How Does Observation Influence the Reality of the Universe Before Observers?

[NWO]

Q- If only conscious beings can be observers, and by the act of observation we bring particles into position and create the reality as we go along. also only this act can make the mutliple outcomes come to fruition, then what happened to the universe before there were observers to create the solid world we call reality. PLEASE HELP?

 

[Dmitry67]

NWO, it is just a weakness of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
There are many other interpretations of QM, and many of them does not require the "collapse" at all.

 

[ansgar]

There is no need of an conscious beeing for oberservation (obersvation in the QM - copenhagen sense), what the weakness of the copenhagen interpretation is though is that it requires classical apparatus - not QM apparatus.

 

[Dmitry67]

ansqar, there are different flavors of CI:
1. observation is done by a measurement device (this has a problem with instantaneous nature collapse and the definition of 'what is a measurement device')
2. wavefunction - is just our knowledge about the system. As wavefunction is not real, there are no problems with the collapse. But 'knowledge' requires a consciousness.

In any case, both flavors are bad :)

 

[ansgar]

ansqar, there are different flavors of CI:
1. observation is done by a measurement device (this has a problem with instantaneous nature collapse and the definition of 'what is a measurement device')
2. wavefunction - is just our knowledge about the system. As wavefunction is not real, there are no problems with the collapse. But 'knowledge' requires a consciousness.

In any case, both flavors are bad :)

well CI is best for "shut up and calculate" and Bohm maybe best for interpretations

 

[Dmitry67]

no, MWI is the best :)

 

[ansgar]

no, MWI is the best :)

LOL no MWI has no predictivity power and is hence not science at all ;)

 

[Dmitry67]

Why? Observationally MWI is equivalent to Bohmian

 

[Fredrik]

1. observation is done by a measurement device (this has a problem with instantaneous nature collapse and the definition of 'what is a measurement device')

Only if the wavefunction is assumed to represent all the properties of the system rather than the properties of an ensemble of identically prepared systems. Only the critics of "the CI" seem to include that assumption in the definition of the CI, so it seems to me that you guys are attacking a straw man.

2. wavefunction - is just our knowledge about the system. As wavefunction is not real, there are no problems with the collapse. But 'knowledge' requires a consciousness.

I haven't been able to make sense of that version of the CI either, but after skimming through the stuff on this page (posted by Fra in another thread), I now think that this version of the CI is just a different interpretation of probability, not a different interpretation of the physics.

 

[Fredrik]

LOL no MWI has no predictivity power and is hence not science at all ;)

The MWI is just the assumption that every system including the entire universe obeys the laws of QM. You can still decompose the universe into subsystems, e.g. "you+system+environment" and use that decomposition to make the same predictions as any other interpretation.

It's easy to think that what you just said is correct (I was saying the same thing myself a year ago) if you've been listening to the MWI proponents. They like to define it by removing the probability rule and not mentioning (or not understanding) that they're replacing it with an assumption that's essentially equivalent to the probability rule: that the Hilbert space of a system is the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces of the subsystems. See e.g. this article. His definition strongly suggests that the probability rule isn't a part of the MWI, and just a few lines later he's using the essentially equivalent assumption without stating (and maybe without realizing) that it's an assumption, and that it's a strong one.

 

[Fra]

ansqar, there are different flavors of CI:
1. observation is done by a measurement device (this has a problem with instantaneous nature collapse and the definition of 'what is a measurement device')
2. wavefunction - is just our knowledge about the system. As wavefunction is not real, there are no problems with the collapse. But 'knowledge' requires a consciousness.

In any case, both flavors are bad :)

Here is a more tasty flavour ;)

3. wavefunction - is just the observing systems knowledge about the system in question. As wavefunction is not observer independent, there are no inconsistencies due to the collapse. Requires no consciousness - knowledge can be thought of as the observers evolved/tuned expectation of the system in question - where this evolving expectations can be thought of as an inference process, which is driven by the flow of new information. The implications of the expectations is that it implies a prefences for the actions, in the sense that the actions are "favourable" or rational choices given the premises.

Fredrik(user) is right that to a good extent, the interpretation of probabiltiy is a key difference in my view.

