patrick.net

Heraclitusstudent says

So to Einstein's question: "when you turn away is the tree still there?"

No, there is no tree.

That's just naive realism.

Counter-example

Stand on a railroad track and wait for a bullet train to come. Watch it come towards you. Then turn around while remaining on the tracks. According to Heraclitusstudent, there is no train, so you will be perfectly safe.

Anyone want to take that bet?

This is not according to me. This is what science says.
Your example is silly because nothing I said implies I couldn't get hit by a train.
It does imply however that reality is more complex than saying that a tree doesn't depend on who is observing it.

Dan8267 says

Heraclitusstudent says

So to Einstein's question: "when you turn away is the tree still there?"

No, there is no tree.

That's just naive realism.

Counter-example

Stand on a railroad track and wait for a bullet train to come. Watch it come towards you. Then turn around while remaining on the tracks. According to Heraclitusstudent, there is no train, so you will be perfectly safe.

Anyone want to take that bet?

You are each talking about events on massively different scales:

The bullet train is a macroscale example with a lot of mass and negligible wave function. Observing it will collapse its wave function but it that wave function is so miniscule for practical purposes it does not exist. Anyone standing on the tracks will die whether they observe the train or not.

An electron has much less mass and a much greater (yet still small) wave function. The act of observing the electron will collapse the wave function to one probability and have a significant impact on the outcome. A neutron may avoid being hit if it closes its "eye" to an approaching electron thus allowing the electron to delocalize yet be impacted if it tries to observe that same electron.

The tree is another macroscale object. What is significant on the quantum scale is negligible in the macroscale.

Heraclitusstudent says

This is not according to me. This is what science says.

Actually, no, it's not. We've already discuss that in depth here and later here. Do I really have to explain the difference between a scientific theory and a philosophical musing?

A scientific theory makes specific, testable predictions. It does not say vague things like "reality is more complex than saying that a tree doesn't depend on who is observing it".

At least, the train example I gave made a specific, testable prediction. You might not want to test it, but you could. Your statement "No, there is no tree [when you stop looking at it]." does not make any testable predictions. Therefore, it is not a scientific statement.

Now we could modify your statement into a testable hypothesis. Place a fragile glass snowglobe that plays a musical chime in the tree after winding up the snowglobe. Turn around while the chime is playing. Since you are no longer observing the tree, and by your hypothesis the tree no longer exists, but you are observing (hearing) the snowglobe, then the snowglobe should fall to the ground, which you can still see even when turned around. If it doesn't, your statement that the tree is no longer there is false.

http://www.80gErRDHeo4

You created this thread as a response to the thread I posted Penn Jillette: Why Tolerance Is Condescending in which Penn states that he believes that reality is not contingent upon his personal thoughts or feelings. Penn was in no way contradicting the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. He was simply stating that reality does whatever the hell it does regardless of our personal emotional experiences. The universe would be essentially the same whether or not you or I personally were ever born. It would be following the same laws of nature -- whatever they happen to be -- regardless of what "spiritual" emotional state you experience.

So, yes, the tree does still exist even if you stop looking at it. This is called object persistence and it's something that two-year-olds and even dogs can master.

http://www.uPGTr2NOXCI

Unfortunately, some adult humans lose this concept when talking about ghosts, angels, and gods. See indigenous and my response to him.

indigenous erroneously argues that a supernatural entity, in his case a god, can affect nature without being bounded to natural laws. Naturally, he's not smart enough to word it like this, but that's the point he was trying to make.

As I have demonstrated before, it is impossible for anything supernatural to interact with anything natural. Nature, by definition, is constrained by the natural laws. This includes the law that for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction. This is often express in conservation laws, but also is manifested in the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The whole reason why you can't know the position and velocity of an elementary particle is that by measuring one you affect the other. It's just like taking an industrial thermometer out of a vat of molten steel and putting it in a bucket of ice-water. The ice-water will rapidly boil and evaporate. So concluding that an ice-water solution has the temperature of 2750°F based on that experiment is wrong.

The twin-slot experiment is no different. Electrons are very low mass. They have about 1/2000th the mass of a proton. So they are very easy to accelerate. The way that the camera and detectors in your video word is by measuring electric and magnetic fields, but because every action has an opposite reaction, when one of these fields is measured, it is also changed, and that changes the behavior of the electron. The electron is strongly affected because it is of the smallest and least massive things in the universe.

So, the double-slit experiment demonstrates exactly why no supernatural being could interact with any natural entity. A ghost could not lift a penny because doing so would introduce kinetic and gravitational potential energy in violation of the law of conservation of energy. Such a violation would be easy to detect and astonishing.

So, unless you are willing to throw out all the laws of nature, including the ones demonstrated in the video you posted, the following is impossible.

http://www.CzRB8t7D5tc

Essentially you are misinterpreting scientific facts with philosophical interpretation of those facts. The Uncertainty Principle is science. The Copenhagen Interpretation is philosophical musings. Quantum Mechanics is science. The Many Worlds interpretation is a convenient plot device for science fiction.

If ever you make a statement that's "open to interpretation" and can be "right or wrong for different people", you're not talking science; you are bullshiting philosophy like every drunk at a bar in history. Now, there's nothing wrong with bullshiting about philosophy; it can be fun, but it's not scientific fact. To call something a scientific fact actually does mean something important.

Again I think Heraclitusstudent is not understanding the relationship between the quantum and the macro. The rules are the same but which take precidence depend on where you are on that scale.

Kind of the same way a gamma ray and radio wave are both EM waves but the low energy radio frequency (wave) the wave nature dominates while in the high energy gamma the particle (ray) nature dominate even though they are both photons.

Between the quantum and macro scales the difference is even more pronounced. Sure the train *might* tunnel through you leaving you unharmed but you'd have better odds of winning a superlotto jackpot a trillio, trillion, trillion, trillion times over.

New Renter says

Again I think Heraclitusstudent is not understanding the relationship between the quantum and the macro.

The interferences bands in this experiment are macro objects. Suppose I take a picture of it. Is that a macro-object? It is. Your brain is a macro object. Which decision you take based on seeing a picture has macro-consequences.

You will find your nuance quantum vs macro is meaningless. This experiment describes the nature of the world as a whole, not what happens to some particles.

Dan8267 says

Do I really have to explain the difference between a scientific theory and a philosophical musing?

A scientific theory makes specific, testable predictions. It does not say vague things like "reality is more complex than saying that a tree doesn't depend on who is observing it".

I'm not talking of a thought experiment. I'm talking of a physical experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser
Sorry you can't sweep the whole thing under the carpet as philosophical musing.
This may or may not affect your argument about religion, but it affects your argument that there is a reality independent of the observer.

Heraclitusstudent: I'm not a physicist, and don't claim to comprehend quantum entanglement, but I'll trust most physicists who generally do not agree with your inferences here.

Read this:

http://jamesowenweatherall.com/SCPPRG/EllermanDavid2012Man_QuantumEraser2.pdf

Thus what is called "detecting which slit the particle went through" is a misinterpretation. It is only placing a detector in such a position so that when the superposition projects to an eigenstate, only one of the eigenstates can register in that detector. It is about detector placement; it is not about which-slit information.

By erroneously talking about the detector "showing the particle went through slit 1," we imply a type of retro-causality. If the detector is suddenly removed after the particle has passed the slits, then the superposition state continues to evolve and shows interference on the far wall (not shown)ó in which case people say "the particle went through both slits." Thus the "bad talk" makes it seem that by removing or inserting the detector after the particle is beyond the slits, one can retro-cause the particle to go through both slits or one slit only.

Others reject your conclusion without proof of what is happening in that experiment simply because it violates special relativity. But keep in mind the kind of time intervals they are talking about.

