Quixotic? and what a word? At first I thought the word exotic was there but then it said something different.Originally Posted by mal4mac
How does one over idealise without going religious?
Quixotic? and what a word? At first I thought the word exotic was there but then it said something different.
How does one over idealise without going religious?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
Invalid appeal to authority and also argumentum ad hominem, in fact. (Feynman is really smart, so it must be that no one can understand QM because this smart guy says so. This shows that not all ad hominem forms of argument rely on discrediting the speaker; some rely on praising him.)
But, of course, we can understand QM -- and many other things besides! We are a very clever species.
The people who invented/discovered QM were shocked by it, because none of it made sense. It was inconsistent with classical reality -- our everyday world where things and people are only one way at a time, and behave in a common-sense fashion. After all, we never observe superpositions in real life -- but they exist at the microlevel. Ergo, something must make these superpositions "go away" at the macro level.
That "something" was put in by hand by the founders of QM -- they called it "wave function collapse." When a measurement of the micro world is made, the wave function is magically collapsed to instantiate a single version of reality, the reality that we all see. No explanation is offered of wave function collapse, no mechanism, no idea is mooted of how the wave function collapses instantaneously across the entire universe, and so on. It is all magic! This is as unscientific as one can be. This is why we get monstrosities like "shut up and calculate" from many modern scientists -- a notion anathema to the greats like Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and others. When it comes to finding out how the world really is, as opposed to mere models of it, modern scientists of the Copenhagen school punt. In fact they forbid you to talk about it -- like priests in a church forbidding you to question sacred Scripture.
Hugh Everett's key insight was to notice that there is no such thing as classical reality, and hence there is no wave function collapse. Reality is entirely quantum mechanical, from top to bottom. In effect, what the pioneers of QM were doing was splitting reality into two domains: the classical and quantum. Then, in setups like the two-slit experiment, they were treating the electrons going through the slits as a quantum world, which then interacted with the classical world of the observers.
Everett says no, everything is quantum, including the observers conducting the two-slit experiment. And of course this must be the case. We are made up entirely of quantum particles!
Everett is saying that when we do a quantum experiment, we are inside the quantum system, not outside it. There is no classical world.
This is why Schrodinger's attempted reductio of QM as a complete theory misfires. In his thought experiment, he was showing a way to "amplify" quantum mechanical effects at the micro-level all the way up to the "classical" level of a cat. And when you do that, (he says) you get a cat that is both alive and dead! This is ridiculous (he thought) and of course we never observe "classical" superpositions and so QM must be an incomplete theory. There must, Einstein insisted, be hidden variables to explain away the mystery of QM.
But there are no hidden variables. This was demonstrated experimentally beginning in the early 1980s. Contra Einstein, QM is a complete theory. Where he and the others went wrong, and where Everett corrected their error, was their assumption that the world is divided into classical and quantum domains. They had the right theory but the wrong interpretation of it.
In the case of the cat, there is no "amplification" of the quantum mechanical state to the classical state, because there is no classical state. The cat was, is, and always will be, in superposition. But now suppose Fred is conducting the cat experiment. What Fred has not taken note of (because he is indoctrinated with Copenhagen) is that he, Fred, is also in superposition; always has been, and always will be. Like the cat, Fred lives in many worlds.
Why, then, when Fred opens the box, does he see only a live cat or a dead cat but never both? But he does! Fred sees a live cat, and his superposed doppelgänger on the wave function sees a dead cat. It's true that neither Fred nor his doppelgänger see a live/dead cat at the same time, but that's because there are two Freds as well as two cats, and each reports a different outcome. What we call the classical world is a perspectival limitation, in which we take a small cross section of all of reality and assume this little slice is all that there is. Exactly the same thing happens, by the way, with relativity theory. Relativity theory shows that the past, present and future all exist. There is no such thing as "passing time," and no single "Now." What we call the "now" is a little cross section of a much larger existent reality in which the people of the past and the people of the future exist just as do you and I.
Well let put this idea to the test.
If one asks the time the probable answer is something like ''an hour and O'clock'' ie
Three O'clock
or
Ten O'clock.
