Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)

originally posted by: HotMale
a reply to: ImaFungi

If consciousness effects results, or if 'the future effects the past', there would be explict and undeniable physical reasons as to how these things occur, and there would be no contradictions.

It's Affect by the way.

Wth are you talking about. There obviously are contradictions and consciousness would explain why this is happening. It doesn't explain how exactly. Your desire for undeniable physical reasons for a non physical nature is not realistic.

BINGO!!

Consciousness explains this perfectly. The reason you have so many interpretations is because all interpretations have the possibility of being true. This is Consciousness. This is why they can't explain the measurement problem or wave function collapse. It's because they're trying to explain these things in the context of materialism and that's just illogical. You get paradox after paradox.

Decoherence talks about "apparent collapse" but the collapse we see in experiments isn't apparent. It's like saying you see a building collapse but you say it's just apparent and the building still exist in some ghostly way that can't be measured and observed. It's not Science it's just nonsense.

Quantum Experiment Verifies Nonlocal Wavefunction Collapse for a Single Particle

“Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle,” says Professor Wiseman.

“Einstein’s view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points.

“However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices.”

“Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”

scitechdaily.com...

This isn't speculation or blind conjecture about "apparent collapse." This is the non-local collapse of the wave function of a single particle.

It's CHOICE of the Conscious Observer that creates reality.

Like I said, it all comes back to consciousness. I was just reading about the hidden measurements, Quantum Bayesian and the many interacting worlds interpretations of QM. There's always a new interpretation and proponents of these interpretations can list a kernel of evidence that supports their interpretation.

Can all of these interpretations be true and not true at the same time? They can because of Consciousness. There's nothing that exists independent of consciousness so there's no ultimate truth just interpretations. People don't even know the truth about themselves so they spend billions on self help books and Therapists.

When you remove Consciousness, you're left with interpretations, weirdness and things that are counterintuitive. As Feynman said:

Electrons, when they were first discovered, behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. Further research showed, from electron diffraction experiments for example, that they behaved like waves. As time went on there was a growing confusion about how these things really behaved ---- waves or particles, particles or waves? Everything looked like both.

This growing confusion was resolved in 1925 or 1926 with the advent of the correct equations for quantum mechanics. Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have seen before. Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have seen before.

This is the conundrum for materialist. It behaves like something you have seen before and that something is called CONSCIOUSNESS. When you remove consciousness you get "screwy" interpretations and weirdness.

There is one simplication at least. Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way….-Feynman

originally posted by: HotMale
a reply to: TzarChasm

"Right guys?"

no, left.

a reply to: elysiumfire

You should read your postings and be ashamed.

You should discuss why availability of path info is what matters, or go away and stop talking to me.

originally posted by: HotMale


If noone wants to discuss the fact that availability of path info is making the difference between non interference and interference, then we are done.

I wanted to pages ago in threads ago.

You are projecting, because you are the one who has been evasive.

I was trying to offer possibilities of what 'availability of path info' physically means.

If the info is available, but it is not looked at what does the end detector look like?

What happens when a person is witnessing the information at the end detector, and the path info is available, but the path info has not been looked at yet, and while people are observing the end detector, then the path info is erased, what happens then?

a reply to: neoholographic

Consciousness explains this perfectly. The reason you have so many interpretations is because all interpretations have the possibility of being true.

either you are supremely bored, or you are moderately nuts. either way, you are someone elses problem. not mine.

deleting your existence from my "virtual registry" in 3...2...1...

a reply to: neoholographic

Feynman was wrong, because eternally everything that exists and possibly can exist can be compared to geometry.

a reply to: neoholographic

Consciousness is an interpretation machine; BUT IT REQUIRES INPUT TO INTERPRET

There needs to exist something beyond consciousness.

If you take a baby and put it in a vacuum chamber, and give it a microphone, and pencil and paper, and tell it to record all of its interpretations and thoughts, how grand do you think it will do?

Animals are conscious.

Animals perceive the world differently.

The world is the same.

Animals brains are different.

a reply to: neoholographic

Is this ----------------> A


an A?


If this A

Did not exist beyond my consciousness,

How would everyone in this thread see the same thing?

Why wouldnt we all see 'whatever we wanted to see, or whatever we interpreted'?

How come the A seems so objectively equal to itself, so that us, different people, different subjects, different interpreters, reach the same conclusion about something that exists beyond each of us?

EXPLAIN THIS EINSTEIN

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Quantum mechanics has the wave function at its heart and the key to understanding the quantum eraser is to stop thinking of "particles" as little marbles, and start thinking of them as manifestations of the wave function. The sooner you realize that a photon has very little in common with a small marble, the faster you'll be able to grasp interpretations of quantum experiments using the wave function.

