Don’t miss the cute kitten in the hedder photo:
In other words, pretty much everything you’ve ever heard about Schrödinger’s cat is probably a myth, with the sole exception of the fact that quantum systems actually are well-described by a probabilistically weighted superposition of all possible, allowable states, and that an observation or measurement will always reveal one and only one definitive state.
This is not only true, but it’s true irrespective of which quantum interpretation you choose. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selecting one outcome out of the ensemble of all possible outcomes; it doesn’t matter whether you’re collapsing an indeterminate wavefunction into a determinate state; it doesn’t matter if you’re falling into one particular Universe out of an infinite suite of parallel Universes.
All that matters is that a quantum observation has occurred.
Ethan Siegel, “Ask Ethan: What Are We Getting Wrong About Schrodinger’s Cat?” at Forbes
If a cat is involved, we bet there is more to the story.
It must be referring to a con-cat-enation of quantum states. (Sorry)
I know I’m going to regret asking this but, if the final or collapsed state is entirely dependent on an observation being performed, what was the Universe like before we were aware of quantum phenomena and began observing them?
How many cat’s died during the “Schrodinger’s cat” experiment?
> what was the Universe like before we were aware of quantum phenomena and began observing them
We have no idea what it is which collapses the wavefunction (and where is the random number generator involved located and who runs it). We don’t know if anything (other than pure mathematical equations) “exists” at all.
Do not ever visualize atoms or electrons as little “balls”. They are anything but. They are basically complex functions in space and time, and they are “spread” nearly infinitely in space.
“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” Niels Bohr
AAR, Nil, This is strictly a thought experiment, though one could rig up a mouse and a RA controlled vial of poison or the like. KF
This is an old joke, but still makes me laugh
Is he gonna get hurt during the expirement?
Schrödinger: Yesn’t
In his article Ethan Siegal states,
Siegal is trying to salvage a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. An interpretation in which the human observer is not to be consider special over and above inanimate objects in making measurements,.. a ‘realist interpretation’ in which an objective reality exists apart from our own personal conscious observation of it,
In fact, Siegal went on to state,
Unfortunately for Siegal, the answer to Einstein’s question, “Is the state of the cat to be created only when a physicist investigates the situation at some definite time?” is NOT, as Siegal himself put in quotation marks, “of course not.”
For crying out loud, if the answer was “of course not”, as Siegal believes, then all the heated arguments over which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct would never have taken place.
For instance, as to Siegal’s claim that “any non-reversible interaction that occurs within that system, even if it’s completely sealed off from the outside world in that box, will reveal one and only one definitive state: either the atom has decayed or it has not”,
,,, Richard Conn Henry responds thusly to that argument, “the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in “Renninger-type” experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”
Here are a few examples of ‘interaction-free” measurements that get Dr. Henry’s point across,
Thus Siegal’s claim that “an instrument which is sensitive to radioactive decays, would count as an observation.,,,, any non-reversible interaction that occurs within that system, even if it’s completely sealed off from the outside world in that box, will reveal one and only one definitive state” is simply a wrong claim for him to make and is contradicted by experimental evidence.
Of related interest, the following video also explains why “decoherence” does not solve the measurement problem: Mainly, there is a breakdown in the mathematics in that there is a irresolvable dilemma for decoherence in deriving the “Born rule” within the MWI (Many Worlds Interpretation). This irresovable dillemmma is discussed at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video,
As to Siegal’s specific claim that “a Geiger counter,,, would count as an observation”, Stephen Barr responds thusly, “Couldn’t an inanimate physical device (say, a Geiger counter) carry out a “measurement”? (NO) That would run into the very problem pointed out by von Neumann: “,,, “as long as only purely physical entities are involved, they are governed by an equation that says that the probabilities don’t jump.”
As well, Steven Weinberg himself, an atheist, rightly rejects the Siegal’s ‘realist approach’ to quantum mechanics, (mainly because of the insanity inherent in the ‘many worlds interpretation)’,
Yet, on the other hand, it is interesting to note the main reason for why Weinberg, as an atheist, rejects the ‘instrumentalist approach’ to quantum mechanics. Weinberg rejects the instrumentalist approach because, ” the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin,,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
Thus, Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach, not because of any inherent insanity with the instumentalist interpretaion, (such as the insanity that is inherent in the Many Worlds Interpretation), but simply because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and simply because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within.
