More evidence the wave function is real but non physical

a reply to: shawmanfromny

"The trajectories tell themselves how to move." Now (that)statement completely blows my mind

It isn't really so mindblowing. Consider an ordinary, macroscopic object -- a dart you throw at a dartboard, trying to hit the bull.

You can derive a probability distribution for where the dart will land, which will map accurately the chances of it hitting any point on the board. If you threw the dart repeatedly at the board, you'd create a pattern of holes in the cork that exactly matched the probability distribution.

Yet still, exactly where the dart lands on any particular throw depends precisely on the magnitude and direction of the forces acting on it: gravity, air pressure, the momentum imparted by your hand, and so on.

If you could compute these forces accurately, you could throw away the probability map. You'd know exactly where the dart would land.

And the dart 'knows', too -- in the sense that its trajectory is slavishly bound to respond to those forces. Probability has been replaced by certainty.

Likewise in the quantum world. The uncertainty invoked by Heisenberg's famous principle is ours, not the particles'; quantum reality is just as deterministic as the familiar reality we know. It could not be otherwise, for they are one and the same.

a reply to: shawmanfromny

Thanks for the post.

First off, there's always a new theory that pops up that claims to get rid of the wave function or it's some new hidden variable that will upend quantum theory.

The reason this occurs is because quantum mechancious tells us that conscious choice creates reality.

This is at the heart of what bugs people about quantum mechanics. Why does the position of a subatomic particle depend on the choice of a conscious observer in any way?

This question bugs them and so they want a hidden variable or something that says these particles have a definite position independent of the conscious choice of the observer.

So far, no good and it just keeps getting worse for them.

When you look at things like the free will theorem or Bell's theorem it totally destroys any of these arguments.

The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that, if we have a free will in the sense that our choices are not a function of the past, then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles. Conway and Kochen's paper was published in Foundations of Physics in 2006.[1] They published a stronger version of the theorem in 2009.[2]

The theorem states that, given the axioms, if the two experimenters in question are free to make choices about what measurements to take, then the results of the measurements cannot be determined by anything previous to the experiments. Since the theorem applies to any arbitrary physical theory consistent with the axioms, it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe's past in an ad hoc way. The argument proceeds from the Kochen-Specker theorem, which shows that the result of any individual measurement of spin was not fixed independently of the choice of measurements. As stated by Cator and Landsman regarding hidden variable theories:[3] "There has been a similar tension between the idea that the hidden variables (in the pertinent causal past) should on the one hand include all ontological information relevant to the experiment, but on the other hand should leave the experimenters free to choose any settings they like."

en.wikipedia.org...

This is the ball game so to speak and every QM experiment has supported the axioms of the free will theorem which are:

The proof of the theorem as originally formulated relies on three axioms, which Conway and Kochen call "fin", "spin", and "twin". The spin and twin axioms can be verified experimentally.

Fin: There is a maximum speed for propagation of information (not necessarily the speed of light). This assumption rests upon causality.

Spin: The squared spin component of certain elementary particles of spin one, taken in three orthogonal directions, will be a permutation of (1,1,0).

Twin: It is possible to "entangle" two elementary particles, and separate them by a significant distance, so that they have the same squared spin results if measured in parallel directions. This is a consequence of quantum entanglement, but full entanglement is not necessary for the twin axiom to hold (entanglement is sufficient but not necessary).

In their later paper, "The Strong Free Will Theorem",[2] Conway and Kochen replace the Fin axiom by a weaker one called Min, thereby strengthening the theorem. Min asserts only that two experimenters separated in a space-like way can make choices of measurements independently of each other. In particular it is not postulated that the speed of transfer of all information is subject to a maximum limit, but only of the particular information about choices of measurements.

en.wikipedia.org...

Let's unpack this.

What it's saying is the conscious experimenter and the particle it's measuring have to have free wiil. This is because a Scientint can go into their lab and a particle doesn't exist in a definite spin up or spin down state until the conscious experimenter makes a choice to measure spin.

S a universe wouldn't exist where spin down is measured unless the conscious observer made a choice to measure spin.

This also means the particle has free will because the particle doesn't take a definite position until the conscious observer makes a choice. So the choice of the conscious observer is creating a "reality" where either spin up or spin down is measured.

