Fredrik said:Varon (and BruceW), Ken G isn't saying that a human observing something is any different from a robot doing it. He's saying that the concept of measurement involves consciousness, not that the act of measurement does.
A human would never think of an interaction that leaves no record of the result as a "measurement". The reason is that he wouldn't have any way of knowing what the result was. If he knows that there's been a result, then a record has been created, because his knowledge is a record.
You are also talking about the easy problem of collapse, the decoherence. That does not tell us how we get a single outcome, that question remains entirely unanswered and very much does require an interpretation choice, or you have to punt the question entirely (which is more or less choosing CI interpretation).
But either way, there is no experiment in the near future that will be able to distinguish between our two interpretations.
collapse, in my opinion (its all opinions here anyway
We have two choices. We can notice that we are conscious, and we are classical, and just guess which of those attributes causes us to experience non-unitary phenomena. Or, we can say, if we were classical but non-conscious, would we need the non-unitary explanations? I've argued we would not. If we were conscious but non-classical, would we need the non-unitary explanations? I would say yes we would, because if one can imagine a conscious electron, it still has to register a single outcome to an experiment. That is the fundamental nature of consciousness, its association with experience. I probably could have ducked a lot of this difficulty by just replacing "consciousness" with "experiential agent", because I'm using the terms synonymously.BruceW said:Ken G - For the case of the mindless robot in the world without any consciousness:
Us humans are classical objects that can cause a non unitary process. Therefore, I would deduce that other similar classical objects which do not have consciousness may also cause a non unitary process. I would not, like you, deduce that non-conscious beings cannot cause a non unitary process.
And I claim that is because even in that world with no conscious beings, you are implicitly slipping in hypothetical conscious agents, to help you form your language about that world.Therefore, in the world with no conscious beings, I would say that non unitary processes still happen.
But in many worlds, we still have to place conscious experience, and it is the reason we talk about "many" worlds instead of just one unitary world. So the many-worlds interpretation is the one that has the most apparent of all roles of consciousness as the source of non-unitary experience, it's just crystal clear if one adopts that interpretation.BruceW said:(That's for the Copenhagen interpretation). And for many-worlds theory, neither conscious nor non-conscious objects cause a non unitary process.
So neither of these theories make any distinction between conscious and non-conscious objects.
Yes, that's it exactly.Varon said:If I understand it right. I think what Ken G was saying was that humans have self initiated volition to home in on the definite outcomes that machines or even equations in quantum mechanics don't have.
Right. Indeed, I'm essentially defining consciousness as "the experience of a single outcome", because that's the only kind of consciousness we know about. The way we experience our own consciousness is in a kind of necessity to have a single outcome. So we have to shoehorn the outcome of any experiment into that rubric. I don't know if we do that because we are conscious, or if we are conscious because we can do that. Thinking about what consciousness actually is gets quite difficult, I am merely looking at what ramifications having it presents us with.LEVELS -------- CAPABILITY
microworld = superposition
lifeless robots = mixed state
humans = definite outcome
That's not how the CI frames it. In the CI, the wavefunction is just a calculational tool, so its final "collapse" to a definite outcome is an entirely manual process. It is just a thought, and you don't have to "collapse" thoughts, you just think them. Ironically, CI manipulates the wavefunction in exactly the way you like to imagine the mind can manipulate reality, making it a closer cousin to your way of thinking than you realize.Now how come or what collapse the wave function. If Copenhagen was right. Wave function could be collapsed to definite outcome because of the existence of self-initiated volation.
Yes, except I don't see anthropic principles as principles of nature, I see them as ramifications of human intellect. Nature imposes constraints on the intellect by virtue of what thought processes are successful, but the thought processes themselves are from us, not from nature outside of us.Without this possibility. Nature would only choose up to mixed state and no possibility of definite outcome. So it's like some kind of anthropic principle why nature has this capability to collapse wave function.
CI would say there is no complete theory nor correct interpretation in the sense you mean, so it asserts itself as the next best thing. It simply avoids self-delusion, that's its raison d'etre.I guess this is all there is to it to Copenhagen, a temporary system of philosophy for lack of other data that can lock on the complete theory and correct interpretation.
