SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
One of the most striking features of quantum theory is that its predictions are, under virtually all circumstances, probabilistic. If you set up an experiment in a laboratory, and then you use quantum theory to predict the outcomes of various measurements you might perform, the best the theory can offer is probabilities—say, a 50 percent chance that you'll get one outcome, and a 50 percent chance that you'll get a different one. The role the quantum state plays in the theory is to determine, or at least encode, these probabilities. If you know the quantum state, then you can compute the probability of getting any possible outcome to any possible experiment.
But does the quantum state ultimately represent some objective aspect of reality, or is it a way of characterizing something about us, namely, something about what some person knows about reality? This question stretches back to the earliest history of quantum theory, but has recently become an active topic again, inspiring a slew of new theoretical results and even some experimental tests.
If it is just your knowledge that changes, things don't seem so strange.
To see why the quantum state might represent what someone knows, consider another case where we use probabilities. Before your friend rolls a die, you guess what side will face up. If your friend rolls a standard six-sided die, you'd usually say there is about a 17 percent (or one in six) chance that you'll be right, whatever you guess. Here the probability represents something about you: your state of knowledge about the die. Let's say your back is turned while she rolls it, so that she sees the result—a six, say—but not you. As far as you are concerned, the outcome remains uncertain, even though she knows it. Probabilities that represent a person's uncertainty, even though there is some fact of the matter, are called epistemic, from one of the Greek words for knowledge.
This means that you and your friend could assign very different probabilities, without either of you being wrong. You say the probability of the die showing a six is 17 percent, whereas your friend, who has seen the outcome already, says that it is 100 percent. That is because each of you knows different things, and the probabilities are representations of your respective states of knowledge. The only incorrect assignments, in fact, would be ones that said there was no chance at all that the die showed a six.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:50AM
So there's a man in the forest sucking his own dick. If a bear shits in the woods, does the man swallow his own cum?
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:50AM (17 children)
In other words, although Schroedinger's cat knows whether the poison gas has been released or not, people outside the box can only assign probabilities and say weird things, like the cat being both dead and alive, until the door is opened.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:46AM (16 children)
I always thought that was a bad analogy. It only works if those with perception don't actually share the same reality, which does not seem to be the case.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:31AM (15 children)
I dunno, man, talking on Internet message boards has fairly well proven to me over the years that there are a lot of people out there who don't share the same reality that I live in.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday May 03 2017, @12:19PM
Yeah, I was quite tempted to make the same observation.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:02PM (12 children)
Dammit, Uzzard, now that Carlin's dead the raw materials for those things are fucking expensive. WARN US before you do that!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:14PM (11 children)
I think your meter is still calibrated to SJW if it's wigging out. Oh, and Carlin would have had my back over yours any day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:31AM (10 children)
I wouldn't be so sure about that. Just because your style of trolling humor is somewhat closer to his does not make your political views the same. The best I can say is you and Carlin both use rude shock humor, but at least Carlin was actually funny.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:55AM (9 children)
Carlin would be sickened by the left and their attempts to muzzle controversial speech lately. He would shit all over them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:28AM (1 child)
It would be a change as Carlin traditionally has been sickened by the right and their constant muzzling of controversial speech ("You can prick your finger but you can't finger your prick"). It's kinda funny, the left considers hatred to be controversial and the right considers love to be controversial.
Personally, Carlin always seemed anti-repression to me whereas the right has always pushed repression.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:28AM
Yeah, Carlin was a big, honkin liberal but more importantly he understood the way to change things is to embrace speech not to shut it down. Progs today are virulently anti-speech and the man who wrote this [youtube.com] would never back censorship.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:51AM (6 children)
You seem to think Carlin's entire schtick was shock jock rebelliousness. How dare you. He may have been a comedian but I consider him a humanist almost on level with Terry Pratchett, if far more vulgar. You're not fit to tie the man's decomposing shoes, and you're precisely the kind of no-goodnik authoritarian he hated.
