"The fundamental flaw with this paradox is that it does not tell us anything about what caused the initial 'something' to exist in the first place"

That is True. And nothing ever will. Not Science. Not Religion. Nothing. And that is why Science (as opposed to scientists) does not even try to determine a "first cause". Science is content to merely find causes for desired effects.

Rob McEachern

    Rob,

    Your comment, "That is True. And nothing ever will. Not Science. Not Religion. Nothing. And that is why Science (as opposed to scientists) does not even try to determine a "first cause."" I find to be a paradoxical.

    Without first cause, your comment infers that an experimenter can indeed conduct an experiment without 'first' making a selection. Then you go on to say that, "Science is content to merely find causes for desired effects." How can science find 'causes' when you have clearly stated it cannot even try to do so?

    Perhaps at this point we should agree to disagree and leave it at that.

    Best wishes,

    Manuel

    Manuel,

    Conduct the following experiment: Try to cause your car to start, by direct selection of your house key, to plug into the ignition. Then select your car key and try again. You can learn how to cause your car to start, without ever having to learn what caused you, the keys, the cars, the cosmos, or anything else.

    Rob McEachern

    "You can learn how to cause your car to start, without ever having to learn what caused you, the keys, the cars, the cosmos, or anything else."

    You are correct Rob, if and only if, they exist in the first place. Thus you are talking about effectual causality, i.e., how observed or measured effects (keys) cause effects (start a car). I am talking about true (first) causality. You continue to miss this point time and time again? I do however, appreciate you trying to understand the findings.

    Manuel

    You are correct Manuel. You are talking about a first cause. My point is that the first cause has been talked about for thousands of years. All talk and no action; after all of that time, no one, including you, has ever even succeeded in producing a logical demonstration that such a cause even exists, much less identified what it is.

    The problem is, that deductive logic, the only type known to be capable of producing *certain* conclusions, given a starting premise, cannot be used to prove the premise. Hence, all "well reasoned" logical arguments, can only be demonstrated to be wrong or questionable, by demonstrating that the premise is false or dubious. Your starting premise, namely that a first cause exists, has been shown to be dubious; it cannot be shown to be true and it cannot be shown to be false - it is thus rendered dubious.

    You stated that "You are correct Rob, if and only if, they exist in the first place" . That is indeed true, but it is just the Anthropic principle. All it really says is that something, your car key, can exist if and only if whatever was necessary for it to exist also existed. It is logically possible for there to be an infinite regression of such things, and thus no "first". It is also logically possible for there to a a circular chain of causes, rather than a linear one, so again, there is no "first", there is just an endless cycle. And that, of course, is why it is possible to debate the "first cause" in an endless cycle. Consequently, we do not need to agree to disagree, in order to break-out of this cycle. We only need to agree to break-out. Which is exactly my point. We do *not* need to directly select a "cause" or "reason" for the break-out, such as agreeing to disagree. We only have to directly select the break-out itself.

    I shall.

    Rob McEachern

    Rob,

    If you did conduct the Final Selection Experiment yet continued to exist without making any direct selections (or not have someone else make indirect selections for you), then and only then would your assumption of the lack of first cause be correct.

    However, since you nor anyone else on this planet 'cannot' exist without the ability to select, then your argument is mute for it has been falsified thus the break-out is complete.

    Best wishes,

    Manuel

    Dear Manual,

    There is a concept, well known to the quantum information community, that

    determines in what precise sense there is no destiny

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_unbiased_bases

    Mutually unbiased bases play a fundamental role in many tasks of quantum information processing. There is no cause, just a set of possibilities with equal probability as soon as you select a mesaurement base uncorrelated (unbiased) to your previous choices.

    I suspect that this concept may be useful for you.

    In my essay, I am working at something quite different but structurally related, that you may wish to read.

    http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1789

    Best wishes,

    Michel

      Michel,

      I agree there is no destiny as commonly understood as the findings from a 12 year experiment clearly show. I also agree that counterfactual definiteness is indeed not causal and the main reason for subjectivity in quantum physics. The question I have for you is what caused the quantum states we hold so dear to exist to begin with? The answer to this question is what the empirical evidence obtained from this experiment has revealed.

