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Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#71

Post by spot5010 »

borissk wrote: post #10
Nevermark wrote: post #3

> None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. Actually, the "many worlds" "interpretation", simply treats the highly suc…

I think you're right, the many worlds interpretation makes the most sense. Unfortunately out current technology is very far from delivering any experimental confirmation or denial of any of the mainstream interpretations.

What if we create a situation in a lab that can be labelled as a collapse of the wave function by interaction with a macroscopic object. Except the macroscopic object is under our control and we can reverse the collapse.

A quantum computer is such a macroscopic state.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#72

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

fnordlord wrote: post #62
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not hard at all when you acknowledge that such senses exist in the world, and that you (like others) possess them. As an aside it tends to foster a certain tendency towards empathy. In essence, you're asking why there's an inside to being a self-modeling system. But "inside" isn't something extraneous, something additional -- rather, it's what "self-modeling" means. Really the "hard problem" has a very easy answ…

It's embarrassingly silly to say but I've frequently just boiled down the hard question to the question of "where is the experience of the color blue stored in the universe?" Even as a non-dualist, I still haven't found much of an answer that I like. I'm all ears if you've got a book recommendation.

The question presupposes that "the experience of the color blue" is a discrete object that needs a storage location. But that's the dualist picture in disguise. On a functionalist view, blueness isn't stored; it's what certain neural activity constitutively is when you're that system observing that blue.

As an aside, isn't it more weird that violet and purple look indistinguishable despite being physically so different? It's said that this is because our L-cones (red-sensitive) have a secondary sensitivity peak at short wavelengths. So violet light triggers S-cones + a bit of L-cone. Purple light (red + blue) also triggers S-cones + L-cones. Similar activation pattern = same quale. It's all functional/physical.

Read Tom Cuda "Against Neural Chauvinism." Also Daniel Dennett.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#73

Post by colechristensen »

Terr_ wrote: post #66
colechristensen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>nobody really knows what they are talking about The mathematics of QM works extremely well. The interpretations of what the math is saying happens a varied and sometimes contradictory. We can predict what's going to happen extremely well, we just can't tell the story of what's happening. And there's been a century of trying to avoid the weirdness and failing. The problem might just be our brains evolved in a world t…

I often observe that humans are wired to create causal stories, whether we intend to or not, even in circumstances, we know are false. A great example involves flipping a coin. Even people who know it's basically an independent 50/50 chance every time get drawn into thinking about "hot streaks" and "overdue for the opposite." It's arguably a superpower that has given us lots of agriculture and tools and technology an…

Philosophy calls this a "just so" explanation

Humans are very good at pattern matching and explanation and that's what's given us success, but false-positive matches sometimes are the result and need to be corrected down a bit

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#74

Post by kikokikokiko »

lukol wrote: post #69
kikokikokiko wrote: post #44

To me, the fact that quantum mechanics is intrinsically "random" and unknowable beforehand, is what makes living bearable in this universe as a sentient being. If we, two legged viruses that we are, could reach a level of understanding that could show the universe to be fully deterministic and every future state to be knowable given that you know the current states, then this human condition would be impossible to st…

#1: You do not want randomness. You may believe you do until the Titanic crashes into your front yard and your significant vanishes into thin air. You want quite a lot of predictability, up to a degree where it might not even matter if things at the lowest level of existence are not perfectly deterministic. #2: What's so bad about thinking about life as an exciting rollercoaster ride? The tracks are laid but the ride…

If everything is deterministic, i.e. determined, there's no free will, so you/I are just a NPC. I prefer to live in a universe where my conscious decisions matter, or at least can't be predicted beforehand.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#75

Post by beloch »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #39

Im fully willing to believe I just don’t “get it” but I took a pretty deep dive into quantum computing and the underlying mechanics and I kind of got the sense (with QC) that nobody really knows what they are talking about. I got this feeling so strongly that stopped studying the topic all together. I’m probably way off base and I’m probably missing some insights that I could get by going to school or something but t…

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

--Richard Feynman

You're far from alone. Quantum physics is tricky because it frequently doesn't agree with our physical intuition. Humans are used to dealing with macroscopic objects. They surround us for our whole lives. Matter behaves in surprisingly different ways at the level of single quanta. Seemingly impossible things flop out of the math and then clever experiments show that reality is consistent with the math, but we struggle to reach the point where that reality feels correct. When we try to translate the math into human language, we often wind up overloading words and concepts in a way that can be misleading or even false.

