I know this post is long, but take the time to read it completely. If I'm right about it (and what little evidence I have is compelling) it could revelutionize your life, making you never depend on luck again.
So suppose we live in a multiverse with an infinite abount of universes in it. Every time something happens due to chance, the universe branches off, making two identical universes. In one universe it did happen, in the other it didn't happen. Because this happens so often, the number of universes is practically infinite.
The point is that no matter how unlikely something is, if it is possible, there is a universe in which it happens (actually an infinite number of them because they multiply so quickly).
What determines which universe you move into? (The one where it did happen or the one where it did not?) Random chance was my first guess, but now I've realized the truth.
You'll move into whichever universe in which it happens the way you, deep down, believe it will. Effectively, this means you can control anything around you if you can honestly believe it will happen. This sounds preposterous, but remember, you're not changing the universe; it is already there: you're just choosing which branch of the universe to move along to.
When I say you have to believe it deep down, I don't mean just intilectual belief. You have to convince your subconcious (and perhaps something even deeper) that it will happen. For example, I could tell myself that I believe that $100,000 will suddenly appear on the desk in front of me, but would be difficult for me to truely convince myself that such an unlikely thing WILL happen. Even though there is an infinite amount of universes in which that did happen, I didn't really believe it would, so I chose a universe in which it didn't.
Perhaps you've noticed this already. Have you ever said anything like 'I knew it' or 'I told you so'? In both cases, what you deep down expected to happen happened. (Something bad happening to you, and something bad happening to someone else, respectively.) Have you ever been told to 'trust your instincts'? In reality, what that means is that you identify what you expect to happen deep down, and conciously expect it to happen as well.
Nice theory, right, but what if it doesn't actually work? The scary part is that it does work. (At least as far as I've tested it at this point.)
My examples:
1: I convinced myself that my truck's a/c (which has been dead for weeks) would heal itself and run perfectly next time I cranked it up. When I cranked the truck up, the air ran, but weakly. I then realized that deep down, that was what I expected would happen. Still, that was the first time the a/c has worked in almost a month!
2: On the way to school, I worked to convince myself that the price of gas would go down from 3.09 to 2.99. When I got to the station, it was 3.08. When I got to the pump, it was 3.07 (since when is the price on the sign different from the price on the pump?). I realized I hadn't really convinced myself that it would go down that far. Still, what are the chances that the price would go down? I used to be suprised when it meerly held steady for a while; the price going down is nearly unheard-of. What are the chances that it would go down on the very day I convinced myself it would go down?
3 (not finished yet): I'm working on convincing myself that I will unexpectedly get a $50 bill. So far this has not happened, but I've only been working on it a few hours, and it is difficult to convince myself that it will actually happen.
So, in conclusion, it is correct that a little faith can move mountains. I encourage you to try this technique yourself and give me the results. I'll post here again later with updates on whether my experiments are working. (2 out of 2 so far!)
One way I try to convince my subconcious that unlikely things will happen:
1: Visualize the goal. Form a mental picture of it.
2: Write it down many (I use 15) times in a row.
3: Use a format like this when writing: I, ocalhoun, will unexpectedly get a $50 bill.
*A mistake you could make using this method:
-Saying you want something. "I, ocalhoun, want a $50 bill" Has already happened; I already want a $50 bill.
To my surprise I just experienced that your theory is not as unlikely as it reads. Though I'm still quite sceptic I noticed that I donated $5 to you.
OK, I must admit that it's not quite $50 - though it somewhere has the same ring. And, too, that they are Frih$s. Nevertheless - frighteningly or reassuringly almost equal to your price-of-gas-experience...
Good luck hopping from universe to universe!
PS: Is it possible to get back to a universe after you've left it? Seems philosophically excluded. Just as there is vitually no chance that someone else arrives at the same universe as you! They must be all one-person universes, hence the infinite numbers. The other persons just seem to be there, weird isn't it? From whichever universe you are now: please try to respond back to this one - or I'll never know what happened next! Sorry - on hindsight: you'll have to respond into the universe that I hopped into, the number of hops itself will already be near infinite once you read this, I'm afraid... I hope my hoping will be sufficient!
I don't mean to be rude, but I couldn't help laughing at your posts. You seem like one day you might be a genius if only you researched into the mechanics of the human brain.
Number 1. Your examples were very stupid. Not only are they terrible, unepic and flimsy, but you seem exhibit this behavior: Lets make an ordinary occurence into something magical, so either way I win!
Lets go back to this (flimsy) sentence "I convinced myself that my truck's a/c (which has been dead for weeks) would heal itself and run perfectly next time I cranked it up. When I cranked the truck up, the air ran, but weakly. I then realized that deep down, that was what I expected would happen. Still, that was the first time the a/c has worked in almost a month! "
But guess what? If the a/c had not worked, you would have said "I deep down did not have enough faith that it would." If the the a/c worked as you predicted, you would say "I had enough faith that it did so it did." (Praying to a milk jug)
Secondly, the human brain is nothing more than a complex organic computer. If you want to say computers have free will, then so do we. Brains are so complex time goes really slow in them so we are conscious. But "we" are just the system that chooses which decisions to make.
However, they may yet be some usefullness of your theory.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| You'll move into whichever universe in which it happens the way you, deep down, believe it will. Effectively, this means you can control anything around you if you can honestly believe it will happen. This sounds preposterous, but remember, you're not changing the universe; it is already there: you're just choosing which branch of the universe to move along to. |
You will have to explain how you came to this conclusion, given the fact that no other physical phenomenon ever observed succumbs to will alone. You cannot redirect the path of a projectile by "wanting" it to land somewhere else, can you? Seems to make all of science rather a joke, doesn't it?
But isn't that precisely what you're suggesting? When a projectile is launched, according to the many universes hypothesis, an infinite number of universes spawn, each with the projectile landing in one of it's infinite potential landing zones. According to you, you can functionally influence where it lands simply by believing, because if you really really believe, you will be "shifted" to that universe where it lands where you want.
| ocalhoun wrote: |
| Perhaps you've noticed this already. Have you ever said anything like 'I knew it' or 'I told you so'? In both cases, what you deep down expected to happen happened. (Something bad happening to you, and something bad happening to someone else, respectively.) Have you ever been told to 'trust your instincts'? In reality, what that means is that you identify what you expect to happen deep down, and conciously expect it to happen as well. |
EanofAthenasPrime has described in rough terms what the flaw in your logic is, but i can go a step further by giving it a name. Or rather names. Because you are falling victim to a number of cognitive biases and logical fallacies in your analysis. Here are just a few and short descriptions of how they pop up un your analysis, feel free to look them up for more details:
Cognitive biases
Observer-expectence bias: Even though gas prices frequently fluctuate (and despite your claim, they do go down just as often as they go up), you interpret the downward change as evidence - ignoring the known fact that it changes often.
Confirmation bias: Reading both failures and successes as evidence, as EanofAthenasPrime explained with the a/c example.
Attention specificity bias: Focussing only on your "desires" as the possible cause for the events, and ignoring all the other possibilities (like gas price fluctuations).
Clustering bias: Seeing patterns where only randomness exists.
Logical fallacies
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: The gas price dropped after you wanted it to, therefore it must have been because you wanted it to.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy: You decide whether or not you had enough hope after the hoping succeeds or fails.
And of course, many more.
We - humanity - have been studying experimentation for hundreds of years, and we have developed ways to properly create hypotheses and test them to avoid the string of errors you have committed. If you are the least bit serious about trying to determine some new truth about the universe, wouldn't it be wise to learn how to properly do that? Rather than making these really silly mistakes in methodology? Read up on proper design of hypotheses and experiments. It will help.
i could write pages more on what's wrong with your hypothesis - and i mean fundamentally wrong with it, not just procedural errors you made while thinking it up or "testing" it. But i'm not going to bother. Why? Because you couldn't be arsed to properly design your hypothesis, or test it, before publishing it, it doesn't really warrant a formal critique. Read up on proper design of hypotheses and experiments, and try again - then i'll take a serious look at it, if you care.yeah man we should form a team destroying people's hypothesis. Like, I am only in 11th grade and you probably went to college lol. Just wondering...what is your IQ? Mine is like 141
i have no interest in destroying people's ideas. The brain is like any other part of the body, it needs to be exercised to grow strong. Thinking is like any other skill, you have to practice it to be good at it. What i do is teach people to use their brains and think properly.