Yes, he'd be ripping on a good faction of the left these days, but hell, so do I, and for the same reasons.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:30AM (5 children)
No, sweety, Carlin was about liberty and equality. Exactly like, oh, who around here is always spouting those words without having to twist their meanings?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:08PM (4 children)
You wouldn't know equality or liberty if they bit you on your fat alcoholic ass, Uzzard.
Let's put this in computer terms: do you understand why the GPL is better, in the long run, for software freedom than the BSD license? It's because the BSD license has forgotten Rule 0, that being "whatever you do with this, you DO NOT get to remove these freedoms from other people." I like the spirit of the BSD license, but I had to laugh back when de Raadt was all pissy over corporations taking OpenSSL and doing what they would with it and not contributing anything. Well, that's what happens when you don't have Rule 0.
This is the essential problem you personally have: you think "the fewest rules/restrictions possible" translates into "maximal freedom and well-being." It does not. Popper tackled this one, what, half a century ago?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:20PM (3 children)
Congrats! Claiming the people need to be government regulated for purposes of liberty and equality just made Moronic Post of the Day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 05 2017, @04:11AM (2 children)
Okay, so all those laws against murder and rape and theft can go then? Dumbass. I knew you were going to say what you did. You're so predictable it's almost sad. Thanks for proving my point for me harder than I ever possibly could on my own.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday May 05 2017, @10:21AM (1 child)
Yeah, darlin, if it's a choice between that and your ideas of having the government poking its nose into every little facet of my life, I'd rather take on the responsibility of dealing with those myself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 06 2017, @04:35AM
Jesus Christ, Uzzard, you would cut off your nose to spite your face. You seriously just said "I hate what I imagine you think so much I would prefer to live in absolute solipsistic disconnect in a world with no laws against anyone powerful doing anything they want to me."
Put your money where your beak is, carrion-breath. Live as an outlaw. No more protection or civilization for you. Go out bare-assed naked into the forest and spend the rest of your life fishing for fish and grubbing for grubs. I dare you.
You won't of course, because you're fucking weak and a hypocrite for the ages.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:25PM
I have a President who doesn't share the same reality that I live in.
He knows nothing about poverty, I know nothing about wealth.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:25AM
html5 could have added this? Maybe too specialized.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:40AM (9 children)
Cuius erroris causa quod omnia quae quisque nouit ex ipsorum tantum ui atque natura cognosci aestimat quae sciuntur. 25 Quod totum contra est; omne enim quod cognoscitur non secundum sui uim sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facultatem. 26 Nam ut hoc breui liqueat exemplo, eandem corporis rotunditatem aliter uisus aliter tactus agnoscit; ille eminus manens totum simul iactis radiis intuetur, hic uero cohaerens orbi atque coniunctus circa ipsum motus ambitum rotunditatem partibus comprehendit.
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, Consolatio Philosophiae, Book 5 Prosa 4. Circa 524 AD.
Boethius' use of this principle is quite contrary to the use that quantum physicists desire, however.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:39PM (1 child)
At first I was confused by your quote, since Boethius is off on an argument about the knowledge of God and the possibility of predestination's compatibility with free will here, and the immediate context is a sort of Platonic form argument combined with different faculties of perception. Outside of that context, he certainly wasn't the first to note that apparent knowledge depends on the viewer (see Protagoras or Sextus Empiricus, for example) or that sight is a superior sense (e.g., Aristotle).
But now I think I see your analogy here, and it's quite interesting. I still don't think Boethius had anything close to the physicists' epistemic relativism in mind here, but there's a connection between the temporal nature of perception and revelation in Boethius's example about a round body only "partibus comprehendit," compared to the atemporal "God's eye view." Given that this is all in the context of a free will discussion, the idea of possibility/probability is also implicitly involved in this act of gradual revelation.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:17PM
Now, see this is why i like this site.
