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Physicists Just Found a New Quantum Paradox That Casts Doubt on a Pillar of Reality
- Thread starter Cooky
- Start date
I watched the first few seconds when i heard the first error, most sub atomic particles are not balls of matter
But if you want to get your quantum data from a cartoon, thats just fine
Edit : when it comes to probability this comes to mind
Last edited:
If you are emotionally attached to certain beliefs, not much informational videos will do.
Personally i prefer the real thing
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Why? That is about measurement. If some macro-scale apparatus makes a which-way measurement and records it, the results are the same regardless of whether anybody looks at it or not. In fact you can tell if you have a working detector in the path from the disappearance of the interference pattern. Hence you can have interaction-free measurements (Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester - Wikipedia).
The "measurement problem" is not resolved but the conciousness causes collapse or Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation is just one of many: Interpretations of quantum mechanics - Wikipedia.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
This is a clip from What the Bleep Do We Know!? which is riddled with pseudo-science and bias - look at the Academic reaction section.
Hermit Philosopher
Selflessly here for you
Dear Cooky,
Aspects in quantum physics confirm that reality, as Man perceives it, is a perspective.
It supports the theory of “reality” as potential, multiple and relative; not defined or certain. This would mean that X is not like this or that, but rather that it is both (or all possible outcomes) until defined by it being experienced (search Schrödinger’s Cat as example).
The way quantum physics describe reality is trick to science, mainly because it opens up for the idea that consciousness somehow precedes matter.
Humbly
Hermit
And that is the reaction of those with a bias against the quantum weirdness in the video. The video makes no conclusion but points out the aspects that defy our straightforward understanding of how reality and passive observation work.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
I'm not making any claim about quantum mechanics not being weird - I've actually studied it and done the maths - I'm pointing out that there really isn't a connection to consciousness, as certainty the film as whole suggests - that is just one interpretation amongst many, for which there is no actual evidence at all.
Wait, do you kind of contradict yourself there? You say:
'there really isn't a connection to consciousness'
but you also say
'that is just one interpretation amongst many'
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
There is nothing in the theory itself that refers to consciousness and no evidence at all that it is involved. It is possible to make an assumption about "measurements" that involves consciousness but it is pure speculation.
Unfortunately, this has led to all sorts of pseudoscience and other woo-peddling that makes bizarre claims that go way beyond even that assumption or that claim that QM actually tells us consciousness is involved - which it doesn't.
Well, I respect the video I presented as I said it claims no conclusion but suggests passive observation effects things in a way we would not expect in a physically created reality. There doesn't seem to be any way to explain-away what happened in the experiment with a mundane explanation.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
As I said before (#25), it appears to be to do with measurement at the macro scale rather than consciousness because the mere presence of something that can detect which-way information in the apparatus affects the interference pattern, not somebody looking at said information.
I don't know quite quite what you mean by "mundane" explanation (it is weird as you said) but there is no shortage candidates: Interpretations of quantum mechanics - Wikipedia
The point is all they added was passive observation to what was already going on. Some people just don’t FUNDAMENTALLY like this and will obfuscate forever.
No sense arguing forever.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
It's a measuring apparatus that makes the difference, as I said, and there isn't really such a thing as passive observation - the measuring device has to interact with the wave function.
Some people will blindly cling to what they desperately want to be true without accepting that it is nothing more than speculation about an unknown, for which there are multiple other alternatives.
So when I look at the moon am I affecting the moon? But at the quantum level......
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
....the cells in your retina are interacting with the light (photons) from the moon. However you want to look at it, there are multiple ways the "measurement problem" might be resolved (interpretations of QM) and most of them have nothing to do with consciousness. Again, it's the insertion of a measuring device that can detect the which-way information in the double slit experiment that makes the difference, even if it doesn't actually register the electron or photon (which means it went though the other slit) and even if nobody looks at what it did or did not register.