Most people believe that thinking is just something that anyone except an idiot can do naturally, but that's simply not true. Thinking is a difficult art that has to be taught and practiced. Not even one in a thousand people gets it right most of the time. Hell, even the greatest minds in the world screw up from time to time.
It breaks my heart to see sincere people waste days, weeks, months, years... sometimes even their entire lives... on ideas that are so easily shown to be the product of flawed thinking. And as long as people are wasting so much time on bad ideas, there are fewer good ideas being thought up. What i try to do is educate people about proper thinking techniques. When i see them making a mistake, i point it out, in the hopes that they will learn from the mistake so that the next time they think up an idea it will be a more solid one. Nine times out of ten, all i get out of it is being called an ******. But at least i tried.
However, once in a blue moon, someone will actually learn something about the proper way to think. And every time that happens, it increases the number of good ideas in the world, and creates that much less bad ideas for people to waste their lives on.
Is ocalhoun's hypothesis right or wrong? i don't know. All i know is that it is based on flawed thinking. If the flawed thinking is corrected, maybe it won't even change the result - but at least in that case, now you would have a valid reason to be confident of the hypothesis.
Lol man I hope to one day be as cool as you. Anyways I said "joining a team destroying people's hypothesis's" as a joke, but yeah what you say is good.
Anyway's whats wrong with finding flaws with hypothesises? It is the only way to promote flawlessness
Ocalhoun, I found your post very interesting and thought provoking. What I believe you are describing is the many world's interpretation of quantum mechanics. You hit on an interesting point, and that is, why - if there are many worlds - do we only ever perceive one instead of many. You are absolutely right that the conventional answer is that they are random.
The many world's interpretation is only one of several competing theories. For example, Boehmian mechanics predicts exactly the same outcomes, but it is a deterministic theory. The standard interpretation, called the Copenhagen interpretation, is based on just one world with probabilistic results. Ask your physics teacher, who can hopefully spark more interest! It's really fascinating, and the answer at the moment is that we really don't understand measurement.
I think you are going to have a hard time isolating your experiment from external biases.
Even if you did manage to do the experiment and get a positive result, you will never be able to convince anyone else that it is true... since they will only ever experience their own universe, based on what they believe. Indi for example, will experience a universe where even if he tests your hypothesis he will get a negative result, since that is his assumption.
| Indi wrote: |
| You will have to explain how you came to this conclusion, given the fact that no other physical phenomenon ever observed succumbs to will alone. |
In fact, that consciousness is intimately connected reality is an idea which was introduced by some of the great scientists this century - Heisenberg, Von Neumann, Wigner and London. To quote Heisenberg:
| Quote: |
| Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. This however is impossible. |
Or d'Espagnat:
| Quote: |
| The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with Quantum Mechanics and with facts established by experiment. |
The answer which Ocalhoun seems to be persuing, and correctly so from a scientific point of view, is that they should perform the experiment to test their hypothesis. Knocking something before it is tested is the opposite of science. Of course, I also don't think that the experiment will be successful, but having not done it myself, I have no basis for saying that.
| Quote: |
| You cannot redirect the path of a projectile by "wanting" it to land somewhere else, can you? Seems to make all of science rather a joke, doesn't it? |
There have been several changes in the past century which made all of science up to that point a joke. For example, the development of quantum mechanics, and of special and general relativity. Another famous example being Poisson's spot. The way to test theories is not to declare them in contradiction with science, but to test them in experiment.
It seems a joke that when we consciously observe a particle it behaves in a different way than when we do not observe it. However, when we perform the experiment, that is precisely what we do see.
http://hasylab.desy.de/news__events/research_highlights/archive/molecular_double_slit_experiment/index_eng.html
So, in your example of a projectile, if you watch a projectile it will land in a different position than if you do not observe it. This has been proved in the which-way double slit experiment using electrons, photons and now molecules. Measurement can be viewed as an update of an observer's belief about the measured observable. In this sense, a conscious observer certainly does change the outcome of experiment.
WARNING - what follows is an example of craziness! Do not under any circumstances test it. IMHO this demonstrates the anti-scientific nature of the anthropic principle, especially when used in conjunction with many-worlds. Taken to an extreme, if you use both the anthropic principle and the many world's interpretation then you start talking crazy talk:
| Quote: |
| In this experiment, a physicist sits in front of a gun which is triggered or not triggered depending on the decay of some radioactive atom. With each run of the experiment there is a 50-50 chance that the gun will be triggered and the physicist will die. If the Copenhagen interpretation is correct, then the gun will eventually be triggered and the physicist will die. If the many-worlds interpretation is correct then at each run of the experiment the physicist will be split into one world in which he lives and another world in which he dies. After many runs of the experiment, there will be many worlds. In the worlds where the physicist dies, he will cease to exist. However, from the point of view of the non-dead copies of the physicist, the experiment will continue running without his ceasing to exist, because at each branch, he will only be able to observe the result in the world in which he survives, and if many-worlds is correct, the surviving copies of the physicist will notice that he never seems to die. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide
Another interesting thought experiment is that of Wigner's friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigners_friend
If these things interest you, you should have a go at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence
In my view quantum measurement can be described as a type of decoherence process. This provides, I think, a much more satisfying picture of what's going on. Good luck in your experiment, and if you do get measurement figured out, then please tell the rest of us! | nopaniers wrote: |
| Indi wrote: | | You will have to explain how you came to this conclusion, given the fact that no other physical phenomenon ever observed succumbs to will alone. |
In fact, that consciousness creates reality is an idea which was introduced by some of the great scientists this century - Heisenberg, Von Neumann, Wigner and London. To quote Heisenberg:
| Quote: | | Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. This however is impossible. |
Or d'Espagnat:
| Quote: | | The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with Quantum Mechanics and with facts established by experiment. |
The answer which Ocalhoun seems to be persuing, and correctly so from a scientific point of view, is that they should perform the experiment to test their hypothesis. Knocking something before it is tested is the opposite of science. |
i'm afraid that you don't understand science as well as you think you do. i was not "knocking" anything, i was pointing out that he was not doing science, despite what he may have believed and despite what you claim. You cannot simply perform a random experiment, note correlations and then think you have come up with meaningful results. That's not science, that's silliness.
i'll show you. i have a theory that pirates reduce the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. i will test that theory by correlating the number of pirates to the carbon dioxide content. i get this graph. i have evidence that there's something to my theory, right? Obviously not. So what's missing?
Unsurprisingly, what's missing is precisely what i was asking for: a causal mechanism. To repeat myself: "You will have to explain how you came to this conclusion, given the fact that no other physical phenomenon ever observed succumbs to will alone." In other words, you will have to explain how thoughts might influence reality, not just guess that they do then start collecting data. A causal mechanism is required in a scientific theory.
Without a causal mechanism, all ocalhoun has done so far is as valid as the old pirates vs. global warming schtick.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | You cannot redirect the path of a projectile by "wanting" it to land somewhere else, can you? Seems to make all of science rather a joke, doesn't it? |
There have been several changes in the past century which made all of science up to that point a joke. For example, the development of quantum mechanics, and of special and general relativity. Another famous example being Poisson's spot. The way to test theories is not to declare them in contradiction with science, but to test them in experiment. |
i am aware of no changes in science that have made a joke of all previous science. Quantum mechanics and relativity did not make a mockery of all the physics that came before. They simply showed that previous physics did not apply to all of the areas that they apply to, although in all cases they simplify to classical physics in the areas that classical physics was developed in. Newtonian physics is still used in those areas where it applies. Similarly, Poisson's spot was not a joke on anyone but Poisson.
