Philosophical Speculations

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:50 pm

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 5:22 pm
Confusion is not in Radin's experiment, but in the minds trying to interpret it. Your formulation is not a very coherent projection. The OP article does not discuss Radin's experiments, it brushes them of with the usual faith based sociological woo of pseudoskeptic materialists. Conservative sociological woo which boils down to claim that science can't and should not be self-correcting procedure, that empirical evidence should be rejected, if it violates certain mathematical dogmatic beliefs.

What exactly does the experiment falsify? So far the most accurate answer I've found is: non-communication theorem. Which is somehow deeply connected with unitarity.

Neither have nothing to do with empirical science as such, the mathematical theorems have been derived from arbitrary (ie. non-empirical and thus faith based) axioms and assumptions. I can go into those in greater detail if you wish.

Maybe I’m a bit confused. As far as I’m aware, the Radin experiment effectively has people watching the slit? If you take the “human observer” consciousness collapse interpretation such as von Neumann, then surely this can’t be equivalent to the ‘measurement’? Otherwise how would you ever get interference patterns when watching a basic double slit experiment? If this was the way that consciousness collapses the wave function, I can think of all kinds of weird effects you would see all around us. In fact I think vision itself would may be tricky if the collapse was happening before the wave reached the eye?

I’m also not sure how your wikipedia link is relevant here?

I do think that interactions of mind is key to understanding QM, but I don’t think von Neumann’s version where it’s human observers is viable? From what I understand, if you put a Young's slit experiment in a sealed box, with detectors that don’t record their results (e.g. they self destruct), you still don’t end up with the interference pattern. So no human has observed anything about the path, but the wave function has still collapsed. Is that not correct?

'Time' refers in this context to a dimension of Minkowski space, and boils down to axiomatic set theory postulation of "real numbers". Which they are not. Einstein's theory of time is deeply false. It's false on many levels, and the deepest level is the implied theory of mathematics. Bergson's philosophy of time is much better, and offers possibility for empirical science to improve.

I don’t know Bergson’s time very well but I think he has some valid points. I also see Einstein’s wrapping up of time and space together is not the full story, a bit like Newton’s gravity but just more accurate. Nonetheless it’s still pretty genius and definitely gives us a very useful insight into how gravity, space and time work, even if it says little about what they are.

I think Radin's experiment had to do with people meditating on the slit and seeing if that made a difference sort of like telekenisis or something? I really don't understand what he was doing or what his result even meant.

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:15 pm
I think Radin's experiment had to do with people meditating on the slit and seeing if that made a difference sort of like telekenisis or something? I really don't understand what he was doing or what his result even meant.

Yes my understanding as well. It does seem more like parapsychology than anything to do with QM and the measurement ‘problem’

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:50 pm Maybe I’m a bit confused. As far as I’m aware, the Radin experiment effectively has people watching the slit? If you take the “human observer” consciousness collapse interpretation such as von Neumann, then surely this can’t be equivalent to the ‘measurement’? Otherwise how would you ever get interference patterns when watching a basic double slit experiment? If this was the way that consciousness collapses the wave function, I can think of all kinds of weird effects you would see all around us. In fact I think vision itself would may be tricky if the collapse was happening before the wave reached the eye?

I share the feel of confusion, in the see of quantum confusion, clarity emerges gradually, very slow. Wigner-von Neumann interpretation is not especially humanist, but generally about vaguely defined consciousness/intention in relation to causal closure of physicalism. Human intention plays special role only in human intended and designed experimental conditions.

A very basic problem of the 'measurement problem', in other words difficulty of maintaining causal closure and excluding mental causation, is that 'measurement' is seldom, if ever philosophically well defined concept. From what I see, it's mostly horribly misunderstood and mangled. I don't know what you mean by 'measurement', and better not to try to guess. My attempt to decipher the meaning of your question stops there. In philosophy, much of the focus and art is trying to learn to ask better questions.

IIRC Radin's experiment shows interference patterns with meditation-intended deviations from standard statistical expectations. "Mind waves" affecting quantum waves directly, not just indirectly through machinery of the experimental device. A part of the issue is that in Radin's experiment, thin line between telekinesis (mind to matter) and telepathy (mind to mind) becomes even more blurred, largely due to absence of any decent definition of "matter".

