Freethought Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for October 25, 2000; #79.
Jeff passed out the results of the Vanguard Charter School lawsuit that had been filed in 1998, regarding the public school's blatant promotion of religion. The practices included volunteers reading Bible stories, and praying in the classrooms, the display of religious signs, allowing the distribution of religious literature, accomodating church groups rent-free, while charging others, and organizing teacher training that included prayer, religious music and a Baptist sermon. This lawsuit filed by the ACLU and three families of the Vanguard Charter, of the National Heritage Academies, was one of the first in the nation to challenge religious practices at public charter schools. Corrective action has been implemented since the lawsuit that was resisted prior to it. The ACLU is taking a wait-and-see approach in monitoring the activities, seeing if the new policies of religious neutrality are being enforced.
Jeff also shared with us his experiences at the Alliance of Secular Humanists leadership meeting in New York. Many luminaries from the secular humanist camp were there, including Joe Nickell, Paul Kurtz, NOrman Allen, Bob Boston, Tom Flynn, Micah White and others. He described the surroundings at the Council for Secular Humanism's facility, including the library of 50,000 volumes on claims of the paranormal, skepticism, atheism, etc., that make use of a full and part time librarian. He gave a good account of the size, scope and direction, changes and challenges of the Council and a run-down on the presentations given. Some of the politics between groups of slightly different bent within the humanist umbrella were mentioned. Jeff said that the contacts made could afford us well-known speakers at future meetings but that some would come at a price. This is an incentive, for those who wish to see this, to donate funds to offset these expenses.
Remember that Brad is accepting recommended reading suggestions from us to compile and submit to the group later. Send suggestions to bunbary@prodigy.net.
The Halloween Party at the Seavers' for October 28 at 5:30 PM was announced again.
Our next topic will be on November 8: "Freethought Association of West Michigan- History & Personal Stories of Leaving the Fold" to be moderated by Jeff Seaver.
**REMEMBER there is NO meeting scheduled for November 22 due to the Thanksgiving holiday**
Because the scheduled speaker was running late, Jeff started us off on the Nov. 8th topic. However, our presenter arrived shortly thereafter and we switched to the topic originally planned for tonight.
The topic was Quantum Mechanics, moderated by Jacques "Jack" Mullah, PhD, Physics Instructor at Ferris State University. Dr. Mullah handed out a paper: "Quantum Mechanics: What's Really Going On?" in which he discusses how and why QM was developed, the problems, theories and attempts made to discover the underlying physical reality, based on quantum effects. He also gave us his own views having to do with the Computationalist Wavefunction Interpretation (CWI) and how it relates to concepts from the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI).
QM was developed to describe atomic systems and the behavior of the smallest known particles. Systems are characterized by a wavefunction, involving all the possible configurations that the classical system provides, and time. Elements of the position, randomness, predictability, variables and time were discussed and how the wavefunction changes over time. When a calculation can be made about characteristics of the wavefunction from what is known at a prior time, a deterministic time evolution algorithm is produced.
The state of a system depends upon the type of measurement that is made. A wavefunction can be used to calculate the probability that the system will be found in one allowed state within the measurement parameters. The actual state found becomes the reality, replacing all possibilities once measurement takes place, in what is referred to as wavefunction collapse. Problems arising in making sense of how elements can be seen as random yet based on deterministic calculations were addressed in different ways and Professor Mullah gave an overview of some of these interpretations.
One makes use of hidden variables besides the wavefunction, that influence what we see from the additional states of these variables but fails to address their specific nature and how they determine what we see. Wavefunction interpretations do not allow for additional variables, see the collapse of wavefunction as illusory- stemming from more than one observer- and take into account the tendency of wavefunction to gather in branches within the configuration space. These branches take on different aspects, appearing as different worlds.
Mullah's CWI sheds light on the observer of these Many Worlds, that seems to see a collapse of wavefunction into one reality, but is only one observer seeing a configuration in one state; whereas different observers would see different states, creating apparent randomness accross the possible configuration space of the wavefunction. Dr. Mullah takes into account the theory of mind that is needed even for classical physics, when building models of reality. He related computers and human minds and deems computation, involving the causal relation between variables, as sufficient for consciousness. He sees the function, rather than the composition, as what is important; the physical system, if it implements a computation, shares all the relevant characteristics of that computation. This computationalist negates the necessity for hidden variables in determining conscious observations. The QM wavefunction in the CWI, performs many different computations as it evolves through time, each can be thought of as a human observer with the measure of distribution of experiences among these observers lending a recipe of human like computations- the number of observers in agreement in seeing one aspect of the configuration of the wavefunction.
CWI rids QM of complications seen in Pilot Wave Interpretation and others he mentioned. Its implications are that parallel worlds do exist, as required by a MWI and that other "copies" of oneself are out there, with almost identical characteristics, interpreting reality. There is no communication between these worlds, so a decision based on the observation in one does not
affect the observer in another. In an infinite universe there may exist a great many "copies" of oneself- this differs from the MWI only in that the copies and planets are separated in position space with the latter. Because of the divergent paths that each copy travels, Dr. Mullah sees this as a problem for religions that involve a Divine Plan administered from one deity for each individual and incorporates prophesies that would be true in some worlds but false in others.
The television program "Sliders" was mmentioned, where a good visula model of MWI was shown, even though the QM was flawed. We talked of non-locality and the instantaneous communication between quantum particles separated in space; what Einstein termed "spooky action at a distance." Dr. Mullah said that QM can be applied to any sytem. Though developed for the micro level, it can be magnified by macro-level experiments. He also talked of how QM works with chaotic systems, where small changes create larger outcomes, such as the weather...and the human mind. Experiences of one individual can change the mood of that individual, affecting his/her behavior, which can influence inter-then intra-group interactions. In the discussion following the presentation, these issues as well as everything from Free Will to the Big Bang were talked about.
Dr. Mullah's website is: http://hammer.prohosting.com/~mathmind/cwia.htm.
For more Freethought Assoc. information on coming topics, or for links, to make suggestions, or request a copy of the FAOWM member directory, go to www.freethoughtassociation.org or
info@freethoughtassociation.com
.
Recorder: Charles LaRue (who was it who famously said: "If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics--you don't." ?)
