What is matter?

[untermensche]

Yes. There's a larger whole that includes both premises and conclusions: logic. Likewise, there's a larger whole that includes both science and art: intelligence.

I don't include "art" under intelligence, closer to intuition.

Lots of thinking isn't guided by science; religious thinking, for instance.

You mean the science of virgin births?

 

[bilby]

Understanding entanglement is more a case of interpretation. If you assume that both particles are in indeterminate states until observed (the Copenhagen interpretation) then a case could be made that they communicate FTL.

However if you take Einstein's explanation:
Take a pair of gloves and put one of them in one box and the other in another box without knowing which is in which box then ship one box far away. One box will have a right hand glove and the other a left hand glove. Nobody knows which is which box. When one box is opened and observed, the experimenter immediately knows what glove is in the other box even though it may be light years away. Not at all mysterious.

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

Do people actually believe the universe bends and distorts in anticipation of human awareness?

And the mere act of human observation changes things?

Is this really a belief held by rational people?

What, have you been living under a rock?

Lots of rational people believe things a lot less plausible than that.

 

[untermensche]

Do people actually believe the universe bends and distorts in anticipation of human awareness?

And the mere act of human observation changes things?

Is this really a belief held by rational people?

What, have you been living under a rock?

Lots of rational people believe things a lot less plausible than that.

So you believe that the both the universe waits in anticipation of human awareness and can experience human awareness somehow?

 

[bilby]

What, have you been living under a rock?

Lots of rational people believe things a lot less plausible than that.

So you believe that the both the universe waits in anticipation of human awareness and can experience human awareness somehow?

No.

But I know that lots of people do - and that many believe even less plausible things besides.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension. Not everyone is always seeking to argue with you.

 

[Bomb#20]

Understanding entanglement is more a case of interpretation. If you assume that both particles are in indeterminate states until observed (the Copenhagen interpretation) then a case could be made that they communicate FTL.

However if you take Einstein's explanation:
Take a pair of gloves and put one of them in one box and the other in another box without knowing which is in which box then ship one box far away. One box will have a right hand glove and the other a left hand glove. Nobody knows which is which box. When one box is opened and observed, the experimenter immediately knows what glove is in the other box even though it may be light years away. Not at all mysterious.

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

Do people actually believe the universe bends and distorts in anticipation of human awareness?

And the mere act of human observation changes things?

Is this really a belief held by rational people?

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson,

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

 

[untermensche]

So you believe that the both the universe waits in anticipation of human awareness and can experience human awareness somehow?

No.

But I know that lots of people do.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension.

To ask questions I need to work on my reading?

I have heard people say that in Schrodinger's thought experiment that the cat is twisted into a state of being both alive and dead just waiting for human awareness to decide the matter.

Does anyone actually believe this? And if so how is it less than pure religion?

- - - Updated - - -

Do people actually believe the universe bends and distorts in anticipation of human awareness?

And the mere act of human observation changes things?

Is this really a belief held by rational people?

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson,

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

How did this "fright" materialize?

It is a figment of your imagination.

Now possibly you could address the questions.

 

[Will Wiley]

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

But if we know we intend to observe it then we do know the state, don't we?

 

[bilby]

No.

But I know that lots of people do.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension.

To ask questions I need to work on my reading?

Oh, you think that asking questions is the only possible response on a discussion board. That's cute.

Actually, it explains a LOT about you.

Here's a hint: You can also ANSWER questions.

You're welcome.

 

[skepticalbip]

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

The former appears to imply observer related reality, the act of observation giving form to the world.

You are right. That is the Copenhagen interpretation. Eisenhower didn't like it so gave his interpretation of an entangled pair. Schrodinger didn't like it and tried to show it was wrong by offering the "Schrodinger's cat" example.

However if you think there may be something to quantum entanglement that indicates FTL communication is possible then you accept observer created reality.

 

[skepticalbip]

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

But if we know we intend to observe it then we do know the state, don't we?

