Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: demalk on 05/11/2017 18:18:01
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According to quantum physics, the observer effect in the double slit experiment is caused by the existence of the ‘which path’ information. Ron Garrett argues in his 2011 Google Talk that mathematically speaking there is no difference between ‘observation’ and ‘quantum entanglement’ – the information ‘observed’, or rather, ‘observable’, is hard-coded in the fabric of the universe in the form of an entangled subsystem. The observation/information is just as ‘real’ and as ‘physical’ as the observer and the observed, and only when this hard-copy of the ‘which path’ information is destroyed from the fabric of the universe, does our interference pattern show up. In other words: observation = information = a quantum entangled subsystem.
If by 'observing' we are enforcing an act of quantum entanglement onto an entangled system, wouldn't we expect to mess up said system? Isn’t it then obvious that the universe is one giant quantum computer, that matter, energy and what we call observation are all different expressions of fundamental bits of information, stored as entangled quantum subsystems within the quantum entangled universe itself? Matter = Energy = Spacetime = Information = Observation = A gigantic network of interconnected quantum entangled subsystems that is our entire universe?
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At a first glance.
Seems possible to me. The main importance might be what you deem to be 'real' in this context, the outcomes or what exist before one. We're all observers as well as observables, but where do we set the limit? Is a 'photon' a observable? Its outcome is but the 'entity' itself is nothing we can observe other than through its effects.
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Although calling it a quantum computer would place us where?
Catalysts maybe?
The point may be that if everything becomes entangled, able to 'act' and be 'acted on' then what place does consciousness have in such a universe? Why the need for it? A coincidence :)
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" If by 'observing' we are enforcing an act of quantum entanglement onto an entangled system, wouldn't we expect to mess up said system? " Well, that depends on how you think of it. Are you defining consciousness as the only thing able to interact for 'change'? Otherwise it's a mess already, as everything that can interact already interacts. Don't need humans for that one unless you apply some anthropic principle on the universes existence.
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The main importance might be what you deem to be 'real' in this context, the outcomes or what exist before one.
By 'real' I mean both exist in the same ontological category.
'We're all observers as well as observables, but where do we set the limit? Is a 'photon' a observable? Its outcome is but the 'entity' itself is nothing we can observe other than through its effects.'
I believe the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment disproves that statement.
Although calling it a quantum computer would place us where? Catalysts maybe?
Information! It places us as information, just like light, energy and everything else in the universe. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that matter exhibits the same particle-wave duality as light.
The point may be that if everything becomes entangled, able to 'act' and be 'acted on' then what place does consciousness have in such a universe? Why the need for it? A coincidence :)
Not a coincidence, a very unavoidable consequence of evolution on earth. The role of consciousness in the double slit experiment, i.e. the role of consciousness in particle-wave duality is a mistake. The observer doesn't need to be conscious at all.
Are you defining consciousness as the only thing able to interact for 'change'?
Consciousness is not the key. Information is. The information needs to be stored. So far we have not found a 'natural' way for the information to get stored, other than a conscious being creating a setting in which the information is stored. But once such setting is created, for example a computer that registers the 'which path' information, it becomes irrelevant whether a conscious being 'observes' that information. The fact that it is stored, is enough for the observer effect to emerge.
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Then we're agreeing to disagree I think :)
I would define everything as observing each other. Something 'bumps' into something else creating a entanglement, no consciousnesses needed for that one. And the 'bump' change things in its interaction. As for whether information needs to be stored? I would have to understand how you think there to answer.
Let 's put it this way then. The universe is a 'storage mechanism', and I don't expect it to need consciousness for doing so, any more than I would expect my harddrive to need it. What I find interesting is 'free will', but that's not about storing information, although it involves it naturally, in making choices. Your definition is different though, isn't it?
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'We're all observers as well as observables, but where do we set the limit? Is a 'photon' a observable? Its outcome is but the 'entity' itself is nothing we can observe other than through its effects.'
I believe the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment disproves that statement.
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How?
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What I am saying about information needing to be stored to create the observer effect is not my invention. It has been confirmed over and over again by the various versions of the double slit experiment that have been conducted over the past 200 years and documented in great detail. Wikipedia has a good explanation. Can't post the link :(
The way I see it, it is not my mind but the body of research on particle-wave duality that you would need to familiarise yourself better with.
You are obfuscating the definition of the word 'observation', and enlarging it to include the meaning of motion and other things. If a rock could observe like we can, i.e. create information like we can, we would always find the observer effect just by the sheer presence of matter in the experimental lab. Since we only find the observer effect when we deliberately create it, we can reasonably conclude that there is a distinction to be made there. We or our computer or our bucket of marbles which we've set up to record the 'which path' information actually creates information that would not have been created otherwise. Your 'bumping' particle does not 'observe' like that.
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You're thinking of the Copenhagen interpretation I suspect? When I'm talking about 'observers' I do have a wider definition, just as you think. I don't lock it to consciousness, because that would exclude most of the natural world around us. What I think you are referring to is the idea of a 'free will', meaning making a conscious choice, somehow changing the way the universe present itself. Doesn't that taste of hubris to you? It does to me.
