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The ‘consciousness causes quantum collapse’ hypothesis (2017)
- TimMurnaghan 7y agoBy Betteridege's Law - no of course not. For a slightly better answer we need physicists rather than philosphers - and need to consider at what scale the quantum measures work - and what scale they're observing at.
- pmoriarty 7y agoWhat do physicists know about consciousness?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAt least as much as philosophers know about quantum mechanics.
- knzhou 7y agoThis kind of thing has always seemed redundant to me. We already have a perfectly good understanding of how decoherence causes effective collapse, by making branches of the wavefunction unable to interfere with each other. This follows automatically from the basic rules of quantum mechanics, without having to add any extra ingredients, and is absolutely necessary to get the predictions to come out right (e.g. in cosmology, where there were no conscious observers at all). This article proposes to add an extra, ad hoc collapse mechanism determined by a system's integrated information, but what's the point? At best, it will be a more complicated rephrasing of an effect that already happens automatically, in which case it is unnecessary by Occam's razor.
- jagged-chisel 7y agoNo. "Observation" involves interacting with the system under test, thereby necessarily changing the system. It is this interaction that results in quantum collapse. Yes. With our consciousness, we become curious and ask questions. We devise experiments that lead to quantum collapse. Is "consciousness" the only cause of quantum collapse? I guess that depends on the simulation we're in.
- Xenograph 7y ago> With our consciousness, we become curious and ask questions. We devise experiments that lead to quantum collapse. You are mixing up intelligence and consciousness.
- dropoutcoder 7y agoSeems to be a far cry from explaining the Hard Problem of consciousness. As for the meat of the text (pardon the pun, I just re-read “they’re made out of meat” yesterday), my amateur understanding is that there may be some degree of quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain, but that decoherence is very localized and limited, thus unlikely to have broader impact on physical systems at large. To this end, it’s unclear how a shared physical reality such as ours would allow for quantum effects from a measurement experiment, through the non quantum systems to the brain. Can someone explain the basis of the hypothesis presented by the paper in simple terms?
- teilo 7y agoThat's because he's not trying to explain it. The article is about quantum determinism. He offers two explanations, depending on how one views the source of consciousness, dualistically or physically. IIT doesn't explain consciousness. It's merely a correlation.
- ajuc 7y agoAs far as I understand - we can make a random number generator decide if the automated observation of the photons passing the slits happens or not and then the pattern on the screen will change from one to the other randomly. So we're pretty sure it's not consciousness that causes the collapse, right? Unless the RNG or the camera is conscious :)
- ericmay 7y agoPanpsychism to the rescue! :p https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
- cultus 7y agoPanpsychism is really something that makes sense to me. It's a really parsimonious way of solving the hard problem of consciousness without getting into dualism or assuming anything special about matter that makes up sentient beings. I really don't think that testing this could ever be in the realm of physics, though.
- ericmay 7y agoI certainly find it a compelling theory, and I agree that it’s probably not testable. I lean toward consciousness being an illusion or simply non-existent. It kind of seems like we, by nature, reject this notion because it shatters our collective human psyche, but it wouldn’t surprise me. On the other hand we have a hard time even defining consciousness.
- program_whiz 7y agoConsciousness is probably the only thing that _cannot_ be an illusion. Whatever you may think, the fact that you are having an experience is the only thing you can know for sure (all the content of your experience could be planted into your mind, but you at least know that you are experiencing it). You really can't know if anyone else really exists and is having an experience, or if its all a dream filled with impersonators created by your own mind, but you know first hand that at least one experience is happening (your conscious experience). Perhaps "the self", or "the idea that I am a being with a consciousness separate from all the universe" is an illusion.
- criddell 7y agoDoes the question "can a computer cause quantum collapse?" have an answer?
- ajuc 7y agoRoom temperature causes wavefunction collapse :) That's the whole problem with quantum computing :)
- jbay808 7y agoBut saying a system is at room temperature is actually just a way of expressing your ignorance about a system's microstate. It's taking off your glasses and saying "I don't have any idea what this system is doing in detail, all I personally know is how much energy it has per degree of freedom in the system".
- ajuc 7y agoWasn't it supposed to be conscious observation that collapses the wavefunction and not uncertainty?
- vikramkr 7y agoEverything causes quantum collapse. The major engineering challenge of quantum computing is getting a computer to not cause collapse for long enough to do your computations.
- odyssey7 7y agoDoes the Earth or the apple cause the gravity?
- soylentcola 7y agoYes.
- lostmsu 7y agoNot necessarily. All apparent casual connections are just an artifact of the timeflow, which on its own might be nothing but a consequence of a particular coordinate choice.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoIf I understand you correctly, the timeflow would be different with a different coordinate choice. That can't be right - the physical results would be different simply because of a coordinate choice.
