Good physics
If, like me, you've heard about, and read up on, the famous Bell Inequality experiment, then my guess is, unless you're physics grad, that you won't understand it. I, too, don't understand it, but my understanding of it is now a little better than it was before listening to the presentation below. It's by science writer Jim Baggott, and it was given in an address to the Royal Institution. He's a legit writer and it's a legit institution, it's not 'quantum quackery'. (I'm very much aware of spurious interpretations of quantum mechanics, and I'm not trying to encourage them, but I think this is genuinely educational.)
I'm not really posting this for discussion, but because it has been said that the Bell inequality experiments are among the greatest science experiments ever, and because it's a very difficult subject to get your head around. This presentation helped me to understand it for the first time.
I'm not really posting this for discussion, but because it has been said that the Bell inequality experiments are among the greatest science experiments ever, and because it's a very difficult subject to get your head around. This presentation helped me to understand it for the first time.
Comments (199)
If they can rule out any hidden variables, then Bell's theorem proves there is randomness in the universe. This makes sense with regard to entropy anyway
I am not an expert, and for whatever reason, Bell's theorem makes my eyes glaze over every time I try to make a run at it. At some level it's just something I care about.
However, I have heard one thing relevant to your comment, and it's important. Bell's theorem rules out local hidden variables, but not hidden variables in general. What's the difference? I have no idea. But Bell's theorem does NOT rule out determinism or prove that the world is random, no matter how many "Internet experts" think it does. Say, weren't we just talking about that?
Spooky action at a distance was proved in Einstein's day I thought. It all pretty confusing. Faster than light action can be explained, or explained away, by geometry and super-dimensions. But determinism would be hard to disprove given that people could subscribe to compatibilism if needed
My only point was that when people say Bell's theorem disproves hidden variables, what I've heard is that it only disproves LOCAL hidden variables. Leaving the question of non-local hidden variables open. And this is only something I've read, I have no understanding of any of this.
Compatibilism isn't a physical theory, I don't see how it would make any difference to the debate unless there are some mathematical models and experiments to back up the models.
'Action at a distance', or entanglement, was implied by Schrodinger's equation. That's why Einstein objected to it, but at the time it was purely conjectural, it had never been demonstrated. However, that was his motivation for the so-called EPR thought-experiment which you can read about here. The upshot is, that what Einstein thought would certainly disprove 'spooky action at a distance' ended up by proving it instead - although, of course, Einstein had died by the time the conclusive experiments were conducted.
The narrative history is not confusing, but concepts of quantum mechanics sure are.
That's what has got me pondering on the truth that Bell's Theorem might be true for low entropic states only.
I've seen videos saying Bell's theorem is about randomness. Maybe it's too complex to explain to non-physicists. The PBS spacetime series said Bell himself thought fatalism was consistent with his theorem but didn't say anything about faster than light travel.
Quoting Banno
:up: :sad:
They pick random samples sometimes in physics but if our will is predetermined nothing we do is random like that. Non local variables are ones we can't detect in the system yet i think
I think there was a recent thread on randomness, I don't remember if I participated. There's no evidence that anything in the world is random. Or the contrary. We don't know. Quantum mechanics tells us that our measurements are random. There's an x% probability that I'll find it here and a y% probability I'll find it somewhere else. QM tells us nothing about where it really is. In QM that question is unknowable. The Copenhagen interpretation tells us it's in both places till we look. Many-worlds says it's in both places in different worlds. That's as good as it gets in physics these days.
Randomness is a very tricky business.
I had a thread on randomness and I think you making a joke lol, because you did participate with some great observation.
I don't know how they can rule out all non-local variables because with "many worlds" couldn't another world influence the entangled pair? And if the communicate faster than light, to save relativity they posit wormholes and these might be connected to other worlds and so there is then even more territory we have to rule out
No joke, just didn't remember.
Quoting Gregory
I am afraid that's all way over my head physics-wise.
If the wavefunction evolves, then temperature gradients determine how it does due to lower entropy.
It's been a while since there has been much good physics on the forum. I'm thinking about starting a thread to prove that force does not really equal mass times acceleration. Or that Ursus Americanus don't urinate in forested areas. Or that people are mistaken about the Pontiff's religious affiliation.
I'm thinking of starting a threat that proves Yahweh/God is real because quantum mechanics was predicted in Bible prophesy - taking Genesis, you just need to use a higher power decoding equation I have developed based on Lurianic Kabbalah and the tree of life as a functional reorientation of the chart of Standard Model particle physics.
(see - I can do bible quotes, too!)
It seems that even the mention of the subject elicits a lot of nonsense. That says something, I guess.
;-)
Well, you can say that gravity seems to require action at a distance, about which Newton famously 'proposed no hypothesis'.
(Relevant articles on that in Philosophy Now here and also Noam Chomsky's comments on it here.)
But the non-locality falls out of the equations of quantum mechanics goes further - it suggests that you measuring something here causes an instantenous change over there - and 'there' might be a light year distant. So something that is done in one places causes a change that seems to propogate at greater than the speed of light, which is impossible - hence, 'spooky action at a distance'. However, now this principle is proven, and it is actually being used to secure encrypted communications. (I penned a brief article on this, for no particular audience, which can be found here.)
I don't want to offer any kind of interpretation, as it plainly baffles a great many far more educated minds than myself. i just wanted to draw attention to Jim Baggott's presentation, because I think it is the best, non-specialist representation of the experiment.
Geez, now you're asking us to respond to the actual subject of the thread. That's pretty unreasonable.
I just looked at the video and I see it's an hour long. I will watch it, but it might be a bit before I respond. I'll try to do it tomorrow.
I started out watching the first five minutes. Then, at your suggestion, I forwarded to the section on Bell's inequality and watched through the end. Let me say first off that the part that always amazes me the most is the technology that allows these types of experiments to be performed. For example, in this video, a light source that allows you to shoot out one photon at a time, the camera that allows you to record one photon at a time, or, most of all, the clocks that allow you to measure the incredibly short periods of time. Another example is the gravity wave detection in the LIGO experiments. The detectors allow measurement of distortions of space by gravity waves much less than the diameter of a proton. How is that possible?
Back to the question at hand. I've read about Bell's equality and entanglement before. I have a real hard time understanding the geometry and statistics of the experiments. Sometimes I can grasp them for a second, but when I stop concentrating, I lose it. Upshot - I trust what the physicists say and leave it at that. I joke and say "I understand quantum mechanics completely - it's just the way things are."
Actually, I don't think that's really a joke. I think that's what they mean when they describe the Copenhagen Interpretation. Don't ask why or what it means, just ask how the world behaves. Shut up and calculate. The narrator calls that the anti-realist position, but I don't see it that way. I think, at bottom, none of our science tells us why. It just tells us how.
Which brings us to what he calls the realist interpretations. For me, the big question, the only question, is whether or not there is an empirical method to determine which is correct even in theory. I believe that is a pretty controversial subject now. It is my understanding that no method for testing the interpretations have been developed. My intuition is that no testing is possible, although I can't justify that scientifically.
That means that there is no difference between the interpretations. That pleases me. I find the Copenhagen Interpretation very satisfying. As I said, it's consistent with how I see science in general. What we call reality is a story we tell ourselves. I think interpretations that can't be told apart even in theory are, I was going to say equivalent but that's not right. They are meaningless. Which is consistent with my preference for the Copenhagen Interpretation. It was always meaningless.
The narrator calls the differences between the interpretations "metaphysics," but I don't see it that way. For me, metaphysics is the stage we build on which physics plays out, the conventions we have established to allow us to talk about reality. I've written many lectures about that, so I won't go into that again.
One more problem, in the first five minutes, one of his basic graphics is wrong - the illustration of the two slit experiment at 3:40. There were others I thought might be wrong, but I was confused about what he was trying to show, so I'm not sure. Sloppy errors like hat undermine my confidence in the narrator.
Long time back, I mentioned his earlier book, Farewell to Reality, which got a pretty good review from yourself:
Quoting T Clark
Same narrator!
Quoting T Clark
Agree. And there can't be an empirical method to decide on the differing interpretations - because they're interpretations! They're debates about what the observations mean, even given that all sides on the debate see the same results. That's why it spills into metaphysics. I'm reading a textbook by a physicist named Shimon Malin, 'Nature loves to hide', which attempts to create an interpretive framework from elements of Whitehead's metaphysics, along with Plato and Plotinus. Not far into it yet, but very much liking it so far.
Quoting T Clark
I don't see it like that. The cosmos is the stage on which physics plays out - provided you confine physics to the observable, which I think is proper. Metaphysics considers the implications of physics in terms of what must be the case in light of certain observations.
I think the question of the nature of the wave-function is a metaphysical question, or even THE metaphysical question implied by modern physics. A lot of the controversies revolve around that point.
I'd forgotten the book and Baggett. What can I say. I was much younger then.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I noted, there are physicists who believe there may be testable differences. We'll see.
Quoting Wayfarer
Disagree, but that's a different discussion.
I'm glad you asked me to respond. I enjoyed putting what I think about this issue in writing.
I'm a big fan of Chomsky and Newton and I'm really enjoying the linked article and video. Thanks for posting.
OK, there's a challenge. I'll see if I can explain Bell's Theorem on an intuitive level. I'll use coins instead of particles.
Suppose Alice and Bob have one each of a pair of coins that have been prepared in an entangled state. Due to their entanglement, if the coins are measured by devices tilted at the same angle (say, 120 degrees) then Alice and Bob will observe the same outcome, i.e., they will both observe heads or they will both observe tails. Whereas if the coins are measured by devices tilted at different angles then, per the probabilities predicted by QM, they may or may not observe the same outcome.
What explains those correlations, even when the coins are separated by large distances? Perhaps the coins communicate instantly (Einstein's "spooky action at a distance"). Or perhaps the coins have definite orientations (i.e., heads or tails) for every possible measurement angle - which any actual measurement simply reveals.
Let's assume the latter (called local hidden variables) and test it. The experiments will involve a measuring device for each coin. Each measuring device can be tilted at an angle of 0, 120, or 240 degrees prior to measurement. Only experiments where the relative angle between the measuring devices is 120 or 240 degrees will be conducted (we already know that the outcomes will be the same when the relative angle is 0 degrees, i.e., when the devices are tilted at the same angle).
Now consider the possible coin orientations for each potential measurement angle. (1) They could be heads for all three angles. (2) Or tails for all three angles. (3) They could be heads for two of the angles and tails for the other angle. (4) Or tails for two of the angles and heads for the other angle. That exhausts all the possibilities.
For the initial two cases, measuring each coin at different angles will always return the same outcomes (e.g., both heads, or both tails). For the final two cases, measuring each coin at different angles will return the same outcome 1/3 of the time (e.g., for HTH the three possible combinations are HT, TH or HH).
Note how the measured coin orientations are the same either 100% of the time or 1/3 of the time. That's Bell's inequality - the measured coin orientations are the same for at least 1/3 of the times that the experiment is performed.
However QM predicts the same outcome 1/4 of the time (cos^2 120 = cos^2 240 = 0.25). Thus QM violates Bell's inequality.
When this is tested empirically, the same measurement outcomes are observed 1/4 of the time as QM predicts. Therefore the assumption of local hidden variables is mistaken.
Nice. That's pretty much what I've come to think and I can see how this model can kickstart many a speculative journey.
So when you say the probabilities that QM predicts, do you mean via the Schrodinger wave function and/or matrix mechanics?
Quoting Wayfarer
My interest is piqued by the wave function also. From what I've learned, geometry of the wave function is analogous to drawing a smooth curve on a linear graph based on the averaging of standard deviations, a "continuous" approximation to what is essentially quantized or "lumpy" but in a very specific, replicable way that has some wavelike properties. Is that accurate?
Check out Nature Loves to Hide, Shimon Malin https://g.co/kgs/PXbiXG. Expensive book but definitely worth the $.
One of the odd spin-offs of this, is that David Deutsch is Everettâs #1 fan. His first book, Fabric of Reality, or something, is an impassioned plea for the reality of many worlds, and an implicit condemnation of all the bone-headed dinosaurs who canât accept it. And Deutsch, let us recall, is the main theorist behind quantum computers. Which makes me wonder if the feasibility of the quantum computer is bound to the validity of the Many Worldâs interpretation. Waaay beyond my paygrade, but I do wonder.
BTW, it's worth noting that Bell's Theorem makes three assumptions - locality, counterfactual definiteness (i.e., hidden variables or classical realism) and freedom-of-choice (in what measurement to perform).
So rejecting hidden variables need not imply rejecting locality. For example, Copenhagen, RQM, QBism, Many Worlds and Consistent Histories are all local interpretations.
Quoting Enrique
Yes.
To those who might know, does the following interpretation of Schrodinger's wave function have any validity: predicted proportion of behavior within a reference frame at the quantum scale, whether construed in terms of position, momentum or whatever, essentially modeling the average amount of energy within that reference frame relative to the rest of the wave function. So wave function collapse is a kind of change in relative energy that can be induced by measurement etc., not a split into separate worlds.
Your comment reminded me of this quote:
Quoting David Deutsch
Quoting Enrique
I don't know - are you referring to an objective collapse theory?
No, it's not just the same. It's a false analogy. Fossilised remains are objectively real. The interpretation of observations in physics is inferential. I think there's something deeply, profoundly wrong about Deutsch's philosophy, although of course, who am I to question a wunderkind.
My philosophical interpretation follows Heisenberg's. He points out that sub-atomic objects neither exist, nor don't exist; their existence is described in terms of probabilities, so they have a degree of existence, which is actualised by measurement. When measured, what is potential becomes actual. And the act of observation is inextricably connected with that. This is what Deutsch cannot accept, because ultimately he's a materialist. So he'd rather accept sliding doors than idealism.
How does either option there amount to a form of idealism?
A fundamental rule of physics is locality, which just means information doesn't travel faster than the speed of light, which is another way of saying causes don't makes effects at faster than the speed of light. So "information travelling" is the same thing as "causes propagating" in these conversations.
Quantum correlations between distant events, such as a material, say a crystal, that produces pairs of particles going in different directions but when both are measured the pairs always have something correlated, such as opposite spin or polarization or what have you: measuring one particle allows a scientist at detector A predict with 100% certainty a measurement by another scientist at detector B, and A and B can be as far apart as the scientists can do.
So, we "know" something instantaneously about B from observations at A, which on first viewing seems to say information has traveled faster than light. Of course, if we inspect closer we don't "really know" anything about B because we're making the assumption that scientist at B makes a measurement, the device still works, a whole bunch of other assumptions. Rather, we're just predicting something at B based on our knowledge of A; but this isn't unusual. We predict things about other places and times regularly; that we predict the sun rises tomorrow does not mean information has traveled from tomorrow to today to allow us to make that predictions. So, already, with this more careful viewing, we're just predicting and not "exchanging information"; and these sorts of experiments can never be setup in such a way to allow the scientists to communicate faster than light. So locality isn't in trouble.
However, we are still left to wonder if the thing about particles at A and B is determined when the first scientists measures or whether it was "really set" at the crystal or whatever creating the particle pair. It's much simpler to imagine the incoming particle responsible for the key event, hits the crystal and two particles emerged with the correlated features and travel to scientists at A and B already with these values of interest. This intuitive way of looking at it is thus called "hidden variables", as the values we're interested in are there, just hidden from us until we measure them and so know about them.
Quantum mechanics is highly wound up in measurement uncertainty and the logical implications of this; however, for a while one could still wonder if the things being measured really become "definite" when they are measured or are already definite and we then just measure them to know something about this pre-existing definiteness. Just as on our normal human scale we measure a door to find out what it already is, not somehow to make nature take on some value at the same instant we measure it.
If the door is "already a meter" wide before we measure it, then there's some variable of definite value that is hidden from us but revealed to us when we measure it. For doors, this makes sense. However, for particles, quantum mechanics strongly suggests things really are uncertain until measured, that nature only takes on the definite value we are trying uncover in our act of uncovering it, but, if so, then correlated events must somehow "talk" to each other instantaneously; since particle at B cannot know ahead of time what scientist at A will measure and so prepare itself to be measured in the expected way; it is equally uncertain as perhaps scientist B will measure it first and so making B a clear value then forces A to take on the corresponding value when it's measured. Quantum mechanics (for a while) only "suggested" this instantaneous resolution of values at faster than light travel, because the "hidden variables" weren't needed to do quantum mechanics, so if they can be thrown out anyway and quantum mechanics is already quite bizarre, then, once you're "in it", it becomes intuitive to just not care about locality in this case (as it can't be used to communicate anyways, so who cares).
But people did care!
However, for a while, how to resolve the debate of whether there are hidden variables -- which seems question setup to be something in principle that can't be resolved by experiment, similar to resolving if there are ghosts we can't see or ever detect ever around or not by experiment -- had no experimental resolution.
