In General
This is a question that is "bottom level" of current physics. "We don't know" or "It just does" is the only answer that can be given.
Why does light behave differently from mechanical waves in a medium; what is the cause of this light speed constancy behavior?
Why does matter bend space?
What caused the big bang?
These are all questions that have nothing below them currently and you can only get an answer when you turn to scientific heresy. Being a heretic myself I do have some personal opinions based on the evidence but it's certainly not part of accepted science!
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For instance I'd personally answer that I believe like Schrodinger did -the originator of the wave function- that nothing happened except you found an accurate measurement beyond your educated guess.
I'd argue that Bell's theorem is a straw man argument against hidden variable because he "falsified" his own sorry excuse for hidden variables an declared all possible formations of hidden variables invalid. Somehow we bought this because we wanted to.
But then again I don't believe in anything magical. I believe in a perfectly rational mechanistic universe and that physics is the only branch of science that has become a bunch of witch doctors hiding behind walls of ever-growing mathematical models of imaginary worlds who -like every religious nut- insist you can't understand the brilliance of their delusional confabulations that have only a tenuous link to reality.
Creation time: Apr 30, 2013 08:37 PM PDT
Absolutely! During the past 100 years in physics we've begun a very troubling trend. We've decided we hit bottom and no explanation or mechanism beyond that point is required. This is tantamount to religious belief.
For instance, "science" once believed in spontaneous generation. It was a bottom level effect that required no further explanation. They could study how many worms were produced per ounce of meat and over what period of time and produce non-linear curves of production rates and studies of the total mass conversion and meat-to-fly ratio. However, every one of these additional layers of knowledge on top of that presumption could make it seem more solid and scientific but the truth is that it was still just a belief.
We've now very recently found a rational and reasonable underlying "mechanical" reason (nothing spooky) for quantum mechanical behaviors because of the silicon oil drop experiments by Couder et al.
http://youtu.be/nmC0ygr08tE?list...
And even though this closely matches Debroglie-Bohm the physics community is hardly reacting. In a recent survey of favored interpretations among the professionals, Debroglie-bohm had zero votes! They prefer their magic to this obvious and more reasonable mechanism. (because literally hundreds of thousands of pages of peer-reviewed papers will have to go directtly into the trash)
Schrodinger is the one who devised the equation but somehow everyone decided he didn't know what he was talking about?? Now we have hard evidence and still we don't budge? It's maddening!
When he came up with the "Schrodinger's Cat" example it wasn't to teach fuzzy logic, it was to make fun of it! This is what he had to say about it:
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
—Erwin Schrödinger
Here is the laymen's description with a film of the dual-slit experiment occurring without any need to invoke some irrational explanation like a particle interfering with itself:
http://youtu.be/fnUBaBdl0Aw?t=3m17s
Creation time: Aug 09, 2014 02:37 AM PDT
Let me paraphrase all the "mathyness" and Obfuscation (typical of this subject matter) found in the other posts here. All the "superpostion" and "eigenstates" and "operators" boil down to some easily grasped concepts...
So let me ironically circumvent all the macrologia and periphrasis. (look it up, you'll laugh)
Here's some quick and dirty generalizations of concepts that are still workable if a bit imprecise.
Eigenstate: The one state of a lot of possible states that we actually measured or nailed-down in some concrete way.
Superposition: Multiple possible states together.
Operator: The associated math that ties all the possible states together and allows you to interchange them.
And now the answer in terms meant to make you understand not impress you with my supreme intellectualalityness...
Quantum mechanics has two important aspects:
1) The observations and mathematical models of those observations: This is very reliable, precise and useful for a variety of hard engineering pursuits.
2) The meta-data theories that connect the data together in a form that tells a story: While an important component, for identifying the areas for additional investigation, (meta-data theory is the seed of understanding) they can be wildly out of whack from reality and seem to hint at magic and, what is worse, can be accidentally considered of the same importance and accuracy as #1
#1: Uses calculations of probabilities to determine where particles exist
#2: Presumes that perhaps reality is somehow basically probability or there are multiple realities all stacked on each other and just recording or observing something might make it be really only one single universe or probability
#1: Is predominantly modeled by Schrodinger's wave equation.
#2: Was ridiculed by Schrodinger in his famous "cat" thought experiment as purely nonsense.
#1: Finds that measuring one state tends to make it impossible to measure the other state of two linked states like position and momentum and this is is called the "Uncertainty principle"
#2: Postulates that particles actually exist in a fuzzy magical multiple-conflicting-possibilities state (superposition) until "observed" whereas Schroedinger and other fathers of QM believed it was just a problem of measurement itself causing a disturbance.
So, what are the postulates of QM?
Basically what we know so far about the internals of atoms is that they have some weird behaviors and attempting to understand those behaviors can lead to some wild ideas. (ideas which violate cause-and-effect or lack any appreciable mechanical underpinning) Like any phenomena observed from a great distance, however, we can reliably predict behaviors via probability.
Therefore the findings of QM are the real-world applicable behaviors of atoms such as binding energies, wave and particle behaviors, and valence etc (details which there are too numerous to list here)
So, perhaps we should then label the more outre aspects of the over-arching meta-theories as postulates. (this would include all the various Interpretations of quantum mechanics)
And these ideas are predominantly that matter seems probabilistic in its basic nature and is perhaps also linked over great distance in some unknowable way.
So when we speak of electron shells and binding energies and things of that nature we're talking about #1 but when we talk about "spooky action at a distance" found in "entanglement" we're talking about #2 because the "action" they are speaking about is the supposed conversion from superpostion (from many states) to a single eigenstate (one measurable reality) and if you don't buy into their broader conjecture(#2), this sounds like some really entertaining mental acrobatics and ad hoc logic.
...but even Quantum entanglement can be split along this #1 and #2 axis because particles, just like billiard balls, can certainly interact and continue to show signs of that interaction later and therefore be "entangled" but the nature of "action" is tied up in theory which is barely distinguishable from raw unfounded conjecture.
One final note:
Relativity and QM are the science of the very large and the very small respectively. It is a funny coincidence that they are complementary opposites in a social aspect as well. (Sociology of scientific knowledge)
In QM, the discussion of the meaning of the physics and the theories surrounding the hard data are often given so much credence that we buy into nonsense as though it were hard science.
In Relativity any discussion of the meaning of the mathematics is so harshly judged that it's sneered at as "meta-physics" and you'll be branded a "crack-pot" for simply bringing it up.
They both have their own opposing way of going terribly wrong, but I prefer QM's brand of fallibility personally.
Creation time: Mar 27, 2015 07:13 PM PDT
You may not realize it, but you are asking a fundamental question about the philosophical ideas of separation and unity.
The question can further be defined as the difference between discrete and continuous and when you look closely enough you'll find that they exist in a cycling continuum, but I digress. Let me give some examples:
Phonons are quantum mechanical treatment of mechanical waves. This means that we treat something we all know to be utterly continuous as though it is discrete. A mechanical wave in a solid can certainly be seen to have no reality to the "particles" we assign to it, yet when we treat the waves as made up of particles we find all the common quantum mechanical behaviors apply.
The particles are not arbitrary like a gallon is for water but more closely related to real facts of the medium such as the distance between atoms in a crystalline lattice.
So, you can also ask yourself: Does a tornado actually exist?
When we think of a tornado we immediately picture a funnel cloud but upon a moment's reflection we know that the damage they do is certainly not confined to the funnel cloud so where is the border of the tornado? The funnel cloud's border is related to something real in that the local air pressure is altered to the point at which the relative humidity causes droplets of water to form in the air and the borderline of the funnel cloud therefore represents the borderline of 100% relative humidity in relationship to the gradient of air pressure surrounding the tornado but it's quite obvious that this is only somewhat meaningful.
When you zoom in close to the "borderline" of a cloud, where exactly is that borderline? It quickly becomes a percentage or probability distribution.
Furthermore the destructive capability certain extends beyond that area. The circular motion of the winds extends far beyond the destructive capability and each one of these definitions is completely fuzzy in nature. truthfully the tornado is just a focal point of the energy of an entire weather system. The energy contained in the system simply began to concentrate and localize when the whole system happened to come together into the right configuration.
Weather systems are tied up in the motion of the earth and the sun so how can the tornado's energy really be separate from the sun's energy?
Truthfully, it's simply useful to speak of a tornado but its separation from the whole may be only that, a useful abstraction like the number zero.
So, does this mean there other abstractions that may be more useful? Why would they be more useful?
Yes, specifically fluid dynamics and an extension/re-work of De Broglie–Bohm / pilot-wave theory are rapidly gaining ground in certain academic circles.
Fluid dynamics offers a different scale of viewing effects which might provide a meta-language advantage over previous interpretations. We must understand that our interpretations are not for defining the "truth" but instead narrowing our area of inquiry towards the most productive path of prediction of effects.
For instance, there is a tribe of people who use a ceremony of calling upon the spirit of a root of a tree to fish for them and they do so by beating the root into the water. When they do this, fish do indeed rise to the surface. (the root is actually a neurotoxin to fish but not humans)
Therefore, in scientific terms, they have results of a theory which can be replicated. The problem is that attempting to extend their theory will result in very little progress. Other roots might have other properties which might result in them creating some medicines with their spirit theory but for the most part they are limited not by their methods of data collection, but instead the interpretation of their results.
Whoa, fluid dynamics is a whole new way of viewing particle physics?!
Well, it's actually the older view but it has found a resurgence since we have gained knowledge of advanced concepts in plasma physics and behaviors of superfluids and liquid crystals so basically it's a whole new ball game since the time of Maxwell.
It may be that, just like the phonon, all our "particles" may simply be other properties, behaviors and border conditions of the underlying medium.
Specifically, it was the macro-scale silicon oildrop experiments of Couder et al that really showed us that quantum mechanical effects need not be spooky or truly random at all.
...indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks. —Erwin Schrödinger commenting on his "cat" analogy
It turns out that fluid dynamics can eliminate literally all the spooky magical effects that have snuck into science.
Let me start you down that path with an excerpt from the website of a leading researcher in the subject from Cambridge, Ross Anderson:
Maxwell's fluid model of magnetism shows that a wavepacket travelling along a phase vortex in an Eulerian fluid obeys Maxwell's equations, is emitted and absorbed discretely, and can have linear or circular polarisation. What's more, the measured correlation between the polarisation of two cogenerated wavepackets is exactly the same as predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in the Bell tests
Here's a laymen's terms video on the experiments that pointed us in a different direction:
Here's some more technicals from MIT:
Further reading:
Shiva Meucci's answer to What predictions does quantum mechanics make that we couldn't verify yet?
[1401.4356] Why bouncing droplets are a pretty good model of quantum mechanics
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
Creation time: Jun 03, 2015 06:11 PM PDT
Arguably none.
Professionals in the field have been admitting that standard model (slightly “downstream” of QM) seems fundamentally flawed for at least over a decade, and this is only one of many indications that the fundamentals of physics have serious problems but specifically during the past few years there have been numerous reports that experiments are directly showing it doesn't work. The vacuum energy catastrophe is another issue so huge it requires scientific notation. Unfortunately, even with all these signs of failure, there has been little or no discussion about the level of rework it needs.
I think the reason for that is because in a few ways, that rework will have to start from the very bottom. It's nearly impossible to get an organization to just rewrite a major piece of software that is failing; imagine trying to get a whole academic community to throw away 30-50 years of work to start over...
To simplify it, the basis of quantum computers boils down to the idea that there are multiple realities out there that we should be able to harness to do computation. From a fuzzy 1,000-mile perspective that sounds great but it completely falls apart under any scrutiny.