These are precise answers that indicates that someone is talking time.
If then someone asks how long does it take and the answer is 45 minutes/3hours/2minutes. That becomes a number which could be quantified as quantum physic notions because take the 45 minutes/3hours/2minutes out of context and it is not specific to time or O'clock and could mean all sorts of meanings.
These answers although clock related they are not telling the time.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
There are many superpositions in real life. You can find them every time you are presented with a choice. Prior to making the choice, whether a candidate on a ballot or when to step in a particular line at a store or whether to buy this brand or that brand, you are in a superposition of possible outcomes. You choose one of them. The others you do not choose. It happens all the time. There is nothing unusual about it.
It is easy to rewrite this from the perspective of someone who might support the Copenhagen interpretation as follows:
That "something" was put in by hand by the founders of QM -- they called it "world split." When a measurement of the micro world is made, the wave function is magically split to instantiate a new version of reality, the reality that we can't see. No explanation is offered of world splitting, no mechanism, no idea is mooted of how the world splits instantaneously across the entire universe, and so on. It is all magic! This is as unscientific as one can be. This is why we get monstrosities like "shut up and calculate" from many modern scientists -- a notion anathema to the greats like Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and others. When it comes to finding out how the world really is, as opposed to mere models of it, modern scientists of the Many Worlds school punt. In fact they forbid you to talk about it -- like priests in a church forbidding you to question sacred Scripture.
This is true, but the objects that make up each of us become something more than the sum of their parts. These combinations get names, like YesNo, Cioran, cacian or mal4mac, and can act and make free choices.
I'm mentioning "free choice" here to try to see whether you think we have any free choice or not. Because MWI is deterministic and carries the wave function into classical reality, I wonder if there is any freedom for the experimenter under MWI. I think I heard that MWI might be implying something called "superdeterminism".
Last edited by YesNo; 11-15-2012 at 07:36 PM. Reason: clarification at least for myself
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
These are not quantum superpositions. To experience a quantum superposition, you would have to vote both for and against a candidate at the same time, or buy and not buy a brand at the same time -- you would, in short, have to violate Aristotle's Non-Contradiction.
Easy to do, hard to be accurate. The above is a strawman caricature of what the Many Worlds says. Notwithstanding the fact that even Everett talked in a loose manner of "splitting" universes, nothing splits, as Tegmark explains in the paper that I linked. So your above re-write is simply a false description of what Many Worlds says. You might also read the layman-geared interview that I linked last night.It is easy to rewrite this from the perspective of someone who might support the Copenhagen interpretation as follows:
That "something" was put in by hand by the founders of QM -- they called it "world split." When a measurement of the micro world is made, the wave function is magically split to instantiate a new version of reality, the reality that we can't see. No explanation is offered of world splitting, no mechanism, no idea is mooted of how the world splits instantaneously across the entire universe, and so on. It is all magic! This is as unscientific as one can be. This is why we get monstrosities like "shut up and calculate" from many modern scientists -- a notion anathema to the greats like Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and others. When it comes to finding out how the world really is, as opposed to mere models of it, modern scientists of the Many Worlds school punt. In fact they forbid you to talk about it -- like priests in a church forbidding you to question sacred Scripture.
Well, I agree that you can't vote both for and against a candidate in the real world, but I thought Many Worlds would have solved that problem. In one world I would vote for Candidate X. In the other I would vote for Candidate Y. At the point where I press the complete ballot button on the screen, there is no turning back. My one reality in the real world voted for Candidate X. My other reality in the cloned world voted for Candidate Y.
If that doesn't work as a quantum superposition according to MWI, then I'm confused. How does Schrodinger's cat pull that off? In one world the cat is alive. In the other world the cat is dead.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I am talking about experiencing a quantum superposition, which is what I thought you were talking about. We clearly don't experience them. But, yes, in one world you vote for x and in the other for y. You don't just don't experience voting for x and y at the same time.
That is exactly the bit that is missing.
We have not yet created a one combination for two combinations meaning if you place x and y together you should by law of quantum get a third combination that means it is an x and y together. That is the height of quantum.