- lostmsu 7y agoThe physical results might be the same. Imagine your universe is that of an empty 2D plane with a single unit circle in it and you use euclidean metric, but 1 of 2 coordinates you experience as time. From your perspective the life of the matter in that universe starts at T0 as a point, then grows to a line of length 2, then shrinks back to a point. Now there might even be a "physical law", describing the evolution of that line as "time" goes (and I am sure there is a simple one), that has "cause" and "effect". But in the end no matter which direction you choose as "time", the law is the same. Now I leave the question of how can you exist in this universe open (or rather obviously impossible in any meaningful sense), but there might be other more complex constructs, that permit "intelligence" along a certain dimension, and it is another question whether our universe is one of these.
- johnyzee 7y agoCixin Liu's book Ball Lightning brilliantly incorporates this phenomenon into the plot, for anyone interested in a sci-fi book recommendation. (Of course, his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is amazing too and required reading.)
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoThe concept that consciousness might cause quantum collapse is untestable. Quantum systems that have not been observed by conscious observers are fundamentally unobservable, by definition. Let me put that another way. No conscious mind will ever be able to observe anything about a quantum system that has never been observed by a conscious mind.
- TheFiend7 7y agoI mean, this is so far out of my wheel house I can't even claim to know anything about this stuff. But why couldn't a form of an unconscious camera exist? We could theoretically just look at pictures of the past from an unconscious camera and therefore never collapse the system?
- kadoban 7y agoI think the idea is that once you look at the picture, that's a mind observing the event. The system "collapses" when it grows big enough that a consequence of it affects you. This should be similar to the idea explored by the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment.
- TheFiend7 7y agoThough we observe the effects of the double slit experiment on the wall with the interference pattern. Thereby not collapsing the system and taking a screenshot of the un-collapsed system? I would argue the wall is an unconscious camera in my example. Because when observed during the experiment, the interference pattern disappears. But not if it's observed after. Secondly, the more and more I re-read the parent comment. The less and less sense it makes. >No conscious mind will ever be able to observe anything about a quantum system that has never been observed by a conscious mind. That isn't really true in concept though, as in my example, we observed a quantum system at play that wasn't observed during its' "execution" so to speak. We literally wouldn't be discussing quantum experiments and quantum experimental phenomena if his statement was "completely" true.
- corneliusphi2 7y ago
- yters 7y agoEven if true, there must be at least one other parameter, since consciousness does not determine the particular state the wave collapses.
- 5cott0 7y agoThis was brought up in the energy healing episode of Netflix’s Goop docuseries. The tools physics uses to measure elementary particles lacking the precision to not disturb the system being observed is a failure of the tools and not sufficient to reasonably imply that human consciousness has anything to do with the fact that observing a system disturbs the system under observation. Far more interesting and grounded along these lines is Penrose’s Orch OR; consciousness is a fundamental physical structure or law of the universe itself that our brains have evolved to access.
- sebringj 7y agoSean Carroll mentions something to the effect that we are just part of the measurement. I personally feel more comfortable with that explanation as it seems detached from the human need to feel special.
- ngvrnd 7y agoUtter nonsense. Collapse is caused by interactions between particles, humans got nothing to do with it.
- FreeFull 7y agoI just don't see why consciousness would require any sort of special physics. We live in a world full of emergent phenomena, and consciousness seems like it should just be another one of them.
- roywiggins 7y agoThis is all neatly sidestepped by many-worlds: the wavefunction collapses that you observe send you down one trouser of time. It may look like you're influencing the world, but you're really just being dragged along by it. Non-sentient things are doing the same thing in the same way.
- gdubs 7y agoLee Smolin’s book, “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution” is largely about particle/wave duality and an alternate theory that never caught on: the Pilot Wave theory. It’s a Realist alternative to the Anti-Realist school of Heisenberg, etc. As Feynman used to say, “nobody understands quantum physics”. I really don’t have a clue which theory is more “correct”. But the book’s interesting, and I recommend it. Also, an exploration of consciousness and quantum physics is central to the Dalai Lama’s, “The universe in a single atom”. Another book I highly recommend. He’s passionate about science, and it’s a thought provoking book. In “The Profound Mind”, he goes further into various philosophies, and has some really interesting things to say on consciousness, subjectivity, etc. Quantum Mechanics attracts a lot of “woo”. I didn’t find the Dalai Lama’s books to fall into that category — more philosophical than anything else. Just worth mentioning. It’s a shame, in general, how much pseudoscience surrounds Quantum Mechanics — the reality of things is plenty interesting and confounding on its own! [Edit: not at all meant as a judgement on this particular article; just following a train of thought.]
- ajuc 7y agoI thought pilot wave theory was disproved recently? https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot-wave-alternative-to-quantum-weirdness-20181011/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/famous-experiment-dooms-pilot...
- szemet 7y agoJust skimmed over, but this is only about the oil droplets experiment - which would have been a great macroscopic model/demonstration of pilot wave theory. If it fails the double slit experiment - then simply it is not a good macroscopic model/demonstration of the Broglie-Bohm quantum interpretation. But AFAIK Broglie-Bohm has been already proven to be equivalent to all the other popular quantum interpretations (if you give up locality), so it has not been falsified at all (and actually can't be - as it gives the same experimental forecasts as the other theories)
- gdubs 7y agoThis looks like a great read — thanks! Regardless, the book mentioned above is still thought-provoking, and an interesting history of quantum mechanics.
- phkahler 7y agoThere is no collapse. One can create pairs of entangled particles and send streams of these in opposite directions - left and right for example. When particles on the left are measured, it causes the so-called collapse of the wave function and that of its paired particle that went to the right. This means one can "collapse" the wave functions of one stream of particles (right) by taking measurements of the other (left). The thing is, the particles on the right behave exactly the same way regardless of weather their wave function has been collapsed. In other words, no one can tell if this collapse has even occurred. Why is it talked about as a discrete event?
- x0n 7y agoWhy? Because Bell's Inequality. That's why.
- gdubs 7y agoI’m not sure I follow. Aren’t entangled particles in superposition until they’re measured? That would mean we have no way of saying they behaved the same way, until we measure them — at which point the “spin” of the particles will be random and opposite. Also, “measurement” doesn’t have to mean “by a human”. Particles in effect “measure” each other when they collide — which is one theory as to why we don’t see quantum effects at a macro scale — there’s too much stuff colliding into each other, collapsing the wave function. A book that’s pretty fascinating in this regard is “Life at the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology”. It explores how birds navigate the magnetic field via quantum effects that we once thought couldn’t “survive” at a macro scale. Fascinating.
- x0n 7y agoThis all fell from Eugene Wigner's ideas, https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/wigners_friend/ https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments... -- and he was convinced (quite rightly in my opinion) that "consciousness" causes wave function collapse. The only mistake there perhaps is thinking that consciousness is unique to humans (or any "living" thing.) Consciousness itself has traditionally been defined as a product of the brain; I think at some point we'll figure out that the formation of the brain is more likely the result of consciousness. This implies that everything is "conscious" (i.e. any quanta), and that consciousness is better defined as something that is capable of updating its state as a result of observation, rather than something uniquely human. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory - a more recent view on the nature of reality, moves in theses lines and is something I myself subscribe to. Ultimately I believe that reality is subjective from the ground up, that there is no such thing as objective reality. This is hard to comprehend since we are hard wired to state things objectively. It's a form of the "many worlds" view, except you must remember that the idea that there "are" many worlds is an objective statement, and in a universe that is entirely subjective from the observer's point of view, this utterance is not compatible with that view. It's a form of solipsism, yes, but a strict one nonetheless.
- wavepruner 7y agoAgreed, although I do believe there is an objective reality, but that it is impossible for any one consciousness to know it. So for practical human purposes it does not exist.
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- jackhack 7y agoI don't think it solves anything, it just "moves the cheese" by referencing (requiring?) an undefinable "consciousness". In the spirit of Gestalt, let's break this down a bit further to try to find the fine line. A person is a conscious being. What if said person is asleep or intoxicated and observes the The Double-Slit Experiment? What if person is sedated ("unconscious")? What if there is damage to the optic center of the brain limiting perception? What about those who believe they can see but are quite blind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrom...) ? And what about those who can see but falsely believe they cannot?(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-blindness-is-in-the-mind/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-blindness-is...) Does this still impart consciousness upon the system? What if one's optic nerve is severed but the eye is otherwise functional? Is a dissected eyeball sufficient to cause wave collapse. If not, what additional elements of the mind are required? How much additional processing is enough? Must it be an advanced, self-aware mind with a complex eye as found in a mammal or a cephalopod? What about a single-celled organelle in plankton which can observe light and react? (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/plankton-s-eye-made-up-of-organelles-study-suggests-1.3136018 https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/plankton-s-eye-made-up-of...) I think you're proposing that this is sufficient. And what is special about just the visible spectrum of energy? What about radio waves? Does my Sony Walkman or a cat-whisker radio collapse the quanta? What about Infrared? etc? Do the leaves of a houseplant perform this act? What about physical vibration? Does a seismometer or accelerometer perform this quantum task? >>consciousness is better defined as something that is capable of updating its state as a result of observation This is extraordinarily broad. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle would then seem to illustrate that every subatomic particle is conscious. This seems a most unsatisfactory conclusion.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoIt seems to me that you can't think that consciousness causes quantum collapse, and also hold to a purely materialist idea of consciousness. Because if consciousness is a purely material phenomenon, then it arises from a bunch of interactions of quantum systems. Then "consciousness causes quantum collapse" reduces to "a bunch of quantum interactions cause quantum collapse", which is kind of unhelpful. To put it a different way: For this to make any sense, consciousness has to be something different. It can't be just material.
- Analemma_ 7y agoHow many people believe in both CCC and materialism though? Virtually all physicists, who tend toward materialism, have rejected CCC; the people who believe in CCC tend to be panpsychists already. You're correct but kind of aiming at a strawman.
- xtiansimon 7y agoIt’s photography. (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland)