Interpretation Of Quantum Mechanics

[Doctordick]

In the June 2013 issue of Scientific American, Hans Christian von Bayer seems to be presenting a new representation of Quantum Mechanics which he chooses to call "QBism". Essentially it sees Quantum Mechanics as being nothing more than a method of calculating expectation: i.e., the actual events are specific and the wave functions are no more than a mathematical fiction created in ones mind. This is exactly the interpretation I have been using for over thirty years and a perspective many here seem to find impossible to comprehend. If anyone really wants to understand my perspective on that issue of what we are doing, they should read that article.

 

Please note that Hans has not even considered the issue I have solved: i.e., the absolute and complete generality of the Quantum Mechanics picture. :P That is, I still own my status as a certified "crack-pot" :lol:

 

Have fun -- Dick

[Rade]

Here is the link the 2010 paper by C.A. Fuchs where the term QBism is introduced by Fuchs:

 

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1003/1003.5209v1.pdf

==

 

A 2011 update to the above 2010 paper by Fuchs:

 

http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/QBism.pdf

 

==

See here a Jan 2013 paper by Fuchs and R. Schack on QBism:

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.3274.pdf

 

Edit: Please see Figure 3 in this paper. Correct me if I error, but Figure 3 gets to the essence of what the OP author of this thread is talking about, that " wave functions are no more than a mathematical fiction created in ones mind" !

==

 

For balance, Chris Fields offer a critique of the QBism model presented by Fuchs based on the nature of the wavefunction of the agent (observer):

 

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2024v2.pdf

 

Here from the end of the paper is the major objection of Fields to QBism:

 

"QBism provides no physical distinction between observers and the systems they observe, treating all quantum systems as autonomous agents that respond to observations by updating beliefs and employ quantum mechanics as a “users’ manual” to guide behavior. However, it treats observation itself as a physical process in which an “observer” acts on a “system” with a POVM and the system” selects a POVM component as the “observer’s experience” in return. This requirement renders the assumption that systems be well-defined - i.e. have constant d-impossible to implement operationally. It similarly forces the consistent QBist to regard the environment as an effectively omniscient observer, threatening the fundamental assumption of subjective probabilities and forcing the conclusion that QBist observers cannot segment their environments into objectively separate systems."

Edited May 20, 2013 by Rade

[LaurieAG]

Here from the end of the paper is the major objection of Fields to QBism:

 

"QBism provides no physical distinction between observers and the systems they observe, treating all quantum systems as autonomous agents that respond to observations by updating beliefs and employ quantum mechanics as a “users’ manual” to guide behavior. However, it treats observation itself as a physical process in which an “observer” acts on a “system” with a POVM and the system” selects a POVM component as the “observer’s experience” in return. This requirement renders the assumption that systems be well-defined - i.e. have constant d-impossible to implement operationally. It similarly forces the consistent QBist to regard the environment as an effectively omniscient observer, threatening the fundamental assumption of subjective probabilities and forcing the conclusion that QBist observers cannot segment their environments into objectively separate systems."

That's a good coverage of the issues at hand Rade.

 

If you view the visible universe as finite from an omniscient perspective, ignore the separate part that is not seen, and 'prove' that things like dark energy etc exist under these conventions, you just introduce another layer of superstition and ignore-ance and effectively create another layer of omniscience, beholden to your own Kant.

[CraigD]

This thread reminded me of the present sorry state of my play:family:work balance – reading Hans Christian von Baeyer's "Quantum Wierdness? It's All in Your Mind", June 2013 Scientific American article, I saw that, despite having subscribed to this famous periodical it in some form or another for 30+ years, I’ve not read it since the May 2012 issue. Back in the 1980s, I devoured the paper copies that arrived in my mail each month. At present, circumstances dispose me not to have the time to click through it electronically ‘til someone such as Doctordick mentions an article. :(

 

Enough whining, bitching, and complaining! and to the subject at hand: Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) as Baeyer lays it out in his SciAm article is, first and most obviously, not a scientific theory, but an interpretation of the scientific theory of quantum mechanics. Interpretations of theories fall into a category or human ideas somewhere among “useful learning techniques”, “deep metaphysical and epistemological philosophical inquiries”, and “intellectual cults”. I wasn’t too surprised, then, to find that a style-critical, “baloney detection”-type read of the SciAm article and Christopher Fuchs’s QBism, the Perimeter of Quantum Bayesianism arXiv paper found a lot of emotionally appealing language: "private wave functions", “quantum absurdity”, "personal belief", "meglomaniac's delusion" "two-dimensional creatures of wikipedia" (I’m still trying to puzzle out what Baeyer is trying to insinuate with that one, and hoping whatever it is, I’m not one!) , and that basic critical reading red flag, "of course".

