The Observer vs. Measurement debate finally solved thanks to Wigner

originally posted by: highvein
Not the rocks, but the photons that were around observed it. Photons can hold information.

The rocks stored the information 2 billion years ago.

Photons travel at the speed of light so if a photon left the rock 2 billion years ago, if the rock wasn't underground it could be 2 billion light years away by now, headed away from us. If the rock was underground, any photon that left it 2 billion years ago hit the rocks around it so those are not around anymore.

Either way, no 2 billion year old photons from those rocks are reaching us humans.

a reply to: cooperton

Good points and I agree.

Materialism is dead. Trying to avoid consciousness is an exercise in futility. Wigner's Friend experiment shows us that observers could reach different outcomes for the same event. Without consciousness saying we're in the measured state where a dead cat was the outcome or a live cat was the outcome then two observers can come to different conclusions.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.

www.technologyreview.com...

If you don't have consciousness, you just have many histories. Consciousness says we're in this state or that state.

Wigner's Friend in the lab, carries out a measurement and his wave function collapses. Wigner outside of the lab can look at the same particle and get an interference pattern and conclude his friend hasn't carried out a measurement.

When Wigner's Friend calls and says, hey Wigner I carried out a measurement and this is my result, Wigner's wave function collapses.

a reply to: neoholographic

If you don't have consciousness, you just have many histories. Consciousness says we're in this state or that state.

Consciousness requires observation to be conscience.

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: cooperton

Good points and I agree.

Materialism is dead. Trying to avoid consciousness is an exercise in futility. Wigner's Friend experiment shows us that observers could reach different outcomes for the same event. Without consciousness saying we're in the measured state where a dead cat was the outcome or a live cat was the outcome then two observers can come to different conclusions.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.

www.technologyreview.com...

If you don't have consciousness, you just have many histories. Consciousness says we're in this state or that state.

Wigner's Friend in the lab, carries out a measurement and his wave function collapses. Wigner outside of the lab can look at the same particle and get an interference pattern and conclude his friend hasn't carried out a measurement.

When Wigner's Friend calls and says, hey Wigner I carried out a measurement and this is my result, Wigner's wave function collapses.

This is patently not true, has been proven to not be true; the double slit experiment has had it's answer for decades now.

If this were true, then you could prove it easily, and you cannot. If I put something in a box, and show it to two different people without them knowing the other looked, they are both going to describe the same exact thing.

I.E. You put a cat in a box, nobody is going to say they saw anything other than a cat. The answer to the slit experiment is a fundamental flaw in the tool used to measure, it's physically changing the super position of the particle being tested, because the test actually hits the particle physically to see if it's there, which #ing moves it.

In other words, all tools we use to observe at the quantum level has a physical repercussion. When photons, particles of light, hit a subatomic particle, they don't just go through them, they push them out of the way. How? PHYSICS. You don't feel the force of photons, but subatomic particles do because they are smaller and lighter than the photon. This is like a bowling ball hitting a baseball if you need a visual.

This is not a philosophical question, there is also no debate in science. There is a factual answer, and scientifically it's physical; no mystic mumbo jumbo, consciousness has nothing to do with any of it; just the tools we use to measure sub atomic particles at the quantum level, use other particles which are bigger and collide with the smaller particles -- the DISPOSITION of the sub atomic particle IS the Observer effect.

I'm turning into Phage -- y'all are making stuff up because you want to believe in the super natural. And that's cool -- really it is, and I'm not saying I don't believe in the super natural, but you can't take something physical with a factual and established explanation for decades and bend it to be super natural.

The observer effect is not super natural. It's physical. It has nothing to do with A PERSON looking at anything, it has to do with the tools we created and HOW they measure, and what the effect of measuring does to the object being measured.

I.E. I want to measure the hardness of a pool ball, so I take a hammer and hit it to see if it breaks. The act of hitting it with the hammer is the test, the position of the pool ball after it's hit with the hammer is the Observer Effect.

Measuring is the action, The observer effect is the reaction that is specifically caused by the observer taking the measurement. Hence it's a very literal definition, and not one that is a question in science, not one that mystifies anyone, it's not philosophical in any nature, it's not super natural.

You can watch Michu Kakku talk about this new age propaganda that turned into popular misconception; you can watch Bill Nye [god I hate bill nye] You can watch Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I've never seen a real scientist say the observer effect is caused by conciousness.

Literally never happened.

originally posted by: SRPrime

originally posted by: neoholographic
a reply to: cooperton

Good points and I agree.