In the idealist frame, interpretative challenge is not easy either (math!), but less fatally bad than in materialist frame.

I’m also not sure how your wikipedia link is relevant here?

The relevance is that people with better grasp of QM than I have, insisted that if Radin's experiment was accepted, it would falsify non-communication theorem. In my own experience, my telepathic experiences have falsified that theorem pretty firmly, so bygones on my part.

I do think that interactions of mind is key to understanding QM, but I don’t think von Neumann’s version where it’s human observers is viable? From what I understand, if you put a Young's slit experiment in a sealed box, with detectors that don’t record their results (e.g. they self destruct), you still don’t end up with the interference pattern. So no human has observed anything about the path, but the wave function has still collapsed. Is that not correct?

I'm not a fan of instant collapse theories, more in favor of temporal decoherence processes. If detectors of particle hits self destruct before anyone reads the results, that sounds like an analogy of Schrödingers cat. No actual measurement has been made, so there's nothing to say to any consensus reality. There's some imagination of a temporal duration of decoherence occurring inside the sealed box, before the detectors self-destruct, but the hidden duration is contained inside the duration of initiating the experiment and looking into empty box without detector records. What happened, if anything, during the hidden duration, is undecidable.

Delayed Choice and Quantum eraser experiments ask more exact questions about the temporal relations.

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 7:57 pm
I share the feel of confusion, in the see of quantum confusion, clarity emerges gradually, very slow. Wigner-von Neumann interpretation is not especially humanist, but generally about vaguely defined consciousness/intention in relation to causal closure of physicalism. Human intention plays special role only in human intended and designed experimental conditions.

A very basic problem of the 'measurement problem', in other words difficulty of maintaining causal closure and excluding mental causation, is that 'measurement' is seldom, if ever philosophically well defined concept. From what I see, it's mostly horribly misunderstood and mangled. I don't know what you mean by 'measurement', and better not to try to guess. My attempt to decipher the meaning of your question stops there. In philosophy, much of the focus and art is trying to learn to ask better questions.

Isn’t a measurement just anything that collects information on the state of particle/system? So passing through a medium like air, or bouncing off a mirror are not a measurement, but passing a detector or hitting a photographic plate, or an eye, are.

This is why I mentioned the sealed box. If you can prevent an interference pattern without any human ever getting information about which slit, then that seems to rule out a role for human mind? It certainly doesn’t rule out idealism however.

IIRC Radin's experiment shows interference patterns with meditation-intended deviations from standard statistical expectations. "Mind waves" affecting quantum waves directly, not just indirectly through machinery of the experimental device. A part of the issue is that in Radin's experiment, thin line between telekinesis (mind to matter) and telepathy (mind to mind) becomes even more blurred, largely due to absence of any decent definition of "matter".

I’ve seen some experiments in this area that do seem interesting. I even had a cat that would go to the door 10 minutes before I got home when my journey was about 10 minutes, no matter what time of day.

I'm not a fan of instant collapse theories, more in favor of temporal decoherence processes. If detectors of particle hits self destruct before anyone reads the results, that sounds like an analogy of Schrödingers cat. No actual measurement has been made, so there's nothing to say to any consensus reality. There's some imagination of a temporal duration of decoherence occurring inside the sealed box, before the detectors self-destruct, but the hidden duration is contained inside the duration of initiating the experiment and looking into empty box without detector records. What happened, if anything, during the hidden duration, is undecidable.

But in this case surely it’s not quite like Shrodinger’s cat because the interference pattern is not there. Surely it’s not feasible to assume that the photographic plate would have the interference pattern if no one ever opened the box?

Delayed Choice and Quantum eraser experiments ask more exact questions about the temporal relations.

Yes the recent “no go” experiments narrow down the alternatives. The non locality option has some weird consequences because the cause could come before the effect to some observers. You need some kind of absolute time, which then seems to take QM from not being compatible with relativity to explicitly conflicting with it. Many worlds seems to me to be upside down and inside out, as the many potentials are there before representation, not after. So we’re left with the likes of Qbism and RQM. The best explanation of these as far as I can see is that the world is composed of mental forms, constantly interacting with each other through a timeless field to form a representation we call matter.

