It's probably not just because you're autistic. Quantum states are a little mind-blowing. But I do like the implication that I get to determine what's "real" because the quantum universe doesn't collapse into a single state until my consciousness interacts with it.
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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There is absolutely no evidence that consciousness causes wavefunction collapse (that is, if wavefunction collapse even happens at all, but that is a different discussion entirely).
Wasn't it something about the information about the state being recorded?
It's been a while since I last read up on any of this but I'd be surprised if the double slit experiment for example showed wave behavior just because the results of the detector weren't shown to humans.
To put things simply, measurement involves thermodynamically irreversible interaction with the larger environment. No literal observer is relevant.
Oh?
Literally every source suggests that the wave function collapses due to being observed. Unless you’re a Nobel-winning physicist, it’s unclear how you are an authority whose opinion matters.
Literally every source suggests that the wave function collapses due to being observed.
This claim that every source suggests that the wave function collapses due to being observed by a conscious being, and only by observation by a conscious being (which is presumably what you meant given the original context) is blatantly false. Give me a single reputable source that makes such a claim of consciousness causing collapse as anything other than a statement of (minority) interpretation.
Unless you’re a Nobel-winning physicist, it’s unclear how you are an authority whose opinion matters.
This is insulting. You are ludicrously claiming that expert opinion agrees unanimously that consciousness causes collapse (despite it actually being seen as a minority view by the community), yet have the audacity to say that my opinion on the matter is useless, despite the fact that I am a senior physics/mathematics double major at a major university with a respected physics program (and which includes multiple Nobel laureates in physics, since you mentioned it). I have already taken both undergraduate quantum mechanics courses as a junior; moreover, I currently only have one more physics course (along with several more math courses and one more general education requirement) required to graduate.
Obviously, this does not make me an expert on the topic in any sense whatsoever, but I think you are in no position to suggest my opinion is useless.
But I do like the implication that I get to determine what’s “real” because the quantum universe doesn’t collapse into a single state until my consciousness interacts with it.
To get right to the point, the idea of consciousness causing collapse is a minority interpretation of quantum mechanics (one that was originally conceived more as a hypothetical alternative interpretation without full seriousness being given to it in its own right) that has been given undue credit in the public eye by the dishonest purveyors of quantum mysticism (like Deepak Chopra) who confidently attribute supernatural attributes to quantum theory with neither any explanation nor even the simplest indication of understanding of even the simplest of an introduction to the topic, let alone any authority on the topic. The part of your comment, "I get to determine what’s 'real'", seems to indicate your familiarity with quantum mysticism beyond just the idea of consciousness causing collapse.
NO, there is absolutely no evidence of any fundamental role of consciousness in quantum mechanics, but you may have been mislead into believing there is. If you have any such credible experimental evidence of consciousness causing collapse, you would be the first to provide such.
If you have any source with credible evidence of consciousness causing collapse, I would like to see it.
Even if it were a matter of opinion among experts, the position that consciousness causes collapse is hardly a common one, despite your attempt at claiming the contrary.
Don't worry! Quantum Mechanics a scientific model we use to understand and work with reality, not reality itself.
The difference may seem subtle, but it is important. E.g. my bank account represents my money. At some point it may have a negative amount on it. I could model this as I own anti-money that obliterate real money when put in the same account. I can have a perfectly functioning personal economy with this interpretation. But in reality, it's the bank having to cover some transactions for me when they shouldn't have and are expecting I cover it with a deposit.
(Though I could probably ask for funding for a large currency collider to search for for the anti-money particle.)
The quantum model has many interpretations as to what underlying reality it may model. Some scientists like the "many worlds" interpretation where a particle is in one state in one universe and another state in another universe - at some point reality branches and one version of you continue in each universe (I think it's silly). What you are describing is the "Copenhagen interpretation" which is popular but many scientists reject it. Some scientists don't want to interpret reality from the model and just work with the math as math.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
Okay, thank you! My first introduction to quantum mechanics was in a magazine when I was like 11 and they used the cat analogy and I've been confused ever since! I was just sitting there thinking, "But, the cat is only one or the other. It doesn't matter whether you look at it. There's no magic going on. It's just random chance, right?"
(Maybe the fact that I was even wondering how quantum mechanics works at age eleven could be a sign that I'm autistic. Idk lol)
Haha, yes. The cat analogy was created intentionally to demonstrate that the Copenhagen Interpretation was ludicrous. Media, however, just... ran with it because it sounded cool.
It's a good sign that you found it annoying. Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
As for autistic, the resources in the sidebar may help you discover more.
Cool! I knew I wasn't crazy! What do you think of the RAADS-R test? That's the one I've taken and I got a score of 156 but I don't quite trust tests as I can generally tell which way a question will sway the result and so I start doubting the validity of my answers.
I saw one of Yo Samdy Sam's (https://youtube.com/@YoSamdySam) videos where she went through either that test or an equivalent one. She said thinking too hard about the questions felt a bit like a symptom by itself. :)
You could also get a family member or close friend to take the test and answer "as" you. My guess is it's going to be an equivalent score.
Your score indicates it's worth checking up if you feel it is useful!
Alright, I'm looking at going back to counsellor meetings and apparently my new one has some experience with autism so that should be nice!
Quantum mechanics doesn't have "particles", it has "quanta". They're fundamentally different things. Your intuition about particles does not apply to quanta.
Think of light. You can shine a red light and a blue light on a surface at the same time. Even with a purely classical vew this gets modeled as a superposition (addition) of the intensities. That's still wrong for how quantum superpositions work, those are adding the probability density functions of a propersty of the quanta, not the properties directly. But it's closer.
Just to add another interpretation (that's not exactly correct, but might rest your mind a little bit): when you measure a single particle (or molecule) it's kind of hard to predict the outcome - so it's useful to think of particles having two states (or molecules having more vibrational states, for instance). When you add a lot of particles or molecules together, the population behavior gets a lot more predictable, and this situation is closer to what we are used to in the real world, that's one of the reasons quantum mechanics feels unnatural. It's also somewhat similar to how a single person can be different and unpredictable, but marketing can easily get insights from large populations. Imagine studying a million people and figuring out 0.5% of them are blonde and have AB+ blood type. When you look at this, you might ask what does 0.5% of people even mean: it's only 1 in 200, but depending on how you think about it, it looks very weird - what does half person even mean in the real world? In the end, it's more a matter of how we interpret things, and trying to compare quantum behavior with real-world analogies will always be weird.
I like to think of it in this way. They have a mathematical model of a thing which works by supposing the thing is in two states at once as long as its true state has not been determined. That just means that it is actually irrelevant what state a thing is/was in, or if the thing even exists/existed (!), as long as it didn't interact with anything (or is being observed which implies an interaction).
Does the moon exist when you turn your back at it and close your eyes? --> It might not, and it would not make a difference if it didn't.
I always thought it was just not possible to measure the state without changing it, so we have no way of even guessing. Schrödinger's Cat is actually a terrible analogy imho, I always liked to think of it like christmas presents - you don't know what the inside looks like until you open it. It could be anything!
But then again, once we open it we know it has always been that. Maybe a chameleon in a box and we can't know what color it had at a given time, even if we open it later? :::
Schrödinger's cat is indeed a terrible analogy, but so is the Christmas presents one. A cat is always either alive or dead, and the contents of a Christmas present are determined before opening it. But the state of a quantum particle is fundamentally ambiguous before measurement. This is demonstrated by experiments breaking the Bell inequality if you want to know more!
… the state of a quantum particle is fundamentally ambiguous before measurement. This is demonstrated by experiments breaking the Bell inequality …
No, the state is not what's ambiguous, but rather a single, definitive value of the variable is what does not exist unless it's already in an eigenstate of said variable.
Yes, I am aware of what you meant, but your wording may be misleading.
I always thought it was just not possible to measure… without changing [the system being measured]
This is the observer effect, which is certainly not unique to quantum mechanics.
I always liked to think of it like christmas presents - you don’t know what the inside looks like until you open it. It could be anything!
That analogy is suggestive of hidden variables. Hidden variables theories are severely constrained by observed violations of Bell's inequality. Without loopholes like non-locality, there cannot be a "hidden" definite value underlying a superposition state.
What gets me is the uncertainty principle.
Like... no fucking shit you can't know the state of a thing until it's observed. You can't know until you know, you know? But you can still take a fucking guess.
And, it's still a certain way until observed. It doesn't somehow change suddenly because it's been observed!
No, that's entirely wrong. That's really the core idea. A particle is not in a certain way, it is in an undefined state. The very fact that you look at it, involes exchanging information (like sending another particle at it and see "how it bounces back", to make a very primitive example).
Observing something intrisically means interacting with it and that interaction will affects the state of the particle.
I see
Ok... how can you know that, though? The slit test is always the proof I'm pointed to, but that doesn't explain in any way how a particle is essentially stateless until observed, only that how it is observed changes the outcome. How would you know it is stateless until you look at it? You can't know for sure until you measure it!
The whole thing seems less like physics and more like philosophy.
There is no absolute "knowing" in science. Physicists constructed a model and that model is then used to make predictions which are checked againt experiments. And so far quantum mechanics turns out to be an exceptional accurate model.
It doesn't mean that we know it is true. But so far sticking to this weird model with all it's quirks allowed us to build amazing gadgets
Other than some issues with wording (i.e., the misuse of "state"), those are some good questions.
It turns out under reasonable assumptions that any theory that attempts to always assign deterministically evolving "hidden" definite values to measurable quantities while reproducing the predictions of quantum mechanics must be nonlocal. This does not mean that such nonlocal hidden variables theories are necessarily wrong, but introduces issues such as the incompatibility of the dynamics of the hidden variables with the theory of relativity. However, the "standard" Copenhagen interpretation has the same issue of nonlocality in the case of wavefunction collapse.
A second issue with such hidden variables theories that are faithful to the predictions of standard quantum mechanics is that they are often essentially standard quantum mechanics with added complexity in the form of the hidden variable dynamics, which would be undesirable from the perspective of Occam's razor, which disfavors unnecessary complexity.
A third issue is the question of how measurement of a quantity would reveal the true, definite hidden variable value. The Copenhagen interpretation has a similar issue with the question of how measurement causes wavefunction collapse.
One may ponder the hidden variable theories that disagree with the predictions of standard quantum mechanics, but experiments investigating these differences in predictions have repeatedly favored the predictions of standard quantum mechanics to an overwhelming degree.
The particle does have a state before it's observed—it just might not be an eigenstate with respect to the variable that shall be measured, but rather there is a well-defined distribution in said variable which comes from the wavefunction.
You appear to be discussing quantum indeterminacy, measurement, and wavefunction collapse rather than the uncertainty relation. Also, quantum indeterminacy is not a matter of "knowledge", as you seem to suggest.
Im a least a lil autistic and I for one love quantum mechanics, if you view existence from a "Schrödinger's Cat" kinda perspective it explains anything paranormal and personally allows me to believe this world is anything more than a bleak, capitalist dystopia from time to time. Certainly explains away the ongoing issue of extraterrestrials if you conceptualize multitudes of reality coexisting at once, anyways.
Based on experience, it makes sense to me that some autistic people might be very upset by this because it seems like some of them have a very strong desire to maintain control.