Bells inequality is a proposed way to resolve the debate with experiment and prove the quantum entanglement realm is non-local and correlations are "made to exist" instantaneously without the cause needed for the correlation to happen travelling at slower than the speed of light (as opposed to if the values of the particle are set when the particles are created in an entangled state, then the information travels with them, since they already have the values to be discovered later, slower than light, to the detectors and so our usual visualization of cause remains local). Of course, we can change our intuition of cause to basically exclude these correlations, because scientist A is not able to use this effect to cause anything different to happen at B faster than the speed of light; so if cause is effecting events, then cause remains local and we just don't think about it more than this (the "shutup and calculate" view of physics).
I say "proposed way" because the experiments can involve crazy loopholes if not setup super carefully, and it get crazy complicated, and I'm not sure if there's consensus about what all the loopholes even are and if experiments have closed them all. Generally, new bell inequality experiments aim to close one loophole. If there's a proof about whether all the loopholes are for sure known about, I'm not aware of it. It's not like we're doing something like math and proofs in physics, obviously not: that would be crazy talk.
If I rig a bomb to explode if and only if the electron goes through the right slit, will the bomb explode? Will it only explode if a conscious agent could hear the explosion if it happened or is affected by it in some way? Etc
It talks specifically about consciousness at 16:38
The idea that consciousness plays any role is one of countless interpretations. It is not implied by anything youâve said here. And itâs not even popular.
To take a bit from the video:
âWhat was happening in the universe before conscious observers evolved?â
âWhat exactly counts as a conscious observer?â
âAccording to Einsteinâs theory of relativity, different events can seem to have happened at different times depending on observer. If the events were quantum wave collapse, which observer collapsed the wave functions?â
And many more issues.
Put another way: There is probably a reason most quantum mechanics interpretations that bring in consciousness are dismissed as pseudoscience nowadays by most experts. That being that itâs an unnecessary, problematic and poorly defined assumption.
Ah, but do you have a non-pseudoscientific definition of expert.
Aie, there's the rub. But don't worry! I nominate myself to fill this power vacuum.
Someone with a Phd or doctorate at least.
And itâs not the domain of science to define what âexpertâ means. So there is no scientific or pseudoscientific definition. But thatâs what I have in mind when I say âexpertâ.
We can devise an experiment to resolve who likely has these socially constructed tittles, but to propose an "experiment" that bestows the claims to knowledge we desire, in our version our science today, means we need an experiment and it needs to be done multiple times and be peer-reviewed by existing experts ... but we don't know who's an expert yet, so the experiments cannot be done and pass into our version of science.
Quoting khaled
If it's a claimed fact about the world, then it's clearly psuedoscience. That proposed empirical facts about the world (we can observe this PhD degree on the wall of this university and agree this person is an expert) can be a state of knowledge neither scientific nor psuedoscientific is itself pseudoscience gobblediegook.
Results of a straw poll taken at a conference of physicists at a Quantum Foundations meeting (by Anton Zelliger et al):
The Copenhagen Interpretation, associated with Bohr and Heisenberg, is shown to be the most accepted. It doesn't mention consciousness as such, but says that the observer has a role in the experimental outcome, which calls into question the purported 'mind-independent' nature of the result.
Quoting khaled
See this post.
Sure. But doesnât say âconscious observerâ does it? Iâm sure if you asked those same physicists of consciousness was required to collapse wave functions youâd get an overwhelming ânoâ.
Quoting Wayfarer
If only conscious observers were able to collapse wave functions, it would. But again, the theory says nothing like that. Only that an observer is required.
Quoting Wayfarer
No whatâs being asked is âWhat would the world look like without spectaclesâ. The answer is ânothing can be seenâ and thatâs a problem. Iâm not demanding you show me consciousness, Iâm asking what the world would look like absent of it. The common answer is: same as it always has been. If some apocalyptic event killed every conscious agent in existence, would all quantum states remain forever unresolved?
In your theory, consciousness is required to collapse wave functions. So what happens when no consciousness has evolved yet? Well, no wave functions have collapsed. What does that even look like? When everything is everywhere.
You mean looking at their resumes?
Quoting boethius
No, itâs a definition. An expert is someone with a PhD or doctorate. We can confirm whether or not someone has this by looking at their resume. Whatâs so difficult here?
You don't seem to be able to extricate yourself from your pseudoscientific beliefs about the world.
We can look at their resumes, I agree. Whether there is some difference between expert and layperson about our empirical world, relating to our state of knowledge as such and not features of society we are told about without experimental evidence, is what I disagree with.
Quoting khaled
So much difficulty. See above.
You can't just define experts into existence in any meaningful sense.
A physical observer is an objective instrumental observer not a person. Mathematical or plain language interpretation of the observations translates objective observation into a public hypothesis. Interpretation requires not one mind but the agreement of expert minds, which takes it from private opinion or belief into a public factoid.
Quoting boethius
Seeing the resume is experimental evidence.
And how do you think they got said features? If not by actually knowing what they're talking about (with maybe a few rare exceptions)?
Quoting boethius
So no experts exist I guess.....
Have a good one.
Those theories make sense to me. As the article says, "the absolute square of the wave function is interpreted as an actual matter density". I'd be inclined based on what I've read to interpret it as a multifaceted energy density that models waves and wavicles, and this makes it more intuitive to comprehend how degrees of freedom (variable rates) for both local and nonlocal motion of many types simultaneously obtain. According to the web: "quantum tunneling seems to happen instantaneously - or at least, so incredibly quickly that it's essentially instantaneous": measurable in attoseconds, or quintillionths of a second. So quantum nonlocality is probably never absolutely instantaneous, but in many contexts the measuring devices are not sensitive enough to register time elapsed. This doesn't mean that quantum processes aren't local - interactively correlated - in some sense, but its a completely different sort of physical interaction.
Bingo!
Quoting Enrique
Really?
"The square of the wave function, ?^2, however, does have physical significance: the probability of finding the particle described by a specific wave function ? at a given point and time is proportional to the value of ?^2." (Britannica)
I never got around to asking you a question you've probably been asked many times, but I'll take this opportunity if you don't mind. Math was always a weak point for me.
Is "pure" mathematics, meaning, mathematics that does not apply to the world (via physics, for example), something invented or discovered?
I think that's misleading because at the subatomic, quantum scale, absolute location and time don't exist for the model, instead an always approximate certainty about the position/momentum value. So it is more accurate to say Schrodinger's wave function doesn't represent the chances that a point particle is in a particular location, but rather the range of spacetime within which a quantity of energized matter is amorphously active. The matter within a quantum reference frame is not fundamentally a particle, a point in time, but rather some kind of perpetually fluxing, diffuse wavicle fused in a mathematically fuzzy way with what surrounds it. Encyclopedia Britannica is simplifying and reifying the model more than is necessary.
There's a whole thread on this and, predictably, there are different views on this.
Most practicing mathematicians at one time or another spend a short period contemplating this question. Then they move on and do mathematics. My thoughts are that some is invented and some is discovered. For example, I recently "invented" an attractor transform for certain functions. Then I set about trying to discover its features. (of course, it may have been invented before - that happens not infrequently in math)
Some philosophers like to ponder the question you posed. Most math people don't care. :cool:
And they should know better! :gasp:
(The good and bad threads should be combined under the rubric, Physics Jabber.)
This is a perennial topic in philosophy of maths and metaphysics. Platonic realism contends that number is real, i.e. not the product of the mind, but can only be grasped by a mind. So it's saying that abstracta are real. Naturalism has big problems accomodating that. Check out the SEP article Platonism in Philosophy of Maths. I think @jgill is correct, that some aspects are discovered - the natural numbers would be a natural! - but, having the capacity to count and perform mathematical operations, then there are all kinds of imaginary number systems that can be devised.
'An instrument' is a device constructed by an observer to capture data. Until that data is interpreted, then it doesn't constitute information - the difference between 'data' and 'information' is precisely that.
:ok:
Experimental evidence of what?
If I send you my resume with all known PhD diplomas that have ever existed, would you just accept the result of this experiment?
And how do we even know what PhD's diplomas exist you may wonder? Luckily I have a PhD in the history of PhD's on my resume, so you trust my expertise, question settled.
But then, being clever and insightful, you begin to wonder how I was able to accumulate over a million PhD diplomas. You scroll down and see "time travelling arts" and immediately jump to the only available conclusion based on the "experimental evidence" so far, which is I'm an immortal time travelling scholastic.
Still, you want to be sure and case may yet be closed. You see some of my PhD's have been issued recently, rather than centuries in the past or future as with most of them. So, being astute and careful, you call the institutions in question and ask around. What do you get? Pathetically useless anecdotes that don't prove anything at all. You demand experimental evidence to resolve your question! The dean of deans at the end of the line tells you to stop wasting their time and hangs up. You scream into phone that you're just trying to get at the experimental evidence that correctly distinguishes experts from non-experts in the same way we would expect to be satisfied in distinguishing electrons from protons, upon which the entire modern world is built, you mad person! But you hear only silence. You are forced to conclude that these institutions labeled "university" don't take knowledge seriously and can't be trusted.
You start pacing in your room. If there is no experimental evidence that can actually be carried out to distinguish between expert and layperson on a given subject, the whole epistemological foundation of global society may collapse. Bridges may collapse due to improper stressed concrete supervision, planes would fall out of the sky due to mad idiots making critical systems dependent on a single sensor, trump would be president! pandemics unleashed and place us all in lock downs and see the harrying day Westerners wear surgical masks in public like dirty Asians! The damages of an apocalypse of a world run by non-experts would have no realistic bounds; the icecaps could melt, species could go extinct at a rate not seen for tens of millions of years, we could even irrationally start killing the bees with chemicals they really don't like for all we could predict.
You pick up the phone, "give me the president of the United States of America". "President, smart and stable genius at that, speaking". You slam the phone down in horror: It's already begun. You turn on the TV to see the date; it's 2016, you've gone back in time, which doesn't surprise you as you have experimental evidence time travel exists, and you don't doubt the results of your experiments. Suddenly you see a shadowy figure in the corner holding some sort of exotic novelty cane. "It's you," you say. "Yes, it's me Khaled, Boethius from the forum -- which I'm sure you now realize is also the actual historical Boethius who discovered the secrets of time travel by taking a lot of drugs and talking with inter-dimensional muses -- and while you've been confident that experts have some real empirical experimental evidence establishing their expertise, rather than a historical social convention resulting in expertise labels without experiments available to confirm those labels really signify what we want them to signify, and have slept peacefully in your bed confident experts have organized everything in a reasonable way and you have no need to worry or even look our your window -- you need but focus on the extremely narrow area of expertise other experts have shoved your face into -- the world has actually not gone that way, and I've brought you back to 2016, to show you how it all began; the start of the destruction of your civilization because mad fools believed critical thinking could be delegated to experts and is not a collective social responsibility that succeeds or fails together, without any experiments available to convince us at any given time which is actually happening. "Now," I say seriously, "you have two choices: take the red pill, a massive complimentary dose of LSD, and I bring you back to ancient Greece and we do a bunch of orgies together, or take the blue pill, and I bring you back 2021, bring you up to speed on recent history, and you can try to work things out. Blue pill is also a complimentary dose of LSD; you want to do some LSD Khaled, cause that's why I'm here; most of my million PhD involve the psychedelic arts actually". You slam both pills into your mouth. After a long pause of appreciation, "so you're beginning to learn," I tell you.
If none are forgeries, yes.
Sigh.
When someone tells you electrons are attracted to other electrons, how do you know they're wrong? Or do you just not? Since my crazy idea that socially bestowed titles are pretty good indicators of expertise is so crazy.
I'm pretty sure they're wrong.
Based on experiments I've actually seen.
Sorry I didn't add the obvious implication of experimental evidence.
Experiments you can do yourself.
How did you learn that two electrons repel each other? Wasn't it some physics textbook somewhere in highschool? What made you trust that one?
I'm not sure when science became just "trust us", but that just so happens to be the exact same epistemological framework of the Catholic church, which science fans are so proud of over throwing with "experiments you can do yourself to convince yourself of what the answer really is rather than just believe what the churchmen tell you".
Yes, things I haven't actually done, like put two electrons together, I have less confidence in than things I have done.
Now, for technology, it's only an argument that supports a "science" used to create it because you can run experiments on the technology yourself. I can run calculations on a computer that satisfy me of it's information processing power and information density.
There's a lot you can do yourself.
You're also forgetting the important step of independent groups confirming results, increasing our confidence we aren't being fooled (experiments "anyone can do" if they want and report to us confirmation or refutation; we can then evaluate their credibility as we wish, but there's no second experiment that actually tells us their credibility ... other than more groups we trust more doing the same experiment, or then ourselves if it means that much to us), rather than just believing experts.
What you can't do is propose an experiment that distinguishes between expert and non-expert.
Of course, maybe independent groups are secretly colluding to fool us. Ultimately, my trust in the reports of others is indistinguishable from my trust in humanity as a whole. Some level of scheming I find implausible, but not due to some experiment I've run but because I don't get "the feeling" the people around me are that duplicitous and I have "the feeling" humanity as a whole is similar. Of course, there's definitely schemes, based on the same feelings about people around me, I find completely plausible, like pretending "experts" backup the idea of selling people a lot of opioids. Essentially by definition I cannot actually verify by experiment exactly how trustworthy people are, I'm forced to make due with guessing and keeping an eye on things. Unless you have such an experiment, then the situation is that the purpose of an expert is that we trust them; it cannot be some experiment that tells us to or not and even less some expert of experts.
But you have some confidence in them. Where does that come from? All the evidence you have that they do is what was written in your physics textbook. It's almost as if you have the absolutely insane idea that experts generally are trustworthy. Could you imagine someone unironically thinking that mere social titles make someone more trustworthy! :rofl:
Quoting boethius
What the hell was that novella then?
Quoting boethius
I'm pretty sure the people in these independent groups happen have PhDs most of the time....
Quoting boethius
Right, and what do you look at when you make your guesses? Does someone having a PhD or Doctorate improve your chances of trusting them in any way? That would be crazy! It's a paltry social title after all!
I just told you: independent groups I have (for not experimental reasons) reason to believe are really independent and have run the same experiments and confirmed the same results; 2. interacting with technology that must be doing "something" and proposed explanations coherent with that and implausible that (again not due to experimental evidence by my feelings of humanity's trustworthiness) has been made up to gaslight me.
Quoting khaled
One can always imagine some more complicated scheme fooling oneself in every way. It's an old philosophical exercise. Have you not heard of Descartes? I'm not suprised if you haven't; obviously he has nothing to do with your version of science.
Quoting khaled
You haven't bothered to reflect on anything I have said. I've made it clear that expert (to me) is the result of historical process and convention, and not a result of experiment. People get PhD as part of a historical process, not by getting in some box that verifies they are indeed made of "PhD substance" that is distinguishable from "layperson substance". Because I have this view, the credibility of PhD's is related to the political institutions that produce them, and I can doubt more an "expert" in China saying the CCP is like, the bestest or then an "expert" in Nazi Germany saying their race is superior to others. If, however, there's a political system I trust more that also produces experts, I trust those experts more.
Right. And all I was saying is that itâs implausible that most experts (from trustworthy institutions that have no motivation to lie about this) saying that consciousness is not required for quantum wave collapse, are gaslighting us. This isnât even a political issue. There is no reason to lie here. Do you agree with that much?
Then you seemed to me to be dismissing all that on the basis that an expert is indistinguishable from a layperson. Which is absurd. You distinguish them with basically all the same qualifiers. PhD, good, political corruption, bad and so on.
Yes, do even know this? Where's the data? And if so, what experiment allows us to distinguish between a "real expert" and not.
As for the subject matter, if someone talking about "science" doesn't have an experiment to backup their claim, it doesn't matter anyway. What you should say (even if you had the above data) is "most experts speculate consciousness is not needed for wave collapse".
But if it's just speculation, who cares?
History (which produces experts), if you bother to look at it, show us "experts" mostly agreeing on a lot of speculations at any given time. Most experts, until recently, nearly all "speculated" the expansion of the universe was slowing down, the question was just how much. Then someone (and it doesn't matter if they're an expert or not) provided evidence that the expansion is actually speeding up. Other groups then independently confirmed this ... maybe; more actual experiments, actually independent maybe needed to increase our confidence to certainty (there could be something seriously wrong with distance measurements, considering the conflict in measuring the Hubble constant may mean we're missing something profound). For now however, "experts" mostly speculate the universe is indeed accelerating in it's expansion.
Point is, what the experts mostly speculated before and what they mostly speculate now doesn't matter, what matters is experiment, independent verification, and the trust (based on feeling) that we place in such verifying experiments (that also extends to ourselves as part of this vaguely trustworthy humanity, as we can also do an experiment ourselves, but do it wrong).
Until recently a lot of "experts" speculated the LHC would give evidence of super-symmetry particles, like they did for previous accelerators; and with good reason, after a good run of discovering new particles with every bigger accelerator there wasn't good reason to assume it would stop. Point is, someone working on theories where the LHC doesn't discover anything more than the Higgs before the LHC results, was not "wrong" because many experts speculated otherwise. Speculation of experts doesn't resolve issues, otherwise no scientific breakthrough would ever happen (as they are almost always fringe ideas when they are first thought of, and would be discarded the moment they are thought of due to "contrary expert speculation").
Not an experiment. But you manage to do it. I manage to do it in the same way. So does everyone I think.
Quoting boethius
Which is precisely why physicists at large do not think consciousness is required for quantum wave collapse.
Quoting boethius
Huh? No that's not how this works. In the sciences we don't add unnecessary assumptions. If some madman wanted to convince the world that every time photosynthesis happens a pink elephant is miraculously created on a certain planet that is too far away for us to see (assume this is consistent with all our laws of physics), we usually reply "Ok but what's your evidence". He can't then reply "You don't have evidence it ain't happenin, you just speculatin it ain't".
That's what you're doing here. Someone says "consciousness is required for quantum wave collapse". People ask "Where is your evidence". He doesn't have any. So people rationally should conclude that it isn't required. Since we seem to be able to explain everything without it. You can't just say "that's just speculation". No, that it is required is the speculation that needs proving. Because we don't need consciousness to explain quantum phenomena.
Quoting boethius
Great. And there hasn't been an experiment that shows consciousness is required for quantum collapse. And there are countless problems that would occur if it were required. Therefore it is reasonable to believe it isn't required. That's why experts say it isn't required.
Quoting boethius
This isn't a similar scenario. In this case, both hypotheses are consistent with our experimental data and no new assumptions are added. Either the universe is expanding or it's contracting, in either case, our laws of physics don't change. We can't tell yet, we need more evidence. Someone found evidence. Now we can tell, great.
But in the case of the consciousness requirement, it's purely extra. We don't need it to explain anything. Either the consciousness is required or it isn't, however we have everything we need to explain quantum phenomena without consciousness. Adding consciousness would complicate our models for no reason. And we don't have enough experimental data to add them. Nevermind that adding them can be problematic. It would be exactly like saying that photosynthesis has pink elephant materializing properties. Why the extra complication when we can explain everything without pink elephants? EVEN IF pink elephants and consciousness requirements are consistent with our laws of physics? (Pink elephants are an example of mass being created out of nowhere so they do violate them. And consciousness requirements violate them too as they imply that without a human measurement, any quantum event remains unresolved)
Quoting boethius
But was unreasonable.
Quoting boethius
No it doesn't, but it determines what's reasonable to believe. Of all the things experts have at first thought of as a fringe idea not worth pursuing very very few end up being correct. Most are just that, fringe ideas not worth pursuing. It's unreasonable to bet on the small chance. Especially since I doubt you do that in most areas.
Some people think the earth is flat. It could be the case that it is a massive conspiracy carried out for no reason. Do you give this fringe idea serious consideration? No. So why the fringe idea that consciousness is required?
That's not what's meant by "observation" in the copenhagen interpretation. Just from a skim of wikipedia:
"A common perception of "the" Copenhagen interpretation is that an important part of it is the "collapse" of the wave function.[3] In the act of measurement, it is postulated, the wave function of a system can change suddenly and discontinuously. Prior to a measurement, a wave function involves the various probabilities for the different potential outcomes of that measurement. But when the apparatus registers one of those outcomes, no traces of the others linger."
"Because they assert that the existence of an observed value depends upon the intercession of the observer, Copenhagen-type interpretations are sometimes called "subjective". This term is rejected by many Copenhagenists because the process of observation is mechanical and does not depend on the individuality of the observer."
"Of course the introduction of the observer must not be misunderstood to imply that some kind of subjective features are to be brought into the description of nature. The observer has, rather, only the function of registering decisions, i.e., processes in space and time, and it does not matter whether the observer is an apparatus or a human being; but the registration, i.e., the transition from the "possible" to the "actual," is absolutely necessary here and cannot be omitted from the interpretation of quantum theory."
I still say that even if the measurement is made by a machine, the machine is a scientific apparatus and augments the human senses. The 'registration' is the key point. If that registration was made by a system that was never observed by a human, then that result would never be known, and so would be irrelevant.
One of Wheeler's essays says this:
[quote=John Wheeler, Law without Law]The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it gives us. In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word 'phenomenon'. In today's words, Bohr's point - and the central point of quantum theory - can be put in a simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon." ...A phenomenon is not a phenomenon until it has been brought to a close by an irreversible act of amplification such as the blackening of a grain of silver bromide emulsion or the trigerring of a photodetector. In broader terms, we find that nature at the quantum level is not a machine that goes its inexorable way. Instead what answer we get depends on the question we put, the experiment we arrange, the registering device we choose. We inescapably involved with bringing about that which appears to be happening.[/quote]
There's a very interesting article on Wheeler which explores some of these ideas, here https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/does-the-universe-exist-if-were-not-looking.
Point is, the quantum wave will collapse in that case. That is the contention here. It is what (pretty much) all the scientists think.
Also from your article:
"Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real."
"The particle, as with the photons in the two-slit experiment, exists in many possible states at once, traveling in every possible direction, not quite real and solid until it interacts with something, say a piece of mica in Earth's crust. (I doubt that's conscious)When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real. In this case the mica, not a conscious being (I don't think you can get more explicit than this), is the object that transforms what might happen into what does happen."
All wheeler is saying is that humans can collapse the wave function. That's not the contention here. The contention is that you want to say they're the only way it collapses. Even the guy in your own article doesn't think so.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good, then trust this one that you linked me. It says consciousness is not required.
You also say that this is some evidence of idealism:
Quoting Wayfarer
If any ol physical thing can collapse the wave function, then it's not our mind doing it is it? At least, there is no reason to think so. So it IS mind independent. But measurement dependent (and measurement is, again, not done by a conscious agent necessarily). That's what your article says too.
If a rock can collapse the wave function then what's likely collapsing it in our case is our eyes, not our minds. So this is no evidence of idealism. You need it to be the case that minds/consciousness are doing something for it to be evidence of idealism. But there is no experimental evidence that that is the case. And nothing you've cited so far supports it being the case. And there are plenty of problems if it were the case.
Quoting Wayfarer
So, we can agree that none of what you've said so far offers evidence for idealism?
Quoting Wayfarer
Because theories that have it collapse are infinitely more complicated. I already gave you a video about them. Most of them have issues or pose new questions. The MWI is the one with the fewest scientific issues (as in, it poses no new questions) I'm pretty sure but is the hardest to swallow otherwise.
The "consciousness is required for wave function collapse" interpretation has a boatload of issues. Such as: Why? Or: What exactly counts as a conscious agent? And many many more.
You make it seem like scientists are all getting together in a circle thinking "No, we must not let idealism triumph, release the MWI!" When really it's more like: The MWI is the most straightforward simple explanation, and scientists are trying more complicated models in an effort to preserve the world being one world. Which you could argue is unscientific.
Then again, I'm not certain it's WITHOUT issues. But I know it's one of the theories with the fewest issues. And the "consciousness is required" one is one of the ones with the most.
Quoting Wayfarer
Alternative to what? In all cases the universal wave function is "objectively real" as in it exists. You wanted to propose that consciousness is required to collapse it. That is a very fringe view without supporting evidence and a lot of problems. Some people propose it collapses due to a pilot wave or due to gravity and so on and so on. Maybe you mean in this case the wave function is not "objectively real" because not all alternatives exist and instead, only one exists in the end though which is undecided.
Some other people simply throw their hands up and say "Fuck it, wave function doesn't collapse". The latter have the simplest explanation, that's why it's even on the radar. Because it's simple though seems ridiculous.
And in this case "objectively real" seems to fit the bill. The theory proposes that all the alternatives exist. Sounds pretty "objectively real" to me. Because here you don't even need to measure anything for it to "collapse into existence", all the alternatives exist, measured or not. (Well, they're all measured, just in different worlds!)
And if that was all there was to it, then would be no point in writing the article or any point in the so-called âdelayed choiceâ experiment, if the only point was to prove the obvious reality of naive realism.
Quoting khaled
Nothing could be more âcomplicatedâ that the idea that everything that happens, happens an infinite number of times in an infinite number of parallel worlds. And it does this, just to avoid the implications of the measurement problem.
Quoting khaled
Not so. The wave function is an equation. The ontological status of the wave function - whether or in what sense it is real - is precisely the point at issue. I am not inventing that, and itâs not âmy viewâ. Pick up a copy of eitherManjit Kumar Quantum: Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, or David Lindley, Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science (the first is better). You will find that the idea that the observing subject is part of the result is not at all âfringeâ, itâs the central philosophical issue. Look at the subtitle of those books! What do you think the arguments were about? Skittles?
Neils Bohr gave a lecture to the members of the Vienna Circle in the 1950âs about quantum physics. At the finish, they all applauded politely and hardly asked any questions. Bohr said to them âif youâre not shocked by quantum physics, then you havenât understood itâ.
It's not an experiment, it's not science. It's pseudoscience with all the same trappings of other pseudosiences: plausible sounding reasoning, anecdotes, unfalsefiable claims.
I'm just not in denial about it. Maybe other pseudoscientific things are reasonable to believe as well.
As reasonable as believing there's some people that have a consciousness made of "expertise" in some way.
So no then. Great! We're agreed.
I'm pretty sure you don't understand what we've agreed to, but maybe you're feeling lucky.
Quoting boethius
And if this:
Quoting khaled
is as reasonable as that then you think it's unreasonable. Great. We're agreed.
I'm not really following you anymore.
I ask: Quoting khaled
You respond:
Quoting boethius
If the belief that consciousness is required for wave function collapse, for you, is as reasonable as believing that some people have a consciousness made of "expertise" (which is not what I was saying but ok) and the belief that some people have a consciousness made of "expertise" is unreasonable, the the belief that consciousness is required for wave function collapse is unreasonable. Which is all I was saying.
If A is as reasonable as B
And B is not reasonable
Then A is not reasonable.
I said as reasonable. Both are claims about consciousness we are unable to verify by experiment. They seem equally reasonable to me in this regard.
As a belief you clearly find unreasonable since you call having it being "In denial"
Quoting boethius
I said you're in denial it is a pseudoscientific belief, whereas I am not. Two beliefs being "as reasonable to believe" do not make them true. I trust people, even some experts; I think it's reasonable, but I do not think it is therefore true. Some people turn out to be untrustworthy, even if I thought it reasonable to trust them before.
Sure. But if one of them is unreasonable it makes the other unreasonable.
Do you think Quoting boethius
Is reasonable?
Yeah, I say both are reasonable.
Quoting khaled
Yes.
What I don't believe is that it is resolvable by experiment, just as whether anyone else is conscious to begin with is not resolvable by experiment (which solves the relativity problems of wave collapse if I'm the only conscious observer, by the by). Again, my belief other people are conscious is pseudoscience.
Quoting boethius
If we did an experiment that showed that even without any conscious observers the wave would collapse anyways, would it be reasonable to believe consciousness is not required then?
No plenty of things are more complicated than "It all happens". If it all happens there is no more need to calculate why it all happens. No need to calculate what the pilot wave looks like for example.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, that's not the idea I find fringe. The fringe idea is that the observing thing has to be a conscious subject and if it's not a conscious subject the wave will never collapse.
Every single interpretation of quantum mechanics has it so that the wave function collapses when observed by us. That's not fringe. But the one you're putting forward has it collapse ONLY when observed by us. That's the problematic view.
As for the articles:
Quoting Wayfarer
"the notion that âthe physical environmentâ is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in âRenninger-typeâ experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The Universe is entirely mental."
Renninger experiments are though experiments where, when you observe nothing going through slit B that has the same wave-collapsing effect as observing something going through slit A, since the particle can ONLY go through A or B. It was covered in the video you sent me.
But it's not clear that the interpretation of that is that "Our mind seeing nothing" is what's causing the collapse. Maybe it's simply "Our eyes seeing nothing". The guy is begging the question here. He hasn't proven it's the mind doing anything, he just declared that the physical environment is not enough because.... it's our mind doing it!
Quoting Wayfarer
The title is clickbait. The article is about entanglement. Nowhere does he say that "consciousness" or "mind" is required for wave function collapse. All he says is that quantum entaglement has been proven and that it challenges a lot of our assumptions.
In fact it explicitly says:
"What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects â the particles, electrons, quarks etc. â cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality"
This far, we can all agree (except for MWI people). Every quantum mechanics interpretation where the wave function collapses means that the particles don't "exist" proper until observed.
"This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of ... Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either."
This amounts to "Reality is formed by our measurements".
This is hardly new. It's true in every interpretation. What you're trying to put forward is that reality is formed ONLY by our measurements. That's not what he's saying. He never said that our measurement is required for reality, only that it is sufficient.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure no one is denying that. But it's very few and getting fewer. There was a time when the "consciousness style" copenhagen interpretation (von NeumannâWigner interpretation) was vogue but not anymore.
There is no such experiment proposed, even in principle.
But yes, if there was, it would no longer be pseudoscience but science.
The pseudoscientific beliefs that are unreasonable are the one's contradicted by actual experiments that you can repeat.
By-the-by, no apparatus can count to infinity and so infinite worlds is pseudoscience, not real science. The "popular" physicists that talk about infinite worlds are complete morons. (And before you say it's not infinite, just near infinite there's so many: any finite number is totally miniscule compared to infinity; the largest number that can possibly be represented in the entire accessible universe using all available energy and material and building up the most compact way to represent the largest numbers in the axiomatic system of your choice; is a minuscule number incredibly close to zero when compared to infinity).
Quoting boethius
Yes there is:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0509/0509042.pdf
Basically: If we can prove that the eyes cause wave function collapse fully, then it's not consciousness doing it is it (assuming you're a dualist)? Unless you want to then propose that eyes are conscious.
Quoting boethius
Why must we be able to count worlds for it to be science? It's not a real infinity anyways. It's just that every time something happens, there are worlds where it didn't, as far as I understand. We can in principle find every possible outcome. Though not practically. Where would that land it?
If you collapse a wave function of an electron there is an infinite number of points where it can end up (with there being an infinite number of points between two points and all that). Does that make wave function collapse psuedoscience too?
What about particle decay? It is completely random, and there is an infinite number of times at which it can decay. No apparatus can measure all the possible times a particle can decay.
This does not seem any different than just experimental apparatus causing wave function collapse, just eyes being apparatus.
The whole point of the question is that "whatever is there" before observation we don't know about until we observe it. Schrodinger's cat in the box.
The paper you cite just goes over the "apparatus" or "external entropy" causes wave collapse arguments. It does not propose an experiment that I can build, turn it on, and be convinced wave collapse has nothing to do with consciousness. An "argument" even in the reputable https://arxiv.org/ does not an experiment make.
Quoting khaled
Yes, I thought you would reply this and I had already edited my comment above, but unfortunately not before you already saw it, so here it is again:
Quoting boethius
Yes. Which means it's not the consciousness doing it. If the wave was already collapsed by the time it made it through your eyes, before it got processed in any way by the brain then it's your eyes doing it. Not your mind.
The hypothesis is precisely that the apparatus does NOT cause collapse and that our mind does.
We can agree you don't become aware of a color until the corresponding wave at least makes it through your eyes right? If by then it's already collapsed, then there is not much left for your awareness to do then is there (assuming you're a dualist, a reductionist would just look at this confused).
Quoting boethius
Ok, all this shows is that "infinite worlds" is a misnomer. Some just call it "many worlds" anyways. So "many worlds" is scientific?
And itâs common practice in the sciences and math to call anything that increases forever ânear infiniteâ. It doesnât literally mean near infinite. It means it increases forever (usually very rapidly)
And again:
Quoting khaled
Quoting khaled
There are two examples where we can't calculate every outcome yet we call it a science. Or would you say that particle decay and wave function collapse are psuedoscience?
Anyways I have to go now.
I'm not sure you're getting it.
We cannot, by definition "observe" when wave collapse happens before an observation.
If you say your eyes cause wave collapse (which already isn't necessarily a coherent use of the word cause), then we'd need an apparatus that makes observations on your eyes to see this eye-wave-collapse phenomenon happening.
If wave collapse happens before observation, we cannot, in principle, observe it. It can always be argued that the cat with the poison is in a super position of different states, and when we open and look, our eyes are in a super position too.
There is nothing in quantum mechanics itself that prevents, in principle, "pan super position" of just setting up the wave function of the whole universe and letting it evolve. If we do this for the big bang or any moment after the big bang, there is nothing in quantum mechanics that forces "observations" to collapse the universal wave function.
It's totally coherent, in principle, to just have a cosmic wave function that then evolves with time and is never "observed" to resolve uncertainties (i.e. collapse the wave function).
What is incoherent in this approach is that we do not (by we I mean my individual consciousness and any like consciousness) observe the wave function of the superposition of all possibilities since the big bang, but we observe one clear possibility.
It's only consciousness that for sure forces us to even come up with wave function collapse in the first place. If you presented the wave function to a mathematician that doesn't know what it's about, they wouldn't be able to find why and when it needs to "collapse" for the math to be coherent. It can evolve in time in it's wavy form indefinitely.
If one sets up a wave function with an "apparatus", the above mathematician would just view it as more particles in the wave function, nothing intrinsically special about the apparatus than the experiment it's connected too.
What makes "apparatus" special is psychics is that we consciously observe the apparatus and so see definite states of the apparatus and not superimposition of states.
This doesn't mean consciousness "causes wave collapse", but "we" cannot "know" about definite states of the universe until we become conscious of those states. What happens before, in principle, we cannot know about unless we look and become conscious of what's happening before (which is now no longer "before" we're conscious of it).
Given all this, it is as reasonable to believe consciousness collapses wave functions as some entropy threshold or the like.
Since math began with numbers, that looks like a good place to start. Numbers are, whatever else they might be, patterns or abstractions. Being patterns, they need to exist out there - external to the mind - for them to be perceived. In this sense numbers (math) is a discovery (of a pattern in nature).
On the other hand, it seems we can create, from scratch, entire worlds based on nothing else but numbers - numerical universes as it were - with no corresponding real world objects/phenomena. In this sense, numbers (math) is an invention.
I wish I could've given some relevant examples but none spring to mind. My apologies.
It appears that math is both an invention and a discovery.
Thatâs because itâs philosophically demanding and goes against the grain of realism, so itâs convenient to dismiss it. Besides most physicists donât give a tinkerâs cuss about the âmeaning of quantum physicsâ. You can have a career in science without even thinking about it. A lot of physicists are employed in sci-tech, defence, aerospace, electronics, all kinds of things. None of this is of any interest or relevance to those occupations - (but then, this is a philosophy forum, so the philosophical implications ought to be of interest here.
Qbism is worth knowing about.
Hey careful now. Patterns are regular - the Fibonacci sequence. But do the prime numbers form a pattern? I think not (although thereâs this.) Anyway, thatâs a philosophy of math subject, not a good (or bad) physics subject.
Oops! I posted in the wrong thread. Sorry!
Anyway...
Good point! However, the holy grail of number theory - understanding prime numbers - is, all said and done, the search for a pattern within a pattern. The parent pattern (natural numbers) is extracted from nature; the daughter pattern (primes) is an altogether different story.
I'll watch the video later and get back to you later if I think of anything worthwhile. G'day.
The (mathematical) equations of physics seem to pick out extra-mental aspects of the world. Why this is so is a good question.
But "by themselves", it's hard to make out what numbers amount to, much less to figure out why we can even access them at all. It does not seem to provide benefits for evolutionary purposes, outside of say counting with your hands. Beyond that it becomes bizarre.
Numbers are abstractions of/patterns in the world at large is how I see it. I recall a video in which the speaker points to a picture of 5 fruits, was it?, and then spreads his 5 fingers and says, I'm paraphrasing, "that someone figured out there's the quantitiy 5 in common between these two common everyday objects is an amazing achievement."
Again with the conspiracy theories. Maybe it's because it's problematic in itself? So far you haven't provided any good arguments for it. The first article explicitly says it's not the case (after you praised your sources, quite ironic). Second begs the question. And final article doesn't comment on it at all.
That's really what I'm arguing against here. Not the interpretations themselves but the conspiracy theory that scientists are all gaslighting us and hiding the enlightened truth of idealism because they're uncomfortable with it.
I'll just leave this here. I don't intend to debate the validity of the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation anymore. If all the above objections, in addition to the fact that even its founders left it for objective collapse theories, in addition that one of your own articles clearly says its false doesn't convince you, I don't think anything will.
"The evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having taken place at various times. These, presumably, are quantum events, so they would exist only in linearly superposed form until they finally led to the evolution of a conscious beingâwhose very existence depends on all the right mutations having 'actually' taken place!"
Perhaps the simplest argument against it by Roger Penrose, unless you're some sort of panpsychist.
Not true. Not even for MWI. MWI is the theory that ALL the possibilities happen. As in a universe where the wave function collapsed to A is created and another universe where the wave function was collapsed to B is created, and so on....
But in all cases, it must collapse in an individual universe. Or else it would make no sense to talk of evolution or big bangs, just some quantum soup. Roger Penrose puts it nicely:
"The evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having taken place at various times. These, presumably, are quantum events, so they would exist only in linearly superposed form until they finally led to the evolution of a conscious beingâwhose very existence depends on all the right mutations having 'actually' taken place!"
Quoting boethius
It doesn't. Now, is the common factor across all the times where it collapses our consciousness, or something else?
Well our consciousness will always be common, no matter what, obviously. When we observe a wave function, and it collapses, obviously "we observed" will be common across all occurrences of this. But that is not enough evidence to conclude that it is what is causing the collapse.
To test this we can set up 2 different, 2 stage tests, where in order to pass an electron has to remain uncollapsed. In the first machine after the first test, put a conscious observer with an apparatus. In the second machine, after the first test, put a measuring machine.
The particle will pass the first test in both cases (just confirmation it's uncollapsed) then fail the second test in both cases. On one side you had a conscious observer, on the other you had a measuring machine. Remove the measuring machine, and all of a sudden the particle passes both tests.
So consciousness is not required. Because if it was, the particles would have passed the two stage test with the measuring machine.
Something similar was already done:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0412003.pdf
Quoting boethius
False. If you set up a measuring machine and no one looks at the results, the wave function will still collapse. That's the reason the whole consciousness requirement is ridiculous. In addition to the evolution argument above. And countless more (such as: What even is sufficiently conscious to cause wave function collapse)
Quoting boethius
If consciousness was the only thing that could collapse it, the particle would pass the test when a measuring machine is used but the results aren't looked at. It doesn't.
It also just so happens that our eyes are good enough to cause this collapse on their own. If you put an eye instead of the measuring machine in the previous example, the particle would still collapse and not pass the test. So even in cases where we do observe the wave function it can't be said that our consciousness is the one doing anything.
It seems that the Bell inequality is an [s]equation[/s] inequality that claims that a certain probability must be greater than or equal to another probability IFF there are hidden variables which seems to be just another way of saying quantum mechanics is incomplete in the sense something is missing from it in its present form.
Experimental evidence seems to violate the Bell inequality which implies that there are no hidden variables so to speak and quantum mechanics is complete.
Neils Bohr won!
'Hidden variables' is the De Broglie/David Bohm theory - that hidden variables cause the correlation. I don't think that's suggested as the solution although it's mentioned somewhere in the presentation.
Nothing to do with conspiracy theories. And what, pray tell, is poisonous or conspiratorial about philosophical idealism? It is, in my view, the mainstream of the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with Platonism. Of course there are issues of interpretation, but many physicists since the early 20th c have evinced idealist leanings, not least Heisenberg, whose book Physics and Philosophy comes out in favour of Plato over Democritus. It's your white-knucked clinging to scientific realism that is always at issue in our debates.
[quote=Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World]The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind ⌠To put the conclusion crudely â the stuff of the world is mind-stuff. As is often the way with crude statements, I shall have to explain that by "mind" I do not exactly mean mind and by "stuff" I do not at all mean stuff. Still that is about as near as we can get to the idea in a simple phrase. The mind-stuff of the world is something more general than our individual conscious minds; but we may think of its nature as not altogether foreign to feelings in our consciousness ⌠Having granted this, the mental activity of the part of world constituting ourselves occasions no great surprise; it is known to us by direct self-knowledge, and we do not explain it away as something other than we know it to be â or rather, it knows itself to be.[/quote]
[quote=Max Planck]All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.[/quote]
I made a mistake which I've now corrected in the post above.
:ok:
Nothing. When did I say there is any conspiracy to push for philosophical idealism?
Quoting Wayfarer
But you did say that the von Neumann interpretation was avoided because of âbig philosophical implicationsâ. Sounds exactly like a conspiracy theory. Scientists didnât want the nasty idealists to win so they came up with any number of alternatives to the von Neumann interpretation.
No, it was avoided because itâs wrong, even by its own originators eventually. Wave functions collapse in the absence of anything conscious to collapse them. Or else conscious things wouldnât have evolved in the first place to collapse wave functions.
Quoting Wayfarer
I wouldnât say idealist leaning more so theistic leanings.
This sounds to me like arguing for intelligent design, not idealism. Or maybe some sort of panpsychism?
But even if that was the case, I donât have a problem with idealism itself. I have a problem with trying to imply that wave functions require consciousness to collapse when they simply.... donât.
Not at all. It's simply that realism is the natural attitude. Thinking through the implications of idealism takes philosophical acumen.
But thatâs not why the interpretation was largely discarded. It was discarded because it doesnât make sense.
So what you're arguing is that the 'observer problem' or 'measurement problem' in quantum physics actually doesn't exist. I think that's just because it doesn't make sense to you.
Largely discarded, by whom? Where is the evidence for that? What are the alternatives?
Quoting Wayfarer
So you think the alternatives are: Either consciousness is the only thing capable of causing wave functions collapse, or the observer problem doesnât exist?
Please explain to me why you think those are the only two alternatives. I donât think they are, clearly. If they were, youâd expect there to be 2 interpretations of quantum mechanics, either multiple worlds, where the measurement problem doesnât exist, or Von Neumann, where consciousness is the only thing capable of causing wave functions collapse. Thatâs clearly not the case.
So why do you think those are the only two options in light of this? All the other interpretations are simply wrong? Even though they make up what about 70-80% of physicists believe according to your poll?
Quoting Wayfarer
The vast majority of the scientific community.
Quoting Wayfarer
Evidence it doesnât make sense? Iâve provided plenty. And youâve provided none supporting it by the way. Evidence itâs largely discarded? That itâs known by most scientists to be simply false. It doesnât even show up on the poll you linked me. Itâs so fringe it is considered âotherâ.
Quoting Wayfarer
The bunch I linked you are a good start. Pilot wave theory. Copenhagen interpretation (which doesnât necessarily require consciousness in any way). Many worlds. Etc. Or take your own poll as a source of alternatives.
I think that the 'observer problem' or 'measurement problem' in physics is precisely due to the fact that 'the act of observation' has a material effect on the outcome of experiments in quantum physics. This is the origin of the controversy, and the reason there is a problem of interpretation. They don't necessarily refer to consciousness but to the act of observation or registration or measurement. It can be argued that this act of observation can be made by an apparatus, not a person, but that begs the question of why the apparatus existed in the first place, and also whether anything it measures or registers constitutes information until it is interpreted by those who made the apparatus. If you say it does, it simply kicks the can down that road, so to speak; ultimately the information is interpreted by a human being, and whether it exists uninterpreted can only ever be an assumption. So asserting that observation doesn't imply a human observer doesn't solve the problem, it only tries to hold it at arm's length.
What is referred to as the wave-function collapse is simply that, prior to the act of measurement or registration, there is not a particle at a definite location with definite properties. What there is, is a distribution of probabilities which define the degree of likelihood of the particle being found at a place and time with such and such properties. When the measurement is made, all of those degrees of probability vanish, because the particle now has definite properties, which previously it didn't. That is the 'wave-function collapse' in a nutshell - the probablity distribution has now collapsed into a certainty. That is why, in the classic double-slit experiment, whether you get a wave pattern or a particle distribution depends on whether the particle has been observed before passing through the barrier. But this is not because the act of measurement literally interferes with the object. Brian Greene says, in the Fabric of the Cosmos:
Basically, this is what the Copenhagen interpretation says, although it's very important to note that this is NOT a scientific theory or hypothesis at all. It's more like notes on what can and can't be said on the basis of quantum physics.
Now the 'relative state formulation' of Hugh Everett simply says, what if this collapse never occurs? It proposes that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some world or universe. The implication of this is the infamous 'sliding doors' universe idea, where every possible thing that could happen, does happen, in some parallel world. Philip Ball has a very good current article on what is wrong with this idea. (Neils Bohr wouldn't even discuss the idea with Everett when the latter was given the opportunity to meet him.)
That 'Copenhagen intepretation' is thought of as 'weird' is simply because of the fact that 'the observer' has a role at all. Conventional science wants to make statements about what is really the case without any reference to 'the observer'. So a lot of scientifically-inclined people can't deal with the requirement to include the observer. This is not 'a conspiracy theory', it has a sound philosophical basis. If you think philosophical arguments constitute a conspiracy theory, then maybe you're in the wrong forum.
Yup. But again, âobservationâ doesnât have to be conscious. If it were then consciousness wouldâve never evolved in the first place! You need collapse to happen to get macro objects, such as humans or animals. So unless youâre a panpsychist, it canât be that observation requires consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
No? How does it beg the question? The apparatus doesnât need to be made by us. For reference: Eyes.
Quoting Wayfarer
Idk what âregisters as informationâ means. But what does in fact happen is that the wave function collapses before anyone has looked at the results of the measuring machine. If it didnât, consciousness wouldnât have evolved in the first place. There would be no electrons or atoms, just quantum soup. You need electrons and atoms to make planets, and water, and humans.
Quoting Wayfarer
False. Whether or not the wave function is collapsed has testable consequences. If a wave is collapsed or does something. If itâs uncollapsed it does another thing. Look at the classic double slit experiment. If we measure which slit the electron goes through, IE, if we collapse the wave, you get 2 stripes. If you donât collapse the wave, you get an interference pattern.
Now you think, that whatâs collapsing the wave is us seeing the results of the measurement. Ok. Attach a measuring device on the slits. Next, make a simple AI that can distinguish between the 2 stripe pattern and an interference pattern. If the interference pattern is seen, make the machine dispense a cookie. If a 2 stripe pattern is seen, no cookie. Now run the experiment and go to the cookie dispenser without looking at anything. You will find that there are no cookies waiting for you :sad:. In other words, the measuring device was enough to collapse the wave function so a 2 stripe pattern is detected, and no cookies are dispensed. Or a simpler thought experiment:
Quoting Wayfarer
Which would result in there being no macro objects at all. If thatâs the case consciousness wouldnât have evolved in the first place. So no, collapse has to happen without consciousness in order for consciousness to even exist.
Quoting Wayfarer
Itâs the most widely held interpretation even today. Yet at the same time most scientists say consciousness is not required. So, what does that tell you about whether or not the observer needs to be conscious?
Quoting Wayfarer
There is no philosophy in âa lot of scientifically inclined people canât deal with the requirement to include the observerâ. Maybe some sociology or psychology, but itâs not a philosophical argument.
And it amounts to saying that all the scientists are getting together in a circle to fight against the evil specter of idealism.
Itâs not that scientists abandoned the von Neumann interpretation because they didnât like idealism. They (again, including its own founders) abandoned it because its problematic. The first amounts to a conspiracy theory.
If thatâs what you think then weâre done.
Or any of the other objections. If a dog uses the measuring device will the wave function have collapsed? What about a mantis? What about a bacteria? Which of these is âconscious enoughâ for collapse?
Never-mind the fact that we can test this and find that it will collapse without any animal or human being there at all. Because the wave not collapsing has consequences. Which we can test.
Now I can see the problem. In today's understanding, consciousness, mind, the observer, are all the products of evolution. There was no mind before evolution, so how could any observers exist?
The problem is that this is what the 'observer problem' ultimately calls into question. That's why it's controversial. As I said already, Einstein had to ask the question 'does the moon exist when we're not looking at it.' Of course, I think Einstein was utterly certain that it does, but he was obliged to raise the question, in light of what quantum physics was saying. This is why he had the 30-year debate with Neils Bohr that is descibed in the Manjit Kumar and David Lindley books I mentioned.
I think that the problem can be resolved with reference to Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy - that 'thoughts don't conform to things, but things to thoughts'. This means that the 'mind-independent nature' of the world is being called into question (and I still think a very small proportion of scientists have read or understood Kant). We have to understand that we as beings don't 'see a world' - what happens is that we receive stimuli through the sense-gates and we interpret these stimuli to 'create' a world - a meaning-world, if you like, in accordance with the categories of the understanding and our cultural background. Of course, it's not just your or my fantasy world, it's real in some fundamental way, it's not just in the mind. But 'the mind' plays a central and fundamental role in constructing or building the world, moment by moment. And science has generally left that out, although it's starting to be more and more considered.