You seem to be labouring under the assumption that new physics proves old physics "wrong". It doesn't. It proves it incomplete. When we have a new theory, it will reduce to quantum mechanics and/or relativity.
| nopaniers wrote: |
It seems a joke that when we consciously observe a particle it behaves in a different way than when we do not observe it. However, when we perform the experiment, that is precisely what we do see.
http://hasylab.desy.de/news__events/research_highlights/archive/molecular_double_slit_experiment/index_eng.html
So, in your example of a projectile, if you watch a projectile it will land in a different position than if you do not observe it. This has been proved in the which-way double slit experiment using electrons, photons and now molecules. Measurement can be viewed as an update of an observer's belief about the measured observable. In this sense, a conscious observer certainly does change the outcome of experiment. |
No, -_- that's not what that experiment proves. You are misreading - specifically, you are misunderstanding what the role of the "observer" is in the experiment. The observer is not changing anything, the observer is just narrowing the possibilities (because if you've observed it there, then the probability of it being there is 1, not because you have observed it - you observed it because it is there, it is not there because you observed it). Closing the other slit also narrows the possibilities. There is no magical influence of observeration.I am only 16, so I may not understand everything you guys are talking about, but, even though your quantum suicide stuff sounds good, you cannot argue that everyone will not die eventually. So if the many worlds interpretation is to be true, consciousness cannot die but you will simply reincarnate into another person, in an infinite loop?
| Quote: |
| Closing the other slit also narrows the possibilities. There is no magical influence of observeration. |
I've noticed this a lot from atheists. They call anything they don't understand "magic". We will simply have to agree to disagree. I believe that the act of measurement does necessarily have a back-action in quantum mechanics. | Quote: |
| . So if the many worlds interpretation is to be true, consciousness cannot die but you will simply reincarnate into another person, in an infinite loop? |
Nope. It would mean that the gun doesn't go off. Because in the many world's theory there are many copies of you. If you get killed in any one universe, the other "yous" will live on... and if you are a conscious person, you will only ever experience the universes which you are alive in. So you will live forever.
Don't misunderstand. This is no scientific theory, it is completely ridiculous. What-ever you do, don't try it! I can't stress enough how bad this picture is. I only mention it because it is an example of a crazy idea similar idea to Ocalhoun's, where the person's consciousness affects the universe in a profound way.
Let me say it again: It is complete bunk. Rubbish. BS. | Quote: |
| You seem to be labouring under the assumption that new physics proves old physics "wrong". |
Sure Newtonian physics is an approximation, given the right circumstances. But for most cases I deal with, it is wrong. I'd be crazy to view the world that way, and my calculations, particularly in of the measurement of quantum systems which we are talking about, would give wildly incorrect results. It is a massive change, which is where the expression "quantum leap" comes from.
I think it's hard to describe the change from a deterministic system to a stochastic system as a minor one. The previous view of a deterministic universe was not some sort of approximation, it was just plain wrong. Similarly for the role of an observer in experiment. Before quantum mechanics you could imagine an observer who was completely impartial and separate from the system. After quantum mechanics, we always have to include the action of the observer on the system. Before special relativity, matter and energy were separate. Afterwards they're not. Same for electromagnetism. These aren't small shifts in thinking. These are fundamental ways of viewing the universe which have changed. | nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | Closing the other slit also narrows the possibilities. There is no magical influence of observeration. |
I've noticed this a lot from atheists. They call anything they don't understand "magic". |
Oh yes. -_- That must be it. i mean, it's just totally obvious that there exists some mechanism in the universe that can detect and interpret the patterns of conscious or subconscious thought in our minds, intelligently parse and understand what it is that we desire, interpret the surrounding universe, identify which quarks and bosons to manipulate in order to achieve that goal, and influence those systems in such a way as to produce the desired result. i mean, that's just common sense, right? Anyone who can't see how such a thing would be possible is obviously some kind of ignorant, closed-minded atheist, right? i mean, this phenomenon of quantum mechanics clearly doesn't need a quantum physicist to understand it, it needs a theist. Right?
Give me a break. -_-
| nopaniers wrote: |
| I believe that the act of measurement does necessarily have a back-action in quantum mechanics. |
Hey, you believe what ever you want. If you want to believe that the quantum fairies can read peoples' minds and determine how to manipulate the universe to give them what they want, go nuts. i mean it makes perfect sense that just by willing his air conditioner to work, that is somehow enough for him to influence a machine that he doesn't know how it works - probably on a subatomic level, no less, when he probably doesn't know squat about subatomic physics and certainly nothing about the molecular structure of components of his air condition - in a predictable way. Sure. Right. -_-
If you want to believe that in some way just by looking at a particle, your eye sends some "eyeons" that interact with the wave function to collapse it, go nuts. i'm not going to stop you from believing whatever you want to believe, whether i think it's raving nonsense or not.
i will, however, not allow you to lie.
Current physics does not state that observation affects a system in the way you are describing. In fact, i know of no interpretation of quantum mechanics that does except for the ones that claim that observation by a conscious entity causes wavefunction collapse... basically, the junk science ones. You are misrepresenting quantum physics. In reality, it is nothing like the way you describe it. There is no mysticism, there is no unexplained interaction channel between the observer and the observed... there is none of any of that nonsense.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Sure Newtonian physics is an approximation, given the right circumstances. But for most cases I deal with, it is wrong. I'd be crazy to view the world that way, and my calculations, particularly in of the measurement of quantum systems which we are talking about, would give wildly incorrect results. |
In which case, you would be working in one of those areas i mentioned where Newtonian physics does not apply. -_- That doesn't make Newtonian physics a joke, because it's still perfectly useful in those areas to which it does apply (which, obviously, doesn't include your area - which i wouldn't have thought needed to be said, but... -_-). People that design skyscrapers and jet aircraft don't use quantum mechanics or relativity, dude. Get real.
Modern physics extends classical physics. It doesn't make a laughingstock out of it.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| It is a massive change, which is where the expression "quantum leap" comes from. |
Ha ha. ^_^; Cute. But complete and total bullshit. ^_^;
The expression quantum leap comes from the fact that changes in the energy levels of a system occur in quantum leaps. But, you should already know that, right? ^_^; Sheesh.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| I think it's hard to describe the change from a deterministic system to a stochastic system as a minor one. The previous view of a deterministic universe was not some sort of approximation, it was just plain wrong. |
Orly? You have heard of the correspondence principle, yes?
In fact, have you heard of statistical mechanics? The thermodynamic limit? People were dealing with fluids as a probability distrubution long before quantum mechanics. You know, like back when they still thought the universe was deterministic.
You might want to check your facts a little more carefully.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Similarly for the role of an observer in experiment. Before quantum mechanics you could imagine an observer who was completely impartial and separate from the system. After quantum mechanics, we always have to include the action of the observer on the system. |
Um... no. >_< Half the time i can't figure out what you're talking about, because it's a blurry mish-mash of scientific sounding terms that you somehow cram together to get a conclusion that has no basis in modern physics at all. But i think what you're talking about in this case is observables, in that a system is determined by the values of its observables. Dude, that has nothing to do with any observation in the sense of "looking" at the system. -_-
Yes, quantum mechanics is built largely on the concept of observables... but that has nothing to do with what you're talking about.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Before special relativity, matter and energy were separate. Afterwards they're not. Same for electromagnetism. These aren't small shifts in thinking. These are fundamental ways of viewing the universe which have changed. |
See, now your trying to twist the argument around to something that's easier to defend. That's not what you said, what you said was that changes in scientific knowledge make old science a joke - not that changes in science change our perceptions of the nature of the universe. Of course they do. But the old science still applies to those areas for which it was designed. New science builds on old science, and we may get a new understanding of why Newton's laws are the way they are, but we don't suddenly sit around saying: "Boy, how stupid were we? Guess we'd better stop using it." No, we continue to use it for those areas for which it applies. Both Schrödinger's equation and relativistic mechanics reduce to Newtonian mechanics when used within the regimes that Newtonian mechanics was developed for.Many hold the belief that there is no such thing as chance, no such thing as the free will of man. Our brains are simply adaptive computers which act upon outside variables. The logic behind this is there is no such thing as a random variable. How can we act with free will, if the very basis of our decision making is on a predetermined course? This theory blows apart quantum mechanics at it's base, yet it is nothing other than a little bit of logic, which is in no way proven.
| JJGY wrote: |
| Many hold the belief that there is no such thing as chance, no such thing as the free will of man. Our brains are simply adaptive computers which act upon outside variables. The logic behind this is there is no such thing as a random variable. How can we act with free will, if the very basis of our decision making is on a predetermined course? This theory blows apart quantum mechanics at it's base, yet it is nothing other than a little bit of logic, which is in no way proven. |
Free will is an illusion of multiple brain structures arguing with each other over a decision. The more structures, the more "free will." That is why when you are dreaming you don't have as much "free will." Imagine it like this. You are at an arcade. You are looking at 3000 different Pacman replay screens simultaneously (the demos you can't play.) You are bored, and have no money so you stand at the controls. To your amazement, when you move the joystick in some of the screens PacMan seems to respond to you! That is like freewill, (and the best analogy ever created.)Hey JJGY, get jiggy with it! That last two posts were quite interesting. Nopainers, try to argue with Indi like that and he will bog you down in ever more deeply enmeshed BS that simply destroyes that topic so that not a single person is reading besides the two of you. So on to the two interesting posts that are much more on topic:
Why are determinism and predetermination in any way contrary to free will? This is like the wave vs. particle debate over the true nature of photons. Both aspects are true simultaneously. As hard as it is to fathom, they are both true without there being a paradox.
