this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 108 points 9 months ago (7 children)

"observing changes the result" doesn't mean conciousness attempting to look at it changes the result, there is nothing special about conciousness (in quantum mechanics)

"observing changes the result" means we try to measure atoms and fields but unfortunately our measurement tools are also made out of atoms and fields which interact with the atoms and fields we are trying to measure, giving us a different result than if we don't attempt to measure it

It does bring up interesting questions about what the "real" behavior of reality is tho, since anything we observe is technically different than what it would be if left alone. We can only ever know what a slightly altered state of reality is

[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Think of it like this:

You can use a tennis ball machine to measure how far away a house is by firing the tennis ball at a constant velocity, timing how long it takes the tennis ball to come back to you, multiplying that time by the velocity, and dividing by 2 (since you measured the distance for a round trip). This works pretty darn well for measuring the distance to houses.

But now try this same trick to measure the distance to another ball. When your measuring ball hits the ball you want to measure, it doesn't stay resolutely planted in the ground like that nice friendly house. The energy from your measuring ball bounces the ball being measured off into the distance. Even if you could get your measuring ball to return, the ball you measured isn't in the place you measured it.

Replace that tennis ball with a photon, and you have the basic picture. There's no such thing as passive observation. Measuring something interacts with that thing. Conventional measurement is like in the case with the house, the thing being measured is so much bigger and more stable than the thing we're measuring with that the effect is negligible. But once you start trying to measure something on the same scale as your measuring tool, the ensuing chaos makes it basically impossible to get useful measurements.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What happens if you try to cut a photon in half with a knife?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The edge of a knife has to be thinner than the thing it's cutting, and we haven't found anything thinner than a photon

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Clearly you haven't seen my penis.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

By that implication it's fundamentally impossible for anyone to see it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This analogy is really well thought out. It really helps my brain understand the weirdness that goes on with measurements on the quantum scale. Thanks for taking the time to type it out.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Every road leads to Plato's cave

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

My teacher had a good comparison for this: observing macroscoping reality like we do microscopic reality would be like throwing a car at another car to measure its speed or position. Obviously you alter the course of events this way.

Fortunately light doesn't do much in the macroscopic world, so we can use it to observe stuff.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Not quite - observability in quantum mechanics is about the event producing an interaction that could potentially be measured, regardless of whether we actually attempt to measure it. By interacting with other things the superposition is collapsed and we can determine it's current properties, but it's still the "real" behaviour of things, because we can only determine things behaviours from their interactions with other things - not knowing what they do when left alone isn't just about there not being a human around to interacts with them, but about there not being any other particles - no atoms, no electrons, no quarks - for them to interact with either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Great distinction.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

just measure everything from the same side it'll all get shifted in the same direction

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What if you just measure the ambient particles

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

idk, I'm not a quantum physicist. I'm just asking theoretically

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

That doesn't make any sense. Observation is alteration. You cannot see light without absorbing light.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Then you are measuring something with matter still and it then affects it. Literally causing interactions to measure means altering it's state even at a nonchalant glance.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (4 children)

This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn't actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that's mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger's equation + boundary conditions.

The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as "Particles + extras", you will fail. You have to think of it as "Waves + extras". It then, suddenly makes logical sense.

It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The big problem isn't that the math is hard, or that's often impossible to visualise. The problem is that a whole bunch of charlatans intentionally misinterpret what "observing" is in QM, to make money off of gullible victims.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied. It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (9 children)

The problem of quantum mechanic is that the physics it shows us is not intuitive, and it sometimes breaks other laws of physics.

Quantum intrication means that information travels faster than light for example. Counterfactuality also breaks causality.

It's not the maths that are the problem, it's that it doesn't make physical sense in the world we currently understand. And the equations explain nothing. They merely describe a a world that doesn't make sense.

Quantum mechanic is like having a machine from the future that does cool things, but you don't understand how it works. It's like people did chemistry before they understand what chemistry was. We do uber cool things with it, but it is a spotlight on our ignorance at the same time.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

You have to think of it as "Waves + extras". It then, suddenly makes logical sense.

Unless you observe the double slit experiment, and then suddenly it's particles again

[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean, consciousness does alter the universe.

Here I am, altering the universe because of my consciousness.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (2 children)

If you mean that we make cities and culture and science with our minds, then yes.

If you mean we control reality by squeezing our butt cheeks real hard and wishing for parking spaces, then no.

