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Or.... consciousness collapses the wave function and solipsism is the nature of reality. Observables are just very large unevaluated expressions that collapse v

Or.... consciousness collapses the wave function and solipsism is the nature of reality. Observables are just very large unevaluated expressions that collapse via lambda reduction ala becoming a tautology. As you gain more information, more alpha and beta reductions become possible, and expressions simplify into static values instead of multivariate/dependent expression trees. The universe is a first person JIT experience. Search for Wigner's friend. Relational quantum mechanics is the only logical and consistent epistemology for what all this means. Effectively, nothing ever changes, just extra information allows for simplification of observables backed by large expressions. The universe is inherently lazy, and it's like LISP. PG come at me!

tsimionescu 5y ago
Well, if you go for pure solipsism, that is, your own consciousness is the only thing which exists in the universe, that can explain any phenomenon you want. But objective collapse due to anyone's consciousness does not solve anything - my observation of this particle still causes infinite speed effects on your particle, so the universe is anyway non-local.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  It's only solipsism in the sense that my wavefunctions do not have to agree with yours. There is a correlation between us, still. So it isn't like our wavefunctions are going to be radically different. We both are entangled since the Big Bang and even after that many times over as shared information exchanges between us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The article you cite provides various alternatives to this world view. It even contains the fun observation that the experiment has actually been performed, but with photons instead of observers - showing just how important consciousness really is in physical theories. In general, I believe the most obvious interpretation of consciousness is simply as a computational process, so looking at consciousness as a key to QM is incompatible with my beliefs. Furthermore, given the classical-ness of the world we see everyday, I have huge problems believing theories like MWI or these consciousness-based ones that claim the world is entirely quantum everywhere and it's just some kind of accident that it seems so classical to us (contrast to relativity which has a very satisfying answer for why we don't notice the difference from classical mechanics).
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      > I have huge problems believing The universe is indifferent to your persuasions. The double slit experiment has been successfully performed on large molecules of 810 atoms. Quantum mechanics is fundamentally about knowledge and information after interactions. You seem to be a physics guy but something tells me you aren't aware that every single interaction causes entanglement. Entanglement is simply a constraint on interaction products, given the input particles. It is just easier to see its effects on small objects since they are less likely to be perturbed. https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8343 https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8343
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        What you're describing is one self-consistent possibility. But there are other self-consistent possibilities, and all have an equally-good claim to being 'how the universe really works'. Some people are really adamant that MWI is the one. Some are adamant that Copenhagen is the only sound one. It may even turn out that Pilot wave theory is true and none of this quantum weirdness is really all that different from the classical world. I think we just don't know enough yet to choose any one interpretation. I hope that at some point we'll find a way to address the measurement problem - either finding that the classical world also behaves quantically or that there is some clear limit between them or that the quantum world behaves classically (least likely). But until then, we're all just guessing. Edit: 810 atoms is great, just ~6.023*10^21 more to go and we'll have something that is truly in our range of advertising.
        goldenkey 5y ago
        Even more macroscopic now: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4 Eraser experiments have already shown that collapse either doesn't actually happen or is reversible. It appears that all observables are just lazily evaluated nested expressions. Collapse/decoherence is just the phenomena of simplification of expressions. The expressions don't change. In the quantum eraser experiment, the erasure causes the expression to no longer be simplifiable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser
kergonath 5y ago
> consciousness collapses the wave function and solipsism is the nature of reality This would assume that somehow the atoms in our brain work differently than the atoms anywhere else. There is nothing special about consciousness. Honestly, the rest of your post is a bunch of mumbo jumbo, it’s difficult to see what you are trying to say.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  > This would assume that somehow the atoms in our brain work differently than the atoms anywhere else. There is nothing special about consciousness. You assume wrongly. The implication is that all wavefunctions have a corresponding consciousness. Since the universe is a nested set of wavefunctions, it's essentially all consciousness. There is nothing special about consciousness, it's the unified field, it's all there actually is. Honestly, the rigidity of your thinking holds you back from seeing any deeper truth. https://youtu.be/LPhgDfT4Zpc https://youtu.be/LPhgDfT4Zpc
  - ShamelessC 5y ago
    There are many theories in this space to consider and we can't feasibly consider them all. Some amount of rigidity is of course required to even begin probing into something new. Since humans have finite lifespans, we all develop some heuristics (probably heavily biased ones) to serve as filters for what is efficient to consider. As such, one of my (again, heavily biased) filters are any such claims that meditation could have an outsized impact on the level of deviance/crime in the Washington DC. " We present the published results of a National Demonstration Project-in which 4,000 advanced meditators markedly reduced violent crime in Washington, DC." I simply don't have time to consider this as my personal biases are telling me to ignore it and that it is bad science. Furthermore, the researcher here very frequently makes use of highly theoretical and even unproven concepts such as string theory and a particular variant of the multiple universes idea which has also not been proven. Both are presented misleadingly as concrete fact rather than assumptions made. I dislike being misled and distrust the researcher moreso because of that. I assume your biases are quite different from mine. I assume some level of experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs may be involved? No judgement - I've just seen lots of similar appeals to philosophical interpretations of physics from other LSD users I know.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Well, if you go for pure solipsism, that is, your own consciousness is the only thing which exists in the universe, that can explain any phenomenon you want. But objective collapse due to anyone's consciousness does not solve anything - my observation of this particle still causes infinite speed effects on your particle, so the universe is anyway non-local.

