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Quantum Physics Parts Ways With Reality
aeoneal sends us to PhysicsWeb for news guaranteed to induce headache in those wedded to the reality of, well, reality. Researchers from the University of Vienna have shown the violation of a stronger form of Bell's inequality known as Leggett's inequality. The result means that we must not only give up Einstein's hope of "no spooky action at a distance," we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking. From the article: "[Studies] have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption — realism, locality, or both — is discordant with quantum mechanics." From the Nature abstract: "Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned." Only subscribers to Nature, alas, can know what features those are, as PhysicsWeb doesn't tell us.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
sounds like some meetings i've been in
closing my eyes at the age of four i knew the reality around me did not exist, so nobody could see me!
If you ask me, most of the people studying this sort of thing lost touch with reality long ago...
This comment is always the first post, as long as you are observing it. That's because by observing this comment you are not observing any previous comments, therefore they cease to exist!
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
And no one is there to hear it, it doesn't make a noise... because it doesn't exist?
How are we in some way special that "observing" something makes it exist or converge to a single state or whatever? Are we not merely objects of matter that inhabit the universe just like everything else in it? Moreover, the universe existed before we were there to observe it. It seems to me that "observation" is a red herring. I prefer Penrose's hypothesis that it is gravity that causes superpositions to converge, which is why tiny objects can be in states of superposition, while macroscopic ones do not.
I found the following summary on the web from its conclusion:
"We have experimentally excluded a class of important non-local hidden-variable theories. In an attempt to model quantum correlations of entangled states, the theories under consideration assume realism, a source emitting classical mixtures of polarized particles (for which Malus' law is valid) and arbitrary non-local dependencies via the measurement devices. Besides their natural assumptions, the main appealing feature of these theories is that they allow us both to model perfect correlations of entangled states and to explain all existing Bell-type experiments. We believe that the experimental exclusion of this particular class indicates that any non-local extension of quantum theory has to be highly counterintuitive. For example, the concept of ensembles of particles carrying definite polarization could fail. Furthermore, one could consider the breakdown of other assumptions that are implicit in our reasoning leading to the inequality. These include Aristotelian logic, counterfactual definiteness, absence of actions into the past or a world that is not completely deterministic. We believe that our results lend strong support to the view that any future extension of quantum theory that is in agreement with experiments must abandon certain features of realistic descriptions."
_______________________
I may be a simple man but a breakdown in Aristotelian logic? What are they going to use to argue against logic? I would assume logic.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Anything in their argument is fair game: Logic, the existence of sets of photons, and the absence of faster then light communication. I hope for the last one.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
was created when I was born and will end when I die.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
An experimental test of non-local realism
Simon Gröblacher1,2, Tomasz Paterek3,4, Rainer Kaltenbaek1, S caronaslav Brukner1,2, Marek Z dotukowski1,3, Markus Aspelmeyer1,2 & Anton Zeilinger1,2
1. Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
2. Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
3. Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdansk, ul. Wita Stwosza 57, PL-08-952 Gdansk, Poland
4. The Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics (ESI), Boltzmanngasse 9, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Correspondence to: Markus Aspelmeyer1,2Anton Zeilinger1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.A. (Email: markus.aspelmeyer@quantum.at) or A.Z. (Email: zeilinger-office@quantum.at).
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Abstract
Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism'--a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that defy locality. Here we show by both theory and experiment that a broad and rather reasonable class of such non-local realistic theories is incompatible with experimentally observable quantum correlations. In the experiment, we measure previously untested correlations between two entangled photons, and show that these correlations violate an inequality proposed by Leggett for non-local realistic theories. Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.
Physical realism suggests that the results of observations are a consequence of properties carried by physical systems. It remains surprising that this tenet is very little challenged, as its significance goes far beyond science. Quantum physics, however, questions this concept in a very deep way. To maintain a realistic description of nature, non-local hidden-variable theories are being discussed as a possible completion of quantum theory. They offer to explain intrinsic quantum phenomena--above all, quantum entanglement1--by non-local influences. Up to now, however, it has not been possible to test such theories in experiments. We present an inequality, similar in spirit to the seminal one given by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt2 on local hidden variables, that allows us to test an important class of non-local hidden-variable theories against quantum theory. The theories under test provide an explanation of all existing two-qubit Bell-type experiments. Our derivation is based on a recent incompatibility theorem by Leggett3, which we extend so as to make it applicable to real experimental situations and also to allow simultaneous tests of all local hidden-variable models. Finally, we perform an experiment that violates the new inequality and hence excludes for the first time a broad class of non-local hidden-variable theories.
Quantum theory gives only probabilistic predictions for individual events. Can one go beyond this? Einstein's view4, 5 was that quantum theory does not provide a complete description of physical reality: "While we have thus shown that the wavefunction does not provide a complete description of the physical reality, we left open the question of whether or not such a description exists. W
Whatever leaves our PoV, ceases to be rendered. That, or the experiment's wrong. But were's the fun in that?
Demented But Determined.
Every time I read one of these things that seem to mix physics and philosophy, I wonder how bored school kids in the 24th century will mock current scientific thought, although quantum entanglement would be pretty cool if an applicable use was found for it.
The question about the falling tree in the forest making a noise is dependent on the existence of an observer?
Only subscribers to Nature, alas, can know what features those are, as PhysicsWeb doesn't tell us.
The theory presented by the author vanishes unless there's an article to document his conclusions, and if nobody reads his article...
you can find here http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529.
meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it
So I guess this means that a tree falling in a forest DOES make a sound even if nobody is there to hear it.
we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking
Does this mean that sticking your head in the sand actually works?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
this is a test to see if unread comments on slashdot really exist
if you are reading this, congratulations, you have participated in bringing this comment into reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Theists have a ready answer to these problems. God's always watching, therefore there's always somebody observing, and thus maintaining reality. The clockmaker universe guys known as Deists have a bit of trouble though. Who is their observer?
... for news guaranteed to induce headache in those wedded to the reality of, well, reality.
It's a no brainer that marrying a real woman would be more trouble than marrying a virtual woman.
Time to get some new words, because QM has gone off the deep end as to what those words they're using actually mean.
That the chair I'm sitting in can affect and be effected by, oh, the Voyager spacecraft in a shorter spacetime than c allows does not mean that either my chair or the spacecraft do not actually exist if they are not observed. It may mean that the concept of my "cone of effect" is a bad one, and that I am not solely affected by those things within X distance of me.
Quantum Mechanics is a terrible term in and of itself, and essentially every part of it is handicapped by having equally terrible names applied thereof. Words with actual meaning are used in a way entirely separate from their meaning, because scientists, by and large, could not be bothered to coin genuinely new terms. Science suffers for this, and the mind-numbingly slow pace of advancement on the cutting edge is only half the problem.
The universe uses portal-based rendering. The only question now is, is it Direct3D or OpenGL?
There is no more reality than that what I see now in this instant. If I walk to the next room I will begin to recreate as soon as I get near. You are not reading this because I can't see you. I didn't kill any Iraquis because I don't see they any more. This reality is just another dream.
Of course reality exists when you aren't looking. This is the same old crap about "Science can't prove that the Sun will rise tomorrow, thus the Universe is unknowable."
This may be some form of Schroedinger's Cat.
Paging Dr Hume!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I think the current generation of scientist, having grown up in a quantum world with the standard model, is growing even more distant from the common person. As much so as the astronaut who has seen the spheroid earth and the common person like myself. Students of the physical science has grown up measuring the speed of light, determining the mass charge ration of a single electron, observing quantum effects not only noticing the collapsing wave when the path is known, but also observing quantum effects in a scanning tunneling microscope. And while these are not necessarily direct experiences, they do satisfy the goals of primary experiences. There are, so to speak, more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
In the end, it seems to that reality changes as we expand our experiences. Assuming that reality is what we currently believe to be true is certainly convenient, but hardly leads to progress. Spooky action a distance, though not ideal, might be what is real. The same for truly randomness at some level. Denying either of these is like denying the validity of special relativity in the hope of saving the simple, deterministic, newtonian mechanics.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Two electrons are sitting on a bench in the park. Another electron comes walking by and says, "Hi there, can I come sit with you?", to which the electrons reply, "Don't be ridiculous, we aren't Bosons."
