3 ms·

If I'm standing here, all the stuff that the atoms in my body could conceivably interact with have to be backfilled for me to interact with them according to th

If I'm standing here, all the stuff that the atoms in my body could conceivably interact with have to be backfilled for me to interact with them according to this experiment, but since I'm not special to the universe, atoms three billion light years over, they are still interacting with each other, just not with me. So am I decohered to them? Is this like a divergent timelines theory such that coherence is defined as when different possibilities converge while following possibilities, reducing them and then so must necessarily collapse as other possibilities drop off? So what's the difference between cohered and decohered reality then? It sounds then like it would just be one of those paths, the one that we happen to be on that we only notice because we're conscious so that's our arbitrary (to the universe) observation point. That's the only way I can make sense out of this without attaching significance to human observation.

mjfl 11y ago
The philosophical interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is a very hard, unsolved problem. There are many reasons why quantum mechanics is theoretically good and philosophically terrible, and not just in a subtle, esoteric way. The reason is that in Quantum Mechanics there are 2 main types of entities: particles, "things" that evolve according to the Schrodinger equation, and "observers". Observers are what deliver to us the results of randomly sampling from the probability distribution defined by the squared amplitude of the wave function by "collapsing" it, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. However, there is no particle that acts as an observer, they all just follow the Schrodinger equation, but nothing that exists isn't a particle. How could "observers" exist and interact with particles then? The Copenhagen interpretation is philosophically terrible. And it really pisses me off that this article title seems to hint that they've really confirmed it. In a lab, an experimenter can just point to his apparatus and say, "that's the observer". Or, being more formal, they can say a thermodynamically irreversible process plays the role of an observer. But this is not really a satisfying explanation because how could it be possible to generate these large, discontinuous motions we call "collapse" on the macroscale if it is impossible on the microscale? There are the multiverse theories that you seem to describe, but they have their own problems. Rae's Quantum Physics: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Illusion-Reality-Classics/dp/1107604648/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1QMSE7ANN5CFTEC7XAEZ http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Illusion-Reality-Class... goes over a lot of them without getting to messy in the math. Other interpretations of QM are in the book as well. There are many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...
- dghf 11y ago
  > Observers are what deliver to us the results of randomly sampling from the probability distribution defined by the squared amplitude of the wave function by "collapsing" it, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. However, there is no particle that acts as an observer, they all just follow the Schrodinger equation, but nothing that exists isn't a particle. This is why proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation claim that Occam's razor favours it: you don't need to posit "observers" or "collapses"; there's just the evolution of the wave function.
  - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    > Occam's razor favours it Occam's razor is not a scientific principle, it's just a rule of thumb. I have yet to see a proof that given a number of equal strength explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is always true. One other thing that's often forgotten is that in Occam's opinion the simplest explanation for everything was God.
    - onnoonno 11y ago
      ... and it should be added that having infinitely many worlds is maybe not really the simplest explanation of reality.

mjfl 11y ago

The philosophical interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is a very hard, unsolved problem. There are many reasons why quantum mechanics is theoretically good and philosophically terrible, and not just in a subtle, esoteric way. The reason is that in Quantum Mechanics there are 2 main types of entities: particles, "things" that evolve according to the Schrodinger equation, and "observers". Observers are what deliver to us the results of randomly sampling from the probability distribution defined by the squared amplitude of the wave function by "collapsing" it, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. However, there is no particle that acts as an observer, they all just follow the Schrodinger equation, but nothing that exists isn't a particle. How could "observers" exist and interact with particles then? The Copenhagen interpretation is philosophically terrible. And it really pisses me off that this article title seems to hint that they've really confirmed it. In a lab, an experimenter can just point to his apparatus and say, "that's the observer". Or, being more formal, they can say a thermodynamically irreversible process plays the role of an observer. But this is not really a satisfying explanation because how could it be possible to generate these large, discontinuous motions we call "collapse" on the macroscale if it is impossible on the microscale? There are the multiverse theories that you seem to describe, but they have their own problems. Rae's Quantum Physics: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Illusion-Reality-Classics/dp/1107604648/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1QMSE7ANN5CFTEC7XAEZ http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Physics-Illusion-Reality-Class... goes over a lot of them without getting to messy in the math. Other interpretations of QM are in the book as well. There are many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mec...

dghf 11y ago
> Observers are what deliver to us the results of randomly sampling from the probability distribution defined by the squared amplitude of the wave function by "collapsing" it, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. However, there is no particle that acts as an observer, they all just follow the Schrodinger equation, but nothing that exists isn't a particle. This is why proponents of the Many-Worlds Interpretation claim that Occam's razor favours it: you don't need to posit "observers" or "collapses"; there's just the evolution of the wave function.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > Occam's razor favours it Occam's razor is not a scientific principle, it's just a rule of thumb. I have yet to see a proof that given a number of equal strength explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest one is always true. One other thing that's often forgotten is that in Occam's opinion the simplest explanation for everything was God.
  - onnoonno 11y ago
    ... and it should be added that having infinitely many worlds is maybe not really the simplest explanation of reality.