About that Aeon article noted here earlier today, in “Ways forward for quantum physics,” Sheldon read Adrian Kent’s well-written article and noticed something, as he writes to say,
He mentions 4 explanations of QM: Copenhagen (Bohr), Many-Worlds (Everett), Collapse (4 names), & Pilot-Wave (Bohm) and then says all of them don’t work, just as Einstein had predicted in his 1935 EPR paper. BTW, the Einstein/Newton metaphysical view that preceded QM is often called “naive realism” which assumes the real stuff of nature is point-like atoms.
He actually lists a 5th explanation that he immediately dismisses. It’s the Wigner or “observer” approach to QM, that suggests it literally takes a mind to make sense of QM. Why does he dismiss it? Here’s his argument:
Of course, this final observation will never happen. By definition, no one is sitting outside the universe waiting to observe the final outcome at the end of time. And even if the idea of observers waiting outside the universe made sense – which it doesn’t – on this view their final observations still wouldn’t allow them to say anything about what happened between the Big Bang and the end of time.
I may be reading too much into it, but it’s not the observation that troubles him, it’s the observer.
“If we cannot get a coherent story about physical reality from the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory and we cannot get a scientifically adequate one from many-worlds theory, where do we turn? We could, as some physicists suggest, simply give up on the hope of finding any description of an objective external reality. But it is very hard to see how to do this without also giving up on science. The hypothesis that our universe began from something like a Big Bang, our account of the evolution of galaxies and stars, the formation of the elements and of planets and all of chemistry, biology, physics, archaeology, palaeontology and indeed human history – all rely on propositions about real observer-independent facts and events.”
He feels that reality should be “objective” which is to say “observer-independent.”
But should it? Why?
Over to you, readers.
See also: Science Fictions
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The whole thing about an observer-dependent reality is hogwash on the face of it. Where did that nonsense come from anyway? It is almost childish in its absurdity. The electrons and other particles that make up my body do what they have to do without any observer having to look at them.
Modern physics is observer-centric. This paradigm has reached the end of its usefulness. The next paradigm will be particle-centric in my opinion.
On the face of it . . . but then there are those pesky Quantum Zeno experiments. 😉
-Q
Mapou claims that:
Actually, that may be true for a human observer, but it is now known that every protein and DNA molecule in your body is dependent of a non-local, beyond space and time cause, to explain why they exist as they do. To make this point clear, first it is important to note that it is now known, by more stringent and more stringent experimental and mathematical confirmation, that quantum entanglement cannot be explained by any ‘local’, within space and time, cause:
And this ‘spooky’ non-local, beyond space and time, entanglement is found in molecular biology on a massive scale, in every DNA and Protein molecule of your body:
Moreover, quantum entanglement, as quantum computers have now made clear, enables manipulation of information that is not possible for classical computers:
The following is a rather stunning example of quantum computation in the process of DNA repair:
Of note: DNA repair machines ‘Fixing every pothole in America before the next rush hour’ is analogous to the traveling salesman problem. The traveling salesman problem is a NP-hard (read: very hard) problem in computer science; The problem involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once. ‘Traveling salesman problems’ are notorious for keeping supercomputers busy for days.
Since it is obvious that there is not a material CPU (central processing unit) in the DNA, or cell, busily computing answers to this monster logistic problem, in a purely ‘material’ fashion, by crunching bits, then it is readily apparent that this monster ‘traveling salesman problem’, for DNA repair, is somehow being computed by ‘non-local’ quantum computation within the cell and/or within DNA;
It is also important to note two other facts. One fact is that quantum information is ‘conserved’:
The other fact is that information in its biological sense is lost upon death:
The implications of quantum information being conserved and information in its biological sense being lost upon bodily death should be fairly obvious:
Verses and Music:
Querius,
The problem that I see is that many people conflate measurement with observation. No phenomenon is ever observed directly. It takes time for a photon to travel from an object to a sensor. So to “observe” a particle, one must shine a light on it and thus impart energy into the particle’s system and thereby change the system in some way. But that has nothing to do with observers. Light bounces all over the place without observers.
Mapou claims:
‘Light bounces all over the place without observers.’
Yet the claim is not that ‘Light (doesn’t) bounce all over the place without observers’, the claim is, (as verified to 80 orders of magnitude with Leggett’s inequality), that the wave function of a photon does not collapse to a 3D state until a conscious observer is present:
Of note: Quantum Mechanics – Double Slit Experiment. Is anything real? (Prof. Anton Zeilinger) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayvbKafw2g0
Prof. Zeilinger makes this rather startling statement in the preceding video:
“The path taken by the photon is not an element of reality. We are not allowed to talk about the photon passing through this or this slit. Neither are we allowed to say the photon passes through both slits. All this kind of language is not applicable.”
Anton Zeilinger
As well, non local, i.e. beyond space and time, quantum actions provide solid support for the argument from motion. Also known as Aquinas’ First way. (Of note, St Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225 to 7 March 1274.)
Aquinas’ First Way – (The First Mover – Unmoved Mover) – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmpw0_w27As
Aquinas’ First Way
1) Change in nature is elevation of potency to act.
2) Potency cannot actualize itself, because it does not exist actually.
3) Potency must be actualized by another, which is itself in act.
4) Essentially ordered series of causes (elevations of potency to act) exist in nature.
5) An essentially ordered series of elevations from potency to act cannot be in infinite regress, because the series must be actualized by something that is itself in act without the need for elevation from potency.
6) The ground of an essentially ordered series of elevations from potency to act must be pure act with respect to the casual series.
7) This Pure Act– Prime Mover– is what we call God.
http://egnorance.blogspot.com/.....t-way.html
Or to put it much more simply:
“The ‘First Mover’ is necessary for change occurring at each moment.”