We've known for a couple decades that EPR made local hidden variable theories extremely unlikely. The real competitors are non-local. Bohmian mechanics (de-Broglie pilot wave theory, really) is one such. Bohmian mechanics make all the same experimental predictions as normal Quantum Mechanics. Bohmians tend to think of Quantum Mechanics as a non-local theory that only appears local because you talk about probabilities instead of positions. The probabilities of Bohmian mechanics are actually just as local as Quantum Mechanics...
Not that Bohmian mechanics should be viewed as a correct theory. It's clearly an artificial construct. But it's a better theory than QM for the simple fact that it talks about particle positions instead of observers. One assumes, after all, that physics goes on even when physicists aren't there to observe it.
ARTICLE
Nature 446, 871-875 (19 April 2007) Received 22 December 2006; Accepted 13 February 2007
An experimental test of non-local realism
Simon Gröblacher1,2, Tomasz Paterek3,4, Rainer Kaltenbaek1, S caronaslav Brukner1,2, Marek Z dotukowski1,3, Markus Aspelmeyer1,2 & Anton Zeilinger1,2
1. Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
2. Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
3. Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdansk, ul. Wita Stwosza 57, PL-08-952 Gdansk, Poland
4. The Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics (ESI), Boltzmanngasse 9, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Correspondence to: Markus Aspelmeyer1,2Anton Zeilinger1,2 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to M.A. (Email: markus.aspelmeyer@quantum.at) or A.Z. (Email: zeilinger-office@quantum.at).
Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism'--a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that defy locality. Here we show by both theory and experiment that a broad and rather reasonable class of such non-local realistic theories is incompatible with experimentally observable quantum correlations. In the experiment, we measure previously untested correlations between two entangled photons, and show that these correlations violate an inequality proposed by Leggett for non-local realistic theories. Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.
Physical realism suggests that the results of observations are a consequence of properties carried by physical systems. It remains surprising that this tenet is very little challenged, as its significance goes far beyond science. Quantum physics, however, questions this concept in a very deep way. To maintain a realistic description of nature, non-local hidden-variable theories are being discussed as a possible completion of quantum theory. They offer to explain intrinsic quantum phenomena--above all, quantum entanglement1--by non-local influences. Up to now, however, it has not been possible to test such theories in experiments. We present an inequality, similar in spirit to the seminal one given by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt2 on local hidden variables, that allows us to test an important class of non-local hidden-variable theories against quantum theory. The theories under test provide an explanation of all existing two-qubit Bell-type experiments. Our derivation is based on a recent incompatibility theorem by Leggett3, which we extend so as to make it applicable to real experimental situations and also to allow simultaneous tests of all local hidden-variable models. Finally, we perform an experiment that violates the new inequality and hence excludes for the first time a broad class of non-local hidden-variable theories.
Quantum theory gives only probabilistic predictions for individual events. Can one go beyond this? Einstein's view4, 5 was that quantum theory does not provide a complete description of physical reality: "While we have thus shown that the wavefunction does not provide a complete description of the physi
A site can still get slashdotted even if I don't look at it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If the theory of evolution is correct, and we did not always exist in our current form, which means we have not been around to observe the universe through most of its life, how does it exist? Perhpas it was created spontaneously? Spooky!!!!!!
Quantum mechanics works at the level of the atom; I think it's safe to say that when I go to bed tonight, my house and all its furnishings are not suddenly going to cease to exist or even waver in their existence while I'm dreaming.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
They killed the goose. It means the door is still open to wierd ideas like FTL, causality breakdown, the world as a simulation, the infinite probability drive, the bistromathic drive and oh, er, uhm, magic. It leers sideways at the anthropic principle, saying that the laws of the universe may be appropriate for human life but still appear to have a good deal of wiggle room, if not fully fledged bandersnatches and snarks hiding in wait. It means the rock-solid, steel-cased words physicists used to use to describe the world are really squishy, feeble things you wouldn't want to bet your life on. "Light Cone" indeed! You, giggling yes you, go out into the hall.
Consciousness is clearly the hidden variable here.
This explains:
- why the intentions of the experimenter affects the results of an experiment
- how consciousness translates to free will and movement in our 3D reality
It also explains the uncomfortable when you don't look at it, it doesn't exist thing. It's not so much that it doesn't exist per say, it's just that it hasn't decayed ( collapsed the wave function ) into 4D space-time, because the process of the collapse of the way function requires an observer. But it still exists, just enfolded into a higher reality that we don't ( usually ) perceive.
I gave up reality a while ago.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
... unless somebody sees them, then they do! Hey, GW ... *now* I understand! That's why we have to keep looking!
Student: I'm enlightened: reality is an illusion.
Master: (hits student with a cane)
From what I have read, the inequality violations can not be used to communicate information faster than the speed of light. From a purely philosophical standpoint, without even getting into any math, reality by definition requires observers and for the most part people observe different things. When people exchange information, they have a more complete understanding of their collective experiences. It's nonsensical to speak of reality outside of that collective experience.
This is the same old crap about "Science can't prove that the Sun will rise tomorrow, thus the Universe is unknowable."
One may be able to predict future outcome based on current/past state with some degree of accuracy, but claiming that anything can ever be KNOWN smells of religious fanaticism to me. Science is built to adapt, not to "prove" antiquated theories and latch on to them forever.
Of course reality exists when you aren't looking.
I would argue that perfect destruction and recreation of reality would be impossible for us to detect. Much as a virtual machine can start and stop its unknowing inhabitants at will, I don't see any compelling reason why we couldn't exist in a similar confinement. I certainly don't agree that this is a simple matter of common sense as you imply.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
It could also be that our probability theory is wrong. Probabilty theory is only a mathematical model, albeit a successful one.
Exotic Probability theories preserve locality and realism though can be difficult to accept if you're a frequentist...
"quantum entanglement would be pretty cool if an applicable use was found for it.
Applications already exist, at least if you count the demonstration of instantaneous transfer of information regardless of distance. And this experiment is years old.
So yes, quantum entanglement is indeed pretty cool.
As I read it they're not saying anything about the universe not existing when nobody's looking.
Quantum mechanics has a set of descriptions of matter/energy that "feel" incomplete.
To "classical physics" thinking the collapse of wave functions of entangled particles seems to require either some faster-than-light communication between the entangled particles (to tell the far one about how the near one was observed - violation of "locality") or some hidden variable (to carry information slower-than-light from the point in space-time where they became entangled to the point where each is observed - "realism" would include this hidden variable as part of the particles' state). Quantum mechanics doesn't describe either. It just describes a situation where this sort of thing just happens - in a way that you can't use it to carry information faster than light from one spacetime location to another.
Lots of work is being done to see if quantum mechanics can be "patched" into a more classical theory, in a way that preserves realism and locality by figuring out some way that a hidden variable can carry, from the entanglement to the observation at no more than lightspeed, the information necessary for a classical mechanism to produce the same result.
This work shows that some simple experiments have already eliminated a very broad class of such hidden variable theories - to the point that "realism" patches involving hidden variables carrying additional information with the particles looks pretty hopeless. This is another step toward the "quantum mechanics really is all there is to it" viewpoint.
(Of course I Am Not A Physicist so I could be reading it wrong.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
if you are wedded to the reality of reality, how would knowing that reality exists when youre not looking make you sad? i dont understand the summary.
If history repeats itself, why can't we study the future?
Or is this just an updated version of the silliness of "where did existance come from?"
I think therefore I am?
Existance and consciousness have one thing in common. They either exist or they don't, there is no inbetween.
But then maybe this articles theory explains alot....
Scientists have figured out that when you play the peekaboo game, the other person doesn't really disappear.
As far as I can tell, this basically says that, if a piece of matter is not effecting any other pieces of matter (or being effected by them - but that's really the same thing) it is impossible to prove that it exists. Is this news? Nope. I've been telling that to people for years, as part of my "it is impossible to prove that the universe, or anything else, exists" spiel.
Here's another idea: prove that water is wet. Or prove that heat doesn't really exist. Both of those are old, old news.
No need for Nature, you can read the preprint at: http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529
...and he is us.
I've always felt that I am the result of everyone else's imagination...
Bread really is the "Body of Christ"... just don't look at it!
I suggest you read Slashdot
We use quantum entanglement to trap insects and have bugfights!
And kids these days, talk about easy! download everything with bit torrent! Back in the day, when we wanted to get tangled up quantums, we had to chase them down with our packs of trained assault badgers, then lasso them with poison ivy vines! And we ~liked it~ that way!
It's pretty damned obvious that quantum physics is just the PVS (potentially-visible set) scheme used by the simulator that runs the Universe. Just as a game doesn't bother rendering objects that aren't in anyone's view frustum, the Universe does not expend processing power rendering objects that aren't being hit by photons.
Consider a cat of the Schroedinger subspecies. In the experiment, it is neither alive nor dead until observed. A rock, positioned near the detection apparatus, can observe the result. So for the rock, the cat is either alive or dead. But until YOU observe the rock, you don't know whether the rock is happy that the cat is alive, or sad that the cat will never again rub it's tail against the quartz inclusion on the rock's lower anterior surface. The quantum wave-function describing the cat has collapsed with respect to the rock, but to you the quantum wave-function of the cat and the rock are now entangled; in fact, by observing the rock and causing its quantum wave function to collapse, you will also cause the quantum wave function of the cat to collapse... but in both cases, it is collapsing for YOU, the observer. Every other observer has to make them collapse for themselves by either observing something the cat/rock, or observing something that has already collapsed those wave-functions for itself.
Sorry man, but the universe isn't obliged to live up to the expectations that you've developed based on your highly limited experience with the laws of physics. You've observed light in the 300nm to 800nm range, you've observed matter in the 1 milligram to 10 tonne range moving at velocities in the 0.0 m/s to 600.0 m/s range, and just maybe some matter in the 10 gram to 1 microgram range moving at velocities up to 1000 m/s. But man, that ain't shit. The world contains matter moving at up to 0.999999 C, blocks of matter so cold that void of space is over a trillion times warmer, particles that change from antimatter to matter for no apparent reason, and photons energetic enough to shred the nuclei of atoms like a Kattus-Schroedingerus shreds catnip-infused kleenex. There are particles whose position is so inherently imprecise that they have trouble turning because they would start colliding with themselves (like humble electron, for example). There are gobs of matter so weighty that they curve space forming telescopes that are light-years long.
If you think you have even the vaguest conception of how the universe works, then you are inherently wrong, because Human's can't conceive of how the universe works by any means. If you even attempt to apply common sense to the universe, you'll never be able to accept any of the research that actually explains how computers, lasers, DNA, proteins, and light-bulbs work.
As per the tradition in new-school quantum physics, the original article is of course available for everyone at arxiv.org: http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529. (Nature articles are a bit special -- they are submitted to the "preprint archive" after they are published...)
I always said that we lived in a computer simulated Matrix, and this just proves that the Matrix is optimized to speed up things when we're not looking. Think about it: we only see a minimal part of our surrounding world, does the Matrix need to execute quantum probabilities, or even atomic-level algorithms for the myriads of galaxies and stars and cosmic clouds or black holes, when we only see gravitational and electro-magnetic effects ? Well, no, obviously not.
Does the Matrix need to perform cat in the box games when must humans beings are not using super-mega accelerators ? No.
In fact, I'm beginning to think that I've been elected to tell the truth to you, poor, insignificant and ignorant virtual reality-zombies. But I can't prove it, so I'm still hesitating.
Quoted from the issue:
;-) experiment has to do with polarized photon pairs where the polarizations must be different. When one of the pair is tested for polarization, its state changes from a superposition of possible states to a definite one. The state of its pair-partner "simultaneously" collapses to the other state, regardless of the distance between the two. It "appears" that either information has been passed faster than light, but that defies the math' that seems to work well otherwise, that causality has somehow been violated, or that there are more variables involved that we haven't identified. The article describes an experiment that excludes some of the proposed variables.
"These include Aristotelian logic, counterfactual definiteness, absence of actions into the past, or a world that is not completely deterministic."
We've had many experiments that demonstrate concepts some people just can't handle. The "classic"
If QM didn't so accurately describe a large number of events, no one would care that it violates their preferred "reality". It's like with the "information loss" when matter/energy cross the event horizon into a black hole. The indeterminacy and apparent irreversibility are at odds with some peoples' concept of how the universe works (mathematically, QM-scale events should be symmetric with regard to time).
Personally, I'd suggest that clinging to QM-incompatible notions, regardless of how well they've served to date, is less likely to provide a resolution to the discrepancy than accepting QM results as a basis for determining a more-inclusive reality of which those notions are a special case.
"Observation" does not require consciousness. It could just be that one of the photons interacts with a polarization-sensitive field in space.
In fact, I have a degree in it.
... that's as much as I know.
Hey kids. Get a degree in something you love, like Latin, or poetry, or whatever.
Then go get a job doing your hobby, like computers (I'm not good enough to be a pro surfer). And keep practicing your love (yes, every kind of love).
This will prevent quantum weirdness like waking up at 35 and realizing you hate your life.
As far as the nature of reality
+1 fashionably cynical
I don't recall the exact words of that Simpson's episode, you know, the one with the giant killer billboard characters... "Just don't look, Just don't look"
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
THIS IS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ONLY. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME OR ANY PLACE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER.
Set a sizable nuclear bomb to go off in, say an hour plus or minus a random 10 minutes. Make sure no one else is observing the device. Leave the room and go about 100 yards away where you can't observe the device. Relax in the assurance that "reality" doesn't exist if you aren't observing it. Stay there for at least 75 minutes; and kiss your ass good by anytime between fifty to seventy minutes as the reality of a nuclear explosion makes itself real while you are not observing it.
For a hypothesis to be a hypothesis it must be falsifiable. I strongly suspect that the above test falsifies the "quantum mechanical" nonsense of the article. It's too bad that such supposed educated scientists can't falsify their own theories with such simple tests provided by common sense "reality".
Best to do this in the desert so as to minimize the damage. Oh yeah, let the physicists who proposed the hypothesis in the article be the one(s) to conduct the above experiment in person in the room above. I bet they won't carry it out as they know very well that they'd be toast for a fraction of a second before they disintegrate. At least their sense of preserving their own life would be "proof" of the falsehood of their hypothesis.
The point is that the "explanations" of Quantum Mechanics don't carry over into the larger world. Stop the silly metaphors which are easily falsifiable.
---
Also see my other posting on this: Nonsense QM explainations.
Perception, Nonsense, Flaws and Human Beings:
As like most articles and books on Quantum Mechanics (QM) it's difficult to really know what the heck the physicists are actually talking about because it makes no sense. Human language is likely the fault here. Mathematics may enable someone to comprehend with some ability to connect to what they are saying. For me it's all incomprehensible drivel and the ravings of a mad man, err, mad men who propose it.
Another problem with this sort of article on QM is how those of us predisposed to non-reality connected beliefs such as belief or faith in God(s), ghosts, magic, superstitions, and all other silliness of the belief-stricken tend to interpret such articles. A good example is the very silly and goofy "new-age" nonsense of the film "What the Bleep do we know" which twists the ideas of QM till it's just funny yet a truly sad comment on humans and how "well" (in a sarcastic sense) equipped we are too deal with the "real reality" (or as the author of that article might prefer, the "real unreality").
Anyway there is a distinction between what is real verses what is fantasy and how what is real is somehow connected with the "real reality" and what is fantasy is simply connected to a thought in your brain - the difference between these two distinguished notions is crucial in that what is real has a connection to the universe, and while the "thoughts" of fantasy (e.g. God) you have might be real the actual universe simply doesn't care about it and goes on about it's godless accidental meandering way.
The reality we perceive is just that, the reality we perceive. The properties of a ball, such as "round", "bouncy" or "red" are real in perception. Perception is a different realty than QM for sure. The QM universe is the universe we live in (from what we can tell). However, it's a big stretch to think that "red bouncy balls" don't bounce on a "hard" flat surface oriented perpendicular to the N dimensional curvature of gravity of the Earth.
Too many of the QM explanations allow for leprechauns to pop into existence one moment and then, after taking your wallet with $200 leave you with the $100 of gold you asked for as they pop away into non-existence. (By the way, that's a rule of leprechauns, always make a profit.)
Anyway the QM rules which operate at the levels "below" the resolution
We've spent too much time constructing, deriving and archiving human knowledge.
How about anti-knowledge?
I have always entertained the idea that the smarter we get about understanding our environment, the more we encounter the computational limits of the simulation our brains-in-vats inhabit. It's a bit like visibility culling of polygons; there is no point in extending the simulation beyond certain limits if you don't assume your observers get smart enough to devise experiments to make your optimizations visible. Just play dice with the details to make things seem reasonable and only show something definite when you are being actively observed.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Most of the authors of this paper work at Austrian institutes. So we can assume that the taxpayers of Austria paid for the research and writing of this paper. Thus the copyright should belong to them, not NPG/Macmillan Publishers. If there are any Austrians reading this demand that the paper be made freely available!