In my view, one is lead not that quantum mechanics as it stands only makes sense as a special case, since a objectively deterministic evolution equation is not consistent with the idea that the evolution is an expected evolution. If the subjectively expectation is assumed to be correct, then the evolution is deterministic. But since the whole spirit of this version 3 of interpretation is to quantify all expectations, there is no physical basis in terms of information processing where a 100% confidence can be acheived.

I hold a subjective bayesian view, in combination with an evolutionary perspective where only the selection comes from an equilibrium population of subjective views. So I replace the multiverse idea with the multiview idea, and then use a sort of subjective probability. The probability spaces and thus also hilbert spaces are then also evolving.

So in this flavour, the "issues" that are obvious instead suggests that current QM is only a special case of a more general theory. So this is more than an interpretation only.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

I now think that this version of the CI is just a different interpretation of probability, not a different interpretation of the physics.

Yes, but somehow the physical meaning of what probabilty is, is quite crucial from the point of view of understanding and extending the theory, right? Because if our theory makes predictions not on single events, but only on probabiltiy level, then the meaning of this is quite important.

So as I've rambled in several threads in the past, my interpretations does come with suggestions on how to improve things, and this does suggest to me a different physics. (but it does not make a difference to the currently tested domains of QM of couse, it only regards some of the open questions, such as unification of forces and QG)

/Fredrik

 

[Demystifier]

well CI is best for "shut up and calculate" and Bohm maybe best for interpretations

I perfectly agree with that. Even though other interpretations also have some interpretational merits, the Bohmian one is the "best" in the sense that it is most intuitive. For example, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to understand INTUITIVELY the origin of the Born rule in MWI.

 

[Dmitry67]

1 wavefunction - is just the observing systems knowledge about the system in question.
2 As wavefunction is not observer independent

1 contradicts 2

Knowledge of system A about system B depends on A and B
Hence systems A and Z can have different and inconsistent knowledge about system B

 

[Fra]

Ok I see I'm forced to elaborate a little more.

1 wavefunction - is just the observing systems knowledge about the system in question.
2 As wavefunction is not observer independent

1 contradicts 2

Knowledge of system A about system B depends on A and B
Hence systems A and Z can have different and inconsistent knowledge about system B

That two observers have different knowledge about B is not really a "physical inconsistency" at all. It is only an inconsistency for those who insist on a certain level of realism.

Instead the implication (which was not clear from my past post) in my view, is that the two observers act differently against B (in consistency with their differing information).

This instead predicts an interaction between A and Z, the result of this interaction can be thought of as a negotiation between A and Z. They both update their previous knowledge in the light of a "second opinon" :)

So there is a great beauty here, not inconsistencies.

This is no more inconsistent than the fact that two observes in different inertial frames measure different wavelenghts of a light source.

The difference is that in SR, the symmetry transformation that provides a covariant description and thus recovers consistency is hardcoded. In my view, these symmetries are emergent.

/Fredrik

 

[Fra]

I see this overlaps to the old thread of Dmitry.

"The role of false info in the Copenhagen Int. "
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=301893

Instead of a realist objective measure of right or wrong knowledge, there is a democracy of opinons, and the system whose prior information proves to be sort of "in contradiction" to the future evolution, will pay a price for this - it will be forced to negotiation with it's environment to revise the information, or face desctruction.

Thus, part of regular QM is an "quasi-equilibrium version" of something even more weird.

/Fredrik

 

[Fredrik]

Yes, but somehow the physical meaning of what probabilty is, is quite crucial from the point of view of understanding and extending the theory, right? Because if our theory makes predictions not on single events, but only on probabiltiy level, then the meaning of this is quite important.

That sounds right on the surface, but in my opinion, the only interpretation that can have any value to a physicist is the frequency interpretation. Baez complains about how the limit of large n doesn't really exist in the real world, but so what? That only means that the "thing in the real world" that corresponds to an expectation value doesn't have an exact definition, but why should that matter when none of the "things in the real world" that a theory associates with a mathematical object or a mathematical structure has an exact definition? Those things are all defined operationally, so they can't possibly have an exact definition anyway.