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And rereading you, I'm not discussing 'free will' when I refer to 'observers'. I'm just stating that a 'bump' will make a change just as good as any human observer. Maybe it's not the Copenhagen interpretation you're referring to though, as I also see you write
" Not a coincidence, a very unavoidable consequence of evolution on earth. The role of consciousness in the double slit experiment, i.e. the role of consciousness in particle-wave duality is a mistake. The observer doesn't need to be conscious at all."
That confuses me slightly as you later say
"Since we only find the observer effect when we deliberately create it, we can reasonably conclude that there is a distinction to be made there."
In fact I do agree to them, there is a distinction to be made between consciousness and free will versus 'dead matter' and I do expect physical laws, properties and principles to be the same for everything existing
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Then we come to information. This is where you will need to explain as good as you can what you see that as. Otherwise we will be lost in a quagmire.
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Ah, I can see the apparent contradiction in my words as well as the source of our misunderstanding, which I believe now is what has happened here. Before I clarify; first Copenhagen.
The Copenhagen interpretation is arguably the silliest, most self-confirming thing that ever emerged from modern science - it is the quantum equivalent of what we would call in the macroscopic world 'to give up'. Furthermore, it was created out of ideological reasons rather than scientific integrity; to prove that nothing is certain at that time was a very logical and appealing way of rebelling against the conservative establishment, which maintained that everything is ultimately and fundamentally knowable. It is just unfortunate that this trend had caught on with such a brilliant audience like Bohr and friends, who managed to force its quantum equivalent upon the world for 100 years to come. It was certainly not my intention to represent this view. I am a fundamental determinist, for short :)
As to the apparent contradiction in my words, I believe it comes down to the semantic difference between 'consciousness' and 'intent', i.e. the distinction between a direct impact of consciousness on reality, or just the ability of some intelligent being to create an experiment that shows a more fundamental mechanism at play. The 'observer', i.e. the mechanism through which the information is created, doesn't need to be conscious. A computer creates the observer effect just by storing the 'which path' information as bits on a hard disk, triggered by a sensor that either does or doesn't send a signal to the computer as a photon passes through the left or the right slit. Whether or not a conscious being then logs into the computer to actually observe the information, is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the information is observable. As long as that is the case, as long as the information is stored or restorable somewhere in the universe, in whatever way, the interference pattern is replaced by 2 distinct dots of light. Logging in and checking the information on the computer doesn't affect the outcome, the particle pattern has already emerged. If however we would destroy the hard drive before retrieving the information on it, this would in retrospect affect our experiment results, and we would once again find the interference pattern. As if the photons had corrected their behaviour in retrospect. This too has nothing to do with consciousness: we could leave the decision whether or not to store the information and when to store it up to the computer itself, or whichever other non-conscious system - the quantum eraser experiment uses a setup of crystals and mirrors - and still the same effect would occur. This doesn't prove the computer, crystal and mirror are conscious of course, but rather that the existence of the which path information, whether it be in the present or at any time in the future of the universe, is key to the behavioural change we see in photons, electrons and indeed entire molecules of matter.
However, and this is where the distinction comes in: this so-called 'observer' effect does not occur naturally. Imagine a sunrise where the first beams of light are just reaching over from the other side of the horizon, and the light passes through 2 tiny openings in, say, a tree, and shines onto an otherwise dark surface behind it, say, a rock. This will always produce an interference pattern (i.e. no observer effect). The 'which path' information isn't being stored. We create the 'observer' effect in our labs by deliberately storing the information. This is where 'consciousness' or rather 'intent' comes in: someone or something has to have created a setup which then stores the which path information of the photons. The setup itself doesn't need to be conscious, the 'observation' itself doesn't need to be conscious. But the circumstances required to create this particular isolated effect, do not occur naturally so intent and intelligence are needed to create the experiment. That is not to say that intelligence or ‘consciousness’ directly create the 'observer effect'.
For that reason 'observer effect' is wrong. The concept of 'observation' is used erroneously. It should be called an 'information effect'. The observer and his/its features isn't key here, the information that is created in the act, is key. We needed a conscious being to produce this lab effect, but the implications that the results carry for the whole of reality have nothing to do with consciousness. It is the existence of the information itself that counts.
The argument also works the other way around. We can put a conscious observer, say, you, right in front of the two slits. You could consciously observe the light going through them. You would look as carefully as you can and focus your entire 'consciousness' on the two slits as the light travels through. But since your internal machinery isn't equipped to process such detail, you still have no idea through which slit each photon travelled. The 'which path' information isn't physically stored in your brain and so the observer effect doesn't occur, even though there was a conscious observer watching the whole time. 'Consciousness' has nothing to do with the result. It is just that intent was required to create this specific experiment.
This distinction is extremely important. The misinterpretation that conscious observation directly affects reality would imply that 'consciousness' has some sort of key role in reality. This feeds into the rhetoric of religion mongers and is used very often to imply the existence of God. The idea that the existence of information is what underlies reality, has far less religious, and far more scientific potential. It just means that information, a seemingly abstract concept, perhaps less abstract that 'love' or 'self-loathing', but surely more abstract than 'matter' or 'light', actually proves to be as real as matter and light at the most fundamental level of existence. This puts the 'building blocks' of information in the same ontological category as the 'building blocks' of all matter and energy, whatever those may be. This doesn't say anything about 'consciousness' or 'free will' or 'observation'. All it says is that the fundamental building blocks of information exist in the same reality, are just as 'real', as those of matter and energy. Or rather; the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy are just as 'real' as those of information.
Now, taking our conversation thus far into account, I would actually be surprised if you and I are in disagreement about this. Essentially you are saying the same thing as I am (correct me if I'm wrong). Except you are using the term 'observation' to describe what I call 'information'. If you want to use 'observation' in the way you are trying to, you would always have to build in a disclaimer that you don't mean conscious observation to prevent misunderstanding like, I believe, has occurred here. Because of the reasons explained above, i.e. the risk of implying religious or spiritual interpretations of reality, or attributing consciousness to inanimate matter (unfortunately the latter is not an uncommon view), i.e. the risk of obfuscating what is actually going on and therefore interesting to discuss, I believe 'information' is far more accurate.
I conclude that 'observation' as you are using the term, has just as little to do with consciousness as the 'observation' in the 'observer effect'. Neither of us consider 'consciousness' to be implied by 'observation'. So technically speaking, and upon closer inspection, I don't think you are wrong in how you describe the world. Our differences to me seem to be mainly semantic. Unless I am missing something here :)
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Ok
There are some things I wonder about reading you
How do you consider 'time', 'illusionary' or 'real'
Or better perhaps, what is it (time) to you?
And information, there's this example I'm sure you've seen, writing a formula on a block of ice. Does that information still exist as the ice is gone?
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Btw: I will reread you and hopefully find some more questions
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And yes, I think we're in a agreement on the importance (or non importance:) of 'consciousness' to 'create' the world. It's neither here nor there, now, as I read you presenting your thoughts consciousness is something evolutionary 'new', but definitely not necessary for a 'Big Bang', unless we question time, in which case you can create a merry go round of cause and effect, the cat biting its tail etc etc.
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Then again, we introduce a lot of new ideas into this world. Like 'ethics' for example, could there be a entropy to ideas? Are we a ordered system of thoughts?
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Most of the information we have, is second hand or indirect information. For example, if we look out at the universe, our predominate source of information is based on the measured energy, coming from matter. It is not based on the actual matter that is the source of the information. We don't have core samples of neutron stars. We infer this from second hand energy emissions. Even if we did have a neutron star sample, we would use instruments that reflect and absorb energy to investigate the sample, which is still hand information.
As another example, we can't directly measure the core of the sun, but will attempt to infer the core from a combination of theory and second hand energy information. This is where consciousness comes in. Consciousness provides the bridge between the observable second hand information the more fickle first hand information. Consciousness develops the theoretical platform by which we extrapolate the second hand information, to infer the primary information. If the theory is wrong, then we can unknowingly create first hand information in the image of our imagination.
The earth used to be flat based on this affect. We all saw the same light reflections of the earth that we still see today. The bridge was different to the primary.
Another example, to see this last observation, in real time, is political information. Depending on your political orientation, each side can look at the same second hand data; raw observational data. However, each side will infer different primary sources of information. Second hand data is self standing, but by itself, it is not a 100% reflection of the primary. There is always room for creative conscious and unconscious liberty.
Consciousness can alter the experiment, but simply changing the theory, used to bridge the invisible primary information with the more obvious secondary information we all can see. For example, the primitive person may interpret the color change of the camp fire; variable energy emissions, as coming from their conversation with the gods. The scientist sees this same secondary information, but changes the bridge theory to the primary information, into mineral salt emissions that lacks divine consciousness. This change of theory can breaks an unconscious bridge called projection, so the future second hand data, may appear to depart in terms of coherency; sensory expectation.
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well, reading it I can't help but thinking of HUP (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). There is no way to get a 'pure information' of anything as the 'touching' will introduce a uncertainty. And I think that's a true principle of how the universe 'works'. Inferring as it might be also reminds me of 'weak experiments' which have gained a strong popularity over the years. And the idea behind I consider to come from the use of statistics, and the idea of a statistical significance.
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sorry I have this habit of trying to make the sentences more palatable to me, and that will make me return to sentences of mine that's not correctly expressed. I will blame that on English being a second language for me, for now at least :)
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If one think of it Quantum mechanics introduce a concept where the 'net' sum of any given system either hide, or if one prefer, 'remove' those uncertainties (decoherence). As in the microscopic assembled into something macroscopic. The chair will keep on being a chair no matter who comes into the room, touching it, etc. And that has to me a close resemblance to the idea of how mathematics and physics are expected to treat statistics.
https://www.physics.drexel.edu/~tim/open/main/node2.html
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'How do you consider 'time', 'illusionary' or 'real' Or better perhaps, what is it (time) to you?'
Great question. I've always thought of time as a non-concept. Just the order in which events happen and therefore not a real thing at all. Relativity seems to confirm that point: it turns out that this sequence of events we call 'time' is subjective to the observer. Sure, my tomorrow is also your tomorrow, and not today or yesterday. But that is just the sequence of events from our perspective, because on a cosmic scale we are really, really close together and travelling at the exact same velocity.
The delayed choice double slit experiment shows us that the existence of information outperforms time every time. i.e. the existence of the 'which path' information in the future affects results in the past, so whether or not the event of the experiment has already passed from our perspective, it clearly has not from the perspective of the photons in our experiment. Which makes sense according to Einstein, because they are travelling so fast that they don't experience any time at all. To them all events happen instantaneously. The entire universe, to a photon, is instantaneous. Certainly a photon would argue that time is an illusion created only if you travel very slowly.
Information on the other hand, provided it is actual quantum information, is 'real' as real can get. Which brings us to the next point.
'And information, there's this example I'm sure you've seen, writing a formula on a block of ice. Does that information still exist as the ice is gone?'
Simply put: you could write 1/1=1 as often as you'd like, you would not be adding any new information to the universe whatsoever. You would just be rearranging molecules to express a symbolic meaning to the software of the brain of some other viewer, hoping that you can create a somewhat accurate copy in their mind of the idea you intend to convey. 1/1=1 is and will always remain retrievable. If we all die tomorrow, and a new civilisation emerges 1.5 billion lightyears from now on planet Gnorfbjalg, they will be able to retrieve 1/1=1. They probably won't use the same symbols, but the concept itself never leaves the universe.
When I speak of the information stored in our double slit experiments, this information actually adds something to the structure of the universe that wasn't there before, and therefore something is actually removed when it gets destroyed. Something that can never be retrieved or deduced in the future because that would retrospectively alter the result of our experiment, and we've already determined in the present that that isn't happening.
So: storing information in the universe is something that happens at quantum scale. Just scratching a series of symbols in ice, only rearranges the ice molecules and doesn't add any quantum information to the universe. The two types of information we are speaking of do not exist in the same ontological category. The which path information in the double slit experiment exists in the same category as the building blocks of matter itself. The 'information' you're trying to convey with your formula is just a copy. '1/1=1' cannot be created or erased. Which path information can.
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This distinction is extremely important. The misinterpretation that conscious observation directly affects reality would imply that 'consciousness' has some sort of key role in reality. This feeds into the rhetoric of religion mongers and is used very often to imply the existence of God. The idea that the existence of information is what underlies reality, has far less religious, and far more scientific potential. It just means that information, a seemingly abstract concept, perhaps less abstract that 'love' or 'self-loathing', but surely more abstract than 'matter' or 'light', actually proves to be as real as matter and light at the most fundamental level of existence. This puts the 'building blocks' of information in the same ontological category as the 'building blocks' of all matter and energy, whatever those may be. This doesn't say anything about 'consciousness' or 'free will' or 'observation'. All it says is that the fundamental building blocks of information exist in the same reality, are just as 'real', as those of matter and energy. Or rather; the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy are just as 'real' as those of information.
I strongly believe that consciousness and information are two sides of the same coin. Without consciousness, there's no information. Thus, the key difference between information and matter is that the former is not physically real. Information is a pure abstraction of our intelligence to define what is real. Hence, if information and consciousness are tied together in a quantum superposition, then we can assume safely that life is essentially conscious.
tk
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The uncertainty principle and the Copenhagen interpretation were brilliant leaps. That is just how quantum mechanics works. It is easy to dismiss things that are poorly understood.
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The uncertainty principle and the Copenhagen interpretation were brilliant leaps. That is just how quantum mechanics works. It is easy to dismiss things that are poorly understood.
They were brilliant leaps, agreed. But there have been brilliant leaps in the past that turned out to be wrong. Still brilliant, still extremely valuable, invaluable even for the subsequent discovery of something better, but wrong nevertheless.
It is easy to dismiss things that are poorly understood, agreed again. However, it is also 'easy' to say of something which is poorly understood: 'it's just not understandable', which is essentially what Bohr, Heisenberg & co. claim. I put 'easy' in brackets because I understand of course that they didn't make this claim lightly, they were some of the most brilliant minds ever to think about anything and they spent a whole lot of time thinking about this. So it would be tempting to just say 'they were probably right'. Which is exactly what happened to DeBroglie when his obviously much more sensible idea of a pilot wave function-based non-local hidden variable succumbed to the political pressure and verbal and intellectual superiority of the Copenhagen camp. Even when Bohm went on to finish his theory decades later, he was already brainwashed past the point of no return and rejected his own theory.
