Quantum Mechanics and Mind

[abashed]

@Exapno_Mapcase

This is the point at which the discussion always goes off the rails. People who don’t know math sincerely believe that if the experts were just to explain things a little more clearly the lightbulb would go on over their heads. And therefore if the lightbulb stays dark it’s the fault of the experts. Because obviously all things are explainable through words and common sense.

That’s simply not true. Most advanced math and physics do not have any analogies to everyday experience and common sense. Science is not explainable in ordinary words. Science is only explainable through math. Not high school math, either. Difficult to comprehend math whose meaning may take decades of immersion to fully understand.

Little wonder that people will gravitate to charlatans who promise that they can explain everything in simple words. The charlatans are always wrong. Always. 100% of the time. You can’t explain this stuff in simple words. Every scientist in the world knows this, so when people come in claiming that they have a word answer they are slapped down before anyone listens. Of course they think this is terribly unfair, which builds up further resentment of the experts, and drives the non-math people back to the charlatans.

I can’t think of a solution. People here at the Dope have been dealing with this problem for almost two decades and as we see here it never changes. The non experts have to admit they aren’t getting it - and that it’s OK if they don’t get it. It’s a specialized skill that takes years of training. It’s like not being able to speak Mayan. Nobody feels they are stupid if they can’t understand a conversation in Mayan, nor should they. Conversely, nobody walks up to a group of expert Mayan speakers and tells them that a guy on YouTube says that their Mayan is all wrong.

Bottom line. The responsibility is all yours, not theirs.

But the fact that not many ordinary people can’t understand the math does not alter the fact that it is information that has been made available to those with the ability to ‘unearth’ it, so to speak. All the great mathematicians have had the ability, not to invent mathematical theorems, but to extract from the potential that lies all around us, mathematical information that exists and describes the universe. Put another way, reality is not based on ‘stuff’ that we can touch, feel, smell, hear etc., but purely on ideas, something some of the ancient philosophers knew. If you want to understand what a rock is, for example, we can look at it, touch it, weigh it and so on, but once we begin to really examine what a rock is we then enter the world of ideas by describing it in terms of atoms, and molecules, chemicals and so on. So when we really get to grips with the world we find it’s all about ideas, not stuff. Even the label ‘rock’ we ascribe to an object is in itself a concept, so we can see everything starts from some basic idea or other.

The same thing applies to QM. We do experiments and we note the results, which puzzle us. We then attempt to provide some kind of rational framework within which such data seems to make sense. This usually involves mathematics which is considered better since it is very precise and does not suffer the ambiguities of language. However, the mathematics never came from the experiment; rather it arose as a consequence of the experiment since it only came into existence as a result of the experiment + a conscious interpretation of it. So whether we use analogies or mathematical models to describe the behaviour of QM, it’s all just information of various types that arise in response to our relationship with the experiment and that originate not in the brain, but from consciousness, which does not necessarily reside in the physical brain. By saying it is our brains that generate ideas we are starting from a physical perspective in attempting to resolve phenomena, but many strange quantum effects do not behaviour anything like the physical world so there exists a mismatch in this approach. Referring back to the simulation model of reality, it’s like a character from* Minecraft *trying to describe the server or the real person playing the game; it’s impossible. You have to look outside of the game to really understand where the ‘inputs’ are coming from.

[abashed]

@Wakinyan

We need to take a couple of steps back. At least I do. As I understand this thread, the OP has some theories inspired from findings in quantum mechanics research; for instance, from the well-known double split expirement.

Half Man Half Wit and others says that he cannot draw these conclusions, because 1) QM is really no mystery at all, and 2) which the OP himself would know if he or she knew the math. Therefore his/her theories are invalid.

Thay mat be good or bad, right or wrong. I have no dog in this fight. I’m reading the thread and writing this post to learn (hell, I even ordered the book!, which hasn’t arrived yet).

But over many years we’ve all seen all those TV documentaries or YouTube clips and what not, and they are all very consistent; which is pretty much: ”This is how QM works. Weird, huh. We don’t understand it.” And the guys who says they do not understand it are QM scientists (assuming there’s no conspiracy). I find this a stark contrast to the arguments the OP gets in this thread, where dopers pretty much says it’s no more mysterious than 1+2=3, if you know the maths.

