Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956__
Study: There may be no such thing as objective reality
Everyone is entitled to their own facts. That's not an opinion. At least, according to a new quantum mechanics study.
What we view as objective reality – the idea that what we can observe, measure, and prove is real and those things we cannot are theoretical or imaginary – is actually a subjective reality that we either unravel, create, or dis-obfuscate by the simple act of observation.
A smarter way of putting it can be found in the aforementioned study, "Experimental test of nonlocal causality" conducted by lead author Martin Ringbauer and an international team of physicists and researchers:
Explaining observations in terms of causes and effects is central to empirical science. However, correlations between entangled quantum particles seem to defy such an explanation. This implies that some of the fundamental assumptions of causal explanations have to give way.
Also at The Conversation
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @10:57AM (2 children)
N/T see title.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday November 19 2019, @02:06AM (1 child)
I think we need a new mod option. How about -1 Ad-Hominem ?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:53AM
You reckon there will be any comments that don't get modded that if we add it?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 18 2019, @11:02AM (1 child)
This sounds to me like a convoluted justification for "alternative facts".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @11:09AM
Postmodernism on steroids.
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday November 18 2019, @11:25AM (7 children)
Note that I'm a physicist who has worked in the field for many years, so I definitely do know what I'm speaking about. And I actually read the linked scientific paper (well, at least the theoretical part; I'm assuming they did the experiments right). And I came to the conclusion that they don't show what they think they show.
Basically, they want to test causal influence by forcing the measurement result on one side of the entangled pair to be a specific value. Well, if they could do that, that would indeed be a great way to test causality.
But the point is, quantum mechanics does not allow that. Unless the system is prepared specifically to deliver a specific outcome, it won't deterministically deliver that outcome. You won't evade randomness. And entangled states never have a determined specific outcome for one of the observables involved in the entanglement.
But they claimed they forced it. So what did they do?
Well, what they did was to measure the system first in a way that doesn't reveal the value of the observable in question, but actually destroys that information, and then re-prepared it in the state guaranteeing the desired outcome, and then measured that (obtaining, of course, the desired outcome).
The problem is: That way they only proved that there is no causal relationship between the re-preparation and the measurement on the other side. But that's no surprise; quite the opposite. They already broke the entanglement the moment they performed the first, information-destroying measurement. If there was any causal link between measurements, it was enacted at that point, making it absolutely irrelevant what is done locally to the particles afterwards. There's no reason to assume that the subsequent re-preparation, or the measurement of that re-preparation, had any causal effect on the particle that formerly was entangled with the particle, but no longer was at the time of re-preparation or final measurement.
Note that I don't say that because I somehow want to save my world view; indeed I do believe that what they are trying to test is true: There is no causal influence. However I don't think their experiment is able to show it (nor is any other experiment whose result is consistent with quantum mechanics).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 18 2019, @01:09PM (5 children)
And on a quantum level they could be correct. Unfortunately that means fuck-all to everyday life on a classical physics scale which functions by entirely different rules, so they were trying for a catchy headline instead of telling the objective truth. When they can quantum entangle a pair of Buicks in a busy parking lot, then they can start talking shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Monday November 18 2019, @02:59PM (2 children)
Prof. Heisenberg, is that you?
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 18 2019, @03:48PM (1 child)
You're uncertain?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @02:03AM
What do you call an alt-right physicist?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @10:44PM (1 child)
There. improved it for you.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 19 2019, @03:54AM
The older I get, the less it takes to qualify for "at a distance".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:07PM
OK. But ignoring quantum theory, the basic conclusion is still a necessary consequence of both Bayesian statistics and psychology, independently.
N.B.: This doesn't mean you get the facts you want. This doesn't mean you get the facts you fear.
On the level of Bayesian statistics another way to say this is there are various sets of conflicting priors that cannot be reconciled with any possible evidence. This has been proven to be true via mathematical analysis.
I suspect the psychological variant of this conclusion is a necessary consequence of the Bayesian statistics version, but I've no way to prove it. It is, however, a frequently observed fact. (Try arguing politics with a committed left-wing anarchist.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @12:53PM (2 children)
It has been objectively observed that this is indeed the first post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @01:00PM (1 child)
Well, it's slightly better than the shitty subjective first post.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @01:07PM
Runaway is an old senile lunatic.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday November 18 2019, @02:29PM (1 child)
Nope major mistake of scaling. You can't scale quantum sized effects to human political issue size.
For example, friction exists on a large macro scale that makes nuts and screws and car tires work. On a microscopic scale there's just massively complicated mechanical engineering interactions between rough surfaces with some bias between parts due to differing chemical composition. You can simulate the interaction of a rolling rubber round-thing and a concrete flat-thing and none of that "friction" stuff exists its merely an artifact of microscopic mechanical engineering issues. Therefore scientists have proven nuts and bolts will magically unscrew themselves and car tires no longer work. Naw wait the real world doesn't work that way.