I was told that pilot wave models are making their way back into the limelight, slowly but surely, and i really hope that this is true. Even if they turn out to be wrong. It seems to me that 'its just unknowable' is a stage we need to get past. If we ever come to the same conclusion again, fine. But what have we got to lose? For now, lets just assume that we can know at least a bit more than we thought we could know 100 years ago, and see where it takes us. We can now do things that Bohr and Einstein couldn't even have begun to imagine. Like all genius minds in the past, present and future they were limited by the context of their zeitgeist. Let the minds of today, both smart and stupid and everything in between, have a crack at it. Nothing bad can possibly come from that. In any case it beats having us thinking about burning bushes and miraculous prophets all day long ;)
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I strongly believe that consciousness and information are two sides of the same coin. Without consciousness, there's no information. Thus, the key difference between information and matter is that the former is not physically real. Information is a pure abstraction of our intelligence to define what is real. Hence, if information and consciousness are tied together in a quantum superposition, then we can assume safely that life is essentially conscious.
You say so little, yet there is so much wrong logically with that statement, I find it surprisingly difficult to determine where to begin.
We have already discussed that information affects reality in our experiments and consciousness doesn't. I don't know what your definition of 'real' is, but if you mean that it exists in the same ontological category as matter, then your conclusion is the opposite of what makes sense. Information must be made from the same stuff as matter and energy, how else can it affect them in such a direct and rigorous way?
'Consciousness' is obviously the construct here. It is just a complex version of instinct. It develops in all intelligent animals, we just happen to be the most complex ones on earth as far as we know. Consciousness is not an 'on/off switch'. You can be a bit more or a bit less conscious. There seem to be even quite large individual differences on that front within our own species, let alone between species. Where we have drawn the line between what we call a conscious being or not, on a cosmic scale is completely arbitrary. It is based on the current state of consciousness of the human species. Perhaps there are beings out there so far more intelligent than we are, that to them we aren't conscious at all.
Consciousness is a complexity-based gradient. Not a binary system. What we call consciousness is completely subjective. So there can be no fundamental link between consciousness and physical reality. In any case, the double slit experiment shows no such link, as it does for information.
I recommend '31 flavors of ontology' by Ron Garrett. A 5-10 minute read, it is very insightful and puts a lot of nuance into the term 'real'.
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Fascinating thread. Lots to think about. No time to chip in at present, but hope to return.
This has to be among the better conducted discussions, Right or wrong; ideas are well presented, and thread drift kept to a minimum.
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Fascinating thread. Lots to think about. No time to chip in at present, but hope to return.
This has to be among the better conducted discussions, Right or wrong; ideas are well presented, and thread drift kept to a minimum.
Much appreciated! Hope to read your 2 cents sometime soon :)
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Much appreciated! Hope to read your 2 cents sometime soon :)
Can't promise a whole 2 cents at current exchange rates, but there should be something :)
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Then again, we introduce a lot of new ideas into this world. Like 'ethics' for example, could there be a entropy to ideas? Are we a ordered system of thoughts?
Even in a universe that is increasing in entropy, tiny blips of order may appear without significantly affecting the average entropy increase whatsoever. Humanity isn't even a blip on the radar of the universe. Let alone our seemingly new (how are we so sure they are new?) and ordered (that too can be debated) ideas like love and ethics and self-loathing.
Look at it this way. If we would remove one electron from a chair. Would the chair have changed significantly at all? All of biology on earth put together is about as significant to entropy as one electron is to a chair :)
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However, and this is where the distinction comes in: this so-called 'observer' effect does not occur naturally. Imagine a sunrise where the first beams of light are just reaching over from the other side of the horizon, and the light passes through 2 tiny openings in, say, a tree, and shines onto an otherwise dark surface behind it, say, a rock. This will always produce an interference pattern (i.e. no observer effect)
How could you be sure of that if it were not observed?
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Consciousness can alter the experiment, but simply changing the theory, used to bridge the invisible primary information with the more obvious secondary information we all can see.
I see that that changes our understanding, but fail to see how this changes the reality of the physical event that is being observed.
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How could you be sure of that if it were not observed?
Before I answer your question, I should ask one first: what exactly do you mean by "observed"?
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Which makes sense according to Einstein, because they are travelling so fast that they don't experience any time at all. To them all events happen instantaneously. The entire universe, to a photon, is instantaneous.
I don’t think Einstein said that, but opinions are divided; quot sapientes, tot sententiae.
It is fascinating that one physicist can say categorically that photons don’t experience time, but another can say the opposite. The way I understand it goes something like this:
Special relativity provides for an inertial frame for everything that has mass, but it does not cover massless particles such as the photon. Talking of the photon having a frame of reference is, strictly speaking, not scientific. The photon must always be observed as travelling at “c”. It cannot be at rest relative to anything. Of course, one could argue that it must be at rest relative to itself, but that is not a very productive line of reasoning. Science has not actually produced definite proof that the photon cannot be assigned an inertial frame, but to maintain that it does have one is pure speculation, and maintaining that it does not have one seems to be the generally accepted position.
Taking the time dilation equation to its ultimate conclusion may seem a logical thing to do, but it is not supported by special relativity because of the lack of mass of the photon which puts it outside the remit of special relativity. It seems that the best we can say is that we have no way of knowing if photons experience time, or not. Nor do we have any scientifically accredited theory that covers this, nor any way to test the idea experimentally, as no massive object can reach the speed of light, and a clock cannot be fixed to a photon.