      Destiny is a theory that events or series of events are predetermined, and since events are moments of physical energy, then fundamentally destiny is a physical theory. Historically it is commonly assumed that if everything is predetermined (cause) then that must mean that everything is certain (effect). But what if this is not about predetermined certainty? What if this is about 'how' determinism is predetermined? If we understand that determinism simply means that a physical system behaves the same each time it is "replayed" from its original state, then this means that our focus on the effects of the original state has been in error.

      May I humbly ask that you please take the time to review my essay in its entirety? There you will find that absolute determinism is also inclusive of states of counterfactual definiteness where we find that QM is indeed valid as a 'partial' description of the dichotomy we call reality.

      Bottom line for followers of the uncertainty principle is that 'uncertainty without certainty makes uncertainty as certainty.'

      BTW - Michel, I did find your essay most worthy of merit and rated it highly on Jun 28, 2013. In hindsight, now that I see how things have played out in this 'competition', I should have rated you at 10 so that it would have helped you over the duration of this competition. My apologies, the exceptional insight and analysis you have exhibited in your essay deserves to be rated even higher than it currently is.

      I truly hope you make it to the finals where I believe your work will be better able to stand on its own.

      Manuel

      Dear Manual,

      I red your paper another time. While I more or less agree with the first part

      "the universal acts of selection are the fundamental causal

      variables of our existence for we must first make a selection (cause) in order to observe (effect)", (although it is not related to entanglement), I don't understand the second part "Unification of Cause and Effect With The Four Forces".

      What you say about selection is perfectly in agreement with quantum measurements (the relative position of Stern-Gerlach measurements of spin for example, see the book of Asher Peres for the 'classical' paradoxes it implies). In my essay, I am just analyzing these observables/selections as a whole, they have to be mutually commutative/compatible. This is also well in the spirit of Whheler's viewpoint.

      Your second part is much more radical and I don't see how it fits the existing knowledge about the 3+1 forces. The spin is not a force, I agree that spins have to do with the selections but I don't understand your point with the forces. The quarks (strong force) have spin 1/2, the electrons (electromagnetic force force) have spin 1/2, W and Z bosons have spin 1 (weak force), the graviton has spin 2, one selects such spins in measurements but not thei masses for example.

      Thank you for you interest in my opinion. But may be I still have to learn more from you.

      Best wishes,

      Michel

        Manual,

        Your discussion on cause and effect is very interesting. Your essay deserves a very high rating.

        I believe in cause before effect. My theory posits that absolute motion is the true cause of all the forces and all the processes of nature. In addition absolute motion can explain the weird results of the double-slit experiment. A paper on this is available in the following link:

        http://www.modelmechanics.org/2011experiment.pdf

        Good luck with your essay.

        Regards,

        Ken

          Michel,

          I have found that determinism is anything that can be selected either directly or indirectly. A direct selection of one potential gives rise to a physical state of certainty as observed in the deterministic macroscopic domain. An indirect selection of 'more than' one potential gives rise to a physical state of uncertainty as observed in the non-deterministic microscopic domain. It is necessary that these two acts of selection exist for they both give us the dichotomy of what we call reality. The potential function gives us the potentiality (wave function) of existence of a selection event and its state. Since the two acts of selection are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, these two fundamental acts give us deterministic or non-deterministic states of reality. These finite selection functions then code (predetermine) the wave function of the potential state as exhibited in Fig. 8 of my essay.

          Therefore the findings show that the uncertainty behavior of quantum mechanics is indeed a valid 'partial' interpretation of a deterministic reality. In other words, non-determinism is a function of determinism for existence/reality is a dichotomy. In this context, both deterministic and non-deterministic behaviors are causal for they both reflect the behavioral existence of a deterministic dichotomy. This existence is mirrored by states of spin. I hesitate at this point to elaborate further than what I have already stated in my essay since this is a topic I will discuss in more detail in my next paper.

          I hope this helps.

          Manuel

          Manuel,

          Thank you for a stimulating essay. Your idea that causal functions and their effectual states have gravitational characteristics is very original.

          It is also possible to consider causal functions as ontic and effectual states as epistemic, with the two related by the action principle. Ontic entropy (contraction of scale) acts as gravity and epistemic entropy (expansion of scale) acts as time. (See my essay "A Complex Conjugate Bit and It".)

          In this way, quantum information theory contributes to your concept of QM as a deterministic system (providing that there is underlying quantum wholeness).

          Best wishes,

          Richard