Particulate, Wave, or Both?

[shawngibson]

I don't really watch much pop. Can you please explain these references? Are they in some manner Cartesian?

[will_perlis]

We have had a failure to communicate. "Brains in Vats" and "The Chinese Room" are two philosophical conundrums relating to "What is reality?" and "What is intelligence?".

 

I haven't figured anyway out of either of those yet.

 

But yes, it would appear that reality is all in my own head and you will all disappear when I die, just as you do temporarily when I sleep.

[shawngibson]

Ah. Must be one of those wacky modern thoughts which would wantonly torture the entire world for a moment of personal bliss, if that's what it took, since nothing matters anyways.

 

Thanks.

[ray robertson]

.."Unfortunately, I can't really comment on the technologies and physical properties/relationships of photographic equipment, much as I would like to find such things 'easy' to understand. I still grapple with the main principles of physics themselves, and probably always will.""...

 

Shawn,

It seems we both read (or have read) similar books. I find the writings of John Gribbin (Schrodinger's Kittens, for example) quite fascinating. Such books (the stories therein) really are fine examples of fact being stranger than fiction, but I find that it's always necessary to apply a bit of basic maths to keep things in perspective.

 

The complete predictability of a single photon may well be impossible and its behaviour very strange, but the greater the number of photons, the greater the predictability. It can therefore be misleading to apply principles that are very relevant at the sub-microscopic level to the macro level. It's the maths of the theories of probability that point to the irrelevancy of such principles on the large scale. There may never truly be 100% predictability, but 99.9% followed by a few nines is as good as certain for me (although I don't expect such accuracy from the weather forecasters).

 

Photonic noise in digital cameras is a good example of the increasing irrelevancy of that type of noise as the numbers of photons increase, whilst still remaining in the microscopic world.

 

The predictability of 16 photons impinging upon a single photodetector is not good. There's a probable error of 25%, given by the square root of 16. However, the predictability of a million photons impinging on a single, larger photodetector is much, much better. Square root of million is a thousand which represents an error of just 0.1% which is vastly better and we're still at the microscopic level.

 

It's theoretically possible for an object which normally falls to the ground when dropped, to not fall to the ground (without being influenced by sudden updrafts or magnets and other obvious explanations). But the probability of such an event occurring is so remote, you would be unlikely to witness it if you lived for 10 billion years.

 

When we gaze at the night sky, it's true that we are looking at the past. The light from many of those stars has taken several years to reach us, perhaps hundreds of years in the case of some of the faint ones, and even longer for some if we use a telescope.

 

However, as you've already implied, such delays are quite irrelevant in every day, terrestrial interaction of sentient beings. You are drawing a long bow to suggest that such theories conflict with advice like 'live in the present' because, if we want to be very precise, the present doesn't exist or is not knowable.

 

It's true that often in Australia when I'm watching a satellite live broadcast of an interview of someone in America, there's a delay of 2 or 3 seconds before the interviewee hears the question, but that's not due to the time it takes light to travel. The speed of light is such that a signal could encircle the earth in about 1/7th of a second. The delay is due to various switching devices.

 

However fancuful and strange the true nature of reality may be, let's not stray too far from the practical implications and uses.

[shadetree407]

why not just leave it at a particular form of energy.

 

consider the wave or the particle to be simply an expression (in which we relate to) of that energy form

[patrick j dempsey]

I really like the idea that old fashioned photography.... and especially the niche of pinhole photography, is based on fairly simple laws of physics and chemistry. Heres a bunch of salts that when light hits them they convert to metals... wow! As far as the chemicals and processes that go into "developing" a negative... all those do is add contrast to the image and remove unconverted silver salts to keep the image from "fogging" when it is put under light. Hardly a majic spell of chemical processes and complexity.

 

The idea of translating light into a digital file contains concepts in processing and physics which I dont think I really will ever have the patience to understand to any degree of satisfaction. There is something really awe inspiring in the simplicity of film photography... to capture a moment in time... to capture light.... and we are capturing light in a photographic negative... in a dramatically more simple way than we capture light within our own eyes! In fact I would say that our eyes process light to make an image in our brain much more like a digital image than a film photograph... all kinds of bizarre chemical reactions and electronic impulses and weird physics.

 

Vito: thank you, I think we never will get a better understanding of the nature of light and reality than that very ancient one... maybe the people who made the matrix shouldnt spend so much time reading existential philosophy, and more time meditating... ;)

[byronlawrence]

I really have always loved this subject, I have even read one of stephen hawkings books (isn't that a name to throw around). but 'what' light 'is' definately has no real impact on photography.

 

so my response is; I don't think that 'what' light is, makes a difference on whether digital photography is less moving than chemical photography.

 

I think you could argue that digital photography is more capable of giving you a feel of 'presence' because (at least on a monitor) it does a more efficient job of trying to recreate the light that the camera captured, as an output through a monitor,, that is cool stuff IMO.