So what? Darwin’s theory can’t even stand on its own merit, much less should Darwin’s theory ever be allowed to dictate which interpretation of Quantum Mechanics we are willing to accept.
In fact, although Siegal claims that, in regards to quantum mechanics, a human observer is to be considered no different than a Geiger counter. the fact of the matter is that there is an irreducible subjective element to quantum mechanics that forever separates the two.
And as John von Neuman stated, “we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer.”
And as Eugene Wigner stated, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”
Thus, regardless of how Weinberg and other atheists prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. As far a quantum mechanics is concerned, “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Likewise, and as leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
The Kochen-Specker theorem undermines the realist approach of quantum mechanics, and/or the strict determinism of atheistic materialists, in the most fundamental way possible in that “it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe’s past in an ad hoc way.”
As well, with contextuality we find that, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”
Going even further, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that the experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally.
First and foremost, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verse:
Of supplemental note. Here are two experimental falsifications of ‘realism’:
@seversky
“I know I’m going to regret asking this but, if the final or collapsed state is entirely dependent on an observation being performed, what was the Universe like before we were aware of quantum phenomena and began observing them?“
Why regret that question!? That’s an honest and legitimate question no has be able to answer with any level of certainty. I’ve often asked that myself. Seriously this is a good question
The one thing we know Schrodinger got right was that cats like boxes.
Also, Erwin Schrödinger apparently did NOT have a cat and it did NOT look like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo5h-A3J4w8
Where did the article’s variation about poisoned cat food behind a door come from and why?
-Q
Schrodinger’s Cat is one of my favorite thought experiments, but I don’t use it to ponder the multiverse hypothesis. I use it more for things like alien life in the universe, regardless of intelligence. Aliens either exist or they don’t. Until we can know for certain, they will exist and not exist at the same time. Discovery or non-discovery has no bearing on anything in regards to what we know of the universe and what we will learn in the near future.
“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.” – Confucius
@Seversky “observation” is misleading to a lot of people, and even some kooky physicists have made crazy statements about it. Observation really just means an interaction with the outside world such that the state is collapsed. A photon can bang into the system and that can be an “observation”.
For instance, if you’re doing a double slit experiment, you can set up a detector such that you know which slit the photon goes through (you’re interacting via photons really) and have it recorded on a piece of paper. Even when you’re not in the room, or conscious, the observations are still happening and being recorded on the piece of paper. You don’t have to be a conscious observer for those marks to hit the paper. You can die, and another person can come along and find the paper. The paper is not in an uncollapsed state while you’re dead.
seversky:
The Intelligent Designers were around, observing. 😎
With Intelligent Design there was always an observer/ consciousness in the universe.
Retired Physicist: Observation really just means an interaction with the outside world such that the state is collapsed.
That’s right, it doesn’t mean a human observation; no consciousness required.
Yep.
If there’s one book that physicists hate, it’s the dancing wu li masters. That book did more than anything to spread misinformation.
JVL:
Exactly!
To be an atheistic materialist
Consciousness, specifically the two mental attributes of ‘the experience of the now’ and of ‘free will’, are far more tightly correlated with measurement, and/or observation, in quantum mechanics than atheists would prefer people to believe.
What many people forget with regard to quantum mechanics is the transfer and conservation of information along with the collapse of wave functions as a manifestation of the probabilistic nature of existence.
Vlatko Vedral is a professor of Physics at the University of Oxford who specializes in quantum theory and whose research papers are widely cited expresses the concept this way:
It’s truly amazing to observe the heroic efforts by some people to try to maintain a believable case for materialistic determinism in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it.
-Q
Querius, when Vlatko is talking about information, he’s using it as a synonym for Von Neumann Entropy. That’s his gig and he’s very good at it. VNE is the quantum version of Shannon information. It’s about matrix math, not meaning.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_entropy
Querius quotes Vlatko Vedral
And then states.
To which Retired Physicist responds,
And what in blue blazes does that have to with what Querius was talking about? In a nutshell, he is claiming, rightly so, that materialism is falsified since “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information”!