Materialism is dead. Trying to avoid consciousness is an exercise in futility. Wigner's Friend experiment shows us that observers could reach different outcomes for the same event. Without consciousness saying we're in the measured state where a dead cat was the outcome or a live cat was the outcome then two observers can come to different conclusions.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.

www.technologyreview.com...

If you don't have consciousness, you just have many histories. Consciousness says we're in this state or that state.

Wigner's Friend in the lab, carries out a measurement and his wave function collapses. Wigner outside of the lab can look at the same particle and get an interference pattern and conclude his friend hasn't carried out a measurement.

When Wigner's Friend calls and says, hey Wigner I carried out a measurement and this is my result, Wigner's wave function collapses.

This is patently not true, has been proven to not be true; the double slit experiment has had it's answer for decades now.

If this were true, then you could prove it easily, and you cannot. If I put something in a box, and show it to two different people without them knowing the other looked, they are both going to describe the same exact thing.

I.E. You put a cat in a box, nobody is going to say they saw anything other than a cat. The answer to the slit experiment is a fundamental flaw in the tool used to measure, it's physically changing the super position of the particle being tested, because the test actually hits the particle physically to see if it's there, which #ing moves it.

In other words, all tools we use to observe at the quantum level has a physical repercussion. When photons, particles of light, hit a subatomic particle, they don't just go through them, they push them out of the way. How? PHYSICS. You don't feel the force of photons, but subatomic particles do because they are smaller and lighter than the photon. This is like a bowling ball hitting a baseball if you need a visual.

Wrong!

Did you even read the study that was carried out that shows this isn't the case?

Did you even bother to read Frauchiger and Renner?

Experimental test of local observer-independence

The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically exposed in Eugene Wigner's eponymous thought experiment where two observers can experience seemingly different realities. The question whether these realities can be reconciled in an observer-independent way has long remained inaccessible to empirical investigation, until recent no-go-theorems constructed an extended Wigner's friend scenario with four observers that allows us to put it to the test. In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realise this extended Wigner's friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way.

arxiv.org...

Let me repeat this part in case you didn't read the Abstract.


In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically exposed in Eugene Wigner's eponymous thought experiment where two observers can experience seemingly different realities.

Here's Frauchiger and Renner:

Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself

Abstract

Quantum theory provides an extremely accurate description of fundamental processes in physics. It thus seems likely that the theory is applicable beyond the, mostly microscopic, domain in which it has been tested experimentally. Here, we propose a Gedankenexperiment to investigate the question whether quantum theory can, in principle, have universal validity. The idea is that, if the answer was yes, it must be possible to employ quantum theory to model complex systems that include agents who are themselves using quantum theory. Analysing the experiment under this presumption, we find that one agent, upon observing a particular measurement outcome, must conclude that another agent has predicted the opposite outcome with certainty. The agents’ conclusions, although all derived within quantum theory, are thus inconsistent. This indicates that quantum theory cannot be extrapolated to complex systems, at least not in a straightforward manner.

www.nature.com...

VERY PROFOUND STUFF!!!

Let me repeat two parts from the Abstract.

First:

Analysing the experiment under this presumption, we find that one agent, upon observing a particular measurement outcome, must conclude that another agent has predicted the opposite outcome with certainty.

This is exactly as I said. Two Observers coming to different conclusions of a measurement outcome with certainty. This is only reconciled when the two observers communicate, then you get a singular history!

Second:

This indicates that quantum theory cannot be extrapolated to complex systems, at least not in a straightforward manner.

This is equivalent to materialist saying, this can't be true because it doesn't match what I already believe.

You can easily say:

This indicates that quantum theory can be extrapolated to complex systems because we see Observers reaching different observations for events with things like the Mandela Effect and strange coincidences.

PROFOUND INDEED!!

a reply to: SRPrime

It has nothing to do with A PERSON looking at anything, it has to do with the tools we created and HOW they measure, and what the effect of measuring does to the object being measured.

This is exactly correct and many different experiments demonstrate this fact. When we use an apparatus to measure which slit a particle travels through in the double slit experiment, that apparatus must in some way become entangled with the particle it's trying to measure. Therefore the particle goes back to behaving like a classical billiard ball and the interference pattern disappears. We could design the device so the recorded path data was deleted before it could ever be observed by a human but the interference pattern would still disappear, the collapse of the wave function isn't dependent on a conscious observer looking at the result, it's dependent on the path data being recorded at all. This is the same reason why quantum computers need to be heavily isolated from the external environment, the qubits will lose their quantum properties if allowed to become entangled with the high entropy environment around them.