 

[mccoy1]

...before there were observers ...:

Before there were observers, there were no observables. It's a reality of nature and it's meaningless to ask for proof.

 

[Demystifier]

Before there were observers, there were no observables. It's a reality of nature and it's meaningless to ask for proof.

But is there reality beyond the observed reality?

 

[Dmitry67]

Before there were observers, there were no observables. It's a reality of nature and it's meaningless to ask for proof.

99.999% of the 13 billion years after the Big Bang there were no intelligent beings
So, what Cosmology is studying? :)

 

[Fra]

Ok here is some personal and speculative elaborations. I won't go into details, I only expand a little on the context and meaning of subjective probability in my view.

That sounds right on the surface, but in my opinion, the only interpretation that can have any value to a physicist is the frequency interpretation. Baez complains about how the limit of large n doesn't really exist in the real world, but so what? That only means that the "thing in the real world" that corresponds to an expectation value doesn't have an exact definition, but why should that matter when none of the "things in the real world" that a theory associates with a mathematical object or a mathematical structure has an exact definition? Those things are all defined operationally, so they can't possibly have an exact definition anyway.

IMO, Baez reflections is great but it doesn't expose the entire problem that I see.

But just like Baez writes the frequency interpretation and a subjective bayesian view is not necessarily in contradiction. On contrary in my personal endavours (which is formally speculative and under development so I will skip the details) does make use of a proper counting. The problem is not frequentism in itself, the problem is that the counting procedure and the representation itself is necesarily subjective. I envision a subjective counting system, in which the frequentist interpretation does play a role, but the fact that the counting procedure itself and the representation of the counts itself is constrained by an inside observer, gives rise to a subjective probability view.

So in this sense I am even more radical than just a bayesian view.

I consider a event counting over and event index, this builds up a discrete microstructure which is like a discretized probability concept over a discrete event space. But if the information capacity is bounded, what happens when new data arrives, and the memory is full?

Either you discard new data (which is not rational, right?), or you rearranges data into compressed form and randomly releases data.

So there are two ways to increase your information retention: evolve better compression and representation systems, and grow larger (this is in my idea also related to origin of mass)

One can apply transformations on these sets that effectively corresponds to lossy datacompression since no physical observer can represent the infinite amount of data, a straight time history is clearly a nonfit strategy. So the internal state of the obsevers is selected for optimum information retention under the constraint to limited memory capacity.

In such a view, "probability" is interpreted as a retained compressed form of a subjective timehistory of actual "frequences". The choice of compression makes this "probability" subjective. But the compression makes it different than regular frequences, and there I envision a natural selection for the optimal compression and representation systems. In these evolution, quantum logic is expcted to emerge as a form of information compression that is more fit that classical logic in the sense that it stabilises the observer complexes.

( On secret goal of mine is to show explictly how quantum logic emerges as a stable representation that has competitive advantages over classical logic, and that there is close to a one-2-one mapping onto the space of preferred representation systems including the compression algortighms and the particles and actions in nature. )

So I have a lot of things behind my view of "subjective probability". Baez gives a good initial point, but the rest of my "interpretations" is even more weird.

/Fredrik

 

[mccoy1]

99.999% of the 13 billion years after the Big Bang there were no intelligent beings
So, what Cosmology is studying? :)

hey this should be a philosophical issue.
I think 99.999% C.I isn't realistic. Well there might have been no intelligent beings but we just don't know with that accuracy. I can give it 50% chance(which is quite reasonable...half true). It may be that the big bang happened within some universe, which had observers then.And 'our" current universe blows those creatures away as it expands. We just don't know...all that we do is make some intellegent guess and model theories...which may or may not be "true".

 

[mccoy1]

But is there reality beyond the observed reality?

There is no reality beyond the observed reality as we don't have an idea of what's beyond it, but we can speculate that there's half a chance that there might...

 

[Dmitry67]

There is an easier method to solve everything. Put the CI in the recycle bin.

 

[Fredrik]

There is an easier method to solve everything. Put the CI in the recycle bin.

...or...you could stop claiming that the craziest idea you know about how to interpret the wavefunction as a description of a physical system is the CI, and start using a definition that's more in line with the original ideas.