Perhaps we just haven't reached the point where things are sufficiently well explained and simplified, but it may be be that quantum physics will always seem strange and counter-intuitive.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#76

Post by blueprint »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #39

Im fully willing to believe I just don’t “get it” but I took a pretty deep dive into quantum computing and the underlying mechanics and I kind of got the sense (with QC) that nobody really knows what they are talking about. I got this feeling so strongly that stopped studying the topic all together. I’m probably way off base and I’m probably missing some insights that I could get by going to school or something but t…

> nobody really knows what they are talking about

Could you form a specific question that you're wondering about? (Have you looked at condensed matter physics yet?)

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#77

Post by dwd »

beloch wrote: post #75
yoyohello13 wrote: post #39

Im fully willing to believe I just don’t “get it” but I took a pretty deep dive into quantum computing and the underlying mechanics and I kind of got the sense (with QC) that nobody really knows what they are talking about. I got this feeling so strongly that stopped studying the topic all together. I’m probably way off base and I’m probably missing some insights that I could get by going to school or something but t…

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." --Richard Feynman You're far from alone. Quantum physics is tricky because it frequently doesn't agree with our physical intuition. Humans are used to dealing with macroscopic objects. They surround us for our whole lives. Matter behaves in surprisingly different ways at the level of single quanta. Seemingly impossible things flop out of the math a…

I like that quote.

I always fell back on "Spooky action at a distance"; If Einstein found it weird, I shouldn't feel that bad if I can't quite make sense of it.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#78

Post by blueprint »

beloch wrote: post #75
yoyohello13 wrote: post #39

Im fully willing to believe I just don’t “get it” but I took a pretty deep dive into quantum computing and the underlying mechanics and I kind of got the sense (with QC) that nobody really knows what they are talking about. I got this feeling so strongly that stopped studying the topic all together. I’m probably way off base and I’m probably missing some insights that I could get by going to school or something but t…

"I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics." --Richard Feynman You're far from alone. Quantum physics is tricky because it frequently doesn't agree with our physical intuition. Humans are used to dealing with macroscopic objects. They surround us for our whole lives. Matter behaves in surprisingly different ways at the level of single quanta. Seemingly impossible things flop out of the math a…

Feynman, a famous man from an older era who tried to inspire, remind, and spur people...

> macroscopic objects

It's not about scale at all though. It's just that small systems tend to be observed with this other, specific property that we associate with causing "quantum" like effects. Not only do those effects happen at mesoscopic scale but aside from gravity, quantum theory already can be and is used to describe things on large scales too. Classical computers and desks are still "quantum" systems. Recently theory and experiments have developed to connect with gravity in many ways. I'm more confused when people say something is mysterious. They're usually referring to apparent randomness but I think even that is explained already with partitions or even just wave math (complementarity).

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#79

Post by Nevermark »

staticassertion wrote: post #59
Nevermark wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why you are being downvoted. The use of "random" as explanation or characterization in science has certainly spanned everything from "we don't know", to "there is inherent indivisible physical randomness". And I would agree, in the latter case it is a crutch. A postulate that something gets decided by no mechanisms whatsoever (randomness obeying a distribution still leaves the unexplained "choice"). It…

It is not incomplete to say that something does not require explanation, nor is it saying it's "magic". It is a cost that your model might incur, that's it. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15776 In this paper a plurality of physicists stated that they felt that the initial conditions of the universe are brute facts that warrant no further explanation. This is not "our model doesn't yet account for it", it's "there is no e…

A model is incomplete if it doesn't explain something.

That doesn't make a model wrong. All models we have are partial explanations.

But that doesn't make it rational to claim that an incomplete model is complete. Or to treat unexplained specifics as inherently "just so", without cause or reason (i.e. magic), and we must just accept them as unexplainable instead of pursuing them with further inquiry.

Re: Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

#80

Post by srean »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #72
fnordlord wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's embarrassingly silly to say but I've frequently just boiled down the hard question to the question of "where is the experience of the color blue stored in the universe?" Even as a non-dualist, I still haven't found much of an answer that I like. I'm all ears if you've got a book recommendation.

The question presupposes that "the experience of the color blue" is a discrete object that needs a storage location. But that's the dualist picture in disguise. On a functionalist view, blueness isn't stored; it's what certain neural activity constitutively is when you're that system observing that blue. As an aside, isn't it more weird that violet and purple look indistinguishable despite being physically so differe…

What is mysterious to me is why and how chemical reactions in a certain part of my brain create an experience of blue.

Yes some chemical change happened there, but so what.

These are not very unusual chemical reactions. They happen and are happening everywhere. Does all the chemical reactions going on generate an experience to some experiencer?

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