 

My unflattering, unsympathetic digest of the “QBist school” promulgated by Baeyer, Fuchs, and other they mention (Caves, Hill, Schack, etc) is that it’s rooted in intuitive, “it just feels right” realism, a passionate rejection of the nowadays commonly accepted proposition/position (to paraphrase J.B.S Haldane) “reality isn’t just weirder than we know, it’s weirder than you can know”, and (paraphrasing and abusively taking out of context David Mermin and Richard Feynman) “shut up and calculate!”.

 

Sympathetically, I get that the notion that our instinctual grasp of physical reality, based on the experiences of our biologically realized senses, may be inappropriate for understanding deep physics, is emotionally troubling. On an innate, atavistic, emotional level, we humans are disquieted by surprises, and crave a world in which all new knowledge is compatible with old. This craving, however, isn’t IMHO a sound basis for a philosophical school or an interpretation of quantum mechanics.

 

I’m also sympathetic to the observation that purposeful “shut up an calculate” neglect of the philosophical implications of interpreting QM often leads to deeply unsound and unexamined thinking, what I usually term “quantum mysticism” (eg: “quantum physics tells us anything can happen any time for no reason”, “reality is created by God observing every measurement of every wavefunction”). So I believe I get the goal of Baeyer and others’ railing against such things as the "meglomaniac's delusion" or certain reality being created whenever an individual person opens a box to see if the cat in it is alive or dead: to raise protest of unchecked quantum mysticism.

 

But QBism, from the little I’ve yet read of it, is a philosophical school of negation, not affirmation. It states that the most popular interpretations of QM are deeply flawed, hints that an approach to QM based on information theory (the modern family of theories that now include Bayesianism) can produce one that is not. But it doesn’t seem to me very useful as a learning/organizing technique for QM, nor to suggest what well-defined theoretical predictions of physics may be wrong due to the influence of flawed interpretations of theory.

 

My bottom-line misgivings and puzzlement about QBism can be framed around a signal experimental result of which practically everyone who’s sat through a class in modern physics has been lectured: single-photon interference patterns produced by the double-slit experiment. QBism would have us believe that the wavefunctions of the photons involved are imaginary and non-physical representation of the information and lack of information a person or collection of people have about the experiment. Other interpretation of QM would have us believe that the wavefunction of the photons involved are representations of the underlying nature of the position of the photons as ensembles of numbers representing probabilities of a measurement detecting the photon in a particular spatial and temporal extent. The observed interference pattern (in a typically experimental setup, seen on its exposed photographic plate) is easily understood via the latter interpretation of QM, by the explanation that the field of probabilities represented by the wavefunction is real, and is what interferes with itself to produce the observed pattern. I can’t make headway in understanding how QBism can be used to make an equivalent explanation using information theory.

 

I quickly searched Baeyer’s and Fuchs’s articles and papers for a hint of an explanation of the double-slit experiment, finding none. I’d like to see them try one – enough, if I can scrape together the time, to try a letter to SciAm, hoping for a response from Baeyer.

 

Of course, a brilliant answer from someone here at hypography who grasps (if there is really something there to grasp, or which I'm skeptical, QBism) would spare me such effort, and be deeply appreciated :)

[Rade]

CraigD,

 

The authors of this 2012 paper argue the following: "Any model in which a quantum state represents mere information about an underlying physical state of the system, and in which systems that are prepared independently have independent physical states, must make predictions that contradict those of quantum theory".

 

http://people.isy.liu.se/jalar/kurser/QF/assignments/Pusey2012.pdf

[Doctordick]

Hi Craig,

 

It is people like you who give me a little faith that perhaps what I am saying is worth saying.

