Experiments spell doom for physical-collapse explanation of quantum weirdness

Post by vpfaulkner » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

resoluteteeth wrote: post #44

vpfaulkner wrote: post #36

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.

> 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. Sure, but isn't that the point of doing these experiments?

Post by wongarsu » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #38

iainmerrick wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by sebastialonso » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 1:54 PM UTC

herdcall wrote: post #54

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…

Check out "superdeterminism," first proposed by Bell (of Bell's inequality fame) himself and currently being vigorously pursued by Sabina Hossenfelder. There is no "collapse" per se according to this model and everything is really classical with hidden variables, and the entanglement comes because everything shared the same origin (the big bang). A very fascinating and in my opinion the best explanation, though it's…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

ThalesX wrote: post #6

Comevius wrote: post #3

Looking out for quantum consciousness in articles about quantum physics would be a good drinking game, though here it is handled with a proper amount of scepticism. The pressure is enormous for writers to include mumbo-jumbo, because people click on these articles expecting to find out that it's possible to alter the Universe with psyhic abilities, which is how quantum physics is represented in social media, especial…

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…

Post by criddell » Fri, Oct 21, 2022, 2:03 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #30

criddell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My feeling is that Everett's "many worlds" interpretation is the clear favorite But what are the worlds? My feeling is that Max Tegmark has it right. Everything is mathematics.

Mildly different wobbled electrons.