Most of the time I hear this, it's stupid people promoting the second.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I believe the more nuanced argument is that even though you think you have free will and are making choices such as "let's build a hospital" or "I will write a song", due to the nature of all effects needing causes, in a chain - there is no such thing as free will as there is no cause without effect.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Agreed. So far the only things we know of that don't seem to have detectable causes are virtual particles and maybe radioactive decay, I think?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (6 children)

That second one... Isn't that manifestation? Hard agree with you there, usually people promoting manifestation are simultaneously saying "you can imagine anything and make it real" and in the same breath are trying to sell you something that you evidently aren't able to imagine into your reality for free.

On the other side, technically, even breathing is enough to satisfy the goal of "changing the universe". That bunch of molecules would not be moving through the universe like that if it weren't for your consciousness (but few appreciate sentience at that atomic of a mechanical level lol. I just think it's a massive glazed over step in going from mind to city/culture/science)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A byproduct of self help hokum. Most people who have difficulties in life relating to their "success" are told to visualize their goals, and magically they'll achieve themselves somehow. They never actually say how to summon the executive function necessary in order to perform the tasks to achieve the goals. That would result in too many middle class people.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sean Carroll had a great take: everything is waves in fields and we know of five fields: Strong Weak Electric Gravity Higgs

Particle behavior arises from interacting waves. So anything that acts like a particle is actually waves interfering with each other.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

God doesn't play dice, he surfs, got it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Consciousness has nothing to do with the "observations" in quantum mechanics. The wave function collapses when we entangle ourselves with the outcome. Whether or not we actually record those "observations" is irrelevant.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

The term they should have used from the get-go is "measurement" instead of "observation". Humans will always tack on mystical mumbo jumbo if given a chance, muddying up the waters for us laymen trying to learn, and "measurement" sounds much more neutral to me.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Everybody knows you need to fall off your toilet and hit your head on the sink for instant flux capacitor.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Having to explain to your parent that yes physics requires math and that yes being a physicist is a job that requires years of dedication to fully appreciate is wild. Also, physicists are just bad at naming things, so no your brain doesn't change reality around it because it has eye holes attached to it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Continental philosophy in a nutshell. Find some cool sciencey concept, and abstract it beyond anything that is reasonable.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

What would oceanic philosophy be then? Dilute everything?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

"Consciousness affects outcomes" is such a cringe take, it's more like, you're in a 3d slice of time and where you inhabit is based on what you do and you're allowed to do anything within that as long as it's self-consistent, with things self-correcting if they're not.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (3 children)

IMO, the perceived inscrutability of quantum mechanics is mostly the result of the dominance of the "shut up and calculate" approach to the question of interpretation.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why focusing on the math and ignoring the rest is a good approach to have when you're actually doing practical scientific work in the field. But if you're wanting quantum physics to "make sense", then you're asking about what it actually says about the underlying reality, and that's a question that requires thinking about interpretations of QM.

Once you start thinking about it in terms of a particular interpretation (or category of interpretation), then QM makes as much sense as any other high level physical theory (certainly no worse than general relativity.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The various interpretations help in processing the math, but isn't the same as understanding - there are a bunch of fundamental facts about quantum mechanics that we just don't understand, even though we know the elements exist, that they happen, and even how we can take advantage of them.

The difference between quantum mechanics and other high level theories like relativity is actually quite large, because the higher level interactions all derive from quantum level states and interactions. At the point where question marks really start popping up (weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity, dark matter &/ energy) it's almost always a matter of quantum mechanics getting involved and being weird.

My quantum mechanics professor started our first lecture with "if you think you understand quantum mechanics you do not understand quantum mechanics", because there are still some really big question marks around our understanding of it. Especially what in the fuck spin actually is.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Quantum mechanics makes no difference, just throw cheese at it, if it eats the cheese it's cool and we can get along, if it doesn't we need to shoot it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (6 children)

I believe once we fully understand consciousness, we'll understand the nature of reality. Of course, I could be wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

We have the many-worlds interpretation that makes perfect sense (as long as you accept that consciousness is just a function of the particles in your brain and not some spiritual essence detached from the laws of physics), but Niels Bohr had to convince everyone that Quantum Mechanics is not supposed to make any sense just so that he could win his argument against Albert Einstein, so now everyone think it's just another interpretation on equal footing with the Copenhagen nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I wouldn't call it weird, just unconventional.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Have you seen the movies? The only sane person who messed with quantum stuff is the camera man, and he never speaks of anything.

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