 

Enough whining, bitching, and complaining! and to the subject at hand: Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) as Baeyer lays it out in his SciAm article is, first and most obviously, not a scientific theory, but an interpretation of the scientific theory of quantum mechanics.

I wouldn't even say “an interpretation”. I would rather categorize it as an assertion of the beliefs he holds; a set which, as you mention later, has holes of it's own. My only point in bringing up his article is that he brings forth the “belief” required by the standard interpretations of quantum mechanics.

 

My unflattering, unsympathetic digest of the “QBist school” promulgated by Baeyer, Fuchs, and other they mention (Caves, Hill, Schack, etc) is that it’s rooted in intuitive, “it just feels right” realism, a passionate rejection of the nowadays commonly accepted proposition/position (to paraphrase J.B.S Haldane) “reality isn’t just weirder than we know, it’s weirder than you can know”, and (paraphrasing and abusively taking out of context David Mermin and Richard Feynman) “shut up and calculate!”.

Feynman is the only professional physicist I ever talked to who showed any interest in following what I had to say. He had agreed to meet with me to get a better picture of my arguments but instead up and died before anything could be arranged. I think he had an inkling of what I was talking about.

 

Sympathetically, I get that the notion that our instinctual grasp of physical reality, based on the experiences of our biologically realized senses, may be inappropriate for understanding deep physics, is emotionally troubling.

I wouldn't argue with you on that at all. Understanding needs to be based on more primitive understanding or it will simply be incomprehensible.

 

On an innate, atavistic, emotional level, we humans are disquieted by surprises, and crave a world in which all new knowledge is compatible with old. This craving, however, isn’t IMHO a sound basis for a philosophical school or an interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Then you would propose the issue be laid aside and forgotten?? Expectations are the only result of any philosophical school of thought (that is exactly why I posted to the “Philosophy of Science” forum and not the “Math and Science” forum. I really have nothing to add to either math or science; but I do have much to add to the question of philosophy of science.

 

I’m also sympathetic to the observation that purposeful “shut up an calculate” neglect of the philosophical implications of interpreting QM often leads to deeply unsound and unexamined thinking ...

So then, let us examine our thinking!

 

My bottom-line misgivings and puzzlement about QBism can be framed around a signal experimental result of which practically everyone who’s sat through a class in modern physics has been lectured: single-photon interference patterns produced by the double-slit experiment. QBism would have us believe that the wavefunctions of the photons involved are imaginary and non-physical representation of the information and lack of information a person or collection of people have about the experiment. Other interpretation of QM would have us believe that the wavefunction of the photons involved are representations of the underlying nature of the position of the photons as ensembles of numbers representing probabilities of a measurement detecting the photon in a particular spatial and temporal extent.

Notice the significance of the phrase “would have us believe” in both of those “philosophic” positions. My position is that “belief” is an issue of religion, not science and one of the problems with modern science is that it is today a religion.

 

The observed interference pattern (in a typically experimental setup, seen on its exposed photographic plate) is easily understood via the latter interpretation of QM, by the explanation that the field of probabilities represented by the wavefunction is real, and is what interferes with itself to produce the observed pattern.

Is it not the explanation itself which is useful? Just why is it necessary to “believe” the “wave function is real”? Isn't it much more important that no internal inconsistency exists in the explanation?

 

I can’t make headway in understanding how QBism can be used to make an equivalent explanation using information theory.

You can't make headway because it cannot provide such an explanation! The complaints put forward by the current theorists are totally valid. It is their “belief” that this requires them to “believe” reality is “weirder than you can know” which is at fault. The correct answer is simply that reality is “what is” and no more. The amount of information required to “know” reality is simply beyond the capability of the human mind. We can however, come up with explanations consistent with what we know: i.e., means of reckoning reasonable explanations. That “means” requires a model of the finite information available to us and a means of referring to that information.

 

What I have done is to construct a model capable of representing absolutely any collection of information and absolutely any explanation of that information. (The critical issue allowing such a thing to be done is the arbitrary nature of “language”!) From that model, I deduce some very important required internal relationships which in fact include both quantum mechanics and general relativity plus a number of other issues not comprehended by modern science: i.e., in a very real sense my work is a philosophic defense of the “shut up and calculate” issue. The difficulty is assuring that all possibilities are included. That can only be done if it is possible to deduce the language of the explanation from the information standing behind the explanation. Everyone here wants to map my deductions into their beliefs without proving their beliefs are valid. I say, why do they not try to prove my model is not absolutely general. I suspect it is because they have no comprehension of my model.