 

[Fra]

For the record, I usually note that I do not adhere or fit cleanly to any classical CI (whatever that is anyway) but that among the classical interpretations it's the one I find closest.

The reason I put my interpretation as "flavour #3" of CI in response to Dmitry here was of no deep significance at all, except that it is a clear variation of his option 2 :)

/Fredrik

 

[Demystifier]

...or...you could stop claiming that the craziest idea you know about how to interpret the wavefunction as a description of a physical system is the CI, and start using a definition that's more in line with the original ideas.

CI is crazy, but there are even crazier interpretations of QM. For me, the craziest one is replacing classical logic with "quantum logic".

 

[Fredrik]

CI is crazy, but there are even crazier interpretations of QM. For me, the craziest one is replacing classical logic with "quantum logic".

As you have pointed out yourself, there are many different definitions of the CI out there, and I think it's very strange to pick the one that's just a huge misunderstanding of the original ideas and make that the "official" definition, just so we can declare the CI "crazy".

I'm very surprised by your comments about quantum logic. What makes you think there's anything crazy about it?

 

[Demystifier]

As you have pointed out yourself, there are many different definitions of the CI out there, and I think it's very strange to pick the one that's just a huge misunderstanding of the original ideas and make that the "official" definition, just so we can declare the CI "crazy".

I agree.

I'm very surprised by your comments about quantum logic. What makes you think there's anything crazy about it?

Well, maybe I have misunderstood something, but I view quantum logic as denying of validity of the classical logic. On the other hand, classical logic seems so fundamental to me that I am not ready to accept that it might be wrong. For example, a statement must be either true or false ...

 

[Count Iblis]

The MWI implies that time does not exist. The early universe before we existed is simply a component of an eternal wavefunction. In fact, you can take the early universe in which we supposedly do not exist, expand it in another basis and obtain today's universe from it. So, it isn't even true that we don't exist in the early universe.

 

[Dmitry67]

For example, a statement must be either true or false ...

Or undecidable, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis for example


There is also alternative logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic

 

[Dmitry67]

The MWI implies that time does not exist. The early universe before we existed is simply a component of an eternal wavefunction. In fact, you can take the early universe in which we supposedly do not exist, expand it in another basis and obtain today's universe from it. So, it isn't even true that we don't exist in the early universe.

It is called a block time.
It is not a property of MWI, but of ANY deterministic theory, BM for example.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I have edited this thread, removing a number of posts, for the following reasons:

1) to focus the topic to discussion appropriate for this forum
2) to remove personal speculation/theory and responses
3) to remove an attribution of an idea that followed with no direct quote from the author or source.

Thanks for your understanding.
MIH

 

[Fredrik]

Well, maybe I have misunderstood something, but I view quantum logic as denying of validity of the classical logic. On the other hand, classical logic seems so fundamental to me that I am not ready to accept that it might be wrong. For example, a statement must be either true or false ...

I think you have misunderstood something, but I have now realized that I had too. I had previously thought of quantum logic only as an approach to quantum theory that starts by letting a specific mathematical structure (some kind of lattice, I don't know the details) represent the set of experimentally verifiable statements. If that's all quantum logic is, then it's not very different from the other well-known approaches. For example, the traditional approach is to associate a complex separable Hilbert space with the set of operationally defined "states". Another option, which seems very popular these days, is to associate a unital C*-algebra with the set of operationally defined "observables". What all of these approaches have in common is that they associate a mathematical structure with a set of "things in the real world" that can be defined operationally.

There's certainly nothing radical about quantum logic so far, and it doesn't even seem to have anything to do with interpretations. The "experimentally verifiable statements" are either true or false, so who cares if that mathematical structure isn't a Boolean algebra, right? What I didn't realize before I started writing this is that there's more than one way to think of an experimentally verifiable statement. Compare e.g.

