Quantum Mechanics- The Science of Absolute Connection

[pood]

BTW, “spooky action at a distance” was coined by Einstein, beause he thought it was, well, spooky. I don’t think he would think the other items on your list are spooky.

 

[steve_bank]

I pots causing somebody at a distance to post bsck.

Spooky action at a distance.

Somebody uses the word spooky with QM and thne QM becomes 'spooky'. An example of how culture works.

 

[pood]

I pots causing somebody at a distance to post bsck.

Spooky action at a distance.

Somebody uses the word spooky with QM and thne QM becomes 'spooky'. An example of how culture works.

I’m not sure you understand entanglement? It’s not like you posting at a distance, and someone posting back. Not at all. To make it analogous, your posting here would necessitate the content of my own post, which would thren appear under yours instantaneously, because our posts were quantum entangled. Ever seen that on a message boad?

 

[pood]

In additiion, in the an analogy, you would already know what I wrote before I ;posted it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Quantum Mechanics scares the heck out of me because matter can act as a wave. WTF is that about?

Don't worry. Matter cannot act as anything.

Waves, on the other hand, can and do act like matter

Of course, they aren't quite waves either. They are some kind of BS matrix of something.

 

[Jarhyn]

I believe Shrodenger's cat problem he posed was to illustrate how QM can be misinterpreted.

My impression was he was offering a reductio of QM, to show that something about it must be amiss, because it seemed absurd to suppose that microscopic effects could propagate to macroscopic states. Others took it seriously and eventually we ended up with many worlds, in which the cat is alive in one reality and dead in another.

Why would it be absurd to think microscopic effects cannot propagate to macroscopic states?

Is it not the case that a tiny trigger can be attached to a big cannon?

 

[pood]

I believe Shrodenger's cat problem he posed was to illustrate how QM can be misinterpreted.

My impression was he was offering a reductio of QM, to show that something about it must be amiss, because it seemed absurd to suppose that microscopic effects could propagate to macroscopic states. Others took it seriously and eventually we ended up with many worlds, in which the cat is alive in one reality and dead in another.

Why would it be absurd to think microscopic effects cannot propagate to macroscopic states?

Is it not the case that a tiny trigger can be attached to a big cannon?

It was thought absurd that microscopic quantum events could propagate to macroscopic states, becaue the quantum realm is entirely unlike anything in the big (classical) world. We never see, in our world, superpositions, entanglement, waves of matter, or balls thrown at walls that appear on the other side of the wall without actually passing through the wall. And we see what we think of as determnism rather than quantum indeterminism. The cat experiment holds that the cat, before it is observed, is in superposition — both alive and dead at the same time. Many thought this absurd.

 

[Jarhyn]

I believe Shrodenger's cat problem he posed was to illustrate how QM can be misinterpreted.

My impression was he was offering a reductio of QM, to show that something about it must be amiss, because it seemed absurd to suppose that microscopic effects could propagate to macroscopic states. Others took it seriously and eventually we ended up with many worlds, in which the cat is alive in one reality and dead in another.

Why would it be absurd to think microscopic effects cannot propagate to macroscopic states?

Is it not the case that a tiny trigger can be attached to a big cannon?

It was thought absurd that microscopic quantum events could propagate to macroscopic states, becaue the quantum realm is entirely unlike anything in the big (classical) world. We never see, in our world, superpositions, entanglement, waves of matter, or balls thrown at walls that appear on the other side of the wall without actually passing through the wall. And we see what we think of as determnism rather than quantum indeterminism. The cat experiment holds that the cat, before it is observed, is in superposition — both alive and dead at the same time. Many thought this absurd.

I don't consider it in super-position either though.

Again, while I'm not a hard determinist insofar as I have a definition of free will that is not based upon indeterminism, I do nonetheless accept the idea of superdeterminism: that all finite systems have a deterministic identity, even when that system is as large as our universe. Largeness in the absence of infinitude is not enough to change that.

It's not "alive and dead" and there are not universes where it is alive and universes where it is dead. There's just the thing that is going to happen, and it will always be the thing that must have happened, it's just not going to *happen* until something forces it to localize.