Spot on. There is something inseparable between the act of being conscious, and the ability to have a unique record of a happening, but I don't know which is prior to the other. Maybe the two are one in the same in some sense.Fredrik said:A human would never think of an interaction that leaves no record of the result as a "measurement". The reason is that he wouldn't have any way of knowing what the result was. If he knows that there's been a result, then a record has been created, because his knowledge is a record.
Ken G said:We have two choices. We can notice that we are conscious, and we are classical, and just guess which of those attributes causes us to experience non-unitary phenomena. Or, we can say, if we were classical but non-conscious, would we need the non-unitary explanations? I've argued we would not. If we were conscious but non-classical, would we need the non-unitary explanations? I would say yes we would, because if one can imagine a conscious electron, it still has to register a single outcome to an experiment. That is the fundamental nature of consciousness, its association with experience. I probably could have ducked a lot of this difficulty by just replacing "consciousness" with "experiential agent", because I'm using the terms synonymously.
And I claim that is because even in that world with no conscious beings, you are implicitly slipping in hypothetical conscious agents, to help you form your language about that world.
The minimum requirement is the capability and even necessity to conceive of a single outcome for an experiment. We have to register a unique experience. In classical physics, that seems like a perfectly normal thing for any material object to do, and even though in statistical mechanics the fundamental object is a probability distribution, we still imagine we have an ensemble of single outcomes. But in quantum systems, the formal mathematics of quantum mechanics makes no mention of single outcomes to experiments, and single outcomes are never predicted and never tested. So this is an important "disconnect" for conscious entities. I'm arguing it is more important than the quantum/classical gap that Bohr and co. tended to focus on, because the two are so easily mistaken for each other. Indeed, if you think about it, the classical limit is always the thermodynamic limit, so we really always have probability distributions rather than single outcomes, even in classical physics-- it's usually just lost in the measurement error.Varon said:Let's go to your "experiential agent", should the "experiential agent" be self-aware? What is the minimum requirement for it?
Ken G said:The minimum requirement is the capability and even necessity to conceive of a single outcome for an experiment. We have to register a unique experience. In classical physics, that seems like a perfectly normal thing for any material object to do, and even though in statistical mechanics the fundamental object is a probability distribution, we still imagine we have an ensemble of single outcomes. But in quantum systems, the formal mathematics of quantum mechanics makes no mention of single outcomes to experiments, and single outcomes are never predicted and never tested. So this is an important "disconnect" for conscious entities. I'm arguing it is more important than the quantum/classical gap that Bohr and co. tended to focus on, because the two are so easily mistaken for each other. Indeed, if you think about it, the classical limit is always the thermodynamic limit, so we really always have probability distributions rather than single outcomes, even in classical physics-- it's usually just lost in the measurement error.
I'm not sure one can answer that, one can only speak of what they mean by the words. If we did program a robot to be able to conceive of and experience a single outcome, then for the purposes of everything I've said above, that robot would be conscious. Whether or not it is possible to actually program a robot to be conscious is a question that is debated ad nauseum in the artificial intelligence community, and no one strikes me as being terribly close to a definitive answer, nor does it matter at all to anything I've said because the "robots" I talked about were ones that we could actually imagine programming with existing technology.Varon said:Can we program a lifeless robot to conceive of a single outcome for an experiment? Or must the robot be self aware?
Ken G said:I'm not sure one can answer that, one can only speak of what they mean by the words. If we did program a robot to be able to conceive of and experience a single outcome, then for the purposes of everything I've said above, that robot would be conscious. Whether or not it is possible to actually program a robot to be conscious is a question that is debated ad nauseum in the artificial intelligence community, and no one strikes me as being terribly close to a definitive answer, nor does it matter at all to anything I've said because the "robots" I talked about were ones that we could actually imagine programming with existing technology.