I don't understand the question. I observed it but it still seems to be in an indeterminate state.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Dogmatic Deception

Actually, you don't need to postulate anything as extreme as a conscious obfuscator in order to keep the local hidden variable hypothesis on life-support. There are "loopholes" in Bell-inequality tests. The main one is that detectors are imperfect -- they miss some of the particles they're supposed to detect. To interpret an experiment as refuting local hidden variables you have to extrapolate and calculate what you would have seen if you'd detected all the particles, applying the "Fair sampling assumption", i.e., assuming that which particles are detected and which aren't is random and unrelated to what you're testing. But if nature is sufficiently perverse, we might be getting a biased sample -- there might be some mechanism causing those particles which tend to support Bell-inequality violations to be less likely to be missed by the detector than those which tend to support local hidden variables.

Non-local hidden variables imply faster than light communication. If you want to get rid of quantum mechanics with hidden variables then you need to get rid of relativity as well...

Hey, that's why God gave us Lorentz Ether Theory.

If the vacuum is not a substance, friction with what substance slows down the speed of light to 186,000 miles a second? What sneaks in being taken for granted here is the unproven assumption that c is so fast there's no way it could be faster. So the concept of it being slowed down by friction with anything seems to be like saying, "What prevents infinity from being even larger?"

 

[Bomb#20]

Do people actually believe the universe bends and distorts in anticipation of human awareness?

And the mere act of human observation changes things?

Is this really a belief held by rational people?

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson,

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

How did this "fright" materialize?

It is a figment of your imagination.

Now possibly you could address the questions.

Yes, there are rational people who think the mere act of human observation changes things. Famous first-rate physicists who held this opinion include Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Werner Heisenberg (although Wigner changed his mind later in life). You appear to be frightened enough by the prospect of the universe being this way that you'd prefer to explain away the existence of the opinion by ascribing it to irrational religious belief rather than ascribing it to the extraordinary difficulty of reconciling human sensibility with the actual nuttiness of the universe. The reason that awareness is taken seriously as an ingredient in physical law by people far smarter than you or I is not some self-important pre-Copernican love affair with the human mind on their part, but because those people feel that the plausible alternatives have all been ruled out by experiment and the merciless universe has dragged mankind kicking and screaming into that most unwelcome conclusion. The reason that this remains a minority opinion among smart physicists is not because there's an obvious alternative, but because the other smart physicists have adopted different but similarly off-the-deep-end ways of accounting for the actual nuttiness of the universe, or else have given up on the problem as too difficult for current science to resolve.

You made your post in response to this analogy:

"Take a pair of gloves and put one of them in one box and the other in another box without knowing which is in which box then ship one box far away. One box will have a right hand glove and the other a left hand glove. Nobody knows which is which box. When one box is opened and observed, the experimenter immediately knows what glove is in the other box even though it may be light years away. Not at all mysterious."

Think about the implications of that explanation. Suppose that that's what's going on, that that's the way the universe makes quantum stuff happen. That means the universe is normal, reasonable, comprehensible, in line with human sensibility. For the universe to be that way would not be shocking. If you think that's what's going on, then you are evidently not shocked by quantum theory.

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." - Niels Bohr

So which is more probable, that von Neumann and Heisenberg were just irrational religious nutjobs who couldn't figure out that separating a pair of gloves doesn't change the number of left ones and right ones, or that you don't understand quantum theory and have not studied it enough to have been shocked by the implications of the experiments that have been carried out?

Now, at this point you'll no doubt be inclined to point out that if I can use proof-by-name-dropping, so can you; and the glove analogy was not yours or skepticalbip's, but Albert Einstein's. True. But for him to propose it and for you guys to cite it aren't the same thing. When Einstein proposed it, the decisive experiment that ruled out the glove explanation had not yet been carried out. (Moreover, Einstein didn't just argue with Bohr philosophically. He's the guy who thought up the experiment. He expected it would disprove quantum theory. It was carried out twenty years after he died. It came out the way Bohr said it would. If Einstein were still alive he'd no longer be making glove analogies.)

So at this point I'd recommend that you learn enough about the evidence for quantum theory to find it shocking that the world behaves that way. It won't necessarily make you think consciousness can change the universe; but you'll know better than to accuse the people who do think so of being irrational.

 

[Bomb#20]

The question really boils down to the question of whether particles are in indeterminate states until observed or if we just don't know the state until we observe it.

The former appears to imply observer related reality, the act of observation giving form to the world.