goldenkey 5y ago
It's only solipsism in the sense that my wavefunctions do not have to agree with yours. There is a correlation between us, still. So it isn't like our wavefunctions are going to be radically different. We both are entangled since the Big Bang and even after that many times over as shared information exchanges between us. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The article you cite provides various alternatives to this world view. It even contains the fun observation that the experiment has actually been performed, but with photons instead of observers - showing just how important consciousness really is in physical theories. In general, I believe the most obvious interpretation of consciousness is simply as a computational process, so looking at consciousness as a key to QM is incompatible with my beliefs. Furthermore, given the classical-ness of the world we see everyday, I have huge problems believing theories like MWI or these consciousness-based ones that claim the world is entirely quantum everywhere and it's just some kind of accident that it seems so classical to us (contrast to relativity which has a very satisfying answer for why we don't notice the difference from classical mechanics).
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    > I have huge problems believing The universe is indifferent to your persuasions. The double slit experiment has been successfully performed on large molecules of 810 atoms. Quantum mechanics is fundamentally about knowledge and information after interactions. You seem to be a physics guy but something tells me you aren't aware that every single interaction causes entanglement. Entanglement is simply a constraint on interaction products, given the input particles. It is just easier to see its effects on small objects since they are less likely to be perturbed. https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8343 https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.8343
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      What you're describing is one self-consistent possibility. But there are other self-consistent possibilities, and all have an equally-good claim to being 'how the universe really works'. Some people are really adamant that MWI is the one. Some are adamant that Copenhagen is the only sound one. It may even turn out that Pilot wave theory is true and none of this quantum weirdness is really all that different from the classical world. I think we just don't know enough yet to choose any one interpretation. I hope that at some point we'll find a way to address the measurement problem - either finding that the classical world also behaves quantically or that there is some clear limit between them or that the quantum world behaves classically (least likely). But until then, we're all just guessing. Edit: 810 atoms is great, just ~6.023*10^21 more to go and we'll have something that is truly in our range of advertising.
      - goldenkey 5y ago
        Even more macroscopic now: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01223-4 Eraser experiments have already shown that collapse either doesn't actually happen or is reversible. It appears that all observables are just lazily evaluated nested expressions. Collapse/decoherence is just the phenomena of simplification of expressions. The expressions don't change. In the quantum eraser experiment, the erasure causes the expression to no longer be simplifiable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser

kergonath 5y ago

> consciousness collapses the wave function and solipsism is the nature of reality This would assume that somehow the atoms in our brain work differently than the atoms anywhere else. There is nothing special about consciousness. Honestly, the rest of your post is a bunch of mumbo jumbo, it’s difficult to see what you are trying to say.

goldenkey 5y ago
> This would assume that somehow the atoms in our brain work differently than the atoms anywhere else. There is nothing special about consciousness. You assume wrongly. The implication is that all wavefunctions have a corresponding consciousness. Since the universe is a nested set of wavefunctions, it's essentially all consciousness. There is nothing special about consciousness, it's the unified field, it's all there actually is. Honestly, the rigidity of your thinking holds you back from seeing any deeper truth. https://youtu.be/LPhgDfT4Zpc https://youtu.be/LPhgDfT4Zpc
- ShamelessC 5y ago
  There are many theories in this space to consider and we can't feasibly consider them all. Some amount of rigidity is of course required to even begin probing into something new. Since humans have finite lifespans, we all develop some heuristics (probably heavily biased ones) to serve as filters for what is efficient to consider. As such, one of my (again, heavily biased) filters are any such claims that meditation could have an outsized impact on the level of deviance/crime in the Washington DC. " We present the published results of a National Demonstration Project-in which 4,000 advanced meditators markedly reduced violent crime in Washington, DC." I simply don't have time to consider this as my personal biases are telling me to ignore it and that it is bad science. Furthermore, the researcher here very frequently makes use of highly theoretical and even unproven concepts such as string theory and a particular variant of the multiple universes idea which has also not been proven. Both are presented misleadingly as concrete fact rather than assumptions made. I dislike being misled and distrust the researcher moreso because of that. I assume your biases are quite different from mine. I assume some level of experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs may be involved? No judgement - I've just seen lots of similar appeals to philosophical interpretations of physics from other LSD users I know.