Now that's not something that evolutionary theory as such explains or generally considers. Evolutionary theory is a theory of the origin of species, but now it's become a kind of universal explanation for everything about us. And evolutionary theory, being a form of naturalism, takes the reality of nature for granted. Whereas 'the nature of reality' is being called into question by the discoveries of physics. That is why both those books I mentioned have subtitles about the nature of reality. So here:
Quoting khaled
Is where the problem lies. Your theory, which is presumably scientifically realist neo-Darwinian evolution, can't accomodate the radical implications of physics. That's perfectly OK, but please understand, this is a real issue, it's a fringe idea, or a conspiracy theory, or something held by a radical minority of whackos.
As I said already, a lot of physicists don't bother with any of this, nor do they need to. They can do physics, even wildly advanced speculative physics, without engaging with this philosophical question. But some do. So please stop saying I'm 'peddling conspiracy theories', it's just insulting. I don't claim to be a physicist, or to understand the mathematical basis of quantum physics, but I've read a fair amount and what I'm saying is not fringe conspiracy theory, but it is deeply challenging for the taken-for-granted realism that a lot of people hold.
I'm sorry if I was being confrontational. I don't mean to be, I'm just used to much less civil discussions with the likes of Bartricks. I didn't notice that what I was saying could be construed as an insult. I don't mean it to be.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes but there is still a "world" underneath our perception of the world. The source of the stimuli. An objective world, is what I'll call it. That's what physics tries to capture. Can we agree there?
You're saying that our interpretation of the world precedes the objective world in some sense. That's the problematic view. Because "we" are a product of the objective world, which we then interpret to create our "own world" or "intersubjective world" if you would. Physics is the study of this bottom layer, the objective world, not the intersubjective one. Physics proposes things we can't see or feel all the time. Like electrons. Or fields. These aren't created in our picture of the world due to us receiving stimuli from the sense gates. They're theories about what the "objective world" could look like. The objective world that brought us about and created the "glasses" we see the world through.
To simply say that the intersubjective world is created by our mind is no new finding at all. We don't see magnetic fields for example, yet we have pretty good reason to think they're there. As part of the objective world. How did we come to that conclusion? By proposing an objective world that could feasibly produce our intersubjective one. So we see a rock attracting metals, and we try to figure out why. Maybe the rock, objectively, has some "essence" which attracts metals. Well, not exactly, because if you rub certain cloths together they also don't attract metals. So that model is bad.... and on and on we go coming up with better and better models.
Physics attempts to get at the world "without our glasses" that we see the world through. Obviously, it would be impossible to know for sure that we got what the "objective world" looks like without any reference to our sense gates, since its our sense gates doing all the work. All we can come up with is a feasible theory to explain what our sense gates perceive, but there could be a lot more complexity than that. Even amidst this uncertainty some theories are definitely better than others. The idea that the sense gates are needed for the world to stabilize just seems confused. The sense gates wouldn't have been created without a stable world in the first place. I think it comes from thinking that the domain of physics is the intersubjective world.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
This seems very handwavy for me. No interpretation of qunatum mechanics will touch evolutionary theory. Quantum mechanics deals with small things. Evolutionary theory deals with one of the biggest things we can deal in (animals and plants). No interpretation of quantum mechanics will have it come out that the moon doesn't exist when we're not looking at it (because if it didn't, we would expect waves to behave differently, yet if everyone looked away from the moon for a second, waves won't behave any differently)
Which radical implication, specifically does it contradict. Again, I don't think bringing Kant into this does anything. I'm pretty sure anyone would agree with the above. That physics is not merely a product of our intersubjective world, but it is also our best attempt at capturing the objective world underneath. Note: best attempt, it's still a work in progress. But some theories are definitely closer than others. And to say that our interpretation precedes the world itself is one of the theories that are very far.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, that's not what I was calling a conspiracy theory. What I was calling a conspiracy theory is that the Von Neumann interpretation was discarded because it's challenging for realism. My point was precisely that:
Quoting Wayfarer
And it is THESE PHYSICISTS, that don't bother with this, that have found problems with the Von Neumann interpretation. I'm saying the physicists didn't reject the idea because of any philosophical implications they didn't like, but because the idea itself is problematic. You think it's not problematic, but even without the whole evolution argument how do you explain this:
Quoting khaled
in terms of consciousness causing wave function collapse?
The Von Neumann interpretation isn't just philosophically challenging, it's also physically problematic. That's my point.
Then again, every interpretation of quantum mechanics has its issues, I'm not denying that, (though I definitely think that the Von Neumann interpretation has more than usual), what I'm denying is that the view is physically unproblematic, but was rejected on the basis of an ideological bias by the scientific community. That's what you seem to be saying to me. That's what I kept calling a conspiracy theory.
This is the problem! That's exactly the point! Is its real nature particle-like or wave-like. Well, it depends on which experiment you conduct. Some will give you wave, some particle. 'But what is it really?'
Silence.
âWhat we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning,â said Heisenberg.
See the connection with Kant? That we know phenomena, what appears to us. What is it really, though? What is the real nature of what appears?
Silence.
You seem to be in a contradiction.
You're saying the MWI solves the problem we're talking about, but somehow the problem doesn't even exist for the proposed solution you are arguing against that "consciousness collapses wave functions".
You say:
Quoting khaled
If the wave function collapses anyway due to a measuring machine, why the need to postulate multiple worlds?
I think @Wayfarer describes the basic problem well, so I'll just repeat it:
Quoting Wayfarer
As I mention in my previous comment, there's nothing "special" about measuring apparatus, other than that we become conscious of their definite states, and, once we do, it is incoherent to continue in the belief that the measuring apparatus is in a superposition of different possible results (which, before we look, is entirely coherent to believe the measuring apparatus is in the superposition of the different measurement outcomes; to "know it's not" we have to look, and only after looking and seeing it definitely says "5" does it become incoherent to persist in the belief that it could be other values other than 5, as it definitely says 5).
Adding a "measuring apparatus" in the box with SchrĂśdinger's cat, doesn't change the thought experiment. There's already the measuring apparatus of the Geiger counter that when activated releases the poison, we ca simply argue it is in a superposition along with the particle it's measuring. We can add into the box as many measuring devices as we like. The particle, the "measuring apparatus" of the Geiger counter, the cat, the air, everything in the box is just particles described by some wave function and there is nothing "logical" that forces us to believe the wave function collapses at any given moment before we check.
The question is what state these measuring devices are in before we look at them? How can we prove any hypothesis? If we're doing science, we have to look to prove our hypothesis, but this defeats the question we are trying to resolve.
When we check, we see one of the potential outcomes; there is no difference between saying we "could have seen one of the potential outcomes since the box was closed" and saying "we could have seen one of the potential outcomes since a series of wave function collapse that have happened since the box has closed", there is no mathematical difference in this second way to imagine things where the "possibility tree" is pruned regularly, just in our minds with imagined wave collapses, as that does not give us any new information in which to predict the state of the box. All we have is the information about the box before we close the lid, so if I just calculate the wave function based on that and let it evolve until the time we open the box to know the probabilities of different box states I may observe, this will be the same as hypothesizing the wave function collapses regularly for some reason.
By "Objective world" I didn't mean a well defined one. I didn't mean that in the "objective world" everything is a resolved quantum wave, that's it's all made of small and big things bumping into each other. That is not needed for what I said to be true. All that is needed is that there is some objective world that is the source of the stimuli. IN that objective world it is totally possible for a particle to exist as a particle sometimes and as a wave sometimes, I don't care about that. Point is there IS an objective world.
AND that that objective world is REQUIRED for minds to exist at all.
Let's take it slowly:
1- Minds require brains
2- Brains require resolved quantum states
3- Therefore minds require resolved quantum states (which implies that it's not the other way around)
What's the problem here?
Quoting Wayfarer
An unresolved quantum wave until something measures it. Not silence. Again, I don't need the objective world to be well defined for what I said to be true.
All I need is that we agree that our "mind" cannot be produced without the existence of well resolved, particles and atoms. Do we agree there?
What Kant said is that we don't observe things as they are. They pass through the filters of the senses. It is not consistent or sensical to then claim that the filters are what create the things as they are. Because then, what creates the filters?
? I legit don't understand what this sentence means.
Quoting boethius
False. That's precisely the point. There are CONSEQUENCES to the wave not being resolved while we're not looking at it. Attach a measuring apparatus to a double slit experiment. Then have an AI recognize whether or not an interference or striped pattern is produced, and connect the AI to a cookie dispenser. If a striped pattern is produced, no cookie, if an interference pattern is produced, dispense a cookie. Start the experiment and go to the cookie dispenser. You will find no cookie.
You can't say that observing the cookie dispenser is the same as measuring which slit the electron went through. The whole series of events, the measurement, and the interpretation of the results, was done by completely unconscious agents. You did nothing, just checked if a cookie comes out or not.
According to you, we should expect that there will be a striped pattern, UNTIL we go and check which slit the particle went through ourselves. In other words, there will be a cookie dispensed, but the second we go and check the measurement device to see which slit the electrons are going through, no cookie.
This simply doesn't happen.
Quoting boethius
Add a cookie dispenser that dispenses a cookie when the cat dies. You will either get a cookie or you won't get a cookie at any one time. You won't be "in a superposition state of having and not having a cookie". And you can tell precisely by doing this whether or not the cat is dead or alive. Even without observing the cat, just the consequences of it being dead or alive.
Quoting boethius
Again, this has testable consequences. Let me take another though experiment, Einstein's does the moon exist when no one is looking at it. But let's make it the sun this time. If no one looks at the sun, does the world suddenly go dark? We can test that. And no it won't. Because the sun stays there even when no one is looking at it. Same can be said of the moon and the behavior of waves (in the ocean).
We can know whether or not a quantum wave is collapsed or not without observing it, by observing its consequences in each case (collapsed or uncollapsed).
Itâs more than simply undefined. It is not objective. You should read Schopenhauer. Objects and subjects arise together, you donât have one without the other. But you (not you in particular) have an object-world, a real-world, in the back of your mind all the time. Itâs assumed, inviolable, unchallengeable. Youâre not engaging with philosophy until you challenge this innate realism - and itâs a hard thing to do. Thatâs why itâs challenging - itâs not an ideological issue but a philosophical one.
I think youâre seeing the idea of the âcollapseâ as being causal, like the closing of the circuit, that plays a role in literally generating things. But itâs not necessarily that. Step back again and consider what questions were being asked when quantum physics was discovered. The ultraviolet catastrophe, then drilling down to the finest constituents of matter and energy, or matter-energy, all based on observation and experiment. What was hoped that some fundamental constituent would be discovered, the ultimate building block of nature, a bedrock. Instead, what we got was uncertainty. We wanted to find a Democritean atom - something that was utterly real, a literal atom, a fundamentally real object. Instead, we get an equation which describes a range of possibilities, and it takes a measurement to pull the real rabbit out of the statistical hat. Seems suspiciously like magic. Nobody really knows if the equation is objectively real and the âcollapseâ literally occurs. Thatâs part of the problem!
Quoting khaled
Youâre asking the same question as Einstein, but the world-picture within which you enact this drama is still the artefact of thought. Every one of your objections come down to âbut this is obviously wrongâ - obviously, because of the obvious reality of the world that you assume. Thatâs why those arguments among the pioneers of this subject were so intense and vehement. Heisenberg recalled being literally reduced to tears. Seriously, do some more reading. Thatâs all for now.
I have challenged it on the metaethics and moral relativism thread and on other threads.
And came up empty. It just doesn't make sense. If the object world doesn't exist, then what are the lenses that we observe the world through made of? It is an inescapable fact that you can't have a mind without a certain configuration of matter. And if that configuration is disturbed (say, by a concussion to the back of the head) the mind goes away.
If one of the two goes away when the other is disturbed then that other is more fundamental. Obviously.
Presumptuous of you to say I haven't. I haven't accused you of being dogmatic and am trying to discuss in good faith. I wish you would do the same.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think this is conflating two things by saying "objects". It is conflating the intersubjective and objective worlds. The intersubjective world doesn't arise without subjects. But the objective world couldn't care less about them.
I can easily conceive of a world empty of life or consciousness. Objects without a subject are no problem. All a subject does is interpret the "things in themselves", the objects, into intersubjective "objects". But the objects can exist without an interpreter. Or at least, the interpreter can not be conscious.
In other words, "planet earth" doesn't exist without a subject because there is no one to distinguish a planet from whatever surrounds it and to dub it "earth". But that doesn't mean that the planet literally, objectively, doesn't exist. There was a floating rock in space with a lot of water on it before any conscious beings evolved. Or else, the conscious beings wouldn't have evolved!!! Yes "water" and "rock" wouldn't have existed either without a subject for the same reason but you know what I mean. The "base material" had to be there already.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, presumptuous of you to assume I haven't done enough reading. I don't doubt that you have done reading, but I think you've taken what you're reading too far. Considering you already linked me an article you thought supports your point when it explicitly refuted it. And a quote you thought supports your point when it was talking about intelligent design. Etc
Quoting khaled
Which part of this do you disagree with?
This is just not how it works.
Interference patterns disappear, not because of wave collapse, but because of running a different experiment, where phase is not preserved through both slits; and without the same phase going through both slits, the interference pattern does not emerge; this is why there is no interference pattern even if you do not "look" at your experiment until the end.
However, if you put your experiment in the box with SchrĂśdinger's cat, how is it described quantum mechanically? The particles, the detectors, the AI are all in superpositions of the different possibilities of when you open the box.
If we look at the math of quantum physics, there is no logical inconsistency in just letting the wave function propagate indefinitely without any "collapses". The logical inconsistency arises when we look at the world and do not see this wave function, but see definite things with definite values. Now, what we can make of this I think @Wayfarer has been describing very well, so I suggest reading his posts carefully.
If you already know this then how can consciousness be what collapses the wave function? When clearly, even without it the interference pattern would not emerge.
Quoting boethius
????
I don't think you understand what phase is. The interference pattern occurs, even if you send in ONE electron at a time. The electron would act as a wave and interfere with itself. It would go through "both slits" at the same time and produce an interference pattern after enough have been sent. That is, if no measuring apparatus is there.
Nothing in the experiment I described suggested sending in electrons in different phases. It is literally just the classic double slit experiment, using a single electron at a time (which has already been done btw) but instead of a person looking at the results, an AI looks at the results and either dispenses or doesn't dispense a cookie.
Start from 1:51.
What I'm proposing is the exact same setup at 2:46 / 3:43 except that an AI recognizes the pattern produced, and no one is actually watching which slit the electron went through. In that case, there is a very clear consequence that is testable, whether or not the wave makes an interference or striped pattern, makes the difference between me getting and not getting a cookie.
What will happen is I won't get a cookie. Because the wave will collapse, aka, will produced a striped pattern, not an interference pattern. Due to the measuring device alone. Or, maybe the measuring device and AI. Point is, not due to anything conscious.
Quoting boethius
?
When I get a cookie, I know for a fact the cat is dead. As long as I don't get a cookie, I know for a fact it is alive. The cat is either alive or dead, not in a superposition by this setup. We know this. And we know it without observing the cat. Because we can observe the consequences of it being alive or dead in this case no cookie vs cookie.
The cookie dispenser is, as a matter of fact, not in a superposition of dispensing and not dispensing a cookie (what would that even look like). I can positively know that it has either dispensed, or has not dispensed a cookie. Which allows me to infer the status of the cat without looking at the cat. An example of collapse without conscious attention.
Quoting boethius
False. If a wave function is collapsed in the double slit experiment, you get 2 stripes. If it isn't, you get an interference pattern. If an AI can dispense a cookie based on which occurs then there is a very real consequence if the wave function collapses or otherwise. It is simply not the case that if the wave function doesn't collapse, everything would be the same as if it hasn't. No, there is a cookie on the line here! Only when the wave function doesn't collapse, do you get a cookie. If it collapses, no cookie.
There is very much a logical inconsistency in claiming that a world where I eat a cookie is no different than a world where I don't eat a cookie.
Right.
Anyways cheers.
An analogous problem is the idea of a "block universe", which is a hypothesis that arises as soon as we assign a dimension to time that is mathematically the same as our dimensions of space; which you can do in any physics system be it Newton, General Relativity or Quantum mechanics.
When time is treated as a space dimension, one becomes (based on the math) free to imagine that time really is a physical dimension and particles travelling "through time" are "physically" long strands traversing this "space-time" physical substance (in one way or another).
If one describes the whole universe this way, there is nothing logically inconsistent within the math of saying the whole 4 dimensions (or however many dimensions you have in your system) physically exist (in some substance intuition sense) as one 4 dimensional block.
The logical inconsistency arises when we try to reconcile the block-universe view with our experience of time, and that only arises due to being conscious of "one moment to the next".
If a mathematical system describing "the" or just "a" universe was given to a mathematician, and the label "universe" was removed and the dimension of time wasn't labeled "time" then there would nothing in that mathematical structure that would lead our mathematician to hypothesize time. You ask the value (or range of values) of a position labeled as "a,b,c,d" in the mathematical structure, and our friendly mathematician crunches the numbers and gives you the result.
Within the math of classical mechanics.
In Quantum mechanics it is very much inconsistent. Because there are 2 alternatives in quantum mechanics:
1- The wave function collapses, in which case, different behavior will be seen as a result of the collapse to if the wave function didn't collapse (this is the whole point of the double slit experiment). Thus, assuming that the wave function will collapse will not yield the same results as assuming it will not collapse (the former means a striped pattern, the latter means an interference pattern)
2- The wave function "doesn't collapse". Instead, it collapses, in every possible way, each in its own universe. So "overall it didn't collapse". That's MWI.
And a bunch more but those are really the only two being discussed right now.
Also the 4 dimensional analog of a cube is called a tesseract.
:up: Hey, thanks for the feedback, and your contributions.
And to you I'd suggest you pay more attention to when someone is saying "Conscious attention is the only thing that can cause wave function collapse" vs that "Conscious attention causes wave function collapse" or even just "The wave collapses when we consciously measure where it goes". Because so far you've mostly given quotes and articles saying the last 2, claiming they say the first.
Cheers. Thanks for the discussion but I don't think we'll get anywhere anymore.
Having multiple interpretations of things does not create inconsistencies.
If you show a parabola equation to a mathematician, there's lot's of interpretations available such as an arch of a particle through space (approximately so), or a string suspended between two fixed points (approximately so), or a shape you have or intend to draw, quadratic growth of some value, or maybe we don't care about the parabolic shape but want to solve for it's roots which will tell us the information we want to know.
Multiple interpretations does not create mathematical inconsistencies.
If I tell you "6", it's not a mathematical inconsistency that I could be talking about 6 electrons or 6 bananas or just the number 6.
Likewise, even if we assumed quantum mechanics does not lend itself to a "block universe" interpretation (which it does), the block universe is not the only interpretation of classical mechanics. We can interpret classical mechanics as representing particles that really do move through time.
All this is getting off topic however, as the analogy that a block universe interpretation of physics is only problematic because we are conscious of the present and time clearly flows in one direction to us.
However, for those curious, the block universe interpretation is as easy in quantum mechanics as classical mechanics. There are just many more paths through the block associated with any particle. If we want to add "wave function collapse" (which the point of contemplating the "cosmic wave function" is that we don't need to ever add a wave function collapse, if we remove the hypothesis of conscious observers that see definite things) then the many potential world lines associated with a particle collapse in the block to the, if not one location, then "smaller region" anytime the wave function collapses in this block universe.
Again, the only reason to postulate "time" as some sort of changing singular experience in our quantum block universe is if we want to contemplate the idea that some of the "particle world lines" represent a conscious being that experiences "time" as some changing singular experience. However, if we had no observers in our quantum block universe there is nothing in the math that would tell us time is some special thing as we understand time to be in our experience.
Sigh. Read the whole comment please. I show why one of the interpretations (the one we happen to be discussing) is inconsistent with that.
Quoting boethius
This is MWI. Which we were not talking about.
Quoting boethius
Great. Now the question becomes, do we need a conscious observer for this to happen, or can it happen on its own. If given you experiments that show it happens on its own. In addition to the simple thought experiment, that if you want to admit that minds/consciousness require brains, and brains require definite (collapsed) electrons and atoms to make, then itâs not possible to get consciousness unless you already have some collapsed stuff. So consciousness canât be necessary for collapsing wave functions.
Quoting boethius
Back to MWI. âMultiple world linesâ is MWI. Collapse (what weâre talking about) is a single world line.
There is no inconsistency with MWI. You just have the block universe of all the possible universes. You have mathematically exactly what I described as the "cosmic wave function" that contains all the possibilities. MWI and cosmic wave function are mathematically the same, only in cosmic wave function I am removing the postulate that there are any conscious beings in this mathematical structure that experience anything, so "all the quantum states" can just happily remain in one quantum block universe where time has no special meaning.
It's not really useful to try to visualize the quantum block universe since there's many more dimensions for field strengths and directions as well as more dimensions representing the probabilities (either mapped onto new dimensions or just left in complex value form; a mathematician investigating this structure won't care that values are complex).
As I say, it's off topic as my point is simply to bring in the analogy that the only "problem" for block universe interpretation of physics equations when we remove "time" as something special that is experienced ... is the fact that we do believe the universe has conscious observers that do in fact experience time.
Quoting khaled
This is what I am explaining; the only way for us to resolve this question scientifically, is to setup an experiment and then for us to both become conscious or the result. If we setup the experiment and then never look at the results (i.e. just keep the lid of SchrĂśdinger's box closed) then we don't know if the wave has collapsed or not because we haven't looked.
That's just how science works, if we don't observe we cannot say what the "real state" of SchrĂśdinger's box is; it is as consistent to say it is in some definite state as to say it remains in the quantum superposition of all it's possible states we might observe when we open the box. One is free to believe the quantum state had already collapsed multiple times since we closed the box ... one is free to believe the quantum state has not at all collapsed since we closed the box; both views will result in the same predictions (we both have the same information of the state of the box when it's closed, we both have the same equations, we will both arrive at the same possible states and probabilities for what we'll see when we open the box; what is "really in the box" when we aren't looking is a unfalsefiable claim, as to falsefy a claim about what's "really in the box" when it's closed, we need to open the box and look and so it's no longer closed).
Sort of. But we werenât talking about MWI. We were talking about collapse and what causes it. There is an inconsistency between âmultiple world linesâ and âcollapseâ.
Quoting boethius
No we donât. We need to become conscious of the consequences of the result. Such as cookie or no cookie. Would you call that âbecoming conscious of the resultâ?
Quoting boethius
No. We only need to check if any cookies have been dispensed yet. As long as none have, the car is alive. When one is dispensed. The cat is dead.
We can definitely tell the state of the cat. Without observing the cat.
MWI will have you believe that for each point in time, a new universe is created where the cat died and a cookie was dispensed. Note that EVEN THERE the wave function has collapsed, just in different universes. You donât have a single block universe with multiple paths, no, you have every possible block universe with a single path each. Thatâs what MWI is.
On the other hand, all collapse theories have a single universe where the wave function DOESN'T collapse until measured. Again, in MWI, the wave collapses in every possible way (so overall it âdoesnât collapseâ if we merge all the block universes). Without MWI we have to figure out when the wave collapses. And Iâm saying it is very easy to prove that it collapses without any conscious interference, simply by interacting with a measuring device (or macro or object in general)
Again, address this: Consciousness evolved yes? In order for that to happen we needed to have collapsed, well defined molecules at least yes? And eventually after enough time a conscious thing evolved from these molecules yes?
Then how can consciousness be a requirement for wave function collapse? If it was, it wouldâve never evolved.
There's no wave collapse in MWI, as the idea there is all possibilities really exist in some physical definite state and new universes pop into existence every time there is a quantum fork in the road.
"Wave collapse" is the idea there's only one universe that doesn't split at every quantum fork in the road, but the possibilities collapse into one path going forward.
In both MWI and "wave collapse" theories, if we "setup", or just imagine, a cosmic wave function at the beginning of the universe will have the same mathematical structure. It's just in one interpretation if we go "forward in time" with our equations we see a range of possibilities and "predict" one of those possibilities will "actually happen" for observers at that moment in time. Whereas in MWI we go forward in time with our equations and we see the same possibilities but assert every possibility corresponds to a real "universe" (which should really be called "subverse" to the real universe of all these possibilities actually existing).
Quoting khaled
Science works through consciousness. We formulate questions, we formulate answers to those questions, we try to "prove" an answer is right or wrong through experiments. If we imagine unconscious rocks sitting in a pond, they cannot "do science".
It simply makes no sense to say we will setup an experiment but neither of us will ever become conscious of the result, and that will settle, in a scientifically meaningful way, the issue at hand.
This is just what "science" means. If you setup your cookie experiment but never look at the results, but assure me the cookie is definitely either there or it isn't even if you don't look, I'll ask "how do you know". The only way for you to "know" is to go and check, but you're claiming to know even if you don't check.
Quoting khaled
We cannot know the state of the cat without observing the cat. We can know it's possible states based on initial conditions when the lid of the box is closed, to know it's state afterwards we need to look in the box. We can do that by physically opening the box, we can do it by running an MRI of the box, we can do it by setting up a detector for cosmic rays debris that travel through the box, we can take the temperature of the box and conclude the cat is dead if the box is too cold or on fire if the box is too hot, but each way we might get information on the state of the box requires observations. If we want to have a sort of "pure" cat killing experiment, we would make our box a light year on each side and place the cat in a suitable smaller livable box in the middle with our experiment; this way we can be certain that no information is "leaking" out about the state of our cat.
What exactly is a "quantum fork"?
Usually in these discussions what I am calling "a fork in the road" is called a branch in a graph of possible state changes.
What it means is simply that when a "wave collapses" and a value previously represented by a range of possibilities becomes one possibility (which is not really one possibility, it becomes just a more constrained range than it was before, as we don't observe particles at "points" but in a region, such as photons hitting a camera sensor we just know which region the photon hit, but not the exact location).
In multiple worlds interpretation there is no wave collapse of the possibilities into more constrained possibilities, but simply everything that can happen does happen in multiplying real and equally physical universes. Every time the universe splits to follow different possibilities new branches appear in the tree of real possibilities that constantly proliferate at a considerable rate, actualizing every possible state of the universe.
We've been recently debating the idea of wave collapse relating to consciousness, as opposed to multiple worlds where no "probability waves" ever collapse.
There are other possibilities, however. Earlier we were discussing hidden variables. Bell inequalities is about local hidden variables, but doesn't exclude non-local hidden variables. Everything could still be fully determined by non-local hidden variables, which, if we knew we could use to fully predict any quantum process. Based on quantum physics as it seems to be now, it's difficult to imagine, even in principle, being able to actually know these hidden variables. However, we can still nevertheless conceive of these hidden variables existing in some other hidden variable dimension that we could probe with the right apparatus to arbitrary precision. Such "hidden variable dimensions" being discovered and accessible to arbitrary precision to predict the exact results of quantum processes (not just the probability distribution of where each particle is likely to land, but exactly where each particle will land to arbitrary precision, constrained just by size of apparatus, for instance) would return physics to a Newtonian world view that everything seems to be in a definite state and larger asparagus gets us more precise results without limitation (in quantum physics as it is, there are fundamental limits to probing values: measure position precisely and you can't measure momentum precisely at the same time; measure too precisely and you create black holes and can no longer see what happens inside those black holes).
So, "likely" hidden variable dimensions, if they exist, we can't access them. However, there's nothing the matter in principle to suppose quantum processes follow some fully determined path without any randomness, due to smaller states we are unable to access.
Next to "consciousness based wave collapse", multiple worlds, full determinism, there are other ideas such as "entropy based wave collapse" as well as "wave collapse just happening spontaneously".
Only within a certain stochastic process governed by entropy, surely?
Yes, this is the main problem with "entropy collapse" as I understand it. Entropy is (in it's classical sense) a macro statistical property resulting from fundamentally quantum process (as is temperature, a related macro property to entropy), so it doesn't really make sense in the usual way entropy is understood to say it can collapse wave functions.
So, some quantum version of entropy needs to be made for it to relate to quantum wave collapse. The one's I've seen are basically just some statistical probability of wave collapse based on number of particles or amount of information. Which can of course be postulated without any conflict with the standard model as it is, but the hope of such theorists is generally that there is some experimental difference that can be detected.
However, splitting into different possibilities again involves the definition of measurement, which is precisely what is to be avoided in the MWI. If I have defined what exactly a measurement is, then I can simply choose the Copenhagen Interpretation. The MWI would then be superfluous.
But, entropy makes everything quite a bit more deterministic. Whilst QM remains elusive for high variance in temperature gradients for atomic elements locally, and even non-locally, yea?
I'm not sure I agree. MWI seems to me to still have the problem of when these worlds actually "split"; it's easy to say "when something is measured as is understood in the standard model", but if nothing is measuring anymore it doesn't seem to me clearly defined when universe splits are supposed to happen; whenever something "could have" been measured. I believe there's also the "continuous" split, at least in some sense, idea and interference patterns then need to be interpreted as these continuously splitting universes interfering with each other. Of course, you can (as with all these interpretations) just say "in a consistent with the standard model".
But to be clear, science does not have a measurement problem. I can take this clock and measure something taking 45 seconds to happen. I can take this ruler and I can measure this thing to be 18cm. I can take something and weigh it to read 40 grams. Likewise, I can make an apparatus in a precise way and read out measurements of the apparatus. I can predict how this precise apparatus will behave (what I will see in it's measurement output) using sophisticated mathematics and knowledge of how I built my apparatus and what state it will be in when I turn it on.
The "measurement problem" is not a problem scientists who measure things face, but rather a problem of people trying to take the person measuring out of the measuring and substituting some collection of particles or what-have-you, which of course can always be hypothesized to be in a superposition of all their possible outputs until someone bothers to check and report back that's not the case.
Obviously, this whole conversation is in the context that there is no theory of quantum gravity, no real understanding of what dark matter or dark energy really "is", incompatible measurements of the Hubble constant that should be compatible, etc.
So, definitely some future new physics could re-frame all these questions totally differently. No reason in principle, if there are hidden variables in some other dimension, that we couldn't access them somehow.
The only point I'm trying to defend is my view on the idea we can "know" what reality is like before we look to see what it's like. Any such theory is speculative in my view. I don't have a problem with speculation though. Can be mind expanding and lot's of falsefiable scientific predictions originated in what may appear as speculation; so, I'm not here to judge for sure what's "really speculation" or "really totally not", but I will of course make the challenge to anyone claiming to know these things we have been discussing.
But in short, I haven't looked in detail about quantum entropy concepts other than combination of micro-states in an essentially classical sense.
Of course not. According to the SchrĂśdinger-Newton-Equation, even the cat is big enough to cause a collapse. Together with the Bohmian Mechanics and the entanglement of measuring object and measuring apparatus (e.g. the cat) everything is explained. The cat is already in a defined state before looking. And the moon is also there when nobody looks. Nobody needs MWI.
There is no experimental evidence that something just needs to be "big enough" to cause probability wave collapse.
"Big things" we assume are in definite states even if we don't look, only because we are big and perceive definite states. There is nothing in quantum mechanics that forces one to start "wave collapsing" once a certain amount of terms and time have been added to describe a system. There is nothing in the mathematics of quantum mechanics (as understood apart from the behaviour of apparatusses and having some independent existence from such apparent behaviour) that prevents adding as many states of things as one wants (as long as the it coheres with the previous states) and then simply propagating the resulting total state forward as far as one wants. The only reason we need to assume probability distributions collapse to "one world" is because we are conscious of only a single world; without this foundational assumption going into things, the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics would not lead us to invent it (i.e. conscious beings perceiving a single possibility) and without this constraint a mathematician that doesn't know "what it's about" I would expect would be perfectly happy with a bunch of parameters and variables, equations, ways to solve for one variable (or then the constraints on that variable) given other constraints on other variables etc.
In other words, if you took the math and removed all the meaningful labels like "time" and so forth, you could ask the mathematician to solve for something, for instance what to us is question about, given some initial state, the probability distribution of a particles position after some time t, but is just a "math problem" to the mathematician. The mathematician would provide whatever solutions exist for the question, which would be the constraints on variables in question (x,y,z coordinates and some additional value representing probability for each coordinate), likely in some equation form. What I contend the mathematician is unlikely to do is add the postulate that the probabilities "collapsed" in some sense on the way to the final answer, but rather would just plug in the provided parameters and constraints (i.e. the fundamental constants and whatever values for initial conditions we provide) into the equations and solve for the question. This would be the process no matter how much information we provide in terms of initial conditions or then constraints at, what is to us, future times which to us represents "measurements", but to the mathematician is just additional constraints to take into account to solve things without the need to imagine the solutions represent anything real at all.
Adding a lot of information about states would make the work the mathematician needs to do exceedingly long and difficult, but I contend at no point would the mathematician postulate wave collapse happening nor even postulate that when answers are given (constraints on variables provided constraints on other variables) that somehow a single range of one or more variables, what we would call possibility (i.e. the photon hitting a particular region of a sensor apparatus), is "special" in a sense of actually happening.