This really bugs materialist so they have been on a hunt for hidden variables since the inception of QM. To them it makes no sense why a fundamental aspect of reality seems to accommodate the conscious choice of the observer. This spin or any other quantum state should exists in a definite position independent of the choice of the conscious experimenter.

Sadly for them, experiment after experiment supports the axioms of the free will theorem.

This also ties into Roger Penrose and the quantum mind but that subject can take up an entire thread on it's own.

Many interacting Worlds is interesting but it bumps into the reality of these experiments. The recent experiment really hurts the theory because you have information going from A to B without a physical medium. There's no transmition of a particle needed to transmit this information.

Many Interacting Worlds say particles have definite positions it's just some of the particles in our universe are from parallel universes. These particles have definite trajectories but it becomes fuzzy because particles from universe A has seeped into universe B so things just appear fuzzy or indeterminate.

The catch is that one has to have many interacting worlds. In fact, quantum behavior itself may be regarded as evidence of definite particles from alternate universes poking through into our own, causing this blurry picture at the quantum scale.
"That's the most radical and interesting part of this approach," he said. "Assuming that reality is now described by many trajectories instead of a wave, we have to ask what these trajectories really mean, physically. The only sensible interpretation is to think of each trajectory as representing a different world. In each world, nothing is wave-like or indefinite. Everything is sharp and well-defined. But there are now multiple worlds. The variation across these worlds is where quantum uncertainty or 'fuzziness,' together with all other quantum behavior, actually comes from."

phys.org...

It's actually a very interesting theory and I personally love this kind of out of the box thinking. The problem is, his motive is to get away from that pesky wave function that just destroys materialism and it says conscios choice is connected to the measurement of a quantum state.

It also posed interesting questions about the physics philosophy on the wave and what it means if you don't need it, he said. Quantum trajectories may be more than just a computational tool. They actually may explain what is going on at the quantum level.

Poirier explained that in the classical physical world where humans operate, everything is in a definite state with respect to velocity and position. Think airplanes and apples falling out of trees. We can calculate where those things are and where they're going.

Read more at: phys.org...

CONT'D

CONT'D

He then says this:

However, by describing quantum realities using quantum trajectories alone, at least some of the old classical notions can be restored, Poirier said. According to this picture, quantum particles really do have well-defined attributes and follow definite quantum trajectories.

phys.org...

So, the motivation is clear and these things have been occurring since the inception of QM. He wants to restore old classical notions of position and momentum and remove the uncertainties that are tied to things like Bell's theorem and the free will theorem.

If you look at this recent experiment, it refutes the idea that these particles have independent trajectories. You can never have a stable transfer of information if the particles from universe A were independent from the particles from universe B. These particles have to be connected by something because they're speaking the same language so to speak. This is why in the latest experiment, information was sent from point A to B without a physical medium and a bitmap of a chinese knot was sent from point A to B. There has to be a wave function that allows these particles to speak in the same language. Without this, you would have distinct particles from universe A to universe B and how could you send any stable information from Alice to Bob?

I have to admit though, Bohmian Mechanics is a beautiful theory. It's a holistic theory that says everything is connected. The only problem I have is it wants to say everything is connected while keeping a classical point of view by removing the wave function. This just doesn't work and this is why QM rules the day because experiment after experiment supports it.

originally posted by: neoholographic


The reason this occurs is because quantum mechancious tells us that conscious choice creates reality.

It does nothing of the sort. That is just one school of interpretation of quantum mechanics. You may ascribe to it, but don't pass it off as though it was canonical, established fact. It is merely an assumption made by those who try to use the unexplained mysteries of quantum mechanics as a weapon to refute materialism. Good luck with that, but it won't wash with diehard materialists who demand proof that their assumptions are wrong, not articles of faith by those who clutch at dodgy conclusions and interpretations of experiments in order to try to disprove materialism.

