Experiment Provides Further Evidence That Reality Doesn't Exist Until We Measure It

[Hexen]

Experiment Provides Further Evidence That Reality Doesn't Exist Until We Measure It

June 2, 2015 | by Stephen Luntz
http://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/ifls_large/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/799px-SodiumD_two_double_slits.jpg?itok=8m8WzOJk Photo credit: Pieter Kuiper via Wikimedia Commons. A comparison of double slit interference patterns with different widths. Similar patterns produced by atoms have confirmed the dominant model of quantum mechanics Physicists have succeeded in confirming one of the theoretical aspects of quantum physics: Subatomic objects switch between particle and wave states when observed, while remaining in a dual state beforehand.
In the macroscopic world, we are used to waves being waves and solid objects being particle-like. However, quantum theory holds that for the very small this distinction breaks down. Light can behave either as a wave, or as a particle (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod1.html). The same goes for objects with mass like electrons (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1929/).
This raises the question of what determines when a photon or electron will behave like a wave or a particle. How, anthropomorphizing madly, do these things “decide” which they will be at a particular time?
The dominant model (http://www.benbest.com/science/quantum.html)of quantum mechanics holds that it is when a measurement is taken that the “decision” takes place. Erwin Schrodinger came up with his famous thought experiment using a cat (http://www.iflscience.com/physics/schr%C3%B6dinger%E2%80%99s-cat-explained) to ridicule this idea. Physicists think that quantum behavior breaks down on a large scale, so Schrödinger's cat would not really be both alive and dead—however, in the world of the very small, strange theories like this seem to be the only way to explain what we we see.
In 1978, John Wheeler proposed a series of thought experiments to make sense of what happens when a photon has to either behave in a wave-like or particle-like manner. At the time, it was considered doubtful that these could ever be implemented in practice, but in 2007 such an experiment was achieved (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5814/966).
Now, Dr. Andrew Truscott of the Australian National University has reported the same thing in Nature Physics (http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphys3343.html), but this time using a helium atom, rather than a photon.
“A photon is in a sense quite simple,” Truscott told IFLScience. “An atom has significant mass and couples to magnetic and electric fields, so it is much more in tune with its environment. It is more of a classical particle in a sense, so this was a test of whether a more classical particle would behave in the same way.”
Trustcott's experiment involved creating a Bose-Einstein Condensate (http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/bec/index.html) of around a hundred helium atoms. He conducted the experiment first with this condensate, but says the possibility that atoms were influencing each other made it important to repeat after ejecting all but one. The atom was passed through a “grate” made by two laser beams that can scatter an atom in a similar manner to a solid grating that can scatter light (http://phelafel.technion.ac.il/%7Esyanivg/bragg_scattering.html). These have been shown to cause atoms to either pass through one arm, like a particle, or both, like a wave.
A random number generator was then used to determine whether a second grating would appear further along the atom's path. Crucially, the number was only generated after the atom had passed the first grate.
The second grating, when applied, caused an interference pattern (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNx70orCPnA) in the measurement of the atom further along the path. Without the second grating, the atom had no such pattern.
http://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/blog/%5Bnid%5D/nphys3343-f1_0.jpg
An optical version of Wheeler's delayed choice experiment (left) and an atomic version as used by Truscott (right). Credit: Manning et al.
Truscott says that there are two possible explanations for the behavior observed. Either, as most physicists think, the atom decided whether it was a wave or a particle when measured, or “a future event (the method of detection) causes the photon to decide its past.”
In the bizarre world of quantum mechanics, events rippling back in time may not seem that much stranger than things like “spooky action at a distance (http://www.iflscience.com/physics/einsteins-spooky-action-distance-confirmed-new-quantum-experiment)” or even something being a wave and a particle at the same time. However, Truscott said, “this experiment can't prove that that is the wrong interpretation, but it seems wrong, and given what we know from elsewhere, it is much more likely that only when we measure the atoms do their observable properties come into reality.”
Read this next: Parkinson's Therapy Revived After 20 Years (http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/parkinsons-therapy-revived-after-20-years#overlay-context=plants-and-animals/mystery-disease-driving-turtles-extinction-waiting-turtle-photo)
Photo Gallery



http://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/gallery_thumbnail/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/nphys3343-f1_0.jpg?itok=Hmak-uWh (http://www.iflscience.com/sites/www.iflscience.com/files/styles/fullwidth/public/blog/%5Bnid%5D/nphys3343-f1_0.jpg?itok=g-ZmKyrv)










Source: http://www.iflscience.com/physics/measurement-rules-quantum-universe

[Rafiq]

Sometimes, when people ask about the "so-called" degeneration of our standards of reason in capitalism, they inevitably demand examples. And nothing is a more perfect example than pop science.