"If we measure the position of the particle, the result will (with probability 1) be in the interval (0,1)"

with

"The particle's position is in the interval (0,1)"

As long as we keep our statements in the first form, then quantum logic is just a more complicated way to arrive at the same thing as the traditional approach, and possibly make some interesting insights along the way. (Yes, I understand that statements of the first kind can't be verified by measurements on a single system; we need an ensemble). But if we take our statements to be of the second kind, then I think you're right. This is an interpretation of QM that rejects some aspects of classical logic. (The distributive property: A and (B or C)=(A and B) or (A and C)). This does seem like a fairly radical interpretation, but is it really more radical than many worlds? If we insist on realism, it seems that we have to choose between many worlds or quantum logic. (My choice is to drop realism, but you know that already).

Note that even if we strongly disagree with this interpretation, that's not a reason to dismiss quantum logic as an approach to quantum theory. It actually seems like a good place to start if we ever want to find some sort of generalization of QM. For example, we may not have to let that mathematical structure be isomorphic to the lattice of subspaces of a complex separable Hilbert space.

The MWI implies that time does not exist. The early universe before we existed is simply a component of an eternal wavefunction. In fact, you can take the early universe in which we supposedly do not exist, expand it in another basis and obtain today's universe from it. So, it isn't even true that we don't exist in the early universe.

My first thought was that this is crazy talk, but then I thought about it and I think you're right. That's actually what the MWI says. Of course, that doesn't mean that it's not crazy.

It is called a block time.
It is not a property of MWI, but of ANY deterministic theory, BM for example.

No Dmitry, it's not. This goes far beyond that. In the MWI, the time evolution of the omnium is a curve in a Hilbert space. The state of the omnium "now" is a point on the curve. This point has a bunch of components in any given basis. Now consider a point much earlier on the curve. You can always find a basis such that that point has the same components. That means that it can be intepreted as describing the same thing. However, since the time evolution curve in general takes off in a different direction at that point (relative to the basis vectors) than it does at the "now" point, the observers described by that state would experience very different dynamics. Probably so different that they all die instantly.

Also, I think you have the wrong idea about the "block time" stuff. For example, it's not the "block" property of Minkowski spacetime that makes SR deterministic. It's the fact that equations of motion are always such that there's a unique solution for each initial condition.

 

[Dmitry67]

Frederik, SR is giving a hint that block time idea is true, because the notion of "now" is relative to the observer. And without block time I don't know how GR's Closed Time-like loops can be interpreted.

But I am confused by what you wrote about 'now'. NOW is an illusion. NOW is very important concept for consciousness, but I doubt you can assign any physical meaning that on t axis breaks the symmetry dividing time into 'past', 'now', and 'future'.

 

[Fredrik]

Frederik, SR is giving a hint that block time idea is true, because the notion of "now" is relative to the observer. And without block time I don't know how GR's Closed Time-like loops can be interpreted.

I know, but you started talking about these things in response to Count Iblis, who was talking about something completely different. My point was (and still is) that what you said in reply to his comment, and what you're still saying, has nothing at all to do with what he said.

But I am confused by what you wrote about 'now'. NOW is an illusion. NOW is very important concept for consciousness, but I doubt you can assign any physical meaning that on t axis breaks the symmetry dividing time into 'past', 'now', and 'future'.

I'm confused by your confusion. I didn't do anything like that, and I don't know why you're talking about these things. I was talking about the value of a curve \psi:\mathbb R\rightarrow\mathcal H at a point in its domain. I chose to call that point "now", but if you prefer we can call it "t" instead.

 

[Demystifier]

Fredrik, thank you for the clarifications on quantum logic!

 

[WaveJumper]

99.999% of the 13 billion years after the Big Bang there were no intelligent beings
So, what Cosmology is studying? :)

Cosmology is studying whatever wavefunctions are collapsed into what you call 'reality'(that obviously includes 'memories' from the past). Even if you brought up a camcorder with a recorded tape from before there had been life on Earth, someone/something has to collapse the measurement device(camcorder's) own wavefunction to a state from which you'd assume time flowing was real and dinosaurs lived in the past, not in the present. In my perspective, the final triggering device(the objectifier) is always inside your head. "Objects" as we are accustomed to label the entities in our experience that have strictly defined properties - mass, dimensions, time, etc., do not exist. The closest term that evades being misleading is to call these "objects" - "events".
It's hardly surprising that QCD calculations indicate nearly all(if not all) of the mass of matter comes from virtual particles.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html