Some very big caveats:
Since "quantum" basically only means "that which deals with the smallest possible" and quite often, quantum mechanics is also wave mechanics, the term "quantum computing" could be (mis)used very loosely to refer to a broad spectrum of technologies.
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Single atom placement for creation of circuity: Though they could (and do) technically misuse the term "Quantum" for these technologies, don't be fooled into thinking there's anything going on here that relies on the aspects of quantum physics that are truly unique to the field. It's just nanotechnology.
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Wave addition or "superposition" of waves for computation: Once again this is a misuse of terminology. Analog computation is a relatively old concept in computers and the use of wave-addition/interference as a mode of analog computation is no mystery within the field. Unfortunately, while I personally find it to be bleeding edge future of computers, (performance video card chips sort of simulate the tech) the research in analog-digital hybridization is a bit stagnant, very underfunded, and an under-explored area of research still going on today a very few small labs. Use of the term "superposition" can mislead a person to believing there is something uniquely "quantum" going on but it's just plain old wave mechanics. The fact that these analog computations can occur at the atomic level in a somewhat self-contained fashion blurs the line only slightly.
Don't take my word for it:
I'll leave you with a presentation by the Cambridge security engineering expert who has investigated the claims of this pseudo-technology himself and written some papers on the subject. Let's just say that his analysis is grim, but thankfully he's one of a few names in a growing counter-culture community within academia that is actually putting together a workable alternative model for quantum mechanics from the bottom up! As always, the revolution is starting from the outside. (listen to emotional arguments posed as "questions" near the end of the video)
Honestly, fluid mechanics isn't really that far "outside" once you understand the interchangeable relationship between the two fields. ...but, that's a digression for a different answer.
Ross Anderson - Should a prudent cryptographer believe all the quantum claims?
Creation time: Apr 17, 2016 02:14 PM PDT
Aligning ancient religious concepts with modern physics is highly speculative, but also very interesting!
So, allow me to introduce my speculations based on a unique perspective.
First, to directly answer your question in a pedantic manner. Current accepted quantum physics usually refers to the copenhagen interpretation which relies upon a basic idea of pure randomness and probability at the deepest level of reality. This is precisely the opposite of a recording and is therefore wholly incompatible with the concept of an Akashic record.
Particles in free space pop in and out of existence at random, according to dominant interpretations. This, by definition cannot store information.
But, now I’ll answer your wider implied question of how the sciences and the data dealing with the quantum world might be interpreted to align with the idea of the akashic record.
Where does the term “Akashic Record” come from and what is the origin of the concept?
The term and the concept are two different things and the theosophists added some confusion. The term itself came from theosophy and is said to be coined by C. W. Leadbeater's Clairvoyance (1899) who refers to to it by name but is said to have gotten the concept from Alfred Percy Sinnett, who, in his book Esoteric Buddhism (1883), wrote of a Buddhist belief in "a permanency of records in the Akasa" and "the potential capacity of man to read the same."
Buddhists, however, seem to have no concept like this beyond kamma, and to associate the two would be a bit of a stretch.
The true origin of the concept most likely comes from a variety of hindu sources, the first of of which is Chitraguptam.
Chitra guptam mahaa praajnam lekhaneepatra dhaarinam;
Chitra-ratnaambara-dhaararn madhyastham sarvadehinaam.
Chitra guptam - The Chitra Guptas (who are endowed with)
maha praajnam - great intelligence and copious memory, (and who)
lekhaneepatra - with (their) pencil, on leaves
dhaarinam - keep records and preserve the memory (and who)
Chitra-ratnaambara-dhaararn - wearing jewels of precious metals
madhyastham - mediate as umpire (madhyasthaha is an epithet of Lord Shiva also)
sarvadehinaam - between all souls that are embodied.
In this part of tradition we see there is the concept of a record of all human activity.
The second is from the idea of the origin of Shruti, (“that which is heard”) the term used to refer to ancient hindu scriptures usually thought of as cannon, and śruti is also a term meaning the smallest unit of sound a human can detect, specific divisions of an octave, and often refers to the hypotenuse of a triangle.
Combine all these concepts and you have the divine truths and records of all of humanity recorded somewhere and accessible to some of the great rishis. These truths are associated with wave phenomena and geometry and the smallest unit of wave phenomena. (A quantum unit)
The association with modern Quantum Physics begins at this point.
The idea of the atom historically are said to have arisen simultaneously in the east and while the west attributes the concept to Democritus, Kanada seems the more likely origin because of the context and history of hindu thought. Some exchange of ideas is likely the reason for the simultaneous development.
This, however, is the end of its association with modern concensus.
What is little known, however, is that there are fluid dynamics interpretations of quantum mechanics. In these interpretations, particles are epiphenomena of the actions of an all pervasive medium.
Enter superfluid quantum vacuum theory
Under the deBroglie-Bohm interpretation or pilot wave interpretation, a fluid mechanics dominant viewpoint paints a picture of a space that is full of structure which inherently stores information. This information governs quantum outcomes because the motions of this primary substance are the source of said quantum phenomena.
Under information theory, this sort of mixing and interactions within an inviscid fluid media is simultaneously seen as storage and computation.
This is basically aether or akasha, storing the information of material and wave interactions of everything in the universe through the structure of the media itself: space, the quantum vacuum, the aether, the akash.
Thus you have the Akashic record explained through credible but non-consensus quantum mechanics.
This sort of speculation refers to such enormously broad sets of information that I must refer you to a chain of other answers I’ve given which, within those refer to a paper I’ve written on the topic of the interplay of modern physics with spirituality when seen through the lens of the fluid dynamics paradigm shift I like to call the neoclassical revolution in physics.
“Long ago he[man] recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, of a tenuity beyond conception and filling all space - the Akasa or luminiferous ether - which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, becomes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.” - Nikola Tesla
Here is the beginning of the chain:
These quora answers lean toward the technical whereas a video series I’ve started begin from a spiritualist side.
Those can be found on my channel here with various talks etc: SevenSageSecrets
The main video series link, however, is this one: Separation, Spirit, Structure, & Energy: Introducing 3S - YouTube
Creation time: Sep 20, 2017 06:45 PM PDT
The “One answer to rule them all.”
Hydrodynamic quantum analogs (The MIT lab showing quantum behavior isn’t that “weird” after all)
All the weird spooky interpretations of QM can exist in the fully macro world, far beyond the quantum size. It’s about faulty interpretation of the data and an entire academic community invaded by wooishness in the 70s. (when copenhagen really gained dominance)
Oh and don’t forget the “Tao of Physics!”
They just haven’t gotten over being misled and won’t back down from their silly magical thinking, because now it’s very “serious” magic. They are wearing the right hat now and swinging their smoking incense without a single giggle!
For those who answer “But but but… that’s 2D!”
It’s generalizes to 3D with simple repeating cavitations in an inviscid fluid.
If there ever were a time for revolution and ample proof to bring it, that time would be now.
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.” -- Niels Bohr
“It is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” -- Richard Feynman
“If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it.”-- John Wheeler
“Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.” -- Roger Penrose
"Solipsism may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics." - Eugene Wigner
“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Erwin Schrodinger
Copenhagen will go down in history as the biggest blunder science has ever known.
More technical explanation of walking droplet QM behaviors:
Ross Anderson from Cambridge on the fluid dynamics model of QM
Maxwell's fluid model of magnetism shows that a wavepacket travelling along a phase vortex in an Eulerian fluid obeys Maxwell's equations, is emitted and absorbed discretely, and can have linear or circular polarisation. What's more, the measured correlation between the polarisation of two cogenerated wavepackets is exactly the same as predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in the Bell tests
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
Creation time: Sep 21, 2017 07:56 PM PDT
It would have to be something radically different. …and thankfully for us such things exist.
Madelung equations - Wikipedia
For instance: Quantum mechanics can be replicated with hydrodynamics.
Why do I say “replicated?” Because there’s a lot of work to do to get as far as current QM if we want to start way back at a whole radically different viewpoint and get the level of detail we currently have.
The point is that you can see QM as a special case of fluid dynamics but this means so many concepts have to be converted over and separated out in a different way. All the various “particles” as they exist as mathematical constructs, might get redistributed across other descriptions. We might have to divide things up a wholly different way.
Why most of these answers will seem like a “no, you can’t do that”
The problem is that when you take a wrong path in theory development you get to finer and finer detail before you might run into failure points. When it’s that closely defined, you don’t have any wiggle room left.
For someone focused in on trying to extend a model (that cannot be extended further) any tiny change is out of the question. The problem is that they are so focused in on the restrictive structure they can’t see how the whole thing can be reassembled in an extremely similar way.
They don’t see how removing the foundation allows for all these tiny cumulative changes along the way as you rebuild something nearly identical with the same pieces.
This revolution is currently underway but very few people know about it or understand it.
It’s going to take so much work and look like a big step back before it looks like a way forward. It’s why I’m writing a book about those reputable scientists that are on the cutting edge of the revolution and their social and technical hurdles along the way. More people have to be able to see what they see, but it’s a specialized and non-standard knowledge set.
All I can really see is the bigger picture but that helps me see those guys working with the details moving those blocks around on the bridge they are rebuilding and how that’s going to make things so much easier to progress in the future.
I want to show others how it’s starting to coalesce. Unfortunately I have to focus on calling out the failure points in the previous models and everyone hates focusing on their failures. It’s necessary, though, as an impulse for moving forward with the rework that has to be done.
So basically I’m saying it would be hydrodynamics essentially…
The uncertainty principle itself would still be something, because we’ve observed real replicable effects, but it might be expressed in a totally different way.
Oh, and here’s one of the researchers plodding down that long and lonely road that paves the way toward scientific revolution:
Creation time: Dec 29, 2017 05:39 PM PST
[I initially started by replying to Paul Mainwood's excellent answer but after adding on to it too many times I realized I needed to make it a separate answer.]
It’s not just accurate it’s profound and shared by many other scientists who were fundamental in creating QM as we know it!
Here’s a few more:
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.” -- Niels Bohr
“If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it.”-- John Wheeler
"Solipsism may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics." - Eugene Wigner
Paul makes a good point that Feynman was NOT saying that we do not have a good useful predictive set of mechanics, but I must insist that we differentiate between that and “understanding.”
If “understanding” simply means “capable of predicting within some reasonable certainty via some set of mathematical conventions” then we have to start saying that computers have understanding.
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” {…] “The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior .” Werner Heisenberg
This not a trivial subject I’m just being contrary about! I’m not just doing the typical linguistic prevarication that is so often a barrier to any useful discussion. It’s about the fundamental nature of intellect and the difference between human cognition and mechanical computation.
The word “understand” should specifically mean exactly what Feynam meant: In context and terms of other behaviors and systems of reality.
Furthermore understanding is all about regression analysis. If one simply postulates that worms spring from meat without an underlying mechanism, one can continue forward from that arbitrary maxim to predict the meat-to-worms ratio and calculations of time etc etc and, regardless how perfect your predictive model of worms spontaneously generating from meat is, you do not understand it.
This is the nature of magical thinking and the reason we have it. It’s a placeholder that helps avoid infinite regression but it should also be a marker for further (later) investigation and curiosity instead of acting like it is a settled matter. (it’s a necessary evil for productive and forward-moving investigation)
To insist something behaves fundamentally different from the rest of reality, however, is a super-extraordinary claim that requires super-extraordinary evidence because it is tantamount to claiming magical fairies are the heart of reality. (and now that mechanisms that match other parts of reality have been found via Couder experiments we should be abandoning the magic of Copenhagen like a sinking ship full of explosives on fire.)
This distinction is the crucial beating heart of the pursuit of science!