Michael Egnor – Aquinas’ First Way
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....first.html
bornagain77:
It is obvious that Professor Zeilinger (or any other physicist for that matter) has no clue as to what is really going on. Therefore his conclusions and opinions are to be taken with a grain of salt.
I think Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment really drives the point home of the central importance of conscious observation (and free will) in quantum experiments:
This following experiment extended the double slit experiment to show that the ‘spooky actions’, for instantaneous quantum wave collapse, happen regardless of any considerations for time or distance i.e. The following experiment shows that quantum actions are ‘universal and instantaneous’:
Of technical note:
And although I’m not a YEC, I still love the following quote:
Here’s a recent variation of Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, which highlights the ability of the conscious observer to effect ‘spooky action into the past’, thus further solidifying consciousness’s centrality in reality. Moreover, in the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is falsified by the fact that present conscious choices effect past material states:
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,,,
Supplemental notes:
Also of interest, Einstein was asked (by a philosopher):
“Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?”
Einstein’s answer was categorical, he said:
The preceding statement was a very interesting statement for Einstein to make (considering his infamous debates with Bohr over quantum mechanics) since ‘the now of the mind’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, undermined the space-time of Einstein’s General Relativity as to being the absolute frame of reference for reality. i.e. ‘the now of the mind’, contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, according to advances in quantum mechanics, takes precedence over past events in time. Moreover, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to phrase Einstein’s answer to the philosopher in this way:
Mapou, I’ve noticed that when anybody contradicts your own personal opinion on a matter, with hard evidence and quotes by leading experts in the field no less, that you do not present any countervailing evidence, references, or quotes from experts of your own but that you just make bold declarations as to how you think reality ought to be structured and dismiss all evidence and everyone else’s opinion with a wave of the hand and sometimes ad hominem. Why is this? Do you expect just to take your word for how reality is structured without any hard evidence?
Mapou, as to your claim that Zeilinger ‘has no clue as to what is really going on’ it might interest you to know that he, and his team, are at the forefront of many, if not most of the recent radical breakthroughs in Quantum Mechanics. For instance his team current holds the world record for distance of quantum teleportation. As well, his team was the first one that verified Leggett’s Inequality. There are many other breakthroughs. Perhaps you would like to browse through his work before you so casually dismiss it?
http://vcq.quantum.at/publicat.....tions.html
For example:
Of Einstein and entanglement: Quantum erasure deconstructs wave-particle duality – January 29, 2013
Excerpt: While previous quantum eraser experiments made the erasure choice before or (in delayed-choice experiments) after the interference – thereby allowing communications between erasure and interference in the two systems, respectively – scientists in Prof. Anton Zeilinger’s group at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna recently reported a quantum eraser experiment in which they prevented this communications possibility by enforcing Einstein locality. They accomplished this using hybrid path-polarization entangled photon pairs distributed over an optical fiber link of 55 meters in one experiment and over a free-space link of 144 kilometers in another. Choosing the polarization measurement for one photon decided whether its entangled partner followed a definite path as a particle, or whether this path-information information was erased and wave-like interference appeared. They concluded that since the two entangled systems are causally disconnected in terms of the erasure choice, wave-particle duality is an irreducible feature of quantum systems with no naïve realistic explanation. The world view that a photon always behaves either definitely as a wave or definitely as a particle would require faster-than-light communication, and should therefore be abandoned as a description of quantum behavior.
http://phys.org/news/2013-01-e.....ructs.html
bornagain77,
The reason that I say that it’s obvious that physicists have no clue as to what it really going on is that their explanations make no sense whatsoever. Consider the photon, for example, a sizeless point particle that nevertheless has a frequency and a wavelength. Who ordered this freak of nature?
The entire concept of wave/particle duality is a disaster because it makes no sense. Ask any physicist to explain why the decay duration of a subatomic particle, e.g., the neutron, is probabilistic and you come face to face with abject ignorance. The ignorance of the physics community wrt quantum phenomena is deep and appalling and yet they feel free to conjure up all sort of voodoo nonsense straight out of their asteroid orifices. I don’t trust anything they say. Sorry.
and yet their work making stunning breakthroughs in quantum mechanics, challenging our (mis)conceptions of reality, testifies that they do have a firm clue what they are talking about whilst you are on a blog taking chep shots complaining that it makes no sense. Go figure!
Here’s my thought experiment: Let’s take an observer at the end of the universe. The observer can observe the photons from the beginning of our universe and collapse the wave function and change how the universe began ! Unless the photons are observed, the beginning of universe will remain in superposition, so to have a definite beginning, you need an observer even before the universe starts it’s birth, so the observer effect when applied to universe gives absurd result.
Even if we consider the observers in the present universe and not the end of universe, since we have been observing universe more and more frequently, the matter and energy density of universe should differ from the past, so our universe will turn from flat to either open or closed type depending on the superposition state that is chosen. Now, our observe at the end of universe will observe the beginning of universe photons differently(due to curvature changes in space-time) and will affect the superposition of the birth of universe – in effect, we will have multiple universe births!
In short, universe can’t be observer dependent.
bornagain77 @12,
You got a lame pony in this race. I don’t. The next paradigm shift in physics will make even Thomas Kuhn blush.
“In short, universe can’t be observer dependent.”
But it can be, and is, consciousness dependent!
“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”
Max Planck – The Father Of Quantum Mechanics – Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797)(Of Note: Max Planck Planck was a devoted Christian from early life to death, was a churchwarden from 1920 until his death, and believed in an almighty, all-knowing, beneficent God.
Colossians 1:17
“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”
Due to advances in quantum mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can be framed like this:
1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality.
2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality.
3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality.
4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.
Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_Fi50ljF5w_XyJHfmSIZsOcPFhgoAZ3PRc_ktY8cFo/edit
Colossians 1:17
And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
Schrodinger’s cat and Wigner’s Friend – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f.....aM4#t=510s
“It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays “Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays”; Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.
“It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality” –
Eugene Wigner – (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961
“No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931
“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
(Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.)
Logical Proofs of Infinite External Consciousness – January 18, 2012
Excerpt: (Proof # 2) If you believe in the theory of Quantum Mechanics, then you believe that conscious observation must be present to collapse a wave function. If consciousness did not exist prior to matter coming into existence, then it is impossible that matter could ever come into existence. Additionally, this rules out the possibility that consciousness is the result of quantum mechanical processes. Either consciousness existed before matter or QM is wrong, one or the other is indisputably true.
http://www.libertariannews.org.....ciousness/
bornagain77,
I am talking about applying QM at the scale of universe. When Einstein field theory is quantized – Wheeler–DeWitt equation-time doesn’t exist,what you get is a timeless universe. There will be no arrow of time.
As I showed in my earlier comment, observer of universe will lead to absurd result.
‘There will be no arrow of time.’
Well, I’m not quite sure what mathematical nuance you are hung up on, but as to the ‘arrow of time’ having overriding relevance to refute quantum mechanics, I think perhaps you should consider a bit more deeply the implications of ‘timeless’ quantum actions::
That quantum mechanics applies to the large, ‘macro’, scale of the universe was established here:
Even a prominent atheist philosopher, though not a physicist, admits that consciousness is an entirely different ‘cat’ that is not reducible to material explanation:
Moreover insisting that material reality precedes consciousness, instead of consciousness beinf foundational to material reality, leads to ‘psychopathic’ consequences:
Moreover, this psychopathic characteristic inherent to the atheistic philosophy is born out empirically, in that people who do not believe in a soul tend to be more psychopathic than the majority of normal people in America who do believe in a soul. You can pick that psychopathic study of atheists around the 14:30 minute mark of this following video:
Verse Quote and Music:
Supplemental notes:
‘There will be no arrow of time.’
Well, I’m not quite sure what mathematical nuance you are hung up on, but as to the ‘arrow of time’ having overriding relevance to refute quantum mechanics, I think perhaps you should consider a bit more deeply the implications of ‘timeless’ quantum actions::
That quantum mechanics applies to the large, ‘macro’, scale of the universe was established here:
Even a prominent atheist philosopher, though not a physicist, admits that consciousness is an entirely different ‘cat’ that is not reducible to material explanation:
Moreover insisting that material reality precedes consciousness, instead of consciousness beinf foundational to material reality, leads to ‘psychopathic’ consequences:
Moreover, this psychopathic characteristic inherent to the atheistic philosophy is born out empirically, in that people who do not believe in a soul tend to be more psychopathic than the majority of normal people in America who do believe in a soul. You can pick that psychopathic study of atheists around the 14:30 minute mark of this following video:
Verse Quote and Music:
Supplemental notes:
semi OT: Jennifer Fulwiler: Scientific Atheism to Christ – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw8uUOPoi2M
What caused her to question her atheism to begin with? It was the birth of her first child. She says that when she looked at her child, the only way her atheist mind could explain the love that she had for him was to assume it was the result of nothing more than chemical reactions in her brain. However, in the video I linked above, she says:
“And I looked down at him, and I realized that’s not true.”
Hi bornagain77 @19,
Arrow of time cannot be used to refute QM nor is there any mathematical nuance. The point is quite simple. For observer effect, universe has to be quantized. When you quantize GR, you get Wheeler–DeWitt equation. Just take the time derivative of the Hamiltonian ,you will find it is zero, which means universe doesn’t change with time! It is absurd (apart from other results given @14) since we do observe changes in universe over time.
bornagain77:
Since you seem to accept Zeilinger as an authority on the subject, are you aware that he doesn’t agree with you about the relevance of consciousness to quantum phenomenon? In A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics, he, Maximilian Schlosshauer, and Johannes Kofler published a survey of participants of a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Of particular relevance here is Question 10:
So only 6% agreed with you (since there were only 33 respondents, that’s just two people). But of course, that’s the overall opinions of the attendees, not Zeilinger or the other authors. But in the discussion following that result, the authors say:
In other words, the authors (including Zeilinger) think you misunderstand QM. BTW, in Question 14:
In other words, they consider that the empirical evidence does not force any specific interpretation of QM (although it does rule many out); so your claims that the evidence forces your particular interpretation are baseless.
BTW, I should also point out that Mapou’s claims are also wrong. The physicists studying this are far from clueless, and are not raising all these questions without good reason. The empirical evidence simply doesn’t doesn’t fit with any well-behaved model of reality, and so some very smart people have gotten interested in the question “what’s the least-weird model we can find that fits our observations?” Weirdness is somewhat subjective (hence the responses to question 14), but the short answer they’ve come up with is: “pretty dang weird.”
The only way to avoid the weirdness entirely is to ignore reality.
Gordon,
Great info! Thanks.
Sal
Davisson:
“Reality is weird” is just a cheesy way of saying “we are clueless”. I know I’m also clueless but it would help a little if scientists, especially physicists, did not act like a bunch of condescending know-it-alls. Here is a list of 5 questions I have for physicists. If they can answer just one, I would be extremely impressed.
1. Why is there a speed limit in the universe?
2. Why is C the speed limit?
3. Why is the decay duration of subatomic particles probabilistic?
4. What causes two particles in relative inertial motion to stay in motion?
5. What is the mechanism of entanglement? IOW, how can two entangled particles communicate instantly at a distance?
I have many more like the above but these will suffice. Who wants to take a crack at these?