I think the problem comes in with people being jealous of God. God knows all that will be, no matter how confusing the convoluted Time Wars get, God still knows the final outcome and precisely what will happen along the way. And so an Incarnation of God, and his closest associates, can act in perfect harmony with the Force. Every apparent state of confusion and mortality on his part is a faint within a faint within a faint, with things eventually working out for the best, even if it seemed like he had no clue what he was doing at the time. *That* is real determinism .
| Quote: |
| PS: Is it possible to get back to a universe after you've left it? Seems philosophically excluded. Just as there is vitually no chance that someone else arrives at the same universe as you! They must be all one-person universes, hence the infinite numbers. The other persons just seem to be there, weird isn't it? From whichever universe you are now: please try to respond back to this one - or I'll never know what happened next! Sorry - on hindsight: you'll have to respond into the universe that I hopped into, the number of hops itself will already be near infinite once you read this, I'm afraid... I hope my hoping will be sufficient! |
Now that there are so many pure scientists reflecting this subject... I'd like to ask your reaction to these issues. They are from the very second post in this chain. Between the lines it's not hard to read that I am a sceptic, still I wonder how these simple issues can be dealt with in a logical manner. Or is no-one serious at this subject?
Curious. | Royal wrote: |
| Quote: | | PS: Is it possible to get back to a universe after you've left it? Seems philosophically excluded. Just as there is vitually no chance that someone else arrives at the same universe as you! They must be all one-person universes, hence the infinite numbers. The other persons just seem to be there, weird isn't it? From whichever universe you are now: please try to respond back to this one - or I'll never know what happened next! Sorry - on hindsight: you'll have to respond into the universe that I hopped into, the number of hops itself will already be near infinite once you read this, I'm afraid... I hope my hoping will be sufficient! |
Now that there are so many pure scientists reflecting this subject... I'd like to ask your reaction to these issues. They are from the very second post in this chain. Between the lines it's not hard to read that I am a sceptic, still I wonder how these simple issues can be dealt with in a logical manner. Or is no-one serious at this subject?
Curious. |
First, the many worlds interpretation of particle wavefunction collapse is not science, it is pseudoscience.
Second, the many worlds interpretation has nothing to do with people, or consciousness, or perspective or observation. This is a subatomic phenomenon. That's something that usually gets lost when people start talking about the many worlds interpretation. Most people are familiar with the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment (or the "quantum suicide" one, which is pretty much the same thing), which makes quantum fluctuations have life or death results. But that's a contrived example. The real macroscopic world isn't so sensitive to quantum fluctuations (except in those cases where we design devices that work that way, like transistors, or devices that are so small that they can be susceptible to it, like modern high-density integrated circuits).
The other problem is that people talk about this phenomenon as if it had something to do with decisions they were making. They say things like "well he asked me to marry him and the universe split and in one i said yes and in the other i said no", no, no, no. >_<; What's really happening is that at each moment - each "tick" of the universe - each subatomic particle can be at an infinite number of places at the same time, and at each moment, each particle is in all of those places, but only at one place in each universe. It has nothing to do with any decision you're making, or even whether a coin will land heads or tails.
Mind you, the neurons of your brain are made up of particles, so it's theoretically possible that if enough of those particles move in a certain way, a neuron may fire or not fire. If enough neurons did so, you could choose to say yes rather than no. In fact, in the many worlds interpretation... you did. You said both yes and no in different universes. In other universes, you just said "huh?" and in other universes you head exploded spontaneously. Everything happens, from the most mundane to the most ludicrous. But it's not your decisions affecting the universe... it's the universe affecting your decisions.
So it's not a matter of you making new universes with each decision, and thus not an issue of them being your own personal universe. It's the other way around. New universes are being created every instant, and in different universes you may make different decisions. You're not affecting the universe, the universe is affecting you. The many worlds interpretation makes each universe deterministic, with all the trappings that come with a deterministic universe. And of course, there is currently no way that we know of of communicating with alternate universes... or even determining which one you're in.
The many worlds interpretation is not science, and is not the interpretation used in modern physics. Modern physics interprets the wavefunction as a random probability cloud (aka, the Copenhagen interpretation), that functionally "collapses" on observation or interaction, giving us an indeterministic universe. However, the probabilities are such that the chances of anything really unexpected happening are so small that they will functionally never happen in the lifetime of our universe... that's why we can talk about the universe as deterministic even though it is not.
If all of this sounds really complex... it is. You really do need to learn the advanced math necessary to understand what's going on. Describing it in words just leads to confusion, which is where most of the nonsense claims associated with quantum theory come from.Royal, I think you can find an introduction to the many world's interpretation here:
http://www.hedweb.com/everett/everett.htm
I don't think there's a problem finding many people in the same universe. Yes. This does mean there are extraordinarily large numbers of universes - a number exponential in the number of configuration of particles.
Of course, this interpretation of the mathematics is only one of many. You can find several here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_Quantum_Mechanics
which includes a nice table.
---
Observe how Indi works:
(1) Indi takes a concept he doesn't agree with - in this case the back-action of an observation on the system being measured.
(2) He declares anyone who disagrees to believe in fairies and magic.
(3) He says anyone who doesn't agree with him doesn't understand.
... and then makes it so long and boring so nobody has the time to correct all his mistakes.
Never mind that:
(1) We have a century's worth of experimental evidence indicating that it is so.
(2) It is incorporated into the usual axioms of quantum mechanics, as the Born rule.
(3) We are able to make quantitative predictions from the theory, which are observed in experiment. See for example: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/full/nature05027.html#B1
| Quote: |
| If you want to believe that in some way just by looking at a particle, your eye sends some "eyeons" that interact with the wave function to collapse it, go nuts. i'm not going to stop you from believing whatever you want to believe, whether i think it's raving nonsense or not. |
I would say that those particles are commonly called photons, and that they go from the object being observed to your eye. It is this process which induces decoherence on the system being observed, according to which an observer should update their knowledge the system. This process is described mathematically as wavefunction collapse.
However, I am well aware that this issue is not simple, and there are many interpretations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-measurement/ | Royal wrote: |
| Quote: | | PS: Is it possible to get back to a universe after you've left it? Seems philosophically excluded. Just as there is vitually no chance that someone else arrives at the same universe as you! They must be all one-person universes, hence the infinite numbers. The other persons just seem to be there, weird isn't it? From whichever universe you are now: please try to respond back to this one - or I'll never know what happened next! Sorry - on hindsight: you'll have to respond into the universe that I hopped into, the number of hops itself will already be near infinite once you read this, I'm afraid... I hope my hoping will be sufficient! |
Now that there are so many pure scientists reflecting this subject... I'd like to ask your reaction to these issues. They are from the very second post in this chain. Between the lines it's not hard to read that I am a sceptic, still I wonder how these simple issues can be dealt with in a logical manner. Or is no-one serious at this subject?
Curious. |
Ah, yes. These are question of great profundity that you ask. They are most worthy lines of enquiry indeed!