This is simply devastating to Darwinian materialists since they hold that (immaterial) information is ’emergent’ from a material basis and not material to be ’emergent’ from an information basis.
Vlatko Vedral is hardly alone. Wheeler himself stated that, “every it — every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely — even if in some contexts indirectly — from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.
It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.”
Likewise leading Quantum experimentalist Anton Zeilinger himself also holds the same view,
Anton Zeilinger went even further and stated that, “It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
Moreover, entropy, (a subject that Retired Physicist brought up), and how entropy relates to quantum information theory is also devastating to Darwinian presuppositions.
Specifically, recent experiments in quantum mechanics have shown that “entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
As the following article states, the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, In the new paper, the researchers,,, show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,,
In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,,
Moreover, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
These developments in quantum information theory go to the heart of the ID vs. Evolution debate and, number one, directly falsify Darwinian claims that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from some material basis.,,,
And secondly, this distinct physical entity of immaterial information is, via experimental realization of the Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, shown to be a product of a immaterial mind. To repeat, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Moreover, this quantum information that is now shown to have a ‘thermodynamic content,’ and which is also shown not to be a property of a system but “a property of an observer who describes a system”, is now found to be ubiquitous within living organisms. As the following paper explains, Quantum Criticality is in a wide range important biomolecules,
And as Dr Rieper notes at 24:00 minute mark of the following video, practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
The following video deals with ‘Quantum Biology’ in a bit more detail,
The interesting thing about finding quantum information to be ubiquitous within living organisms is that quantum information, like quantum entanglement itself, requires a ‘non-local’, i.e. beyond space and time, cause in order to explain it. As the following article noted, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Moreover, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
In short, Christian Theists now have very strong empirical support for their claim that we have immaterial souls that are capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies
Verse:
Nicely addressed, Bornagain77! Neither Anton Zeilinger nor I made any claims about information content. Regarding the Shannon information that Susskind first posited in relation to black holes, the difference is insignificant if not nonexistent.
I do think “Shannon information” is a misnomer and should actually be called Shannon data, but that’s a different issue.
-Q
Shannon Information can be caused by random data, as can Neumann‘s entropy. You’re looking for meaning when it’s not there. Abusing quotes from authoritative physicists is a weird hobby to have.
I encourage everybody to learn the actual science involved, but sadly it takes years and a lot of work. Misconstruing quotes is easy and fun and anybody can do it. I worked on solid-state physics and not quantum information, but I have had the 10 or so classes necessary to understand it, and I would love to see people accurately quoting his academic papers instead of pop science stuff. You don’t change science by coming up with clever sounding arguments based on misunderstandings.
RP-While it is true that Shannon was not interested in meaning, that’s only because the equipment used to transmit and receive the signal do not care about meaning. His was a special mathematical model pertaining to a specific engineering problem. Information is, and always has been, about meaning.
Retired Physicist states
Retired Physicist claims that Querius misconstrued Vlatko Vedral’s quote, i.e. “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information”
Yet Vedral’s quote means exactly what he said it means and it is certainly not being misconstrued or misunderstood. In fact it is the lead off quote in his book description for ‘Decoding Reality” on Amazon
In fact, it we were to take what Retired Physicist said that Vedral really meant by information,,
And insert what RP claims he meant into Vedral’s sentence in place of the word information,
Then, as we can see, that renders Vedral’s sentence basically nonsensical. Thus, if anybody is guilty of misunderstanding and trying to misconstrue what Vedral actually meant by what he said then it would be Retired Physicist himself who is guilty of what he accuses others of.
Moreover, since RP appealed to Von Neumann entropy, then is is very interesting to point out that John von Neumann himself, contrary to what Retired Physicist believes, held that the observer holds a special position within quantum mechanics,
Von Neumann goes on.
In fact, the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics “is an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is postulated to be necessary for the completion of the process of quantum measurement.”
Thus Retired Physicist’s appeal to von Neumann entropy to try to get around the fact that “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information”, is self defeating in that von Neumann himself, contrary to what RP believes about decoherence rendering a conscious observer unnecessary, instead held that “consciousness causes collapse”.
Thus RP shoots himself in the foot twice. First he is guilty of the very thing that he accuses others of, namely, trying to twist Vedral’s words to mean something other than what they clearly meant, and secondly, his appeal to von Neumann entropy, in and of itself, defeats RP in that von Neumann himself held that “consciousness”, not decoherence and/or entropy, “causes collapse”.