Gordon you ask,,,
Yes! I’m also aware that I don’t agree with him on his ‘loophole on judgement day’ interpretation, (and I don’t agree with a few other philosophical nuances in his interpretation(s)),, In the following video, at the 37:00 minute mark, Anton Zeilinger, humorously reflects on just how deeply determinism has been undermined by quantum mechanics by saying such a deep lack of determinism in Quantum Mechanics may provide some of us a ‘loop hole’ when they meet God on judgment day.
Personally, I feel that such a deep undermining of determinism by quantum mechanics,
,,,far from providing a ‘loop hole’ on judgement day as Dr. Zeilinger stated, actually restores free will to its rightful place in the grand scheme of things, thus making God’s final judgments on each man’s soul all the more fully binding since man truly is a ‘free moral agent’ as Theism has always maintained. To solidify this theistic claim for how important free will is in the structure of reality, the following study came along a few months after I had seen Dr. Zeilinger’s ‘loop hole’ video:
So just as I had suspected after watching Dr. Zeilinger’s video, it is found that a required (axiomatic) assumption of ‘free will’ in quantum mechanics is what necessarily drives the completely random (non-deterministic) aspect of quantum mechanics. Moreover, it was shown in the paper that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will as a starting assumption in Quantum Mechanics! But what was really unprecedented in the paper, as impressive as it was in its breadth and scope, is that they were able to perform an experiment showing that Quantum Theory will never be exceeded in predictive power by a future theory. In my opinion, that represents a milestone in science that should certainly be worthy of a Nobel Prize (or at least far more notice than it has received thus far!)!
Moreover as if that was not enough, Zeilinger himself solidified the inference to free will’s axiomatic position in Quantum Mechanics with this following experiment. In the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is directly falsified by the fact that present conscious choices are, in fact, effecting past material states:
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past? This experiment is simply impossible for any coherent materialistic presupposition (not that materialists will not try to posit incoherent explanations!)!
Antoine Suarez has also done some very fine work in this area establishing free will’s primacy in Quantum Mechanics,,
Also of note
Needless to say, finding ‘free will conscious observation’ to be ‘built into’ our best description of foundational reality, quantum mechanics, as a starting assumption, ‘free will observation’ which is indeed the driving aspect of randomness in quantum mechanics, is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy which demands that a ‘non-telological randomness’ be the driving force of creativity in Darwinian evolution!
Of note: since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, I think a Christian perspective on just how important our choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting:
Also of note to the ‘problem of evil’, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day and shared many strange similarities in their lives, but the one common thing they shared that separated the two men drastically was the way they choose to handle the evil that happened in their lives. Darwin, though drifting away from God for a long while, was permanently driven away from God because of what he perceived to be the ‘unjust’ death of his daughter (in fact Theodicy is rampant in ‘Origin of Species), Whereas Lincoln, on the other hand, was driven from his mild skepticism into a deep reliance upon God because of the death of his son.
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-443197
Verse and Music
It should be noted that I do agree very strongly with Zeilinger on this interpretation of his,,
selvaRajan, since I am a complete novice at math, I really don’t know what you are objecting to. So I certainly don’t want to give the wrong evidence to you until I am more certain of your exact position. I’m fixing to go to bed for a while, perhaps in the morning I can try to understand your position more clearly to see if I can help (or if I may agree)
Our existence at a quantum scale seems mathematical and subject to collapsing probabilities through observation, including our perception of the passage of time. There’s no reason to assume that time is one dimensional and moving only in one direction. In fact when you download something and your internet connection slows down, the time estimates for completion will increase relative to your perception of real-time, and in that sense, time is moving backward.
That light travels at different speeds in different media indicates some type of interaction, perhaps absorption and re-emission within the quantum foam or dark matter, or perhaps there’s some intrinsic property of space itself. Consider the Scharnhorst effect, where light travels 1.5-1.7c in a Casimir vacuum.
Also, why is the speed of the propagation of gravity the same as the speed to light? It’s extremely unlikely to be a coincidence.
Finally, moving yourself to the end of the universe requires you to travel faster than the speed of light to be able to become an observer–this is analogous to dividing by zero in math, and will result in both an incorrect answer and ridicule from your colleagues or professor.
We don’t know what’s really going on, but we know that different rules apply on a micro (QM) scale and on a macro (gravitational) scale.
-Q
Querius:
This is yet another epic failure of physics. Changing time is an oxymoron. Time cannot change by definition. Why? Because a change in time implies a velocity in time, i.e., a rate of change. Velocity in time would have to be given as v = dt/dt, which is nonsensical.
This is the reason that spacetime physics is hogwash (there is no physics in it) and the reason that Karl Popper compared Einstein to Parmenides of Elea (Zeno’s teacher) and called spacetime, “Einstein’s block universe in which nothing happens.” Source: Conjectures and Refutations.
My biggest problem with the physics community is that their BS is deep and in-your-face. Their smarter-than-thou condescension toward a public who pays their salaries is legendary.
Paul Feyerabend was right when he wrote in Against Method:
Nothing that a little paradigm shift cannot fix, though.
Re 29
Here’s the link for Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations.
