Dirac, Pauli, and Heisenberg walk into a bar-

[AnonymousSpeed]

Psych! There is no bar.

This is, however, a real conversation had by these three physicists, which I had the great pleasure of hearing from a general associate of mine and felt so inclined to share. Heisenberg here plays the part of an observer, but it's thanks to his book Physics and Beyond that we know of this splendid little event.

The three were having a discussion of religion, as physicists do, and instead of adding my own spin, I will simply copy from the aforementioned book. Please enjoy.

Spoiler

"I dislike religious myths on principle," Paul Dirac replied, "if only because the myths of the different religions contradict one another. After all, it was purely by chance that I was born in Europe and not in Asia, and that is surely no criterion for judging what is true or what I ought to believe. And I can only believe what is true. As for right action, I can deduce it by reason alone from the situation in which I find myself: I live in society with others, to whom, on principle, I must grant the same rights I claim for myself. I must simply try to strike a fair balance; no more can be asked of me. All this talk about God's will, about sin and repentance, about a world beyond by which we must direct our lives, only serves to disguise the sober truth. Belief in God merely encourages us to think that God wills us to submit to a higher force, and it is this idea which helps to preserve social structures that may have been perfectly good in their day but no longer fit the modern world. All your talk of a wider context and the like strikes me as quite unacceptable. Life, when all is said and done, is just like science: we come up against difficulties and have to solve them. And we can never solve more than one difficulty at a time; your wider context is nothing but a mental superstructure added a posteriori."

And so the discussion continued, and we were all of us surprised to notice that Wolfgang was keeping so silent. He would pull a long face or smile rather maliciously from time to time, but he said nothing. In the end, we had to ask him to tell us what he thought. He seemed a little surprised and then said: "Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is: 'There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.'" We all laughed, including Dirac, and this brought our evening in the hotel lounge to a close.

 

[Jotari]

A hotel lounge is a kind of bar.

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

A hotel lounge is a kind of bar.

[Original Alear]

I don't really agree, at least with some of that. If I feed a hungry family composed of two parents and a child, then I've solved the problem of the hunger of the family and maybe even the parents' problem of being unable to feed their children (I guess that depends on whether the parents or someone cares about the child enough that it'll be a problem for someone besides the child, but I don't think that's a really strong assumption in this day and age). So by doing the feeding of three people I've solved three problems, no? If you condense it down to one problem, which seems reasonable, that's a "wider context" which the Dirac speaker guy objects to.

And, uh, I'm also pretty sure that if there are contradictory beliefs in different locations, that could to some extent be because some locations have people holding more correct beliefs than other locations. It kinda depends on how much we can really know, I guess, but sometimes I'm willing to believe that many beliefs drawn from the sciences are true, even though they might not be equally dispersed among each and every person on the globe. If you're born in an alley and then abandoned by your parents and die an infant, doesn't where you were born have some bearing on what you knew during your brief life? I guess it's hard to tell if there might be a part of a newborn infant that knows something that we don't seem to be aware of at all, because our consciousness apparently seems to come into existence a little later than when we're first born. Also, is this guy really so smart that he never believes something that isn't true?

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

I don't really agree, at least with some of that. If I feed a hungry family composed of two parents and a child, then I've solved the problem of the hunger of the family and maybe even the parents' problem of being unable to feed their children (I guess that depends on whether the parents or someone cares about the child enough that it'll be a problem for someone besides the child, but I don't think that's a really strong assumption in this day and age). So by doing the feeding of three people I've solved three problems, no? If you condense it down to one problem, which seems reasonable, that's a "wider context" which the Dirac speaker guy objects to.

While I don't think absolutism in how many problems can be solved at once is inherently sensible, that example kind of comes down to semantics. Which, in a sense, all problems are. As problems are an entirely human construct. You only have as many problems as you believe you have. If you were giving bread to the family of enlightened Buddhas, for example; while they'd be happy to take the bread, they wouldn't perceive you as having solved any problem at all as starving to death would be of little concern in the face of complete spiritual contentedness. 

[AnonymousSpeed]

13 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

guess that depends on whether the parents or someone cares about the child enough that it'll be a problem for someone besides the child, but I don't think that's a really strong assumption in this day and age

Precipitous spiritual decay moment.

13 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

And, uh, I'm also pretty sure that if there are contradictory beliefs in different locations, that could to some extent be because some locations have people holding more correct beliefs than other locations.

Perfectly reasonable, I agree completely.

13 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

I guess it's hard to tell if there might be a part of a newborn infant that knows something that we don't seem to be aware of at all, because our consciousness apparently seems to come into existence a little later than when we're first born.

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. Interesting.

13 hours ago, Original Johan Liebert said:

Also, is this guy really so smart that he never believes something that isn't true?

He did believe in communism.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

You only have as many problems as you believe you have.

Precipitous spiritual decay moment.

[Original Alear]

Reg the consciousness thing - I'm not sure I would agree with what I said either, sorry for saying otherwise. I was more saying that at least for me, my memories don't go back very strongly through my early years, and others I've talked to have concurred. That's more what I was trying to say. I think I can agree that infants have consciousness since they respond to stimuli and learn even though humans don't seem to remember most of what they experience during their very early years.

If you were giving bread to the family of enlightened Buddhas, for example; while they'd be happy to take the bread, they wouldn't perceive you as having solved any problem at all as starving to death would be of little concern in the face of complete spiritual contentedness. 

That's true. I figured out they'd be willing to take the food from those fat Buddha statues.

Regarding the precipitous spiritual decay moment...for my part, I'm pretty sure I was aware that some children get abandoned when I was in elementary school. It didn't seem like something that would be particularly surprising. Are we trying to raise an AI on this forum?