If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way.

This last sentence of the abstract seems like a very key point, quantum mechanics is only observer-dependent "If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice" and there's absolutely no good reason to assume quantum mechanics obeys the logic of locality because multiple experiments clearly show that quantum mechanics has non-local phenomena. The paper also states the experiment violated a "Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations", which would indicate to me that this is just another way of showing that any theory of quantum mechanics must be non-local.

Bell then showed that quantum physics predicts correlations that violate this inequality. Consequently, the only way that hidden variables could explain the predictions of quantum physics is if they are "nonlocal", somehow associated with both halves of the pair and able to carry influences instantly between them no matter how widely the two halves are separated.[3][4] As Bell wrote later, "If [a hidden-variable theory] is local it will not agree with quantum mechanics, and if it agrees with quantum mechanics it will not be local."[5]

Bell's theorem

Consciousness is a by-product of quantum field interactions. At the point of interaction, the resonance that arises (having a combined energy value of the interaction) is the energy that fuels consciousness. However, what you need is a structure through which consciousness can be maintained and be recorded upon. Structure predicates how consciousness is expressed. Wave function breakdown is the point of consciousness creation, and it occurs everywhere.

Clearly, we don't create the reality out there, we simply become pivvy to it. I can explain in detail if you wish.

originally posted by: highvein
a reply to: neoholographic

If you don't have consciousness, you just have many histories. Consciousness says we're in this state or that state.

Consciousness requires observation to be conscience.

Exactly and this is why more Scientist are turning to Panpsychism.

Minds Everywhere: 'Panpsychism' Takes Hold in Science

Neuroscientists and many philosophers have typically planted themselves firmly on the materialist side. But a growing number of scientists now believe that materialism cannot wholly explain the sense of "I am" that undergirds consciousness, Kuhn told the audience.

www.livescience.com...

Is the Universe Conscious?

Some of the world's most renowned scientists are questioning whether the cosmos has an inner life similar to our own.

www.nbcnews.com...

The universe may be conscious, say prominent scientists

A proto-consciousness field theory could replace the theory of dark matter, one physicist states.

bigthink.com...

So there might not be a non conscious observer if consciousness is fundamental. You just have different degrees of consciousness.

An observer with that's less conscious can cause a measurement to occur but an Observers that's self conscious can know what measurement has occurred and which ones didn't and relay this information to other conscious Observers.

Without human consciousness, measurements can never become singular histories.

We can see this extend to the classical world with the Mandela Effect and strange coincidences.

Here's another example.

I remember being at a store with my Mom and I was walking up the end of the aisle and my Mom came rushing up one of the aisles and said did you see Patty. Patty is my cousin. There was nobody but me walking up the end of the aisle. We even looked around the store for my cousin Patty. Of course, my Mom laughed it off and said she must have been mistaken. These types of things happen all the time but when they happen we just explain it away.

WHAT IF?

My Mom and I, for a split second, observed 2 different outcomes for the same event? Maybe my Mom glimpsed a parallel universe where my cousin Patty was in the store. There's Interacting MWI theories out there. If true, then our universe would have these small fluctuations with other universes. So maybe when some people think they see ghosts, they're seeing other timelines.

The Mandela Effect and other strange coincidence happen all the time but most of the time we explain it away. Quantum Mechanics shows us that some of these things are real especially if all is Quantum like many Physicist believe.

You have some people who measured Mandela dying in prison while others measured him getting out of prison. When he became President, this updated the wave function of all Conscious Observers and a single history occurred.

Conscious Observers can collapse multiple measurement outcomes into a single history. Without consciousness, you have no reality. The universe is observer dependent.

This can be seen with Wheeler's cosmic example of the delayed choice experiment.

How long can we delay the choice? In Wheeler's original thought experiment, he imagined the phenomenon on a cosmic scale, as follows:

1. A distant star emits a photon many billions of years ago.

2. The photon must pass a dense galaxy (or black hole) directly in its path toward earth.

"Gravitational lensing" predicted by general relativity (and well verified) will make the light bend around the galaxy or black hole. The same photon can, therefore, take either of two paths around the galaxy and still reach earth – it can take the left path and bend back toward earth; or it can take the right path and bend back toward earth. Bending around the left side is the experimental equivalent of going through the left slit of a barrier; bending around the right side is the equivalent of going through the right slit.

