that the role of the observer has to be taken into account in observation.
My view is not 'subjectivist'. Rather, it's that both subject and object are poles or facets of a larger reality - which is pretty much what transcendental idealism says. So we're not, by means of science, homing in on a final, single reality, because that reality, whatever it is, transcends science also.
I have less disagreement with Khun's argument than the arguments the concept of incommensurability supports. I cannot count the number of times I've had it thrown in my face that "science doesn't know anything" - with Khun cited as the source. That's obviously not so.
Scientific principles can be applied to create technologies that work - and work better, the better the technology accounts for the underlying scientific principles. Like steam engines and thermodynamics. If the laws of thermodynamics were false - steam engines wouldn't work. It's not "just a theory."
There's a great deal of misunderstanding, and deliberate obfuscation around the truth value of scientific knowledge. And there's a concerted philosophical crusade to deny objective reality, and the possibility of objective knowledge. So, it may be wrong that:
But there are plenty of people who do make exactly those claims, and cite Khun as a source.
I mentioned that above. It works - but we don’t necessarily understand the principles. ‘Spooky action at a distance’ is proven, in fact it’s now used for cyber security technologies. But nobody can explain why doing something here produces an immediate consequence there, without any intermediary or contact being possible. It just does. Hence, ‘shut up and calculate’ in physics - don’t ask ‘how can it be like this’, simply use it for the amazing power it provides. So, it is ‘like magic’ in that respect. (Or maybe sorcery, but they’re basically synonyms.)
Quoting counterpunch
I agree with that, and I too despise ‘post-modern relativism’, that we each have our own ‘truth’. But I’m not seeking to say that science is only or merely a social construction, either. As you say, misreadings and misunderstandings abound on all sides. There is a ‘middle path’ which avoids such extremes, and I think Kant is pretty close to that.
Right, but we're in the realm of QM again where (in my view) the possibility of objective knowledge may be hampered by the lack of existential properties. It's not possible to know the velocity and location of a quantum object if it doesn't have one (or the other) of those properties.
Spooky action a a distance, is really just the double slit experiment from another angle. The object passes through both slits at the same time because it's in two places at the same time; lacking the existential property of location conferred on objects by the focus of forces at the macroscopic causal nexus. "Doing something here produces an immediate consequence there" because the object is in both places - or rather, not quite present in either place, at the same time.
That's what I think anyway!!
More to the point, given the current understanding, the macroscopic and quantum realms are not reconciled; such that, it's philosophically unsound to draw implications for the possibility of knowledge on the macroscopic level, from observations on the quantum level. Just because we don't know the mechanisms of spooky action at a distance, doesn't invalidate our knowledge of the mechanisms of steam trains.
Perfectly true. But the point is, science was supposed to disclose the fundamental constituents of being. When LaPlace devised his 'daemon', then it was supposed that science for once and for all would show that all is determined by objectively-real forces. When Heisenberg torpedoed the very idea - well, let's say, the response was incommensurate with the the original claim.
i appreciate the fact that someone who knows how to use a computer would go the route of calling it magic. In my opinion all matter and energy is haunted. Thank you Sir!
Okay, but I suppose you realise that LaPlace was a strict determinist, and Einstein proved determinism false a decade before Quantum Mechanics. Also, I suppose you know Einstein hated quantum mechanics. 'God does not play dice' he said, referring to probabilistic math used to make sense of quantum phenomena - that cannot be empirically designated a location and/or a velocity.
But what if that's because quantum objects don't posses those existential properties? Then the deterministic, or rather relativistic causal reality is preserved; and it's not an epistemic problem of establishing certain knowledge. Then Einstein's right. God does not play dice. I suppose you know he was hella smart!
It is almost always the case that a webdeveloper has zero understanding of the logic of a computer at the hardware level. Moving from hardware to software is a path of many different layers of abstraction and as a result the lower levels are 'hidden' from the higher levels. In the industry this is even termed as magic.
But it's not really magic of course. It's a well-established domain, computer science.
Most of the moderators reject panenpsychism and constitutive micro-psychism so i'll keep my mouth shut.
