Quantum Weirdness

[DrChinese]

DrChinese,

I believe it was that both hidden variables against quantum theory and also seperability of particle properties that were shown to be false by the Aspect experiment.

I don't believe that decoherent/consistent histories is saying the world is in any way classical, only that the result is like it was.

As far as I know, the act of observation has problems with cosmology as there is nothing to observe the universes wavefunction of Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle. It's no coincidence that Hartle has been one of the four main people involved in the development of a version of quantum theory that removes this problem.

How it gets there involves decoherence and a many-worlds'-like "many-histories" view of particles that sounds a bit like Richard Feynman's sum-over-histories version. I clearly have no idea how it all works yet or I'd obviously be giving a better explanation.

I'm still going to try and find the least weird one, even if they all come up with the same practical result anyway.

I just don't like paradoxes much.

Of course, the only "paradox" is that reality isn't like we imagine it to be. At any rate, the Aspect experiments ruled out what are known as local realistic theories. That leaves non-local realistic theories (a la Bohm) and local non-realistic (i.e. no hidden variables) theories. Of these, there is the standard (Copenhagen) interpretation, the many worlds interpretation (Everett) and I guess the stuff from Griffiths of which I am not familiar. At this time, none of these classes of theories makes any different predictions than the others to my knowledge.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

All these interpretations are in accord with what we can observe, and is compatible with the standard model, but they differ in the part, which we cannot observe! For instance in the experiment with the two holes, a wave equation is a mathematical tool which can be used to compute where on the screen the photon is most likely to end up, where the amplitude is as highest there is the highest probability for us to find the photon. The photon, or photons behaves in accord with common sense when the one hole is open, either the left or the right one, since there is a light strip to the left, when the left hole is open, and a light strip to the right when the right hole is open.

But the basic quantum mystery begin when we open both holes, because it stand to reason that it additively should be two light strips there, one to the left, and one to the right, but nope, since it is always a fence with some 5 or 6 light stripes there, even when we shot one photon at a time, it is still a fence there, and this fence is labeled interference pattern. Richard Feynman has said that the photon "sniffing" out all possible ways (histories) between the light source and the target screen, and what we see when we measure its end result is an average way between all possible ways, the interference pattern is an indication that the photon has mathematically interacted with itself. Not at all said by David Deutsch, because all these photons are equally real, because it is other photons from the multiverse which bouncing and impinging upon each other which has generated this pattern, but the system acquire decoherence when we measure where the photon is! Decoherence happens when we disturb the system, decoherence happens when we probe the system, our awareness has nothing to do with it!

But John Gribbin has said in his book Schrodinger' s Kittens that; I don't think David Deutsch has considered that, these close to infinite photons, and the multiverse acquire decoherence in the same unit of time, and so is a nonlocal phenomenon! But John Bell has said in Paul Davies book, The Ghost in the Atom, that he prefers reality and reject locality, and will reinstall the pre-Einsteinian ether, where signals can travel faster than light! Murray Gell-Mann has said in his book The Quark, and The Jaguar, chapter 12, EPR B and Hidden Variables, page 210, that the two photon's polarizations are correlated in quantum physics which classical physics does not permit, and he doesn't elaborate it any further because of lot of misinterpretation in public! The chapter is labeled Quantum Physics and humbug!

But I think it is closer to the true to say that: the two photons in Alain Aspect's experiment 1982, are correlated known as quantum entanglement, the photons has thus a superposition of polarizations until disentangled by the act of measurement, and so photon A acquire polarization say up, and the photon B polarization down, the distance between them doesn't matter, even if one photon is here, and the other in the other side of universe, and nobody knows how they can disentangle in the same unit of time, frankly we have only measured one of them!

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Consciousness as the collapser of universal wave function!

DrChinese,

I believe it was that both hidden variables against quantum theory and also seperability of particle properties that were shown to be false by the Aspect experiment.

I don't believe that decoherent/consistent histories is saying the world is in any way classical, only that the result is like it was.

As far as I know, the act of observation has problems with cosmology as there is nothing to observe the universes wavefunction of Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle. It's no coincidence that Hartle has been one of the four main people involved in the development of a version of quantum theory that removes this problem.

How it gets there involves decoherence and a many-worlds'-like "many-histories" view of particles that sounds a bit like Richard Feynman's sum-over-histories version. I clearly have no idea how it all works yet or I'd obviously be giving a better explanation.



I'm still going to try and find the least weird one, even if they all come up with the same practical result anyway.

I just don't like paradoxes much.

Soderqvist1: This is also a possibility by professor Goswami at the University of Oregon! Read both sides of the story as I have done!

An Interview with Amit Goswami
WIE: To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I assumed you were speaking metaphorically. But after reading the book, and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting the sense that you mean it much more literally than I had thought. One thing in your book that really stopped me in my tracks was your statement that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe only existed in a realm of countless evolving possibilities until at one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being arose and that, at that point, instantaneously, the entire known universe came into being, including the fifteen billion years of history leading up to that point. Do you really mean that?