Gordon you also state in regards to the survey of 33 Quantum Physicists,,,
Yes Gordon isn’t it funny how in science, which is SUPPOSE to be driven by empirical evidence, philosophical prejudice reigns supreme??? 🙂 For instance you can get similar numbers (+90%) if you ask biologists if life evolved by unguided Darwinian processes (i.e. no Mind). And this is percentage is in spite of the fact that Biology is orders of magnitude more complex than anything man has ever devised. The Brain by itself has been shown to have more connections and switches than the entire internet:
And well Gordon, our best computer programmers can’t even come close to the multiple overlapping coding found in DNA
And yet Gordon, despite all this overwhelming evidence of Intelligent Design in biology (and the sheer poverty of positive evidence that unguided processes can produce it), a majority of biologists still believe it happened by unguided Darwinian processes. Thus Gordon when you yourself state a survey showing that philosophy drives science far more than it should and then state
I think you have overlooked the fact that I deal with severe philosophical prejudice all the time in spite of the fact that the evidence itself overwhelmingly supports the fact that Intelligence is necessary to explain that complexity
selvaRajan
Sorry selvaRajan but when you state, ‘take the time derivative of the Hamiltonian ,you will find it is zero’, you might as well speak Chinese to me. That is how much of a novice I am to higher math! What I do know from the empirical evidence itself though, in my very limited ability, is that the empirical evidence from quantum mechanics consistently speaks of a ‘timeless’ higher dimension above this temporal one.,,,
Here is how the empirical evidence plays out for me in regards to time. Hypothetically traveling at the speed of light in this universe would be, because of time dilation, instantaneous travel for the person traveling at the speed of light. i.e. Time, as we understand it temporally, would come to a complete stop at the speed of light. To grasp the whole ‘time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
This ‘instantaneous travel for the person traveling at the speed of light’ is because time does not pass for the ‘hypothetical’ observer at the speed of light, yet, and this is a very big ‘yet’ to take note of, this ‘timeless’ travel is still not completely instantaneous and transcendent of our temporal framework of time as quantum entanglement is now shown to be.
i.e. Speed of light travel, to our temporal frame of reference for time, despite ‘time not passing’ for light’, is still not completely transcendent of our temporal time framework since light appears to take time to travel from our temporal perspective. Yet, in the quantum entanglement, the ‘time not passing’, i.e. ‘eternal’, framework is not only achieved in our lower temporal framework, but is also ‘instantaneously’ achieved in the ‘eternal’ speed of light framework/dimension. That is to say, the instantaneous travel (if travel is a proper word) of quantum information/entanglement is instantaneous to both the temporal and speed of light frameworks, not just our present temporal framework or the ‘eternal’ speed of light framework. Quantum information ‘travel’ is not limited by time, nor space, in any way, shape or form, in any frame of reference, as light is seemingly limited to us in this temporal framework. Thus ‘quantum information/entanglement’ is shown to be timeless (eternal) and completely transcendent of all material frameworks. Moreover, concluding from all lines of evidence we now have examined (many of which I have not specifically listed here); transcendent, eternal, and ‘infinite’, quantum information is indeed real and resides is the primary reality (highest dimension) that can possibly exist for reality (as far as we can tell from our empirical evidence).
supplemental notes:
It is important to note higher dimensions are invisible to our physical 3 Dimensional sight. The reason why ‘higher dimensions’ are invisible to our 3D vision is best illustrated by ‘Flatland’:
It is also interesting to note that ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics had to be developed before Einstein could elucidate General Relativity, or even before Quantum Mechanics could be elucidated;
Verse and Music:
M: Pardon, but clocks track change in time and the smooth swinging of say a pendulum (or even smooth motion of a second hand) shows why analysis on increments is useful. Please, rethink. Time flows as an independent variable, presumed to be at a steady rate. That is not unreasonable. KF
Mapou:
Disclaimer: I am not a Quantum Physicist.
However, my limited understanding of the subject indicates that interaction-free measurements such as those in the Renninger negative-result experiment tend to call into question the view that the change in the system can be explained away by appealing to physical interference from the measurement process. As I understand it, the Renninger negative-result experiment demonstrates that (at the least) partial wave collapse may occur even in instances where what is observed is a lack of measurement. Since a lack of measurement cannot “shine a light on [a particle] and thus impart energy” this would seem to take us back to a change in the system being the result of an observer and not a measurement.
kairosfocus @33,
The idea that time is an independent variable is a myth, an illusion. Clocks change but time does not. Time is abstract. Nothing can move in spacetime for this reason. I explained why @ 29. Please address my argument.
Most physicists are never taught this truth because it is very inconvenient to their Einstein cult. Dishonesty is not just the domain of Darwinists. It is rampant in the physics community and elsewhere. Science is one of the most political human endeavors. A few honest relativists are brave enough to admit it, though. Here’s an example:
Consequently, the following claims by relativists wrt spacetime are plain false.
1. Gravity is caused by the curvature of spacetime.
2. Time dilates (the truth is that it’s just the clocks that slow down for whatever reason that relativists are clueless about).
3. Time is relative (see 2).
4. Bodies move along their geodesics in spacetime.
5. There is a physical time dimension.
6. Time travel is possible through wormholes.
I could add many more to the list but you get the picture. By the way, item 6 is a favorite of that little crackpot in England, Stephen Hawking. It’s all crackpottery of the highest order. It’s pathetic and shameful.
Phineas @34,
I am not familiar with the Renninger negative-result experiment but a quick look at Wikipedia tells me that it’s just a thought experiment. And it seems that some people are deluding themselves into thinking that one can observe something without a measurement. I would not give this thing any credibility.
Like I said, I don’t trust physicists because they are not only clueless about so many things, they have a dishonest political agenda just like Darwinists.
That’s way over the top. Evolutionary biology is mostly useless to science (except things like population genetics), but you would not be able to be having discussions like this if it weren’t for quantum physicists who helped construct the computer chips in your computer.
Some physics, or even most may not be correct about EVERYTHING, but it doesn’t mean the industry is fundamentally dishonest or politically driven. I didn’t see that as I matriculated through a physics program, but I do see a lot of political motivation in evolutionary biology…
The Renninger Negative Result Experiment – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3uzSlh_CV0
Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester
In 1994, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, and Thomas Herzog actually performed an equivalent of the above experiment, proving interaction-free measurements are indeed possible.[2]
In 1996, Kwiat et al. devised a method, using a sequence of polarising devices, that efficiently increases the yield rate to a level arbitrarily close to one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.....xperiments
“Experimental realization of “interaction-free” measurements” Paul G. Kwiat; H. Weinfurter, T. Herzog, A. Zeilinger, and M. Kasevich (1994).
http://www.univie.ac.at/qfp/pu.....994-08.pdf
Interaction-Free Measurement – 1995
http://archive.is/AjexE
Realization of an interaction-free measurement – 1996
http://bg.bilkent.edu.tr/jc/to.....rement.pdf
IP’s new video up. Why materialism is inconsistent with QM and why the past is determined by “final causes” (ie. telos -wink, wink) in the future:
Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment Explained – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6HLjpj4Nt4
bornagain77:
I don’t think you’re really addressing the disagreement I was pointing out. You may also disagree with him about judgement day loopholes, but what I was pointing out is that while you are claiming that various quantum effects show the importance of consciousness, Zeilinger (and pretty much everyone else who has studied the matter closely) disagree. And I’m pretty strongly in the same camp as Zeilinger here. I’ll take a stab at explaining why.
Let me try to summarize the main arguments I see for QM effects providing evidence of a role for consciousness:
1) Quantum nondeterminism demonstrates the existance of free will (e.g. in the Michio Kaku video you linked).
2) QM shows that a conscious observer plays a necessary role in the experiment (e.g. by collapsing the wave function).
3) Tests of Bell’s theorem (and its relatives) show free will in the choice of which measurements to make.
4) Entanglement effects suggest “a mind outside space-time can purposefully control quantum randomness” (Suarez, InspiringPhilosophy).
Before I go through these, let me digress a little on the topic of bias…
The importance of bias in interpreting QM
The interpretation of QM isn’t a normal area of science, precisely because many of the possible models (interpretations) make indistinguishable preditctions. Science is driven as much as possible by empirical evidence, but in this case we’ve run into (and gone past) the limits of what the evidence can tell us. In this situation, it’s essentially inevitable that various forms of bias will become a lot more significant.
Firstly, this means that you shouldn’t assume philosophical prejudice plays the same role in other areas of science that it does here. In areas where different hypotheses make different predictions, the effects of prejudice can be overridden by evidence. You may think that prejudice is plays an important role in evolutionary biology as well, but you can’t use this survey to support that opinion.
Second, I’d argue that the survey results are actually a good sign; as I said, this is an area where we run into the limits of what empirical evidence can tell us, so it’s inevitable that various sorts of bias will play an important role, and the survey shows that the people working in the field are aware of this. We’re all human, and we all have biases; but I’d much rather someone be aware of their biases than blithely unaware. Someone who knows about their biases at least has a shot at keeping them under control and minimizing the damage they do.
So, let me turn this around: how aware are you of your own biases? Bias isn’t just something that happens to other people, it’s a normal part of human thought. Through the rest of this comment, I’m going to be disagreeing with a lot of the arguments you’ve given; as you read through them, try to watch your reactions and see how impartial your thought process is. Do you automatically look for reasons to reject counterarguments against positions you hold, or do you evaluate each counterargument as though it might be right?
In the interests of fair play, I should probably discuss my own biases at least a little. This is obviously a big topic, so I’ll just stick to the interpretation of QM. My favorite interpretation of QM is the many-worlds interpretation, and while I don’t think philosophical prejudice specifically plays a big role in that (I actually consider many-worlds rather icky from a philosophical perspective), there are certainly several factors that bias me towards it:
* MWI strikes me as one of the more technically elegant interpretations of QM (or maybe “least inelegant” would be better). MWI “solves” the measurement problem in QM essentially by using elements that’re already part of the theory (mainly superposition and entanglement), and applying them at the scale of the entire universe rather than just at the microscopic scale. Most other interpretations add other baggage to the theory to explain how measurement works, but MWI just skips that.
I don’t know if this really counts a bias, but it is at best a subjective aesthetic judgement.
* Investment bias: I’ve invested a fair bit of time & effort in wrapping my head around some far-from-intuitive concepts in order to understand MWI, and I’d hate for that to have been a waste of time. By contrast, I haven’t invested the time & effort to properly understand the transactional interpretation, so I’d rather that one was wrong so I wouldn’t have to spend that time & effort to understand it…
* Comfort: precisely because I’ve wrapped my head around MWI, it now makes more intuitive sense to me than one I haven’t properly figured out (again, the transactional interpretation would be an example of that). If I’d spent time thinking in terms of TI but not MWI, I’d clearly have the opposite comfort bias… but I didn’t so I don’t.
* Confirmation bias: having decided that I like MWI, I’m inevitably biased to look for further support for it (and discount arguments against it).
Net result: I recognize that a lot of the reason for my preference for MWI is from various sorts of bias, and so I don’t take my preference that seriously. I’d sort of like MWI to be correct, but I don’t actually believe it’s correct.
Ok, now back to the arguments about QM & consciousness:
1) Quantum nondeterminism demonstrates the existance of free will
There are really two problems with this argument:
* First, while QM effects strongly suggest true nondeterminism, it is impossible to show conclusively that the nondeterminism is more than in an illusion. The various tests of quantum weirdness (Bell’s theorem et al) have ruled out all causally well-behaved deterministic models, but since they’ve also ruled out all causally well-behaved nondeterministic models as well, that’s not saying a lot.
* Second (and probably more important), QM randomness has a very different character than conscious free will: it’s not associated with conscious entities (the decay of a radioactive atom appears random, does that mean the atom has free will? Does that mean it’s conscious?), and it isn’t influenced by things like personal preferences, but by things like phase shifts and probability amplitudes.