 

I quickly searched Baeyer’s and Fuchs’s articles and papers for a hint of an explanation of the double-slit experiment, finding none. I’d like to see them try one – enough, if I can scrape together the time, to try a letter to SciAm, hoping for a response from Baeyer.

Why don't you do that. I would like to see his response.

 

The real problem there is that the interference is a consequence of the wave function and not simple statistics. Perhaps the mathematics of Baeyer's model includes the deduction of wave mechanics (my deductions certainly require that relationship but I have no knowledge of Baeyer's underlying model of information). Clearly, if the results are to be consistent with Schrödinger's equation the double-slit experiment is explained: the probability of seeing a spread out distribution (no interference) is simply zero. However, I certainly don't count as grasping “Qbism”. You know, every time I see that reference I think “Cubism”.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[AnssiH]

Of course, a brilliant answer from someone here at hypography who grasps (if there is really something there to grasp, or which I'm skeptical, QBism) would spare me such effort, and be deeply appreciated :)

 

This is an old post but... well I can try!

 

I did not read QBism papers carefully, but I do understand how purely epistemological view of QM works, and it really is just plain old naive realism blocking that understanding. ("Naive realism" is not a mocking term, it's just the name of the actual philosophical stance.) Basically people don't think about their beliefs deeply enough. Well, let's do some thinking!

 

My bottom-line misgivings and puzzlement about QBism can be framed around a signal experimental result of which practically everyone who’s sat through a class in modern physics has been lectured: single-photon interference patterns produced by the double-slit experiment. QBism would have us believe that the wavefunctions of the photons involved are imaginary and non-physical representation of the information and lack of information a person or collection of people have about the experiment. Other interpretation of QM would have us believe that the wavefunction of the photons involved are representations of the underlying nature of the position of the photons as ensembles of numbers representing probabilities of a measurement detecting the photon in a particular spatial and temporal extent. The observed interference pattern (in a typically experimental setup, seen on its exposed photographic plate) is easily understood via the latter interpretation of QM, by the explanation that the field of probabilities represented by the wavefunction is real, and is what interferes with itself to produce the observed pattern. I can’t make headway in understanding how QBism can be used to make an equivalent explanation using information theory.

 

Let's first be clear about what the problem is exactly. If you take the wave function as real, you run into trouble by the time you need to define "observation".

 

The fundamental problem with those kinds of interpretations is that, on one hand observation can only be seen as an act of acquiring information from the system, while on other hand - in accordance to the quantum rules - that observation must also affect the system "in reality" in such a way, that the wave function collapses into a particular state.

 

You can't say the double slit experiment is "easily understood" by traditional interpretation. If you do, it only implies you don't understand the quantum strangeness implied by it, just like Feynman always complained.

 

There are a number of thought experiments and real experiments indicating clearly, that you cannot take away that purely epistemological component (of observation seemingly affecting the system) from the soup, and as long as you have it in there, you are always implying that the mere act of acquiring knowledge about some system would magically change its state "in reality", from a wave-like superposition, to a single state. The most pronounced example is any delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, where you place photon detectors to detect some states, but after the measurement you erase it in a way that you cannot possible later acquire information about what was measured. If you view those experiments with naive realistic goggles, it is almost as if the actual past changes, depending on whether or not you decide to press "delete" on already measured information.

 

So, at that junction, there is quite obvious motivation to try and interpret the collapse of the wave function as an epistemological feature; only our knowledge of the system collapses. The reason why almost every physicist argues that this is not possible is because they have not thought very deeply about what they believe they know about reality. Those believes make that option seem quite impossible.

 

They start from the assumption that there are such things as photons and atoms and electrons and space and time, instead of considering what kind of information actually leads to a validity of such representation of reality.

 

Let's take a few steps back, and look at what is it that we mean by a photon in the double slit experiment. We have information of some observable state change at the "source" which in accordance to our world view implies "a photon was emitted".