Goswami: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In fact, in quantum physics this is called "delayed choice." And I have added to this concept the concept of "self-reference." Actually the concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The question always arises, "The universe is supposed to have existed for fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for so long?" Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being, biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial fireball which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang.

But this other way of looking at things says that the universe remained in possibility until there was self-referential quantum measurement—so that is the new concept. An observer's looking is essential in order to manifest possibility into actuality, and so only when the observer looks, only then does the entire thing become manifest—including time. So all of past time, in that respect, becomes manifest right at that moment when the first sentient being looks. It turns out that this idea, in a very clever, very subtle way, has been around in cosmology and astronomy under the guise of a principle called the "anthropic principle." That is, the idea has been growing among astronomers—cosmologists anyway—that the universe has a purpose. It is so fine-tuned, there are so many coincidences, that it seems very likely that the universe is doing something purposive, as if the universe is growing in such a way that a sentient being will arise at some point.

The Self-Aware Universe, How Consciousness Creates the material world!
http://www.twm.co.nz/goswam1.htm

 

[DrChinese]

Re: Consciousness as the collapser of universal wave function!

Soderqvist1: This is also a possibility by professor Goswami at the University of Oregon! Read both sides of the story as I have done!

An Interview with Amit Goswami
WIE: To be honest, when I first saw the subtitle of your book I assumed you were speaking metaphorically. But after reading the book, and speaking with you about it now, I am definitely getting the sense that you mean it much more literally than I had thought. One thing in your book that really stopped me in my tracks was your statement that, according to your interpretation, the entire physical universe only existed in a realm of countless evolving possibilities until at one point, the possibility of a conscious, sentient being arose and that, at that point, instantaneously, the entire known universe came into being, including the fifteen billion years of history leading up to that point. Do you really mean that?

Goswami: I mean that literally. This is what quantum physics demands. In fact, in quantum physics this is called "delayed choice." And I have added to this concept the concept of "self-reference." Actually the concept of delayed choice is very old. It is due to a very famous physicist named John Wheeler, but Wheeler did not see the entire thing correctly, in my opinion. He left out self-reference. The question always arises, "The universe is supposed to have existed for fifteen billion years, so if it takes consciousness to convert possibility into actuality, then how could the universe be around for so long?" Because there was no consciousness, no sentient being, biological being, carbonbased being, in that primordial fireball which is supposed to have created the universe, the big bang.

...

That is wild/cool! Weird is relative, I guess, and it is weird. But I guess as within the realm of the possible as anything. I had not previously seen the act of observation elevated to such heights. But fundamentally no more difficult to accept than the many worlds concept.

Perhaps we did create the universe after all. Or perhaps it was "created" by an earlier civilization than ours.

 

[wipeout]

Re: Re: Re: Oh, I'm SLOW!

Yes, I sort of gathered. I've downloaded the pdf, I'll read it soon, real soon.... honest. Hey, you've tried to read this stuff too. You know it's probably the best remedy for insomnia since halothane.

Hey, homoeopathy produces genuinely effective treatment at last!

They can also lift your mood if you take homeopathy papers and make paper airplanes out of them.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by TillEulenspiegel
To muddy the waters even further search out some papers on Quantum encryptation. The theory stands firmly on the principle that if an encrypted communication is intercepted and observed that the information will change.

No, don't - the waters are muddy enough!

Yeah, I've read a little about this in Gell-Mann's book. It's quite interesting that people could use fundamental physics to create something that will always show if it has been intercepted.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Rolfe
But the one which creeps me out the most is Atmanspacher, particularly his address (the second one - and as to how he manages to combine psychology and "psychohygiene" - what??! - with extraterrestrial physics, I don't even want to go there).

I'd guess "psychohygiene" means "mental health". At least, I hope it does.

OK, I know, but this is on-topic as far as the original intent of the thread is concerned.

Indeed. These homeopathy people are displaying much quantum weirdness.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by DrChineseOf course, the only "paradox" is that reality isn't like we imagine it to be. At any rate, the Aspect experiments ruled out what are known as local realistic theories. That leaves non-local realistic theories (a la Bohm) and local non-realistic (i.e. no hidden variables) theories. Of these, there is the standard (Copenhagen) interpretation, the many worlds interpretation (Everett) and I guess the stuff from Griffiths of which I am not familiar. At this time, none of these classes of theories makes any different predictions than the others to my knowledge.

What I know right now essentially agrees on all of this.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Peter SoderqvistNot at all said by David Deutsch, because all these photons are equally real, because it is other photons from the multiverse which bouncing and impinging upon each other which has generated this pattern, but the system acquire decoherence when we measure where the photon is! Decoherence happens when we disturb the system, decoherence happens when we probe the system, our awareness has nothing to do with it!

But John Gribbin has said in his book Schrodinger' s Kittens that; I don't think David Deutsch has considered that, these close to infinite photons, and the multiverse acquire decoherence in the same unit of time, and so is a nonlocal phenomenon!

I think the decoherent histories approach is similar but seems to have ruled out nonlocal effects so maybe Gribben is incorrect here, and the solution is perhaps related to a lack of wave-function collapse problems, so this could be good news for Deutsch. Also I believe the idea behind decoherent histories is just having different particle histories interfering and not different universes but there is no way of dismissing the multiverse idea.

But I'm speculating beyond any certain knowledge of mine so I should probably stop talking about this very soon. I want to know exactly what I'm talking about eventually.

But I think it is closer to the true to say that: the two photons in Alain Aspect's experiment 1982, are correlated known as quantum entanglement, the photons has thus a superposition of polarizations until disentangled by the act of measurement, and so photon A acquire polarization say up, and the photon B polarization down, the distance between them doesn't matter, even if one photon is here, and the other in the other side of universe, and nobody knows how they can disentangle in the same unit of time, frankly we have only measured one of them!

I don't find the part about the EPR paradox in Gell-Mann's The Quark and the Jaguar very helpful because it wasn't an explanation about how they resolve the paradox, it's just a summary of the result that it is resolved.

I think the only real way of understanding it is to read the Consistent Quantum Theory by Robert Griffiths and that's not obviously a popular science book, that's a textbook of several hundred pages on quantum mechanics.

I won't be able to get it for a month yet but what I've seen so far is clear and concise and very well-written so I hope to have a better understanding within a few weeks of getting the book.

I'd say now, though, that Gell-Mann is notorious for not saying anything until he is absolutely sure about it. He utterly hates being wrong. This is the man who was overhead muttering "I wish I were dead!" because he made one mistake while speaking French 20 years before.

I don't see a man of his achievements and perfectionism saying various paradoxes are gone unless they really are gone. Well, here's hoping.

 

[wipeout]

Originally posted by Peter Soderqvist

Soderqvist1: This is also a possibility by professor Goswami at the University of Oregon! Read both sides of the story as I have done!

Okay, I read what Amit Goswami is saying. As you might expect, I'm more of a practical kind of person and I like to think that there is a real world out there beyond me that is behaving itself and following the rules we think we know without turning it around like he has and taking a philosophical or mystical approach.

Wolfgang Pauli once called Enrico Fermi a "quantum engineer" for doing this, but either position has had its supporters at even the highest levels as can be seen by these two founders of the field going opposite ways.

 

[wipeout]

Okay, with making six replies I feel I've said everything I'm going to for now and I think I'd like to take a holiday from all things quantum.

 

[Rolfe]

Bump, because there are some really great references posted in this thread (thanks, Wipeout!).

Rolfe.

 

[cosmic]

My main problem with Amit Goswami's "collective consciousness" of the universe that is needed to "collapse the wavefuntion" is that like all other interpretations of QM, there is as yet no data to support this idea over any of the others.

Another worry is that Goswami's idea of a universal consciousness is never really explained-- how can we see/test this notion? Seems very metaphysical.

The mysteries of QM are troubling. I reccomend the first two chapters of David Z. Albert's "Quantum Mechanics and Experience" for an excellent descrition of what the actual mysteries are. I think he correctly identfies the mysteries as (1)the "new mode of being" at the quantum level called superposition, and (2) what it means to make a measurment, that is when does a quantum superposition of states (potential to be in each state) become the actual state (realized state).

The going from a superposition of states to an actualized state is what all these interpretations try to explain. The trouble is that none of the interpretations offer a way to test/falsify their claims. So that's why we're stuck with so many interpretations.

The interperetations involving consciousness are the most questionable in my mind. See "The Unconscious Quantum" by Victor Stenger for more details.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

I think I understand what Hunter means and I sympathise. Most posters here seem to be similar with the expression of certain quantum phenomenon in thier field and some are well acquainted with the whole idea of QM and it's impact in the larger sense.

However QM like many other fields has adherents and hucksters. The claims of the more extreme of these reads like a snake oil salesman's handbook from the 1800's. The theoretical basis of the applicable rule sets that we know works and can be demonstrated can be counter-intuitive, the more esoteric can seem to be completely unreasonable.

The fact is that QM is a probibilitistic study where anything is possible. That does not make any particular case probable or plausible.The focus of the body ( like everything else ) is on the spectacular and not on the functional.

The whole observer determining the outcome of an experiment is an example. We know if you setup the experiment to observe a point particle , that is what you will observe, conversely if you setup the experiment to detect a wave...

The fact is that the common "observer" sobriquet has morfed to participant. That gives rise to the whole idea of consciousness causing a wave collapse which is solipsism in it's worst pajamas. One of the more extreme of the QM community's claims. We have instrumentalities that can record programmed random switches in the experimental model with no human intervention subject to review at a later time and in the near future we can harness the quantum mechanism to generate truly random switches of state of the inquiry. I wonder what claims the QM fanatics will say when we use the very mechanism to define the outcome of the experiment.