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Before I answer your question, I should ask one first: what exactly do you mean by "observed"?
Sorry, cross-over posting, there.
In order that a conscious being may say with any certainty that a particular event/effect has occurred in the physical world, she/he must be (consciously) aware of it. So, in this specific instance, but not always, I refer to conscious observation.
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Chris Baird’s blog may be a bit basic for this level of discussion, but I think he does a good job here.
http://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/07/30/what-did-schrodingers-cat-experiment-prove/
“In summary, quantum state collapse is not driven just by conscious observers, and "Schrodinger's Cat" was just a teaching tool invented to try to make this fact more obvious by reducing the observer-driven notion to absurdity. Unfortunately, many popular science writers in our day continue to propagate the misconception that a quantum state (and therefore reality itself) is determined by conscious observers”.
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“In summary, quantum state collapse is not driven just by conscious observers, and "Schrodinger's Cat" was just a teaching tool invented to try to make this fact more obvious by reducing the observer-driven notion to absurdity. Unfortunately, many popular science writers in our day continue to propagate the misconception that a quantum state (and therefore reality itself) is determined by conscious observers”.
Exactly!
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I see that that changes our understanding, but fail to see how this changes the reality of the physical event that is being observed.
Exactly my point. 'Consciousness' doesn't alter anything. It doesn't exist in the same reality as matter or, according to the definition presently up for debate, information. Consciousness is just a word we use to describe our experience of the level of complexity of our brain in relation to the brain of each other and other animals. To a bird, you and I are completely not-conscious of the earth's magnetic field it uses to find the exact same spot across extreme distances. It would consider an animal that cannot do that, like you or me, significantly less conscious than birds.
Since consciousness is a matter of perspective and doesn't have an objective value, an objective threshold of what 'is' or 'isn't' conscious, it can never be a fundamental part of reality. It emerges from biology just like biology emerges from chemistry which emerges from quantum physics.
Interestingly, 'Consciousness' and 'time' don't exist, in exactly the same way. Time has no objective meaning either. That's why it cannot trump information in the double slit experiment. If it existed in the same ontological category as matter and energy, and information didn't, it would trump information in our experiments. We would be able to 'fool' the system by delaying our decision to store or not store the which path information. Since we cannot do that, since even in the future the information affects the results in the past, it is safe to say that time, like consciousness, only exists in the mind of and from the perspective of the entity that experiences it. Or shall we say, 'observes' it ;)
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In order that a conscious being may say with any certainty that a particular event/effect has occurred in the physical world, she/he must be (consciously) aware of it. So, in this specific instance, but not always, I refer to conscious observation.
Right. So this is the type of observation by which we determine whether or not the experiment has led to an interference pattern. It is not the type of observation that is meant in reference to the altered pattern, which underlines my point: the two are distinct and therefore 'observer effect' is wrong. It implies consciousness which is a subjective construct.
When I say 'We know for sure it wasn't observed', I mean the other type of 'observation', the one that should be called 'information'.
So, given your definition, my answer to your question - "how do you know it wasn't observed?" - is: I'm sure it was observed. I'm sure there was some animal watching the light fall through the slits. That 'observation' has no effect on the pattern on the rock. Whether it was an ant or a human that saw it, whether that human understood what he or she was watching, whether life at this point in time had even developed at all (well, apart from the tree;)); these things will not alter the interference pattern.
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Thanks.
That seems to bring us to the point, which I think you were making elsewhere, that what makes the difference is whether or not the information is recorded.
Is that right?
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The problem with any argument against an aspect of quantum mechanics is the lack of full understanding. Quantum mechanics is founded upon experimental observation and how to explain it. The fact that is doesn't fit with a classical viewpoint is not a flaw in quantum mechanics. I am currently studying a variety of aspects of QM. What I have learnt so far confirms this.
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The fact that is doesn't fit with a classical viewpoint is not a flaw in quantum mechanics.
That is something with which I would certainly not try to argue. If something doesn't seem "right" it is probably because of our incomplete knowledge.
What I'm particularly interested, here, is the possibility that information is something that exists in its own right. Or, is it something that emerges from "something", because it has to be information about something?
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The information about an object is not the object itself. All electrons are identical in principle. So they only convey information about their states. The state is not the object itself either. It is a property of the object. This is information. It cannot exist without the electron.
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That seems to bring us to the point, which I think you were making elsewhere, that what makes the difference is whether or not the information is recorded.
:)
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The way I understand it goes something like this:
Special relativity provides for an inertial frame for everything that has mass, but it does not cover massless particles such as the photon. Talking of the photon having a frame of reference is, strictly speaking, not scientific. The photon must always be observed as travelling at “c”. It cannot be at rest relative to anything. Of course, one could argue that it must be at rest relative to itself, but that is not a very productive line of reasoning. Science has not actually produced definite proof that the photon cannot be assigned an inertial frame, but to maintain that it does have one is pure speculation, and maintaining that it does not have one seems to be the generally accepted position.