Human choice only creates observed reality, that is, a quantum reality that has been forced through interaction with the detecting or measuring apparatus to behave in an entirely randomn way. It does not create what is unobservable reality (the noumenon as opposed to the phenomenon). It is the conceptual failure to understand this philosophical distinction that contributes to much of the confusion surrounding how to understand quantum mechanics. Calling the wave function real yet non-physical is meaningless to physicists, for nothing is real to them unless it is physical. Hence, it is hardly a useful way of reconciling opposing views amongst physicists over the correct understanding of the quantum universe. One of its problems is that no one has managed to reconcile the property of "interference" of probability amplitudes, which is consistent with their being real waves, with Born's interpretation of the square of the modulus of the wave function as a measure of probability. The term "probability wave" is just a befuddled , intellectual cope-out that totally fails to resolve the fudnamental conceptual tension within quantum mechanics. Hence, the still unsolved problem of the instantaneous collapse of the wave function once a measurement has been made. Another problem is that the Supposition Principle has never been proven from some fundamental (pre-quantum) theory. Historically speaking, it was just imposed upon us to accept as a fact of nature. Instead of regarding wave-particle duality as an emerging feature of a subatomic world forced by an experimental set-up to choose between opposite extreme states, the Copenhagen School turns the duality into a great principle of nature that cannot be avoided or even explained by proper science, as opposed to psudoscientific speculations!

I applaud your airing of the ongoing debate about quantum mechanics. But there is a danger of presenting a one-sided view favoured by a predisposition to accept only explanations that favour the metaphysical implications that you espouse. It simply does not make sense to call something a wave but in the same breath to describe it as non-physical. Nor is it good science. You cannot have your cake and eat it. That is being intellectually dishonest. If the wave function is just a mathematical function that statistically accounts for quantum-mechanical behaviour but nothing more, then it is not a real wave in some medium filling all space. If it is the latter, then physicists will regard it still as physical.

a reply to: micpsi

First off, there's a lot of hyperbole in your post but you have presented nothing but opinion in your post and it refutes nothing that I have said.

In my posts, I try to quote actual scientific experiments and theorems to support what I'm saying. You have basically just given us a bunch of hot air that refutes nothing. You said:

Calling the wave function real yet non-physical is meaningless to physicists, for nothing is real to them unless it is physical.

Again, a meaningless statement. I don't care how someone subjectively feels. Yes, many of them are materialist because much of Western science is rooted in a materialist philosophy. Materialism is dead and has been dead for awhile. So people can have a materialist view all they want, it doesn't change the fact that materialism just doesn't correspond to what we call reality.



Now, I wasn't the only one who said the wave function is real but non physical.

The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view from counterfactual quantum cryptography

Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches to wave function ontology, that are based on realist models of quantum theory, here we recast the question as a problem of communication between a sender (Bob), who uses interaction-free measurements, and a receiver (Alice), who observes an interference pattern in a Mach-Zehnder set-up. An advantage of our approach is that it allows us to define the concept of "physical", apart from "real". In instances of counterfactual quantum communication, reality is ascribed to the interaction-freely measured wave function (ψ) because Alice deterministically infers Bob's measurement. On the other hand, ψ does not correspond to the physical transmission of a particle because it produced no detection on Bob's apparatus. We therefore conclude that the wave function in this case (and by extension, generally) is real, but not physical. Characteristically for classical phenomena, the reality and physicality of objects are equivalent, whereas for quantum phenomena, the former is strictly weaker. As a concrete application of this idea, the nonphysical reality of the wavefunction is shown to be the basic nonclassical phenomenon that underlies the security of CQC.

arxiv.org...

I then quoted the experiment that just carried out the exact thing this paper was talking about.

Using this effect, the authors of the new study achieved direct communication between sites without carrier particle transmission. In the setup they designed, two single-photon detectors were placed in the output ports of the last of an array of beam splitters. According to the quantum Zeno effect, it's possible to predict which single-photon detector will "click" when photons are allowed to pass. The system's nested interferometers served to measure the state of the system, thereby preventing it from changing.

Alice transfers a single photon to the nested interferometer; it is detected by three single photon detectors, D0, D1 and Df. If D0 or D1 click, Alice concludes a logic result of one or zero. If Df clicks, the result is considered inconclusive, and is discarded in post-processing. After the communication of all bits, the researchers were able to reassemble the image—a monochrome bitmap of a Chinese knot. Black pixels were defined as logic 0, while white pixels were defined as logic 1.

phys.org...

You also complained about me saying Conscious Choice creates reality. Yes it does and this can be seen with things like Bell's theorem and the free will theorem which I went through in the earlier post.