This is how I've learned to think about it. You need to have studied electromagnetic waveguides, like those used to transfer and manipulate microwaves. Hollow long rectangles, etc. There's an analogy between electromagnetic field function and the wave function.

classical E&M:

In EM waveguides there are a countable, enumerable, *set* of modes---these are spatial distributions of functions, which you sum together to make the total EM field: there is some total sum over all possible modes. These modes typically represent only the stationary or fully propagating solutions, and not the less interesting 'evanescent' modes which are exponentially decaying.

You notice there's a finite sum over modes, but there's something else which is fully continuous: the coefficient of the mode, and its complex absolute value, the non-negative amplitude. It can be any number. In particular, there's no lower limit.

That's classical physics.

Now, onto quantum mechanics. It turns out, that there is some lower limit. It's really small for radio waves (and not so small for x-rays), but the cavity modes, when it comes to amplitude, cannot be fully continuous. What's a photon, by this we mean one and only one photon, then? The quantum mechanical wave function of one minimum (but non-zero) amplitude mode, that has the minimum Planck energy allowable for its frequency. It's a building block of the wavefunction of the EM field. In a cavity you'd get two finite sums, but in free space, the countable sum over spatial modes becomes an integral, and what was once in classical physics be an integral over all possible amplitudes paramterized by a real number, is now a sum over allowable amplitude states photons (call them particles) and their occupation count. [the details come down to imposing a commutator relationship which isn't zero but has a 'h' in it]

The 'particle' aka photon is a manifestation of the wavefunction of the E&M field.

And this is where the Planck black body spectrum formula and Planck's constant came from---the energy modes of E&M aren't continuous in amplitude!

Now on to electrons and stuff. Well, in QFT, there is "the electron field" (leptons really, and other massive particles) just like EM field. One electron is an elementary 'mode' of that field. It also turns out that in deep contrast to EM, there is a very strong conservation law: it is really really hard as heck to delete an electron, where as photons can just come and go as long as total energy & momentum is conserved. And, additionally, there's that Pauli exclusion thing, so you can't normally stick electrons together 'adding up' to something bigger, so they don't like being crowded. And moreover they electrostatically repel.

So those individual modes (aka particles) really stick around and don't go anywhere and take up space and make up the persistent solid world of our universe. But deep down they're just excitations of the underlying field & wavefunction just as cavity modes of microwaves are and when you do the deep QM experiments you see that.

I don't like saying that there's a "duality" that QM stuff is 'both particle & wave like some some nonsensical mystical merger such as the Catholic Christological Trinity doctrine. [Isaac Newton was an Arian, by the way---his logic rejected Nicene mysticism]

I say: A particle is something that quantum fields do, not something that they are. It's a behavior of quantum fields which have waves. The spatial basis functions are the waves and with quantized amplitudes/occupation state they behave when interacting as countable particles.

And furthermore there are physics-specific properties that make electromagnetic stuff look much more like fieldy/wavey than regular matter which feels very particley in most practical cases: conservation laws and Pauli exclusion principle.

a reply to: TzarChasm

deleting your existence from my "virtual registry" in 3...2...1...

Such information is not stored by you nor do you have the power to access the mainframe and change it. Nobody is saying that the role of consciousness is one of having direct power over reality. Nothing changes. The rules of our material reality are still the same in my, and your interpretation.

a reply to: ImaFungi

Why don't you find a source, and then qoute the answers to these questions you are asking me if you think they disprove my point.

originally posted by: HotMale
a reply to: ImaFungi

Why don't you find a source, and then qoute the answers to these questions you are asking me if you think they disprove my point.

You said something like;

Availability of path info! Availability of path info! Availability of path info! Availability of path info!


You said that was the most important aspect. That when the availability of path info changed, the result changed.

So my two great questions which are now 3, ahem;

If the path info is available, but the path info is not looked at what does the end detector look like?

If the path info is available, and the path info is looked at, what does the end detector look like?


What happens when a person is witnessing the information at the end detector, and the path info is available, but the path info has not been looked at yet, and while people are observing the end detector, then the path info is erased, what happens then?



Here is me, attempting to be honest, and have a discussion with you, attempting to discuss your points and claims, it would be honest of you, to attempt to answer those questions.

a reply to: ImaFungi

Ok. I will reply tomorrow. I am off to bed.

a reply to: korg trinity

This guys conclusion is more similar to Neoholographic then yours I think

originally posted by: ffx6554
But the Quantum Eraser experiment DOES prove consciousness. The experiment is set up so that you can actually look at the result before the electrons arrive at the destinations, and it changes depending on whether you "knew" which path the electrons took. I wonder if the author even knows what the observer means. Observer simply means "the act of knowing which path the electrons took."