3. The photon continues for a very long time (perhaps a few more billion years) on its way toward earth.

4. On earth (many billions of years later), an astronomer chooses to use a screen type of light projector, encompassing both sides of the intervening and the surrounding space without focusing or distinguishing among regions. The photon will land somewhere along the field of focus without our astronomer being able to tell which side of the galaxy/black hole the photon passed, left or right. So the distribution pattern of the photon (even of a single photon, but easily recognizable after a lot of photons are collected) will be an interference pattern.

5. Alternatively, based on what she had for breakfast, our astronomer might choose to use a binocular apparatus, with one side of the binoculars (one telescope) focused exclusively on the left side of the intervening galaxy, and the other side focussed exclusively on the right side of the intervening galaxy. In that case the "pattern" will be a clump of photons at one side, and a clump of photons at the other side.

Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ, the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments.

www.bottomlayer.com...

What this shows is that the universe is observer dependent.

a reply to: neoholographic

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality.

You can have a non-materialistic objective representation of how all the quanta-point in this matrix is connected and that includes all the entanglements and superposition within. This will include how consciousness thru observation changes the outcome of the quanta point in the matrix.

Entanglement have been observed and measured have already proven that materialism is a false subjective faith response and not an objective representation of the data.

a reply to: elysiumfire

. On what level do consciousness appear.

It is Quantum Consciousness and its Nature in Microtubules _ Dr. Stuart Hameroff.

a reply to: neoholographic

Exactly and this is why more Scientist are turning to Panpsychism.

And this is why you will never understand real science. You're wrapped up in some "psychic" world no more real than Disneyland. Before you know it, we'll be using runes instead of mathematics to describe nature.

You may be a figment of your own imagination.

Wave functions are dynamic.



It is not till a person from Porlock comes along and observes the wave function that we understand that there are tidal forces in the sunless sea.

Chinese Golden Horde


In 1614 Samuel Purchas published "Purchas His Pilgrimage", might be worth a read if you want to view more of this wave function or to extend the discussion into political reality and control. Mongol rule of China by the CIA?

a reply to: Slichter

Interesting, but a wave function in physics describes the state of an isolated quantum system. I don't think you could call it dynamic - it's really just statistical - probabilities or possible outcomes. There's one wave function for the universe. The Schrodinger equation allows us to break it down into separate wave functions. But I don't think the "functions" are dynamic themselves - they either exist or they don't.

I might be wrong on the dynamic part - maybe Arbitrageur can insert something here. Maybe degrees of freedom is a better way to describe.

a reply to: neoholographic

You are misrepresenting what an observer is in quantum physics. You are misrepresenting what this paper you cited calls an observer.

LittleByLittle:

On what level do consciousness appear.

As I stated in my earlier post, consciousness is a by-product of quantum field interactions. Structure is what predicates its expression, you need to fully understand what I am saying here. Quantum field interaction is wave function breakdown. It is where two or more disparate realities become 'reactive' to each other.

In the universe, wherever quantum field interactions occur, within a diverse array of structures, the resonant energy of the field interactions can be expressed as consciousness. All life forms have a consciousness expression, it is a bio-consciousness, that in the right biological structure will express as sentience and awareness.

Photons, or other radiating energies impacting on a rock will still raise a resonance with an equal proportionate energy value of the interaction, but the structure of the rock will not produce the same form of consciousness as that within life forms. Not all life forms will exhibit the same type of consciousness expression, as it all depends on the complexity of the biological structure.

As long as the consciousness resonance energy can be captured and assimilated as both short-term memory (present moment awareness) and as long-term memory (long-term storage), sentience and awareness and ultimately intelligence will evolve. You need the feedback mechanisms and cross-correspondences of previous memory assimilation to constantly reference. It is why you have 'person-hood'.

Yeah I read that; it's just not true.

The reason why photons sometimes seem like particles and sometimes like waves is that our experiments dictate what we see. -Niels Bohr

Not profound at all, expected. The way we measure it produces the outcome. When we change the way we measure it, we change the outcome. The outcome does not change at all, the way we measure it does. The outcome is consistently the same and is dependent upon which way it's measured.

I.E. The measurement IS the interference. The Observer effect. Everyone who says it's not [and I mean everyone] is someone who is looking at the problem philosophically rather than scientifically. Because scientifically there is a cause and effect, action/reaction, 100% reproducible empirical effect.

Wigner used a thought experiment. A thought experiment isn't science, it's philosophy. Scientists use a real experiment, and the outcome is the outcome, which is dependent upon the way it's measured.

There is only one other possibility, photons create waves, and both ways of measuring are accurate, so if you measure both ways simultaneously, you'd read that both were happening concurrently.

Einstein believed light is a particle (photon) and the flow of photons is a wave.