Over on that other site, this conversation would probably go something like:
"They don't know shite!"
"You don't know shite!"
Instead, we get intelligence and thoughtfulness and insight that makes me think.
I'd eat you both up, but i don't like Soylent Red: i prefer the new Soylent Green.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:42PM (2 children)
I was actually going to point out that this kind of dilemma reminds me a lot of the clamor in medieval philosophy amongst people like Occam and Scotus, but I guess Boethius beat them by another 500ish years in some regards.
I'm still impressed by the guy's intellect. Too bad he was executed before he could finish translating all of Plato and Aristotle.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:10AM (1 child)
Yes, but the Realist/Nominalist debate over the ontological status of general terms was very different than the "observational contamination of reality" debate of the modern realist/instrumentalist epistemological debates. The question is not whether the general conceptual structures determine or are determined by an independently existing reality, the question is whether there is any such reality. Both Duns Scotus and William of Ockham would be appalled!
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:53AM
Personally I think this is one of those "has a dog the Buddha nature?" questions, which is to say, the answer is "this question is based on malformed assumptions." Reality may not be directly accessible to human consciousness, *and that's okay.*
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:04PM (3 children)
The cause of this error is that every man believes that all the subjects, that he knows, are known by their own force or nature alone, which are known; but it is quite the opposite. For every subject, that is known, is comprehended not according to its own force, but rather according to the nature of those who know it.
The problem with this assertion is that if it were merely a matter of the limitations of our perceptions, then why do we perceive things differently at all? For example, Boethius then speaks of perception of a sphere via sight and touch speaking of the sphere in terms of the senses in question while ignoring that both senses are more than sufficient to distinguish (at least at the implied scale) between a sphere and cube.
Perception is not just a limitation. It is also a powerful delineation of reality. If we can't perceive a thing either directly or through its influence on things we can perceive, then in a very clear way, it doesn't exist to us.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:32PM (1 child)
It's much worse than that. If all knowledge is only about what we know about things, then we can't say anything about things as such. Including that things as such exist.
This is related to the interpretations of quantum theory, and why, e.g., it's impossible to rule out Solipsism.
What we can say about a physical theory is that the evidence is consistent with certain interpretations. In quantum theory those interpretations include the (EWG) Multi-world hypothesis, Solipsism, a kind of pre-determinism, and several other interpretations that seem, on the surface, to be quite different. But even though they look quite different in English, they could all reasonably yield the same observed effects. My favorite interpretation is that the state vector never collapses, but that by observing we can determine certain features localizing our position in a branch of the state. But I can't rule out naive realism, or any of the other choices. The available evidence not only doesn't let you figure out which is correct, it doesn't even let you figure out the probability of one of the interpretations being correct.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:52PM
If all knowledge is only about what we know about things, then we can't say anything about things as such.
It's not. Math is the huge exception to that. Nothing in math actually exists except as representations. But once you have a representation, no matter how convoluted or obscure - even if no one, universe-wide is ever aware of it, then the consequences follow.
But even though they look quite different in English, they could all reasonably yield the same observed effects.
Any theories with the same observed effects are the same. Then it just becomes a matter of what is more convenient to use to explain what we see.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:01PM
You're right about some of these issues, which is why I noted in my post that I was first confused by the citation of the passage. Boethius's argument makes a lot more sense when you read it in his broader context, but isn't really about the limitation of perception as it is about predestination and free will. I'm not going to bother getting into all of that here; you can read about it here [stanford.edu]. Basically, Boethius is just making a rough analogy to the differences between human and "God-like" perception here (which also, if you believe in predestination, includes knowledge of the future), not really a fleshed-out argument that's meant to say something deep about human perception.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:06AM (11 children)
> If it is just your knowledge that changes, things don't seem so strange.