The entire article is completely misleading. Firstly, atoms do not "decide" to do this or that by merit of whether they are being "watched" or not. Saying that reality does not exist "until we measure it", i.e. as though physical entities are generated by our neurons is completely misleading.

[ckaihatsu]

Sometimes, when people ask about the "so-called" degeneration of our standards of reason in capitalism, they inevitably demand examples. And nothing is a more perfect example than pop science.

The entire article is completely misleading. Firstly, atoms do not "decide" to do this or that by merit of whether they are being "watched" or not. Saying that reality does not exist "until we measure it", i.e. as though physical entities are generated by our neurons is completely misleading.


Are you saying this after having familiarized yourself with the double slit experiment -- ?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment


DfPeprQ7oGc

[Q]

Sometimes, when people ask about the "so-called" degeneration of our standards of reason in capitalism, they inevitably demand examples. And nothing is a more perfect example than pop science.

The entire article is completely misleading. Firstly, atoms do not "decide" to do this or that by merit of whether they are being "watched" or not. Saying that reality does not exist "until we measure it", i.e. as though physical entities are generated by our neurons is completely misleading.

How, anthropomorphizing madly, do these things “decide” which they will be at a particular time?
Emphasis added. How misleading indeed.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The notion that an electron "chooses to be" a particle or a wave is not just gross antropomorphism, it doesn't really engage with the physics of the problem. An electron is always a particle. It has spin, a magnetic moment, is described by the Dirac equation etc. - all the things you would expect from a point particle. At the same time, every electron has its quantum state (the "wavefunction", even though we can only talk about the sort of thing most people would recognise as waves for certain problems with one particle; anything more than that and we get waves in six or more dimensions). Now when you measure things, sometimes you get very localised behaviour, and sometimes it's all smeared out. In actual experiments, most of the time you get something inbetween.

And what you get is determined by your experimental setup. So the supposed dependence of reality (!) on measurement is resolved into the banal observation that the setup of the experimental apparatus determines what we measure. And yes, of course there are significant nonlocalities. But this is the reason materialists like Fok and the later Bohr have always understood that the measurement apparatus needs to be considered as a whole.

[Rafiq]

I don't know if this is received with sarcasm, or not, but I claim it's misleading not because the actual contents of the article mean this or that, but because with the title and a few key words we can all guess what the take-away effect form the masses will be. And the media knows this, it gets them more attention.

[ckaihatsu]

Sometimes, when people ask about the "so-called" degeneration of our standards of reason in capitalism, they inevitably demand examples. And nothing is a more perfect example than pop science.

The entire article is completely misleading. Firstly, atoms do not "decide" to do this or that by merit of whether they are being "watched" or not. Saying that reality does not exist "until we measure it", i.e. as though physical entities are generated by our neurons is completely misleading.





How, anthropomorphizing madly, do these things “decide” which they will be at a particular time?





Emphasis added. How misleading indeed.





The notion that an electron "chooses to be" a particle or a wave is not just gross antropomorphism,


It's downright sad that more than just one person on this board would choose to be willfully dismissive of empirical fact, for the sake of ridiculing a simple *expression* -- that of particles "deciding".

Note that the article used quotation marks, showing the meaning to be non-literal, *and* it even poked fun at its own phrasing by calling it 'anthropomorphizing madly'.

Now three posters have gone over the edge with this, as though anyone familiar with this quantum phenomenon would really say that the particle *literally* made a conscious decision to act like a particle instead of as a part of a larger waveform.





it doesn't really engage with the physics of the problem. An electron is always a particle. It has spin, a magnetic moment, is described by the Dirac equation etc. - all the things you would expect from a point particle. At the same time, every electron has its quantum state (the "wavefunction",


It's the wavefunction *result* of single quantum particles being shot through a double-slit that's at-issue here -- that simply wouldn't actually happen at the macroscopic scale, with regular-sized objects.





even though we can only talk about the sort of thing most people would recognise as waves for certain problems with one particle; anything more than that and we get waves in six or more dimensions). Now when you measure things, sometimes you get very localised behaviour, and sometimes it's all smeared out. In actual experiments, most of the time you get something inbetween.