The universe has been "observed" all along, just not by thinking entities. Your fallacy is that you place special emphasis on our particular style of observation, which involves distillation of patterns and their subsequent translation into thought, reflection, coherence, and meaningful action. However, our particular machinery is not required for the universe to operate. Everything that comes into contact with - or otherwise affects - anything else "observes" and "experiences" it.
The key thing is not to look for some way in which we are special (because we're not!) but to focus on the ways in which we are just like any elementary particle or material system. Then we begin to understand that our habitual sense of "experience" is highly conditioned and extremely narrow - just one particular interpretive system suited to our survival.
So, sorry to say, your house and all its furnishings do cease to exist... not just when you look away but all the time. Well, sort of. They don't really cease anything, because they never really were anything to begin with. Just a lot of energy flowing along. You call a house a "house" and so when you look twice you see the same "thing." But that's just your conventional utilitarian brain doing its thing. In reality, nothing is fixed or named or whole. Nothing "exists" except the indestructible quanta, and even they don't hold still long enough to be said to "exist" in any way our minds conventionally understand.
Aristotle famously said "A=A" and this is called the "Law of Identity." But Aristotle overreached. "A=A" is a fine definition for the equals sign, but it says nothing about "A" whatsoever. And although this law works just fine in the abstract, it's impossible to apply to reality when you get down to the really real stuff. (Besides, most people commute it to "A=B" by ignoring all the differences between A and B, which is... ignorant.) The thing is, by the time you get around to comparing "A" to itself, you've undertaken a process of comparison. This takes time, and "A" refuses to sit still for the photo. So, try as we might, there's no fixing reality using the sword of identity.
My point in bringing this all up is just this: It's safe to say what you say about going to bed at night. It's fine for everyday gross experience. Just don't say that in a room full of physicists or philosophers or you're going to find your whole house turned upside-down in the morning.
-- thinkyhead software and media
We make up reality as we go along. People talk about space-like separation which is most often a useful model but, really it's all just a question of what's entangled with what -- the possibility of separation is what allows there to be a multitude of choices about what reality will be. The stochastic regularities of QM are what makes sure those choices are Intersting. It's a proven fact -- people just have trouble understanding its implications. Thank god for that!
QM is a theory of information; not of physics. This is because we have come so far in studying nature that we have bit by bit began studying ourselves, and the information system that is our mind. Things don't exist when we're not looking at them because the brain and mind receive no data nor information about them.
This subject is much like Plato's World of Ideas. - When we're not looking at a thing, but we are> thinking about them, do they exist? In Plato's world; yes.
All rites reversed 2010
Truth is what you believe. If you believe you have 10M dollars, then you DO have it. Unless you don't, in which case you weren't observing hard enough.
Wikipedia gives a brief introduction> but the main paper is quite readable.
To me it just seems right. The Copenhagen interpretation seems to be driving itself into an unsatisfactory corner. And which is more likely? We've got a tweisted view of it for 70 years, or the universe can do something unexpected with time travelling waves? Just that one little mental hurdle to cross, and everything else falls into place. No more spooky actions at a distance. No more photons knowing which slit was closed after they had gone past it.
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I'm totally out of touch with reality anyway. So it makes total sense to me.
Doh!
Could somebody please explain this to me in terms an idiot (read: humanities major) like me could understand. This looks potentially interesting, if only my brain were big enough to understand it!
What really pisses me off is that I had one moderator point left and it just expired!
Ah ha! But I wasn't even certain about reality when I was observing it! Put that in your quantum-mechanical crack pipe and smoke it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Huw Price has an interesting theory that all we need to do is give up the unidirectional nature of time. That is, causes can go forwards and backwards, at the micro level anyway. They can't at the macro level because of thermodynamics. Have physicists explored this option much, or do the recent experiments rule even it out?
There are a lot of women who believe they don't exist if nobody is looking at them. Make that people.
I wonder who was the person who jumped to the conclusion that the earth was flat.
Just because we can't see over the horizon doesn't mean it drops off into nothingness.
I told a girl once she didn't existed unless I was looking at her. Not the best move on my part.
On a lighter note...
a flat earth sounds silly now. I wish I could be alive in like 200 years so I could know how silly our theories are today. If only they could figure out time travel and I'd be set.
But Aristotle overreached. "A=A" is a fine definition for the equals sign, but it says nothing about "A" whatsoever. And although this law works just fine in the abstract, it's impossible to apply to reality when you get down to the really real stuff. (Besides, most people commute it to "A=B" by ignoring all the differences between A and B, which is... ignorant.)
Whoa... That gives me a completely different perspective on life.
As an electrical engineer, it also reminds me the "mistake" people often make when applying math to describe real systems. Fixed and floating point arithmetic is not exact. Some people propose these highly complex algorithms after learning 500 ways to factor and diagnoalize matricies while completely overlooking the difference between exact arithmetic and approximate arithmetic. They truly do ignore the difference (literally!) between A and B and assume that "A=B" just because the math book says it must be so. This can have really bad consequences...
we must also give up (some of) the idea that the world exists when we are not looking.
Just 20 minutes or so ago, I was asleep and was woken by my brother knocking at my front door. He isn't someone I get on well with, and he normally doesn't turn up unless he wants something, so I hadn't thought about him or observed him since the last time he turned up.
If reality didn't exist when I wasn't observing it though, since I wasn't directly observing him, he would not have existed in order to be able to make the decision to come over here. It would also mean that everyone we know only exists on an intermittent basis. If my girlfriend is in bed asleep, and I'm in my room on my computer, she doesn't exist at that time according to this idea because I'm not observing her.
I get the feeling that physicists need to stop coming up with ideas which they think are provable on a microscopic level, only for other people to find that we can disprove them on a macroscopic level quite easily.
I read this paper about 5 or 6 years ago and it bears directly on the parent article and Bell's inequality.
0 07.pdf
http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/quant-ph/papers/9906/9906
Since I can't read the parent paper outside of the abstract it is hard to say. But I think that these two papers disagree in their conclusions.
I have one question. If the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture is not in charge of Gundam, then who is?
I know this isn't amateurphilosophyhour.slashdot.org, but, if you will indulge me, I see two problems with the common philosophical issue surrounding topics like quantum nonlocality and cruely confined half-dead cats. The first is that I can't think that something exists if I have no reason to think it might. I can't argue that my computer might not exist when I'm not observing it, because I would need to know that it's possible for it to disappear. Nothing in my experience suggests that when I take a shower, for example, my computer takes a vacation.
However, It has crashed while I was in the shower, so I could argue that it gets depressed when I'm not around. And I like to think he does.
What I can argue in this case of my computer disappearing is that I can imagine an <i>imaginary</i> situation in which my computer might not exist when I am not observing it. I cannot imagine such a <i>real</i> situation, where "real" is of course limited to my experience of reality.
The second problem I see is that saying that an object disappears in my absence is the same as saying that it is absent from my experience of it when I am not experiencing it, which is effectively saying nothing. And saying that an object might disappear in my absence is the same as saying that it might be absent from my experience of it when I am not experiencing it, which is proven false by personal experience.
Just need some clarification on some of the terms/concepts mentioned in the paper. Does Realism = Hidden Variables = An external reality that exists independent of observation?
Physics is crap, always has been, always will be.
:P
Its always "true until proven false".
What if programs were written like that? Horrible horrible outcomes
I seem to recall that Douglas Adams wrote about some "peril-sensitive sunglasses". Suppose one were to market a line of quantum wave-function blocking sunglasses, that were designed to darken and prevent the unintentional observation of phenomena. By allowing the wearer to not cause the collapse of a quantum wave function, the wearer would be protected from any legal liability that resulted from any particular outcome of that phenomena. I can picture someone having a productive career as a lawyer who handled very specific types of accident liability suits against "innocent bystanders"... damn bystanders, going around hurting innocent people by collapsing their wave functions.
As every kernel level debugger will tell you, it is impossible to really debug a system by itself. You can't really "look" at your own running system, because you would have to stop it from executing, thus your own observation would grind to a halt and you'd see nada.
Now, we can't simply "stop" reality. Why do we assume we can "debug" it by running by the executable?
I know, a bad analogy, but you have that effect in many situations. You cannot really observe a system from within, whether you're looking for rootkits or analysing your company's shortcomings. And we're obviously within the system, since we do exist in the same reality as the particles and effects we're trying to observe. Technically we'd have to create a second universe to observe.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Or reality as we perceive it is the interaction of particles, rather than the particles themselves?"
Funny you should say that.
Ever since I started studying physics/chemistry in high-school (at about the same time, 5th grade or so), I stopped thinking of "matter" as the defining issue, and started focusing on interactions between them almost exclusively.
It makes no difference wether a particle/molecule/object actually "exists" or what "internal make-up" it has, the only thing you should ever care about is what types of interactions it can have with other particles/molecules/objects... nothing more, nothing less.
Well, the "knowing about possible types of interaction" issue kind of makes it almost mandatory to understand exactly what any entity is actually "made of", but that's a secondary issue... if you know how something behaves in any possible situation, regardless of what's inside... do you really need to know what's inside ?
Or, rather, if you know how something reacts to any imaginable interaction, would you have any actual means to determine without the shadow of a doubt "what's inside" ?
My personal answers are both negative: you don't need to know, and there's no way to know for sure.
Heh, here's the craziest thory: what if "space", "time" and "energy" don't actually exist (or worse, what if they're ALL discrete, not continuous) ?
Would we even be able to notice ? Or have we noticed that already (Planck's h) but can't grasp the concept ?
For all intents and purposes, the entire universe actually existing (on one hand) or being a completely fictional construct/simulation (on the other hand) makes no difference whatsoever.
So, basically, all what's left of reality is simply interactions between entities, not any of the entities themselves.
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
Dig it baby. Glad I could amuse.
Can someone copy and paste here Alain Aspect's comments on this in the same issue of Nature? The title is "To be or not to be local". Would like to read this but don't have a subscription of Nature. Thanks!
I've actually been organizing a great crusade against those "No Godel but Godel" computer science guys in the East. On their way, of course, the armies will loot the magnetism research laboratory of Constant-Dipole, which is the holy city of the Geek Orthodox church -- our ancient enemies.
Common sense can be applied to the universe: the universe is governed by laws, and these laws dictate the causes and possible effects of them. This simple scheme is used both in QM and in the macro world.
Personally I do not believe the universe is not there when you're not observing it. I also find the randomness of quantum mechanics silly. There may not be hidden variables in the 2 dimensional world we can observe with our instruments (2 dimensions being space and time), but who can prove that the quantum effects are not the result of forces interacting in other dimensions?
When does reality start for you? As a sperm? When cell doubling occurs? The first neuron firing? The lawmakers for anti-abortion need this info pronto!
Something witty goes here.
There sure are a lot of things QED predicts accurately (to an astounding precision) but previous success does not mean we just have to swallow everything that comes out of the field unquestionly, and this result is clearly wrong. If the scientists involved can't see that it's wrong, well, that's their problem.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I am the center of the universe.
gosh, I wanted to mod you up, and thanks to this %%%% of 53-button-multiple-roller-mouse I suddenly sent an 'offtopic' before even understanding what I was doing :( /. I cannot even come back to re-mod :((
And with the careful handling of mod points by
Now what if I post a comment there, will it "undo" the mod?
Herve S.
I think that science is slowly reaching the boundary of reality and perception.
... because it is! If you think of it, 'here' and 'there' are actually perceived in the same place - in your thought (not necessarily head or brain), so space is just a definition that you've learned / invented.
In fact, if you think about it, there is nothing BUT perception of reality.
From a subjective point of view, I do not know if the universe around me exists beyond my perception of it - for me, when I'm dead, the universe disappears; my body is merely a notion in my head, as is 'my head', actually.
In fact, one cannot prove that there is 'us' - all of this (earth, people, Microsoft) can be just a mere movie that my perception plays and constantly invents.
So I (or you) can interpret reality as my (your) own creation
For us, things do not exist in this universe until we learn them - how can we be sure that we are not just inventing our reality as we go. Jupiter did not exist, until some guy built a telescope and it popped up into reality. The galaxies did not exist until scientists have 'discovered' them. Is 'discovery' an actually identification of what is 'out there' or is it just a possible idea that we declare real.
As we uncover the fabric of the universe, we might as well discover that there is no such thing as 'universe' - it is just our invention - including life, death and all other definitions that govern our perceived world.
No, it will not work, as the not existing world will come and force you to observe it so that it can continue to exist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mJ5kwVqkqg
oops!
Why don't they just throw some more Tacheyons at the problem?
It always worked on Voyager.
Google for the Transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics; it's an approach which treats wavefunction collapse as being due to interference between forward-time and backward-time travelling waves, which seems to be the approach you're interested in.
Of course, there's work that shows that thermodynamic arrows exist (probabilistically) even at the quantum level.
Yeah, and my theory is that these are just a whole bunch of limitations of the computer to which our brain-in-a-vat are connected to.
There are quanta, because the computer works using interger math (Quantum theory is just the best proof that decimal numbers are just a scam...)
Reality only happens when we look at it, because the computer does lazy evaluation to spare resources.
The universe hasn't suddenly ceased to exist, because it doesn't run Windows.
Didn't you see the movie ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
Well, it all makes sense, if you think of it. Whoever is running this MMO we call RL, can't possibly have the resources to simulate every single particle all the time. So until someone actually goes and observes the damn thing, there's no need to actually spawn/instantiate it.
Think of going farming for copper and tin ore in, say, the Gold Coast Quary in WoW. A particular ore spawn point might have been spawned as tin (most often), or as silver (rarely) or not at all. Would it already be spawned and in memory, if noone was there to see it? Or would it exist only as a probability until someone actually gets in range?
Or say you're hacking away at a copper ore vein with your trusty cold iron pickaxe, like a good dwarf. Sometimes you get just a piece of copper ore, sometimes you also get 1-2 pieces of stone, sometimes you get a Shadowgem, or a Tigerseye or Malachite. Were they already there before you started to hack at the ore vein? Or did they exist only as a probability until someone actually gets that loot window?
Of course, once you got a certain set of ore, stone and/or gems, closing the window and hacking at it again, won't change it. It stays the same set of, say, 1 ore, 2 stone, 1 gem until you actually loot them.
I can tell you, the best gnomish engineers and mages have worked hard for an answer to those questions, but everyone came up empty. We just can't figure out a way to see what's there without seeing what's there. Even warlocks sending their Eye Of Killrog into the mine didn't manage to fool the system. That and the eye got killed by the bandits in the mine. The best priests whined... err... prayed piously to the great gods of Blizzard, and got no answer. Etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
By the well tried method of "jumping to conclusions", one infers that I do not exist when the world isn't looking. This is a bit of a bummer as I do most of my best work when the world isn't looking.
I'm not sure I got it right, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one out here. Does it mean that we can communicate faster than c, even instantaneously, thanks to this?
You just got troll'd!
Then how come, when nobody's looking, I can reach my hand back and touch the back of my chair?
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
Quantum mechanics is incompatible with relativity at extreme scales? Must be something wrong with relativity.
It seems to me that every couple of months on Slashdot I read some article about Quantum Mechanics being incompatible with some fundamental assumption we have about the universe, and the immediate response is to throw out the assumption. The "proof" we're given is dense reams of equations that nobody on earth can or will ever review, and experiments that you need a 20 million dollar supercollider and a grant to repeat.
Maybe if every single thing we have ever learned, will learn, perceive, know, think, and measure is incompatible with this model...maybe it isn't everything else in the universe that is wrong.
Alright. That is enough. No more drugs for the lot of you!