Taking the time dilation equation to its ultimate conclusion may seem a logical thing to do, but it is not supported by special relativity because of the lack of mass of the photon which puts it outside the remit of special relativity. It seems that the best we can say is that we have no way of knowing if photons experience time, or not. Nor do we have any scientifically accredited theory that covers this, nor any way to test the idea experimentally, as no massive object can reach the speed of light, and a clock cannot be fixed to a photon.
The way I see it the evidence is there – we are just interpreting it from the warped perspective of time-experiencing entities.
In the delayed choice experiment, the photon seems to violate causality. So clearly something is weird here. Our friends from Copenhagen maintain that the photon is what's weird. The world is what's weird. Then you need things like superposition to describe what's going on. And even then, as Feynman remarked in one of his famous lectures: "it is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics". It allows us to predict, not understand. By definition. According to Copenhagen, that is the final answer.
To me, all you need to do to explain the apparent violation of causality, is flip the proposition and assume that we are what's weird here. That we are experiencing reality in a fragmented, diluted, distorted way, and the photon is what experiences it as it really is. It can incorporate into its present behaviour whether or not the which path information will exist in what we think is the future, because to it, there is no such temporal distinction. In reality, there is no such distinction.
The notion that something doesn't exist until our sense of causality/time has caught up with it, seems to be refuted by delayed choice. That’s where we get a glimpse of the simultaneous existence of the present and the future. That’s where we manage to break free from the confines of our temporal illusion and directly observe the absence of time at work.
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Well you can understand quantum mechanics. Quite easily. Just as you can understand relativity.
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The problem with any argument against an aspect of quantum mechanics is the lack of full understanding.
Agreed.
Quantum mechanics is founded upon experimental observation and how to explain it. The fact that is doesn't fit with a classical viewpoint is not a flaw in quantum mechanics. I am currently studying a variety of aspects of QM. What I have learnt so far confirms this.
That is incorrect in several ways. First of all nobody is arguing against any aspect of QM. The equations are accurate, obviously. Nobody is saying that they need to be changed. We didn't have to change Newton's equations when we discovered a more fundamental reality underlying them either.
The question here is: are QM's equations fundamental or are they partially describing something even more fundamental and to answer that question, you cannot expect to just dig into the equations of QM itself and figure it out. Just like a pure study of Newton's equations could never have revealed the underlying world of QM, the pure study of QM can never reveal the reality underlying it, if such a thing exists. One thing is for sure: if we all just shut up and accept Copenhagen, we will never find out.
QM describes and thereby predicts. It does so more accurately than anything we've ever encountered. But it doesn't explain. Nobody can claim that it does. And nobody does actually claim that. It is just claimed that it is fundamentally inexplicable, and that is something I will never accept regardless of how unimaginably smart the claiming party, or how Scandinavian their city of origin, may be. To me, at that point science has reached equal terms with religion: both god and the universe work in mysterious ways. Great. Praise the universe.
What often strikes me about people who have actually dug into the mathematical details of QM, is that on the one hand they exclaim with great ease that quantum is just different from classical and you can never reason about quantum in classical terms. But when asked to take that step another time, and imagine how different terms would be needed to talk about QM's underlying reality just like different terms were needed to talk about the underlying reality of classical physics, they completely shut down and start reciting Copenhagen on you. Why? Just take the same step again. Assume just for argument's sake that there IS an underlying reality. Is it so hard to see that the relationship between it and QM would be similar to that between QM and classical in the sense that you cannot use the same terms to describe both?
The way I see it, there has to be an underlying reality to QM just like QM underlies classical physics. And if we look close enough we can catch glimpses of it just like we were eventually able to catch glimpses of QM when we were looking at our classical experiments closely enough. We didn't prove Newton wrong, we just proved him incomplete. That there is something deeper. The same will happen for QM, eventually. And if not, at least we died trying :)
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What I'm particularly interested, here, is the possibility that information is something that exists in its own right. Or, is it something that emerges from "something", because it has to be information about something?
Right on! So the idea up for discussion in this thread is that everything emerges from information, not the other way around. It all has the same informational building blocks. Shoes, light, gold, Google Docs, geckos, 'which path' information, teddy bears, Mark Cuban; it all emerges from the same fundamental informational reality. This is not to say of course that there is some sort of universal concept of 'teddy bear'. The teddy bear is just a specific arrangement of a certain type of molecules shaped to represent a symbolic meaning for the software of the brains of our fellow humans to decode and go: "awww, a teddy bear", even though it would not have been a recognisable bear to any other animal species on this planet. A shoe is just something that fits around our foot. At the fundamental level there is no such thing as 'foot' or 'shoe' or 'teddy bear' or even 'bear' or even 'b'. But all the subatomic particles and/or processes comprising the bear, and those comprising the atmospheric particles that allow the 'b' wave to travel from your mouth to my ears, are all phenomena emerging from the same informational fundamental reality.