And what you get is determined by your experimental setup.




So the supposed dependence of reality (!) on measurement is resolved into the banal observation that the setup of the experimental apparatus determines what we measure. And yes, of course there are significant nonlocalities. But this is the reason materialists like Fok and the later Bohr have always understood that the measurement apparatus needs to be considered as a whole.


This is a gross oversimplification -- again, at regular macro scales, in everyday life, natural (objective) reality doesn't "care" (to also anthropomorphize) at all whether human beings are observing physical phenomena or not. Objective physical events will take place according to the laws of physics whether or not people are there and/or use scientific instruments to record such events. It's only at the *quantum* scale that the 'weirdness' happens, where detached observation somehow intrudes into the quantum dynamic and affects it.

[Luís Henrique]

"Reality" at the quantic level is quite different from "real reality" we live in.

Maybe an electron "doesn't exist" when it is not being looked at; but if they are "waves of probability", at any level in which we are talking about millions of electrons, any "uncertainty" tends to zero.

As a gross analogy, you cannot know if any particular Brit is a faithful of the Church of England or not, but regarding the whole populace you can be quite certain that a given proportion, that only changes over years, not over nanoseconds, is.

Similarly, Saturn, the Pacific Ocean, Hannah Montana, the Greek crisis, the Milky Way, and even Peoria, Illinois, exist whether we measure them or not.

"Scientific" journalism, which is one of the starkest forces for pseudoscience nowadays, misconstrues quantics in order to make it look like a scientifical demonstration of gross mysticism. Intelligent quarks, purposeful molecules, galaxies that do not exist as long as we aren't looking, are part of such charade.

Luís Henrique

[ckaihatsu]

"Reality" at the quantic level is quite different from "real reality" we live in.


This is true, but then you go on to make the *opposite* case, that they're *similar*.





Maybe an electron "doesn't exist" when it is not being looked at; but if they are "waves of probability", at any level in which we are talking about millions of electrons, any "uncertainty" tends to zero.


It's not that a subatomic particle 'doesn't exist' when it's not being looked at -- of course it exists, but we can't know both its location and its direction at the same time.

Whether it's *one* electron or *millions* of them they'll all have the potential to behave as particles and as waveforms -- it takes measuring them to find out, and in doing so the act of observation somehow happens to affect their function, collapsing the dual-potential into being one or the other, wave or particle.





As a gross analogy, you cannot know if any particular Brit is a faithful of the Church of England or not, but regarding the whole populace you can be quite certain that a given proportion, that only changes over years, not over nanoseconds, is.


You're conflating social statistics with quantum mechanics -- to make the analogy work one would have to say that in surveying a particular person, the act of querying them as to their religion would be *deterministic* of what religious affiliation they wind up having.





Similarly, Saturn, the Pacific Ocean, Hannah Montana, the Greek crisis, the Milky Way, and even Peoria, Illinois, exist whether we measure them or not.


Yes, but these are all examples of *non*-quantum-dynamic phenomena.





"Scientific" journalism, which is one of the starkest forces for pseudoscience nowadays, misconstrues quantics in order to make it look like a scientifical demonstration of gross mysticism.


Not that I'm partial to the field, but this is a very serious charge that you're leveling against 'science journalism' -- you're saying that facts about quantum science are being inaccurately reported -- ?





Intelligent quarks, purposeful molecules, galaxies that do not exist as long as we aren't looking, are part of such charade.


You may want to include references or links here for these alleged formulations / characterizations.

[Luís Henrique]

Not that I'm partial to the field, but this is a very serious charge that you're leveling against 'science journalism' -- you're saying that facts about quantum science are being inaccurately reported -- ?

You may want to include references or links here for these alleged formulations / characterizations.

Hm. The article quoted in the OP, which is featured by a site ostensibly aimed at science popularisation, and goes under the title "Experiment Provides Further Evidence That Reality Doesn't Exist Until We Measure It", isn't evidence enough?

Luís Henrique

[Thirsty Crow]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

So let me get this straight. We don't exist until we measure something?

Mind blown. Oh, wow, now this changes everything, doesn't it? But to be more clear, the way this issue in quantum mechanics is framed lets me draw the inference above in a completely legitimate manner since, after all, human beings are a part of X which seems not to exist without measurement. And X is "reality", that grand old marker when physicists start to grow a sweetooth for speculation on ultimate questions.

