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Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#31

Post by danielbln »

ericmay wrote: post #14
wongarsu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't really fit today's world view. We have largely moved away from viewing humans or "consciousness" as something special, so the notion that an observer collapses the wave function just seems weird now. "Many worlds" or "the wave function never collapses, you are in a superposition" both make much more sense with how we currently view the world

I’d say a good heuristic would be to include all mammals in any theory about consciousness, wave function collapse, quantum consciousness, etc. and then see if the theory still holds up. If it does, you are probably on to something. I think scientifically we will look back on “humans are uniquely conscious” as a categorical differentiation instead of a gradient with other mammals to be as absurd as believing the eart…

> “Unique consciousness” is a quasi-religious mechanism we use at a societal level to not run around all the time terrified of death.

It also helps us justify eating other lifeforms, mammals included.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#32

Post by spywaregorilla »

zhouyisu wrote: post #15
dzdt wrote: post #4

There is an often-repeated statement that different quantum mechanical theories are equivalent. This is an over-simplification. Is wave function collapse is a real thing or just an approximation of what happens when a large system is entangled? Some smart people have tried to make theories where wave function collapse is a real thing. These new experiments are working to rule out those ideas. My feeling is that Evere…

A interesting deduction: By making quantum computer, we are making us into Schrödinger’s Cat. Which entangles our destiny to a quantum possibility. Such as a highly sophiscated military quantum computer which decides war and peace on quantum computing. It must be very fun to observe us from a Alien Species's angle.

Quantum computing is a means to avoid checking wrong solutions en route to solving certain types of problems. Seems very unlikely for this kind of decision to ever depend on a quantum computer.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#33

Post by [deleted] »

danielbln wrote: post #31
ericmay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say a good heuristic would be to include all mammals in any theory about consciousness, wave function collapse, quantum consciousness, etc. and then see if the theory still holds up. If it does, you are probably on to something. I think scientifically we will look back on “humans are uniquely conscious” as a categorical differentiation instead of a gradient with other mammals to be as absurd as believing the eart…

> “Unique consciousness” is a quasi-religious mechanism we use at a societal level to not run around all the time terrified of death. It also helps us justify eating other lifeforms, mammals included.

[deleted]

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#34

Post by iainmerrick »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #29
Comevius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Copenhagen interpretation never defined an observer that way. It's a non-interpretation basically, just shut up and calculate, which is still the most widely accepted approach among scientists, since there are no other falsifiable interpretations.

I'm reminded of learning about the grandfather paradox as a kid. I recall hearing shit about scientists saying if you were to travel back in time, you would be compelled by a universal force to do things that don't alter the future and create a paradox. Even as a kid, that sounded so idiotic. In retrospect it was almost certainly the reporting that was wrong.

Is that really so weird? That's a very common version of time travel in SF, perhaps the most common. You can travel back in time, and you think you're changing history, but through a series of unlikely coincidences you end up being the person who created the history you were trying to change.

Come to think of it, maybe that's more common in short stories, where the "gotcha!" format works. It's probably harder to spin that unchangeable-history gimmick out to novel length, whereas "you can change history and it has endless weird side effects" can work well in long form. I can't think off-hand of any time travel novels with unchangeable history.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#35

Post by rubidium »

dzdt wrote: post #4

There is an often-repeated statement that different quantum mechanical theories are equivalent. This is an over-simplification. Is wave function collapse is a real thing or just an approximation of what happens when a large system is entangled? Some smart people have tried to make theories where wave function collapse is a real thing. These new experiments are working to rule out those ideas. My feeling is that Evere…

Many worlds is just some peoples favorite because they get too weirded out but indeterminism. They prefer a billiard ball universe and so invented the hairbrained many worlds theory.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#36

Post by vpfaulkner »

From a layman’s point of view, it seems like we grasping at straws when it comes to these thorny quantum questions. Is fair to say, for example, that we are about as clueless as our ancestors were with the bubonic plague?

To a non-expert it can be difficult to separate which theories lay on solid ground and which theories are highly speculative.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#37

Post by guerrilla »

wongarsu wrote: post #12
ThalesX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been passionate about this for awhile, I have a layman’s surface overview of the state of physics, or I like to believe so. It amused me to no end when my elderly aunt came to ask me for a tl;dr; on Quantum Physics. She stopped me shortly asking how she can control the universe with her mind. I tried to explain a bit about the famous interpretation (Copenhagen, not Von Neumann–Wigner) but she would have none o…

To be fair, the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't really fit today's world view. We have largely moved away from viewing humans or "consciousness" as something special, so the notion that an observer collapses the wave function just seems weird now. "Many worlds" or "the wave function never collapses, you are in a superposition" both make much more sense with how we currently view the world

You're thinking of the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, not Copenhagen.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#38

Post by spywaregorilla »

iainmerrick wrote: post #34
spywaregorilla wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of learning about the grandfather paradox as a kid. I recall hearing shit about scientists saying if you were to travel back in time, you would be compelled by a universal force to do things that don't alter the future and create a paradox. Even as a kid, that sounded so idiotic. In retrospect it was almost certainly the reporting that was wrong.

Is that really so weird? That's a very common version of time travel in SF, perhaps the most common. You can travel back in time, and you think you're changing history, but through a series of unlikely coincidences you end up being the person who created the history you were trying to change. Come to think of it, maybe that's more common in short stories, where the "gotcha!" format works. It's probably harder to spin…

It's not weird. It's fun.

But it's stupid as a serious time travel proposal. Things like "travel in back in time 5 seconds unless you see your future self is already there" create a hard paradox that this logic cannot solve. Time loops are easily broken by anyone interested in testing them.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#39

Post by iainmerrick »

Falsification is hard work, and rarely reaches a tidy end point. Even now, according to Curceanu, Roger Penrose — who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on general relativity — is working on a version of the Diósi-Penrose model in which there’s no spontaneous radiation at all.

It's incredible how influential Penrose has been for such a long time, and continues to be. As far as I can tell (I'm interested but far from an expert) very few theorists are coming up with genuinely testable ideas in this area.

Re: Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

#40

Post by guerrilla »

Comevius wrote: post #21
ericmay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say a good heuristic would be to include all mammals in any theory about consciousness, wave function collapse, quantum consciousness, etc. and then see if the theory still holds up. If it does, you are probably on to something. I think scientifically we will look back on “humans are uniquely conscious” as a categorical differentiation instead of a gradient with other mammals to be as absurd as believing the eart…

No interpretation of quantum physics proposed by scientists ever required a conscious observer, that's more of a misinterpretation of what an observer is. It's an interaction, not a person or animal. As for the theory of consciousness, of course we are not special, it's information-processing, and it looks like thermodynamics is responsible for the emergence of information-processing structures. https://arxiv.org/abs…

> No interpretation of quantum physics proposed by scientists ever required a conscious observer, that's more of a misinterpretation of what an observer is. It's an interaction, not a person or animal.

Are you saying that the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation[1] does not explicitly postulate consciousness to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_int...

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