You are right. That is the Copenhagen interpretation. Eisenhower didn't like it so gave his interpretation of an entangled pair. Schrodinger didn't like it and tried to show it was wrong by offering the "Schrodinger's cat" example.

However if you think there may be something to quantum entanglement that indicates FTL communication is possible then you accept observer created reality.

This doesn't follow. Quantum mechanics never defines measurement. Some physicists have equated measurement with observation, but that's an optional matter of interpretation. QM treats measurement as happening at some indeterminate point after the phenomenon you're experimenting on but before you learn the result. So it could as easily happen in the photomultiplier tube as in your mind. If you think there may be something to quantum entanglement that indicates FTL communication is possible then that could merely mean some amplification event happens in the particle detector and information about that event flies outward faster than light.

(Also, the act of observation giving form to the world isn't the Copenhagen Interpretation. Bohr never went along with talk like that. The CI is logical positivism in action; it's determinedly agnostic about reality. Bohr wouldn't have said measuring particle A makes particle B behave differently from how it would have behaved; he'd have said "how particle B would have behaved" isn't observable so we mustn't make claims about it.)

 

[untermensche]

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." - Niels Bohr

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” - Richard Feynman

And I say no, the experimenter does not know what is in the other box.

The box and what was in it may be nothing but ash light years away.

 

[Kharakov]

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." - Niels Bohr

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” - Richard Feynman

They are short.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." - Niels Bohr

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” - Richard Feynman

Feynmann disagreed with Bohr as to whether Bohr understood quantum mechanics*. But don't imagine for a second that this means Feynmann wasn't shocked by quantum theory too. Feynmann was very much in the "This problem is too hard for current science." camp.

(* At one point Bohr specifically asked for Feynmann to be his assistant because Feynmann was the only student willing to tell the great man he was wrong.)

And I say no, the experimenter does not know what is in the other box.

The box and what was in it may be nothing but ash light years away.

But "light years away" is a theoretical extrapolation. In the actual experiments the boxes are a few meters to a few kilometers apart, and the experimenter does know what's in the other box, after the fact when he compares the outcomes.

There are a couple things about the glove analogy that are seriously misleading. In the first place, there's only one possible outcome for a given glove. If it's a left glove it's a left glove no matter how you look at it. That's not how it works in an entanglement experiment. If you shoot a laser through a barium borate crystal, sometimes a photon in the laser beam will "parametrically down convert", which means it breaks up into a matched pair of photons that always have opposite polarizations; these are what the gloves are supposed to be analogous to. But the polarization of a photon isn't like the handedness of a glove. Whether a photon is polarized one way or the other depends on which way you look at it. To make the glove analogy fit, you'd have to use a peculiar type of glove that's manufactured in the dark and that can be a left glove if it's first illuminated from the north or the south but a right glove if you first illuminate it from the east or the west. When we say the two photons always have opposite polarizations, that's only when we measure them both the same way. If we measure them the opposite way then they'll always have the same polarization -- it's as though if I open my glove box from the south and my friend across town opens hers from the east and then we compare notes, it will always turn out that we had two left gloves or two right gloves.

Now so far that's merely weird, not crazy. You can do all that with smart gloves that sense which direction the light is coming from and shape-shift in response. You manufacture one smart glove with the rule (north/south=left, east/west=right, northeast/southwest=left, northwest/southeast=right, north-by-northwest=right, south-by-southeast=left, etc.). You manufacture the other glove with exactly the opposite rule (north/south=right, east/west=left, northeast/southwest=right, northwest/southeast=left, north-by-northwest=left, south-by-southeast=right, etc.). That way whenever the two boxes are opened with the same orientation you're guaranteed to get a left glove and a right glove. Whenever the two boxes are opened ninety degrees apart you're guaranteed to get either two left gloves or two right gloves. It all works by prior arrangement, so there's no need for the two gloves to talk to each other after they're separated. This is what the "Take a pair of gloves and put one of them in one box and the other in another box without knowing which is in which box then ship one box far away" analogy is intended to be analogous to -- all that complexity about rules and shape-shifting gloves hasn't changed anything fundamental.