The robot doesn't perceive at all, that's the point. What we are talking about is a program and a machine running that program, and its job is to test quantum mechanical predictions. Quantum mechanical predictions are mixed states, that's it, that's all you get from quantum mechanics. So the robot must be set up to test the mixed-state predictions, and this is always done in the classical limit. That's the ultimate irony of doing quantum science, all the predictions of the quantum theory are tested in the classical limit of many events, but they can be done one at a time and tested with outcomes that are quantum in nature. However, the outcomes that come from quantum mechanics are mixed states, so a robot set up to test quantum mechanics in a universe with no perception and no concept of a unique outcome would have to test quantum mixed states. The tests come out the same as classical ensembles, so rarely are the quanta sent through one at a time. Instead, the robot would be programmed to recognize the superposition principle, and would send a vast ensemble through their instrument, and test the mixed-state predictions in the classical limit, and find that quantum mechanics works with flying colors. All without ever having a concept of a single unique outcome for a single quantum.Varon said:You said the lifeless robot can only perceive mixed state in the double slit experiment. Can you please be clear what is the equivalent of mixed state in the double slit. I think it has to do with the fact that we don't know which slit the photon would enter. But won't this produce detection events? I guess not. So what does it mean the robot can only perceive mixed state when nothing in the detector got any photon hits?
Ken G said:That's simply because the phrase "consciousness causes collapse" can mean about 100 different things, many of which have been carefully delineated on this thread. Indeed that was the initial disconnect between myself and G01, if you care to review that discussion. Nothing that I am saying is what that Wiki means by consciousness causing collapse, but what I do mean is completely consistent with both the Wiki I quoted for you, and what G01 just said above.
All covered in the thread, you're not telling me anything I haven't already discussed in detail.
Now I'm just repeating, but I will go through it yet again because this is the crux of the whole business right here.
A measurement made by a lifeless computer creates what is called a mixed state for the quantum system. That is because the quantum system is, at this point, a subspace of a larger apparatus. The larger apparatus, as G01 just explained, is still in a pure state according to the unitary evolution of quantum mechanics theory. The mixed state is the projection from the whole system onto the subspace of the quantum system. Nothing there creates any difficulties, nor requires any interpretations of quantum mechanics-- the full system is in a pure state so is still unitary, the projection onto the subspace is not supposed to be unitary, it's a projection from a joint wave function to a single-particle state, and that does not lead to a single-particle wavefunction at all (let alone an eigenstate of the measurable), it leads to a mixed state.
At this point, where all we have is the "lifeless computer", we do not have a single measurement outcome, we have a mixture of outcomes. This is also called an "ensemble" in mainstream quantum mechanics, the only difference is that to resolve certain difficulties in picturing what this is, we imagine lots and lots of copies of the system, instead of just one system. This makes it easier to imagine what a mixed state is, but there's really only one system there, it doesn't have to be an ensemble.
Enter a consciousness/intelligence/perceiver who thinks classically. Only now do we encounter the concept of an "actual outcome", and this creates a huge problem for quantum mechanics theory. Where does that actual outcome come from? No one knows, but here is where each of the interpretations step into provide an untestable answer. I've already outlined what those answers are above, and GO1 mentioned some of the possibilities as well. The key thing to recognize at this point is that none of that difficult business even comes up, and there's no need for an interpretation, until we factor in the presence of a consciousness and its resulting "actual outcome" perception. The physics is perfectly happy just leaving the quantum in a mixed state, if all we have is a lifeless computer. It's all related to how a conscious entity does science, and this involves the perception of an actual outcome, even though the theory provides no such concept and forces us to inject a layer of randomness to get agreement with our experiences. Because we are conscious.
So this role of consciousness is much more subtle, yet much more fundamental to everything we do in science, than what that Wiki is talking about. I know that without even reading the context of the rest of that Wiki.
No. Measuring apparatuses are physical constructs, and so, should obey the laws of physics. Unitary evolution is one of the laws they should obey. Ergo, measuring devices should not "cause a non unitary process to occur." The whole measurement problem, as nicely described by G01 above, is the origin of the apparent non-unitarity, since it cannot come from the measuring device. Here are the answers of the main interpretations:
CI: it comes from how we do science, since the unitary evolution piece was just a tool we use at one stage of the calculation. (This is related to our consciousness/intelligence/classical processing in the "how we do science" part.)