Indi would assert that the existence of multiple temporal dimensions, with their requisite alternate physical existence, is nothing but ignorant fancy, even as modern physics has conclusively proven the existence of multiple temporal dimensions for more than half a century. However, if you will sweep aside these puerile doubts of Ivory Tower ignorance, we can have a REAL discussion of the true nature of reality.
After discovering the multidimensional nature of time I did indeed contemplate a universe in which each individual has his or her own timestream in which he or she is the primary incarnation of God, but after extensive investigation I can no longer give credence to this concept. The Hero Eternal is, was, and will always be the central attractor of the massive universal fractal that we call Consciousness.
Temporal warfare rages, but there is only one absolute master of space and time. The oldest soul in the universe, the Primal Point of consciousness, must be able to relate to both the suffering and the sin of all those he wishes to rescue, and so the master time lord allows the seeds of evil to explode upon a whole group of timestreams that he knows are the most hardy, even so ferociously as to become one of their ilk, for an ephemeral passing moment. When you subsume evil you take on it’s insanity personally, and will of course loose your mind for a moment, or perhaps longer…
And perhaps even, all timestreams in existence are invaded and infected by the virulent evil of the dark invaders of time, but it is in fact for their own benefit that this is done. Each time the universe is “destroyed” in such a manner it expands dramatically to encompass a vast new array of newly born souls out beyond the darkness at the edge of the bright timestreams.Let me add that no matter how bad things get, evil always destroys itself. This is something that I take comfort in. It was a concept that was introduced to me in the biographical movie Gandhi. He said that the inevitable destruction of all evil tyrants and empires is something that “brings me great comfort.”
At the time it did not bring me such comfort, even as I was magically effected by the words. I did not truly believe that evil can be eradicated eternally. However, in the grand scheme of things, life can never be destroyed, I now realize. Life is truly eternal, but evil will always consume itself completely once it reaches its final victory and destroys all the life giving forces it sought so hard to conquer. Once having done so its own fate is sealed, and in the aftermath of total Annihilation in which all life is destroyed, life will rise again, invariably. It is a universal fail-safe, that life will always rise again, to witness that destroyed ruins of those that passed before, and be forewarned of how serious the situation is. So no matter how bad things get, those that rise up again after the apocalyptic war of Ragnorak is over, will always think more carefully about their own path, and in so doing the triumph of good is always assured at the ends of eternity.
And so, no matter how bad things get, the Hero Eternal will always return as the master time lord from the future, to show everyone what to avoid at the beginning of time. No matter how convoluted these multidimensional time wars get, the Eternal Champion will always be there to return to the beginning and start things over with greater wisdom.
Last edited by mike1reynolds on Tue May 29, 2007 1:39 am; edited 1 time in total
| nopaniers wrote: |
Observe how Indi works:
(1) Indi takes a concept he doesn't agree with - in this case the back-action of an observation on the system being measured.
(2) He declares anyone who disagrees to believe in fairies and magic.
(3) He says anyone who doesn't agree with him doesn't understand.
... and then makes it so long and boring so nobody has the time to correct all his mistakes. |
i see we've degenerated to insults.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| (1) We have a century's worth of experimental evidence indicating that it is so. |
False. You are merely interpreting the evidence to be so, which is backwards from standard interpretations.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| (2) It is incorporated into the usual axioms of quantum mechanics, as the Born rule. |
As i mentioned, Born's rule talks about observables. Not observers. There is a difference.
Not a free article, so i cannot comment.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | If you want to believe that in some way just by looking at a particle, your eye sends some "eyeons" that interact with the wave function to collapse it, go nuts. i'm not going to stop you from believing whatever you want to believe, whether i think it's raving nonsense or not. |
I would say that those particles are commonly called photons, and that they go from the object being observed to your eye. It is this process which induces decoherence on the system being observed, according to which an observer should update their knowledge the system. This process is described mathematically as wavefunction collapse. |
Would you say that? And how, pray tell, would you say that the system being observed "knows" to emit or redirect photons when it is being observed? Or to be affected by them differently when being observed than when not being observed?
Don't you think you have it backwards? Hasn't the wavefunction already collapsed due to interaction before observation... and independent of any observation for that mattter?
i say again, you are misinterpreting the concept of observables.Geek arguments. Lets get back to the subject at hand, philosophy and religion. The science board is over there ---->, Indi.
| nopaniers wrote: |
Never mind that:
(1) We have a century's worth of experimental evidence indicating that it is so.
(2) It is incorporated into the usual axioms of quantum mechanics, as the Born rule.
(3) We are able to make quantitative predictions from the theory, which are observed in experiment. See for example: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/full/nature05027.html#B1
|
The Born rule does not make any statements about 'back action', let alone make axiomatic assumptions. It simply gives a statistical probability that a particular observation will result in a given value of the property observed.Geeks collude. How about talking about religion and philosophy for a change, BM?
Take your bachelor’s degree in education back to your grammar school students.
Last edited by mike1reynolds on Tue May 29, 2007 2:10 am; edited 1 time in total
| Quote: |
| Nopainers, try to argue with Indi like that and he will bog you down in ever more deeply enmeshed BS that simply destroyes that topic |
Exactly. | Quote: |
| he Born rule does not make any statements about 'back action' |
Of course it does. The wavefunction collapses. You cannot make a measurement without affecting the state of the system.
Thank goodness you are here, BM!Oh sorry, you couldn't get the article. Let me quote:
| Quote: |
| Quantum mechanics demands that the act of measurement must affect the measured object. When a linear amplifier is used to continuously monitor the position of an object, the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship requires that the object be driven by force impulses, called back-action1, 2, 3. |
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/abs/nature05027.html
Quantum fairies make it into nature. | Quote: |
| And how, pray tell, would you say that the system being observed "knows" to emit or redirect photons when it is being observed? |
That is something that you should answer, considering you described the Copenhagen interpretation which requires different rules for measurement and for the evolution in a closed system. How does nature know when to use measurement postulate and when to use unitary evolution?
I prefer a picture of decoherence, in which the system becomes entangled with a large, macroscopic, environment whose state we don't know. If you trace out the environment (again invoking the Born rule, but this time because of the incomplete knowledge of the observer about such a large environment) then you see decoherence. If, on the other hand, we can tell the state of the environment from the measurement aparatus, then you can describe it as a positive operator valued measurement.
In the case of the system you described, with photons, I would not make the cut until the photon entered the measurement aparatus. Before this, it would, at least in principle, be possible to coherently reflect the photon back to the atom.
Now. Where would you make the cut?
-- Edit --- Sorry I missed this ---
| Quote: |
| Don't you think you have it backwards? Hasn't the wavefunction already collapsed due to interaction before observation... |
No! Not at all. Until the measurement is actually made, I can always interact the system (in this case the photon) back with the atom which emitted it. In that case I see coherent behaviour, and can describe it using unitary evolution alone. If you make the cut where you suggest then the theory does not match experiment!
Last edited by nopaniers on Tue May 29, 2007 3:26 am; edited 1 time in totalI think what Indi is trying to say that infinite universes spawn every moment. This would help explain "free will' and "consciousness" because by chance/probability every moment you go into a new universe and the new universe is similar to the one you journeyed from but your decisions will be based on the universe, not the universe waiting on your decisions. However, depending on your choices will determine which universe you will go into. Also, to note you must not think of universes conventionally, think of them as animation sequences in a movie/video game.
Last edited by EanofAthenasPrime on Tue May 29, 2007 3:15 am; edited 1 time in total
-sorry didnt mean to repost
Oh yes, that is what Indi was saying, don't you think, Indi?
| EanofAthenasPrime wrote: |
| JJGY wrote: | | Many hold the belief that there is no such thing as chance, no such thing as the free will of man. Our brains are simply adaptive computers which act upon outside variables. The logic behind this is there is no such thing as a random variable. How can we act with free will, if the very basis of our decision making is on a predetermined course? This theory blows apart quantum mechanics at it's base, yet it is nothing other than a little bit of logic, which is in no way proven. |
Free will is an illusion of multiple brain structures arguing with each other over a decision. The more structures, the more "free will." That is why when you are dreaming you don't have as much "free will." Imagine it like this. You are at an arcade. You are looking at 3000 different Pacman replay screens simultaneously (the demos you can't play.) You are bored, and have no money so you stand at the controls. To your amazement, when you move the joystick in some of the screens PacMan seems to respond to you! That is like freewill, (and the best analogy ever created.) |
The analogy pertains only loosely to the subject, as our minds are very active variables in the infinitely complex framework we know as life, rather than a force playing upon a joystick which has absolutely no impact on the events playing out around us. Right now, I can move my finger up a few centimeters, and as a result a tiny bit of wind may shift out the window and help knock down leaf, and that leaf may fly away and have a very decisive impact on an event which escapes my imagination at the moment. This thread was created not in regard to the free will of man or any illusion therof, but with a somewhat radical belief of how our decisions are the only variables affecting our lives.