In that reality, time doesn't exist. All the information is already there. Like the information on an SSD. Time is just a filter, an emerging phenomenon through which massive networks upon massive networks of information (matter) process the equally emerging massive networks of information around them. We are held back by the weight of our own informational complexity so much, that we can no longer experience the instantness of the information around us. We need to experience causality in order to experience anything at all. Had we been as light as a photon, we would experience all the information at once just like the photons evidently do in our experiments. The fact that we are lagging behind, and therefore only see a probabilistic quantum world, isn't the universe's fault. It is our incomplete experience, our observational deficiency (and by 'our' I mean everything that has mass) that is at fault.
There are thousands of jokes about Chuck Norris and his legendary strength. My favourite one is: "when Chuck Norris jumps into the water, he doesn't get wet. The water gets Chuck Norrissed." In the same light (pun intended), light isn't travelling at light speed. We are travelling at matter speed. We are impaired. We are weird. The photon is what really sees the universe as it is: one gigantic timeless network of informational subsystems.
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The information about an object is not the object itself. All electrons are identical in principle. So they only convey information about their states. The state is not the object itself either. It is a property of the object. This is information. It cannot exist without the electron.
Correct. However, object information is not the type of information intended here. Objects have no meaning outside classical reality. The electron doesn't know that it is part of a chair. What is meant here, is that what underlies the states of the electron, resides in a yet deeper-rooted fundamental reality which is informational and deterministic in its core. It is not the information about the concept of 'chair' that is hard-coded in the quantum systems of the universe, but the information that describes deterministically the states of the electrons of the chair. This information exists in the same ontological category as the which path information we manage to store in our labs. It has to, otherwise how could they interact in such a rigorous and fundamental way?
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Damalk; somehow I’m going to have to find the time to look more closely at what you are saying.
At a cursory scan there seem to be numerous links with things I have been saying for a few years; not to mention similarities in the responses of others.
There may be little more than a semantic difference between an infinite/eternal, changeless cosmos, of which our perceptions are incomplete, and the “underlying information” idea you are championing. Certainly, neither has to involve anything supernatural, which. I suspect, is what many people fear.
However, I’m not sure, at this point, if you are saying that information, existing on its own, is the precursor of everything; or if everything, plus its information, has always existed. The former, I would need to understand better; the latter I would have no problem with.
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There may be little more than a semantic difference between an infinite/eternal, changeless cosmos, of which our perceptions are incomplete, and the “underlying information” idea you are championing. Certainly, neither has to involve anything supernatural, which. I suspect, is what many people fear.
Agreed. I hope I am not implying religious/spiritual interpretations, those are the one thing I want to stay away from. If anyone finds any in my words, please share so we can shred them to pieces :)
However, I’m not sure, at this point, if you are saying that information, existing on its own, is the precursor of everything; or if everything, plus its information, has always existed. The former, I would need to understand better; the latter I would have no problem with.
Tricky! To me it would seem that the big bang was just the beginning of matter and therefore the illusion of time. But not the beginning of the information that gave rise to all the matter and everything else. The information must have preceded the big bang. Kind of like how you have the software to run a simulation, including all the parameters, rules and values, sitting on an SSD until you press 'go' and everything is set in motion. Before you press 'go', not a single electron has been fired into existence yet, so no matter or time exists. But all the information required to run it, already existed prior to the 'go' moment. i.e. the big bang. So from the perspective of our world, and viewed from within its confines, everything came into existence all at once including the underlying informational layer. As far as we're concerned, that might just as well actually have been the case. But of course, thinking about it as a simulation, the information must have preceded the 'go moment' somehow, somewhere in some shape or form.
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I hope I am not implying religious/spiritual interpretations
By no means. I was simply suggesting that there might be an element of fear of the supernatural lurking in the ranks of the cognoscenti.
The information must have preceded the big bang.
Must this not have been information about something that also preceded the BB?
BTW, have you looked at the (rambling) "Is it possible to define infinity?" thread?
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Must this not have been information about something that also preceded the BB?
Prior to the BB, only the informational layer existed. Statically, like a piece of software that isn't being executed. It just sits there with the potential to be executed. The BB marks the instance where the program gets executed, giving rise to our macroscopic, temporally impaired reality (that is, impaired by time). So the information wasn't about something that preceded the BB, the information was about what would 'follow'. It contained, and still contains everything that will ever be within the confines of our reality. Including every 'free choice' and every 'random event'.
So from our perspective, where bees and trousers and Justin Bieber exist; time also exists. But when we look at quantum, where all bees and trousers and Justin are reduced to electrons and photons, we are essentially looking at the static fundamental informational layer. But because we can only observe it through the goggles of a temporally impaired mass of matter, everything seems jittery and uncertain.
Time is obscuring our view of the staticness of the information we consist of. This would be a crazy statement on its own if not for the fact that we have proof of this in the otherwise unexplained behaviour of photons: since a photon doesn't have our temporal goggles on it can experience the fundamental informational layer in its static entirety, thereby naturally incorporating a seemingly future event into its observable behaviour.
'c' therefore isn't the speed of light. The photon is static. It forms a static line between its source and its destination and exists at every point along that line throughout the entire existence of our universe. In essence 'c' is the error margin by which time-prone matter experiences a timeless universe.