 

Then we have some observable state change at the target, which in accordance to our world views implies "a photon was received". Be it a detector at one of the slits, or at the back wall, or wherever at all.

 

There exists no information at all about what exactly happened in between those state changes. There's no way of knowing why the first state change "here" would lead to the next state change "there". It is our world view that implies there was a photon, or a wave function, or whatever you wish to put there.

 

Is there really any reason to believe things like photons exist, just because using them to represent reality is approximately valid way to draw expectations? Should we assume that, there actually is an electron that actually teleports from one orbit to another, and at the same moment an actual entity called "photon" magically appears from out of nowhere, and starts its flight, until another electron elsewhere just so happens to catch it (whatever an "identity" of a photon could mean), and puts it into its magical undetectable bag of photons waiting to be released later?

 

When you really think deeply about any given language that we might use to think about reality, you can easily find incredibly naive ideas in there, that really have no purpose to be taken realistically. When you think deep enough, you realize the entirety of your world view is just a collection of undefendable ideas. The only defense is always just the fact that the collection of ideas is self-consistent. There's no way to change that, it's just is the name of the game; we always have to generate somewhat "silly mental language" about reality, in order to categorize it in our minds into something generic and simple for prediction purposes.

 

The philosophical stance that that categorization is also the way reality is, is nothing but good old naive realism.

 

So let's take a more epistemological view of double slit experiment. We know that quantum formalism is valid to a very high degree of accuracy. So as long as it remains valid, here's what we know; we do know that any state change that in naive realistic terminology implies "a photon was emitted from the source", will give us a reason to expect a state change elsewhere, that in naive terminoogy is taken as "the catching of said photon".

 

We have absolutely no idea WHY it is so in reality, we just know that's a valid expectation, based on our past experiences. (Or in more naive realistic stance; based on the world view we have built out of our past experiences)

 

Now if you change the setup in any way, be it adding detectors to the slit or whatever, you are also changing what our expectations for the observable state changes would be. And there's nothing mysterious about that, if you only take the QM formalism as valid "for some reason", period.

 

It is only when you view that experiment from naive realistic goggles, that you will get into the mystery of how does the system know beforehand what is to be observed, and also, which ones of those observations are to be erased.

 

Look here;

 

The authors of this 2012 paper argue the following: "Any model in which a quantum state represents mere information about an underlying physical state of the system, and in which systems that are prepared independently have independent physical states, must make predictions that contradict those of quantum theory".

 

http://people.isy.liu.se/jalar/kurser/QF/assignments/Pusey2012.pdf

 

Here's the most basic complaint from the naive realistic camp, just represented with more exact mathematical language than usually (which makes it seem little bit more complex than it is).

 

They are committing exactly the error I am complaining about; They are essentially describing an entanglement experiment, which from naive realistic stance means, for example, you measure the polarization of a photon "here", which appears to affect the polarization of a photon "there", even though the measurements are spatially separated, and simultaneous in a lab-frame. I could describe this in very many different ways through all kinds of different interpretations, but that is quite moot exercise...

 

The importat error is they think that an epistemological interpretation of the experiment means, that we'd nevertheless believe there REALLY ARE such things as photons in flight, and they really would have some particular real state at all times through the experiment, but our knowledge would be limited to hop between observable states; the in-between states would be represented as all possibilities interfering with each others.

 

Actually an epistemological interpretation means, there is a state change that implies two photons took off in opposite directions, and we draw our expectations from quantum formalism, without arguing AT ALL why it's valid. Meaning, without assuming there actually are photons in flight; reality could take countless of forms to generate the same observations.

 

The same formalism will tell us the probabilities of finding such state changes that in naive realistic terms imply "such polarizations of those photons". Basically, observing the polarization of one photon will serve as an act of "acquiring knowledge about the system"; that knowledge changes our expectations about the other photon, the moment we acquire the knowledge. We don't stretch our beliefs to assume there is another photon in flight that actually has some real state, which will change on the instant we observe the other photon. (If we did, we could not justify the expectations we observe at the other end... that's basically the complaint of the paper)

 

We do not know anything about why or how the system got to the states we observed, all we know is that quantum formalism is valid to a high degree of accuracy, and again it yielded CORRECT expectations no matter which way we look at the system.