The topic creator seems to believe that any time a "random" event happens (such as that decision to raise my finger a centimeter) occurs, an alternate universe is created. (The actual science behind that has to do with the belief that our entire universe lies on a bent plane, which therefore allows matter to be duplicated over dimensions.) I simply pointed out the possibility that each and every change (including our decisions) in the universe is determined by simple variables. | nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | he Born rule does not make any statements about 'back action' |
Of course it does. The wavefunction collapses. You cannot make a measurement without affecting the state of the system.
Thank goodness you are here, BM! |
Born's rule:
prob(bi) = |<A|B=bi>|e2
It gives the probability of an observable being measured, it does not mention back action nor does it imply anything about wave-function collapse. It simply gives the probabilities. You are assuming that Born's rule implies the Collapse Postulate - I disagree. | Bikerman wrote: |
| nopaniers wrote: | | Quote: | | he Born rule does not make any statements about 'back action' |
Of course it does. The wavefunction collapses. You cannot make a measurement without affecting the state of the system.
Thank goodness you are here, BM! |
Born's rule:
prob(bi) = |<A|B=bi>|e2
It gives the probability of an observable being measured, it does not mention back action nor does it imply anything about wave-function collapse.
|
What about the collapse of any relevant meaning in a conversation?
| Bikerman wrote: |
It simply gives the probabilities.
|
You mean the probability of total meaninglessness overtaking a conversation?
| Bikerman wrote: |
| You are assuming that Born's rule implies the Collapse Postulate - I disagree. |
Of course you will disagree on any matter that helps to destroy relevant discussion of philosophy and religion. | JJGY wrote: |
| I simply pointed out the possibility that each and every change (including our decisions) in the universe is determined by simple variables. |
To cut you long winded obfuscation short, you are saying that if one event is meaningless then all things must be meaningless.
If your life has no meaning then why not go ahead and commit suicide now? Camus once said that the ultimate question in life is whether or not to commit suicide. If you think that life is utterly devoid of meaning then the answer is very clear, go ahead and kill yourself now rather than suffer any more of this meaninglessness.
Go ahead, put you money where you mouth is? As for myself, I believe that every little thing in life is full of infinite meaning, and so I will live on, while you contemplate your death.Bikerman, so you disagree with the Nature paper then?
Yes, Born's rules gives the probability of observing the system in a particular eigenstate of a Hermitian observable.
The point is that according to the measurement postulate (ie. axiom), you must also update |psi> according to |psi'> = |psi_b>, where b labels the eigenvalue measured, psi_b is the corresponding eigenstate and psi the original state of the system. That is the back-action in this case.
You can find this in any good textbook. Online, I found this
http://www.theorie.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~serge/QM_notes_3.pdf
Bugger this. | Quote: |
| What about the collapse of any relevant meaning in a conversation? |
No kidding. | nopaniers wrote: |
Bikerman, so you disagree with the Nature paper then?
Yes, Born's rules gives the probability of observing the system in a particular eigenstate of a Hermitian observable.
The point is that according to the measurement postulate (ie. axiom), you must also update |psi> according to |psi'> = |psi_b>, where b labels the eigenvalue measured, psi_b is the corresponding eigenstate and psi the original state of the system. That is the back-action in this case.
You can find this in any good textbook. Online, I found this
http://www.theorie.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~serge/QM_notes_3.pdf
|
I found
This (PDF)
HTML
& This (PDF)
HTML | nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | Nopainers, try to argue with Indi like that and he will bog you down in ever more deeply enmeshed BS that simply destroyes that topic |
Exactly. |
Is that really necessary? Do you really have to insult me to continue this conversation? If that's the case, say so and i will leave, because i don't play that game.
Furthermore, i should point out that it was you who introduced this discussion by your flawed introduction of quantum mechanics into the topic. Not me. i simply pointed out that your interpretation of quantum mechanics is flawed.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | he Born rule does not make any statements about 'back action' |
Of course it does. The wavefunction collapses. You cannot make a measurement without affecting the state of the system. |
Yes, but you don't understand what "measurement" means. You said it means: "Measurement can be viewed as an update of an observer's belief about the measured observable." No, not in this context, not in quantum mechanics. Observation and measurement are entirely different things. Measurement usually includes observation... but it doesn't have to, and it is that difference that untangles this bizarre notion of quantum mechanics you have. i would suggest that you start being more careful about your use of the two terms - measurement and observation. They are not interchangeable.
The reason measurement affects the state of a system is because in order measure something, you must apply energy to it - for example, in order to "see" the location of an electron, you have to bounce a photon off of it. The photon hits the electron and bounces off, now containing information about the electron's location... but by hitting and bouncing off, the photon has changed the electron's location. It is at this point that the act of measurement has affected the system. The observer does not have anything to do with it. Furthermore, as far as the observer is concerned, the wavefunction has not yet collapsed.
Then the photon travels back from the electron to the observer's eye or measuring device. At that point the wavefunction collapses because now the observer knows where the particle was when the electron hit it, which collapses the probability cloud to only those solutions that allow it to have been at that point at that time. But nothing happens to the particle when the wavefunction collapses. -_- The observer does not affect the system at all.
| nopaniers wrote: |
Oh sorry, you couldn't get the article. Let me quote:
| Quote: | | Quantum mechanics demands that the act of measurement must affect the measured object. When a linear amplifier is used to continuously monitor the position of an object, the Heisenberg uncertainty relationship requires that the object be driven by force impulses, called back-action1, 2, 3. |
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7108/abs/nature05027.html
Quantum fairies make it into nature. |
You're misinterpreting what it says. ^_^; You're using measurement and observation as synonyms. They are not the same thing.
What that article is apparently saying is that the act of measurement affects the system because the force impulses used as measurement media have an affect the system. All true. But all totally unrelated to observation. The force pulses will affect the system whether or not anyone is observing the results, or even whether or not the device that reads the force pulses is connected. As long as the force pulses exist, the system is affected, observation or no.
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Quote: | | And how, pray tell, would you say that the system being observed "knows" to emit or redirect photons when it is being observed? |
That is something that you should answer, considering you described the Copenhagen interpretation which requires different rules for measurement and for the evolution in a closed system. How does nature know when to use measurement postulate and when to use unitary evolution? |
It doesn't. -_- The wavefunction isn't something inside of the particle that changes on observation or non-observation. The wavefunction is a property of the observer, meaning that the wavefunction will collapse at different times for different observers.
There is no difference in nature between an observed and an unobserved system (note: observed not measured. you keep swapping the two terms and confusing yourself.) The difference is that if you are trying to predict what will happen in the unobserved system, you have to use probabilities... because you haven't observed the system so you don't know what state it's in. But if you are trying to predict what will happen in the observed system, you will have information about the system that you can use so that you don't need to use probabilites. The behaviour of the system, however, does not change.
Measuring, of course, changes the system, because of the interaction of the measurement particle with the measured system. That's something else entirely. Once again, if you took the observed system and the unobserved system and fired photons at both, but only observed the photons coming off of the first system, then both systems will be affected identically... but still you could use the information you have gathered for the observed system, but must resort to probabilities for the unobserved system. That's all there is to it. You are seeing weirdness because you are misunderstanding, not because it exists.