Yes, but we should not reject a model because it is "strange". That just roots us in our limited intuition and prevents us from going anywhere new.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:56PM (10 children)
OPs coming from a philosophy of classical mechanics where randomness seems very inappropriate or strange because in classical mechanics it would in fact be pretty strange strategy to stick a rnd() function in there.
"We'll talk about quantum stuff but I don't agree with it, so I'll call it 'strange' or whatever"
Like when you talk to kids about how zero point nine repeating equals one, some with strange flexibility problems won't wrap their minds around that but will come up with some fairly creative narratives to avoid them.
Its actually like mentioning hate-facts to lefties, you tell them the sky is blue and you'll get the craziest narrative to avoid double plus ungood badthink.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:21PM (9 children)
but zero point nine repeating ISN'T one, it is only rounded to one.
If you take a piece of string and keep cutting it in half, it will never be eliminated as there will always be more to cut in half.
Errm, at least until you get beyond the quantum level.... errrrr.....
MAN, IT'S POINT NINES ALLLLLLL THE WAY DOWN!!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:38PM (1 child)
If you take a piece of string and keep cutting it in half, it will never be eliminated as there will always be more to cut in half.
The obvious rebuttal is that you have to consider the final stopping point, not the intermediate points. The remaining string bit keeps getting shorter and shorter without bound as you keep cutting it in half. There is no shortest string of positive length because you can keep cutting it in half to get shorter strings. Similarly, no matter how long your starting string, you can keep halving its length until it's shorter than any string of a fixed positive length with further halving leaving the string below that length. It is only when you get to zero length that the process stops.
We're not speaking of finite processes, but infinite ones. If you can show that your sequence of numbers gets and permanently stays arbitrarily close to a particular number, then the limit of that sequence, which is the value of an infinite decimal number, is the particular number. That is how you get zero point nine repeating exactly equal to one.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:56AM
Since space, time, and energy are quantized, you'll eventually hit the Planck limits. In the case of the piece of string, once you get down to a single molecule of cellulose or lignin or whatever, you can't cut it any further because it would then not be made-of-the-stuff-of-which-a-string-is-made...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:06PM (3 children)
I know at least four ways to show that 0.999 repeating is equal to 1.
One is the limit method mentioned already.
Another is to show that 0.999... is equal to 9/9 which is equal to one.
Another is to show that for any two real numbers, there are an infinite number of numbers between them, and there is no room between 0.999... and 1.
Another is to subtract 0.999... from 1 and show that it is 0.
There are probably others.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:45AM
And yet it is not one, quite.
Example: to run your computer, you need EXACTLY 1 unit of power. Giving it .99999999 repeating will not power it. What use is your computer.
But my computer goes to 11, so I don't care. ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:52AM (1 child)
The easiest I found to understand is that 1/3 = 0.333.....
And strictly speaking, 0.333.... * 3 = 0.999....
But we also know that 1/3 * 3 = 1
Therefore, it also follows that 0.999... = 1.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:00AM
This is an argument over bases rather than quantities from the looks of it. When I was studying computers and figuring out binary, it was a shock and a revelation to figure out that some decimal numbers straight up cannot be represented in any reasonable number of bits in a floating-point type. Immediately it hit me that the decimal system was *not* immune to this simply because it's familiar to us.
All this comes back to epistemology eventually, it seems...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:35PM
If you take a piece of string and keep cutting it in half, it will never be eliminated as there will always be more to cut in half.
A better analogy is you take point three repeating and divide it by point nine repeating of string, you divide them and the repeating cancels out and you get 3/9 or 1/3, right? Well, point three repeating is supposed to be 1/3 so thats chill, right? I mean you've done a couple decimal places of the long division, right? I mean just humor me for a minute that dividing my point nine repeating is OK..
So you try again add a third with point six repeating and divide it by point nine repeating, you divide them and the repeating cancels out and you get 6/9 or 2/3, right? Well, one third plus one third usually comes up as two thirds, so no surprise.