Still even if they are correct to reject the retroactive causation theory, it doesn't mean that the universe is not a quantum computer.

Heraclitusstudent says

This may or may not affect your argument about religion, but it affects your argument that there is a reality independent of the observer.

That was true even with the earlier two slit experiment, the one that isn't taken to imply retroactive causality. That is in the case where observing which slit the photon goes through, determines whether it hits the wall as a wave or a particle, that is whether it goes through one or both slits.

Heraclitusstudent says

The interferences bands in this experiment are macro objects.

Sigh...

Right there you display your lack of understanding of this experiment.

The interference bands are caused by ELECTRONS, subatomic particles and definitely a part of the quantum world. The bands are a pattern caused by multiple electrons. The type of interference bands observed are a consequence of whether the electrons are being measured or not:

The electron (symbol: e−) is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge.[8] Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family,[9] and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure.[2] The electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton.[10] Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of a half-integer value in units of ħ, which means that it is a fermion. Being fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, in accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle.[9] Electrons also have properties of both particles and waves, and so can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. Experiments with electrons best demonstrate this duality because electrons have a tiny mass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

marcus says

Heraclitusstudent says

This may or may not affect your argument about religion, but it affects your argument that there is a reality independent of the observer.

That was true even with the earlier two slit experiment, the one that isn't taken to imply retroactive causality.

The previous experiment shows the observer interferes with the outcome. This by itself doesn't prove that there is not a tangible physical reality.

Wheeler's experiment goes farther in that it shows there is not one reality before the observation happens. Either you would have to accept that there is some reverse causality going on- which doesn't make sense- or you have to accept that there is no reality of the event happening until it is observed.

The best way I find to think about such experiment is that both outcomes are superposed, until knowledge affects the brain of the observer, and the observer is consequently falling into 1 of the possible version. This btw doesn't violate relativity.

New Renter says

Right there you display your lack of understanding of this experiment.

The electron is a particle, but the image of the interference bands is a macroscopic object. The observer is a macroscopic object.

Particles are everywhere and affect everything including the macroscopic level. While most of what happens at the particle level is just noise in our world, sometime, often, a particle changes things at the macro level.

The chaos theory says a butterfly can cause a hurricane. For the same reason a particle jumping that way or this way can cause a hurricane. Therefore quantum events affect our reality all the time.

You can't escape this experiment by putting arbitrary limits on quantum physics.

Heraclitusstudent says

New Renter says

Right there you display your lack of understanding of this experiment.

The electron is a particle, but the image of the interference bands is a macroscopic object. The observer is a macroscopic object.

Particles are everywhere and affect everything including the macroscopic level. While most of what happens at the particle level is just noise in our world, sometime, often, a particle changes things at the macro level.

The chaos theory says a butterfly can cause a hurricane. For the same reason a particle jumping that way or this way can cause a hurricane. Therefore quantum events affect our reality all the time.

You can't escape this experiment by putting arbitrary limits on quantum physics.

Doubling down here I see. OK, try to follow along:

The direct observation of which slit the electron takes has the effect of changing the outcome of the experiment.

Ignore the electron and the interference pattern is there.

Observe the electron with a detector pointed at the slits and the interference pattern is replaced with a simple pair of Gaussian distributions.

Observing the patterns created is not what affects the outcome. What affects the outcome is using a detector placed by the slits to determine which slit the electron passes through.

Think about it for a moment, what is the change between the two experiments?

Did the screen (not the pattern) change? No.

Did the observer change? No, the observer is looking at the screen in both cases.

Did the slits change? Nope, they are both the same in either case.

Did the electron stream change? No.

Did the presence or absence of a detector on the slits change? Yes.

Please try to understand this rather simple experiment before you even try to interpret its meaning.

New Renter says

Did the presence or absence of a detector on the slits change? Yes.

Please try to understand this rather simple experiment before you even try to interpret its meaning.