Many-worlds: the non-unitary element is illusory, the full unitary result is there but we only see a tiny part of the real story. (This is related to our consciousness/intelligence/classical processing in the "what part of the whole we see".)
Bohm: the unitary evolution is the illusion-- it's just a cloak placed on top of the pilot-wave evolution, which is deterministic and non-unitary. The unitarity is "filled in" by physically irrelevant aspects of the wave function, and it is stripped away by the measurement. (This is the only interpretation that does not involve consciousness in a direct way, because it treats unique experimental outcomes as purely deterministic, but it cannot be tested.)
No, an electron in quantum state superposition will not undergo a non-unitary process. Only classical objects can undergo a non-unitary process.Ken G said:If we were conscious but non-classical, would we need the non-unitary explanations? I would say yes we would, because if one can imagine a conscious electron, it still has to register a single outcome to an experiment. That is the fundamental nature of consciousness, its association with experience. I probably could have ducked a lot of this difficulty by just replacing "consciousness" with "experiential agent", because I'm using the terms synonymously.
BruceW said:No, an electron in quantum state superposition will not undergo a non-unitary process. Only classical objects can undergo a non-unitary process.
(This is why decoherence is important. Non-unitary process can only happen after decoherence, but a single electron cannot 'decohere'. Only a large system of many particles can decohere).
But anyway, back to the main subject,
The postulates of QM say that there is a superposition of quantum states, then measurement causes an outcome of one of those states to happen with a particular probability. Then after measurement, the wavefunction will be equal to the state corresponding to the outcome.
(This is a measurement of the first kind, aka strong von Neumann projection, aka full collapse, ie the non-unitary process has happened).
From this method, you don't have to set up the system so that a person is making the measurement. Any classical object can 'make a measurement'.
It is true that if we want to predict the outcome for a human, the thing making the measurement can always be chosen to be human (since this is always the last step in any experiment). But generally, we can choose the non-unitary process to happen at the lab equipment, instead of at the person.
I am going with the general case that any classical object can cause the non-unitary process.
Ken G's opinion (as far as I understand) is that since we only need to find predictions for what happens from a human's perspective, we can choose our definition of 'measurement' such that only a human can make a measurement.
Ultimately, you could go one step further and say that the only perspective I am interested in is my perspective. I can then define 'measurement' such that only I can make a measurement. Therefore, when my scientist friend does an experiment, the outcome of the experiment (and my friend) are all just a quantum superposition, until he comes to see me, and then by seeing him, I cause a measurement to happen. This interpretation would work equally well.
So when Ken G was saying 'conscious', in my words, I would say 'the perspectives which we are interested in finding predictions for'. Or more precisely, 'classical objects which we define to be able to make measurements'.
I had to think for a long time to get this far. You're right, Varon, I had great difficulty understanding what conscious meant in this context.
That's only partially correct, and highly misleading at best. When you couple an electron to a classical system, the electron may be part of a classical system, but it's still an electron, so projecting onto the electron subspace is still projecting onto a quantum system. And when you project a decohered pure-state closed system wavefunction onto an electron subspace, you get a mixed state, as I have been stressing. The electron subspace was originally described as a pure wavefunction (let's say), but after the decohering interaction it is now in a mixed state. That is very non-unitary! But it's not a problem for quantum mechanics because it is not a closed system, it is just a subsystem. Projections are not supposed to be unitary, and an electron does not become a "classical object" just because it is coupled to a classical system, but we do lose the ability to give the electron a wavefunction until we take the next step of perceiving a unique outcome for the electron, and then manually asserting a new pure state for it (which is also a non-unitary step). These are all things happening to the quantum subspace, the electron.BruceW said:No, an electron in quantum state superposition will not undergo a non-unitary process. Only classical objects can undergo a non-unitary process.
Here you mean a measurement in terms of a full collapse to a single new state, and to that I can only ask you: what evidence do you have that any classical object can do that, without a perception to register that final state? Certainly you can draw no evidence from the formal structure of quantum mechanics, which has no such provision. So you must draw from experience of scientists to assert it-- and that is not a classical system free of perception. If we simply watch closely where the various issues crop up, it does indeed crop up when there is an "experiential agent" to register the single outcome, and as I said above, a mindless machine would never have any need or reason to register a single outcome rather than a probability distribution of single outcomes-- just as quantum mechanics predicts they would.From this method, you don't have to set up the system so that a person is making the measurement. Any classical object can 'make a measurement'.
Well this is certainly the fundamental disconnect. You are simply asserting we can do that, but you cannot really give any good reason why we should think that is a reasonable thing to do. We cannot test it, we agree on that, so it becomes a matter of convention more than anything else. I am merely pointing out that there is simply no justification for your assertion, whereas the justification for mine is that it is what quantum mechanics formal theory predicts. I grant you that the predictions of a formal theory are not the same thing as the reality, but at least it is some justification. There's no perfect solution-- we either stick in the non-unitary step in an ad hoc way within the theory, or we say we are leaving the theory when a perceptive conscious agent enters. But I suppose it is not experimentally answerable, so must be classified as an issue of personal taste.But generally, we can choose the non-unitary process to happen at the lab equipment, instead of at the person.
Yes, I think that's a fair characterization, though I'd put it in the way I did above.Ken G's opinion (as far as I understand) is that since we only need to find predictions for what happens from a human's perspective, we can choose our definition of 'measurement' such that only a human can make a measurement.
Well, you certainly wouldn't want to do that, it would be terrible scientific epistemology. We rely on several key concepts in science that this program would not support: in particular, objectivity. The whole theory of relativity is predicated on a symmetry principle among observers, for example. So this would be a bad epistemology. The one I'm talking about suffers none of those problems, because it not only allows for other conscious agents, it even allows for hypothetical conscious agents, to help us form a useful scientific language about what is happening in classical systems. All I'm doing is pointing to where the shell went in the shell game of designing such a language.Ultimately, you could go one step further and say that the only perspective I am interested in is my perspective.
Yes, this is a way to frame it where we are in agreement. It is useful to find the common ground, and recognize then that our only disagreement lies in what is the most logical way to identify what the ability to make a measurement actually entails. It seems like a smaller disagreement that way. I think my earlier discussion with GO1 followed a similar course, but that was a lot of thread ago!So when Ken G was saying 'conscious', in my words, I would say 'the perspectives which we are interested in finding predictions for'. Or more precisely, 'classical objects which we define to be able to make measurements'.
Ken G said:In classical physics, that seems like a perfectly normal thing for any material object to do, and even though in statistical mechanics the fundamental object is a probability distribution, we still imagine we have an ensemble of single outcomes. But in quantum systems, the formal mathematics of quantum mechanics makes no mention of single outcomes to experiments, and single outcomes are never predicted and never tested. So this is an important "disconnect" for conscious entities. I'm arguing it is more important than the quantum/classical gap that Bohr and co. tended to focus on, because the two are so easily mistaken for each other.
Yes, that's quite well put. The irony is, we used to think that reality had to be crisp, so indeterminacy is a kind of symptom of incomplete information, a mistake or failing of some kind. Now, we have the clear suggestion that it is crispness that is the mistake, that is the illusion of over-interpreted information that is in some sense a processing outcome more so than a real physical state independent of our perception. But the CI then steps into point out that we cannot epistemologically label the inevitable outcome of our processing a "mistake", because the entire endeavor from start to finish of understanding reality is an example of said processing. So it is better to call it a "disconnect" than a "mistake" or "illusion", the way many-worlds would.apeiron said:Yes, if I follow you right, this is a key point. Classical ontology believes that indeterminacy is merely epistemic. Reality must always be in some crisply definite state. And so the probability issue is just about not knowing in which of an ensemble of possible states reality happens to be at some moment.
But the "weirdness" of QM indeterminacy is that there is no ensemble that pre-exists the constraint towards some outcome. The indeterminacy is in fact ontic, not epistemic. But there is then a lack of "interpretation" for this view of reality. It is an unfamiliar metaphysical view.
What do you think of attempts to advance the metaphysics here by equating such indeterminacy to vagueness as in these two papers?
http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~dkrause/Artigos/Vagueness.pdf
http://www.unicamp.br/~chibeni/public/vaguemicrophys-final.pdf
That's pretty much the "many worlds" view, that our conscious experience is really only a tiny fraction of the full reality, and the full reality is that of the wave function of everything. The observer, us, is then just a kind of coherent ripple of processing in a vast river of incoherent happenings. The view has a certain rationalist appeal, but it certainly stretches what we can really use science to ascertain as true, because all of science must itself live in that coherent ripple of intelligent processing-- the rapids understanding the rest of the river, if we take the many-worlds story. It also doesn't completely sidestep the issue of consciousness, because the "ripples" of conscious processing are what we experience, so we still require our consciousness to be in the story that we tell about our experience. But the consciousness has a kind of passive role here, it controls what we experience, but not what "actually happens", as it is just a subprocess in what actually happens.rodsika said:Dear Ken, I read you mentioned there was nothing wrong if the wave function were actually physical. If this were the case, then wave function was no longer just knowledge of the observer, then the argument that definite outcome can only be attributed to human consciousness becomes unnecessary. Or is there a counterpart problem for this case where the wave function were physical?
Ken G said:That's pretty much the "many worlds" view, that our conscious experience is really only a tiny fraction of the full reality, and the full reality is that of the wave function of everything. The observer, us, is then just a kind of coherent ripple of processing in a vast river of incoherent happenings. The view has a certain rationalist appeal, but it certainly stretches what we can really use science to ascertain as true, because all of science must itself live in that coherent ripple of intelligent processing-- the rapids understanding the rest of the river, if we take the many-worlds story. It also doesn't completely sidestep the issue of consciousness, because the "ripples" of conscious processing are what we experience, so we still require our consciousness to be in the story that we tell about our experience. But the consciousness has a kind of passive role here, it controls what we experience, but not what "actually happens", as it is just a subprocess in what actually happens.
The problem with the wavefunction being physical, yet collapsing, is that we can't identify any physical process that causes it to collapse to a single outcome, we can only identify a physical process that decoheres it into a mixed state of many happenings. You can still do it, but you have to resort to something pretty close to magic to get the wavefunction to behave that way as a physical entity, with no evidence of any physical process that can do that. You also have to take the physical embodiment of information pretty literally, and there doesn't seem to really be good reason to do that.rodsika said:I'm not referring to Many Worlds but the wave function being physical and collapse still happens.
Yes that particular problem does vanish, it just gets replaced by what seems a worse problem. At least if we put the problem at the doorstep of consciousness, we have some justification for expecting nonphysical behavior, since the whole subject/object dichotomy that runs through the concept of "physical behavior" breaks down there. But you can do it your way if you really want to, if you can live with such a totally unknown physical process that has no apparent reason to be so unknown.Since it is objective, then your problem about consciosness and definite outcome vanish? Or what is the counterpart if the problem remains?
Yay! I agree. Glad we understand each other, although it took awhile!Ken G said:Yes, this is a way to frame it where we are in agreement. It is useful to find the common ground, and recognize then that our only disagreement lies in what is the most logical way to identify what the ability to make a measurement actually entails. It seems like a smaller disagreement that way. I think my earlier discussion with GO1 followed a similar course, but that was a lot of thread ago!
Yes, I agree that its not experimentally answerable (unless QM has some kind of drastic revolution). This is my main justification for answering "consciousness is not involved in wave function collapse" - because experimentally we can't prove if its classical objects or conscious people that cause 'measurement'. I suppose I should have answered "If consciousness is involved in wavefunction collapse, then it would justify why we require collapse to happen (in CI), but there is no experimental support for consciousness to be involved in wave function collapse".Ken G said:I am merely pointing out that there is simply no justification for your assertion, whereas the justification for mine is that it is what quantum mechanics formal theory predicts. I grant you that the predictions of a formal theory are not the same thing as the reality, but at least it is some justification. There's no perfect solution-- we either stick in the non-unitary step in an ad hoc way within the theory, or we say we are leaving the theory when a perceptive conscious agent enters. But I suppose it is not experimentally answerable, so must be classified as an issue of personal taste.