It was one, discrete thing before, and one different discrete thing after, and that tiny event, the "observation", propagated a macroscopic difference: the big cannon has a tiny trigger.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Let's keep in mind that the smartest physicists in the world thought it was weird or improbable. Not a bunch of Internet jockeys. They needed to come to peace with what the science was indicating. They didn't need to be right with their suspicions, but their suspicions carried a heavier weight than the average joe.

 

[steve_bank]

You have to understand what a wave function means. A simple example.

Toss a coin in the air in a dark room. A wave function, probability distribution, can be develoed for the position versus time.

Periodically flash a light and there is a potability of the coin being in a specific state. The light flashing determiners the state. When the coin hits the floor the wave function has collapsed into a quantifiable state.

When you get past the jargon in principle QM is not all that mysterious.

Does meauremnt dermine the state of a particle? Because of the relatve energies and mass involved at the quantum level yes. When a measurement is made the result is the combination of what is measred and the measurement apparatus.

There s no such thing as an independent observer.

A small pot of water is warm on a stove. Put a glass thermometer in the water and the state of the water is disturbed by the measurement. The indicated ureter is based on mass of pot ,whater, and thermometer combined.

So, does the act of observing the cat determine if it is alive or dead? Nope.

 

[pood]

It was one, discrete thing before, and one different discrete thing after, and that tiny event, the "observation", propagated a macroscopic difference: the big cannon has a tiny trigger.

Well, not according to standard QM, which that it was in superposition, and a measurement forced wave function collapse to a discrete state. Now, if by “superdeterminism,” you are literally referring to quantum superdeterminism, that’s a real thing. It holds tha quantum indeterminism and the other weird stuff goes away if everything that happens was pre-determined at the big bang. By that, of course, it is meant that every single experiment ever conducted on qm is wrong, yielding false indeterministic results, because the experimenters are not free to pick their detector settings. And it just so happens it is predetermined that they always bollix up the experiment, for some wholly inexplicable reason. At least that’s my understanding, and if this is true, there goes all of science, because we can’t ever trust our results. Quantum superdeterminism strikes me as the scientific equivalent of last Thursdayism.

 

[pood]

You have to understand what a wave function means. A simple example.

Toss a coin in the air in a dark room. A wave function, probability distribution, can be develoed for the position versus time.

Periodically flash a light and there is a potability of the coin being in a specific state. The light flashing determiners the state. When the coin hits the floor the wave function has collapsed into a quantifiable state.

When you get past the jargon in principle QM is not all that mysterious.

Does meauremnt dermine the state of a particle? Because of the relatve energies and mass involved at the quantum level yes. When a measurement is made the result is the combination of what is measred and the measurement apparatus.

There s no such thing as an independent observer.

A small pot of water is warm on a stove. Put a glass thermometer in the water and the state of the water is disturbed by the measurement. The indicated ureter is based on mass of pot ,whater, and thermometer combined.

So, does the act of observing the cat determine if it is alive or dead? Nope.

You do realize, though, that the coin toss is deterministic — if we knew all the variables, we could accurately predict the result — so the 50/50 probability is a measurement of our ignorance. QM is not like that.

 

[pood]

I\

It was one, discrete thing before, and one different discrete thing after, and that tiny event, the "observation", propagated a macroscopic difference: the big cannon has a tiny trigger.

In the two-slit experiment, if you fire one electron at a time at a wall with two slits, eventually, on the far wall, where the detection is made, a wave pattern forms. This is not possible unless the electron were interfereing with itself as described by its wave function. On the other hand, if you put your detectors at the slits, the wave pattern on the far wall never forms, because detection was made at the slits and the wave function was collapsed there. I can’t think of a clearer demonstration of wave/particle duality in matter, and they‘ve now demonstrated such duality in matter as large as molecules. No doubt it pervades all matter, us included.

 

[Jarhyn]

It was one, discrete thing before, and one different discrete thing after, and that tiny event, the "observation", propagated a macroscopic difference: the big cannon has a tiny trigger.