Or imagine the stupidity of claiming that because electrons can jump nano-scale insulator films under certain probability and electric field conditions, the existence of various working commercialized electronic devices somehow "proves" the existence of Harry Potter magic doors that people who really want to really hard can walk thru. Surely if electrons can jump thin insulator films via scientific physics, then large humans who really feel strongly or hate Trump hard enough or similar nonsense can walk thru solid doors and walls, I mean popular science proved it because Quantum is a magic word that means there's no rules, at least to the uneducated.
A math CS analogy would be childish attempts at using Gödel's incompleteness theorems as an "out" to avoid learning number theory or doing research. Its possible in theory to define unanswerable questions doesn't mean a get out of jail free excuse to be lazy. And then bad journalists tend to pervert the math/scientific result into something trendy and meaningless, "Godel proved Jesus is real" if pandering to somewhat more sane people, or "Godel proved Greta is a saint" for the somewhat more insane people.
I mean I get the motivation by popular science reporters to try and excrete some kinda of sermon about a cool scientific result in a format that the marching morons will understand; sometimes its not possible, and its a major ethical / moral failure to try to drum up attention by, frankly, outright lying about the scientific result.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @07:38PM
Exactly true. As a case-in-point, consider the Higgs-Boson. Just because some scientists out of frustration called it "the Goddam particle," which got censored to "the God particle," you had all these reports and pop-culture references about finding spirituality in the search for it.
Poe's Law, only applied to real life I guess.
As a side note, as I'm already responding, this article does not pass the "sniff" test, at least to me. It smacks of the Romantic-era "everything in subjective." I'll admit many things are subjective, but it's hard to imagine that EVERYTHING is subjective. If somebody really says that, I'd be more than happy to wager with them that the sun will rise tomorrow... they can even set the odds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @02:41PM (12 children)
F = G*m1*m2/r^2
PV= nRT
J= sigma*T^4
c^2= a^2 + b^2
No cause and effect. Only lesser sciences like psychology care about cause and effect.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 18 2019, @03:53PM (11 children)
Incorrect. Zymurgists very much care about cause and effect and theirs is unarguably the highest scientific calling.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @04:08PM (10 children)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Mysticism_and_Logic_and_Other_Essays/Chapter_09 [wikisource.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday November 18 2019, @04:24PM (3 children)
Don't take wiseass remarks seriously.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @04:36PM (2 children)
Don't take wiseass remarks seriously.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
Take THAT, wiseass!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @05:13PM
Trump said either A or else B. Quid Quo Pro. Impeach!!
A = Putin could use the public bathroom
B = use his private one
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:15PM (3 children)
My take on the matter is that causation is too complex to deal with. It deals with a complex interaction of multiple inputs, and is statistical in nature. I recommend "Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference" by Judea Pearl, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
It's not surprising that the medieval notion of causation was a bit flaky. So was their idea of logic. But that doesn't mean that the underlying phenomenon is unlawful.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @05:19PM (1 child)
I have talked to Judea Pearl before, neither he nor his followers have been able to provide a single real life example where those DAGs are of any value.
Causality simply is not an important concept in science because every event is collectively caused by every single event in its past timecone. In science you want to distill the most important functional relationships down to a simple set of assumptions/postulates.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:07AM
Yes/no. You can argue a "sum over histories" approach, and that works, sort of. But the question is the degree of relevance. If you expect infinite precision, then, yes, you do need totally accurate evaluation of the entire time-cone. But a lot of the effects are so small that they have no measurable effect. (Which, of course, depends on your measuring instruments.)
That's why I said it was statistical in nature. You need to consider the several most important causal elements, and what that means depends on both the precision you expect in the result and the delicacy of the balance between alternatives. I'll agree that it's almost impossible to specify just how far one needs to go, but the further out you go, the smaller the incremental effect. So an iterative approach looks reasonable to me. This is closely (how closely?) analogous to the way neural nets decide whether or not to detect an edge. If it's closely enough analogous, then that provided the "real life example" you were asking for.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 19 2019, @04:55PM
My take is that we have big problems with language. The way things are being described, there's a lot of stuff that simply does not make sense. The fault is in the inadequate and plain wrong names and descriptions, not objective reality.
For example, a glass of water can be full, half full/half empty, totally empty, or anything in between. It can even be slightly overfull, temporarily. But it can't have a negative quantity of water.
Extrapolation is a technique that must be considered cautiously. It's so easy for a simple extrapolation to be garbage, routine for a naive application to produce values outside the possible, a color whiter than pure white, blacker than totally, completely black (fuligin?), emptier than empty, or colder than absolute zero. A famous example is Moore's Law about the doubling of computing power every 18 months. We all realize it can't really hold up, that it must break down at some point. Also in this category is the whole notion of traveling backward in time, by extrapolating Relativity to faster than light speeds. The passage of time slows to zero as an object approaches light speed. Therefore, if something were somehow to go faster than light, time would have to run backward for it, and viola! Time travel into the past! Another bad extrapolation is the notion that a black hole might be a point with infinite density and mass.