So you try one last time add one more third resulting in point nine repeating (where have I seen that before?) divided by point nine repeating and the repeating cancels out and you get 9/9 or oh snap...
There's a certain implication above that you can't divide by anything but 1 and get the original result back, so doesn't that imply that dividing by point nine repeating always gets the original result back? But the only number that works for is dividing by one, anything smaller gives a bigger result and anything larger gives a smaller result, so the separation between one and point nine repeating is infinitely small, lets say... zero? Implying they're the same thing.
I'm too tired to play the analogy game where you chop a length point nine repeating length of string out of a length 1 piece of string and that itty bitty remainder of string, whatever you claim it is, has properties indistinguishable from zero, so apparently point nine repeating equals one because the gap between is a zero. The hard part of this analogy is convincing someone you're constructing the point nine repeating segment of the string correctly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:54PM
Zero point nine repeating can be one [youtube.com], or maybe not. In the immortal words of Bill Clinton, it depends upon what "is" means.
By the way, an infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The barkeep asks them what they want. The first one orders a pint. The second one orders a half a pint. The third one orders an eighth of a pint. The fourth opened his mouth to give his order, but the barkeep says, "Nevermind" and he puts two pints on the bar and walks away.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:34PM
You are assuming that space-time is continuous, and this not only hasn't been proven, I find it a dubious assumption.
OTOH, when the pieces get small enough you won't be able to tell the pieces of string from the virtual particles.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Soylentbob on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:29AM (5 children)
If I understand the proposition correctly, the idea is that the state of quantum-systems is already defined but just unknown. But doesn't quantum-computing rely on the fact that quantum systems have several states at the same time? And the tunnel-effect?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:03PM (4 children)
But doesn't quantum-computing rely on the fact that quantum systems have several states at the same time?
Yes, and this is one of two places in the extended research article (linked about halfway through the summary) that they bring up these very practical issues (to me). The first is interference and the double-slit experiment, where that article quotes Richard Feynman saying "In reality it contains the only mystery" about quantum mechanics (p. 78). And the second is David Deutsch quoted a little later (p. 81) on quantum computing: "if the universe we see around us is all there is, where are quantum computations performed? I have yet to receive a plausible reply."
The reply to the latter seems to be that the algorithms for quantum computing so far only deal in NP problems, but not NP complete problems, and that there might (I guess) be an "efficient classical algorithm for these problems" which presumably we haven't figured out yet. In other words, the argument seems to be (if I understand it correctly): quantum computing may only appear to be doing really cool stuff because we've only solved hard problems with it, but not really hard problems, and maybe it's possible solve just the hard ones classically anyway (which maybe would explain how quantum computing appears so efficient?). It frankly sounds like a bunch of handwaving to me. The section concludes by just saying "explaining quantum computation ought to be viewed as a challenge."
In other words, we have no idea.
As for the interference/double-slit issue, it seems rather than the "wave function" traveling through both slits, they want to claim that "a bit of information" or an "influence" is traveling through one slit while the photon goes through the other, hence leading to interference: "There is an influence that travels through both arms [i.e.,slits], but that influence is not a wavefunction."
I don't quite know what the heck difference it makes to claim that "information" or some vague "influence" is traveling through the other slit, compared to the wavefunction itself, other than we can handwave the interference problem away too. I assume some explanation of what they're proposing in terms of this "information" might be buried in the other 89 pages of the article, but my quantum theory knowledge is rusty (and some of this is I'm sure above my head) -- and I stopped reading after the whole "We should just view explaining quantum computing as a challenge" nonsense. To me, interference phenomena and quantum computing are the PRIMARY issues that need to be explained for someone arguing for a pure epistemic theory, and both seem to just be met with handwaving, unless there's something buried in all the equations and theorizing elsewhere in the article that lends insight into these.
Note that the interference section ends with: "In combination with the fact that interference phenomena can be modeled ψ-epistemically, the argument from interference is far from compelling." So I assume there's something buried later in that article... if anyone has the knowledge and initiative to go digging for their explanation of interference other than handwaving "information" traveling through slits, I'd be interested in knowing what the gist of their explanation is.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:23PM
Also, I should note that the summary is very misleading about TFA (i.e., the Nautilus article linked at the beginning of the summary). The excerpt in the summary seems to suggest TFA is advocating an epistemic view, but actually by the end TFA basically is arguing that recent evidence might start to RULE OUT an epistemic view. From the conclusion:
Spekkens and his collaborators managed to take an interpretation of the quantum state and turn it into a precise hypothesis—a hypothesis that was then refuted with mathematical and experimental results. That does not mean epistemic approaches are dead, but it does force their advocates to come up with a new hypothesis. And that is unambiguous progress—both scientific and philosophical.
The bit in the summary is presenting a simplified version of the perspective the article later points out is more likely to be wrong....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:16PM (1 child)
Can't we say that we simply don't understand (can't see) the root mechanisms of QM and that probability-based models are the best models we have right now?
Until the math behind gravity was understood, nested epicycles were the best model of the time to "explain" orbits, or at least model them. We probably are just missing some key clues and/or haven't spotted a key relationship yet, and thus are mucking around with probabilities and ghost multiverses. Probabilities could be our generation's epicycles. ("Dark-matter" could be in a similar boat.)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:35PM
Probabilistic behaviour isn't the real problem. The real problem is that one can mathematically prove that anything following the rules of quantum mechanics has to violate at least one of the conditions that one would expect to hold. The debate essentially is which of those is the right one to drop.
Basically those conditions are:
Quantum mechanics essentially says: Realism, Locality, Single world: Choose two. And the experiments confirm it.
Moreover, and related to this, there is the measurement problem: Quantum mechanics has two qualitatively different sets of rules: One set that describes what happens when you don't observe a system, and one that describes what happens on observation. The first one is deterministic, the second one probabilistic. The problem here is that ultimately observations are ultimately also just normal physical interactions, and therefore one would expect the rules for unobserved evolution to also apply to observations. But that would contradict the rules for observation; in particular you'll never get a definite measurement result out of unobserved evolution.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:41AM
Are you talking about Pilot Wave Theory?
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @01:48PM
That cat stuff is good for normies not good for engineer and programmer audience.
For background consider some normies harassing a EE about DSP filter coefficients. The normie asks "master, why is that filter coefficient 0.23 instead of 0.22 or 0.24?" Now a shitty EE can reply "Shut up padawan its just Fing magic". A good, or chaotic good, EE would give some ramble like "Well young padawan its complicated but when a Chebyshev Polynomial and a Fourier Analysis grow up into adults, and meet, and love each other very very much, they have some private parent time together, and then the stork delivers a brand new little filter coefficient of 0.23 which the Chebyshev and Fourier love very very much." Or some BS like that. I probably could have told you 25 years ago how it actually works, assuming the above is incorrect, if you don't use stuff like that you rapidly forget the details. So the point is something weird looks like Fing magic or is just a "well understood" math problem depending how stupid you and the people around you are.