Of course, irresolvable conundrums ensue. All from the simple fact of the uncertainty principle, and what it actually refers to.

[Comrade Jacob]

All this goes over my head but the answer is 12.

[ckaihatsu]

Hm. The article quoted in the OP, which is featured by a site ostensibly aimed at science popularisation, and goes under the title "Experiment Provides Further Evidence That Reality Doesn't Exist Until We Measure It", isn't evidence enough?


I guess I'm simply not going to get why there's a schism in the revolutionary left regarding the issue of quantum science -- I have no problem understanding that empirical observations at this point yield some strange experimental results, results that are *counterintuitive* to our ordinary everyday understanding and experience of the macroscopic world around us.

Perhaps in the future we'll get a better grip on why the data are the way they are *these* days, but being summarily dismissive of actual experimental results does nothing for anyone.

[Luís Henrique]

I guess I'm simply not going to get why there's a schism in the revolutionary left regarding the issue of quantum science -- I have no problem understanding that empirical observations at this point yield some strange experimental results, results that are *counterintuitive* to our ordinary everyday understanding and experience of the macroscopic world around us.

Perhaps in the future we'll get a better grip on why the data are the way they are *these* days, but being summarily dismissive of actual experimental results does nothing for anyone.

Oh, please.

The point is not to be dismissive of experimental results in the field of quantum science. The point is to denounce ideological manipulation of experimental results in the field of quantum science, that wants us to believe that, since an electron can apparently be at two different places at the same time, Barack Obama can also be in the White House and in the Kremlin at the same time.

Luís Henrique

[ckaihatsu]

Oh, please.

The point is not to be dismissive of experimental results in the field of quantum science. The point is to denounce ideological manipulation of experimental results in the field of quantum science, that wants us to believe that, since an electron can apparently be at two different places at the same time, Barack Obama can also be in the White House and in the Kremlin at the same time.


Shit -- is *that* what the whole political overlay is about -- ?

Well, no wonder now.

But *has* anyone, like in the bourgeois press, *said* that sort of thing, extrapolating from the conclusions of quantum dynamics, to try to make a parallel from it for the *macroscopic* / political world -- ?

It would be a bonehead move for *anyone*, and you quantum science ultra-critics would definitely be the vanguard on *that* one...(!)

[Luís Henrique]

Shit -- is *that* what the whole political overlay is about -- ?

Well, no wonder now.

But *has* anyone, like in the bourgeois press, *said* that sort of thing, extrapolating from the conclusions of quantum dynamics, to try to make a parallel from it for the *macroscopic* / political world -- ?

Beam me up: Scientists say human teleportation is 'possible' as they transfer atoms three metres in groundbreaking experiment (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2643332/Beam-Scientists-sat-teleportation-possible-transfer-atoms.html)

Will Human Teleportation Ever Be Possible? (http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/20-the-ups-and-downs-of-teleportation)

How Teleportation Will Work (http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/teleportation.htm)

Yeah, they do...


It would be a bonehead move for *anyone*, and you quantum science ultra-critics would definitely be the vanguard on *that* one...(!)

I am decidely not an "ultra-critic" of quantum science. I do know that reality is paradoxical at subatomic level. What I am criticising is the trend to believe that things that are possible at subatomic level are also possible at a multimolecular level. That, not quantum science, is junk science.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

However, one field where macro-reality may look like quantic reality is that of journalism. Often we see that the headline claims something that simply is not in the full article... making the people who read only the headlines believing in something very different, if not opposite, than the people who read the full text.

Luís Henrique

[CyM]

It is not empirical fact that reality does not exist, it is sheer lunacy. But if you insist that reality does not exist, I could ban you and test how seriously you take your position. After all, reality does not exist, why should you care?

[ckaihatsu]

Beam me up: Scientists say human teleportation is 'possible' as they transfer atoms three metres in groundbreaking experiment (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2643332/Beam-Scientists-sat-teleportation-possible-transfer-atoms.html)

Will Human Teleportation Ever Be Possible? (http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/20-the-ups-and-downs-of-teleportation)

How Teleportation Will Work (http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/teleportation.htm)

Yeah, they do...



I am decidely not an "ultra-critic" of quantum science. I do know that reality is paradoxical at subatomic level. What I am criticising is the trend to believe that things that are possible at subatomic level are also possible at a multimolecular level. That, not quantum science, is junk science.