Millions of scientists all over the world regard Albert Einstein as one of the greatest scientists of modern era because of the impact of his Relativity theories and also because he his theory helped produce atomic bomb. But I do have some problems with his theories. His relativity theory assumes that space is empty. My understanding is that space seems empty to human beings but it is not. Space may seem empty to humans. But what about other beings? Humans are not the only beings in the universe. There are other smaller and higher beings in the universe. Humans are like atomic particle in the body of the solar system. Yes, the living Sun, is also a being. The living Universe is a being. And an atom is a being too. Beings exist at different scales and sizes and dimensions. So, what may seem like an empty space to a human being will look like a solid rock to an atom. It is all about relativity of perception. Space and matter are relative. What is matter to a being will seem like an empty space to another being. And what is space to another being will seem like matter to another being. So, what is space or matter depends on the being! When the living Sun looks out, it doesn't see human beings because to the living Sun, humans are invisible atomic particles! So, my point is that scientists should stop formulating theories and laws as if they are absolute because all of our theories and laws are human centered and may not apply to other beings. This will help scientists who have been baffled by the strange behavior of sub atomic particles to finally understand what is happening at sub atomic world. For them to understand the sub atomic particles and their behavior, they must give up their human perception and cognition and assume that of the sub atomic particle. To understand any being at any level of existence, you must become that being! You must perceive it with its mind, not human mind! This is the error modern science is making. They look at planets and suns and they are not aware these are beings too and that they are alive because they are perceiving them with human mind. To see a living planet as it is as a living being, you must look at it with "planetary eyes" and a "planetary mind"! (This is what we call "Transcendental Mental Technology, The Science And Technology Of Existence" http://www.tmtworldwide.org/ ) This may help some people to understand why UFOs are so enigmatic. We try to understand it using human frame of reference (perception) and mentality! Scientists should learn to start adding disclaimers to their theories that they are only applicable to human beings and that they are not absolute. Ikey http://www.ezymoneyinfo.com/fast
The creator of $100,000 monthly for life system. http://www.secret33.com/home-based-business-progr
For years, quantum physicists have been ripping off and repackaging transcendentalism, though in a much simpler and basic form. Why not just read 19th century American philosophy (i.e. Emerson and friends), instead of wasting time with these guys trying to wow you with the word "quantum"? Physics today is all based on arbitrary theories developed to explain observations. Philosophers, at least, use reason and intuition. And philosophers have always been brave enough to question everything.
In our day, many scientists tend to go far out to the opposite extreme, relying exclusively on empirical evidence while simply dismissing reason and logical thought processes! That results in theories which, while they have may have practical uses, are as far removed from truth and reality as when people believed that theories had no need of any empirical proof.
I'm sure one of these days, these modern theories which disregard logic and reason are going to be viewed with the same respect and admiration as alchemy and the balancing of humours are viewed by scientists today.
You've eloquently expressed what I feel too that is going on with modern physicists and their theories. Ikey http://maychic.com/services.htm
The creator of $100,000 monthly for life system. http://www.secret33.com/home-based-business-progr
The Rev. George Berkeley some hundreds of years ago was of the conviction the world didn't exist when unobserved, and only remained in place due to G-d as co-observer. I don't see why this is suddenly a problem now. Ironically perhaps that the most recent theory I can think of concerning a co-observer to ensure reality outside humans is theories dealing with dark matter. (Berkeley didn't believe in any material matter, at all).
We've had this in games for years! It's called visibility checking...
If there's anyone I hate more than stupid people, it's intellectuals.
sounds like metaphysics to me
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
... Quantam Wave Form collapses YOU!
... I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, but I had to.
You can read the article for free here.
So this means that if I close my eyes and someone throws a punch at me, the fact that I'm not seeing it coming means it's not going to hurt me?
Seems unlikely...
I love reading about this kind of stuff, but I am completely lost. Can someone dumb down and summerize the article and the slashdot blurb?
"One of these days, some really smart person is going to come out with a new and better theory of reality that reveals all this quantum mechanics stuff to be a bunch of quackery."?
has the best theories on the nature of Reality. See.
Doom does this to speed up its rendering, with its reject, nodes, and subsector lumps.
What you don't see, isn't processed, Things excluded.
So when David Copperfield made the Statue of liberty disappear, he was just modifying the Universe's IWAD.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die.
-- replicant Roy Batty, in Blade Runner
Every programmer including THE programmer is familiar with lazy initialization. No use wasting resources until they are needed. makes perfect sense.
Some settling may occur during posting.
Considering the population's average IQ, why would you want to settle for ANY sort of "common" concensus?
nyep, its all in your head.
- find the reference yourself... it's not impressive but it's a good question.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
As a computer programmer, I have to constantly keep in mind my First Law of Debugging: When it seems impossible for the subroutine you're looking at to cause the observed behavior, then you're looking in the wrong place for the bug. You overlooked something, and that something only *appears* irrelevant to the problem.
Science (not just QM) is exactly like that. Sometimes in their persuit of answers, scientists will push and twist a particular theory until it *does* provide the answer they want, producing a nightmare of convoluted logic that to the layman might not make any sense. I strongly suspect that QM, while it accurately answers the mathematical need to describe reality, is the result of someone looking in the wrong place for the right answer. They've already decided that a certain place (wherever and whatever it is) couldn't possibly hold the answer they're looking for, and like the weary programmer trying to fix a program, in the wee hours of the morning, insists that the place he's looking at *must* somehow be causing the observed behavior. Somehow.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
So what does imply? As long as we do not check/observe for cancer in ones blood, our cells are in either state: both cancerous and healthy. Let's never do any medical observations anymore, they break the probability wave and might cause cancer in reality! That's right, I cured cancer!
If I can't read the Nature article because I'm not a subscriber, does that mean it doesn't exist?
Maybe Kiri-Kin-Tha's First Law of Metaphysics is true...
See Anthropogenic Global Warming. If we continue sinning Nature will destroy us...
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
Nobody is really sure what quantum physics says about reality or locality.
All nonlocality means is that space (distance) is an illusion. But we don't need all this mumbo-jumbo about hidden variables and Bell's inequality to tell us that there is no space. It can be easily figured out with simple logic. By the way, there is no spooky superluminal signal propagation between entangled particles because, you guessed it, there is no distance between them. In the future we will use this knowledge to develop technologies that will allow us to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere!
Actually, as the Fortran wisecrack went, "God is real, unless declared an integer." ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, yes and no. Mostly no. And I was indeed joking, and pretty heavy-handedly at that.
Floating point errors tend to be more chaotic and unpredictable. QM is actually quite predictable and you can calculate useful stuff with it. E.g., it's not just that an electron in a potential well sometimes "tunnels through" (or rather, due to uncertainty principle constraints, it might have enough energy to jump or it might already be on the other side.) You can actually calculate how many will tunnel, and under which conditions, and build for example a Zenner diode. Mere floating point errors don't act that predictably, or not in the same way.
The thing about QM is... well, that QM doesn't actually have a problem. You can calculate stuff with any degree of accuracy, and, assuming you can actually design an experiment to simulate an measure it that accurately, chances are you'll get the expected results. The QM has been better validated than pretty much anything else.
Most of the conceptual problems you read about it are, basically, not problems of QM itself, but problems of the human imagination. The only problem is trying to imagine it, with a mind and in terms/concepts that were not made for that kind of problems. It's like trying to imagine a Beethoven symphony in terms of shapes and colours. That big a problem.
The human mind and your everyday experiences are based on macroscopic, Newtonian experiences. That is really why you find Newtonian mechanics simple. Your intuition helps you there. If I say "imagine a billiard ball hitting another" or "picture a ball rolling down a slope", you can conjure that mental image right away. You have tens of years of experience with that domain, and a brain which evolved to deal with that kind of problems.
When you move to Quantum Mechanics domain, your imagination and intuition fail you. (And me too, so don't take it as being snotty or anything.) You can imagine a particle, like a billiard ball. You can imagine a wave. (E.g., think: raindrops on a lake.) You _can't_ imagine something which acts fundamentally and thoroughly as _both_ at the same time. You can work abstractly with the concept, because you're undoubtedly a smart guy, but if you actually tried to really _imagine_ it, you'd probably just get a headache.
The "problem" is that people instinctively try to reduce it to one or the other, but each has its own problems:
- Thinking of, say, an electron as purely a particle, just like a small newtonian billiard ball, gets out of hand very fast. It does all these things, like mysteriously appearing on the other side of a potential barrier, which just aren't very newtonian.
- Thinking of it as purely wave, popular as it may be, is almost as big a mistake. Whenever you actually measure a state, you get a particle, not a wave front. E.g., if you put a phosphorescent coated screen (like that of a CRT) in the path of the electron, you get a single blip of light, not a fuzzy cloud over the whole screen. It only hits exactly one atom or mollecule of that phosphorescent coating, not all of them.
At any rate, that is the only problem: trying to imagine it all in a way that makes any sense to your macroscopic intuition. Even smart people who know QM well have a problem there. When you apply your intuition to it, it just doesn't make any sense. So all sorts of funny metaphors are invented to try to describe it... in words and concepts that just weren't made for that, and to a mind that wasn't supposed to imagine something like that.