 

Any argument against that idea must be in the form of "but IF reality is such and such, then what?".

 

The obvious question in most people's minds at this junction is "but reality must exist in SOME form, right? And if so, it must be possible to represent that form correctly! Are you saying we should give up trying to understand reality?"

 

No I am not saying that. I'm saying the problem should be analyzed little bit from a purely logical point of view before banging your head on those walls that logically cannot possibly be broken.

 

What if I told you, that it is possible to show with explicit math, that quantum formalism can be seen as a valid method of drawing expectations from ANY source of information, given that you DEFINE the meaning of the information in a particular way? I.e. take a large number of undefined state changes, and have an unrestricted power to define the meaning of those state changes in any way or fashion you'd like, and you can always construct a valid view where the entities you defined will obey quantum mechanical rules, exactly. That is basically the argument DD is trying to get at. That means, if his math is valid, it is also an explicit proof that purely epistemological interpretation of quantum mechanics is perfectly valid.

 

Meaning, any naive realistic interpretation is merely additional to the fact that QM must already be valid for purely logical reasons. ANY additional naive realistic interpretation is always possible, and they cannot be conclusively proven false, but knowing why they are always possible, you realize they are also always as hilariously unnecessary, as the idea of gods used to explain reality. You can bang your head on that wall all you want, but you can never break through it.

 

Sorry about the length, but I think the subject matter justifies it, this is not too simple to explain.

 

-Anssi

[Doctordick]

I did not read QBism papers carefully, but I do understand how purely epistemological view of QM works, and it really is just plain old naive realism blocking that understanding. ("Naive realism" is not a mocking term, it's just the name of the actual philosophical stance.) Basically people don't think about their beliefs deeply enough. Well, let's do some thinking!

I think you hit the nail on the head! People just don't like to think; not even the supposed intellectuals. That is the thought which resides behind my “signature - the most popular abuse of the power of knowledge is to use it to hide stupidity.” When I was in graduate school I dealt with many scientists, including staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and not one of them seemed interested in thinking (except for Richard Feynman who had to go and die shortly after letting me know he was interested in talking to me). Maybe God doesn't want anyone to know of my thoughts.

 

By the way, my book The Foundations of Physical Reality is now available on amazon.com but apparently interests no one. Well I guess that is how life is!

 

Let's first be clear about what the problem is exactly. If you take the wave function as real, you run into trouble by the time you need to define "observation".

 

The fundamental problem with those kinds of interpretations is that, on one hand observation can only be seen as an act of acquiring information from the system, while on other hand - in accordance to the quantum rules - that observation must also affect the system "in reality" in such a way, that the wave function collapses into a particular state.

 

You can't say the double slit experiment is "easily understood" by traditional interpretation. If you do, it only implies you don't understand the quantum strangeness implied by it, just like Feynman always complained.

As you have commented a number of times, the real issue is naive realism. Naive realism is very analogous to belief in God. In many respects it does indeed close down alternate explanations. The simple view that quantum mechanics is no more than a prediction mechanism based on what we think we know is much more rational than a reality which includes a “collapse of the wave function".

 

So, at that junction, there is quite obvious motivation to try and interpret the collapse of the wave function as an epistemological feature; only our knowledge of the system collapses. The reason why almost every physicist argues that this is not possible is because they have not thought very deeply about what they believe [math]\cdots[/math]

As I said people don't like to think and this is an important fact when it comes to people who earn their living by means of "knowing"!!!

 

They start from the assumption that there are such things as [math]\cdots[/math]

 

Let's take a few steps back, and look at what is it that we mean [math]\cdots[/math]

 

It is our world view that implies there was a photon, or a wave function, or whatever you wish to put there.

Try to convince any “religionist” that their beliefs are internally inconsistent. You will fail!

 

When you really think deeply about any given language that we might use to think about reality, you can easily find incredibly naive ideas in there, that really have no purpose to be taken realistically. When you think deep enough, you realize the entirety of your world view is just a collection of undefendable ideas. The only defense is always just the fact that the collection of ideas is self-consistent.