I don't know where you are going with this but clearly the pattern on the screen changed, depending on the knowledge of the which-path information.

Let's say I take a picture of the pattern. Then detect which path the particles took. (this is essentially the experiment).

This says what the picture (a macroscopic object) shows is determined a posteriori by whether you did the measurement or not at the time you look at the picture.

Do you start to see where the macroscopic world is affected?

Heraclitusstudent says

or you have to accept that there is no reality of the event happening until it is observed.

OR you accept that the quantum entanglement takes a little time, and that the amount of time lapsing in those experiments is such that even if only one of the superpositions is registered by the detector, before they make the next observation, it doesn't actually mean that the particle wasn't effectively a wave going through both slits.

Definitely an interesting topic for further reading.

Heraclitusstudent says

New Renter says

Did the presence or absence of a detector on the slits change? Yes.

Please try to understand this rather simple experiment before you even try to interpret its meaning.

I don't know where you are going with this but clearly the pattern on the screen changed, depending on the knowledge of the which-path information.

Let's say I take a picture of the pattern. Then detect which path the particles took. (this is essentially the experiment).

This says what the picture (a macroscopic object) shows is determined a posteriori by whether you did the measurement or not at the time you look at the picture.

Do you start to see where the macroscopic world is affected?

Interference pattern or no, you're still getting hit by the train.

New Renter says

Interference pattern or no, you're still getting hit by the train.

Getting hit probably counts as a measurement.

Heraclitusstudent says

New Renter says

Interference pattern or no, you're still getting hit by the train.

Getting hit probably counts as a measurement.

Depends on whether the gray matter can processes the information before it becomes a pink mist.

New Renter says

Again I think Heraclitusstudent is not understanding the relationship between the quantum and the macro

That's actually besides the point. There is an objective reality both at the quantum and macro levels. The universe is what it is at any scale. Yes, at the quantum level mere observation has a significant effect on what's being observed because "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". This is why a supernatural being like the Christian god could not even be aware of mankind's existence. He could not see or hear us without being bounded by the laws of nature himself, thereby contradicting the premise that he is supernatural.

In fact, observation does effect what's being observed even at the macro level, but it's usually insignificant. Whenever you stick a thermometer in an object, the temperature of the thermometer affects the temperature of the object that it is measuring. This is insignificant if you're using the right thermometer, but as in my ice-water/molten-steel example, it's not.

Every time your radio picks up a radio station's signal, it has a slight effect on that signal. The radio station broadcasts at such a strength that your radio receiver is insignificant, but it is a measurable effect. For example, in Britain, law enforcement measure this disturbance in order to find people who watch television without paying the television tax.

However, the important point is that the law "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", typically expressed as conservation laws, is a natural law and not a loophole to introduce bullshit mysticism into science. The God of the Gaps argument is both disingenuous and unconvincing.

marcus says

OR you accept that the quantum entanglement takes a little time, and that the amount of time lapsing in those experiments is such that even if only one of the superpositions is registered by the detector, before they make the next observation, it doesn't actually mean that the particle wasn't effectively a wave going through both slits.

The originally proposed Wheeler's experiment doesn't use entanglement.
There are other experiments as well:

Read this: http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/reality/chap2.html

---------------
We would like to think that the particle detectors at the slits are affecting the passage of the electron -- perhaps deflecting it, or modifying it's path, or in some other way influencing the experiment. We could accept such an explanation. But that does not seem to be the case. A series of experiments have been conducted to test just such a hypothesis, and the results are uniformly negative. I will quickly run through some of the more ingenious attempts to isolate and remove any possible influence stemming from the detectors located at the slits.[2]

1. Turn off the electron detectors at the slits. Suppose we take our modified double slit set up -- with electron detectors at the slits -- and leave everything intact. But, we will conduct the experiment with the electron detectors at the slits turned off, so that we will not actually detect any electrons at the slits.

The result upon analysis: an interference pattern at the back wall. So it seems that mere passage through the electron detectors at the slits does not affect the electron, so long as those electron detectors are not functioning.