Well, and then there are the people who _don't_ understand QM. Again, not meant snottily, it's a very hard and abstract domain. If it gives experts mind-cramps trying to wrap some intuitive sense around it, you can imagine how hard it confuses everyone else. So a thousand times more bad metaphors and mis-understandings get born that way.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
<soc>I don't get physicals... ever... if some pain occurs... I ignore it completely... or I black out... whichever comes first... ... ... ... .. .</soc>
"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
There already was one such really smart person, an authority in physics and mathematics, who closely examined the theories of quantum mechanics, and concluded they were nonsense. His name?
Albert Einstein.
Go read his bio.
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
Huw Price has an interesting theory that all we need to do is give up the unidirectional nature of time. That is, causes can go forwards and backwards, at the micro level anyway.
The other way to "patch" Q.M. is to allow faster-than-light travel of information (breaking "locality"). You can show, using only special relativity, that in some frames of reference this is equivalent to sending information backward in time. So letting information travel back in time along the particle's space-time path is a special case of breaking locality. (It's also a case of adding a "hidden variable" to the particle's state - the backward-flowing information.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
stable. "The Lord upholds the universe by the power of His word" The omniscient, omnipresent observer constantly stabilizes the waveform of every subatomic particle in the universe, so quantum mechanics works, but the universe exists.
Oh wait, actually, the server isn't there at all untill you ssh to it...
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
I mean, Euclidean geometry, Riemannian geometry, Ricci tensors, topology, Lorentz contraction, Maxwell's demon, algebraic set theory, noncommutative geometry, and Quantum Mechanics were all instances of science following technology.
It's an impossible thing to quantify without some sort of rigorous definition of technology, but I'd say technology follows science as much as science follows technology.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Yes, well, you'll have to understand that this is second hand, what some prophet understood from God's dumbed down explanation to someone who doesn't even have the concepts to understand it all.
:P
Think explaining Linux or the Internet to my old grandma (otherwise a smart woman, but doesn't even have a computer) and see if you don't end up dumbing it down to "it's like some tubes" oversimplification to get it over with. Now think she goes forth and writes a book about it. Ouch. It's not going to be very accurate, to say the least.
I mean, I can just think God explaining a player wipe to Moses:
God: "So we just reformatted the hard drive and re-installed from backups."
Moses: "Uh, what's a hard drive, Lord?"
God: "Well, it's this thing, like a magnetic disc, where everything is stored. All you see around you is on it."
Moses: "So, like a flat platter lord? And it carries the whole world?"
God: "Ah, wth, yeah, the world is on a plate. Whatever. So, anyways, we reformatted it..."
Moses: "My Lord, what's a reformat?"
God: "We wiped it clean, really?"
Moses: "Wiped the whole world, Lord? How is that even possible?"
God: "(Gah, I'll never get to the bottom of it.) You know, rewrite it all... if you will, cover it all with the same value."
Moses: "With a value?"
God: "You know what? With water."
Moses: "Like a flood, Lord?"
God: "Yeah, I flooded the damned thing. Everything was cross-linked and corrupted anyway."
Moses: . o O (Damned? Corrupted? So the world must have been sinful and angered the Lord.)
God: "So, anyway, then we reinstalled the prototype files for everything from the backup and respaned them everywhere..."
Moses: "Curse this feeble mortal mind, Lord, you've lost me."
God: "You know, prototypes? Like a definition of each animal? A master copy of each animal, one per sex? Male lion, female lion, male zebra, female zebra..."
Moses: "So you had one male and one female of each species stowed away somewhere safe?"
God: "Yep."
Moses: "On a... what was the word, Lord? Backup?"
God: "Uh, a big boat. Really big boat. I told this guy Noah to put one of each there."
You can see where it's going
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ugh. I hate it when people say something like the above -- even physicists -- because they don't realize they've accidentally stumbled into a tautology. Faster-than-light travel does *NOT* imply going backwards in time or reverse causality. It only means that it *LOOKS* like reverse causality. Many people get wrapped up into thinking this means causality violation, but this is because they're already defined the light cone in advance as causality! Then it only logically follows that anything faster-than-light would violate causality as it appears inside the light cone.
The "collapse" of a system into one or another of two states is not an actual event. Nothing actually happens when a system "collapses", it would be just as accurate to say that the larger system of the observor and the photon is in a superposition of two unimaginably complex states. In fact you can build a consistent theory of QM on that basis. It's not very practical, but it's consistent.
The problem is that it's immeasurably harder to make predictions based on treating a 200 pound experimenter as a quantum system rather than a classical one, and the results would be identical to the ones you get from collapsing the state vector, so once you have more than a few particles involved you pretty much have to simplify things.
There's no "infinite regress" here. Anything that might be effected by the "collapse" of the state vector and is complex enough that you have to treat it classically is an "observer". Any random chunk of space junk will do.
> The result means that we must not only give up Einstein's hope of
> "no spooky action at a distance," we must also give up (some of)
> the idea that the world exists when we are not looking.
Chief Programmer Archangel Gabriel: Welp, looks like they figured it out. Heads in a vat they be, and in a sparse matrix implementation at that.
Assistant Chief Programmer Archangel Gabriel: Hehe, you said "matrix".
Chief Programmer Archangel Gabriel: Shut up! Anyway, Yahweh, I thought you were supposed to be so you-damned good?
Pointy-Haired God Yahweh: I am. I just made them in my image.
Chief Programmer Archangel Gabriel: Uhhh, good job. Hit the reset?
Pointy-Haired God Yahweh: Yep. I have an idea for some 8-legged octopus-like things in 7 dimensions -- 4 space, 2 time, and one quex-el. With 3 sexes and naturally slime-covered bodies, should be lots of fun to visit.
Ok...Hit it!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Can you show me where I said anything about causality violation? Or even pointed to information from an event further down a light cone affecting an event in is own history.
Information going backward in time within a light cone is going backward in ALL frames of reference, not just some. Perhaps my phrasing made it appear that I was referring to that - and then the information causing an effect on an event in its own history that is also measurable in it own history - in which case I apologize.
Note that if you accept my characterization of the information traveling backward along the entangled particle's space-time trajectory, then forward along that of the partner particle, as a hidden variable, it implies that measuring the hidden variable within the light cone of the first particle's history violates causality, but causality is preserved if the measurement takes place at sufficient space-time separation that the light cones of one measurement doesn't include the other measurement.
Causality is preserved ONLY by hidden variables that remain hidden well enough to emulate "spooky action at a distance". B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Chief Programmer Archangel Gabriel: Any clues to this new even more sexual world?
Pointy-Haired God Yahweh: Alls I have to say is 2 in the pink, one in the stink, and 4 in the grink.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Belle Confirms Quantum Entanglement at 10 Billion. html
Electron Volts.
http://www.kek.jp/intra-e/press/2007/BellePress9e
Why would this not be considered a re-iteration of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
.....
i.e.
reality vs. locality
OR
position vs. momentum
reciprocal values always being inverse.
Sounds the same anyway
There's a whole passel of improperly informed people yakking on about consciousness and its relation to reality and other ridiculous notions, specifically because people insist on confusing the necessary MEASUREMENT with the irrelevant OBSERVATION. Collapse of quantum wave functions requries interaction with another non-entangled wave function such as a measuring device. All of the results which support the inequalities tested and referenced here were produced using equipment which measured the phenomena and gave results well before any observation occurred. The parent, and the blurb in Nature both imply the mistaken idea by using terms that refer to a observer. Nature should know better. Everybody else that's really interested in understanding it should learn better. It makes the science much more interesting. But then it weeds out the semi-informed speculativists and the newage (rhymes with sewage) pseudoscientific-spiritual theorists. Being the vast majority, they obviously tend to revolt at the insistence on being correct.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
No, you're still not quite getting it. Causality is only appearing to be violated because you're using the light-cone construct to dictate causality. You're pre-defining that causality is events ordered in a certain way inside the light cone, so naturally anything that's FTL could create a situation where the events appear out of order in the light cone. But if there really is FTL communication, then *that* is really the "causality cone", and no matter how things may appear in the light cone, causality is not really violated.
:) It's simply a matter of semantics; people instinctively think causality violation is a bad thing, but when you realize the causality being discussed is really a pre-defined property that depends on the speed of light BEING the speed of causality, then the fact there are FTL things causing things "faster than causality" is not nearly so disturbing. Terms like "locality" and "realism" have similar problems; often they have mental connotations that go beyond their formal definitions.
I've had arguments with physics profs about this before who didn't get it either.
... if there really is FTL communication, then *that* is really the "causality cone", and no matter how things may appear in the light cone, causality is not really violated.
I see what you're saying.
The problem is that if you can have FTL communication actually carrying a message, AND special relativity isn't violated (i.e. any inertial frame of reference is as good as any other), you can use two or more inertial frames to construct a multi-hop FTL message that DOES transfer information backward in some light cone. There's no question that information can be transferred FORWARD within a light-cone. So you can construct a causality loop. Stick an inverter in it and you have a paradox.
So FTL transfer of information in a way useful for communication - even if not time-reversed in a single hop - is incompatible with Special Relativity. You have to give up one or the other.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So FTL transfer of information in a way useful for communication - even if not time-reversed in a single hop - is incompatible with Special Relativity. You have to give up one or the other.
In fact this is the whole POINT of the "light cone" analysis and the claim that cause-and-effect can't leave the light cone (i.e. information can't travel faster than c). Anything else requires a preferred frame of reference to avoid future-to-past communication.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sounds interesting. I wish to learn more about the physics of this "word" coming from His mouth, and how it goes about causing the metaphysical stability of instantiated reality.
Do you have a brochure?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If anything, mathematics is our salvation, because it allows scientists to determine the solutions to physics problems without requiring any kind of Human intuition or visual model.
It's not hard, actually. What you're saying there is basically akin to that you couldn't run something that calculates 64 bit arithmetic on a 32 bit machine. Yet Java or your favourite C compiler do that all the time. In fact, they can calculate a 1000 digit binary coded decimal just fine too. Thankfully, we can do arithmetic in slices, much like you operate on the individual digits instead of the whole number when you do arithmetic by hand.
If it weren't possible, well, let's just say that computers wouldn't have been too useful until very recently. We've had 8 bit computers, 12 bit computers (Unix was written on one), even a 4 bit CPU, and other such. If it weren't possible to calculate at least 32 bit floats on them, any kind of computer aided engineering would have been dead in the water for a long time.
Also, to answer your problem, let me give you some examples from that universe:
1. A photon has, so to speak, 2 states. Either it's there or it isn't there. It's not even a float, it's 1 bit. You know, 0 decimal points. Yet you can assign decimal values to how bright a monitor is. Or you can have grey shades on your monitor, basically, float values between 0.0 and 1.0. If you want to set that pixel to 0.12345 brightness, at least theoretically (given enough bits per pixel), you can.
Why? Because we do a neat fixed point arithmetic trick there. We basically define "1.0" to mean a gazillion bajillion photons per second, so 0.25 brightness is really a quarter of a gazillion bajillion.
2. You either have an extra helium atom in a balloon, or tank, or you don't. When you count in atoms, there are no decimals there. You can't have half an atom of helium. (Well, not while still being helium. Half of it is deuterium;) Yet you can talk about having 12.73 litres of helium in a baloon, if you want to. Why? Because again 1 litre means a helluva lot of those atoms, so you can have quite a bit of accuracy when measuring in litres.
And so on and so forth. We do that kind of trick all over the place.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I was getting at that idea, prompted by the GP, of overloading the "computing" resources used to run the universe simulation, by paying too much attention to too many details all at once. That's operating at a whole different level than just destroying the ozone layer, cutting down the rainforest, or polluting the atmosphere. You gotta think big!
Sure.. just dig into any branch of QM that assumes there's only one authoritative world-line, and that non-observed states cease to exist as soon as the observation collapses the waveform.
What, exactly, makes that observation authorative, thus making observed reality fixed and determinate, which in turn keeps the past from being a multiple-choice kind of thing?
Once you've worked out the math on that, try coming up with a reason why I shouldn't hum, _You say "po-tay-to," I say "po-tah-to"_ while you explain that this is Science, not The Nature of the Word of God.
Not the same way.
Surely if space were quantised in a simple way then moving diagonally would be slower than moving along the axes.
For example, in computer science, there are random algorithms. To the novice, this initially sounds like a contradiction in terms. But it simply means that at certain branches in the algorithm, the path taken is determined stochastically -- at random. This actually allows the creation of algorithms that are significantly faster than their deterministic counterparts. It doesn't mean that the algorithm is some mysterious vortex from which knowledge can not escape. It just means that there is some randomness in how the algorithm works. It still does the computation that it is supposed to, it still computes the desired result with perfect accuracy, and it is still an algorithm in every sense of the word. We can know exactly how it works and why. In fact, a good random algorithm is often better vastly better in every regard than its deterministic counterparts (technically, deterministic algorithms are just a subclass of random algorithms with absolutely minimal randomness, but there's no reason to start quibbling about these things).
Similarly, if quantum physics asserts that nuclear decay is random (I don't think that nuclear decay is actually asserted to be fundamentally random, unlike some other quantum phenomena, but it's still a nice example), it's not suggesting that it's some mysterious weird process that we'll never understand. The rate and distribution of decay-events can be known EXACTLY, the possible products can be known EXACTLY, the likelihood of any particular decay mode can be known EXACTLY. We can even have models describing why nuclear decay takes place, although to my knowledge we don't have any serious contenders for position yet (the nuclear shell models sound rather nice, but I haven't heard if they've moved past being idle conjecture).
Besides, random doesn't even have to mean "random". It can just mean "deterministic but inherently unpredictable", like thermal noise or the conjugate pair of momentum and position. If something is inherently unpredictable, you just have to accept that (or discard the physics that say it's unpredictable; and better men than us have tried).
It may even mean that you are discussing a quantity or quantities that aren't actually meaningful -- position and momentum can't be measured precisely at the same time simply because precision in one of them unavoidably destroys the precision of the other, due to the wave-nature of matter. Waves simply can not be localized in space without making their momentum undefined, any more than someone can be active in politics whilst having a well-defined time-of-death. Having a time-of-death by necessity rules out being active in anything (other than maybe vermiculture or composting), and vice versa.
Randomness isn't something to "pushed back" or "settled for". If it's there, it's there. If it's not, it's not. It's no different than determinism. If the model is deterministic, fine. If it's not, fine. It's a property of the model, and ultimately all that matters is how well the model holds and whether it can make good predictions within its domain. And at the quantum scale, deterministic models have consistently failed.
Have you ever, you know, seen a wave? Did you notice that it wasn't a point? Did you notice that waves are spread out through space? So clearly, trying to say that they have a well-defined position is a completely retarded thing to do; the kind of thing that would signify that one had absolutely NO idea what's going in the world.
Of course, if you combine several waves of different frequencies, you can create a nice tight little pulse. A pulse is much more localized, but it doesn't have a clearly defined frequency anymore. The more localized the pulse, the wider the range of frequencies occupied by the wave. And the frequency of a wave is directly proportional to its momentum.
Now of course, you can reject the concept that matter exists as a wave. But then you end up having to posit the existence of magic or something to explain why matter undergoes diffraction, interference, doppler-effects, and every single other wave phenomenon known to physics. If you accept that matter is a wave, then the heisenberg uncertainty principle says that not only can you not measure a particle's position and momentum precisely, but that simply do not HAVE a precise position and momentum at the same time.
Occam's razor might help you out here: option 1: matter is a wave, and option 2: there are hidden dimensions containing hidden forces that are somehow totally imperceptable and tie our hands to sticks. I think you know what the razor suggests in this case. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is not just about being unable to measure two thing precisely at the same time, it's about that precision simply not existing to be measured.
Is it really relevant if the quantum world is random, or just governed by processes that are absolutely indistinguishable from randomness? I mean, fluctuations in thermal noise may not actually BE random, but it's irrelevant since they are guaranteed by the laws of thermodynamics to be unpredictable by any means whatsoever.
There's always that one guy or girl in every science class, the one that has to start arguing with the professor about theories that make him uncomfortable / offend her faith / aren't politically correct. They can't just go out and do some science; they have to stand around pissing everyone off by being a pedantic asshole that obnoxiously questions everything while having an utterly closed mind.
My favourite was the guy in my computational complexity class who began blabbering like a howler monkey when the professor tried to describe how no Turing Machine or equivalent computational model could ever solve more than an infinitessimally small proportion of the problems that could be posed. I think his final point before the entire class fell silent in embarassment on his behalf was to suggest that maybe art represented a model of computation that could solve the entire problem-space. Yes, he suggested that ART of all things represented model of hypercomputation. I was told that later on, in an Literature class, he publically denied the existence of the transatlantic cable system. Since then, I've had a low tolerance for people who question theories without having the intelligence to understand them in the first place.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0704.2529
The problem is choice!