Just as other “religionists” believe, the greatest of our scientists “believe their ideas are self-consistent.” Note that Einstein's “theory of relativity” is still considered a factual relationship in spite of the fact that it is admittedly inconsistent with quantum mechanics. A fact which has been known by most scientists for almost a hundred years. The central issue here is that you cannot fight beliefs.

 

[math]\cdots[/math] if you only take the QM formalism as valid "for some reason", period.

 

It is only when you view that experiment from naive realistic goggles, that you will get into the mystery of how does the system know beforehand what is to be observed, and also, which ones of those observations are to be erased.

I can not comprehend why things you put so clearly can not be comprehended by others.

 

As I write this “How the Universe Works” is playing on TV in the background. I am listening to Michio Kaku spout un-thoughtout “supposed facts” about this universe - “the holy goal of science”. Anssi, I don't think we are going to reach anyone. None the less, I appreciate your attempts. I sent a copy of my book to Michio and have received absolutely no response. I suspect it met the trash can without even a first thought.

 

I'm saying the problem should be analyzed little bit from a purely logical point of view before banging your head on those walls that logically cannot possibly be broken.

Oh how I wish there were others who felt that way.

 

Meaning, any naive realistic interpretation is merely additional to the fact that QM must already be valid for purely logical reasons. ANY additional naive realistic interpretation is always possible, and they cannot be conclusively proven false, but knowing why they are always possible, you realize they are also always as hilariously unnecessary, as the idea of gods used to explain reality. You can bang your head on that wall all you want, but you can never break through it.

You need to read my latest post on this forum.

 

Thank you Anssi, for your kind and thoughtful support.

 

Have fun -- Dick

[AnssiH]

I can not comprehend why things you put so clearly can not be comprehended by others.

 

I had already forgotten that post, and now that I re-read it it seems pretty clear to me too. It would be interesting to understand what CraigD thinks about it... Craig?

 

As I write this “How the Universe Works” is playing on TV in the background. I am listening to Michio Kaku spout un-thoughtout “supposed facts” about this universe - “the holy goal of science”. Anssi, I don't think we are going to reach anyone. None the less, I appreciate your attempts. I sent a copy of my book to Michio and have received absolutely no response. I suspect it met the trash can without even a first thought.

 

I would be extremely surprised if Michio Kaku spent time on trying to understand it. But you never know I guess... My problem with his presentations is that in the attempt to simplify the issues he has also distorted them so far from the actual facts, that I cannot even verify whether he himself understands the theories he talks about. I mean, he may be making false statements because it was just an unsuccesfull attempt to simplify something into simple ontological language, or because he doesn't understand the actual underlying facts properly? Verifying this would be very difficult.

 

You might have better luck with fresher minds who are looking at quantum theories from more information theoretical point of view. For instance Scott Aaronson;

 

http://www.scottaaronson.com/

 

There are others out there as well, but even for those who are already thinking about the issues I'm representing in my post above, it may not be immediately obvious for them to connect your book directly to that issue before actually reading it.

 

Well, at least it's out there now.

 

You need to read my latest post on this forum.

 

I just read it, and I think Turtle is right in that you should be more careful with how you come across in your responses. It can come off as aggressive and that in itself often locks up people's thinking faculties. The fact that Sman responded to your post implies he is more or less interested of the subject. He might have been open to learn more about the subject had he just been exposed to it, but your response will probably just make him spend all his thinking powers coming up with defenses for the view he expressed.

 

That is how people get locked up to merely defending the little ontological circles they represented, and trying to find anything in your representation that they can interpret in some way as to convince themselves that there is a flaw in there, and sub-sequently convince themselves that one flaw means there are more flaws that don't even need to be found... In some ways, the more intelligent they are, the better they are at convincing themselves that they had the right picture all along... It is a pure cop-out preventing them from taking a step back and looking at the higher level issue you are trying to represent.

 

Isn't it ironic how most people spend most of their thinking powers trying to think of ways to stop thinking! It is difficult to make people think even if you give them soft landing, and even harder of you rile them up to it. Just don't let your frustration show, instead focus on stating cold hard facts in neutral manner. Some people will stop and think about those facts, most people won't.