When Feynman says nobody understands it, he’s terrifically correct in not only a direct way but in attitude that determines future action. Accepting magical explanations without marking them as temporary placeholders for the truth is the domain of religion, not science.
This is also a crucial distinction important in the research which is attempting to create strong AI. There is something more to human intellect and I would argue it is the way in which analogy between various parts of concepts allows them to be stored holographically in a multi-layered manner. (I’m a proponent of Bohm-Pribram holonomic mind and de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM)
It is the multi-layered manner in which we store information that allows the “compare-and-contrast” of associated systems and gives us a predictive area that limits our future investigation down from infinite to a useful finite investigative area instead of the nearly infinite energy expenditure required for a trial and error search of infinite scope.
It is understanding that allows for creation of new ideas via the use of analogy and it is only via the use of analogy that even a mathematician knows how to use what math where. (metamath)
It seems everyone who is closest to the systems that would eventually create strong AI have a fundamental disrespect for the fuzzy (distributed and holographic multi-layered data storage) parallel processing that creates the fundamental superiority of human intellect.
Somehow we keep falling back into the caves and want to believe reality “just is,” “just does,” or “god did it.” (think magically) We keep fearing the possibly infinite depths of regression analysis.
Without the pursuit of understanding we lose curiosity, close the doors to creativity and stagnate. We become a little less like that fundamentally scientific human intellect we had as a child.
Please don’t stop asking “why!”
“And I cherish more than anything else the Analogies, my most trustworthy masters. They know all the secrets of Nature, and they ought to be least neglected in Geometry.” – Johannes Kepler
The only reason why we can make predictions from understanding and have a consciousness like ours that is greater than machine intellect is because of the ubiquitous appearance of commonalities to nature which are derived from the common determinate factors of simple fundamental laws of mechanics.
And finally, for those who exhort Bell inequalities as fundamental to “understanding” QM: (an oxymoron in my opinion)
“That the guiding wave, in the general case, propagates not in ordinary three-space but in a multidimensional-configuration space is the origin of the notorious ‘nonlocality’ of quantum mechanics. It is a merit of the de Broglie-Bohm version to bring this out so explicitly that it cannot be ignored.” ~ John Bell
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated…
But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160.
Bell understood what many now have forgotten for some strange reason I cannot fathom. There’s no need for the nonsense and magical beliefs.
[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
Creation time: Jun 14, 2018 10:58 AM PDT
To understand the answer you have to know the difference between the ideal people believe exists called “consensus” and the reality of how science really plays out under human social mechanics. (so please excuse the extremely necessary digression)
Let’s get real for a moment here. From a perspective of sociology and psychology, it pretty easy to identify that most scientists are nerds who lack social skills. IE they are on the spectrum (ASD) and therefore are poor at theory of mind and understanding group mechanics. This is just categorical of that spectrum disorder. Like any normal person they don’t want to acknowledge their weaknesses nor do they want a wider community to expect them. They only want respect and appreciation for their powerful and effective abilities which have granted mankind great boons. (and horrific ills) They want to focus on the strengths that came from the weaknesses.
This bent to their mentality often makes them believe in simple and unrealistic ideals about social phenomena. This is true of the idea of consensus. It’s a much fuzzier and contentious thing than most scientists believe, and in the face of absurd science denial that has been happening in recent years, its become ever more crucial to deny any doubts and present an apparently unified front.
The nature of more socially adept minds is based in primate social hierarchy and therefore their weakness comes through in an absurd reliance upon confidence and absolute perfectionism that doesn’t reflect good methods of finding truth.
This is why leaders are liars. Any realistic human that has unavoidable human frailty and the weaknesses that come with strengths will never be perfect enough for the group to allow them to lead. To neurotypicals truth is gauged by confidence. …and thus we have the perennial problem of poor leadership.
IE: The dysfunction of the crowd and their inability to understand maintaining a level of doubt required in scientific pursuit, (or any respectful pursuit of the true and best system) leads to destroying the fundamental necessity of scientific pursuit: Self-doubt and reexamination to identify mistakes.
The main problem people have had is the solipsistic idea that human intellect’s interaction with reality somehow creates or solidifies it.
This is comes from the basic idea from the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics… (not the only or best but the most preferred) that a particle exists in some weird fuzzy state of probabilistic existence until it is observed.
"We often discussed his notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it." - Abraham Pais about Einstein
“Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.” -- Niels Bohr
“It is safe to say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” -- Richard Feynman
“If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it.”-- John Wheeler
“Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.” -- Roger Penrose
"Solipsism may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics." - Eugene Wigner
At this point, unbeknownst to most of the people who espouse the idea, the most common opinion has morphed and changed over time to the opinion that, not only is that the idea I’ve just described absurd, these modern physicists believe no scientist ever believed such nonsense.
That is both true and false in a variety of ways. First off, Heisenberg and Schroedinger both attempted to point out in many various explanations that there was something real under the surface and our methods did not accurately represent the underlying reality.
“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Schroedinger on his famous cat thought experiment (emphasis mine)
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” - Werner Heisenberg
“The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior .” - Werner Heisenberg
Yet for many decades mountains of ink has been spilled discussing this idea of the ”observer” and what an observation might be.
Even today, those same scientists who will insist that it has nothing to do with consciousness will, in the same breath, defend semi-magical beliefs about probability, entanglement and “collapse of the wave function” as though they can split hairs in some way to make a fundamentally magical belief system somehow work rationally.
They will go on long digressions about Bell inequalities and use terms like “counterfactual definiteness” to make excuses for inane ideas that can be swept away before superior interpretations like de Broglie-Bohm “Pilot wave” in which mechanics is clear and unambiguous.
However, even though they will use the work of scientists like Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, and Bell to uphold their absurdities they wont acknowledge the intellectual superiority of these original thinkers and listen to their opinions.
Bell knew how to solve the problem. We simply need to treat space in a different fashion: As a superfluid which was where we started before we veered way off course and it’s where tons of scientists are currently returning to.
“Well, you see, I don't really know. For me it's not something where I have a solution to sell! For me it's a dilemma. I think it's a deep dilemma, and the resolution of it will not be trivial; it will require a substantial change in the way we look at things. But I would say that the cheapest resolution is something like going back to relativity as it was before Einstein, when people like Lorentz and Poincare thought that there was an aether - a preferred frame of reference - but that our measuring instruments were distorted by motion in such a way that we could not detect motion through the aether. Now, in that way you can imagine that there is a preferred frame of reference, and in this preferred frame of reference things do go faster than light. But then in other frames of reference when they seem to go not only faster than light but backwards in time, that is an optical illusion.” - John S Bell, on the bell inequalities The Ghost in the Atom, P.C.W. Davies and J. Brown, ch.3, p.48-9
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated… But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160.
This is why truth by consensus in science is sometimes just as bad as mob-rule in politics.
"It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact…That Gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to Matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance thro' a Vacuum, without the Mediation of any thing else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this Agent be material or immaterial, I have left to the Consideration of my readers." — Isaac Newton, Letter to Bentley, 1692–93
“The electromagnetic field behaves as if it were a collection of wheels, pulleys and fluids.” - James Clerk Maxwell
“Since 1954, when this passage was written, I have come to support wholeheartedly an hypothesis proposed by Bohm and Vigier. According to this hypothesis, the random perturbations to which the particle would be constantly subjected, and which would have the probability of presence in terms of [wave-function wave], arise from the interaction of the particle with a “subquantic medium” which escapes our observation and is entirely chaotic, and which is everywhere present in what we call “empty space." - Louis De Broglie commenting on his own earlier preference of the many worlds interpretation.
“According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense.” - Albert Einstein, 1920
The problem of all this irrationality is a sociological problem, not a scientific one. It is over an interpretation instead of the real data.
There are numerous scientists and researchers who have found the connection between our newer tools and our older ones and how interchangeable fluid dynamics and the two currently failing branches of theoretical physics actually is.
They are slowly headed towards the revolution in interpretation but social revolutions are hard!
You can help by understanding this one thing. We have a scientific concept called a “Phonon “ in which there is no actual particle but we treat the waves in a solid medium as though there are real particles (we divide up the tension of the wave into packets) and we find all the behaviors in QM in these pseudo particles. The particle nature of them only exists as an analogy to border conditions like the border between solid and liquid in water. It’s an abstraction but the particle doesn’t really exist. It’s a very useful convention that leads to technology but the particle doesn’t exist. So simply ask yourself where exactly the border of a tornado is and you’ll begin to find that concept can become very fuzzy as well when you put real thought into it.
Summarized, I’m saying that the neoclassical interpretation is that there are things that behave like particles (energetic particles) which we think of as discrete but they are not. There are other things like atoms which are made up of complex knots in the primary substance and are therefore real particles but since both are rotational perturbations of the medium they seem nearly the same in some ways.
If you’d like to understand more about the revolution occurring in the background at major institutions like Cambridge and MIT then you’ll enjoy this paper:
[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
And I would be remiss if I didn’t recommend John Bush’s page at MIT:
Creation time: Jun 23, 2018 02:21 PM PDT
There’s some good technical answers here so let me put it in common sense terms: It’s not the math, but the interpretation.
While they can relate certain parts of the math to superposition, we’re talking about a concept and that is interpretation. What is “superposition” in the first place and where did we get the concept from in this context?
It’s a reference to fact that experiments with energetic particles seem to suggest that a single particle is somehow sometimes in a spread out wave state and sometimes in a point-like particle state depending on how we interact with it.
More specifically, “superposition” is the concept that all those possible positions or states that a given particle exists in, are calculated as a collection of probabilities. At any given place where the particle could be, we have a numerical representation of the probability that it will “show up” there when we test it in some way. This is often called the “collapse of the wave function.”
That “wave function” terminology is used because the probabilities accross the whole area where the particle might be, when we look at them like stacked up plinko balls, form a wave.
Waves have the interesting property of “interfering” with each other. This isn’t just destructive or constructive but a combination of the waves. This combination of waves can also be called superpostion. When a bunch of waves of different phase, frequency, or amplitude get combined into a “superposition” they usually create a weirder wave pattern than the common ocean wave we think of. Something more like the chaotic ripples from splashing rain on a lake:
Each of these singular waves created by each drop could theoretically be separated out via a mathematical tool called a fourier transform and we’d have a bunch of simple waves but when we just look at them in nature, we see them in their jumbled superposed state.
When we look at the distribution of probability of where we might find an electron, the pattern of weird lobes you’ve seen as “orbitals” are actually superpositions of waves.
This is why we think of particles as also waves in the most common interpretation of quantum mechanics and refer to them as being in superposition.
It can be thought of as though the particle is in all of the positions and those probabilities, when combined together as waves, superpose into the pattern we call orbitals.
This is why I can show you a picture of spherical harmonics and a picture of electron orbitals and you won’t necessarily notice the difference without labels to guide you:
The deceptive truth here, however, is that this is all about interpretation of what probability is. One must presume probability is physically extant to further presume it can add together like waves. One must assume wave particle duality is an underlying reality, instead of interpretation, to believe superposition is also a reality and not just a useful model for referring to and modeling what occurs under the hood.
“The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior" - Heisenberg (1958, p. 100)
“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Erwin Schroedinger (the originator of the wave function) describing his “cat” paradox
This is why we can have alternatives such as the “de Broglie-Bohm” or “pilot wave” interpretation and with modern advances in using the tools of fluid dynamics to model quantum mechanics, the idea of superposition becomes more clear and wave particle duality starts to look like an artifact of interaction instead of some new property of reality where “probability” becomes physically real. Instead it’s just wave mechanics and many energetic particles may get downgraded from being discrete to being quasi particles like Phonons. The focus may be shifted to vorticity and the point-like nature may simply be complex versions of centers of rotation in wave-vortex duality.