This may be of interest here, from the same guy who recently interviewed Bernardo for over 4 hours, wherein the claim is made that there is no collapse of the wave function ...

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:12 pm This may be of interest here, from the same guy who recently interviewed Bernardo for over 4 hours, wherein the claim is made that there is no collapse of the wave function ...

Just want to chime in and say this is a really good channel. He interviewed a very smart woman there who knows more about physics than I do but I don't agree with her interpretations like many world. Physics is a varied field where people have all sorts of opinions just like any other academic field.

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:28 pm Isn’t a measurement just anything that collects information on the state of particle/system?

Obviously not. IRL.measurements are temporal processes, not "things". Idea of a process only "collecting information" instead of also affecting and generating information makes huge metaphysical assumptions of "objective reality" etc., which have proven unsustainable. Also, Wittgenstein: "Mathematics as such is always a measure, not the thing measured." Hence, all mathematical measurements are already theory dependent, implying the theory of mathematics used, and somehow deeply related to phenomena of mathematical cognition.

This is why I mentioned the sealed box. If you can prevent an interference pattern without any human ever getting information about which slit, then that seems to rule out a role for human mind? It certainly doesn’t rule out idealism however.

Can you prevent interference pattern by making the measurement of it undecidable?

cf.:

Can you solve the Halting problem as either 'yes' or 'no' by proving that Halting problem is undecidable?

I’ve seen some experiments in this area that do seem interesting. I even had a cat that would go to the door 10 minutes before I got home when my journey was about 10 minutes, no matter what time of day.

Lovely

I'm not a fan of instant collapse theories, more in favor of temporal decoherence processes. If detectors of particle hits self destruct before anyone reads the results, that sounds like an analogy of Schrödingers cat. No actual measurement has been made, so there's nothing to say to any consensus reality. There's some imagination of a temporal duration of decoherence occurring inside the sealed box, before the detectors self-destruct, but the hidden duration is contained inside the duration of initiating the experiment and looking into empty box without detector records. What happened, if anything, during the hidden duration, is undecidable.

But in this case surely it’s not quite like Shrodinger’s cat because the interference pattern is not there. Surely it’s not feasible to assume that the photographic plate would have the interference pattern if no one ever opened the box?

How do you know interference pattern was not there, if all you did was to order the experiment to destroy all evidence before looking? That is all you did, and all you can decipher from destroying your evidence. You chose to make your experiment undecidable. From holding on to LNC (Law of Non-Contradiction) it follows that LEM (Law of Excluded Middle) gets cancelled, the result is not either, or, but the "middle" undecidable. From choosing to make your experiment undecidable, it follows that you cancel LEM by your choice. Bivalent logic don't apply to quantum phenomena. Which are BOTH waves AND particles, in complex relations. To make sense of QM, we need to see classical tetralemma as a whole, and beyond.

Yes the recent “no go” experiments narrow down the alternatives. The non locality option has some weird consequences because the cause could come before the effect to some observers. You need some kind of absolute time,

What kind of absolute time, and why?

which then seems to take QM from not being compatible with relativity to explicitly conflicting with it.

QM time mathematically defined as palindromic. A movie that looks the same whether you look it from the "beginning" or "end", whether you read it from left or right. The problem is how to derive one-directional experience of time from that. Without assuming that is the only way we experience time. Sometimes significant events seem to radiate "synchronicities" also towards their relative past.

Many worlds seems to me to be upside down and inside out, as the many potentials are there before representation, not after. So we’re left with the likes of Qbism and RQM. The best explanation of these as far as I can see is that the world is composed of mental forms, constantly interacting with each other through a timeless field to form a representation we call matter.

"Constantly interacting" suggests that continuous processes are more fundamental than forms.

Soul_of_Shu wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:12 pm This may be of interest here, from the same guy who recently interviewed Bernardo for over 4 hours, wherein the claim is made that there is no collapse of the wave function ...

Yes I’m using “wave function collapse” for what happens at measurement. You could say that there is no collapse and the whole universe duplicates itself because a single photon has reached you eye It’s not an option I take seriously to avoid using the old Copenhagen language.

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:13 pm

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:28 pm Isn’t a measurement just anything that collects information on the state of particle/system?