However, one field where macro-reality may look like quantic reality is that of journalism. Often we see that the headline claims something that simply is not in the full article... making the people who read only the headlines believing in something very different, if not opposite, than the people who read the full text.


Okay, so what all this boils down to is that one "faction" of the revolutionary left finds some journalism about quantum science to be sensationalistic.

[Luís Henrique]

Okay, so what all this boils down to is that one "faction" of the revolutionary left finds some journalism about quantum science to be sensationalistic.

From post #2 on, yes.

Luís Henrique

[ckaihatsu]

From post #2 on, yes.


I've seen this kind of anti-quantum-science "factionalism" in other, non-RevLeft revolutionary leftist contexts. I always found it puzzling, but maybe it's just an overreaching dismissiveness due to some sensationalistic coverage of the field.

[Luís Henrique]

I've seen this kind of anti-quantum-science "factionalism" in other, non-RevLeft revolutionary leftist contexts. I always found it puzzling, but maybe it's just an overreaching dismissiveness due to some sensationalistic coverage of the field.

That's really a funny misinterpretation. What we are saying is not that fotons, quarks, and whatnot, do not behave in ways that differ wildly from what our normal experience says that should be the case.

What we are saying is that, just because subatomic particles do crazy things, it doesn't mean that multimolecular objects can do similar wonders.

And that (pseudo-)scientific journalism deals in exactly this: that because Russian scientists managed to "teleport" an electron from here to there, we are in the way to making air travel companies obsolete by making British tourists magically appear in Tanzania, out of a "teleportation machine" able to treat multi-billion atom complex organisms as elementary particles.

... it is however an interesting change from being accused of being a pataphysical Hegelian mystic who secretely deals in the Kabbalah or the corpus Hermeticum because I can realise that subatomic particles are not small spheric solid chunks of what we ordinarily call "matter"...

Luís Henrique

[ckaihatsu]

That's really a funny misinterpretation. What we are saying is not that fotons, quarks, and whatnot, do not behave in ways that differ wildly from what our normal experience says that should be the case.

What we are saying is that, just because subatomic particles do crazy things, it doesn't mean that multimolecular objects can do similar wonders.

And that (pseudo-)scientific journalism deals in exactly this: that because Russian scientists managed to "teleport" an electron from here to there, we are in the way to making air travel companies obsolete by making British tourists magically appear in Tanzania, out of a "teleportation machine" able to treat multi-billion atom complex organisms as elementary particles.

... it is however an interesting change from being accused of being a pataphysical Hegelian mystic who secretely deals in the Kabbalah or the corpus Hermeticum because I can realise that subatomic particles are not small spheric solid chunks of what we ordinarily call "matter"...


Well, by this description my summation wasn't a misinterpretation -- you're spelling-out the more sensationalist aspects of what the journalism around it tends to imply.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, by this description my summation wasn't a misinterpretation -- you're spelling-out the more sensationalist aspects of what the journalism around it tends to imply.

The misinterpretation would be the phrase below:


anti-quantum-science "factionalism"

As far as I can see, no one is anti-quantum science here. We are decrying the misuse of quantum science by sensationalist journalists to foster gross superstition (of the kind, "reality doesn't exist until we measure it").

Luís Henrique

[ckaihatsu]

Not to be argumentative, and not that I'm defending current journalistic practices, either, but, in the spirit of f.y.i., I'll point out that the 'sensationalism' being decried here, and in general, regarding coverage of quantum science and its peculiarities, is actually fairly *typical* of journalistic convention.

In other words if we were to look at *other* topics we would find the exact same kind of treatment, especially in the wording of headlines, for all other articles, potentially.

Really it's just a matter of 'sexing it up' to draw attention, which is done by 'bending' the literal meaning to some extent, in the interests of creating some cognitive 'shock value'.

Another way of looking at it is that the headline tends to be the 'marketing' aspect of the whole article's overall information -- I have a framework here that shows 'marketing' to be slightly 'lower-road' in terms of quality of meaning than 'information'.


philosophical abstractions

http://s6.postimg.org/cw2jljmgh/120404_philosophical_abstractions_RENDER_sc_12_1.j pg (http://postimg.org/image/i7hg698j1/full/)

[Cliff Paul]

I'm too dizzy to read your posts but I imagine you are saying that Luis Henrique's posts are bullshit and I agree with that.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm too dizzy to read your posts but I imagine you are saying that Luis Henrique's posts are bullshit and I agree with that.