 

As to how I was able to understand what you are saying, I'm tempted to explain it little bit more deeply than I have so far. The way I think about things seems to be quite different from the way most people think about things, and I also try to decouple my emotions from my logical thinking, which is not natural for a human being at all, it requires conscious effort.

 

"They must find it difficult, those who have so long mistaken authority as truth, rather than take truth as authority".

 

I realized a long time ago that most people are not thinking logically much at all, in that everybody around me held the belief system supported by the culture around us, without questioning it. Everybody are raised inside the belief system of their parents, neighbours, friends... And most people never question that arbitrarily chosen belief system throughout their lives. But at the same time, almost everybody are ready to defend their belief system to the death, without further examination.

 

We live in a world where most people are more willing to kill and to die for the preservation of their arbitrary cultural beliefs than to think about the fundamental issues behind their conflicts. They are so convinced their beliefs are true, that they think God and the Universe itself relies on them preserving those beliefs.

 

And anyone questioning that perspective is merely unpatriotic fool, an evil man, a communist, a capitalist, or any other cop-out concept created to avoid thinking about the real issues.

 

The single most tragic cop-out that blocks thinking is the perspective that world conflicts originate from evil people doing evil deeds, and ought to be destroyed. When actually all the conflicts are easily traceable to game theoretical behaviour of groups of people who mean well, but are unwilling to think.

 

Even people who express the sentiment that reality is not really a battle between good and evil but rather it's all pretty grey, in the next sentence turn around and say things like "except Hitler.... oh, and those guys who flew those planes to the towers. Oh yeah and Saddam. Clearly evil."

 

Well guess what... Hitler saw the world as a battle between good and evil, where evil needed to be destroyed. And how many of you reading this ever spent a minute researching the history behind those attacks, instead of just deciding "these people are obviously evil and that's that". And what was the reason for western powers to push Saddam into power again? Wasn't it... oh that's right, battle against evil.

 

To think about the reasons behind those acts is not an admittance to their necessity! To understand what led to those acts is very important. The real tragedy is that history repeats itself by the unwillingness of masses to understand anything about those events. I see this type of ignorance hurting the entire mankind very severely all the time.

 

This rather lengthy tangent was necessary to really demonstrate how deeply important I think it is to break free from the idiotic circles that most people subject themselves to. Authority is completely meaningless to me as a source of knowledge, apart from knowing that this is their opinion, to be used as material for thinking about the underlying issues myself.

 

And the "common beliefs" of the masses only serve me as an example of what's the consequence of taking the authority as truth to avoid thinking. The worst kind of non-thinker is the person who has decided that "common belief" is the authority; the person who assumes others have already done the thinking for them... That is how religions that explicitly command people to not think for themselves ("for you are only human") are so immensely powerful in the world.

 

The last time I really had to fight back my anger on this forum was when someone suggested I was simply following DD's words as authority and in reality I didn't even understanding what DD was saying. The reason this would spark an emotional response on me should be understood from above. I myself did view that comment as another cop-out created in someone's mind to explain how is it possible that two people would appear to agree on something that appeared to be so fatally inconsistent.

 

The matter of the fact is that DD's opinions are meaningless to me apart from being his opinions that I could examine. The real reason why we see eye to eye is that I actually spent time thinking about the logical issues behind his representation unemotionally, instead of seeking ways to avoid thinking about it.

 

Thinking about cold hard facts without emotions, and thinking about what can be known and what cannot be known, and so identifying what are beliefs and what are facts, is the very definition of science.

 

Most people who think of themselves as scientific don't even know what scientific means. They think (tacitly or otherwise) that being scientific means "to believe in scientific theories". But in accordance to the definition of science, it means almost the opposite; to NOT BELIEVE in these theories. It means, to question them! To master a theory is to understand the ways in which it is wrong! It means, to understand that we do not know about things!

 

I often watch religious debates in horror, when the supposedly "scientific" side proclaims that the problem with the opposition is that their perspective cannot be falsified, whereas the scientific side can be... ...only to turn around in the next sentence and start defending the theories themselves! What hope does the opposition have to understand what scientific philosophy means, if the defense itself doesn't even understand it? I have exactly once seen anyone bringing up this fact in those debates (It was Brian Greene, of all the people...)

 

-Anssi