Another question about quantum is this:
whilst we are able to determine our weight at a static phase, what is the actual weight for a non static object say thrown in the air?
Whilst the object is moving it has a determined weight are we able to tell it?
Quantum physic or meta-physics or quantum in the move?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
Of course smart guys can be wrong, but in this case Feynman is right.
We can't understand it in terms of common sense, if you want to equate "having an equation" and "experimental results" to "understanding" then fair enough...But, of course, we can understand QM -- and many other things besides! We are a very clever species.
How on Earth can they forbid you talk about it?! Why would they? There is no Copenhagen Inquisition marching round the countryside looking to burn Many Worlders... it's just that Many Worlders are not convincing... Galileo proved the moon wasn't an ideal object by producing a telescope, where is the MW telescope?When it comes to finding out how the world really is, as opposed to mere models of it, modern scientists of the Copenhagen school punt. In fact they forbid you to talk about it -- like priests in a church forbidding you to question sacred Scripture.
Hugh Everett's theories have no general acceptance. In any case, this sort of arcane discussion should surely take place on physics forums, if anywhere, not here. It's bad enough having to suffer Big Endian discussion in ones own discipline without having one in someone else's discipline. Lay people should be protected from these kind of discussions...
For those wanting to dip their toe in "the other culture", a bare instrumentalist account is all that is needed, and the literate layman can happily avoid the "interpretation wars" that happen on the fringes of physics - most sensible physicists do, so they certainly should!
If we are in free fall we wouldn't have any weight. We wouldn't think we are moving either. Supposedly the laws of physics should be the same in these frame of references, but I wonder whether that is true for quantum physics laws.
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
*Shrug* So you say. By the way, Feynman's elaboration of QM is essentially the Many Worlds.
There are tons of things we can't understand in terms of common sense. The universe can, however, be described mathematically, and understood to a good degree in that way.We can't understand it in terms of common sense, if you want to equate "having an equation" and "experimental results" to "understanding" then fair enough...
Did you read the essay I linked on Hugh Everett? Nobody said there was an inquisition marching around to burn Many Worlders; this is a silly strawman of what I said. But, yes, you're not supposed to talk about what this means; just crunch the numbers was a big thing in QM for a long time. Read about how Everett was treated after he unveiled MW. He was essentially driven out of doing physics! Which shows that scientists can be petty, defend their domains with sometimes religious fervor, and in general behave like anyone else; i.e., badly.How on Earth can they forbid you talk about it?! Why would they? There is no Copenhagen Inquisition marching round the countryside looking to burn Many Worlders...
Not convincing to whom? MW is mainstream now, even boring. That's because Copenhagen with its magical wavefunction collapse is entirely unconvincing. Of course it's probably true that most scientists "shut up and calculate" and ignore what QM means. This puts them outside of the great tradition of the natural philosophers, like Galileo, Einstein and Newton, who wanted to understand how the world really was, and not just crunch numbers like mindless caclulators.it's just that Many Worlders are not convincing...
Where is the Copenhagen telescope? But, since you ask, here are the Many Worlds telescopes: Quantum computation, in its infancy but working and Buckyballs observed to be in superposition. Both demonstrate the Many Worlds. David Deutsch, in his book the Fabric of Reality from some fourteen years ago, makes a convincing case that quantum computation proves the existence of the many worlds, at least as far as anything can said to be "proved" in science.Galileo proved the moon wasn't an ideal object by producing a telescope, where is the MW telescope?
Sure, they do. Did you read the two papers that I linked? In his most recent book, Stephen Hawking talks not only about the Many Worlds, but about how in one of them the moon is made of Roquefort cheese! Literally! In any event, truth is not a matter of popular opinion, so the acceptance or non-aceeptance of a theory is irrelevant. Newton's theories were accepted for hundreds of years and are still taught in school, because they're useful. They're also wrong.Hugh Everett's theories have no general acceptance.