So two EEs work on thermostats, later the padawans ask them questions to learn. One EE writes a neural network in his microcontroller, loads up all the synapse weights with random numbers, picks a random number of neurons and random topology and depth, and trains the hell out of it until it works, at least in simulation, at least most of the time. The other EE writes a classical PID controller right out of a control theory textbook. The young Padawans enter and ask the EEs some questions. "Master, in the PID controller, what is that specific term, why is it exactly 0.01126, what is its meaning, what is it?". "Well young Padawan, that coefficient is how important the long term sum of the error in temperature is, if its too small the average error in temperature never quite hits zero and if its too big it turns the thermostat into an oscillator, and if you were a naughty Padawan I would punish you with Bode stability graphs and all that shit that helped me pick the exact numerical value". "Oh OK, you're a very smart master, Other Master, in your neural network what is the meaning of the synapse weight between neurons 5243 and 47243?" "All we know about neural networks is they seem to work if they're big "enough" and trained "enough" but no one really knows why, now shut up with the questions I can't answer or you'll be shoveling banta fodder all week"
Another good one is telling computer scientists the world is not modeled functionally by mere variables like newton thought. Sometimes there's lambda functions mixed in there and many seem to contain random number functions and sometimes Turings Halting problem applies and the fastest way to predict what happens is to run the damn thing. Sometimes the prediction never halts or we just can solve it like when we try to mix too much gravity and relativity into quantum stuff. Or sometimes its just a PITA. Sometimes outta nowhere apparently impossible problems get solved. Its pretty much like using a debugger to load up memory with random data and pointing the PC to it. You predict you'll get nothing but as you know from cellular automata some simple and obvious rules can implement surprisingly complex structure. So that be us. The world models more similar to randomly executing code than like an algo with clear separation between code and data. Depending how noob they are you can talk about Harvard memory architecture and all that stuff.
There are analogies to quantum theory in the above ramble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:04PM (23 children)
Every few decades we need to have these very same quantum soul searching pontificates. For 100 years the philosophers have been frustrated that they lost the "what is reality" podium to physicists; perhaps if they weren't so condescending towards mathematics and they actually took some of it, then they could have participated in the conversation.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:26PM (7 children)
Their laziness goes quite beyond refusing to consider math. For more than half a century now they've had the late works of Wittgenstein (a mathematician by training, btw), where he explains in marvelous detail the folly of using the words such as "being" and "reality" in the sense employed in questions like "does the quantum state ultimately represent some objective aspect of reality?" I mean, he really chews it up for them in Philosophical Investigations, and then there are also Blue and Brown books, where he explains all the same things to an audience of Philosophy grad students (they need a special treatment because their brains are usually do badly damaged, they can't understand anything that doesn't use obscure Latin or lacks a reference to Kant on every page).
So short of learning some math and physics, they could have settled with an explanation of why they need to learn math and physics in order to escape the metaphysical swamp, where they all drown in the nebulous language they themselves created and insist on using. But few ever do. Many of them still flatly refuse to admit to a simple fact: the "reality" of which they want to speak is not bound by the grammar or semantics of their language. If anything, it is bound by the grammar or semantics of math, in as much as math applies to explaining physical phenomena, but definitely not by the ordinary language.
For example, one kind of difference between knowing and being is very well understood: think of the planet getting warmer versus Donald knowing it's getting warmer. The first scenario is described by the body of climate science done on the matter, and the latter scenario can be described by writing down what Donald says, or better yet, a brain scan. Put two climate scientists at the table, and they will have zero trouble discussing whether the planet is getting warmer, whether Donald is aware of it, and they will have no issue whatever in understanding these are two different things.
Closer to home, you can put two particle physicists at the table, and they will have zero trouble discussing the state of being of a photon (it manifests the properties of a wave and of a particle in different situations) versus the state of their knowledge about individual photons (they know they fly through a double-slit and create a wavy pattern on a sensor plate beyond).
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:09PM (2 children)
an audience of Philosophy grad students (they need a special treatment because their brains are usually do badly damaged, they can't understand anything that doesn't use obscure Latin or lacks a reference to Kant on every page).
Citation needed! Preferably one in Latin, or from Kant.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:05AM (1 child)
"Fabricati diem, pvnc."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Demena on Sunday May 07 2017, @05:48AM
Really? ''Make the day"...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:14PM (3 children)
Could you be more specific on how you know that this:
in as much as math applies to explaining physical phenomena,
has any basis in reality whatsoever? And if you indeed claim to know this, please tell us just how much math applies to physical phenomena. I feel like we are working with an unknown margin of error, one that could approach 100%, or in the range of "massively mistaken".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)
What are you getting at? We've got things like the Standard Model which describes the plethora of particles and their interaction strengths, all from fixing one free parameter (the electron mass). All of that is tied together with coupling constants calculable to a dozen or more significant digits that agree with experiment. The question has always been not IF mathematics describes the world around us, but WHY does it? Is mathematics a human construct? I don't understand the angle you are working from.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:53PM
The question has always been not IF mathematics describes the world around us, but WHY does it?