Well, not according to standard QM, which that it was in superposition, and a measurement forced wave function collapse to a discrete state. Now, if by “superdeterminism,” you are literally referring to quantum superdeterminism, that’s a real thing. It holds tha quantum indeterminism and the other weird stuff goes away if everything that happens was pre-determined at the big bang. By that, of course, it is meant that every single experiment ever conducted on qm is wrong, yielding false indeterministic results, because the experimenters are not free to pick their detector settings. And it just so happens it is predetermined that they always bollix up the experiment, for some wholly inexplicable reason. At least that’s my understanding, and if this is true, there goes all of science, because we can’t ever trust our results. Quantum superdeterminism strikes me as the scientific equivalent of last Thursdayism.

That's the thing. It doesn't even require predetermination of the outcome, just predetermination of any information triggering those outcomes.

Let's imagine a game of Monopoly, but instead of reading dice off, all decisions are made based on "the next calculation of Pi".

While the game is determined, while there is only one game outcome according to that seed and those rules, the winner cannot be pre-calculated from before the game is played.

Much like blackjack with a shuffled deck, it's more about not knowing the results before they happen rather than about being unable to pick your settings; yes, the next card WILL be a jack, but without that absolute knowledge, your asking to hit or stand is just as much a gamble.

The game still doesn't happen without the monopoly mechanics, and the outcome cannot be accessed without accessing it in the same way as the game must.

It's not about bolloxing up the experiment at all, nor about the events being somehow determined beforehand. Part of the event is determined "right then and there" by the action of the system itself... it's just the "randomness" that is a lie here.

The event of the "cat" "living or dying" is going to go only one way, but the living or dying, whichever it was always going to do, only continues once you pull the box away and the cat "sees it's dice roll" and properly finishes what it had started.

It doesn't matter to you AT ALL if the dice was rolled and inserted into a very large dice tower before the universe properly started, or whether the dice got rolled in an entanglement event according to some locally chaotic system, or any of that. What matters is that you can't possibly know what the dice roll was until you see "the modified result". You don't even properly know what bonuses applied to the base roll.

And... like it or not, it's a mathematical fact about systems theory.

So your understanding is wrong.

 

[pood]

Well, no, I believe your understanding is wrong, at least according to standard QM. Although we should distinguish between superdeterminsm and QM, because, as Sabine Hossenfelder, a superdeterminist, has argued, superdeterminism is not an interpretation of QM, it’s an alternative theory to it. Most QM physicists reject superdeterminism.

In the case of entanglement, for example, the measurfement of one particle instantly and accurately predicts (forces) the state of another in the entangled pair, even if that particle is on the other side of the universe (spooky action at a distance). This is not the same, though, as taking a pair of gloves, and sending one glove to one person the other glove to another person. If a person opens the box and sees a right-hand glove, he knows instantly that the other receiver must have the left-hand glove. Entaglement is nothing like that, because the collapse yields a random result, not a result that was discrete but unknown beforehand, like the gloves in boxes.

 

[Jarhyn]

I\

It was one, discrete thing before, and one different discrete thing after, and that tiny event, the "observation", propagated a macroscopic difference: the big cannon has a tiny trigger.

In the two-slit experiment, if you fire one electron at a time at a wall with two slits, eventually, on the far wall, where the detection is made, a wave pattern forms. This is not possible unless the electron were interfereing with itself as described by its wave function. On the other hand, if you put your detectors at the slits, the wave pattern on the far wall never forms, because detection was made at the slits and the wave function was collapsed there. I can’t think of a clearer demonstration of wave/particle duality in matter, and they‘ve now demonstrated such duality in matter as large as molecules. No doubt it pervades all matter, us included.

Yes, electrons can be diffuse. This does not mean that it is "in superposition". This just means that it is diffuse.

When it passes by the active detector, it gets forcibly pulled together in the event that detects it, and ceases to be diffuse.

The diffusion pattern never forms because the diffusion is isolated at the event at the slits.

It's not a duality it's more a trick of time: that aspects of reality can be diffuse until they are forcibly localized by an event.

Imagine the photon being shot, but it is being shot as a dice roll and a ruleset. If the rule is "interact with something" the dice is "looked at" and its state is "looked at dice, dice says is here". Until the wave is in state "looked at" it is in discrete state "diffuse". When it is looked at, that event itself changes the state from "diffuse" to "what the dice says".