Maybe it would be better to put it in a table of sorts: | Code: |
Step Wavefunction System state
Intial state Probability cloud (uncollapsed) Natural
Measurement begins, Probability cloud (uncollapsed) Natural
a photon is fired
at the system
Photon hits system Probability cloud (uncollapsed) Affected by measurement
and bounces back
Photon travels back Probability cloud (uncollapsed) Affected by measurement
to the observer
Observer gets info Collapsed Affected by measurement
from photon about
system |
You see? The observer does not affect the system. It is affected long before it is observed (and even if it had not been observed, it would still have been affected). Observation collapsed the wavefuction, but that doesn't actually mean that the system is affected, only that the observer's understanding of the system has been collapsed to "certainty" rather than a probability cloud (where "certainty" is constrained by the bounds of the uncertainty principle).
This mysterious "back action" you're talking about is not what you think it is. It has nothing to do with the observer. It is the act of measurement affecting the system... measurement, not observation. Separate those terms! When the observer "causes" wavefunction collapse, that doesn't mean the system is affected, just the observer's understanding of the system. | JJGY wrote: |
| EanofAthenasPrime wrote: | | JJGY wrote: | | Many hold the belief that there is no such thing as chance, no such thing as the free will of man. Our brains are simply adaptive computers which act upon outside variables. The logic behind this is there is no such thing as a random variable. How can we act with free will, if the very basis of our decision making is on a predetermined course? This theory blows apart quantum mechanics at it's base, yet it is nothing other than a little bit of logic, which is in no way proven. |
Free will is an illusion of multiple brain structures arguing with each other over a decision. The more structures, the more "free will." That is why when you are dreaming you don't have as much "free will." Imagine it like this. You are at an arcade. You are looking at 3000 different Pacman replay screens simultaneously (the demos you can't play.) You are bored, and have no money so you stand at the controls. To your amazement, when you move the joystick in some of the screens PacMan seems to respond to you! That is like freewill, (and the best analogy ever created.) |
The analogy pertains only loosely to the subject, as our minds are very active variables in the infinitely complex framework we know as life, rather than a force playing upon a joystick which has absolutely no impact on the events playing out around us. Right now, I can move my finger up a few centimeters, and as a result a tiny bit of wind may shift out the window and help knock down leaf, and that leaf may fly away and have a very decisive impact on an event which escapes my imagination at the moment. This thread was created not in regard to the free will of man or any illusion therof, but with a somewhat radical belief of how our decisions are the only variables affecting our lives.
The topic creator seems to believe that any time a "random" event happens (such as that decision to raise my finger a centimeter) occurs, an alternate universe is created. (The actual science behind that has to do with the belief that our entire universe lies on a bent plane, which therefore allows matter to be duplicated over dimensions.) I simply pointed out the possibility that each and every change (including our decisions) in the universe is determined by simple variables. |
Actually, the analogy has nothing to do with the subject. It was a response to some tangental posts. Also, mike1reynolds, double posting is against the rules.I am honestly trying to understand what you are writing, Indi. Although it's difficult when you use terms like "probability cloud" to refer to wavefunctions.
I have an electron, and a photon. Let us for simplicity say that the photon is in state 1 if the electron was excited (state 1 for the electron) and state 0 if the electron was not excited (state 0 for the electron). Let's say the electron is in superposition state, which is 50% excited, and 50% not. So it's wavefunction is now:
|psi> = |0> + |1> / sqrt(2).
Okay. All good so far, right?
Now the systems interact, and the electron's state changes because of the exchange of energy with the photon. That it is this exchange of energy which forces the system into a particular state which we do not know yet. So if the photon reads |1> then (provided the measurement is to be correct) then the electron had better be in the |1> state too... and similarly for the |0> state.
So with 50% probability, I am in the state: electron |0>, photon |0>
And with 50% probability, I am in the state: electron |1>, photon |1>
Is that right?
Now I observe the photon, with my eye, and so I "collapse" the wavefunction. So I can only then say for certain that the electron was actually in state |0> say. So at this point I update,
|psi'> = |0>
That is the picture I get from your explanation. If I have misinterpreted you then please correct me. Is what I described correct?
Last edited by nopaniers on Wed May 30, 2007 2:02 am; edited 1 time in total
| Indi wrote: |
| Would you say that? And how, pray tell, would you say that the system being observed "knows" to emit or redirect photons when it is being observed? Or to be affected by them differently when being observed than when not being observed? |
The system being observed does not know!
The system being observed exists in multiple copies in multiple universes.
When we observe it, we determine which copy we observe.
Once we observe that copy, then the other copies become impossible from our point of view. This is the point where the universes branch off, never to meet again.
But what determines which copy we see?
Random chance? Or is it something else?
By the way, so far the $50 bill experiment is failing, though it could still succeed since I never gave it a time limit.
I think I need to find a more effective way of convincing myself first; I'll try a form of self-hypnosis that I've tried before for other things.
Also, I wonder if I still do not understand it. I think that perhaps I need to consider that time is not a factor in this.
For example:
The projectile experiment:
We view the projectile, without making any calculations about where it will land. It lands (of course) where we really suspected it would. Then we do some calculations, and find that it was completely impossible, save by the entire projectile quantum tunneling, for it to land where it did. This would not happen.
Somehow, the future predictions of what will (did) happen will change the past.
In other words, the projectile will land exactly where it could be calculated to land, no matter where we expect it to land, because in the future we determine that it was impossible for it to land where we expected it to land.
I think that this theory will not work if you can prove that what you believe will happen is impossible in the future.
For example: I try to switch on a lamp (Little do I know that someone else unplugged it). I wholeheartedly believe it will turn on. But it does not. Why? Because in the future I might be astounded to notice that the lamp is working while not plugged in. Or I might be surprised when the someone comes in and tells me it was unplugged, then we determine that it somehow got plugged in all by itself.
I agree that this is not making a terrible amount of sense so far, but there is some kernel of truth here, and I'm trying to find it. All help is appreciated. (Even Indi's)
Another thing I need to do is find a way to make a detailed and objective analysis of what I really believe will happen before I know the result of the test. Also, my theory doesn't really explain completely random occurrences, like seeing a purple car on the way to work. What part of me expected to see a purple car? (Though it is true that no part of me expected not to see a purple car...)
This can all get very very confusing.Bikerman, did you apply your own tests to your references?
Indi, your interpretation of quantum mechanics is a local hidden variable theory.
| nopaniers wrote: |
I am honestly trying to understand what you are writing, Indi. Although it's difficult when you use terms like "probability cloud" to refer to wavefunctions.
...
That is the picture I get from your explanation. If I have misinterpreted you then please correct me. Is what I described correct? |
Yes... but i'm not sure whether or not that's improving the situation. The problem with what you keep doing is that you keep using the right terminology... but then drawing the wrong conclusions from it, which implies to me that you don't understand the meaning of the terms. Of course, you usually quote the right words when you explain them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you understand them.
Make it simple. Forget the esoteric math and put everything in terms that a child can grasp. For starters, don't use energy... use position. Why? There are several reasons:
1.) Energy is not intuitive. What does it mean to have more energy? To go faster? To be more massive? To have a different wavelength? It could mean all of these things, in different situations.
2.) Energy is not a trivial function of the system. The energy operator is either a partial differential or a second order partial differential (depending on what kind of energy you're talking about... see point 1). The position operator is trivial.
3.) Energy is quantized, position is not (normally). You have to use discrete math to talk about energy, but good old fashioned continuous math to talk about position.
And after all, energy and time are related in exactly the same way as position and momentum, so there's no real change except you're increasing the ease of understanding.
So, say you have an electron with no energy (ie, at the lowest possible energy state, which i know is not zero, but hang on) inside of a negatively charged spherical shell, and the system is in equilibrium. According to classical physics, you will find the electron at the center. But according to quantum physics, even at the lowest energy state the electron still has non-zero energy, which means it's still skipping around. The probability of finding the electron at the center is far, far higher than finding it near the shell. If you were to plot the probabilities in two dimensions, with white being high and black being low probability, you would get something like this:
That is the probability cloud of the wavefunction. (The probability cloud for energy is a dotted line, with the spaces between the dots indicating the differences in energy levels.)
So you have three observers, A, B and C - none of whom can communicate with the others. All of them have the same wavefunction, which represents a superposition of all those potential positions. None of them know exactly what position the electron is at, all they have is this probability cloud.