So here's the part where physics gets crazy, and here's the second thing about the glove analogy, the point where it gets seriously misleading. The "One box will have a right hand glove and the other a left hand glove. ... When one box is opened and observed, the experimenter immediately knows what glove is in the other box even though it may be light years away. Not at all mysterious." bit can evidently only be referring to what happens when both experimenters open their boxes from the same direction. But that's not what people do in an entanglement experiment! The whole bloody point of doing these experiments is to find out what happens when the boxes are opened in different directions! We already know the gloves will be opposite if we open the boxes along the same axis. We already know the gloves will be the same if we open the boxes along perpendicular axes. What we don't know, what we intend to find out, is whether the gloves will be the same if we open the two boxes in directions 45 degrees apart from each other, or 22 degrees apart, or whatever odd angle.

The crazy thing about the real world is that how often you get identical photon polarizations and how often you get opposite photon polarizations depends on the angles you measure the two photons from, and there's a formula for how often it happens at 22 degrees and at 45 degrees and so forth -- a formula predicted by quantum theory and confirmed by experiment -- and it turns out to be a formula that cannot be accounted for by prior arrangement between shape-shifting smart photons. That's why smart people who've studied quantum physics believe so many weird-ass counterintuitive proposals like consciousness affecting particles and parallel universes and whatnot. So the glove analogy amounts to

Bohr: Look at the crazy thing that happens when the measurements are 22 degrees apart! How do you account for that?
Einstein: Nothing crazy happens when they're 0 degrees apart. See how sane the universe is?​

It's the physics equivalent of

Gnome: Step 1 is Steal underpants. Step 3 is Profit!
Kyle: What's step 2?
Gnome: Step 3 is Profit!​

 

[DBT]

Then we have the idea of retro causality. Weirder and weirder.

''According to Truscott, this means that if one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths, then one also has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past.

"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," said Truscott. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Weird Is Wired, Not Wise

Then we have the idea of retro causality. Weirder and weirder.

''According to Truscott, this means that if one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths, then one also has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past.

"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," said Truscott. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality. Escapist quack nerds lecture to us with disturbed descriptions of what they perversely want to think is reality. Nobel Prizes just follow decadent fads, so name-dropping should not impress us, especially when fanboys cite a Nazi like Heisenberg. Fitting the incompetence of people who accept quantum theory, Heisenberg wasn't smart enough to develop the atomic bomb for his hero Hitler.

The century-long faddists' dishonest authoritarian answer often claims to think that critics are denying the phenomena, when we are only denying the anti-rational explanations. It's like replacing gravity theory with angels bringing things down, dropping something, and then saying that because it fell, that's proof of the angel theory. So get off that cloud.

 

[ontological_realist]

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality. Escapist quack nerds lecture to us with disturbed descriptions of what they perversely want to think is reality. Nobel Prizes just follow decadent fads, so name-dropping should not impress us, especially when fanboys cite a Nazi like Heisenberg. Fitting the incompetence of people who accept quantum theory, Heisenberg wasn't smart enough to develop the atomic bomb for his hero Hitler.

The century-long faddists' dishonest authoritarian answer often claims to think that critics are denying the phenomena, when we are only denying the anti-rational explanations. It's like replacing gravity theory with angels bringing things down, dropping something, and then saying that because it fell, that's proof of the angel theory. So get off that cloud.

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality.

A great observation.

 

[beero1000]

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality. Escapist quack nerds lecture to us with disturbed descriptions of what they perversely want to think is reality. Nobel Prizes just follow decadent fads, so name-dropping should not impress us, especially when fanboys cite a Nazi like Heisenberg. Fitting the incompetence of people who accept quantum theory, Heisenberg wasn't smart enough to develop the atomic bomb for his hero Hitler.

The century-long faddists' dishonest authoritarian answer often claims to think that critics are denying the phenomena, when we are only denying the anti-rational explanations. It's like replacing gravity theory with angels bringing things down, dropping something, and then saying that because it fell, that's proof of the angel theory. So get off that cloud.

All that is superstition. Just like primitive man, if something is unexplainable by present knowledge, there is a need to fill the vacuum with some unnatural or supernatural irrationality.

A great observation.

I guess it's too bad that it just isn't true. It's almost like random people on the internet think that they are better at physics than physicists...

Wait a second...