With the detector, the particle is hitting walls at the slits, too, and ones which absorb ONLY a whole electron or ONLY zero electrons, will "almost always" be the least action in absorption, and then re-emit them parallel to the determined trajectory. If you were to repeat it by rewinding time and removing the detector you would see the diffuse result, because what you have is really not an "a or b" state or even an "a and b" state but rather a "c state" that is neither A nor B, and looks from our position indistinguishably LIKE the "d state", where the c state is "diffuse and contains a 0", and the d state is "diffuse and contains a 1".

I recall reading an article where this was validated by researchers meticulously undoing the interactions that caused a "wave collapse" and then re-initiated the "wave collapse" and got the same results. The result is the function of previously existing information rather than the result of some cosmic "indeterminism".

What, exactly, that information looks like is uncertain, however, and not really useful in "predicting" the future.

At best it says all the dice rolls are fixed.

 

[pood]

I’m not sure what you mean by “diffuse,’ but superposition of different states is a fundamental property of qm and it is precisely mathematically defined. Superposition is bedrock to the theory. If you reject it you are rejecting QM in toto.

 

[steve_bank]

Superposition simply means that the total effect at a point is the sum of the individual effects of all the causes taken individually.

The waveform on the wall for the slit experiment look like sinx.x. The same diffraction patterrn yiu see in visible optical sytem diffraction.

The solution of the wave function for a rectangular infinite potential well is snes and cosines. Photons are reflecting back and forh between the two walls in a rectangular potential well. When the length of the box s multiples of the wavelength of the photons a standing wave occurs.

The wave equation yields the probability of a photon being at an x,y,z vs time. In this case the probability is a sine. There are animations online.

A prcal example is a gas laser tube. One end of the tube is an infinite potential wall(IOW a mirror), the other end less than infinite to allow some of the photons out.

QM is best understood by how it is applied.

 

[Jarhyn]

I’m not sure what you mean by “diffuse,’ but superposition of different states is a fundamental property of qm and it is precisely mathematically defined. Superposition is bedrock to the theory. If you reject it you are rejecting QM in toto.

It's not necessarily fundamental to the mechanics of the thing. It's more... the math works out for the same reason epicycles made perfect mathematical sense without actually being correct.

You can, just as precisely, define it as a single state whos determinant, even without its immediate observability, is fixed.

The question is really "when does the dice roll", but that doesn't tell you what the numbers are going to mean or how they will be applied.

For instance, let's look at two entangled particles. If we, instead of seeing it as "both particles have both spins until they don't" seeing it as "both particles have exactly one value, the value of which has a fixed mass, one containing the value and the other containing the anti-value, and when the first thing that happens to them happens, that value is applied in that event to produce the outcome." One particle spins up, the other spins down.

It's like a flag or rider that doesn't get applied meaningfully until something else happens. They look the same to an internal observer.

It's much like velocity and position. We cannot possibly measure both at the same time but that does not mean both are failing to exist at the same time. It just means you cannot simultaneously *access* both at any point in time from inside the system.

It's a trick of the fact you are inside the thing you are trying to observe and it moves as you observe it so as an OBSERVER you have no certainty.

I've looked at enough systems as "not an internal observer" to know that's not an issue with the system, or the reality of a momentum in light of a momentary position. The issue is that we cannot *access* that information.

I can absolutely pause a game of DF, look at the "position" of an object, and then output it's hidden "momentum" value. Of course *this can't be done by a dwarf* because *their* access to momentum is in terms of position, not in terms of the class data that ultimately determines it. If they had access to the information about the moment, if they could stop time and look at it. So really they aren't looking at the momentum, they are looking at the derivative of position, which is mathematically descriptive of momentum except in the case where you only have one position... hence why I as a "god" get to know both moment and position and the dwarves do not.

You can see identical behavior in a deterministic system; this just means that some information of the system is not measurable at the moment it is meaningful within the system.

As to whether we are looking at "spooky" epicycles or "straightforward distributed determinants" orbits, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Either way, though, my free will stays intact because compatibilism.

 

[pood]

We get the waveform not only with photons but electrons, and we get it when we fire one electron at a time.

ETA: that was in reference to Steve’s earlier post. I think it’s true that QM is best understood in how it’s applied, IF we are not interested in what QM says about the ontology of the world, but merely in results we can calculate – the “shut up and calculate” route of Copenhagen.