2. Leave the electron detectors on, but don't gather the information. Suppose we take our modified double slit set up -- with electron detectors at the slits -- and still leave everything intact. And we will keep the electron detectors at the slits turned on, so that they will be doing whatever they do to detect electrons at the slits. But, we will not actually look at the count of electrons at the slits, nor will we record the count at the slits in any way, so that we will not be able to obtain any results from these fully-functioning electron detectors.

The result upon analysis: an interference pattern at the back wall. So it seems that the electron detectors located at the slits do not themselves affect the electron, even when the equipment is fully functioning and detecting (in a mechanical sense) the electrons, so long as we don't obtain the results of these measurements.

3. Record the measurements at the slits, but then erase it before analyzing the results at the back wall. Suppose we take our modified double slit set up -- with electron detectors at the slits -- and still leave everything intact. And we will still keep the electron detectors at the slits turned on, so that they will be doing whatever they do to detect electrons at the slits. And we will record the count at the slits, so that we will be able to obtain the results. But, we will erase the data obtained from the electron detectors at the slits before we analyze the data from the back wall.

The result upon analysis: an interference pattern at the back wall. Notice that, in this variation, the double slit experiment with detectors at the slits is completed in every respect by the time we choose to erase the recorded data. Up to that point, there is no difference in our procedure here and in our initial procedure ([pp. 15-17]), which yielded the puzzling clumping pattern. Yet, it seems that if we, in a sense, retroactively remove the electron detectors at the slits (not by going back in time to physically remove them, but only by removing the information they have gathered so that it is not available from the time of the erasure going forward into the future), we can "change" the results of what we presume is a mechanically complete experiment, so far as those results are determined by a later analysis, to produce an interference pattern instead of a clumping pattern. This is mind-boggling.
4. Arrange the experiment so that we can make an arbitrary choice at some later time, after the experiment is "complete," whether or not to use the information gathered by the electron detectors at the slits. Suppose we take our modified double slit set up -- with electron detectors at the slits -- and still leave everything intact. And we will still keep the electron detectors at the slits turned on, so that they will be doing whatever they do to detect electrons at the slits. And we will record the count at the slits, so that we will be able to obtain the results. But (this gets a little complicated), we will
(1) mix the data from the slits with additional, irrelevant garbage data, and record the combined (and incomprehensible) data;
(2) design a program to analyze data coming from the slits in one of two ways, either
(a) filtering out the garbage data so that we will be able to obtain clean results of electrons going through the slits, or
(b) analyzing the mixed-up data so that we will not be able to obtain the results of electrons going through the slits; and
(3) leave it up to a visiting politician which way we actually analyze the data from the slits.

The result upon final analysis by method (2)(a): a particle clumping pattern appears from the data.
The result upon final analysis by method (2)(b): an interference pattern appears from the data.
So it seems that an arbitrary choice (represented by the politician who has no personal interest in the experiment) made hours, days, months, or even years after the experiment is "complete," will change the result of that completed experiment. And, by changing the result, we mean that this arbitrary, delayed choice will affect the actual location of the electron hits as recorded by the electron detector at the back wall, representing an event that was supposed to have happened days, months, or even years in the past. An event that we suppose has taken place in the past (impingement of the electron on the detector) will turn out to be correlated to a choice that we make in the present. Imagine that.

The proverbial tree has already fallen in the forest, and we can later choose whether or not to listen. And if we choose to listen then the falling tree will have made a noise, and if we choose not to listen then the falling tree will not have made a noise.

----------------------------------------

If the above is true (didn't verify the source), it shows how mind boggling the reality of this experiment truly is.

In (3) above, deleting data from a computer changes what's on a picture AFTER the picture was taken. Think about it for a minute. These are 2 completely unrelated macroscopic events, yet one affects the other.