Since he struck out twice, RP is running out of feet to shoot himself in! 🙂
Moreover, RP is not really contesting the fact the basis of reality is found to be information, not matter or energy, (which is what, in and of itself, falsifies Darwinian materialism and which was Querius’s, and my, main point in the first place), but RP is instead claiming that the information and/or entropy is not meaningful. Specifically he claimed,
Yet, meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So let’s see if we can find ‘meaning’ with entropy where RP apparently can find none.
In the ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’ in quantum mechanics, we find that “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”
Likewise, the entry on wikipedia about the Quantum Zeno effect also provocatively states that “a system can’t change while you are watching it”
Atheistic materialists have tried (as is usual for them) to get around the Quantum Zeno effect by postulating that interactions with the environment are sufficient to explain the Quantum Zeno effect (i.e. decoherence).
Yet, the following interaction-free measurement for the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.
Thus, regardless of how atheistic materialists may feel about it, the quantum zeno effect is experimentally shown to be a real effect that is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation. And thus the statement, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay”, stands as being a empirically true statement for a person to make.
Moreover, as was highlighted in post 23, within recent developments in quantum information theory, we now find that “entropy is (NOT) a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The reason why I am very impressed with such experiments as the preceding is that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is very foundational to any definition of time that we may try to put forth.
As the following article states, “Entropy explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,,”,, “Even gravity,,,, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,,”
On top of the fact that “(Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe”, Entropy is also, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Finely tuned to an almost incomprehensible degree of precision, 1 part in 10 to the 10 to the 123rd power. As Roger Penrose himself stated that, “This now tells us how precise the Creator’s aim must have been: namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123.”
In the following video, Dr, Bruce Gordon touches upon just how enormous that number truly is. Dr. Gordon states, “you would need a hundred million, trillion, trillion, trillion, universes our size, with a zero on every proton and neutron in all of those universes just to write out this number. That is how fine tuned the initial entropy of our universe is.”
In fact, entropy is also the primary reason why our own material, temporal, bodies grow old and eventually die in this universe,,,
And yet, to repeat the last sentence from the quantum information paper that I cited at post 23, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
That statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which also happen to explain time itself, even care if I am consciously observing them, and/or describing them, unless ‘the experience of ‘the now’ really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is? To state the obvious, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system.” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality.
For instance Romans chapter 8: verses 20 and 21 itself states, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
Thus Retired Physicist may claim that, in regards to entropy, “You’re looking for meaning when it’s not there.” but clearly when we ‘look’ at entropy, specifically when we ‘look’ at unstable particles, via the quantum zeno effect, we find far more ‘meaning’ for the universe, and for our lives in this universe, than Retired Physicist, as an atheist, would prefer to believe existed for our lives in this universe.
In short, our lives are not nearly as inconsequential in this universe as the nihilism inherent within atheistic materialism entails.
In Retired Physicist’s quote,,,
In that quote, Retired Physicist is, in large measure, referring to the years of work that it takes to learn and understand the mathematics, and concepts, that lies behind science. And indeed, much of the math of modern physics can be quite formidable. But for Retired Physicist to try to claim that an increased understanding of the mathematics that lies behind science will somehow enable us to finally see, as he claims that he does, that the universe is meaningless, even atheistic, in its foundational essence, is for Retired Physicist to make a wildly unsubstantiated claim and is in fact for him to reveal that he does not really even understand the ontology of mathematics in the first place.
Mathematics is immaterial in its foundational essence and thus the very existence of mathematics itself can never have its explanation grounded within atheistic materialism. Much less can Darwinian materialism ever offer an explanation as to why we have an innate mathematical intuition.
As David Berlinski explained, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….”
In fact, the birth of modern science itself was, in large measure, based on the belief that mathematics, especially any mathematics that might describe this universe, was contingent upon the Mind of God for its existence.
Physicists today, especially with the proof of Godel’s incompleteness theorems sitting right before them, simply have no basis for their belief that mathematics, all by its lonesome, can somehow function as a God substitute,
As the following article states, “Kurt Gödel had dropped a bomb on the foundations of mathematics. Math could not play the role of God as infinite and autonomous.”