Laugh out loud, protected? If you want to be "protected" from some of the most interesting philosophy and science that you will ever encounter, don't read this thread! But don't presume to tell others what they can read or talk about. This particular forum is about philosophical literature. Thus thus this topic is perfectly appropriate, indeed one might say paradigmatically appropriate, for this particular forum.In any case, this sort of arcane discussion should surely take place on physics forums, if anywhere, not here. It's bad enough having to suffer Big Endian discussion in ones own discipline without having one in someone else's discipline. Lay people should be protected from these kind of discussions...
Right, exactly my point earlier, that the Copenhagen school of instrumentalism actually seeks to forbid these sorts of discussions -- which you yourself evidently are trying to do! Thanks for demonstrating my point.For those wanting to dip their toe in "the other culture", a bare instrumentalist account is all that is needed, and the literate layman can happily avoid the "interpretation wars" that happen on the fringes of physics - most sensible physicists do, so they certainly should!
Last edited by Cioran; 11-16-2012 at 01:41 PM.
Yes - Sum over Histories, another insult to common sense. No wonder he said you can't [really] understand it!
Einstein was also "driven out" of physics, into the patent office, but it didn't stop him doing physics that was quickly *accepted by all physicists*.
Read about how Everett was treated after he unveiled MW. He was essentially driven out of doing physics! Which shows that scientists can be petty, defend their domains with sometimes religious fervor, and in general behave like anyone else; i.e., badly.
"World really was"?! I can here Kant and the Buddha laughing in heaven at that one... Galileo, Einstein and Newton just gave us models, QT is a mathematical model.This puts them outside of the great tradition of the natural philosophers, like Galileo, Einstein and Newton, who wanted to understand how the world really was, and not just crunch numbers like mindless caclulators.
They don't forbid these discussions, how could they? They just try to discourage them, in the way that rational philosophers tried to discourage discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin - there are better things to discuss.Right, exactly my point earlier, that the Copenhagen school of instrumentalism actually seeks to forbid these sorts of discussions -- which you yourself evidently are trying to do! Thanks for demonstrating my point.
I don't know what you mean by experiencing a quantum superposition. I understand that MWI wants to extend the quantum wave to classical reality. I understand that MWI believes that Schrodinger's cat is alive in one world and dead in another. Perhaps I am wrong with those assumptions.
If I am not mistaken, I maintain that prior to voting the voter is in a superposition of (a) vote for X and (b) vote for Y. The voter has not yet chosen which it will be. In a similar way the photon is in a superposition prior to being measured of (a) spin up and (b) spin down. The photon has not yet chosen which it will be. When the voter makes a choice in voting, the machine registers that choice and a measurement is recorded. The voter should be in two different worlds now based on MWI. When the photon is measured, it also makes a choice between up and down and a measurement is recorded. The photon should be in two different worlds now based on MWI.
Perhaps MWI is false and there is only one world and looking at indeterminacy at the classical level rather than the quantum level is a way to expose the problems with MWI.
I have also been putting this in terms of "making a choice" and earlier with "free will". At the moment I am looking at Conway and Kochen's The Strong Free Will Theorem hoping to clarify some of the issues that MWI bring up for me: http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
I'm pointing out that some people felt (and many still feel) that there is a classical world in distinction to the quantum world because we never notice superpositions in ordinary life. They seemed to feel that unless the superposition of the quantum world "gave way" to what we called the classical world at some point, then we ought to experience superpositions in ordinary life -- actually experience being in many different states. But the MWI answer to this is simply that each of our "versions" experiences only one particular branch. In the case of the voter, the voter is always in superposition -- before, during, and after the vote. This is why, technically, there is no "splitting" -- everything is already "split" to begin with. But our minds are "split" among the different branches as well, so each mind experiences only a single branch and thinks (wrongly, under MWI) that that particular branch is the totality of reality.
What is this with your devotion to common sense? Does common sense tell you that the world is quantum or relativstic (it's both)? Did common sense tell everyone that the reason that the apple falls to the ground is the same reason that the moon circles the earth, or did it take civilization 5,000 some years until someone came around and figured that out? Common sense is a notoriously poor guide to the world. Do you recall what Einstein said about common sense?