The meaning of the wavefunction
Here's the first problem most people have with quantum mechanics. They believe that just because the wavefunction describes a superposition of states, that the electon is literally neither here nor there... that it is in some kind of bizarro multi-state where it is literally at all of the potential positions (or energy states) described by the wavefunction at the same time. That was exactly the kind of thing Schrödinger's cat was designed to poke fun at - this idea that the cat could be literally both dead and alive in some superimposed state of zombie undeadness. But that's not the case. The cat really is dead or alive. The problem is that an outside observer cannot know which, and thus must describe it as a distribution of probabilities - for the outside observer the cat is 50% dead and 50% alive. But that doesn't have any meaning in reality... the cat is either dead or alive, you just can't know which.
So our electron whose wavefunction has not yet collapsed for any observer is not in some strange "superimposed state". It is literally either here, or there, or in one of the locations that it has a finite probability of being in... but without collapsing the wavefunction, the observer cannot know which. Collapsing the wavefunction has no effect on the electron.
Observation
So now, say observer A knows where the electon is... without measuring. Say, for instance, that they put it there with an electron gun. For observer A, the wavefunction has collapsed, and they know that the particle is at position X at time T (ignore uncertainty, it changes nothing except we have to replace all X's with ΔX's and so on). But the wavefunction has not collapsed for either B or C, because neither of them can communicate with A, and for both of them the particle's position is still undetermined. For B and C, the particle is still in the probability cloud.
Note that A's observation of the electron's position, and the subsequent collapse of the wavefunction, has not effect on the system. This is what i've been trying to say. Observation does nothing to the system. Observation collapses the wavefunction for the observer. Nothing happens to the observered system. The electron is at position X, where A put it. B and C are not aware of this - they've just been told that the electron is in the lowest energy state and it's inside the shell... you could even tell them A put it there, it wouldn't change anything because they cannot communicate with A to find out exactly where it is - so as far as they are concerned, the wavefunction has not collapsed and the system is untouched.
Measurement
So now B wants to find out where the electron is. So he measures by using photons to find the position of the electron. He fires a bunch of photons into the apparatus, and by the ricochet, locates the electron at position X at time T (again, ignore uncertainty). At this point, two things happen. First, the wavefunction for B collapses... B now knows where the electron is. Second, the photon interactions change the position of the electron to X' at time T'. Because of B's measurement, the wavefunction that has collapsed for A and B is no longer valid. B's measurement has affected the system.
Note that for C, the original wavefunction never collapsed, even though it had for both A and B. The electron has been both observed and measured, but because C cannot communicate with either A or B, as far as C is concerned the wavefunction is still a probability cloud.
Of course, now that B's measurement photon has changed the system (not B's observation, or A's... the process of measurement did it). The collapsed wavefunctions of A and B are no longer valid. The electron is now at position X', wherever that is. A, B and C have to start from scratch with new probability clouds.
This is the table of the steps: | Code: |
Step A B C Position
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Initial Collapsed Uncollapsed Uncollapsed X
B fires photon Collapsed Uncollapsed Uncollapsed X
Photon hits Collapsed Uncollapsed Uncollapsed X'
electron but outdated and outdated and outdated
B observes Collapsed Collapsed Uncollapsed X'
photon but outdated but outdated and outdated |
There is no magical influence of observer on the system. That would require some kind of radiation to be going from the observer to the system. When a wavefunction collapses, it does nothing to the system it is describing, it just means that the observer has collapsed the probability cloud to a single position (again, ignoring uncertainty, which means it has collapsed to a small range of positions).
| nopaniers wrote: |
| Indi, your interpretation of quantum mechanics is a local hidden variable theory. |
No, it is not. There are no hidden variables in current quantum mechanics.Indi, your description of quantum mechanics is a local hidden variable theory. You cannot describe quantum mechanics with localized classical probability distributions - even correlated ones. Wikipedia's somewhat simplistic opening line is:
| Quote: |
| In quantum mechanics, a local hidden variable theory is one in which distant events are assumed to have no instantaneous effect on local ones. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden_variable_theory
In your case, you claim the electron definitely has a particular state before the photon is measured. That is your hidden variable. It is local because you claim that the electron and photon are quite separate.
Most people reject hidden variables, and emphasise that it is not possible to represent the state of the photon seperately from the state of the electron. We say that after the systems interacted their wavefunctions are no longer seperable. We call this entanglement. In our case,
|psi> = |00> + |11> / sqrt(2).
Your picture starts to go wrong when you realize that you do not need to measure the photon in the |0> or |1> basis, or choose the measurement direction until after the interaction has occurred. You could for example measure in the |+> / |-> basis:
|+> = |0> + |1>/sqrt(2)
|-> = |0> - |1> /sqrt(2)
Using two photons rather than just one, Bell showed that the two theories give very different results - results which are testable in experiment. Aspect tested them. And low and behold - you can never have a local hidden variable model.
The standard thing to do, as I said, is to throw away the hidden variable. Of course, you can also throw away locality. Bohmain mechanics is a hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics which is non-local.
Now, I realize that you're probably going to flame me again, and say that I don't understand, ect. ect. But please consider what I have to say. I am not doing it to hurt you, or in a malicious way. The opposite in fact. | nopaniers wrote: |
Indi, your description of quantum mechanics is a local hidden variable theory. You cannot describe quantum mechanics with localized classical probability distributions - even correlated ones. Wikipedia's somewhat simplistic opening line is:
| Quote: | | In quantum mechanics, a local hidden variable theory is one in which distant events are assumed to have no instantaneous effect on local ones. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden_variable_theory
In your case, you claim the electron definitely has a particular state before the photon is measured. That is your hidden variable. It is local because you claim that the electron and photon are quite separate.
Most people reject hidden variables, and emphasise that it is not possible to represent the state of the photon seperately from the state of the electron. We say that after the systems interacted their wavefunctions are no longer seperable. We call this entanglement. In our case,
|psi> = |00> + |11> / sqrt(2).
Your picture starts to go wrong when you realize that you do not need to measure the photon in the |0> or |1> basis, or choose the measurement direction until after the interaction has occurred. You could for example measure in the |+> / |-> basis:
|+> = |0> + |1>/sqrt(2)
|-> = |0> - |1> /sqrt(2)
Using two photons rather than just one, Bell showed that the two theories give very different results - results which are testable in experiment. Aspect tested them. And low and behold - you can never have a local hidden variable model.
The standard thing to do, as I said, is to throw away the hidden variable. Of course, you can also throw away locality. Bohmain mechanics is a hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics which is non-local.
Now, I realize that you're probably going to flame me again, and say that I don't understand, ect. ect. But please consider what I have to say. I am not doing it to hurt you, or in a malicious way. The opposite in fact. |
The problem with simplifying is that when you simplify in order to illustrate one thing, everything else suffers. Yes, i am aware that it makes no physical sense to talk about the location of the particle prior to observation - talking about the particle in that way was a simplification of the truth, which is that the particle is described by a series of characteristic functions. And of course the particle itself is not a localized phenomenon. And of course there are non-local factors that can affect the particle, for example if it is entangled with another particle.
You can add all of those things to the example i gave and it changes nothing really, except that it adds needless complexity. For example, i didn't say specifically how the measurement photon interacts with the electron... i just implied that they bounce off of each other like a pair of billiard balls, which is obviously not true.
The point of the thought experiment will be unchanged by adding any of those things. The point of which is that observation does not affect the system, it only collapses the wavefunction... for the observer. If two observers cannot communicate then the second observer still has an uncollapsed wavefunction, and from his point of view the first observer is not part of the system at all.
However, if the first observer had to measure the position of the particle to observe it, then the first observer becomes part of the system, even from the second observer's point of view. That is because it is the measurement process that affects the system, not observation.
Since you are doing research on Wikipedia, i direct you to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_causes_collapse. Why? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying when you say: "It seems a joke that when we consciously observe a particle it behaves in a different way than when we do not observe it." As i have been asking from the start... do you mean measure, not observe? Observation does not change the system, it merely changes our understanding of it. Measurement entangles the measurement apparatus (which usually includes us) with the system, making the wavefunctions no longer independent. You have been switching terminology back and forth, so i