At first, this was just seen in the abstract on a classical level. If I make the conscious choice to go to the store and buy some Oreo's and a small thing of chocolate milk, then my conscious choice created a reality where I'm sitting on the couch, watching TV, eating Oreo's and drinking chocolate milk.

The universe itself was seen as something independent of this conscious choice at least by western science. There were many in Eastern Philosophy who said it was all connected.

Quantum Mechanics has shattered the notion of separation. Local realism is dead and has been dead for awhile.

Quantum physics: Death by experiment for local realism

A fundamental scientific assumption called local realism conflicts with certain predictions of quantum mechanics. Those predictions have now been verified, with none of the loopholes that have compromised earlier tests.

www.nature.com...

So just like we see conscious choice create reality on an abstract classical level, we've discovered that this holds true on a fundamental level of reality on Planck scales.

Again, this is why some have been looking for hidden variables and trying to rid us of the wave function since the 1920's. It destroys materialism.

The universe on a fundamental level seems to accommodate the conscious choice of the experimenter. Materialist can't stand this. To them, electrons should have a position independent of the choice of a conscious observer. What we see though, is the particle is in superposition and doesn't take a spin up or spin down position until the conscious experimenter chooses to measure spin.

There's a link between concious choice and QM and this goes deeper into theories that propse a Quantum Mind.

So when the conscious experimenter walks into his/her lab and makes a choice to measure spin, at 9:35 A.M. they may get a spin down measurement. The choice of the conscious experimenter has created a reality where spin down was recorded at 9:35 A.M. This is no different than my conscious choice to buy oreo's and chocolate milk which created a reality where I was watching House of Cards while drinking chocolate milk and eating oreo's.

The choice of the experimenter goes even deeper. When I made my choice, Oreo's, chocolate milk and the show House of Cards exist. The experimenter was bringing something into existence that didn't exist before he/she made the conscious choice to measure spin.

So, you can complain all you want, but again it's just hyperbole.

a reply to: neoholographic

In any case, most everything is a matter of perspective.

a reply to: neoholographic

I have been posting this paper for years on this site and others.

Meanwhile, science marches on.

a reply to: Astyanax

Of course it does and it's great that scientific experiment supports what was said. I have to quote a great Philosopher named Jesse Pinkman who said, "Yeah Science!"

a reply to: neoholographic


Well, this is as good as any other place to post this! I do not think we really need yet another thread and you have some good info here...

Known as the BIG Bell test, it involved over 100,000 people using their cell phones to contribute data to 12 quantum research institutes around the world. These volunteers—known as Bellsters—played a video game to instruct over 100 scientists how to perform measurements on entangled particles and superconducting devices.

The experiment was meant to close the “freedom-of-choice” loophole in quantum experiments, which basically amounts to the notion that particles may influence the way researchers choose to measure them. By having these measurements dictated by a diverse group of 100,000 strangers, however, it would be impossible to predict in advance how the measurements would be made. This would, in principle, give researchers insight into whether the world exists independently of our observations of whether our observations shape the world.

The first results from the study were published today in Nature, and suggest that our observation of the world strongly influences it.

In both Bell tests, the results “clearly” contradicted Einstein’s theory of local realism once again. It was the first time a Bell test wasn’t subject to the freedom-of-choice loophole. According to Mitchell, however, there are still other loopholes that need to be closed, but the size of this test has effectively shut the book on this particular loophole for good.

motherboard.vice.com - The Results of a 100,000-Person Quantum Experiment Seem To Violate Einstein’s Theory of Local Realism.

I thought there was a thread up about the Big Bell Test but can't seem to find it.

This is the "freedom of choice" loophole being closed. The article explains how but basically by playing a game a sequence of random 1's and 0's were created by people who were not connected (or knowing what the other person was doing). That string was used as input to Bell's Test, not once but twice, and the results are what is quoted.

Einstein's local realism has had its day. Time to move on to QM with all of its peculiarities and live with it. I kind of think that all particles in universe are entangled with each other since the Big Bang but in a manner we do not fully understand. It is more of a Machian Universe where all particles interact with all other particles (like one huge Bose-Einstein condensate) or at least my attempt at describing what I "feel" this means from a cosmological standpoint.

Give the Motherboard article a read for all the details!