Excuse me? Einstein was "driven out of physics" into the patent office? Maybe you should check your history. As to being "accepted by all physicists," acceptance has nothing to do with whether something is true or not. Copernicanism was certainly not accepted for a long time, and Galileo's attempt to teach it as "true" as opposed merely to a model that gave identical predictions with Ptolemy gave him a fair spot of trouble with the Church, as I recall.Einstein was also "driven out" of physics, into the patent office, but it didn't stop him doing physics that was quickly *accepted by all physicists*.
Of course it's a mathematical model. Are you saying that there can only be models, and the world has no actual true nature? If the world has no actual true nature, is it all in the mind, or a matter of opinion? Are you advocating philosophical idealism? Also, see above, on the debate of Ptolemy vs. Copernicus. Both provided models of the solar system. Both models made identical predictions. The Church told Galielo that it was fine to teach Copernicanism as a model to make predictions, but that it was not fine to teach it as showing how the solar system really is. And yet, it turned out that solar system really is heliocentric, and so Potelmy's model, while useful, was wrong. Here is a clear example of what you seem to be denying can happen: an example of a model not just being useful, but actually true. Would you deny that heliocentrism is actually true?"World really was"?! I can here Kant and the Buddha laughing in heaven at that one... Galileo, Einstein and Newton just gave us models, QT is a mathematical model.
Read the piece on Everett.They don't forbid these discussions, how could they?
This comparison is invalid. QM is a fact; angels are a fiction. When we discuss interpretations of QM, we are discussing a factual reality that, if it were not a fact, would instantly render your TV and your computer useless, among many other devices. So disucssing interpretations of a factual state of affairs has nothing in common with angels dancing on pins.They just try to discourage them, in the way that rational philosophers tried to discourage discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin - there are better things to discuss.
Again, if you don't approve of the discussion, feel free to recuse yourself from it.
I was reading Max Born's 1954 Nobel Prize address, "The statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics": http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...rn-lecture.pdf
In this address he wrote something about determinism that I think resolves the issue against the MWI. He describes how determinism started and remained as a belief that the laws of mechanics can accept an initial state from which all other states are derived.
Newtonian mechanics is deterministic in the following sense:
If the initial state (positions and velocities of all particles) of a system is accurately given, then the state at any other time (earlier or later) can be calculated from the laws of mechanics. All the other branches of classical physics have been built up according to this model. Mechanical determinism gradually became a kind of article of faith: the world as a machine, an automaton. As far as I can see, this idea has no forerunners in ancient and medieval philosophy. The idea is a product of the immense success of Newtonian mechanics, particularly in astronomy. In the 19th century it became a basic philosophical principle for the whole of exact science.
He then argues that one cannot get precise enough initial states to make predictions that remain accurate over time. His conclusion is the following:
I should like only to say this: the determinism of classical physics turns out to be an illusion, created by overrating mathematico-logical concepts. It is an idol, not an ideal in scientific research and cannot, therefore, be used as an objection to the essentially indeterministic statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Born removes determinism from both classical and quantum physics. An initial state cannot be obtained that would allow any law to derive with adequate accuracy any future state after a certain point of time.
The MWI attempts to restore determinacy to physics by using a separate world for each branch in an indeterminate situation. This creates separate worlds in which QM should be true or MWI is not an interpretation for QM. However, if such an initial state and wave function existed for any particular world in the universe, that would contradict the indeterminacy of QM. Therefore, no initial state and wave function exists that will deterministically predict events for any particular world in the universe. Should such an initial state and wave function exist for the entire universe then in particular it would be a deterministic solution for some particular world and again QM would be contradicted. Therefore, no initial state and wave function exists that will predict all events for the entire universe.
And now for the conclusion:
Since MWI requires an initial state and wave function to exist for a deterministic physics either in each particular world or the universe as a whole, MWI is not a valid interpretation of QM.
Last edited by YesNo; 11-16-2012 at 09:16 PM. Reason: typos
My blog: https://frankhubeny.blog/
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