This is why “pilot wave” is thought of as a much more rational and mechanical interpretation.
Check out Hydrodynamic quantum analogs at MIT and then read my history paper to see how the neoclassical revolution is coming together in the background:
[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
Creation time: Jun 30, 2018 11:48 AM PDT
You’re asking an odd question, so let’s try to untangle it:
Superposition in QM is a description of all the possible locations of a particle. It is therefore, itself, basically a prediction. At any given place we’re discussing (within the main area described by an orbital for instance) is a probability that the particle will be found at that location, (a single point in a coordinate system) and it’s a combination of waves we call a superposition.
So, we’re looking at a single point where a particle might be found and it’s, therefore, a prediction. The superposition is a description of a method (and reasoning) of prediction.
You’re asking if the prediction can be predicted. I’m not sure this was your goal, but to answer it, yes there is a rational path to coming up to this predictive process and it started with de Broglie and was finished by Schroedinger.
Excuse me while I over-simplify the genesis of QM: De Broglie was attempting to use special relativity with particles to describe the nature of a wave packet like a photon, through the idea of “superposition” of waves or more crucially, simply “interference.”
When we examine waves, if multiple waves are combined, there can be phase velocity and group velocity. A pure single frequency of light can have a phase velocity (which will be the speed of light in vacuo) but it cannot have a group velocity because that’s a phenomena caused by interference or ”superposition.”
When waves are grouped in certain ways, have different frequencies, or especially if they have different speeds for different frequencies in a medium, then the pattern of how they line up changes and in the simpler cases goes back and forth between constructive and destructive so that you have these lumps in the overall signal.
(above, the red dot represents the phase velocity and the green dot represents the group velocity. )
De Broglie envisioned particles as these packets and used his knolwedge of the difference between viewpoints represented in Lorentz’s original (relativistic) theory -which no longer exist in relativity- in which light will travel at different speeds. This gave him a methodology for determining a pattern of superposition of waves that give us these packets.
Schroedinger then took this methodology and applied it, via spherical harmonics, to give a spherical representation of de Broglie’s wave packets and this described the shape of orbitals we find today.
We only find the actual electron, for instance, in one point-like location within that shape but when we test over and over many thousands of times, we find that the likelihood of finding the electron matches the amplitude of the wave function at that location. Said another way, Shroedinger’s equation describes an interference pattern and that interference leaves patterns of amplitude at certain locations and times. (thus the shape of the electron orbitals are like packets)
The likelihood we will find a particle at a given location matches the amplitude of the wave left over from this combination method. Therefore the combined wave packet itself represents a probability distribution. (but the other areas where the wave is flattened out, are still technically part of the wave combination and therefore probability distribution too… it’s just low probability)
Creation time: Jul 01, 2018 07:38 AM PDT
Observational effects. Observation is often inseparable from interaction. The observation can become causal in the effect observed.
While there’s controversy over what exactly observation means, we’ll try to gloss over it for this question and instead try to point out how certain things are more interactive than you might first believe.
One of the things I learned later in life that I wish I understood as a child is that a person’s opinion of you is strongly tied up in what you think their opinion is. When you expect a person to be aggressive there is a variable/fuzzy space within the interpretation of language that actually has a correlate in our heads. When you become defensive, statements that had an ambiguous valence become locked down as agressive.
I’ll give an example in a moment, but bear in mind we have so many ambiguous opinions about things that we just haven’t cared to resolve into one solid conclusion. Whether or not you like someone is a very frequently one of those situations.
So, for example, a person says: “You have a very unique hairstyle.” You can decide they have couched an insult to publicly degrade you (like if you live in LA for instance) or you could decide they like creativity and daring attempts and find an asthetic in that which goes beyond simple visual stimulation. (like if you lived in SF before the tech-bro takeover)
The truth is that people aren’t so certain of what they mean at the moment they say it. They literally have an ambiguous opinion to go with their ambiguous words and more often than not, you can influence them to come down on one side or the other simply by strongly believing in one or the other.
Your response, which can be more positive or negative than their original statement will drag their conscious mind toward believing in unitary original intent in themselves when it was, factually, more ambiguous at the time. (via inference)
This is an unfortunate feedback loop for the depressed and paranoid as well as the blindly arrogant. Your pop-psy ideas that people don’t like arrogance should have been finally thrown away once and for all when Trump was elected. There is a deep set instinctual system for estimating truth via confidence that was helpful for primates for millions of years. An animal that is very familiar with something via experience is very automatically confident in a response, thus the confidence level emitted by another primate around some information is a heuristic method for determining the likelihood that the information is viable and tested.
There are many systems of dual parts in the world if you look for them.
Many things we think of two separate phenomena or subjects are only one and we get caught asking ourselves about the chicken or the egg instead of noticing that the feedback loop joins the two inseparably into a unitary thing.
When people talk about relationship problems and say “it takes two to tango” those who are one of the parties involved in the relationship problem, usually disagree, but it’s because they simply lack perspective.
Let me give a couple more real-life examples:
If there is a person who behaves as a capitalist in their emotional relationships they will believe you have to stop them and let them know when they are taking too much because they can’t know what’s in your head. They have a point. (A narrow-minded and short-sighted one, but a point nonetheless) If you then behave more socialistically in that you believe each person should be self-limiting and take only what they need in consideration of the group, then you will always end up on the losing side of this and feel abused. You may be able to see how in-group competition tears down the group and reduces the group’s ability to compete with other groups, but behaving as a sheep with someone you’ve identified as a wolf is a decision to be betrayed.
These people will always require that others limit them because they cannot limit themselves. Their beliefs match their natural proclivities because it’s easier to live with yourself when you think your lack of self control is somehow a good thing.
You must either up your aggression because they do not understand the world around them and cannot control themselves well, or you must end the relationship. If you have decided to stay in the relationship then you have judged the relationship to be worth the payment to the narcissist. You must take responsibility for this decision. Your refusal to compete is causal of their abuse.
For another sub example of “it takes two”:
When your roomate and you share grocery costs and you act conservatively and always limit yourself to rarely eat the most costly pre-prepared snacks (rarer) but they always indulge in whatever is easy first, they will gobble up all the fat and leave you with nothing but the lean. You’ll never have the nice fun and easy delicious snacks and you’ll always be doing the harder food prep and eating the less tasty food. They will not understand the problem because they live competatively. They value “freedom.”
To them, being an indulgent pig that requires everyone else to limit them is freedom. To do the opposite is restrictive and unpleasant. If they would not restrict themselves then you are the one restricting them and that is, therefore, lack of freedom. You’re taking away their “FREEDUMB!”
The only answer in this context is to also take part in thier poorly thought-out system of behavior and compete by also gobbling up everything rare and good first and leaving all the harder and less desirable things for a long miserable dry spell instead of spreading out the niceties.
Once again, it is your decision to try to live in a less animalistic and idiotic way that leaves you at a competative disadvantage. When you choose to behave as a civilized person who makes the group stronger, those who prey upon the group will temporarily profit from what they see as your stupidity. (oh yes, they are so much smarter than you by being a gluttonous devouring bottomless-pit of self-indulgence and destroying everything that upholds them)
As they gulp down huge mouthfuls of the town’s golden goose they slaughtered they will relish in how much smarter they are than you as they laugh at you for not thinking of it first.
…The only answer is to purge these people from your group or to engage in their behavior to compete. Do neither and you must simply take responsibility for your decisions and recognize that you value the arrangement of payment you give to the narcissistic reavers in the outcome of the overall system.
It is however, the tolerance of them and the lack of response to them that empowers and rewards them. Flat refusal become aggressive rewards aggression.
Like a chicken and egg, it doesn’t happen all at once, but instead there is a slow back and forth over many interactions where each shapes the other.
There is no better example of this than the “Democratic party” pushing for war policies when liberal values have usually been strongly anti-war. We Americans benefit from all the destruction and suffering the constant war we wage across the planet in the form of technology and energy availability.
When we turn on the air conditioning and drive around with a single person in huge SUV, we can cry till the cows come home about how terrible those war-like devourers who run our country are, but it is meaningless when we calmly accept the benefits of their behavior. Every American is responsible for every drone bombing of innocents. Every American is responsible for the weapons we trade with Saudi Arabia and therefore the millions starving to death in a current ongoing genocide in Yemen. Myself included.
Observation is often inseparable from interaction. The interaction required to observe is often causal in the behavior observed.
Can we separate the observer and the observed? If not then perhaps we need to focus on changing ourselves first in our efforts to change the world.
Creation time: Jul 01, 2018 11:08 AM PDT
Yes. It’s called pilot wave and it’s part a revolution currently under way!
Probability is just a human concept. It’s a description of our inability to predict an outcome. It’s a useful description, but not a physically extant part of reality.
The main reason we started thinking in terms of probability was the dual slit experiment. We believed particles were behaving as waves and at the time, without modern tools and evidence found such as found in the Couder “walker” experiments and an understanding of deterministic chaos, it was the only answer and it made no sense. Feynman specifically commented about how it was “completely impossible.”
So we came up with silly ideas to match the only mathematics that would solve the problem at the time.
We never would have come up with that nonsensical idea if we knew what we know now. We’d still use the tool of probabilistic mathematics, but it’s a description of complex mechanical and deterministic interactions that are just too sensitive to starting conditions to use any other tool.
“There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Erwin Schrodinger.
“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” - Werner Heisenberg
“But why then had Born not told me of this 'pilot wave'? If only to point out what was wrong with it? Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing 'impossibility' proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978? When even Pauli, Rosenfeld, and Heisenberg, could produce no more devastating criticism of Bohm's version than to brand it as 'metaphysical' and 'ideological'? Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in text books? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” - John S. Bell, "On the impossible pilot wave". Foundations of Physics 12 (1982) (emphasis mine)
Want to know more about the revolution, where it came from, where it’s going and how it got here?
Then this is just the history paper to get you started!
[1804.01846] History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
…but if you hate history and just want to know about the quantum stuff (and want to make me sad) then you can just read this site at MIT:
Creation time: Aug 17, 2018 09:41 AM PDT
Will the failure to reproduce the results of Couder and Fort's bouncing drops experiments affect the popularity of the Pilot Wave/de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics?
Not. Even. Close! (beware broad pronouncements in the news)
This is a simple failure of setup in a single version of the walker experiments. Numerous other experiments show the analogy very clearly. The double slit experiment is important, to be sure, but it’s only one of many ways walkers show quantum effects. Don’t just read silly pop articles; go to the source and learn the data for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
Further info here:
Let’s talk about the Gedanken experiment mentioned in the article.
They speak about the pilot wave being lost around a dividing barrier. First, there’s more than one wave involved. It’s not just the waves created by the particle itself but whole bath system is driven to allow the behavior in the first place.
If it disperses too much before reaching the slit then you’ve simply exploited the difference between the speed and persistence of electromagnetic waves versus waves in silicon oil. It’s an irrelevant argument. Secondly, it’s a 2D analog for a 3D phenomena so there are ways to exploit that to affect the walkers in a way that wouldn’t impact pilot wave phenomena in reality. Finally, the speed of the waves versus the particle is not variable in reality whereas that relationship and more can drastically alter the outcome of this experiment. (as the dedicated researchers point out) Therefore, we cannot judge the value of this analog system based upon one attribute but upon the combination of many.
It’s one small aspect of a larger system of exhibited behaviors.
Remember that we’re dealing with a phenomena very much like quantum mechanics which is something that baffled the greatest minds in the world for 80 or more years. Einstein was often called wrong about how he understood it.
