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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mitch Blevins who wrote (7864)	9/6/2001 10:28:05 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I'm claiming that the very phenomenon of consciousness ARISES out of quantum effects (your authors probably touch upon this) and this necessarily introduces non-locality to brain functions (I tend to agree). This is a fundamental point, IMO. What is possible in our future is defined in terms of energy gradients. The energy difference between detonation and non-detonation of a H-bomb is almost unmeasurable. One could devise a system where a low-energy single photon could trigger it. The amount of energy in such a state transition could be at the smallest measurable threshold we can measure. The resultant energy of the "choice" is enormous and the "free-choice" involved in detonation vs. non-detonation ultimately hits a noise floor. In the system I described, a fluke random event could change the outcome of your future in a very real way. In fact, a lower energy barrier makes you a bit more of a Schrodinger Cat. Similarly, the sequence of events that make you "choose" one thing or another have similar low thresholds of transition. A car cutting you off could lead you to come home and kill yourself. For most people, this isn't very likely. For others, it could be the straw that broke the camel's back. All of life, IMO, is this type of continuum. Some things are more likely than others. Some individual "free-will choices" are more likely than others. QM provides the random element (and mechanism) that makes it so difficult for us to define what mental states should preceed and arise from other mental states. Someone related the story about a woman who goes after her kids and kills one, the other is saved from the shotgun blast by a Bible. The meaning, if I may be so bold, is that such tragedy seems to occur and DEFY our best explanation of causality. There is no easy or reasonable explanation why a mother would turn a shotgun on her children when most don't. Sure, one can hypothesize a whole range of emotions or states of mind that could lead to the contemplation of it, but the physical act is separated from the psychological state by teeny bit of energy (or small number of causal events). Heck, I think of all sorts of things that I wouldn't want to have happen physically. What is so different from her "free-choice" and mine arising from similar emotional states?