Well, thanks for the 'Thanks', but, no, I don't differ with what Luis said:





As far as I can see, no one is anti-quantum science here. We are decrying the misuse of quantum science by sensationalist journalists to foster gross superstition (of the kind, "reality doesn't exist until we measure it").


My response was a bit more nuanced -- it's basically about whether journalism, as about quantum science, is indeed 'sensationalist' in presentation or not.

(I guess I'm kind of on the fence about it -- I see much of it as just being standard journalistic practice, as for the way headlines are phrased, so I just 'factor-it-out' when I read it, and don't think of the practice as being such an intellectual transgression.) (The way many comrades responded to that type of writing here.)

[Rafiq]

Ckaihatsu, the point is that because most of these journals are for-profit, and because reproducing present society is contingent upon belief in superstition (of social processes, at the very least) then we end up with what we call pop-science: Because what is wrought out from scientific inquiry is not interesting enough for society, it has to be bent, twisted and sensationalized.

But this itself is not even the point - the point is that a general mysticism is becoming more and more increasingly prevalent in the way society approximates reality. That is to say, people might not directly, openly claim that electrons do not exist unless we measure them, but none the less the general ambiguity which opens up the space for believing this is purposefully left open.

Because above all, to be mesmerized, left in the dark, and left with a feeling of permanent ambiguity about how you conceive reality is integral to the dynamic necessities of capital.

What is very clear about the double-slit experiment, however, is that such wild misinterpretations are contingent upon the following presumptions:

Firstly, the point is that the point of difference between observer and reality is related to the Observing screen and the slits. Erroneously, this is compared to how humans observe objective reality on a larger level, i.e. throwing a baseball through slits, whether or not you are observing the slits, is going to produce the same effect. So we already have the error of assuming that the observation screen, like the dents on a wall from a baseball, somehow constitute testament to objectivity. The error is the application of classical mechanics on a quantic level - that the observation screen is the neutral 'effect'. But the observation screen is being continually observed, just like the detectors are. The experiment is never beyond the scope of human observation or "interference" in the first place, the difference is that the experiment is set up in such a way which entails a DIFFERENT KIND of observation. You can't emulate non-observation, if I place a bottle of water on a rock, and simply switch the conditions of my observation, then nothing in effect changes about the placement of the water on the rock.

Secondly, the error is conceiving the banality that yes - reality is contingent upon our observation of it, but this is only because of the banality that our consciousness is not divine - and that is simply because consciousness itself entails the practical relation between the organism and the world around it. It is, however, an axiom that the world exists independently of consciousness, else - there would be no rationally explicable function of consciousness itself. Upon asking the basic question - what were the conditions for the emergence of consciousness, the metaphysical idealism shatters to pieces.

The conclusion is that observation did not "change" anything, for all "reality" is, amounts to the practical relation between us and it. We do not DETERMINE it, however, we approximate it for practical reasons. To ask the paradoxical question: What are the properties of the universe independent of our consciousness is already a false one. Because "laws", "properties" and "tendencies" of the universe amount to nothing more than our practical relation to it. What would be actually scary is if this experiment resulted in the opposite effect - that upon observation, nothing would change. That would be evidence that on a quantic level, reality exists to conform to humans, or that, somehow, there was a god observing it at all times.

The lessons to draw from this kind of drivel is that how today, more than ever positivism has died - no longer does "neutral" science as such exist, for the implications of science, conceived by the disillusioned positivists who are of course philosophically illiterate, is mysticism, superstition and darkness. Zizek is right to say both that we need philosophy more than ever today, to conceive the implications of quantum physics, and that secondly - even Hegel's absolute idealism (i.e. which was a prelude to historical materialism) would be a grand step above the subjective metaphysical idealism that is predominant today.

[Ele'ill]

have you all read the Discover magazine article about how we are probably living in an artificially designed Matrix
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/09-do-we-live-in-the-matrix




Home»December»Do We Live in the Matrix?
FROM THE DECEMBER 2013 ISSUE
Do We Live in the Matrix?
Tests could reveal whether we are part of a giant computer simulation — but the real question is if we want to know...

By Zeeya Merali|Friday, November 15, 2013
RELATED TAGS: PHYSICS, VIRTUAL REALITY, COMPUTERS
Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on printMore Sharing Services
3.6K
matrix-door
In the 1999 sci-fi film classic The Matrix, the protagonist, Neo, is stunned to see people defying the laws of physics, running up walls and vanishing suddenly. These superhuman violations of the rules of the universe are possible because, unbeknownst to him, Neo’s consciousness is embedded in the Matrix, a virtual-reality simulation created by sentient machines.

