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I don't know to what degree the metaphor is accurate but as a non-physicist I find thinking about quantum mechanical experiments easier if I think of them as ru
by jonahbenton 6y ago
I don't know to what degree the metaphor is accurate but as a non-physicist I find thinking about quantum mechanical experiments easier if I think of them as running code on a vast decentralized computing infrastructure.
The concept of "measurement" is just executing code on one node that populates local registers- "creating" not "measuring". Yes- by running code you are pulling on a reality fabric that we still know almost nothing about. But I find it easier to visualize than relying on my colloquial/non-QM intuition in words like "measuring"- which implies something like a single centralized reality database, not a creative decentralized infrastructure. QM experiments seem to create things, not measure them.
Would love to learn metaphors of folks in the space.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thechao 6y agoI’m just now teaching myself QM (20 years after school). I can tell you that in QM, seemingly innocuous phrases like “locality” have highly unintuitive, nonstandard meanings. I’m just now getting a glimpse at how amazingly fucking awful pop-sci QM articles are. If you’re interested in QM, read “The Theoretical Minimum”; the second book gets into QM. There are video lectures of the same material that complement the series, we’ll.
- jonahbenton 6y agoAppreciate the reference, cheers.
- guerrilla 6y agoThere are lectures by Susskind at Stanford on YouTube that go with them by the way.
- ssivark 6y agoThis perspective is interesting and potentially valuable, but it must be emphasized that quantum mechanics has linear evolution and hence “no cloning”. That means, when the registers are quantum objects, there is no such thing as copying a value into a register — there is only one version of each object, and you’re always manipulating it directly. That’s one aspect which leads to very difficult questions when thinking of “creating” at local nodes — because it’s the same object/copy that’s accessed at different nodes by various observers — so how can we ensure consistency of observations?
- jonahbenton 6y agoThanks, understood- the metaphor wasn't intended to imply the registers themselves were quantum objects, more that the process of observation / measurement of some quantum phenomenon- metaphorically- could be a creative/derivative process. That metaphor/mental model would conflict, to some degree, with the centralized/cache coherency metaphor you cite, that aligns more with colloquial understanding of "measure." Whether one is more appropriate than another I don't know. But I find the decentralized model produces more interesting naive questions for me to puzzle over. Of course those questions likely lead in a completely wrong direction. Cheers, thanks for engagement.
- ahelwer 6y agoAn alternative way to view measurement is that you're just entangling yourself with the quantum system, and are as much in superposition as the system itself.
- jonahbenton 6y agoThanks, yeah. With this view I run into trouble understanding what constitutes "entry into" and "exit from" superposition.
- ahelwer 6y agoPresumably, nothing was in superposition when the universe began. Everything after that evolved in time according to the Schrodinger equation, with everything becoming more superposed (i.e. their exact properties less certain) and entangled with everything else to at least some degree. Things can be more or less entangled with other things, and when you measure something you become very strongly entangled with it.