41 ms·
I think its a step in the right direction, but I believe one can go even further. It is not necessary to assume an observer or a conscious entity (the dog probl
by c3d 11y ago
I think its a step in the right direction, but I believe one can go even further. It is not necessary to assume an observer or a conscious entity (the dog problem in the article), if one remarks that physical entities that have the "collapse of the wave function" property make good measurement instruments. In other words, knowledge is gained more rapidly with a good measurement instrument, and that is what defines the "collapse", not consciousness.
In that interpretation, QM is seen as the only way to do physics when you represent your knowledge of a system using probabilities. Measurement instruments are a choice among all the physical systems, and what we consider good physical instruments lead to QM "axioms".
This is elaborated here: http://cc3d.free.fr/tim.pdf http://cc3d.free.fr/tim.pdf.
- darkmighty 11y agoThis kind of argument works for classical thermodynamics too, where observing a particle in a gas collapses it's velocity distribution; where if we take a confined gas we can localize it (confining it within a tight space), only to grow uncertain about the momentum of constituents, or expand it, growing uncertain about the position. In other words, for any probabilistic physical framework it seems to me you are going to need to put a magical 'sampling' or 'observation' somewhere. Making this explicit is one of the reasons I like Bohm's formulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory#Relation_to_the_Born_Rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory...