Busting the myth of the observer: the double slit experiment

[microsansfil]

No - it built right into its basic axioms. The theory is about the outcomes of observations - that's it - that's all.

Quantum contextuality seem to be a very useful property/feature for quantum computation ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v510/n7505/full/nature13460.html ).

http://www.cifar.ca/contextuality-puts-the-magic-in-quantum-computing-contextuality-puts-the-magic-in-quantum-computing-contextuality-puts-the-magic-in-quantum-computing-contextuality-puts-the-magic-in-quantum-computing

“One way of thinking about contextuality is that inevitably measurements involve some kind of disturbance. I'm not just learning about some definite property the system had prior to the measurement. I can be learning about some property the system had, but only in a way that depends on how I did the measurement.”

Patrick

 

[Greg Bystroff]

We all remember the animations describing the double slit experiment to the public, laying out the foundations of the mysterious quantum world. Now take the part when we try to determine which slit the electron went through. The narrator will say something like this, in a hushed voice: „And now, the electron, as if it somehow knew we were watching, becomes a particle! It changes just because we observe it!”
If I’m correct, the notion of the intelligent observer is so serious that it gave rise to the anthropic principle where consciousness interferes with quantum objects. I don’t understand something here because I see an error so glaring, it’s as bright as the Sun.
How could anyone call a which-way detector an innocent little observer? For a quantum particle, it is a brutal machine, that interacts with it in a physical way. The detector has no choice by the way but to interact, after all, how else would it get any information out of that photon or electron? It places an electromagnetic field in the path of the particle, or is bombarding the path with particles, I don’t know exactly how it does it but there is no choice but to do something like that. And it is perfectly natural for an electron in its wave form to collapse into a particle after you bump it against some other particle for the purpose of measurement.
Suggesting that all we do is observe gives everyone the false idea that a flying particle in the double slit experiment is bothered by an imaginary line, which we call our line of sight.
I think the word „observe” should only be used if we know what we are talking about:
Step one: Brutal interference
Step two: Drawing conclusions after checking what happened (good luck by the way, after step one)
So what am I missing here? Surely I can’t be smarter than all those scientists who had good reason to pursue the theory of the intelligent observer.

 

[stevendaryl]

The notion of the intelligent observer is so serious that it gave rise to the anthropic principle where consciousness interferes with quantum objects.

The "anthropic principle" was not developed from the notion of consciousness interfering with the wave function. Instead, it's an attempt to explain some seemingly unlikely facts about the universe by saying that if they weren't true, we wouldn't be around to observe them.

Your suggestion that measurement causes wave function collapse through disturbing the particle has been investigated, and there are good reasons to believe that that can't be the full explanation. In the EPR experiment, we have a pair of correlated particles, that travel far apart before a measurement is performed. Then apparently a measurement of one particle causes the wave function of the OTHER particle to collapse. If you assume that physical disturbances can't instantaneously cause effects on far-distant particles, then there is no way for wave function collapse to be an ordinary physical disturbance.