Stephen Hawking himself, an atheist, honestly admitted that “Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”
As well, Steven Weinberg, also an atheist, also honestly admitted that, ” “I don’t think one should underestimate the fix we are in. That in the end we will not be able to explain the world. That we will have some set of laws of nature (that) we will not be able to derive them on the grounds simply of mathematical consistency. Because we can already think of mathematically consistent laws that don’t describe the world as we know it. And we will always be left with a question ‘why are the laws of nature what they are rather than some other laws?’. And I don’t see any way out of that.”
In fact, there are an infinite number of mathematical theorems that could have described the universe but don’t, As Gregory Chaitin pointed out, “what Gödel discovered was just the tip of the iceberg: an infinite number of true mathematical theorems exist that cannot be proved from any finite system of axioms. ”
Mathematics, contrary to what the vast majority of theoretical physicists believe today, simply never will have the capacity within itself to function as a God substitute.
As Dr. Bruce Gordon explains, “The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,,
Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.”
As to “a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them” it is also interesting to note that ‘free will’, i.e. “a mind that can choose”, plays a fundamental role in Quantum Mechanics itself,
As Steven Weinberg explains, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, and as leading experimentalist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
etc.. etc.. etc..
Thus regardless of how smart Retired Physicist may regard himself as being in regards to understanding the mathematics behind science, the fact of the matter is that the ontology of mathematics itself, as well as the verification of free will within quantum mechanics, refutes his atheistic worldview, especially refuting the atheistic materialism that lies at the foundation of Darwinian evolution.
Verse:
Supplemental quote:
Bornagain77,
Thank you for diving into the information. I’ve read quite a few books on quantum mechanics and I watched several complete presentations by Anton Zeilinger. The quote I provided is clearly unambiguous.
I think it’s important to free oneself from preconceptions and to simply listen to what the experiments seem to be telling us. Heavy-handed interpretation of the data into ideological positions (regardless of what they are) obscures truth and hinders science. Sabine Hossenfelder famously points this out as one cause for the apparent impasse in QM . . . the other cause being the current priority for beauty and symmetry in choosing mathematical models for QM.
Nevertheless, I’m intrigued by the subject of information. For example, in modern cryptography, the goal is to make encrypted information appear as white noise as much as possible. Perhaps, RP’s reference to “random data” is simply information that we cannot decode–sorta like the infamous “junk DNA” blunder in biology.
I especially appreciated your supplemental quote from one of Einstein’s letters. It demonstrates the precise difference between a scientist and a pedagogue.
-Q
Querius, indeed Einstein’s quote does get to the precise difference between a scientist and a pedagogue in rather short order.
And while Einstein resisted quantum mechanics and tried to disprove it, I hold that he was big enough to accept experimental results that falsified his ‘hidden variables’ theory and be a ‘believer’ today.
.
#14
So it is your position that “which slit a photon goes through” during a double-slit experiment is specified among alternatives by a mark being “recorded on a piece of paper”?
Is that correct?
And so?
UB, and, notice, experiments like that do not spontaneously set themselves up. They are FSCO/I rich and are designed. KF
Since Retired Physicist brought up Von Neumann, the infinite regress of the von Neumann chain in quantum mechanics is discussed at the 2:09 minute mark of the following video.
And as to this claim in 14 from Retired Physicist, “You don’t have to be a conscious observer for those marks to hit the paper (in the double slit).”
Yet in the very first part of the following video we find that, “The question of whether detectors in double slit experiments physically cause the wave function to collapse was settled by experiments like the 1999 ‘Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser’ experiment. ,,, The experiment showed that the wave property of a photon could not possibly be collapsed into a particle by some physical effect of the detectors.”
Moreover, the double slit itself, where a detector is placed at only one slit, is a type of interaction free measurement in that the ‘waves’ at the ‘unobserved’ slit still collapse into a particle state although there is no physical detector at that other slit. Thus proving that interaction with the measuring device (i.e. decoherence) is insufficient to explain the collapse of the wave function to a particle state in the double slit experiments,
As Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics John Hopkins University, noted, it is just such ‘interaction free measurements’ in quantum mechanics that proves, in and of themselves, that, “The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”