Obviously not. IRL.measurements are temporal processes, not "things". Idea of a process only "collecting information" instead of also affecting and generating information makes huge metaphysical assumptions of "objective reality" etc., which have proven unsustainable. Also, Wittgenstein: "Mathematics as such is always a measure, not the thing measured." Hence, all mathematical measurements are already theory dependent, implying the theory of mathematics used, and somehow deeply related to phenomena of mathematical cognition.

Yes fair point, but isn’t that really semantics to some extent here. The photon interacts with air, mirrors etc and doesn’t collapse. It interacts with a different type of thing and does. Yes part of the question is definitely about what it means to measure, but we can also put the measurement process in a black box label, and look at whats happening in the slit experiment or Aspect type entanglement experiments.

Can you prevent interference pattern by making the measurement of it undecidable?

I have no idea. What would that tell us if you could? My guess would be that as long as you have the potential to measure it at all, there would be no interference regardless of the “decidability”.

How do you know interference pattern was not there, if all you did was to order the experiment to destroy all evidence before looking? That is all you did, and all you can decipher from destroying your evidence. You chose to make your experiment undecidable. From holding on to LNC (Law of Non-Contradiction) it follows that LEM (Law of Excluded Middle) gets cancelled, the result is not either, or, but the "middle" undecidable. From choosing to make your experiment undecidable, it follows that you cancel LEM by your choice. Bivalent logic don't apply to quantum phenomena. Which are BOTH waves AND particles, in complex relations. To make sense of QM, we need to see classical tetralemma as a whole, and beyond.

I don’t follow the way in which the experiment is undecidable. Are you saying that by deciding to put the detectors there in the first place, that awareness of the fact that information is being collected is responsible for collapsing the wave function ? That seems very improbable to me, when you have a simple explanation that it’s just something about an information-collecting-interaction?

What kind of absolute time, and why?

You can separate entangled particles hundreds of miles, but when you measure one the other collapses instantly. So if you’re near B, and a flag is raised at the same time A is measured, B seems to collapse before A is measured. So if you’re explaining this by non locality alone, you’re breaking Einstein. So you would then have to propose that the quantum world follows some kind of absolute time rather than the observer’s reference point, which feels like plasters on top of plasters.

That’s my understanding anyway.

"Constantly interacting" suggests that continuous processes are more fundamental than forms.

Aren’t the processes just how the forms unfold in time?

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:51 pm I don’t follow the way in which the experiment is undecidable. Are you saying that by deciding to put the detectors there in the first place, that awareness of the fact that information is being collected is responsible for collapsing the wave function ? That seems very improbable to me, when you have a simple explanation that it’s just something about an information-collecting-interaction?

But you don't. We would not be having this discussion, if the academic authorities had such a simple solution to the measurement problem. The answer to the problem may be simple, just hidden under way too much complexity, and learning away from too much complexity tends also to be complex process.

The big picture is very simple: Potential measured/decohered into some actuality. Potential, in Aristotle's terminology dynamis, corresponds with "superposition/quantum state", and actuality, in Aristotle's terminology energeia, with "classical state. Measurement and decoherence are two different words, or viewpoints, for the same process.

What kind of absolute time, and why?

You can separate entangled particles hundreds of miles, but when you measure one the other collapses instantly. So if you’re near B, and a flag is raised at the same time A is measured, B seems to collapse before A is measured. So if you’re explaining this by non locality alone, you’re breaking Einstein. So you would then have to propose that the quantum world follows some kind of absolute time rather than the observer’s reference point, which feels like plasters on top of plasters.

Forget Einstein. He got it wrong. Brilliantly wrong, but wrong anyhow. A very interesting question is, does the "non-local" (ie. superluminal) interaction happen really instantly, and what "instantly" could really mean, instant in relation to what absolute? Bohm's notion of decoherence is temporal process, but what does temporal mean exactly in that context?

Computation of very big numbers in the form number plus antinumber can give the answer "0" very very quickly, as thought is faster than light, but not wholly without a duration. That could offer an answer to the origin of measurements of very small ether-type inertia. Which, of course, falsifies the whole starting point of Einstein's non-ether theories.

Aren’t the processes just how the forms unfold in time?

Doesn't seem possible. As far as I can tell, even the "immovable" form in the hypothesis of "immovable mover" keeps on rollin, rollin, rollin, rawhide!