My deepest apologies for being on this forum.
as far as i know the computers built in the 1950s used all equations and concepts developed prior to the 20th century. This is a common misconception about modern technology. Most of modern technology can be built with equations that predate Einstein. Please correct me if i'm wrong. As each generation passes each technology is refined. The future began in 2000 c.e. . Flying cars were possible at the time of September 11th but September 11th pretty much showed us why average People shouldn't have Airplane licenses or flying cars. The difference between a flying car and an airplane is a flying car is supposed to be easier and more accessible to the average person. I'm not against poor People getting Pilot licenses and that was not the intent of what i'm saying.
To limit confusion the 19th century was the 1800s.
I'm not against nuclear power but you don't need nuclear power for automobiles, computers and rockets. Einstein largely contributed to the rise of Nuclear power.
Yes, computers are magically amazing! what about airplanes flying? After so many flights I've taken I'm still amazed seeing those super-heavy monsters flying in such a safe way!
The technology we have created in the last, I would say 100 years ? ...is really amazing.
Take Plato or Aristotle and bring them here, they would think gods have descended to earth!
Aside comment: And then, after a few days people would call them slavist, machists and xenophobes :rofl: ... technology has not only changed our life but our values and ethics as well.
Elucid should probably stick to making 50k a year by sitting on his ass. No talent ass clown thats what he is. lol
No, computers aren't anything like that. They're engineering artifacts that can be rationally explained and reliably designed and manufactured down to the chip level. The chips themselves are manufactured in wafer fabrication facilities. It's all completely explainable. The parts that aren't are the fundamental laws of electronics and materials science depending on physics. But even most of that is understood, it's only the deepest levels of physics that aren't understood. But that's true about rocks and tomatoes as well so computers are no different.
You might enjoy reading up on integrated circuits, computer architecture, operating system kernels, modern cpu design, and the like. Those are the things that appear magical from the application programming level. But they're not, any more than cars are magic to someone who only knows how to operate the steering wheel, accelerator, and brakes. Those things are not understood by the driver, but they're well understood by the automotive engineers who designed and built them.
Transistors rely on the principles of quantum physics. Explainer here.
Quoting emancipate
Interesting reference!
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I find the Copenhagen interpretation quite persuasive, as far as I understand it. I read Manjit Kumar’s ‘Quantum’ and David Lindley’s ‘Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg and the Battle for the Soul of Science’, both difficult reads, but informative with respect to the philosophical aspects.
Rockstar physicist and engaging Youtuber Sean Carroll is big on Many Worlds. But the fact that people argue about the right interpretation of QM, is not by any stretch of the imagination an argument for the thesis that "computers are magic." After all, radios used to work on vacuum tubes. Those depend ultimately on quantum effects too. But you can't credibly say that a tube radio of the 1950's was just an engineering artifact but the transistor radios of the 1960's suddenly became "magic" by virtue of using transistors. That's stretching a point to no purpose, since it's ahistorical and ignores the nature of engineering progress. A transistor does exactly the same thing as a vacuum tube. They're functionally equivalent.
Right. No argument from me there. But I still say, the fact that many eminent physicists have divergent, and even incommensurable, views of what physics means, or what it says about reality, is tantamount to saying, 'well, it works, but we really don't know how it works'. And that's the sense in which it's similar to magic.
A vacuum tube, by contrast, because it doesn't rely on quantum mechanics, can be explained without reference to qm. But what was the problem that eventuated with quantum mechanics? It was Max Planck's 'ultaviolet catastrophe'. That lead from his investigation of black-body radiation, which was an observational anomaly - according to current theory, the 'ultra-violet catastrophe' ought to have followed, and it was necessary to introduce the idea of the quantum to accomodate it. That was the beginning of quantum mechanics, and it came from observing the behaviour of phenomena.
Anyway, what's the problem? It's because we don't like 'magic' - it's superstitious, it's unscientific, no rational person would believe in magic. But I'm not at all sure of that anymore, either. Not that I rely on magic, or try to invoke it, but I'm nowadays confident that what is described as 'magic' is an element of reality. it's no more 'superstitious' than the sliding-doors world of the Everett interpretation.