Adding to the problem is journalistic drama. To use a Betteridge Law style of headline, they might as well have said "Is Everything You Thought You Knew Wrong??" Count on them to mangle scientific findings out of all recognition. They love misusing extrapolation by not bothering to limit it, as that way it is so wont to produce dramatically impossible values.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @10:52PM (1 child)
I'll see your mystical "Notions of Cause" and raise you a Second Law of Thermodynamics [wikipedia.org]. Unscramble *that* egg, friend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:00AM
I don't see any concept of cause in those equations, nor anything useful that has come from examining whether the second law of thermodynamics explains "cause and effect" or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @03:48PM (4 children)
"Everyone is entitled to their own facts. That's not an opinion. At least, according to a new quantum mechanics study."
"Proclaiming to be wise, they became fools"... In the real world, facts match the definition of "Fact", which is: a thing that is known or proved to be true.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday November 18 2019, @05:23PM (3 children)
And that's the basic problem. The belief that you can absolutely prove some things to be true. You can establish reasonable grounds of certainty, with error bounds, and that's the best that is EVER possible.
Informally, we decide something to be a fact when the cost of being wrong is a lot less than the cost of additional verification. And this is a subjective judgement. The experiment is an attempt to establish limits to certainty which we can never exceed, no matter how much effort we put into it. I'm going to mark the result "uncertain", and live with the uncertainty, despite the fact that the published results agrees with my general position. Because I'm quite willing to live with a lot of uncertainty, and don't feel the need to call everything "true" or "false". (Logical entailment requires not only that the premises be true, but that no logical steps were made along the way. Both are always uncertain...though sometimes not very.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday November 18 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
But you *can* prove things to be true. For example: "if I detonate a blasting cap within your skull, you will die". Run the experiment, and if you die, I've been proven true. Your death is a fact (an objectively observed data point)
What you *can't* prove is general principles. I could do that blasting-cap experiment to a billion people, and it would (presumably) always end with them dead - but it would not prove anything. It would build a large body of evidence supporting my claim, but support is not proof. There's always the possibility that some quirk or skill of the next person would allow them to live on unharmed. It's unlikely, but not completely impossible, and thus I've proved nothing. Otherwise known as the white crow problem. I can claim that all crows are black - but to prove it I would have to individually verify that every crow that ever has or will exist anywhere in the universe is black. Discovering even one white crow would disprove my hypothesis.
Which is why science doesn't deal in proofs. It does however deal in facts. Observable, verifiable, objective statements about events that have happened. Otherwise known as "data points". They are the foundation upon which all scientific advancement is built. But the theories that grow from that - the generalizations from collections of fact to inviolate principles? That's always unproven, and always will be (and that *has* been proven). Science is about developing models of those inviolate principles (assuming that they do actually exist) through successive approximations. The only "proof" relevant to science is that a new theory is more accurate over a wider range of conditions than the old one.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Monday November 18 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)
You could, but it would be unbelievably stupid to make that claim in a universe where you can get video/image/text results for "albino crow" from Google in under two seconds.
Therefore, you must inhabit a different universe to me, which is clear proof of macro quantum effects on reality as claimed in the summary, or maybe of something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY_r5Re8gjE [youtube.com] - white crow in my universe, probably 404 in yours...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @11:05PM
Interestingly, you proved GP's point for him. He stated (as you quoted) that he *could* make such a claim. However, no such claim was made. Your "point" (whether through ignorance or a *failed* attempt at snark) was that he would be foolish to make such a claim, since his argument boils down to "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," which is objectively true -- as you made perfectly clear.
I suggest reading some Descartes, friend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @07:35PM
maybe all individual views are objective ... until we start talking about them(!) and we automatically have to introduce a new word into our "communication system"... which is the word "subjective"?
it seems we can do more if we can talk to (and understand) each other?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Monday November 18 2019, @08:27PM
Every time somebody says objective reality does not exist, slap their face. Then claim it happened only in their reality, not yours. At worst it will degenerate in a fight as the other guy applies the same principle.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 18 2019, @09:01PM
I didn't find any support for alternative facts in the paper. You can tell this is an opinion injected by TNW because they bring up that crass misinterpretation of Schrodinger's cat. His point was that the Copenhagen interpretation is broken. TNW's description of it isn't compatible with any physics we know.
Superposition gets you different sets of facts, but decoherence forbids you from interacting with anyone or anything whose facts are different than yours — you are no longer causally connected to them (locally or otherwise) or the world they inhabit. This is true of every interpretation of quantum mechanics endorsed by physicists (except Bohmian mechanics, which basically turns superposition into an illusion) and even true of the broken Copenhagen interpretation.