The action really begins when Neo is given a fateful choice: Take the blue pill and return to his oblivious, virtual existence, or take the red pill to learn the truth about the Matrix and find out “how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Physicists can now offer us the same choice, the ability to test whether we live in our own virtual Matrix, by studying radiation from space. As fanciful as it sounds, some philosophers have long argued that we’re actually more likely to be artificial intelligences trapped in a fake universe than we are organic minds in the “real” one.

But if that were true, the very laws of physics that allow us to devise such reality-checking technology may have little to do with the fundamental rules that govern the meta-universe inhabited by our simulators. To us, these programmers would be gods, able to twist reality on a whim.

So should we say yes to the offer to take the red pill and learn the truth — or are the implications too disturbing?

Worlds in Our Grasp

The first serious attempt to find the truth about our universe came in 2001, when an effort to calculate the resources needed for a universe-size simulation made the prospect seem impossible.

Seth Lloyd, a quantum-mechanical engineer at MIT, estimated the number of “computer operations” our universe has performed since the Big Bang — basically, every event that has ever happened. To repeat them, and generate a perfect facsimile of reality down to the last atom, would take more energy than the universe has.

“The computer would have to be bigger than the universe, and time would tick more slowly in the program than in reality,” says Lloyd. “So why even bother building it?”

But others soon realized that making an imperfect copy of the universe that’s just good enough to fool its inhabitants would take far less computational power. In such a makeshift cosmos, the fine details of the microscopic world and the farthest stars might only be filled in by the programmers on the rare occasions that people study them with scientific equipment. As soon as no one was looking, they’d simply vanish.

In theory, we’d never detect these disappearing features, however, because each time the simulators noticed we were observing them again, they’d sketch them back in.

[Cliff Paul]

have you all read the Discover magazine article about how we are probably living in an artificially designed Matrix
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/09-do-we-live-in-the-matrix

so if I believe I can kick your ass mari3l, I can? also if this isn't true I was just joking, don't hurt me

[Ele'ill]

idk i can't even move my neck right now pretty serious pot smoking injury

[Cliff Paul]

idk i can't even move my neck right now pretty serious pot smoking injury

I pulled my right arm lifting two by tens a few days ago so we'll call it even. I think I have like 40 pounds on you but you are definitely stronger than me and know how to fight so my money's on you.

[ckaihatsu]

[P]op-science: Because what is wrought out from scientific inquiry is not interesting enough for society, it has to be bent, twisted and sensationalized.




[P]eople might not directly, openly claim that electrons do not exist unless we measure them, but none the less the general ambiguity which opens up the space for believing this is purposefully left open.


What's immediately at-issue here, Rafiq, is whether science journalism is *misrepresenting* quantum science in its full descriptions of it, or not.

There's a distinction to be made between a sensational-esque *headline*, for marketing purposes (drawing the reader in with some intellectual 'shock value' and intentional ambiguity), and the *full article* itself.

You're absolutely dismissing journalistic coverage as being 'pop science', *entirely*.

I think that's just too far -- you're overreaching in your dismissiveness since no one here seems to be at odds with the *findings themselves*, which is what the *content* of the article is about.

[Rafiq]

No doubt, people as enlightened as Ckaihatsu can read between the lines and salvage useful information from such journals, but as for ordinary individuals who are without the privilege of acquiring ckaihatsu's vast knowledge, yes it is absolutely justified to dismiss the article in its entirety if one frames the point of reference in this way.

Articles that seek to condense complex information into something easy to understand have a responsibility to properly convey that information - even in an aesthetic sense. It doesn't matter if they are not, upon close examination, "misrepresenting" the information, for "technically" the article is not wrong. That is besides the point. The information is presented in such a way as to indireclty insinuate a sense of mesmerizing mystique.

"I fucking love science"... "Omg, science isn't cold, it's beautiful!"... "Science is magic!" this spectacle-based garbage - "Swooooosshhhh whoooaaahh man" - don't tell me that this does't misrepresent empirical findings. It does. Why? Because it must consistently approximate it into society's ideology of science - which is of course a general mysticism, which embeds in each and every "complex" discovery a sense of awe, as though even in nature itself the mystique of capital, a justification for our present condition is derived.