Is simple randomness conscious to libertarian free will? I certainly don’t think so…
2) QM shows that a conscious observer plays a necessary role in the experiment
This is what most people mean when they talk about consciousness having a special role in QM. However, only one model of QM (the modern Copenhagen interpretation) has this role at all, and even in that model the assumption that it’s a conscious observer that triggers wavefunction collapse is just that: an assumption.
Actually, I’ll go further than that: all of the real experimental tests of QM weirdness I’m familiar with assume that consciousness is not an important part of observation, because they use non-conscious “observers”. Consider the Bell test done between the islands of La Palma and Tenerife (“Violation of local realism with freedom of choice”) (and yes, Zeilinger was involved). In this experiment, each photon was “observed” by a photodetector, which fed the detection event to a logic circuit, which passed it to a time tagging unit, which passed it on to a computer that recorded it on a hard disk. Presumably at some point a human looks at the results, but this isn’t considered an important enough part of the experiment to even bother documenting.
Similarly, in the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment mentioned in the InspiringPhilosophy video, the output of the photodetectors are sent to coincidence circuits… with no mention of a conscious observer.
Other experiments, of course, use different setups; but while I haven’t followed these tests very closely, I’d be suprised if you can find any that actually involved a conscious observer as a significant part of the experiment (i.e. a conscious observer looking at the results after the experiment’s done doesn’t count).
For Bell’s theorem tests, there’s actually a good reason that conscious observers shouldn’t be used (at least for experiments performed on Earth): in order to avoid a timing loophole, each observation must be completed before a speed-of-light signal could arrive from the other observer. Even if the two observers were on opposite sides of the Earth, that allows less than 1/20th of a second for each observation — and human reaction time simply isn’t that fast.
It’s pretty hard to claim that experiments that don’t involve conscious observers demonstrate the importance of conscious observers. If anything, they demonstrate the opposite.
(It might be interesting to do the experiment with one of the conscious observers, one of whom is on the moon. With a 1.3 second speed-of-light delay, you’d have enough time to actually make a meaningful test. But it probably wouldn’t be very interesting, because the expected result is exactly the same as with non-collapse-triggering observers…)
3) Tests of Bell’s theorem (and its relatives) show free will in the choice of which measurements to make
As with the last point, this is an assumption not a conclusion. Free choice of which measurement to make is a critical part of Bell tests, but if the assumption isn’t met, the experiment will still work (or at least appear to), the results just won’t actually demonstrate a violation of Bell’s theorem.
Also, the choice doesn’t actually have to be free in the sense of free will, it just has to be statistically independent of the physical situation at the other detector. This requirement can actually be satisfied even with full determinism, as long as the causes that determine which measurement is made at each detector are different from the causes that determine what happens at the other detector. (The “Violation of local realism with freedom of choice” paper has some more discussion of this.)
Finally, as with the measurement argument, the actual experiments generally don’t involve conscious agents choosing measurements. The La Palma-Tenerife experiment I just cited had a quantum random number generator controlling each of the detectors, but you’ll find a variety of options. And as before, a human wouldn’t be able to choose quickly enough to meet the timing requirement.
4, part 1) Entanglement effects suggest “a mind outside space-time can purposefully control quantum randomness” (Suarez)
Suarez is on his own with this one. None of the standard interpretations of QM involve anything like this, so it’s certainly not a requirement.
Actually, I’d recommend ignoring Suarez entirely, because (based on the paper you linked), he really doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. The most egregious example was his claim that his 2012 Geneva experiment demonstrated that “the most basic principle ruling the material world, the conservation of energy, would not work without a nonlocal (non-material) coordination coming from outside space-time”. In fact, that experiment’s results are entirely consistent with local realism. The experiment doesn’t test anything interesting, and the fact that he thinks it does…
For those that haven’t read the paper: he ran photons through an interferometer, configured so that the photons could exit in either of two directions. He then set up detectors a ways away in each of those directions, and found that each photon was detected at exactly one of the two detectors. No photon showed up both places, and no photon vanished. This… is exactly what you’d see if the photons behaved as classical particles and simply went one way or the other. (Mind you, the behavior of the photon in the interferometer does demonstrate a bit of quantum weirdness — but it’s just basic garden-variety two-slit weirdness, nothing really weird, and he seems to think the results after it leaves the interferometer are more significant.)
The only reason he thinks his results are weird is that “According to standard quantum physics the decision about which detector clicks happens at the moment of detection…” In other words, he thinks it’s weird because he started from the assumption that it’s weird.
Now, some interpretations of QM do imply that the decision happens at the moment of detection, but all of these interpretations (that I’m familiar with anyway) also explain these sorts of correlation without “coordination coming from outside space-time”. So to the extent that they support his starting assuption, they also refute his conclusion.
4, part 2) Entanglement effects vs. free will
In part 1 of this point, I argued that the evidence doesn’t suport a mind being behind entanglement; now let me go further and argue that the evidence goes against this claim. The problem I see is that the various entanglement results show that whatever is behind entanglement doesn’t show any real sign of free will; it slavishly — even mindlessly — follows the predictions of quantum mechanics.
For example, in a standard (photon-based) test of Bell’s theorem, if the two detectors are set to the same angle, the two polarization results will be different from each other (e.g. if one photon is found to be horizontally polarized, the other will be vertical). Always. Which one will be in which state appears to be random (as I pointed out in the nondeterminism section, this isn’t necessarily a sign of free will), but whatever arranges the results appears to have no choice at all about the correlation between them.