Did you think we’d understand this similar system perfectly on the first go? Chaotic determinism and complexity are at the bleeding front edge of science where it’s messy. Give the research a little time before you declare. “It’s the end of science!!!”
It is telling that the primary researcher in the field, John Bush, believes it’s a simple problem of set up.
People have been declaring that “we’ve got it all buttoned up down to the fine details” for over a 100 years in science and a lot longer in religion. Nobel Laureate Philip Warren Anderson coined the term “Horganism” to represent this repeating phenomena. (named after John Horgan)
People keep having proof it’s the end of the world too. I wouldn't get too excited if I were you.
Creation time: Oct 11, 2018 05:21 PM PDT
A2A: Absolutely, yes!
…but that is only because the entire universe and all phenomena have quantum properties.
Whether or not subtle differentiations to fields in the brain and things like microtubule interactions are an integral part of the computational system of the brain is a hotly debated topic that varies wildly from purely mechanistic speculation to spiritual ideas.
I, personally, side with the subtle fields and mechanistic interaction on the quantum level being an integral part of the computation system of the brain, but those who want to feel like we have all the answers will represent themselves as the mainstream.
Don’t believe them. They are of the same breed of every “skeptic” who only believes whatever the most easily accessible apparent consensus of people they respect as the absolute perfect truth. This is because they feel safe with that group “having their back,” and they can therefore have arrogance by proxy of the group without appearing personally arrogant. It’s the perfect position to attack others from.
Science is a process of exploration and refinement, not a system of dogma. Unfortunately the dogmatic invade and claim science as their own.
It’s unfortunate that “religious thinking” and behavior isn’t confined to spirituality, but applies to any system of knowledge.
That being said, I recommend you look into Holonomic brain theory
It’s one of the most interesting and plausible over-arching concepts in field theories of brain function.
Here’s a fun paper I wrote for a spiritually inclined audience on how spirituality can be conceived from a purely deterministic physics perspective if we subtly alter the interpretation (not the math) of modern physics:
Though I admit that for it to seem plausible from a physics perspective you have to read this paper:
History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
Creation time: Oct 30, 2018 11:04 AM PDT
A2A: It doesn’t in the way they suggest.
Superposition is a word that can be used in to two extremely similar but different ways that can confuse people.
In quantum mechanics is it refers to representations of probability that fluctuate in space in a wave-like manner.
In regular wave mechanics it’s just another way to say “interference.” Waves stacked on top each other will create patterns based on subtraction and addition of wave amplitudes. It’s simple.
How does this relate to quantum computing and the weird statements made about it?
When two waves interact, both waves are still preserved in their original form even as they mix with others in the same place. The information of one wave is not lost upon interacting with the other. This is why we call it “superposed.”
Here’s the kicker. We can use this for computation. It’s called analog computation. The fact that waves do this addition and subtraction thing automatically means that we could use various waveforms as representations of data and then “superpose” them and poof you have computed two complex sets of information.
Since particles do exactly this trick, it’s a great way to implement analog computation at super small scales. Analog computation when mixed with digital as a hybrid, is a hyper-powerful form of computation that, if implemented with today’s technology, will vastly outstrip current tech.
Unfortunately the way analog computation was implemented in the past was clunky, so hybridization was out-competed by pure digital solutions and the market slammed us into one inferior tech.
That’s where it’s REALLY going.
What it will never do is all the irrational magic BS they are promising with using other dimensions to mix infinities or whatever mumbo-jumbo they spool out at you.
Here some material from one of my favorite authors at Cambridge, Ross Anderson. If you’re in the industry and want to make trillions of dollars, I recommend searching his name on arxiv and reading what comes up ;)
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
Creation time: Oct 30, 2018 11:28 AM PDT
You have been fed magical thinking. If we don’t stop infecting science with magical thought, the crises today will never be solved.
Time’s up people! We can’t keep embracing magical nonsense. It’s go time and we’re still sticking our heads in the sand and wishing to be magical fairies that can affect the world with our mind.
We keep wanting to believe in that special “something” that is just beyond us. It’s the same tripe spoon-fed in every church that god is just beyond us.
Irrationality is not “beyond mortal men.”
I’m sick to death of this argument. It’s not the fault of the person asking the question, it’s those who support Copenhagen interpretation and all the magical and irrational garbage one must swallow to support it. We no longer have time for it. We can no longer be patient with it. It’s stupidity, pure and simple. It’s religious thinking with science as the proxy for religion. Enough!
There are rational mechanical explanations of all spooky and weird effects. They are adequately handled via pilot-wave interpretation, advances in the physics of superfluids, and an understanding of the Couder walker experiments. We’ve got to STOP THE NONSENSE NOW!
I look out my window right now as the air outside is too thick with smoke to breathe from the California fires. Entire towns burned down because of our uses of energy. …because of the retardation of energy technology caused by magical thinking.
The world is literally on fire and we’ve run out of time.
Give up the childishness. Get serious. Don’t tolerate any more flights of fancy. It’s time for all of us to behave like responsible adults and stop wishing on a star.
“That the guiding wave, in the general case, propagates not in ordinary three-space but in a multidimensional-configuration space is the origin of the notorious ‘nonlocality’ of quantum mechanics. It is a merit of the de Broglie-Bohm version to bring this out so explicitly that it cannot be ignored.” ~ John Bell
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated… But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” - J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160.
History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY: Liquid Droplets May Help Unravel the Secrets of Quantum Mechanics
Creation time: Nov 11, 2018 01:58 AM PST
There used to be a belief of a split and the main problem in physics is orthodoxy not updating to new information.
“We choose to examine a phenomenon [Double-slit experiment] which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by "explaining" how it works. We will just tell you how it works. In telling you how it works we will have told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics.” - Richard Feynman
This quote used to be true and now it’s completely false. We can explain it in rational terms now because of the silicon walker experiments. The behavior got scaled all the way up in analog experiments using waves in silicon oil and droplets called “walkers.”
We’ve done experiments showing quantum behavior in larger and larger ensembles of atoms so that effectively there is no true macro-micro divide that is hard or reliable. It’s just a measure of objects on the scale of the physical wavelengths of electromagnetism are more easily made coherent but that same sort of coherence and “weird” behavior can happen at a level where we now understand the chaotic determinism underlying the “weird” phenomena
Hydrodynamic quantum analogs (really peruse this site if you want to understand)
Dynamics that used to be impossible to explain now can be explained without any of the magical nonsense still actively being taught.
Most of the irrational arguments now stem from people not understanding the limitations of Bell inequalities and the presumptuous problems in experiments but Bell understood long after all the arguments that originated with him.
“That the guiding wave, in the general case, propagates not in ordinary three-space but in a multidimensional-configuration space is the origin of the notorious ‘nonlocality’ of quantum mechanics. It is a merit of the de Broglie-Bohm version to bring this out so explicitly that it cannot be ignored.” ~ John Bell
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated… But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160. (emphasis mine)
The pilot-wave revolution is well under way but it’s slow going and greats like Planck knew this perennial problem well..
“Science advances one funeral at a time” - Max Planck
History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
Creation time: Nov 17, 2018 01:19 AM PST
First, the quantum computers actually in-use do not work on the principles most people know from a high-level viewpoint.
There are a wide range of effects that occur at the quantum level that have nothing to do with “existing in multiple states simultaneously” such as coupling effects. The new behaviors found in a Bose-Einstein condensate are technically “quantum” effects, but not in any sense usually associated with pop-sci “quantum” effects.
So it’s important to know that quantum computers may eventually accomplish some powerful computing tasks using some of the behaviors called “quantum” but it’s more like materials science than anything at all to do with the “spookiness” of quantum theory.
So phrases like “calculating in multiple dimensions” and other hand-wavey nonsense is just that, nonsense. It’s not working in a way that is even remotely similar to how it’s described.
It’s much more closely related to Analog computation and Simulated annealing.
Secondly, the very concept of randomness is not something anyone can authoritatively say is real.
Everything we see in science everywhere but in the quantum world behaves based on deterministic principles and even the author of the equations that are most directly useful in quantum physics (Schroedinger Equation) tried to make people understand that there’s a difference between a probabilistic computational model and what it represents. (there’s a difference between the word “apple” and a real physical apple even if it’s the one you’re referring to)
Some processes have so many little chaotic inputs that you literally cannot ever account for all the trillions of tiny variations and so we literally cannot use anything other than probability to represent it in math. Our inability to account for all the variables and our use of heuristic guesswork to deal with that fact says absolutely nothing about the underlying reality.
When Schroedinger wrote about his cat thought experiment, it was specifically to ridicule the absurdity of not understanding this difference but for many years afterwards people took his ridicule, turned it inside out, and used it as a teaching tool to represent the opposite of what he meant.
The most telling line is his final summary of his little parable:
“There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.” - Erwin Schroedinger
Finally randomness is of extremely limited and pointed use.
Consider for a moment what we attempt to accomplish with computers. Think about what it is that we attempt to accomplish with any knowledge at all: Prediction.
The whole cognitive process is about an attempt to predict reality. Even the idea of “reacting accordingly” requires knowing what impact actions will have and that relies upon prediction.
Randomness is most used in computing to defeat the ability to predict. We use it in games and other situations in which we want to defeat normal cognition, not in the attempt to augment it.
Computational methods are for solving problems, and that is inherently based upon the patterns of events and the ability to predict them. When we use randomness in computation it’s to represent the difficulty, not to arrive at the solution.
So the jury is certainly not in on the Copenhagen interpretation and nothing has been even remotely proven about the concept of randomness by quantum computing.
“Random” is a useful concept that would be difficult to express in any other language but you know quite well that the “random events” in your life are not factually random when describing the larger scale events, yet you still refer to those deterministic events as random because it’s useful to do so for the same reason it’s useful to use statistical approaches in mathematics.
I, personally, still very strongly favor pilot-wave and and a Shannon Entropy (information theory) version of “randomness” in the quantum vacuum. There’s just information there that is too complex of an influence for us to track as yet, but it’s still deterministic.
It’s just an expression of Chaotic determinism which, itself, wasn’t well understood until quite recently
Creation time: Dec 11, 2018 03:54 PM PST
[Closely related question here: Shiva Meucci's answer to Is the invention of the quantum computer evidence that true randomness exists in nature? Why or why not?]
Only devices which are designed to hide or obscure the truth.
There are uses of quantum randomness in encryption. “Randomness” which can effectively be argued to simply be a symbolic representation of ignorance, cannot be used to more effectively discover those things most commonly thought of as “truth” because those things rely upon patterns which are precisely the opposite of randomness.
IE: Randomness is not a problem solver, it is a problem creator.
Though, further advancements in quantum science could arguably be said to be based on “random effects.”
This is, however, a very incestuous and self-generating type of “development” that is much like studying english to teach english. The “problem” solved is self-promotion and continuation.
That exception for the use of “randomness” to increase knowledge might be the use of Stochastic resonance.
This, however, relies upon the “patternicity” of wave phenomena. Waves have a regularity to them that allows the phenomena of resonance, so this isn’t really true randomness.
Quantum mechanics uses random descriptions of wave phenomena so there is almost certainly an application of stochastic resonance in the quantum realm because there is an underlying lack of real randomness expressed as the regularity of waves.
This would comprise a method for the use of pseudo-randomness to increase knowledge instead of tearing it down, but truthfully it’s tied up in interpretation whether or not we’re using “randomness” at all.
Personally I don’t believe random actually exists and every constructive use of it is actually a use of underlying or obscure orderliness whether or not we recognize this truth.
Randomness is no lottery thanks to entangled ions – Physics World
Creation time: Dec 12, 2018 05:07 AM PST
Neuroscientists and those who work with neural networks will usually say no.
They believe ligands, receptors, action potentials, and the larger network structure and actions is sufficient to explain brain function or production of consciousness.
While Stuart Hameroff’s picture differs slightly in places from my own views, for my money, his information is the best and first (and perhaps only) real argument for quantum consciousness.
Unfortunately there’s a ton of noise out there on this topic and very little signal.
That’s why people more on the pedantic end of the spectrum will just give you a solid no. They hate sifting through junk to find the tiny pearls. If they see you take a piece from a pile of junk from a distance and you’re walking up to show it to them, they’ll just tell you it’s a piece of junk without really looking at it.
Let me tell you, on this topic, there’s a gigantic pile of worthless trash.
There’s a lot of extreme bias around this topic because consciousness and spirituality are closely linked in most minds. This means that at one end hardened materialists want it to be a simple straight forward machine. Spiritually minded people either want it to be a mystery and magic, or they want the neuroscience to it be a completely unrelated to the those aspects of cognition they label as spiritual.
There are many religious scientists and this tends to gum up the works in both directions.
That said, Hameroff comes from the perspective of starting as an anesthesiologist. He caused thousands of people’s consciousness turn on and off and wanted to know where that effect comes from. He seems to believe we can directly explain more about consciousness so, regardless of his deeper religious or philosophical motivations, the pursuit of deeper explanation is a venerable scientific perspective and the “We’re done; we finished science and we know it all.” perspective some scientific minds often express is very counter to the further pursuit of science in this author’s opinion.
Many people have heard that his model is about microtubules and it sounds completely unnecessary from an educated perspective.
To a biologist this immediately sounds like someone just picking a topic out of the air because microtubules are usually all about cell structure like the beams of a high-rise building. (neuroscientists are generally biologists trained in a bit of psychology and maybe some information systems)
Those same biologists might know microtubules role in marshaling and pulling apart DNA during cell replication but again, this seems unrelated to cognition for which we have neural networks as a working model using only the macro level of the cell. IE Neural networks mimic large scale cellular organization. (relationships of full cells, not the stuff inside them) They are successful without any consideration of field-based crosstalk between cells beyond the linear chain of connection, and utterly without consideration of internal cellular mechanics.
However…
Neural networks do not exhibit human-like consciousness. That consciousness can be interrupted by anesthetics. Anesthetics chemically work on tubulin which are components of microtubules.
[That’s the central and most important part of my answer and his assertions. don’t lose it in with all the other text. That’s the evidence.]
Thus his assertion that consciousness is linked to micotubules is quite well founded and assertions that internal structure is not necessary are actually baseless and therefore unscientific opinion that has accidentally grown into a consensus opinion.
The quantum of it…
This is where Stuart is making some great strides in theory development but he’s nearly a one-man show on the microtubule front and that can lead toward some dead-ends, presumptions, and many other difficulties that he’s doing a great job attempting to overcome, but it’s a little absurd to require or expect him to be perfectly successful with the tiny team of collaborators he’s had to work with.
I personally do not agree with a few of the conclusions he’s come to but that’s really almost unnecessary criticism of a work in progress on a shoestring reasearch budget. I still greatly respect the work done and feel like it’s made fantastic strides toward uncovering the truth. Unfortunately, your contributors focus your research and the only real funding he receives are from people more interested in the philosophy than the science. His focus on pleasing his contributors makes the very real science he’s doing look bad to those who come from a pure science perspective. It’s not a fair situation.
Even now, as an author, I must attempt to make an article like this one accessible to a wide audience which can, with a negative expectation of the author’s knowledge, can make the text look simplistic or even ignorant. We often must form our communication around a particular audience and often it’s the receptive audience or the paying audience. This is one of a few ever-present problems of science.
Unfortunately, we still haven’t covered the real “quantum” part of it.
Personally, my only criticism comes specifically from modern physics theory he’s attempted to integrate which, itself, has misleading problems.
His older explanations of quantum effects are very tied up in the philosophy of physics and that means you have to pick between interpretation of quantum mechanics. He chooses the “Many Worlds” interpretation which has “collapse events” in common with “Copenhagen Interpretation” and I prefer “Pilot wave” or the “de Broglie-Bohm” interpretation which views “collapse events” in a fundamentally different way from the other two.
Regardless of all this distraction however is the fact that field effects are present in the mechanics of microtubules and therefore it is a quantum effect regardless of your interpretation or your philosophical extension of that interpretation.
The fact that field effects are involved and consideration of the the internals of the cell are required, means that the opinion that consciousness is not quantum has been falsified by experimental evidence.
Here’s the harder scientific information to find that you don’t usually see:
Here’s science focused talk Stuart gave which very deliberately covers the crucial scientific point, that anesthetics affect consciousness via quantum level effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
Here’s a recent paper that further reveals the convergence field effects, microtubules, and consciousness that Stuart contributed to:
And here’s all the nonsense you run into incidentally, which will give a scientist a bad impression of science frontier work:
Here’s an article from Discover magazine that tells the whole story in fairly good way that seems unbiased but leaves a certain bent to the picture right from the title:
And here’s a video Stuart gave of his work presented to an audience interested in the philosophy more than the science: (notice the enormous difference from the talk linked above)
The Science of Consciousness: Stuart Hameroff - Vloggest
Here’s a popsci article that really goes for the clicks and makes it look like it’s all a bunch of woo instead of science. (to a scientist)
Life after death: Soul continues on a QUANTUM level – scientists reveal
Creation time: Mar 06, 2019 05:14 PM PST
How does a an alligator create water droplets on the top of the water?
The sound waves created inside him are the right frequency and amplitude to carry the water up and away into droplets.
How do we create the strange bubbles of sonoluminescence without adding gas?
When pumped with the right frequency and amplitude of sound, the water rips apart into mostly vacuous cavities and slams back together emitting light.
How do we remove stones and destroy fat with ultrasonic waves?
By making waves cross over each other at a focus point we can intensify the wave until it rips open the substance as a cavitation. This is called constructive interference when the waves are lined up but it’s destructive interference when they are exactly out of alignment.
How do holograms work?
Waves propagate from various angles off of a holographic surface and create focal points in the air that make up a field. Every place in the field represents a complex combination of various interference patterns.
Therefore, if waves of whatever kind can combine and focus energy from a surface, in a single location, then matter, if it is like a cavitation in some way, might be created like the droplets above the alligator.
Typically we think of the surface as some sphere far outside of us like we’re inside a black hole or something like that, but what if the “surface” of the “holographic plate” is actually a bunch of strings or something all around us?
Boom, holographic universe!
Creation time: May 11, 2019 01:05 AM PDT
The term quantum leap (quantum jump) came from the apparent behavior of a particle to move from one place to another without traversing any of the space between; such as an electron moving from one orbit to another.
Simplifying, the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics supposed that it was necessary for a conscious observer to actually observe a particle for it to actually be in one particular place.
Taking these two things (and a few other conjectures around the subject matter) very broadly and sort of “squinting” at the concepts, an artistic sort of person might decide that consciousness and quantumness are two sides of the same coin. (a concept still alive today)
Then the final piece of the puzzle is that in relativity, if one were to find a way to traverse vast distances faster than light, (like via a wormhole) one would be able to time travel. According to various entanglement experiments it appears some sort of connection between particles happens instantly across any distance including the distances between galaxies. If one ignores the more modern and unfounded claims that “no information is transferred” in entanglement experiments and you continue to hold to the Copenhagen interpretation, then time travel also seems possible via entanglement. There are a few serious scientists today who think there might be some sort of backwards time effects in quantum mechanics.
Then you just add some sort of sci-fi silly pseudo-logic like “If consciousness causes collapse of the waveform, then collapse of the waveform must also cause consciousness. All we have to do is invert the timelike progression of the waveform’s polarity and your consciousness can be entangled with another consciousness just like two particles can!”
Almost sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? …but it’s not even close.
So, in the end you have to remember it’s just a fun little show using vague ideas of what quantum physics is, and vague ideas of what consciousness is, and mashing them together to make what is essentially a story of magic, seem like it could be possible.
Creation time: Oct 02, 2019 07:02 PM PDT
The problem is that modern sources don't understand the paradox at all, they just parrot the beliefs they've been handed.
What happens in Bell's experiment is precisely what Einstein expected and this result was meant to falsify the idea of indeterminacy as an underlying function of reality!
The EPR paradox and the experiment itself was to show that if we could know the properties of one particle and therefore infer the properties of the other, then the truth is that there was never a bunch of fuzzy states in the first place. That is the point Einstein et al were making. But as usual, the believers masquerading as scientific thinkers just re-cast evidence against a theory as evidence for it.
Einstein thought that no person with the mildest modicum of rational thought would believe that simply looking at a particle here changed a particle there at an infinite distance. He underestimated human stupidity, faith and magical thinking.
Now we've decided that simply because we can know the properties of a distant particle via inference, that knowledge changes it from many states to one. This knowledge is the so called "event" that happens!
This is easily identified as MAGICAL THINKING. But if you surround it with enough pomp and circumstance, nobody is going to question the guys in the white robes.... erm, I mean white lab coats.
Milgram Experiment | Simply Psychology
For a more complete discussion of the garbage the acolytes of magical thought are trying to shove down our collective throats, please see: Shiva Meucci's answer to Why do we have quantum entanglement, "spooky action at a distance", and yet we can't use it for communication?
Creation time: Mar 30, 2015 07:17 PM PDT
Never. Only principles based on manipulating up and down spin are real. The rest is magical nonsense.
It's important to understand that the word quanta specifically refers to the smallest possible thing. When it comes to manupulating individual atoms and arranging things at extremely small levels, even as far as electron level, that's the real deal and could be called a quantum computer.
The other meaning is using entanglement-wave-function-probability-jargon-BS-that-makes-for-great-pseudo-intellectualism. And it has no real working principles. It's BS artists using the fact that you're not understanding the pseudo-sentences they can string together as a way of intimidating you into no further questioning.
When you research it far enough you find out that at the lowest level the very idea of entanglement is BS. Not that two particles can affect eachother in a way that will show up after they are separated, but the instantaneous action at a distance.
It takes a great deal of sifting through BS jargon like "counter-factual definiteness" to figure out that they don't even know what the word "local" really applies to when they start talking about local variables.
Then you find out that the dual slit experiment can be replicated at a macro level without any magical wave particle duality and their whole magical religion starts crumbling. But oh, will they posture and attempt to intimidate!
"You're just not smart enough to understand my magic!!!"
No guys... we are just starting to escape the grip of religion and we're not buying the new one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...
Creation time: Apr 06, 2014 11:10 AM PDT
Entanglement
While it's all just BS, technically according to the dominant interpretations of the theories, you could.
First set it up to speak to a distant part of the galaxy via the instant quantum entanglement method then briefly accelerate to near light speed toward that distant location. According to the relativity of simultaneity, you should now be simultaneous with the distant future of that distant location. Send your messages back and forth and then slow back down and head home.
So long as you only traveled very briefly, the difference in time shouldn't be too great between you and your home when you get back.
For bonus points, if they happen to have had the same instant quantum communication device around at the distant location for very long time, when you turn around and accelerate back toward home you're now communicating with their past and can send them the information from their future. I'm sure the appreciate it.
Basically we all know this shouldn't work but it still is a consequence of what we now believe about these theories.
The problem is lack of simultaneity from SR is a mathematical illusion (much like an optical one) and the entanglement of particles is a real effect in which they share a fate if unmolested but one never affects the other. "Collapse of the wave function" is asinine hocus pocus and thank god the Copenhagen interpretation is falling into disrepute. (though they aren't embracing pilot wave quick enough for my liking)
Creation time: Nov 17, 2014 01:01 PM PST
Because quantum entanglement is simply interaction that also occurs on the macro scale. If two billiard balls ram into each other, there is an "entanglement" of their outcomes from that point forward. Their spin, position and momentum etc are now in a very particularly related to each other. There is nothing even slightly surprising about entanglement itself.
It is the spooky "action" at a distance that Einstein found deplorable and modern experiments (Couder) have provided a better explanation than "Many worlds" and "Copenhagen." So while those explanations should now obviously fall to Occam's razor, it takes a while for changes like this to propagate through academia.
So the truth is that Einstein was right...
The problem comes from the strong assertion that position and momentum cannot be known simultaneously. In entanglement we can get the position of one and the momentum of the other and Presto! we can calculate the other characteristic of each particle therefore knowing both position and momentum of each simultaneously. (oops!)
Now, since the Copenhagen interpretation was trying to make some weird blurred model of reality an underlying "mechanic", this experimentally verified truth blew a huge hole in their idea just like Einstein thought it would. It was Einstein's (and others) suggestion that it would do so. But belief systems are not so easily defeated by evidence.
Subsequently, by twisting their minds around their beliefs, the believers in the Copenhagen interpretation came up with the idea that our knowledge of one particle's real position or momentum causes the "action" of the other particle's probabilistic existence to collapse into one single existence and that's why we can know both it's position and momentum via inference. Our knowledge caused the action at a distance.
Yes, it's just as crazy as it sounds. Religious belief does not require spirits or gods, it's just a way of believing something.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
—Erwin Schrödinger, Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics), Naturwissenschaften
(translated by John D. Trimmer in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society)
(yes, Schrodinger, a real father of quantum mechanics thought indeterminacy was a bunch of wooish retarded garbage worthy of ridicule just like Einstein did)
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
(contact me if you'd like to know more about the logic problems of Bell inequality)
Laymen's terms video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W...
More Technical Video:
Creation time: Dec 18, 2014 11:13 AM PST
I really like the answer by Chen Gong but I'd have to interject that Schrodinger's criticism via his "cat" applies once again in that if there is literally a real state transition occurring then there is no need for data to be transmitted directly.
One needs only measure state transitions.
The problem is that the whole theory has a ton of bathwater mixed in with a beautiful baby.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks. —Erwin Schrödinger
All that is required, however is that we simply throw away any magical belief systems and revert to the more rational models which have been available for many years. (from the beginning) Namely the De Broglie-Bohm interpretation of QM called pilot-wave theory.
tl;dr Nothing is actually impacting anything at a distance, we're just learning what was already there with better resolution. The other "probabilities" are just a mathematical illusion. (the banana in Chen Gong's answer only has one reality with no magical other realities stacked on top that magically get resolved by looking at the banana)
They didn't have the advantage of understanding chaos theory at the time of the Copenhagen interpretation nor were they aware of additional spin states that have been discovered in recent years. Copenhagen has fallen apart and it just takes a while for large organization of information to change course and move in the right direction.
They are headed there though..
Something that is not exactly evident in the papers below is that there is a concept called a "phonon" which is a method of dealing with mechanical waves in a solid in a quantum mechanical fashion. The particles have no physical reality (they are just an action occurring to a substance) yet it is useful to deal with these discrete quantities because they interact with border conditions. It is a discrete method of dealing with a continuous phenomena. The same may be true of some of our other QM concepts.
For instance, it's a well known effect that a vortex's rotation speed can be pumped by a wave and the wave then loses energy to that rotational body. If a particle is conceived of as a complex vortical structure (in fluid dynamics, toroidal vortices can have multiple internal vortices that follow the flow pattern of an orbital in the presence of spherical harmonics... unsurprisingly) then the stress energy of a wave can easily be imparted to that structure when it resonates with it at the perfect time and angle and more importantly, just the right amount of energy to keep from disrupting a complex structure. This would be equivalent to an electron promotion.
This video makes the words above a little more obvious. In the video around 1:10 you'll notice the internal vortices take the shape of the D orbital and even more complex internal structures are part of the more complex shapes created:
The point is that there are aspects of fluid dynamics that are answering hard questions in a novel way while eliminating any magical or spooky effects. (Yay, Science is BACK!)
[1401.4356] Why bouncing droplets are a pretty good model of quantum mechanics
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W...
Creation time: Jan 30, 2015 08:15 PM PST
Because it's complete bollocks.
Every explanation has to rely on magical thinking because that's what it is.
Plain. Simple. Magical thinking.
It doesn't belong in science and it's an embarrassing disgrace that is very slowly but surely finding its way to the door OUT.
You've been fed a history curated by the magical thinkers that came after the fathers of QM.
It's simply because experimental results defy any rational logic if our axioms are true but instead of questioning axioms we decided logic itself was at fault.
It all starts with Quantum indeterminacy or the uncertainty principle. It's a concept that started out with the masters in the field as simply a measurement problem and not a description of some real underlying reality.
But the fathers of quantum mechanics literally ridiculed those who came afterwards with their idiotic magical thinking. That's what Schrödinger's cat was. It was a mockery of the Copenhagen interpretation and any other idea that held probability as a state of being. (Remember that Schrodinger's equation is the very heart and soul of QM)
Here's his quote about the "cat" experiment:
"It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks." —Erwin Schrödinger, Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik
Wave-particle duality is the second problematic idea but it was conceived of by a rational man, Louis de Broglie who knew it was simply a placeholder for a more realistic underpinning as yet unclarified. But the religious and magical minded who came after are the ones who promullgated our new irrational views: De Broglie had this to say:
"that the particle must be the seat of an internal periodic movement and that it must move in a wave in order to remain in phase with it was ignored by the actual physicists [who are] wrong to consider a wave propagation without localization of the particle, which was quite contrary to my original ideas."
And David Bohm who later worked with de Broglie’s original formulation on pilot-wave theory initially called the interpretation a hidden variable theory but later stated that they found the description of pilot wave as "interpretation in terms of hidden variables" to be too restrictive, in particular as the variables, position and momentum, "are not actually hidden".
And here we have an example directly violating the uncertainty principle... oops
New 'Double Slit' Experiment Skirts Uncertainty Principle
There is no event! All that is actually occurring is we are learning what was already there.
Let's be very clear what this so called "action" is that is happening at a distance. It's a "Wave function collapse" which is to say it's pure imagination. What they are saying is happening at a distance is that the position and momentum of a distant particle go from being a set of possibilities to one single real state.
Why do they say this "event" happens? Because, after making two particles interact you can measure one particle and then, through inference, you can know the definite state of the other particle which should be impossible according to indeterminacy. This is directly analogous to knocking two billiard balls together and calculating the spin and position of one from the other. Yet because we believe the other ball is in a fuzzy magic state of multiple simultaneous possibilities we call "uncertain" we say that suddenly all the possible spins resolved to just one spin and viola! ...action!
I don't think I have to point out the mental acrobatics required to have these magical beliefs because they are so similar to other wooish thinking that it should be readily apparent to any rational person!
This then leads to the obvious reality that local hidden variables must be real.
*whiney voice* But what about Bell's theorem?!
It's so full of holes it's like swiss cheese but it's buried under mountainous piles of pseudo-intellectual pontification and obfuscation that they came up with terms like Counterfactual definiteness. It's like trying to talk to any religious thinker. They'll just keep creating and spewing new nonsense to avoid the subject and protect their belief.
First let's just start with the fact that there are additional spin states discovered since all this nonsense was discussed back then and so that throws it in all into trash by itself.
Secondly his presumption that the correlation between local hidden variables would be linear instead of the negative cosine of the angle is utterly fallacious because it is based upon false presumptions of how local hidden variables might behave.
Gahh, okay let's lay the whole hidden variables thing out
The issue with Bell's theorem is that it is only a commentary on the random-like or complex nature of quantum mechanical effects and it is a fallacious assumption of Bell that a local hidden variable theory cannot provide such a random effect. He was focused on proving the randomness and trying to prove the indeterminate nature of it. The problem is that local hidden variables can have a seemingly random component!
So, specifically there is an expectation of a linear set of measurements which is practically a straw man argument. Let me provide a thought experiment which can create a non linear pattern in the results of an analogous experiment but with local hidden variables. The difference is the use of synchronized pseudo-random number generators. (something far from commonplace in his time)
[Find the thought experiment at the bottom of this post. (Too long for being placed here)]
And then besides that, the whole underpinning for the magic is the Dual slit experiment!!
So why is it we've been willing to buy into any irrational crap at all in the first place? Specifically because of the single-electron Double-slit experiment makes it seem as though a single particle can be in two places at once because of wave particle duality.
But lo-and-behold we now have a rational mechanical analog of that experiment happening at a macro level to destroy that original magical thinking as well.
The laymen's terms:
A little more technical:
And here are some of my favorite papers on the subject from some folks at Cambridge:
[1401.4356] Why bouncing droplets are a pretty good model of quantum mechanics
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
The thought experiment as promised!
Let's first discuss the "two black boxes analogy" in which you press right or left button to receive true or false on each box. When the two sets of results are examined, all opposite presses resulted in different true/false results, when both pressed left, both got same results. Hidden variable theory requires both pressing right button should also yield the same true/false result on both. If both right button presses are ever not equal, (non-linear correlation) a local variable theory is impossible. I'll give this as granted, however my argument is that there were seemingly two signal lights, red for false and green for true. However, all performers of the test were blue/green color blind and the box can give a red, green, or blue signal, not just true and false.
What I'm saying here is that if you measure the spin axis of a billiard ball and split the balls surface into quadrants, it seems you could measure the axis point as being horizontal or vertical but a spinning top can have precession large enough so that the axis can wobble between one category or the other depending on the timing of measurement.
Let us convert the actual experiment Bell speaks of in which "a pair of spin one-half particles formed somehow in the singlet spin state and moving freely in opposite directions." to something similar, billiard balls. They have friction, spin and motion that can become "entangled" after they bounce off each other. The ability to predict their location and momentum after striking each other would produce a linear distribution of correlations and this is not what is found in quantum theory.
Let us, however, make two billiard balls with a surface covered in small LED lights and let our method of detection be via tracking lights. Both have accelerometers and RFID chips. They also use the C rand() algorithm with their own ID number as the seed. This governs the lighting of the LEDs on the surface. When the balls strike however, they transmit their own and receive the nearby identifier. They restart the rand() with a seed which is the average of the two identifiers. Because random is not a real thing but a human concept, the rand algorithm is actually pseudo-random and therefore will output precisely the same "random" sequence for a given seed.
Furthermore, the range of the random number generator and the pattern of the lighting could be configured to represent some pattern like the D orbital on the surface (or even placed in the interior of a clear acrylic ball)
Now because the balls impart averages of speed, rotation and also synchronize their random component, this experiment will conform to every test of "entanglement" but it's not clear whether or not this is a hidden "local" variable theory or not because ironically the definition of “local” is very fuzzy in quantum mechanics. Somehow, pilot wave theory is considered non-local when it seems very obviously and clearly local in the context of the Couder experiments.
Restated, because the pseudo-random number generators were synchronized upon striking one another this situation would fulfill the requirements of a local hidden variable theory with a non-linear distribution of spin states. An idea of "spin up or down" is not necessarily an accurate representation of the underlying phenomena. IE a "Blue" answer,can be obtained by poorly representing the actual axis of the ball (true alignment of the orbital) if the process of determining that axis is accomplished by using total distribution of measurements.