There is some important context that is almost entirely missing from both the popular summary in the OP’s link and the corresponding published paper. This is actually a rather perfect example of the numerous ways that popular science presentations distort actual scientific inquiry in diverse ways that harm, rather than help, public understanding of science along with scientific literacy. Over the past 2 years, there have been numerous popular science articles all with sensational claims about a recent experiment or paper on quantum theory that makes it seem to be singular and groundbreaking but all of them are in fact caught up in a tradition that dates back to 2016.
Actually, one could say it all started with the Wigner’s friend gedankenexperiment, but this is problematic for a few reasons, starting with the fact that it was Everett, not Wigner, who presented the first published version in his now infamous thesis (Everett was a graduate student of Wigner’s). Wigner himself, though, was building off of work from the 30s by von Neumann and London & Bauer. In addition, the no-go theorem of the type found in the OP’s link started essentially with the same work by von Neumann in the 30s, as did the problem of such proofs and hidden assumptions that remain the most contested aspects of such works in the literature today (and have since Bohm and Bell first showed how von Neumann had made implicit assumptions that negated the force of his proof). Then there is the fact that the literature since 2016 (and previously) relies heavily on extensions of Wigner’s thought experiment by Deutsch along with the incorporation of work since the 60s on Bohm-EPR and Bell’s theorem(s). But stories have to start somewhere and the renewed interest in Wigner’s friend as well as the author behind the OP’s link started primarily with Frauchiger & Renner.
In 2016, Renato Renner together with co-author Frauchiger published a paper on arXiv titled "Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent.” By the time a newer versions of their work made it into Nature Communications in 2018 with grander sounding but actually more qualified title “Quantum theory cannot consistently describe itself”, it had already generated considerable interest, support, and criticism in the quantum foundations community. Renner remarked at one conference around the time the Nature Communications paper was published that he was not only behind in responding to colleagues who had written him about the 2016 paper, but so far behind he wasn’t caught up on things like bills and everyday correspondences. I know at least one former graduate student whose doctoral dissertation discussed the 2016 paper a year or so before the Nature Communications version was published, and several other papers that were at least originally published (some in print and some on ArXiv) prior to the journal paper as well. Issues such as what constitutes an “agent”, clarifications about self-reference, etc., were already being sorted out, and most importantly the other physicists and philosophers had narrowed much of the focus to the novel use of the Wigner’s Friend gedankenexperiment.
The above paragraph leaves a ton out, but this is a forum post. I have to focus on key parts of the story, and the next one is the use of Frauchiger & Renner’s work by by Časlav Brukner in a paper “A No-Go Theorem for Observer-Independent Facts.” Brukner’s interest in the issue was not new, and his contribution to the 2nd Bell volume and other work reflects this, but it was in this paper that he capitalized on the discussions and papers on the Frauchiger-Renner “paradox”. It was also this paper that resulted in the actual experimental realization behind the OP’s link. In a paper published in Science, Proietti et al. describe the actual experimental test behind the no-go theorem linked to in the OP’s link. Their paper, “Experimental test of local observer independence,” based largely on Brukner’s work and by extension Fruachiger & Renner, was the first big experimental realization observer independence. It generated a lot of press because the findings seemed to indicate conclusively that there is no observer independent reality (this is nonsense, but typical of popular science over-simplifications). It was a rather monumental work by experimentalists that once again confirmed theoretical predictions. It generated a good deal more discussion and theoretical work by physicists. Among these were papers by Bong et al., including the one underlying the OP’s link: “A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox”.
This is all just skeletal context for the claims in both the OP’s link and the corresponding published paper. But the point is that to the extent it is novel work, it should be situated within the context of ongoing work both theoretical and experimental since 2016. And that work was novel mainly in combining a lot of previous work going back to the 30s into one package that had to be hashed out over the next few years before researchers could focus on some of the key issues underlying the experimental and theoretical work directly behind the OP’s linked article and corresponding paper. It is within this larger context that any discussions should be taking place.