And this also shows how physicists are not focusing on the information aspect of this: how the propagation of information affects the result. The classical theory says measurement collapses the wave function. It doesn't says how and when, and this is a huge gap in understanding that is not addressed.

Suppose I encrypt the measurements results and throw away the password. For me this is as good as deleting it. Is the which-path information still existing?
Suppose there are 2 physicists: 1 looks at the measurements, looks at the picture, and then deletes the measurements, then the second physicists looks at the picture, in a world where the measurements don't exist. Would he see the interference? Whereas the first physicist doesn't?
Clearly the whole thing become extremely hairy and I don't think physicists are putting enough in clearing out the nuances here.

Heraclitusstudent says

I'm not talking of a thought experiment.

Irrelevant.

Heraclitusstudent says

Sorry you can't sweep the whole thing under the carpet as philosophical musing.

I sure can until you make a testable prediction. Without a testable prediction, you are not making any scientific statement.

In fact, I gave you two examples of testable predictions that test your musings. You conceded that both would disprove your statements without even bothering to check them indicating that even you do not truly believe what you are saying.

Heraclitusstudent says

it affects your argument that there is a reality independent of the observer.

I'm not sure if you are deliberately misinterpreting my argument like a troll or accidentally like someone with poor reading comprehension skills. And I'm not sure which is worse.

Neither Penn nor I have never stated that an observation is not affected by the act of observing. In fact, I have repeated stated the exact opposite. How many times in this thread alone have I said "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" and then explained in detail what that means?

What Penn and I have stated is that there is no magical law that makes the universe conform to your perception of it. The tree does not exist solely to be observed by you. It would exist even if you didn't. Similarly, you can no more pray cancer away than you can pray gay away. And if you think a god is telling you something, you are delusional.

Quantum Mechanics does not contradict objective reality; quantum mechanics is objective reality. The fact that quantum mechanics is based on universal, immutable laws, however counter-intuitive they may be, is exactly what objective reality means.

Subjective reality would be that reality differs from person to person. It does not. Even in General Relativity with different frames of reference, there is still one reality. Two observers from different frames of reference will observe different measurements, but according to a set of equations which completely describes what both observers will measure. And both observers will know exactly what the other observer will measure. There is no fudge factor.

You are playing word games, trying to use the ambiguity of the English language to introduce ambiguity into science where there is none. This is why you never use equations, which lack such ambiguity. As such, your arguments are meaningless.

If you have anything interesting, useful, or insightful to present, then make a clear, specific statement that is testable. Otherwise, you are just shooting the bull.

Dan8267 says

I sure can until you make a testable prediction.

I'm talking directly of an experiment and the result of this experiment. There is no theory or philosophy. Experiments are the prime source of empirical knowledge overriding everything else. Physical experiments are reproducible and as such you could consider them a testable prediction of what will happen if you reproduce them.

You still need to reframe your prose after considering the results of this experiment.

Dan8267 says

Subjective reality would be that reality differs from person to person. It does not.

The instant you admit the reality itself is formed at the time you observe it, it is by definition dependent on the observer. This is what is proven by the experiment and you continue to ignore this fact.

That each observer sees a consistent reality (that includes other observers) is expected. But are different observers seeing the same in all circumstances? The question is opened.

Assuming somehow it is the case, the experiment still disproves statements like " The tree does not exist solely to be observed by you. It would exist even if you didn't. "

No the tree doesn't exist if no one observes it. Maybe several versions of it exist. Maybe it doesn't exist in some versions.

Dan8267 says

Neither Penn nor I have never stated that an observation is not affected by the act of observing.

Penn Jillette in the video you posted:
--"I believe very strongly that there is a physical reality that my perception doesn't change."

--"You can make the argument that we're all just brains in jars, the matrix, and that all this is just an illusion. And that is an air tight argument. You can't refute it. But let's just say it is not that. I think there is a real reality out there."

I'll give you the guy is honest with what his hypotheses are and the fact they are just hypotheses.

Why can't you admit the same?