Even the actual spin axis of the ball can cause aberrations in the apparent distribution of the lights. We can create a reliable pattern of unreliable correlations. So with the measurements oriented at intermediate angles between the basic cases in the common example experiment, the existence of local hidden variables does not have to agree with a linear dependence of the correlation in the angle and could agree with the dependence predicted by quantum mechanical theory, namely, that the correlation is the negative cosine of the angle.
Creation time: Mar 20, 2015 05:51 PM PDT
The other answers are irrational.
They'll tell you that there is no communication in the same breath as they tell you that one particle reacts to the events at another particle. It's maddening.
The mental gymnastics displayed in this belief system are characteristic of religious fundamentalism.
People who behave in this way hide paradoxical thoughts from themselves by compartmentalizing and only focusing on the "true" things they "know". Their consciousness is often made up of a collection of faith based knowledge which associates facts but they lack the mechanical connection between two sets of information that requires all paradoxes to be eliminated. They lack an understanding of their data that gives mechanical dependencies and hierarchies.
This mental type needs no "god" or "spirit" ideas to behave in the same fashion. (They will repeatedly infect science as their next religious dogma.)
They lack the ability to know beyond doubt that, regardless how many other humans believe something or how "reliable" the source, there are sets of facts that cannot exist simultaneously.
They never passed the first test of an AI: "What happens when an irresistible force meets and immovable object?" They lack the ability to identify paradoxical axioms hidden in inference. (one most people fail as a child)
So what is the answer?
There is no communication.
Quite obviously our popular models do not match an objective reality and therefore fail. Therefore consensus truth (like all religion) is faulty and an alternative must be searched for.
It turns out that fluid dynamics can model the same effects without any magical nonsense and the "spooky action at a distance" was never any action at all. It was a misinterpretation of a misrepresentation.
The "action" at a distance is only a revelation of the information that was already present (via hidden variables) and is not an action at all in any reasoning (non-magical thinker) human beings mind. It was an absurdity to start.
Schrodinger, the most prominent father and developer of QM laughed at and ridiculed the Copenhagen interpretation via his "Cat" thought experiment yet we still see headlines based on this idiocy. (He wasn't trying to explain the theory as many people were taught, he was publicly ridiculing it)
The answer is that "they don't", but not because of the self-contradictory reasoning usually given: Nothing actually happens at the remote location!
I've shown the vast numbers of ways that this wooish nonsense has been falsified in various posts so I'll just drop links and videos here for now unless I'm asked for more detailed explanation.
Here is an excerpt from may favorite Cambridge author, Ross Anderson, on the topic:
Maxwell's fluid model of magnetism shows that a wavepacket travelling along a phase vortex in an Eulerian fluid obeys Maxwell's equations, is emitted and absorbed discretely, and can have linear or circular polarisation. What's more, the measured correlation between the polarisation of two cogenerated wavepackets is exactly the same as predicted by quantum mechanics, and observed in the Bell tests
[1305.6822] Violation of Bell's inequality in fluid mechanics
[1301.7351] Why quantum computing is hard
[1301.7540] The irrotational motion of a compressible inviscid fluid
And here's some videos, one laymen's terms and one a little more technical:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W...
Creation time: May 03, 2015 08:23 PM PDT
According to primary consensus (fashion) in modern physics, no.
Supposedly entanglement can only links the “collapse” event and no information is sent by the simultaneous collapse at both locations. The fact that something is or is not collapsed at both places, however, is obviously a form of signal that carries information regardless how much that throws Copenhagen and fashionable opinion into disarray but let’s ignore those faith-filled followers of opinion who will insist it’s not so for the moment.
A better question would be to ask exactly what instantaneous collapse means to particles in two radically different frames.
Unfortunately most people who are familiar with GR nowadays don’t really grasp what Einstein was attempting to demonstrate with the rubber sheet analogy which is a single sheet of a foliation of 2D spacetime so now it’s become fashionable to criticize the analogy since the, now socially dominant, lack of understanding of the meaning of time in GR has overtaken the widespread understanding it once had.
Part of the reason why Einstein started to abandon the constancy of light’s speed was the understanding that the bending of spacetime makes some events truly forward of other events and the reciprocal is true when looking back the other direction… that they are behind.
This is contrary to the mind-breaking (not boggling… breaking) aspects of special relativity that are based on constancy where both subjects see the other as ahead.
I strongly recommend this essay version Einstein published for his speech at the University of Leiden in 1920:
Einstein: Ether and Relativity
Einstein’s quote, “Space without Aether is unthinkable” comes from that speech and his point is really him trying, as he had for over a decade, to gracefully back people away from the mistake he abandoned long ago: The constancy of light’s speed.
In the end you have incompatibility between the two main theories at this interpretation layer, but that’s the rub. People discussing it never separate the interpretation from the theory and always represent fashionable BS as though it’s absolute fact. They do this because they know of experiments that seem to uphold their favored interpretation but they haven’t closely examined those experiments with enough of a critical eye.
This is how they speak out of two sides of their mouth and one moment say they know it’s only a theory and then explain it like it’s irrefutable fact.
“The duty of man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads and … attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency.“ – Ibn al-Haytham (965-1040 CE)
Creation time: Jan 29, 2019 10:52 AM PST
This is a very controversial question and answer and people will answer as though their beliefs are the obvious gigantic majority or perfect consensus. That simply isn’t true.
First let me give the short answer for your tl;dr
Yes, many real credible experienced rational scientists honestly believe that might be the case and actively are investigating it even today.
I can point to at least one Nobel laureate in physics that is actively working on investigating that idea right now as we speak. He is FAR from alone among real practicing scientists academics regardless what some of them want you to believe.
And now for the very long answer…
- Unfortunately we must separate “sciencism” from science. -
Let’s first establish the fact that there are people who do not investigate any claims they believe are very unlikely. This is not rational behavior; it is emotional and closely tied with the human proclivity for superstition.
Those who rail most strongly against anti-rationalism and superstition, are themselves usually strong partakers of superstitious behavior but are incapable of recognizing the strength of their faith or how much it is embedded in belief in the group instead of personally experienced evidence. (because they are part of the dominant belief system)
They mouth skepticism and have none. They claim doubt and humility but have none. They say one thing and then demonstrate behavior over and over that shows thier claims of who they are are exactly the opposite of the truth.
If they were supporting religious beliefs we’d call them hypocrites. Do not judge ANY belief system by these people who inhabit ALL belief systems and usually become a vocal minority with the strong -but false - appearance of majority.
All religions purport to have rock solid evidence viewed critically by thousands or millions. (yet if you are of an opposing belief you doubt them)
Nearly all modern religious people claim to have questioned their faith and found the body of evidence mostly rational though allow for some error they recognize as faith.
There is almost no difference between these beliefs and the vast majority of those who believe in “consensus science” with the exception that those who believe in science are often more zealotous and do not believe they have any faith whatsoever.
(More on the reason for that can be found here: Shiva Meucci's answer to Why do mathematicians/physicists denigrate intuitive explanations and analogies and refer to math itself as understanding as though it stands alone outside explanation?)
Religions have evidence and simply have different criteria for what is usable and what is not but the basic structure of an attempt to organize information about reality is the same.
Science has been extremely successful and therefore those who have converted to “scienceism” are very smug and like the tiny angry little man that pops out of the crowd long enough to kick someone who is down. These sorts of people feel like they have the largest and most dominant possible group at their back agreeing with them.
This feeling of power from being one of the big group is the drug of all those who fall in line behind despots. There is always an exhilarating feeling of “righteous” indignation and being on the winning team that is too strong of a temptation for most.
It is not however the truly earnest, humble, searching of the scientific mind. They are, instead, dogmatic keepers of the faith and orthodoxy.
Make no mistake, they are aware of their own personaly vulnerability and are full of self-doubt, but they have perfect absolute arrogant pride in the group they belong to. By giving up all self-reliance and subsumbing themselves in the beliefs of a group, they have have unlimited unrestrained ugly pure and perfect pride on behalf of their group and benefit from all the endorphins of smug pride while believing they are humble. Yet they exercise none of the sacrifice of true humility: the gripping pain of uncertainty and risk of being embarassingly wrong is something they find their way out of.
We have denigrated cowardice and venerated courage for just such reasons. Unwavering support of the group falls quickly into the worst vices of mankind.
I am not personally religious and strongly support what most would call materialist views yet I recognize a fundamental flaw with the very vocal “supporters” of science. They are very often extremely fundamentalist religious types of minds that have simply picked a different religion.
These people are the same people deeply embedded every belief system and every one of those groups wishes these extremists would stop representing them and claiming to be one of them. Science is no different except we haven’t fully recognized how many of “us” are only on the bandwagon of sycophantic power.
If these people are not burning people at the stake in the deeper past, blowing themselves up in the more recent past, then they are on the internet trolling people with their super-atheist superiority and smug self-satisfaction that has a paper thin veneer of knowledgeability that is only superior to the average Joe who is too busy supporting his family and making allies of friends and neighbors to get too focused on a tiny subset of useless esoteric knowledge to shove in other people’s faces.
These people’s regular success at knowing a tiny bit more of the consensus science fills them with the superiority they seek through imputing the goodness, rightness or dominance and power of the group upon themselves.
That said. There are certainly people with very strong views against this idea who are VERY well informed and very actively practicing real science.
They simply aren’t the gigantic majority they believe and want you to believe.
Even the idea that no information can be sent by quantum entanglement, while probably the most common answer you’ll hear, is not really a rational one in the slightest.
If one believes a real event does occur called “collapse,” then the event is detectable and separable from other phenomena and therefore is a communication device. To claim otherwise is typical superstition-like excuse-making. It’s shameful and embarassing really that people so commonly repeat this excuse like its anything credible.
There is even a well known phenomena called “weak measurement.”
While I personally stand against the idea of collapse at all (my view is called neoclassical and includes the newest updates of pilot wave) I can still recognize that if a change is mediated elsewhere then that is communication, period.
Copenhagen interpretation certainly supports some ideas of esp etc. I just don’t personally buy Copenhagen or Many Worlds with such a far more elegant answer available and demonstrated in analog through pilot wave and the Couder walker experiments.
But be assured, the fathers of the cCpenhagen interpretation were very well of and supported the mystical views we are talking about now.
The takeway here is that the current consensus scientific belief system is consistent with ESP etc but the current repeated scientific popsci opinion most people will regurgitate at you authoritatively, just isn’t self consistent. (it’s superstitious faith without truly deep understanding)
Therefore even though I disagree with the scientists exploring ESP etc based upon the most dominant interpretation (Copenhagen) I agree that they are pursuing the rationally self-consistent path that the experimental information and dominant interpretation of those results infers.
They are literally more rational via self-consistency, than those who decry their efforts and call them “wooish.” They are the better scientists! They have good reason to follow the path they do, it’s just the wrong path because consensus itself is wrong.
“But in 1952 I saw the impossible done. It was in papers by David Bohm. Bohm showed explicitly how parameters could indeed be introduced, into nonrelativistic wave mechanics, with the help of which the indeterministic description could be transformed into a deterministic one. More importantly, in my opinion, the subjectivity of the orthodox version, the necessary reference to the ‘observer,’ could be eliminated…
But why then had Bohm not told me of this ‘pilot wave’?... Why did von Neumann not consider it? More extraordinarily, why did people go on producing “impossibility” proofs, after 1952, and as recently as 1978?... Why is the pilot wave picture ignored in textbooks? Should it not be taught, not as the only way, but as an antidote to the prevailing complacency? To show us that vagueness, subjectivity, and indeterminism, are not forced on us by experimental facts, but by deliberate theoretical choice?” J. S. Bell. (1987), p. 160. (emphasis mine)
History of the NeoClassical Interpretation of Quantum and Relativistic Physics
Creation time: May 01, 2019 02:00 AM PDT