If the two detectors are at different angles, the measurements will agree with probability equal to the square of the sine of the angle between the detectors. While whatever controls the results has some additional choice (/nondeterminism) about which specific runs will agree vs disagree, the long-term average always converges to the QM-predicted value. There might be some room for free will here, but only within the bounds of the predictions of QM.
Basically, the results look to me more like a purely mechanistic proess with some (non-free-will-type) nondeterminism thrown in.
4, part 3) Delayed-choice experiments and retrocausality
This InspiringPhilosophy video argues that delayed choice experiments show “… our knowledge of the system affects the past by loading up a back history to corelate with our knowledge,” and “a conscious choice [of what measurement to make] affects the behavior of previously measured, but unobserved, particles.” As I pointed out before, these experiments don’t actually involve conscious agents either as observers or choosers, so this is clearly wrong.
But there’s more than that wrong here: the delayed choice experiments don’t show retrocausality at all. Their results are consistent with retrocausality, but do not require it. The transactional interpretation does involve a sort of retrocausality (but involving particle emitters and absorbers, not conscious agents), but many others explain the results of delayed-choice effects just fine without invoking anything like this. Essentially, the reason is that the correlation effects in these experiments are causally symmetric — one can think of measurement A influencing the result measurement B, or of B influencing A, and the results are equally consistent either way. If you assume the later measurement influenced the earlier one, you get retrocausality; but there’s no real reason to assume this.
Let’s look at the two-slit delayed choice eraser described in the video. I won’t summarize the experiment here; you can read a short summary on Wikipedia, a more detailed description by Ross Rhodes, or the original paper. The basic idea is that it’s a two-slit interferometer experiment, with an additional entangled photon (which I’ll call the “twin”) that can (optionally) be used to measure which slit it went through. And depending on whether the which-slit measurement was done or not, the interference pattern vanishes or appears (respectively). Essentially, it decides after the fact whether the photon acts like a wave or a particle.
… Of course it’s not that simple. First, if the which-slit measurement is made, it doesn’t actually mean that the photon went through that slit (particle-like behavior) vs. having gone through both (wave-like behavior). It’s consistent with it having gone through just the one slit, but it’s also consistent with it having gone through both slits and only later collapsing to a single position.
But what of the other photon, that might or might not show an interference pattern? Before I explain that, I have to point out another fundamental error in the IP video: he keeps saying things like “if a photon makes it to D1 [detector #1, which does not give “which-path” info] or D2 [similar], they always display an interference pattern [wave-like behavior]; yet every time a photon hits D3 [which does give “which-path” info] or D4 [similar], a clump pattern [particle-like behavior] is formed. The mistake here is that a single photon does not form a pattern — a pattern is what you get from looking at the statistics of a large number of photons. This means that for any single photon, you can’t tell what pattern it’s part of, you have to look at a bunch of them.
You can see these patterns in figures 3-5 of the original paper (also reproduced in Rhodes’ summary). Figures 3 and 4 show interference patterns (wave-like behavior) and figure 5 shows the “clump” pattern (particle-like behavior). Notice that Figures 3 and 4 are quite different from each other. Fig 3 is the pattern from photons whose twins were detected at D1 (which, if you remember, does not give which-path info) and figure 4 gives the pattern from photons whose twins were detected at D2 (also no which-path info). They both show a wide peak in the middle, but with wiggles overlaid on them — and the wiggles in fig 3 and 4 are opposite each other. If you averaged figures 3 and 5, it’d look just like figure 5 (the one for photons whose twins did give which-path info).
What this means is that if you didn’t split out the D1 vs. D2 photons into different data sets, you’d see the exact same pattern from photons you did measure the which-path info for as you would for photons you didn’t. In other words, choosing to measure vs. not measure the path doesn’t change the overall pattern at all! It also means that you can explain this by the position measured at D0 influencing whether the twin photon goes to D1 or D2, which happens after the measurement at D0. No retrocausality required at all.
The situation with the delayed-choice entanglement swapping experiment is different in detail, but the same basic principle applies. You can think of the later (delayed) choice of measurement as influencing the earlier measurements, but you can equally think of the earlier measurements as influencing the later one. As Asher Peres puts it in the paper that originally proposed this type of experiment:
Gordon, I don’t think you understand quantum mechanics! I see a bunch of excuse making! I don’t buy your arguments at all!
“My favorite interpretation of QM is the many-worlds interpretation,”
OH yeah, no bias there at all, and you believe Darwinism too! Isn’t that special! Yep no bias there at all!
bornagain77: I understand QM reasonably well. I took a year of graduate-level QM in college, as well as participating in a seminar in the philosophy department on the philosophical implications of QM. I haven’t followed the field that much since then, so I’m a little out of date (and rusty), but I’ll certainly claim that I understand QM a great deal better than you do.
And if all you see in my comment was excuse-making, try actually reading it.
If you feel my summaries of the arguments for consciousness playing a special role in QM don’t represent your actual arguments, please explain how I’ve misunderstood you. If you feel my counterarguments are wrong, please explain why. But just dismissing my arguments without bothering to address them doesn’t refute them at all.
Gordon, You think you got all the answers and that I’m not qualified to correct you on them, so what is the use? Enjoy your delusions buddy! Evolve away with your many-worlds self!
Historically, many philosophers had the view that an “objective” reality or an “observer-independent” reality was inaccessible to the observer, and cannot be logically inferred from phenomenal or qualitative states which we have direct experience of. But, it was unwarranted to had ever posited an inner phenomenal reality–distinct from its objective counterpart. Because to say that an observer is barred from a world other than her own (subjective experience) is to beg the question of whether there was ever a world she was barred from. And so, she contends with her “inner” state of affairs only to find that a similar objection can be made to the notion of whether these state affairs were ever “in” anything at all!