Actually, one could say it all started with the Wigner’s friend gedankenexperiment, but this is problematic for a few reasons, starting with the fact that it was Everett, not Wigner, who presented the first published version in his now infamous thesis (Everett was a graduate student of Wigner’s). Wigner himself, though, was building off of work from the 30s by von Neumann and London & Bauer. In addition, the no-go theorem of the type found in the OP’s link started essentially with the same work by von Neumann in the 30s, as did the problem of such proofs and hidden assumptions that remain the most contested aspects of such works in the literature today (and have since Bohm and Bell first showed how von Neumann had made implicit assumptions that negated the force of his proof). Then there is the fact that the literature since 2016 (and previously) relies heavily on extensions of Wigner’s thought experiment by Deutsch along with the incorporation of work since the 60s on Bohm-EPR and Bell’s theorem(s). But stories have to start somewhere and the renewed interest in Wigner’s friend as well as the author behind the OP’s link started primarily with Frauchiger & Renner.
In 2016, Renato Renner together with co-author Frauchiger published a paper on arXiv titled "Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent.” By the time a newer versions of their work made it into Nature Communications in 2018 with grander sounding but actually more qualified title “Quantum theory cannot consistently describe itself”, it had already generated considerable interest, support, and criticism in the quantum foundations community. Renner remarked at one conference around the time the Nature Communications paper was published that he was not only behind in responding to colleagues who had written him about the 2016 paper, but so far behind he wasn’t caught up on things like bills and everyday correspondences. I know at least one former graduate student whose doctoral dissertation discussed the 2016 paper a year or so before the Nature Communications version was published, and several other papers that were at least originally published (some in print and some on ArXiv) prior to the journal paper as well. Issues such as what constitutes an “agent”, clarifications about self-reference, etc., were already being sorted out, and most importantly the other physicists and philosophers had narrowed much of the focus to the novel use of the Wigner’s Friend gedankenexperiment.
The above paragraph leaves a ton out, but this is a forum post. I have to focus on key parts of the story, and the next one is the use of Frauchiger & Renner’s work by by Časlav Brukner in a paper “A No-Go Theorem for Observer-Independent Facts.” Brukner’s interest in the issue was not new, and his contribution to the 2nd Bell volume and other work reflects this, but it was in this paper that he capitalized on the discussions and papers on the Frauchiger-Renner “paradox”. It was also this paper that resulted in the actual experimental realization behind the OP’s link. In a paper published in Science, Proietti et al. describe the actual experimental test behind the no-go theorem linked to in the OP’s link. Their paper, “Experimental test of local observer independence,” based largely on Brukner’s work and by extension Fruachiger & Renner, was the first big experimental realization observer independence. It generated a lot of press because the findings seemed to indicate conclusively that there is no observer independent reality (this is nonsense, but typical of popular science over-simplifications). It was a rather monumental work by experimentalists that once again confirmed theoretical predictions. It generated a good deal more discussion and theoretical work by physicists. Among these were papers by Bong et al., including the one underlying the OP’s link: “A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox”.
This is all just skeletal context for the claims in both the OP’s link and the corresponding published paper. But the point is that to the extent it is novel work, it should be situated within the context of ongoing work both theoretical and experimental since 2016. And that work was novel mainly in combining a lot of previous work going back to the 30s into one package that had to be hashed out over the next few years before researchers could focus on some of the key issues underlying the experimental and theoretical work directly behind the OP’s linked article and corresponding paper. It is within this larger context that any discussions should be taking place.
IAMinyou
Active Member
I think Albert Einstein was the first person to say that we're experiencing a "grand illusion". Ever since then, physicists and deep thinkers have been trying to figure out what they cannot observe that they call "dark matter". They still haven't figured out what they think they can see so it's impossible for them to understand what they cannot possibly see such as the Voice and Image of our FATHER.