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No, it's not. QM doesn't have any confirmed solution to the measurement problem, and no seriously considered solution has anything to do with intelligent observ

by wyager 10y ago

No, it's not. QM doesn't have any confirmed solution to the measurement problem, and no seriously considered solution has anything to do with intelligent observation or consciousness. Anyone who claims to have a profound philosophical argument inspired by QM is almost certainly a charlatan.

Noseshine 10y ago
A "philosophical" argument is pretty useless. Unless you manage to devise experiments for your those theories. And QFT can at least inform you about "reality" - and how little the one in a human head has to do with it. Since QFT is "real" (shown to work), if our perception was based on "reality" we should not have had such trouble to a) come up with it, and b) understand it.
- wyager 10y ago
  Our perception of reality absolutely agrees with QFT -- in the medium-energy medium-scale environments that humans operate in. Everyday physics is a limiting case of QFT. Our mental heuristics don't work for very high/low energies or small/large scales because we don't operate on those scales. We had no reason to evolve other heuristics.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    I think I understand your point - but I had a very different angle. What you write actually is fully in support with my point. You simply declare as "reality" that what you perceive, the model we (our brains) have come up with. But that's exactly it - that's your version of "reality" created by how you look at it - with "macro" sensors. Different sensors would have a different result. In addition we don't even have raw sensor data in our mental world model, instead the data is extremely processed before it is assembled to our mental model of the world. Take a neuroscience course on perception, I recommend. Somebody said we live in a VR world created by our brains, and that is a good fit. Of course the input that goes into creating that "VR world" is from sensors getting data from interactions with the actual world. If you don't understand what my point is don't say "you are wrong".
    - wyager 10y ago
      The reality constructed in our brains is not substantially different from actual reality. Our mental model of reality is just much lower fidelity. At no point has physics demonstrated "wow, humans are totally wrong about the world". >Different sensors would have a different result All of our experience with robotics suggests otherwise.
      - Noseshine 10y ago
        > The reality constructed in our brains is not substantially different from actual reality. Now you're being facetious. Good joke though. > > Different sensors would have a different result > All of our experience with robotics suggests otherwise. I meant DIFFERENT sensors, not the same version of the same sensor. You are telling me a sensor for microwaves gets the same result as one for different wavelengths? Good god. And that's actually related sensors, then there's touch, smell etc.
    - visarga 10y ago
      > Of course the input that goes into creating that "VR world" is from sensors getting data from interactions with the actual world This process might not be so arbitrary, for example in an experiment at Google, an unsupervised machine learning system discover the concept of cat from raw images all by itself. The concept of cat might be present in the world objectively and we just gave it a name.
      - Karnickel 10y ago
        > The concept of cat might be present in the world objectively It exists in a world with sensors similar to that of humans, and hardware and software made by humans mirroring their world experience. You are still within the exact same (world) box.
      - amatic 10y ago
        It discovered a statistical measure of features that happen to occur on cat images, on the pixels of those images. It might be something like brains do, it might not.
lisper 10y ago
You didn't actually read the paper did you?
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  I've read it before. It's not very helpful. As a rule, any attempt to "solve" wave-particle duality is going to be wrong, because in real QFT there's no duality to solve. Photons aren't objects in a classical sense. Photons are event probabilities. "Entanglement" is a description of how the probabilities interact, not an explanation of why they interact as they do. And if you're going to suggest it's all about "observers" and "minds" you need to explain what both of those things are made of in quantum terms. I haven't seen anyone manage to do that yet.
  - FeepingCreature 10y ago
    Risky for a layman to nitpick, but as I understand it amplitudes aren't probabilities, they just cash out in probabilities on measurement?
  - lisper 10y ago
    > I've read it before. You need to read it again. Because it agrees with everything you say: > in real QFT there's no duality to solve > Photons aren't objects in a classical sense. Photons are event probabilities. > "Entanglement" is a description of how the probabilities interact, not an explanation of why they interact as they do. Yes, all true. > if you're going to suggest it's all about "observers" and "minds" I suggest no such thing.

by wyager 10y ago

Noseshine 10y ago

A "philosophical" argument is pretty useless. Unless you manage to devise experiments for your those theories. And QFT can at least inform you about "reality" - and how little the one in a human head has to do with it. Since QFT is "real" (shown to work), if our perception was based on "reality" we should not have had such trouble to a) come up with it, and b) understand it.

wyager 10y ago
Our perception of reality absolutely agrees with QFT -- in the medium-energy medium-scale environments that humans operate in. Everyday physics is a limiting case of QFT. Our mental heuristics don't work for very high/low energies or small/large scales because we don't operate on those scales. We had no reason to evolve other heuristics.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Noseshine 10y ago
  I think I understand your point - but I had a very different angle. What you write actually is fully in support with my point. You simply declare as "reality" that what you perceive, the model we (our brains) have come up with. But that's exactly it - that's your version of "reality" created by how you look at it - with "macro" sensors. Different sensors would have a different result. In addition we don't even have raw sensor data in our mental world model, instead the data is extremely processed before it is assembled to our mental model of the world. Take a neuroscience course on perception, I recommend. Somebody said we live in a VR world created by our brains, and that is a good fit. Of course the input that goes into creating that "VR world" is from sensors getting data from interactions with the actual world. If you don't understand what my point is don't say "you are wrong".
  - wyager 10y ago
    The reality constructed in our brains is not substantially different from actual reality. Our mental model of reality is just much lower fidelity. At no point has physics demonstrated "wow, humans are totally wrong about the world". >Different sensors would have a different result All of our experience with robotics suggests otherwise.
    - Noseshine 10y ago
      > The reality constructed in our brains is not substantially different from actual reality. Now you're being facetious. Good joke though. > > Different sensors would have a different result > All of our experience with robotics suggests otherwise. I meant DIFFERENT sensors, not the same version of the same sensor. You are telling me a sensor for microwaves gets the same result as one for different wavelengths? Good god. And that's actually related sensors, then there's touch, smell etc.
  - visarga 10y ago
    > Of course the input that goes into creating that "VR world" is from sensors getting data from interactions with the actual world This process might not be so arbitrary, for example in an experiment at Google, an unsupervised machine learning system discover the concept of cat from raw images all by itself. The concept of cat might be present in the world objectively and we just gave it a name.
    - Karnickel 10y ago
      > The concept of cat might be present in the world objectively It exists in a world with sensors similar to that of humans, and hardware and software made by humans mirroring their world experience. You are still within the exact same (world) box.
    - amatic 10y ago
      It discovered a statistical measure of features that happen to occur on cat images, on the pixels of those images. It might be something like brains do, it might not.

lisper 10y ago

You didn't actually read the paper did you?

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
I've read it before. It's not very helpful. As a rule, any attempt to "solve" wave-particle duality is going to be wrong, because in real QFT there's no duality to solve. Photons aren't objects in a classical sense. Photons are event probabilities. "Entanglement" is a description of how the probabilities interact, not an explanation of why they interact as they do. And if you're going to suggest it's all about "observers" and "minds" you need to explain what both of those things are made of in quantum terms. I haven't seen anyone manage to do that yet.
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  Risky for a layman to nitpick, but as I understand it amplitudes aren't probabilities, they just cash out in probabilities on measurement?
- lisper 10y ago
  > I've read it before. You need to read it again. Because it agrees with everything you say: > in real QFT there's no duality to solve > Photons aren't objects in a classical sense. Photons are event probabilities. > "Entanglement" is a description of how the probabilities interact, not an explanation of why they interact as they do. Yes, all true. > if you're going to suggest it's all about "observers" and "minds" I suggest no such thing.