Take for instance the flick linked to earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ, where Jim Al-Khahliliexplains the double slit experiment. This presentation is just an example. As we all know there are hundreds of its kind where scientists explain or help explain this from a classical physics standpoint unexpected phenomena just about the same way, year after year.

This I do not get. It would mean that Al-Khalili et al’s presentation of QM is ”fake science”? Of course there are simplifications etcetera, often needed to explain something complicated, but is for instance Al Khahlili simply wrong in his presentation of the double slit experiment or even deliberately telling us lies, like just about any other scientist in presentations like this one?

(The clip is only nine minutes long and seems to support the OP’s conclusions. For me it would be valuable if Half Man Half Wit have time to watch it and respond, though I understand if he or she does not want to review YouTube clips on demand. :))

This is why I gave that particular link because, yes, it* is* a great simplification of the double-slit experiment but Jim Khalili is a well respected and accomplished physicist who has done a lot of research in this field. So you have to ask yourself whether somebody like that is going to go on YouTube and present stuff that is going to make him look ridiculous. He was addressing some kind of meeting and it wasn’t just a question of the YouTube audience he was making a presentation to but it would also have been interested parties in the audience, who probably had some knowledge of QM, and wanted to see a well known ‘expert’ give their take on it. Jim Khalili has presented many physics programmes on the BBC and the BBC would hardly tolerate someone who is pedaling pseudo-science on their network. The bottom line is, knowing the mathematics is telling you this or that, you are aware of that as an expert, and simply summarize the results of what the theories are without needing to go into the complexities, which most people would not understand. All you would say is that mathematics has shown this or that result, so I kind of reject the many objections people are making here about not taking the math into account.

[BeepKillBeep]

@abashed

so I kind of reject the many objections people are making here about not taking the math into account.

Others may have a different perspective as this isn’t my area of expertise, but I don’t think it is impossible to understand at a shallow level without the mathematics; however, to really understand at a deep level requires mathematics. To make the kind of conclusions about QM that you’re making in this thread requires a deeper understanding. You’re applying a shallow understanding to a complex subject and coming up with flawed conclusions. That’s my perspective, if I’m wrong I’m sure somebody more knowledgeable will correct me.

[Mangetout]

@abashed

Well, it’s tempting to think of the mind, the universe, as essentially a set of simple switches but that is probably because we have become accustomed to thinking in terms of the way digital computers work which is just the* current* way of looking at intelligence/consciousness.

I think when we talk about ‘mind’ it is as well to remember that we too are a part of the universe and evolved out of the basic constituents of the big band and the way the universe evolved after that. There are probably ‘connections’ that we don’t understand at the moment that exist between particles and forces which include our consciousness, although traditionally, it has been the practice of science to regard a separation between us and the rest of the universe and to look at things ‘objectively’ as if we had no influence or connection at all to whatever it is we are studying.

Personally, I think it will eventually be realized that ‘mind’ is more than an individual brain and body and that it is a composite of biology, physics and so on connected on a universal level. This might be something like entanglement which suggests that everything is, at some fundamental level connected, so that it then becomes impossible to really separate an observer from the observed. This could be why QM seems very weird. It might be that our participation in any experiment has an input which effects the outcome in unpredictable ways. Why should mere inanimate stuff behave in ways that defy classical behaviour? Because in classical experiments our ‘mental’ effect is too small to be noticed but on the quantum level has a significant effect. People like Newton wouldn’t have known about this which led him to describe the universe in terms of a clockwork mechanism. Quite understandable. Where do we really get our ideas from? From the brain alone? Possibly, but we might also be able to ‘plug in’ to a kind of ‘universal internet’ - a kind of ‘quantum computer’, connected, via entanglement, to a form of universal processing system. None of this can be proved, of course, but intuitively it is an appealing idea.

Appealing perhaps, but it’s not a very new idea - you’re pretty much describing Platonic Ideals.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@abashed

However, the central point is still that all this clever mathematics is a form of information, no matter how complex. And such information can (theoretically at least) be considered to exist as a possibility, probably one of many, that consciousness has to interact with in order to become ‘real.’ So we still have information, on one hand, and consciousness that needs to interact with it to form reality, on the other.

I don’t see how this is supposed to follow at all. Just because our models of the world are, in some vague sense, ‘informational’ and dependent on conscious apprehension, it simply doesn’t follow that hence, the world must likewise be informational and dependent on consciousness. After all, the models of the world can be written down and published in Physical Review, but it doesn’t follow that therefore, reality is made out of paper and edited by the American Physical Society!

Or, putting it a little less crudely, we observe the world, and tell stories about our observations; sometimes, we can use these stories to predict things—in the sense that if the story were true, such-and-such would happen. Sometimes (annoyingly often, from the perspective of many physicists desperately looking for ‘new physics’), that indeed happens; then, we keep the story, and see what else it implies. Other times, it doesn’t happen; then, we need to change the story.

None of that implies that what does or doesn’t happen depends on the story we’re telling. Indeed, if that were the case, the above would be terribly hard to explain: if it’s the story that is responsible for the facts about reality, then how is it that the story sometimes happens to be wrong? What fixes those facts that contradict our story, and hence, can’t be fixed by the story? It seems the simplest answer is that there’s a story-independent world out there, and our stories sometimes just get things wrong about the world.

Yet, you insist that for some reason, just because we can tell stories about the world, the world ought to be made of stories, and dependent on stories. But there’s just no grounds for thinking so at all.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@abashed

By saying it is our brains that generate ideas we are starting from a physical perspective in attempting to resolve phenomena, but many strange quantum effects do not behaviour anything like the physical world so there exists a mismatch in this approach.

This is also a very strange thing to say. It’s not like there’s some set of notions according to which things in the physical world are allowed to behave—rather, it’s that we find out how things in the physical world behave through experiment; and sometimes, we find that our previous notions simply weren’t refined enough. So we refine them. But implying that there’s some sort of a priori notion of ‘physical behavior’ that quantum mechanics fails to conform to just gets the whole endeavor backasswards.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@abashed

But the fact that not many ordinary people can’t understand the math does not alter the fact that it is information that has been made available to those with the ability to ‘unearth’ it, so to speak. All the great mathematicians have had the ability, not to invent mathematical theorems, but to extract from the potential that lies all around us, mathematical information that exists and describes the universe. Put another way, reality is not based on ‘stuff’ that we can touch, feel, smell, hear etc., but purely on ideas, something some of the ancient philosophers knew. If you want to understand what a rock is, for example, we can look at it, touch it, weigh it and so on, but once we begin to really examine what a rock is we then enter the world of ideas by describing it in terms of atoms, and molecules, chemicals and so on. So when we really get to grips with the world we find it’s all about ideas, not stuff. Even the label ‘rock’ we ascribe to an object is in itself a concept, so we can see everything starts from some basic idea or other.

This is not true. Reality was there before humans, before organic life. It does not depend at all upon ideas. Our understanding of it does, but that’s a level of abstraction not a reality. Several levels, actually. Math is a level of abstraction. Philosophy is a level of abstraction. English words to explain math to non-mathematicians are a second-level abstraction. Ancient philosophers may be interesting - Plato posited the world as many levels of abstraction, although most modern philosophers don’t accept his schemata - but are not scientific. Even the best ancient scientists have been completely superseded. Euclid’s geometry was shown later not to be mathematically rigorous by modern standards, e.g. No one yet has successfully combined philosophy and QM. Run, do not walk, from anyone who claims to have done so.

The same thing applies to QM. We do experiments and we note the results, which puzzle us. We then attempt to provide some kind of rational framework within which such data seems to make sense. This usually involves mathematics which is considered better since it is very precise and does not suffer the ambiguities of language. However, the mathematics never came from the experiment; rather it arose as a consequence of the experiment since it only came into existence as a result of the experiment + a conscious interpretation of it. So whether we use analogies or mathematical models to describe the behaviour of QM, it’s all just information of various types that arise in response to our relationship with the experiment and that originate not in the brain, but from consciousness, which does not necessarily reside in the physical brain. By saying it is our brains that generate ideas we are starting from a physical perspective in attempting to resolve phenomena, but many strange quantum effects do not behaviour anything like the physical world so there exists a mismatch in this approach. Referring back to the simulation model of reality, it’s like a character from* Minecraft *trying to describe the server or the real person playing the game; it’s impossible. You have to look outside of the game to really understand where the ‘inputs’ are coming from.

This is also not true. QM came first and then experiments like the double-slit were done to test the predictions made by the math. Entanglement appeared first in the math; Einstein never believed it but experiments later verified it. You have your history backwards as well as your other “understandings”. No wonder your thought experiments fail.

[abashed]

@BeepKillBeep

Others may have a different perspective as this isn’t my area of expertise, but I don’t think it is impossible to understand at a shallow level without the mathematics; however, to really understand at a deep level requires mathematics. To make the kind of conclusions about QM that you’re making in this thread requires a deeper understanding. You’re applying a shallow understanding to a complex subject and coming up with flawed conclusions. That’s my perspective, if I’m wrong I’m sure somebody more knowledgeable will correct me.

I don’t think that just being able to refine the details of quantum measurements gives us an answer as to why it happens. It’s kind of like the situation was before Einstein. There was great mathematical formulae to describe the behaviour of gravity but it was all based on an incomplete understanding of it. Mathematics is only as good as the model it is based on and it is only a complex subject within such constraints. To be a bit unkind, it’s like digging a hole deeper and deeper and not realizing you are digging in the wrong place!

[abashed]

@Mangetout

Appealing perhaps, but it’s not a very new idea - you’re pretty much describing Platonic Ideals.

Maybe Plato had it right!

[abashed]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I don’t see how this is supposed to follow at all. Just because our models of the world are, in some vague sense, ‘informational’ and dependent on conscious apprehension, it simply doesn’t follow that hence, the world must likewise be informational and dependent on consciousness. After all, the models of the world can be written down and published in Physical Review, but it doesn’t follow that therefore, reality is made out of paper and edited by the American Physical Society!

Or, putting it a little less crudely, we observe the world, and tell stories about our observations; sometimes, we can use these stories to predict things—in the sense that if the story were true, such-and-such would happen. Sometimes (annoyingly often, from the perspective of many physicists desperately looking for ‘new physics’), that indeed happens; then, we keep the story, and see what else it implies. Other times, it doesn’t happen; then, we need to change the story.

None of that implies that what does or doesn’t happen depends on the story we’re telling. Indeed, if that were the case, the above would be terribly hard to explain: if it’s the story that is responsible for the facts about reality, then how is it that the story sometimes happens to be wrong? What fixes those facts that contradict our story, and hence, can’t be fixed by the story? It seems the simplest answer is that there’s a story-independent world out there, and our stories sometimes just get things wrong about the world.

Yet, you insist that for some reason, just because we can tell stories about the world, the world ought to be made of stories, and dependent on stories. But there’s just no grounds for thinking so at all.

Well, once upon a time I would have probably agreed with you but since the birth of QM we have seen phenomena that defies classical, materialistic, even causal explanations that science has traditionally been able to employ in order to account for various scientific questions. And despite you and your colleagues maintaining that we should be able to construct some kind of ‘physical’ theories in order to explain QM, this has failed spectacularly. Non-locality, for instance, is completely counter-intuitive yet you see people pointing out that yes, action at a distance has been shown, yet faster than light information is impossible, which still does not explain anything. All it appears to do is try and bolster up the existing scientific orthodoxy while relegating the new physics to something akin to superstition. And again, mathematical arguments only describe such phenomena in terms we can construct a framework for but only go to prove that we can put together a ‘story’ that seems to work. Maybe ‘fairy story’ would be a better term.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@abashed

Well, once upon a time I would have probably agreed with you but since the birth of QM we have seen phenomena that defies classical, materialistic, even causal explanations that science has traditionally been able to employ in order to account for various scientific questions.

So, turns out we were wrong about these things! Happens.

And despite you and your colleagues maintaining that we should be able to construct some kind of ‘physical’ theories in order to explain QM, this has failed spectacularly.

To the contrary, it has succeeded spectacularly; you just fail to understand it, hence, it seems all sorts of weird and strange to you. But that’s your problem, not that of QM. QM has led to predictions that have been confirmed with unprecedented accuracy. And of course, despite your scare quotes, QM is a physical theory.

Non-locality, for instance, is completely counter-intuitive yet you see people pointing out that yes, action at a distance has been shown, yet faster than light information is impossible, which still does not explain anything.

Action at a distance hasn’t been demonstrated, and QM yields a straightforward explanation for why faster than light information transfer is impossible. Unfortunately, it involves math.

All it appears to do is try and bolster up the existing scientific orthodoxy while relegating the new physics to something akin to superstition.

No; what’s relegated to superstition is the sort of stuff you advocate. And since that’s got no basis in fact, nor even any sort of argument going for it (I notice you haven’t addressed my points regarding your non sequiturs), well, superstition’s exactly what it is.

And again, mathematical arguments only describe such phenomena in terms we can construct a framework for but only go to prove that we can put together a ‘story’ that seems to work. Maybe ‘fairy story’ would be a better term.

So, you admit that you have no knowledge nor understanding of math (and QM, and the philosophy you’re dabbling in, and so forth). Yet, still, you believe yourself capable of rendering such judgment.

I used to wonder from where people like you, coming from a position of near-total ignorance, nevertheless take the confidence to make such grand pronouncements, while my friends and colleagues, highly qualified scientists, sometimes are wrecked with doubt regarding their ideas.

But then it hit me: I got the whole thing wrong. It’s because those people constantly doubted their convictions, they kept questioning themselves, examining their convictions, and altering them, should the need arise. Their self-doubt was ultimately part of what enabled them to become highly qualified in the first place, not the other way around.

By the same token, of course, there are those who have supreme confidence in every little misconception they come up with. Every vague idea seems to them a grand realization, every fuzzy notion a deep insight; they question nothing, instead elevating themselves above the experts who need all this boring, silly math stuff, and even then get things wrong, even though it’s all oh-so-obvious. Those are the people who think they know it all, and never learn a thing.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@abashed

I don’t think that just being able to refine the details of quantum measurements gives us an answer as to why it happens. It’s kind of like the situation was before Einstein. There was great mathematical formulae to describe the behaviour of gravity but it was all based on an incomplete understanding of it. Mathematics is only as good as the model it is based on and it is only a complex subject within such constraints. To be a bit unkind, it’s like digging a hole deeper and deeper and not realizing you are digging in the wrong place!

Math is not in and of itself designed to answer “why” questions. Thinking this is so is a fundamental misunderstanding, which is why it leads to philosophies like yours.

@abashed

Maybe Plato had it right!

If this is true, please explain Plato’s philosophy to us.

@abashed

Well, once upon a time I would have probably agreed with you but since the birth of QM we have seen phenomena that defies classical, materialistic, even causal explanations that science has traditionally been able to employ in order to account for various scientific questions. And despite you and your colleagues maintaining that we should be able to construct some kind of ‘physical’ theories in order to explain QM, this has failed spectacularly. Non-locality, for instance, is completely counter-intuitive yet you see people pointing out that yes, action at a distance has been shown, yet faster than light information is impossible, which still does not explain anything. All it appears to do is try and bolster up the existing scientific orthodoxy while relegating the new physics to something akin to superstition. And again, mathematical arguments only describe such phenomena in terms we can construct a framework for but only go to prove that we can put together a ‘story’ that seems to work. Maybe ‘fairy story’ would be a better term.

Science as superstition is the province of people who refuse to understand science. You again betray a fundamental misunderstanding that turns every later statement wrong. Theories are not stories to “explain” QM. QM is a mathematical framework in which real-world-processes are worked out step-by-step. As you have been told many times but refuse to acknowledge, a number of “interpretations” of QM exist. Yet each is mathematically identical to each other so by definition they must all be
true" in some fundamental sense, since the math predicts reality to more decimal places than any other capital T Theory. What those interpretations are vary considerably, which is fascinating and frustrating. But you cannot pick one flavor out of the pot and proclaim that it and only it is correct and then base your philosophy on it, which is what you’ve been doing.