The point is very simple: On an empirical level, the information is neutral - but they amount to nothing more than cold, hard facts. How to approximate this to people's lives, how to allow it to synchronize with the opium of the people, how to properly place it within the lexicon, the constellation of this hell? The degeneracy of reason is not constitutive of what goes on in the laboratory, it is how society conceives this. How society conceives it, more and more is beginning to define it. So degenerate has capitalism become, that even the "skeptical" anti-metaphysical positivism is now thrown aside, where even the natural sciences are no longer susceptible.

We are increasingly entering a situation wherein real scientific practice is more and more reserved for the technocratic apparatus, science itself is not longer useful in the society of the spectacle. Until some four decades ago, superstition and the irk were almost unanimously looked down upon, disencouraged and attacked wherever it found itself. Now we see ourselves in a situation where the masses must imbibe from the sensationalist media distortions, and corruptions of scientific findings - by all means, as far as science's practical necessity for capital goes, nothing has changed - the point is that with new apartheid opening up, new barriers to the general space of civic society, there is a disparity between science's practical use, and its ideological implications for the masses.

[Luís Henrique]

I'm too dizzy to read your posts but I imagine you are saying that Luis Henrique's posts are bullshit and I agree with that.

It is apparent that you are also too dizzy to determine the difference between bullshit and chocolate cream...

Luís Henrique

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I had forgotten about this thread as well. It keeps happening because I'm not being properly incentivised, but no matter how many times I point that out my account remains empty.


It's downright sad that more than just one person on this board would choose to be willfully dismissive of empirical fact, for the sake of ridiculing a simple *expression* -- that of particles "deciding".

Note that the article used quotation marks, showing the meaning to be non-literal, *and* it even poked fun at its own phrasing by calling it 'anthropomorphizing madly'.

Now three posters have gone over the edge with this, as though anyone familiar with this quantum phenomenon would really say that the particle *literally* made a conscious decision to act like a particle instead of as a part of a larger waveform.

You may consider it to be simply an unfortunate expression, but people do take it quite seriously, including serious scientists like Kochen, hence the awful "free will theorem".


This is a gross oversimplification -- again, at regular macro scales, in everyday life, natural (objective) reality doesn't "care" (to also anthropomorphize) at all whether human beings are observing physical phenomena or not. Objective physical events will take place according to the laws of physics whether or not people are there and/or use scientific instruments to record such events. It's only at the *quantum* scale that the 'weirdness' happens, where detached observation somehow intrudes into the quantum dynamic and affects it.

Quantum events also happen the "same" way (that is, the statistical distribution of the events is the same) whether humans are observing them or not. E.g. spins in ferromagnetic materials orient themselves according to the same rules whether we're talking about a sample where we measure the magnetic domains, a fridge magnet, or ferromagnetic rocks from eras before humanity existed.

The important thing is that the system being measured is placed in a definite physical situation. With the double slit experiment, what is important is the physical configuration of the measurement apparatus. Change that, and you change the way the system interacts with the apparatus. But that has nothing to do with some mystical power of human observation. You can cut out the human entirely, they're irrelevant.


Whether it's *one* electron or *millions* of them they'll all have the potential to behave as particles and as waveforms -- it takes measuring them to find out, and in doing so the act of observation somehow happens to affect their function, collapsing the dual-potential into being one or the other, wave or particle.

Well, no, in most cases you get an in-between state where the distribution of some variables is reasonably sharp and other variables are smeared out. And depending on the apparatus used, different kinds of properties are measured.


Not to be argumentative, and not that I'm defending current journalistic practices, either, but, in the spirit of f.y.i., I'll point out that the 'sensationalism' being decried here, and in general, regarding coverage of quantum science and its peculiarities, is actually fairly *typical* of journalistic convention.

The problem is that popular science is being left to journalists, or to celebrity scientists, creating something that sells a lot and educates a little.

[Luís Henrique]

The problem is that popular science is being left to journalists, or to celebrity scientists, creating something that sells a lot and educates a little.

That.

To the point that the same sci-jou magazine can feature two articles like these:

The wonderful human beings that cannot count up to four (http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2004/08/how-language-shapes-math)

The even more wonderful pigeons that can learn abstract numerical rules (http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/12/no-joke-pigeons-ace-simple-math-test)

without apparently even realising the absurd...

(notice that those articles have nothing to do with quantic physics: the infection goes far beyond, and any branch of science if fair game for the wonderscience industry.)

Luís Henrique