Haha, yeah I guess you're right about that. The interpretation of "only I am allowed to make a measurement" Is like saying copenhagen interpretation for me, and many-worlds for everyone else. The theory would still work (assuming that CI and many-worlds are both viable interpretations), but it wouldn't have the nice symmetry among observers that physicists like to have in physical theories.Ken G said:Well, you certainly wouldn't want to do that, it would be terrible scientific epistemology. We rely on several key concepts in science that this program would not support: in particular, objectivity. The whole theory of relativity is predicated on a symmetry principle among observers, for example. So this would be a bad epistemology.
Varon said:I think what Ken was saying was simply that both machines and human consciousness are similar in that wave function collapse behavior was similar in their presence. What differs is how we perceive it. Since the only way to create an ensemble to match the prediction of the equation is to run many one at a time photon emission. The machine can only see the interference pattern after millions of single photon emissions as ensemble. Intermediate. It can't perceive the pattern as cause by collapse because machines can only see ensemble because the equation output can only be demonstrated with ensemble. It is only human which can know that a single outcome or hit in the detector is because of non-unitary process in a single photon at a time run. I think this is what Ken was saying. If I'm wrong. Let me know.
Always does-- communication is the hardest thing of all.BruceW said:Yay! I agree. Glad we understand each other, although it took awhile!
And then I would probably have said "there is also no experimental support for saying that the non-unitary stage of collapse is a physical attribute of nature that exists independently of our mental processing of experimental outcomes, and our best formal theory certainly doesn't predict that it would be." But framing it with these two sentences, we see that it is truly a "tomato - tomahto" issue, as it all comes down to what untestable assumptions one cares to make. Which claim must stand to the burden of evidence? Since we now see it as a philosophical choice, you may reframe my comments on this thread not as "why the role of consciousness is crucial for interpreting quantum mechanics", but rather "why some choice about the role of consciousness must be made in order to interpret quantum mechanics, even if that choice is that it will not be regarded as important." Navigating these nuances is exactly why communication is so difficult-- but so important, so thank you for entering into the process with me.I suppose I should have answered "If consciousness is involved in wavefunction collapse, then it would justify why we require collapse to happen (in CI), but there is no experimental support for consciousness to be involved in wave function collapse".
Right, I'm basically saying that I have no problem with the "many worlds" interpretation in any universe that doesn't have any conscious intelligences in it. But even when we contemplate what such a universe would be like, we can only do it by inserting hypothetical consciousnesses, to "make it talk our language." This is also what I don't like about many-worlds in the presence of consciousnesses-- the whole business is a language that is informed by consciousnesses, so to then remove those consciousnesses and imagine the language still means something seems disingenuous to me. Like telling nature "go about your conversation, pretend I'm not here-- oh, and could you please speak English?"BruceW said:I think what Ken is saying is that the computer doesn't perceive anything. Therefore, the computer and particle are in a quantum superposition of possibilities. The computer appears to be able to measure a single outcome of one particle because the computer's quantum superposition collapses when a human looks at it. There have been no experiments which could determine whether the computer actually did measure a single collapse or whether the computer was in a quantum superposition until a human looked at it.
I can't disagree with that, it is the place where our models of reality, and our models of our place in reality, bump heads. Is there any concept of "reality" at all that does not require we insert a concept of a perceptive intelligence into it to interpret what we even mean by that word?Coldcall said:Doesn't this all boil down to the question of whether an independent reality exists without the presence of a "consciousness"? It seems to me that has always been the real argument involved in the measurement problem.
I'm on your page.If reality is only a result of a certain threshold of information processing capacity being attained, then it seems logical (to me) that for reality to occur some sort of consciousness must be acting as the processor.
Excellent question, I think the realisits would say that reality occurs anyway, but I think they have just tied themselves into an inextricable semantic knot if they try to tell me what they mean by reality occurring, if they are not allowed to avail themselves of the outputs of the kinds of processing you are talking about.I can only think of a "brain", so if the "brain/s" are not present in the universe how does reality occur?
Varon said:I Wave function could be collapsed to definite outcome because of the existence of self-initiated volation.
Varon said:So it's like some kind of anthropic principle why nature has this capability to collapse wave function.