In formal logic, a true premise developed properly leads to true conclusions. But a false premise does not inescapably lead to false conclusions. It can lead to any conclusion at all, true, false, crazy, meaningless. You keep starting with false premises. They are not going to get you anywhere. They certainly haven’t so far.

[BeepKillBeep]

@abashed

I don’t think that just being able to refine the details of quantum measurements gives us an answer as to why it happens. It’s kind of like the situation was before Einstein. There was great mathematical formulae to describe the behaviour of gravity but it was all based on an incomplete understanding of it. Mathematics is only as good as the model it is based on and it is only a complex subject within such constraints. To be a bit unkind, it’s like digging a hole deeper and deeper and not realizing you are digging in the wrong place!

I have a policy not to go in circles with people on online discussions. My time is too valuable to waste in such endeavors. So as previously stated, your method derived from a lack of understanding has no results, the scientific method (including mathematics) has had much success over an extended period of time at improving understanding even if people like you don’t necessarily get it. It is almost like scientists are digging in the right place and finding all sorts of treasures while you examine pictures made of clouds and wonder why no holes are being dug.

Ciao.

[abashed]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Math is not in and of itself designed to answer “why” questions. Thinking this is so is a fundamental misunderstanding, which is why it leads to philosophies like yours.

Doesn’t mean we stop asking why though.

If this is true, please explain Plato’s philosophy to us.

He thought ideas were more real the the physical world.

Science as superstition is the province of people who refuse to understand science. You again betray a fundamental misunderstanding that turns every later statement wrong. Theories are not stories to “explain” QM. QM is a mathematical framework in which real-world-processes are worked out step-by-step. As you have been told many times but refuse to acknowledge, a number of “interpretations” of QM exist. Yet each is mathematically identical to each other so by definition they must all be
true" in some fundamental sense, since the math predicts reality to more decimal places than any other capital T Theory. What those interpretations are vary considerably, which is fascinating and frustrating. But you cannot pick one flavor out of the pot and proclaim that it and only it is correct and then base your philosophy on it, which is what you’ve been doing.

In formal logic, a true premise developed properly leads to true conclusions. But a false premise does not inescapably lead to false conclusions. It can lead to any conclusion at all, true, false, crazy, meaningless. You keep starting with false premises. They are not going to get you anywhere. They certainly haven’t so far.

We still need to find the best possible model that represents reality, however. Why do I need to tell you this?

[naita]

@abashed

We still need to find the best possible model that represents reality, however. Why do I need to tell you this?

You’re being disingenuous. No one is saying we shouldn’t find the best possible model to represent reality. They’re saying you don’t understand how well our current models work, or what they say about reality.

[Czarcasm]

@abashed

We still need to find the best possible model that represents reality, however. Why do I need to tell you this?

IF there is an ultimate “best possible model” it will stand of the shoulders of all the previous “best possible models” that came before it.
“The best possible model” is merely the best model scientists can come up using the information currently available and when new information comes in(as it is wont to do) it will either confirm your “best possible model” or change it to a better “best possible model”, which will stand and be used until the next bit of information about the subject comes in.
There are only two ways to come up with an ultimate “best possible model”-

1. There is no further information in the universe to interfere with whatever was previously cooked up, or
2. Pick a model you like, and disregard any information that has a possibility of changing it.

[Trinopus]

@abashed

. . . He thought ideas were more real the the physical world. . . .

Kinda, yeah. Big problem with that: there isn’t any way to test such notions for validity.

“Reality is unified” vs “reality is manifold.” Go ahead, prove either proposition.

There are some remarkable “one-nesses” in the universe…it’s amazing that we’ve worked out that there are only four major forces, and under some circumstances, they merge. That’s wonderful!

But there are also astonishing levels of diversity, such as the plethora of chemical elements, the variety of types of stars, and the staggering richness of plant and animal life.

“Ideas” are sweet – I think that democracy and liberty are two of the best ideas the human race has ever come up with – but you can’t prove them rigorously.

(Which is better, chocolate or vanilla?)