If this process (that for the mathematician is just math and doesn't represent reality in anyway) results (what is for us who understand how the variables are usually labeled) in the solution to a question about interference patterns in a double slit experiment, the mathematician will solve for the pattern and is happy to provide it, but there's nothing in the math that implies "one spot" in the pattern must logically "happen". The math doesn't logically lead to special spots where something actually happens, that is the core of the quantum mystery (why rejecting hidden variables, which is not the same as rejecting merely local hidden variables, is as problematic as accepting them; for if they do exist, where are they, and if they don't exist, then how do particles / quantum states "choose" where they end up, it seems then "pure uncaused spontaneity" ), there's no logic to where things actually happen, only the probability of happening, and so provided only the logic without context of an experienced reality we are talking about, a single reality does not jump out from the math as a logical necessity. It's mostly just a lot of integrals in abstract spaces which mathematicians solve for fun all the time without suddenly deciding certain values represent probabilities of something actually happening in some sense in the real world, and much less be led to add the postulate that "constraining events" (what we'd call wave collapse) randomly happen along the way to the final answer to a given question (these additional "constraining events" don't change the answer as it's unknown what will be constrained in such a hypothetical constraining event, and so adds no additional information to the initial conditions).
The reason quantum physics doesn't work like this mathematical exercise is because physicists add additional constraints by measuring things in the real world: the real world, not logic, provides this additional information that makes it reasonable to constrain a quantum model at some real time t to reflect what was actually measured. Logic does not even provide some necessary extrapolation from the equations of quantum mechanics that there must be "measurements"; hence, why all sorts of speculation is compatible with it. However, I'm sure you would agree that it is the equations of quantum mechanics that are extrapolated from the single world we see, not the other way around.
That's what I might do. The metaphysics could be fun, though. :cool:
âReally exist in some physical definite stateâ = collapse.
Quoting boethius
Correct. And MWI is the idea that this is what happens, for each possible universe. Again, you have each possible single path block, not a single multi path block (though thatâs what you get if you were to superimpose all the blocks on each other)
Quoting boethius
Yup. So a single path.
Quoting boethius
So a single path, for every possible path a world.
Quoting boethius
No the point is this isnât the âresultâ of the experiment. The variable we want to examine is whether or not the wave function can collapse without our conscious interference. If we get a cookie, where was the conscious interference? We definitely didnât measure which slit the electron went through. And we didnât interpret the results on the screen. All that was done by things that arenât conscious. Yet in the end, when we look at the cookie dispenser, it wonât be âin a superposition of dispensing and not dispensing a cookieâ it will either dispense or not dispense a cookie. Based on that we can know whether or not collapse happened without measuring which slit the electrons are going through. Thatâs the point. Same with the cat. All youâd need is a cookie dispenser there too to know specifically whether or not the cat is alive without observing the cat, just the dispenser.
And, again, address the historical argument:
Quoting khaled
I hate to re-open this issue, but you keep asking this. (Again this is from my knowledge, if someone with a degree in mathematical physics says I have it wrong, I will defer to them by all means.) But I think the so-called 'wave function collapse' is not necessarily something that happens objectively - it's not a literal change of state. It's not that matter exists in some non-collapsed state, waiting for someone to measure it, so it can collapse and thereby begin to exist. The issue arises from reconciling the wave-function equation, which describes the state of the object before it is measured, with the act of measurement. What is potential becomes actual with the measurement. I think this is the meaning of QBism, 'quantum baynsieanism':
I've been reading a well-known paper by John Wheeler about the delayed-choice experiment ('Law without law'). He says:
Again, I think the underlying point is that reality is no longer conceived of being 'out there' completely independently of ourselves. As Wheeler says, we 'construe' it in a particular way - there are objective elements - the 'iron bars' of observation - but also imagination and theory.
Also have a listen to Andrei Linde's response to the same question. Linde is the physicist who came up with the original idea of 'inflation' in respect to Big Bang cosmology. (The video is bookmarked to the specific question but if it doesn't work it's around 6:06)
Thatâs one interpretation. Iâm not sure what itâs called but I also donât think it makes sense. If this was the case, then youâd just expect the double slit experiment to always produce 2 lines. Because after all, the matter already exists, completely collapsed, and doesnât need measurement.
Itâs precisely because matter can exist in an uncollapsed state that it has different behavior when collapsed vs uncollapsed.
Also this sounds closer to what Andrei Linde is saying. Heâs asking if consciousness can be required for matter to exist in any objective sense, OVER just being something required for our description of matter 10:20
Quoting Wayfarer
But I thought you just said that there is no difference between before the matter is measured and after, when it comes to the physics itself. Only what we can say about it.
If thatâs the case how come there are direct physical consequences to both, over what we can just say. For example, if you do the double slit experiment on a screen that begins to burn when hit by enough electrons, the screen would burn in whichever pattern is produced, either 2 stripe or interference pattern. There is a real consequence here. We can check the screen after to find out which pattern âreally happenedâ more than just which pattern âwe can say happenedâ
You say that quantum mechanics is âepistemologicalâ in a sense. That all it does is express what we can say about what the matter is doing, but the matter itself already knows what itâs down, doesnât need anyone to collapse it.
If thatâs the case, then youâd expect that doing the double slit experiment, without the measuring device, would produce an interference pattern, but the screen would burn in a 2 slit pattern. Because after all, quantum mechanics only represents âwhat we can sayâ and since we havenât measured anything, we would see an interference pattern. But since itâs only about âwhat we can sayâ and the matter itself doesnât need any measuring it already has a definite state (that we just donât know) then it will âactuallyâ produce a 2 stripe pattern.
Maybe Iâm talking out of my ass but do you get the point Iâm getting at? If the measurement problem was purely an epistemological problem, then you wouldnât expect âuncollapsedâ and âcollapsedâ matter to act differently, because âuncollapsedâ matter is just collapsed matter but we donât know how itâs collapsed.
But how did âweâ arise without iron posts or paper machĂŠ? If weâre required for reality (the objective world) to exist in any resolved way, how did we ourselves come about?
If you look at Jim Baggott's categorization of wavefunction anti-realism versus realism at 26:40, he notes that psi does not collapse at all on an anti-realist view (which includes Copenhagen). At 55:00 he categorizes both physical collapse theories (GRW, etc.) and consciousness-causes-collapse (von NeumannâWigner interpretation) on the realist side. Which is to say, collapse (when the wavefunction is real) is a physical process - whether triggered by matter or mind.
Conversely on an anti-realist view, the wavefunction is a book-keeping device that is useful for making predictions but not for revealing nature. As Baggott quotes Bohr at 29:30, "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is." It is just the book-keeping device that is adjusted ("collapses") when an observation is made - but there is no physical collapse implied.
If all it was was a book keeping device for our own sakes, then youâd expect the electrons to act the same way collapsed or uncollapsed no?
That the Copenhagen interpretation is anti realist is news to me. Iâm curious where you got that?
What 'matter'? That's the problem! What is measured appears as waves or as particles. But, you're saying, behind what is measured there is 'the matter that already exists'. But that is the point at issue! What is being measured? We can't say what is 'behind' the measurement. One set-up produces a wave pattern, the other a particle pattern. Is it really waves or is it really particles? You can't say! That's the paradox, the whole issue in a nutshell.
Quoting khaled
The results happen, but we can't say that the real cause is a wave or a particle. We can't say that they are attributes of some underlying neither-wave-nor-particle stuff. The answer you get depends on the question you ask, and you're severely limited in infering what is the case beyond that - or rather, there's nothing in physics which will provide you with a warrant for that kind of speculation.
Quoting khaled
[quote=Richard Feynmann] I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.[/quote]
Quoting khaled
That there isn't 'a particle'. You're observing different results, but they're not 'of' something that acts in a certain way.
Quoting Andrew M
Right! I think that's what I was getting at, but it's been a while since I listened to the whole presentation, so thanks for the reminder.
They wouldn't explain why.
Bohr: "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is."
Heisenberg, "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."
Quoting khaled
At least on Copenhagen, you can only ask about what you observe, not how reality is. There is no unifying picture, just a wave picture or a particle picture depending on the measurement context (complementarity).
Bohr: "We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections."
Heisenberg: "for visualisation, however, we must content ourselves with two incomplete analogies - the wave picture and the corpuscular picture."
Quoting khaled
See the OP video at 55:00 - Copenhagen is on the anti-realist side. Note that it's anti-realist about the wavefunction. Reality itself is not denied, but is beyond our ken.
This is where I see a parallel with Kant - the distinction between reality as it appears to us and as it is in itself. That's why I posted the Michel Bitbol video on Bohr and Kant. Bitbol is an interesting philosopher of science - I learned of him on this forum. His Academia profile is at https://ens.academia.edu/MichelBitbol
But how do we know this? We observe the world and see a definite state?
How do we know we've observed the world to see a definite state? We become conscious of the observation.
If we just had the wave function we can have as many particles as we like, and nothing in the math of the wave function "forces" us to collapse our possible states to more definite states.
The reason viewing the reality as "just the wave function" is that it conflicts with our being conscious of definite states.
Quoting khaled
You do not understand my point.
There is nothing in quantum mechanics that prevents setting up a wave function state of however many things you want, and simply propagating it forward in time to the end of the universe.
There's nothing preventing a "spacial" view of time in such a mathematical structure so everything is "one block" and all the particles represented by all their possible world lines and spacially representing the probability density of each world line, and having one block.
What's "wrong" with such a view of the universe? (And whether the block-universe we're considering we define as Newtonian, General Relativity or Quantum terms )
The problem is the supposition that there are conscious beings that experience the flow of time. The idea the universe, however it is mathematically described, is one "single block" with past, present and future coexisting (just as up and down direction co-exist) is that it conflicts with the idea of conscious beings inhabiting the universe and experiencing time, and we get that idea from being conscious ourselves.
The point is that it is an analogous problem of a perfectly "fine" interpretation of a mathematical structure of which the only problem is the supposition of conscious beings experiencing time and change (rather than experiencing no time and no change as something existing as a solid changeless block would suggest).
Likewise, that wave functions just propagate indefinitely and never collapse is a perfectly "fine" interpretation of the mathematics of the wave function, of which the only problem is the supposition of conscious beings experiencing definite states represented by real numbers and not these probability distributions represented by complex numbers.
In both cases, since consciousness is "the problem" that prevents, it is entirely reasonable to consider some special relationship between consciousness and these things.
Quoting khaled
Again, you do not understand my point nor the mathematics of quantum mechanics.
It is not the case that when the wave functions "collapses" that a particle is then considered to have taken a definite path, only the properties observed become more definite for the time of observation, but it is still the case that the particle in some way (we really don't understand) when through all possible paths to get to that observation point: which is why interference patterns emerge (the particle went through, in some sense, both slits and then interfered with itself).
Quoting khaled
Wave function collapse is not a variable.
Variables are states of particles or fields that we can observe. "Wave function collapse" is simply what the "other possibilities" going away is referred to.
For instance, you can have a "probability wave" of a particle in classical mechanics, such as a random walk of a particle Brownian motion or someone who fell of a boat and is adrift at sea. Take the person at sea, based on known constraints, relevant laws of physics etc, a probability distribution of where we are likely to find the person after some time t can be calculated. "Our probability wave" representing where the person might be is the exact same sense of probability as where we might find a particle in a quantum mechanics experiment.
We then go and find the person, and the "wave function" or where they could have been "collapses" in our model because we have new information. This the exact same process as quantum physicists doing measurements and "collapsing" other possibilities that didn't happen when they find one possibility that did happen, they update the model with new information and continue. For instance, finding the persons boot (or what is evaluated as 50% likely to be the persons boot) would update the "lost at sea" model based on this new constraint of observing a boot at location x,y.z at time t.
The difference between classical and quantum probability "wave collapse", is that classical probabilities of the above scenario act only as a one sort of "blobbty diffusion" wave and don't have tell-tale characteristics we'd associate with classic waves such as waves in water.
Critically, as the classical "probability wave / blob" diffuses in space, it always remains cohesive. The probability wave representing where a person maybe based on some initial condition, has no disconnected regions. A person might fall down an elevator shaft, and so is very "unlikely" we'd observe the person in the state of falling down the elevator shaft, but it's not zero probability; we could open one of the other elevator doors on the way down and see the person falling. It's more likely we'd observe the person either just sitting somewhere at the top or then just lying t the bottom of the shaft, than it is to go and observe happen to open an elevator door in the middle and see the falling state, but obviously not impossible.
The classical probability blobs diffuse through space, but never disconnect entirely.
Likewise, someone in a house maybe more probable to be observed in one room or another and less likely we'd observe them right at the moment of going through a door, but obviously we might and people do need to walk through doors to be in different rooms.
We do not believe someone lost at sea somehow "really exists" in all the places we might find them, it is just a mathematical description of probabilities to help us find them. Likewise, we do not believe someone is in "all the rooms" they could be at once, it's just a mathematical description of where we might find them.
Critical to this view that someone lost at sea is a definite state or someone in a house is in a definite state, before we go and check where they actually are, is the probability regions never disconnect (there is a continuous connection of everywhere "they might be", just different probabilities for each place, and we might really find them anywhere in this region; we can run experiments to find that 1/10000 chance of randomly opening the elevator shaft over some time span at the moment someone, let's hope a dummy, is falling).
In quantum mechanics, regions of probability states can be entirely disconnected, and this completely breaks our normal intuition of probability diffusion of "little ball particle" at definite positions through space at each moment in time. How does the electron exist in a definite state but "move" between disconnected regions A and B without any possibility of us finding the electron in some connected bridge state between A and B (i.e. in the doorway)? Likewise, how does an electron interfere with itself so that it's probability of hitting certain regions of a detector is zero, and that even one at a time, electrons produce interference patterns?
The only way to make sense of this is to say the electron does not "move" in a classical sense between A and B and when we look we find where it "really is" but rather the electron somehow co-exists in some sense in both regions, but when we look to find the electron in region A, then somehow it's "existence" in region B disappears. This is what happens mathematically, and "collapsing the wave of probabilities" to the new reality, is a sensical way to describe the mathematical process of updating a model with new information (just as with updating a model of someone lost at sea with information about their probable shoe or then finding the person themselves).
What we cannot easily make sense of is what sort of "substance" the electron (or quantum fields if you prefer) really is to have these characteristics, nor can we easily make sense of how our observations affect the situation (to resolve such questions, we need to make observations, but obviously that is no longer the same question).
Quoting khaled
The consciousness relation to wave collapse can solve this in different ways; such as simply stating first wave collapsing at some threshold of consciousness or something along those lines (evolution happens in every possibility, and then collapses to the first possibility of consciousness; explaining why there's more matter than antimatter, as only in these probability edge cases does matter outnumber anti-matter, and stars and evolution can happen etc.); but we have no experiment that even shows what is and isn't conscious so this is pseudoscience speculation; not anyway to go back and "observe" the universe before it collapsed to a definite state due to the first observation.
What we do know (or what I know) is that I'm conscious and observe a definite state of the universe around me (certainly more definite than observing "all possibilities" simultaneously). I can know what I observe; I cannot "know" what existence is "really like" prior to my observations. I can note that quantum mechanics basically prevents any intuitive visualizations of what "things are really like at all", but, as a Kantian, it's not really surprising that whatever we can say of the "noumena" always remains fundamentally speculative anyways (maybe new physical theories will lend themselves back to a more "Newtonian" view just to be overturned once again by something even more bizarre than quantum mechanics).
Quoting boethius
I appreciate the long explanation but there is nothing there I didnât already know. Maybe itâs you who doesnât understand my point?
Quoting boethius
Ok. Agreed so far.
Quoting boethius
But itâs not just âupdating the model with new informationâ is it? Itâs changing how the particle behaves. When we collapse the wave of probabilities, suddenly the particle behaves differently than before we did. Thatâs the key difference between probability distributions of quantum mechanics and other fields.
The probability distribution of the person at sea is âepistemicâ. There is definitely a person at sea, we know everything about him except where he is, and so we make a model to find the most likely locations he can be at.
The probability distribution of an electron is âontologicalâ. Itâs not that there is a definite electron whose location we donât know. If that were the case, youâd always see 2 stripe pattern. No, the electron truly behaves differently according to whether or not it has collapsed. It is truly âeverywhere at onceâ until measured
Quoting boethius
Yes but how will we ever reach that threshold if consciousness was what causes wave function collapse?
To be conscious you need a brain. And for a brain you need collapsed, well defined atoms and electrons. So in order to get consciousness you need collapse to have already occurred. So consciousness canât be the only thing capable of causing collapse.
Unless you think that somehow collapse can happen âback in timeâ? But you also said:
Quoting boethius
You seem to be suggesting that the world went through all possible paths, until consciousness was reached in one of the paths, then somehow the awesome power of consciousness ontologically corrected history so that everything went through that one path only.
Quoting boethius
You need planets, suns and water at least for evolution to occur. You canât get those things without collapse. Those things need to exist definitively for evolution to occur, without anyone looking at them. So again, you wouldnât get consciousness. Ever. Youâd get quantum soup awaiting collapse by consciousness, which will never happen because consciousness needs brains not quantum soup.
Quoting boethius
I donât mind that.
What I do mind is the suggestion that consciousness affects noumena.
No Iâm not. Thatâs the anti realist view. Iâm critiquing it not agreeing with it. Read the quote in context.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes I can. Whatâs the problem with this?
Quoting Wayfarer
How does this relate to what Iâm saying?
Quoting Wayfarer
?
What are you âobservingâ if not something acting a certain way?
In science, yes, that is what is happening.
If we don't have new information, we cannot say what is happening other than the probability distributions that we already have based on old information.
If you make a claim about what is happening, how can that claim be verified?
By getting new information through new observations.
Talking about what is happening without any actual information about what is happening, is pseudoscience. It maybe true, it maybe false, but it's not a scientific claim that can be verified by experiment.
Quoting khaled
I very much doubt this is true.
Point is, these probability distributions are âontologicalâ for QM. Itâs not that there âreally is an electron somewhereâ we just donât know where, the electron âis really everywhereâ in the probability distribution. Otherwise you wouldnât get interference patterns.
Thatâs what I mean by not JUST updating the model with new information. Observations in QM change what is happening, not just what we think is happening. Itâs not like when the probability distribution of the location of the drowning person âcollapsesâ when we see them, but really, there was always a person there even without us observing them.
In QM that collapse has physical effects: such as there being interference without the collapse and no interference after. There was no âelectron really thereâ.
Quoting boethius
I donât. But I donât care to start playing âyou just donât get itâ games. If thatâs your intention Iâm just going to leave.
And what happened to the argument from evolution? Maybe coming from someone else itâll make more sense?
"The evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having taken place at various times. These, presumably, are quantum events, so they would exist only in linearly superposed form until they finally led to the evolution of a conscious beingâwhose very existence depends on all the right mutations having 'actually' taken place!"
-Roger Penrose.
The point is that it can't be known. If it were simply a matter that 'electrons can either appear as waves or particles'. again, there wouldn't be any problem of intepretation.
For that matter, why do you think there is a problem of interpretation? What is this thread about?
This is literally what I explain, as the electron somehow "co-existing" in detached regions.
What is at issue is what to make of this.
Quoting khaled
That's not a problem. The model includes these interactive effects, so when we measure position precisely of a particle we update the model with this increase in constraint on position but also decrease the constraint on momentum.
We can do all this without making any ontological claims as to what exists apart from our calculating and measuring. This is where the "shutup and calculate" expression comes from; it works and it doesn't "have to" make any intuitive sense nor does one "have to" take a position on the ontological status of the electron apart from variables being more or less constrained in mathematical models that take real world inputs.
We take information from the real world, we put it in a model, we get information out that corresponds to future information we can take from the real world. This is all that "we know" is happening. What happens between information gatherings we don't know.
In the case of the classical "probability waves" of large objects, even if the above is true "in principle", we are free to imagine the drowning person somehow co-exists is in all possible locations and the possibilities "collapse" to one possibility when we find them (how do we check if the person is "really somewhere", we need to go and find them and check), nevertheless, the assumption that the person is "really somewhere" doesn't run into intuitive problems (the statistical model is completely compatible with this assumption).
In the case of quantum mechanics, not only is it a problem "in principle", but it's also a problem that our intuitions about how "real objects" should behave simply don't work.
If there was an obvious conclusion to be drawn, the best physicists of the last hundred years would have drawn it and all agreed.
I think Feinman says it best when he describes "doing quantum mechanics" as the same state of knowledge as Mayan priests (I think it was Mayan) calculating the next eclipses. They've discovered a pattern, and they can do the calculations and make predictions and those predictions come true, but they have no knowledge of orbital mechanics and what is "really happening". So, any explanation the high priest gives is complete speculation and doesn't seem much better than plenty other explanations available. In such a state of knowledge where the "true causes" are simply lacking, we just have a mathematical pattern of what we observe, "these are lucky numbers for the Sun God" is going be just as reasonable to believe as "things are floating up there and they can block each other ... coincidentally following the pattern we've discovered for some reason".
And speculation is fine; I'm simply arguing that unless there's an experiment that proves one equally reasonable speculation is more credible than another ... one equally reasonable explanation is not more credible than another.
And mostly, interpretations boil down to ontological positions that predate quantum mechanics. "Everything that can happen does happen," is a very old concept. Likewise, we simply can't know what reality is "really like", goes thousands of years before Kantian skepticism. Similarly, there is a specific state of the universe and the future is fully determined is also an old idea.
All we are doing in this conversation is throwing in some quantum jargon, which is useful because it can help readers here understand quantum mechanics a tiny bit better, but doesn't really setup anything really different in the speculations available. We know quantum mechanics "is wrong" and maybe a better theory lends itself to one over another speculation, just as Newtonian physics lends itself to a deterministic interpretation and Quantum Mechanics, at least on the surface viewing, lends itself to Kantian style skepticism of "not knowing anything about things in themselves"; but QM isn't "proven" as some sort of end all and be all of physics, so maybe some future theory gives us other indications about "the true ontology" (and perhaps equally misleading as the indications of Newtonian, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics).
Quoting khaled
Yes, we are "JUST" updating the model with the new information, but in quantum mechanics updating the model with new information can impact on the model in ways that aren't intuitive. If we measure a particles location precisely (constrain that variable) it also changes constraints on momentum, and we may now know less about the particles momentum than we did before. We do not need to make ontological assumptions about what "really exists" between measurements to make use of quantum mechanics.
I've already mentioned, it can just be supposed that all the possibilities propagate, including ones in which evolution happens, and the first possible consciousness collapses the cosmic wave function. No problem, no one's conscious before that to say otherwise, perfectly explains why we live in an extreme probability edge case, based on what we know of quantum mechanics so far, that there's more matter than antimatter for instance.
Of course, if, why and how this happens is pure speculation. The difference is that I'm labeling my speculations as speculations.
Well youâre certainly right in saying that there would be no problem of interpretation if there was no problem of interpretation.
I mean.... that is pretty much what happened when it comes to whether or not consciousness is necessary. They basically all drew the conclusion that it isnât. Thatâs one of my first arguments.
Quoting boethius
But we can KNOW that the electron, unlike the drowning person, doesnât âreally exist somewhereâ that we are finding out correct? Or else interference effects wouldnât happen.
So we can make some ontological deductions. We can know that the electron wasnât âreally anywhereâ but was âreally everywhereâ. It has to be. Or interference wouldnât occur.
But regardless:
Quoting boethius
And DESPITE, no one being conscious before to say otherwise, we know certain things happened at certain times. We know the age of the earth for example, when it formed, which species existed when, etc. We shouldnât be able to know these things without any consciousness to collapse the wave functions at the time.
What youâre suggesting here is that in the xyz-time âblockâ, you start from time = 0 and as you move along particles take every which path available to them. But the second one of these paths hits consciousness, suddenly, the awesome power of consciousness causes collapse âback in timeâ correcting history so that only one path happened all along. This contradicts what you say here:
Quoting boethius
Again, if the above is true (and I agree it is) and consciousness was the only thing capable of causing wave function collapse, then all we SHOULD be able to know about the world before we evolved is that it was all some quantum soup with everything being everywhere. But we clearly know more than this. Even though there was no one around to collapse wave so that certain events would âreally happenâ before us.
This is true regardless of whether you want to consider QM as justifying certain ontological assumptions or not. Even if we are speaking purely in terms models about what we know: If consciousness was required for collapse, we shouldnât know anything about the time before consciousness emerged, yet we do. How?
"Why is 1+1=2"
"Well, when you put 1 and 1 things together you get 2 things"
"Oh, so 1+1=2 because 1+1=2 now? You haven't explained why"
"Why else do you think"
"I've explained my position, I'm asking you!"
Wherever multiple interpretations are available people will be arguing which is better or which is even valid. But that's not a good enough answer, so what is?
They don't all agree on an interpretation. I don't see where you get this, maybe read some of @Wayfarer''s posts.
Quoting khaled
No, we can't know. We can't know if the person is in a superposition of possibilities, unless we go and check and make an observation.
You are claiming to know? How would you backup your claim? By going and finding the person and pointing to a definite location the person is in, or then making other observations that at least constrain the possibilities. Does that establish you "know" the person is in a definite position before you go and check? No, it doesn't establish that.
Quoting khaled
We do not know.
The whole cosmic wave function could have been happily existing in its quantum splendor representing all possibilities a conscious being might see, and only collapse due to a conscious being existing in one possibility and therefore the cosmic wave function collapses to a coherent single, or at least greatly constrained, possibility.
Quoting khaled
It does not "correct history".
The other possibilities "go away" upon observation, just like any other experiment.
How do we, or "the universe", know there's an observation that has happened? Because someone or something becomes conscious of the observed results.
There is no correcting history, obviously our "definite universe" is a coherent possibility, just as any other; it's just the other possibilities "went away" somehow for some reason. Before anyone was conscious of what possibility the universe is actually in, there's no way to go back and check whether the possibilities co-existed in a quantum probability wave sense (or any sense) or then definite situations followed one to the other even if there was no one around to see it.
That's why the word "basically" is there. It's definitely a statistical majority. Which is as good as you're going to get.
Quoting boethius
Yes we can because if it did the interference pattern wouldn't emerge.
Quoting boethius
As above.
Quoting boethius
No but if throwing a bunch of people through two slits produces the result that the people act as "waves" until measured that precisely means that they don't act as particles all the time. In other words, that the people are "truly everywhere" in the probability distribution.
Now replace people with electrons.
Or in other words, if the electron really did exist as a particle in a spot, with a certain momentum, how do you explain why an interference pattern emerges when we don't measure the electron's location?
Quoting boethius
No, not just like in any other experiment. In fact very unlike every other experiment. See here:
Quoting boethius
Except in this case... For some reason in this one case, when collapse happens at time t5, it also happens backwards for times t1,t2,t3,t4. It's either that, or everything we know about Cosmology is just wrong, and we can't really know it.
Quoting boethius
You claim this. But it's clearly false. We know definite situations followed one to the other even though no one was around to see them. That's what Cosmology establishes. By your theory we shouldn't be able to do cosmology. Since waves don't collapse unless seen by a conscious agent, and since we can't see the past, we should not be able to know anything about it. It should just seem like quantum soup.
Is it a majority? Where's your data?
But, even so, who cares?
If a majority of physicists in the time of Newton believed physics was fully determined (or then to arbitrary precision of all variables such as position and momentum), did that conclusively prove anything at the time?
All communities are affected by "group think", and the point of science is that real experiments can settle differences, not votes. If a bunch of physicists "voted" about something, really, who cares about that? Do the physicists themselves even care about it more than just an opinion poll of the moment that obviously doesn't "prove" anything?
If a majority of physicists were defending your point of view, where's their experiment to prove it? Are you really defending the idea that these physicists would say "ah, ah, ah, not so fast, we're a majority and therefore correct"?
Quoting khaled
What does this point make? We agree the electron cannot be said to be "at one place" when we aren't observing it (even though there are fully deterministic theories where the particle is "at one place" at all times, but we seem to agree on at least this point; still, worth making a note of), and we agree that the "substance" of the electron, in some sense, is represented by the probability distribution, which has wave characteristics and can interfere with itself to make interference patterns etc.
What we're debating is what happens to this "probability related substance" when a measurement is made.
My point is that to "know" a measurement is made is to become conscious of the measurement result. The "probability waves going away" happen at that moment or before. If you argue "before", how do you prove it? In science you need to go and check, but this just kicks the can up the road, as @Wayfarer has really described super well, so read his comments. I'm just adding some quantum math lingo to what Wayfarer has already adequately described (and my math lingo I'm adding just to explain to you, or other readers here interested, that the math lingo doesn't really change the philosophical arguments of principle that pre-existed Quantum Mechanics, of determinism, skepticism, solipsism, panpsychism, everything possible actually happens in eternal infinite chaotic universe, etc.; although if a poster here knows of an interpretation of QM that does not map "pretty well" to pre-existing philosophical arguments, it would be interesting to add it to the mix).
Quoting khaled
You backup your claim by just asserting "physicists agree with you", without providing any "well controlled experiment" of how this is even supported?
Quoting khaled
I don't know what we're debating here. I've said our knowledge about the person lost at sea is a probability distribution (labeling it a "wave" or not doesn't matter), my point is that if you claim the person is "really somewhere" and not somehow "co-existing" in all the places they can be according to what we know, how do we prove they are "really somewhere"? We go and check.
As for making interference patterns with people; so far there is no known bound for making interference patters with atoms, so in principle, as far as we know, it's possible with people too. Of course, you'd need to cool them incredible close to absolute zero and you may need literally hundreds of trillions of throws to see any pattern in a whole bunch of noise, as well as do the experiment in deep inter-galactic space; but, until we find an upper bound of number of particles for making interference patterns, we can't say we can't do it with "people too" (well, at least the particles making up their bodies).
Quoting khaled
Collapse does not happen backwards. All the possibilities related to t1, t2, t3, and t4 can be still "in play" and those possibilities are still co-existing at t5 as well, but when we make a measurement at t5, all the other possibilities "that could have happened" go away.
Cosmology only tells us that now, when we look up at the stars, we see starts in definite locations corresponding to a definite history we can piece together. There is zero problem saying plenty of other possibilities "co-existed" until the first consciousness emerged to make such observations to collapse the wave function. Definiteness occurs at observation, how would we check it occurred before? We'd have to go and observe what occurred before, defeating the purpose of the checking.
Quoting khaled
I really don't see where you get this. All possible cosmologies propagate from the big bang, and then the cosmic wave collapse happens and one definite cosmological history is "retained" once a "sufficient" consciousness emerges (in at least one of the possible cosmologies) and the wave function collapses.
This theory explains fine-tuning, and also solves the problem of the universes splitting and questions about energy conservation and quantum information copying (which if universe splitting doesn't just ignore, I haven't seen any experimental evidence proving this isn't a problem); however, we know probability waves can and do exist without violating information or energy conservation, so the entire cosmos in such a state creates zero problems in this regard. Maybe inflation was a super low probability event, likewise matter and antimatter asymmetry, weakness of gravity, and so on, but the first consciousness emerged in this super probability edge case, so that's what we see. Why is humanity so stupid? > edge case, "sufficient consciousness" is a pretty low bar.
I did provide experiments. And clearly not I back it up by saying:
Quoting khaled
That's what was above the words "as above". To remind you the claim was:
Quoting khaled
Which you agree with here:
Quoting boethius
To rephrase the claim: I was saying that we can know for a fact that the "substance" of an electron is not a particle in one place when we are not observing it. That's an ontological claim.
This was in response to your claim that Quantum Mechanics can't say anything ontological. Yes it can. "That the substance of an electron is not a particle in one place when we're not observing it" for example.
Quoting boethius
Ah I see, so when I say that "The majority of physicists agree that this interpretation is false" then it's "who cares" but when you say "If there is an obvious interpretation physicists would have agreed on it" expert opinion suddenly matters. If you remember, I was only following what you said. You said if there is an obvious interpretation that physicists would have agreed on it. Well, physicists agree that consciousness is not necessary for collapse. Shouldn't that make it the "obvious conclusion" then? Oh no but who cares about expert opinion at all.
To emphasize, I didn't say that experts agreeing makes them correct. You're the one that started by giving significance to expert opinion which I only used to support my argument.
Quoting boethius
Whether or not quantum mechanics can lead to valid ontological claims about electrons (for example), instead of just epistemological claims.
Quoting boethius
For massive objects the probability distribution is incredibly small. From the uncertainty principle equation: For massive objects there is always going to be a (relatively) large uncertainty in momentum (since they're massive) which means a very small uncertainty in position.
Definitely not enough to produce an interference pattern of any sort. So no, we know we can't do it with people. Moreover, if you still want to stick to the "consciousness causes collapse" theory then we DEFINITELY can't do it with people, because the people will collapse their own wave function!
Quoting boethius
"Those possibilities are still co-existing except they go away"
Excuse me what?
Quoting boethius
Exactly. So we shouldn't have any clue what happened at times t0,t1,t2,t3,t4 since we can't go and check. But we do. So maybe definiteness doesn't require conscious observation?
Quoting boethius
Except that would mean that it caused collapse back in time. It "corrected history".
Quoting boethius
"One definite cosmological history is retained". So... Correcting history with the awesome power of consciousness?
The only way I can make sense of this is if you're trying for some MWI of some sort but it doesn't seem like you are.
Quoting boethius
By the fact that there are consequences if it didn't happen before which we can test for. Again, cookie dispensers and double slit experiments.
Also because if it didn't happen before, then you're saying that we can't know anything about the state of the world before the observation. Yet cosmology exists.
I think the issue here is that the electron does not have any real existence as a particle at all. It is a particular quantity of energy, and we, as human beings desire to give that quantum of energy real existence as a unit, making it an entity, called an electron. But there is no real existence of that particle, this is simply how we relate to that energy from our perspective as human beings, with human artifices.