French theoretical physicist Louis de Broglie (1892 to 1987) furthered such research on the wave nature of particles by proving that there are particles (electrons, protons and neutrons) besides photons that have the properties of a wave. According to de Broglie, all particles traveling at speeds near that of light adopt the properties and wavelength of a wave in addition to the properties and momentum of a particle. He also derived the relationship "wavelength x momentum = Planck's constant."

So basically; any particle moving close to the speeds of light, are moving so fast they ripple, creating a wave wake. This is as close as you get to "settled" science in the quantum field.

a reply to: Phantom423


As a rule of thumb, the complete fission of 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of uranium or plutonium produces about 17.5 kilotons of TNT-equivalent explosive energy.

So in the instance there is 1 KG of matter sitting there frozen in time.

We can't see what is going on there without releasing a fireball equivalent to 35 million pounds of TNT.

There is a resonant superposition that actually warps space time at the quantum level which no one can talk about.

a reply to: neoholographic

If I am understanding you correctly you are explaining what is referred to as the twilight zone effect in some circles,
and yes, if conscience observation can effect the quantum level then the possibility of two separate actions could exist very near the same coordinates.

a reply to: SRPrime

Wrong, just wrong. You said:

Wigner used a thought experiment. A thought experiment isn't science, it's philosophy. Scientists use a real experiment, and the outcome is the outcome, which is dependent upon the way it's measured.

This wasn't a thought experiment. This was an experiment that confirmed Wigner's thought experiment. This shows me that you didn't even bother reading the paper.

Objective Reality Doesn't Exist, Quantum Experiment Shows

In 1961, physicist Eugene Wigner proposed a provocative thought experiment. He questioned what would happen when applying quantum mechanics to an observer that is themselves being observed. Imagine that a friend of Wigner tosses a quantum coin — which is in a superposition of both heads and tails — inside a closed laboratory. Every time the friend tosses the coin, they observe a definite outcome. We can say that Wigner's friend establishes a fact: the result of the coin toss is definitely head or tail.

www.livescience.com...

Quantum observers may be entitled to their own facts

In the 1960s, the renowned scientist, Eugene Wigner, proposed an intriguing thought experiment. An observer, Wigner's friend, tosses a quantum coin inside a closed laboratory, observing as a fact one of the two outcomes. From the outside, we cannot tell what happened, and the rules of quantum mechanics allow us to describe both friend and coin as one single system.

Massimiliano Proietti, lead author of the study and PhD student at Heriot-Watt, said, "From outside the laboratory, Wigner's friend and the coin become "entangled", which means they are in a superposition where both outcomes, 'heads' and 'tails' are still present — a fact that can be established by the outside observer. This brings about a paradoxical situation where the fact established inside the laboratory seemingly contradicts the fact observed on the outside."

phys.org...

Different Versions Of Reality Can Exist In The Quantum World, Study Confirms

In 1961, Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963, introduced a thought experiment that later became known as "Wigner's friend."

It involves two people observing a photon, a particle of light. When one observer who is in the isolated laboratory measures the photon, the particle's polarization, or the axis on which it spins, is either vertical or horizontal.

Before the photon is measured, however, the photon displays both polarization at the same time, existing in a superposition of two possible states.

The particle assumes fixed polarization once the person in the lab measures it, but for someone outside of the laboratory who is not aware of the results of the measurements, the unmeasured photon remains in a state of superposition.

This outsider's observation then diverges from the reality of the person inside the lab, but neither of the conflicting observations is wrong, according to the laws of quantum mechanics.

In new experiments reported in the preprint journal arXiv on Feb. 13, Martin Ringbauer, from University of Innsbrück in Austria, replicated the conditions described in the thought experiment.

www.techtimes.com...

I can go on and on but I will stop there.

Let's play a Sesame Street game. What do all of these articles have in common?

WIGNER!

This isn't a though experiment. This is Scientist testing and confirming a thought experiment. I repeat.

In new experiments reported in the preprint journal arXiv on Feb. 13, Martin Ringbauer, from University of Innsbrück in Austria, replicated the conditions described in the thought experiment.

It's clear, observers can reach different facts about the same event on a microscopic scale. You add in Frauchiger and Renner and viola, the Mandela Effect and other strange coincidences have a simple explanation.

At times, observers come to different facts about an event until there's Bayesian type updating and one set of facts wins out.

I think this also shows that the wave function is non physical and connected to consciousness.

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...

A test later confirmed this and transferred information between points A and points B without a physical particle.

CONT'D