Says who?

In the actual experiments, not mystical thought experiments, this wasn't consciousness but a machine somebody manufactured and installed.

The human knowing something came later after this classical machine irreversibly (in thermodynamic sense) pinged or not, because human brains need classical sized inputs and they are also thermodynamically irreversible inside, which is why you need to eat or die.

a reply to: mbkennel

" a machine somebody manufactured and installed."

Without Human Consciousness/Intervention there would be no machine.

originally posted by: ImaFungi
a reply to: Arbitrageur

I dont know why you so desire to say; "consciousness doesnt require quantum mechanics"

If quantum mechanics is the fundamental basis of reality; Everything requires quantum mechanics.

Or to say 'requires' may even be silly; may be more appropriate to say, everything 'is' quantum mechanics?

Yes, everything is made of quantum mechanical fields. But as far as we know, the peculiar quantum behaviors which are only apparent in the true quantum limit and which disappear in the usual classical thermodynamic limit, are neither necessary nor used in any computational sense in natural biological consciousness.

In any case, it wouldn't be evolutionarily favorable: it's likely impossible to maintain stable, large-scale quantum coherence in a macroscopic organic system at 300K.

a reply to: neoholographic

The actual experiment quoted was evidence for non-locality, not consciousness.

By the way, Einstein wasn't completely wrong: he pointed out that IF non-locality were fully forbidden, then quantum mechanics was incomplete. That's still correct.

He believed, as many others did, that non-locality was fully forbidden. Experiments show, only after his death, that it isn't.

My belief: Relativity, which means at its modern core the imposition of a Lorentz symmetry group invariance, forbids non-locality for a classical field theory on space-time. Classical field theory like E&M and acoustics. But quantum mechanics is on a functional space of a field (there's a x,y,z,t space and a function space) and it's the function space weirdness that does it.

Relativity in modern QFT means asserting the symmetry property is in the core laws of physics and this hasn't ever been violated as far as I'm aware.

originally posted by: mbkennel

it's likely impossible to maintain stable, large-scale quantum coherence in a macroscopic organic system at 300K.

How is it not true that; classicality is nothing but large-scale quantum coherence?

What is classicality besides quantumcality?

Quantum is the underlying fundamental nature of nature.

Quantum + ________ = classical?

originally posted by: mbkennel

The actual experiment quoted was evidence for non-locality, not consciousness.

By the way, Einstein wasn't completely wrong: he pointed out that IF non-locality were fully forbidden, then quantum mechanics was incomplete. That's still correct.

He believed, as many others did, that non-locality was fully forbidden. Experiments show, only after his death, that it isn't.

My belief: Relativity, which means at its modern core the imposition of a Lorentz symmetry group invariance, forbids non-locality for a classical field theory on space-time. Classical field theory like E&M and acoustics. But quantum mechanics is on a functional space of a field (there's a x,y,z,t space and a function space) and it's the function space weirdness that does it.

Relativity in modern QFT means asserting the symmetry property is in the core laws of physics and this hasn't ever been violated as far as I'm aware.

Submitting to functional space is cheating, it is just saying 'because of magic'.

But hear me out.

All these ideas are connected; The only reason one, or Einstein, would think in terms of 'non locality' was because one, and/or Einstein, defined the physical mechanism of light as 'the fastest physical mechanism, in terms of action from point in space A to point in space B';

So they make the statement; "Light is the fastest physical mechanism".

So then they are forced to consider; "Anything that appears to occur faster than this, must be referred to as this term 'non local'".

Or; they can say; "there is functional space", or "space which we cant see or access, but space that must be there if anything seems to be occurring at a speed faster than we have defined being the fastest speed, there must be a reason action can occur faster than the speed of light, if we register action occurring faster than the speed of light; Either our registering is wrong, or action can occur faster than light, or 'space is fake, or there are different types of secluded and over lapping spaces that do and dont effect one another', or 'the universe is fake'.

You have to admit, functional space, appears to be something of a patch, a bandaid, a throwing the hands into the air, more so then any evidenced, experimentally verifiable objecthood.

I am still leaning towards, our modes of registering and understanding how and what we are measuring coupled to the models and math tools used to digest the data is creating contradictions and weirdnesses that do not really exist in/as reality.

Imagine there was a real energy field, that sent information across it faster then the speed of light, hypothetically if one existed, is there any reason to think it couldnt or wouldnt or shouldnt be 1.1 times faster, or 2 times faster or 10000 times faster?

And is thoughts like that, not conceptually similar to what is meant by functional space; that there is a space, in which real matter computes itself faster than light?