Really!!! Here, talk to Morpheus, the god of dreams: "Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real that math actually described it? Do you think those are real integers you are breathing?" Your question used to be the question, but it no longer is. It has been recognized as unwarranted presumption.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:56PM
I don't know whether the reality is mathematical, but it is at least conceivable that we live inside a mathematical structure. May be we are essentially AI agents inside a big computation, for example, and then the reality is actually mathematical, regardless of how the simulation is done, and regardless of whether we can grok what's going on. It is very easy to design mathematical universes where resident intelligent agents will be practically prevented from getting to the bottom of things, but we can also imagine a universe where it's quite possible. For example, if we live inside a von Neumann computer, we could hope one day to get access to the memory tape and the raw byte code, and figure out the instruction set. Or may be the universe is some kind of topological space, and we can discover the differential equations from which both gravity and quantum mechanical phenomena emerge with utmost certainty and accuracy.
And quite regardless, in many real-life instances we can totally quantify just how much math applies to natural phenomena. If we drop a golf ball near the surface of the Moon, it's going to follow Newton's laws of motion with mind-blowing accuracy. I don't want to compute the deviation from the GR in this case, but I will safely claim 99.9% accuracy there, probably quite a bit more, and GR itself likewise has been tested with amazing precision.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:06PM (14 children)
perhaps if they weren't so condescending towards mathematics
Who do you think invented math? Have you heard of Liebniz? Descartes? Pythagoras? Math is not the problem, unexamined metaphysical assumptions about math are the problem. As an American philosopher once said: "Those who do not know their history are condemned to be Mathematicians."
(See also: Πρὸς μαθηματικούς by Sextus Empiricus, 2nd Cent. C.E.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)
I know them, and others like Russel. But who fills all the hallowed halls of greater learning in the Philosophy departments? There aren't any mathematically inclined folk there (within rounding error).
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:48PM (2 children)
Ah, you must be a very blissful person. By the way, the name is Lord Bertrand Russell, two "l"s. And a Mandatory XKCD [xkcd.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
You are the blissful one, my friend, if you think anything deemed a philosophical tome in the last 100 years has come from anyone with a rudimentary training in mathematics. What you've gotten was a handful of physicist popularizers making tenuous and speculative claims on theoretical physics, which get picked up by the likes of Fritjof Capra and bastardized and over-extrapolated into some kind of bullshit New Age crap. Meanwhile all the professors in the Philosophy Departments are struggling to separate themselves from the sociologists because they can't even begin to understand any of the physics of the last 100 years. Once the Special Relativity horse has been beaten to death (because you only have to understand what a square root is), they've all retreated into analysis of pre-20th century philosophers because that is where their "safe places" are.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:53PM
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:18PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)
"Hilary Putnam is well known for his quasi-empiricism in mathematics," Unfortunately, he just passed.
And shirley you have heard of philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, John Searle, And did I mention Quine and "Polymath, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce". It is all right there at the end of a Wikipedia search, which while not necessarily reliable (Wot? Ayn Rand as an American Philosopher? Ha ha ah!), is much better than your undergraduate biases.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:17AM
Oh man, reading Putnam article... I remember reading about this guy. Just the "argument for the reality of mathematical entities" would be enough, and I can't really read after that with a straight face, especially as sober as I am right now.
I actually read Searle and saw him talk at SJSU may be 10 years back, a very entertaining lecture, can't remember a single thing, it was a bit over my head... But I remember during the Q&A someone asked him about the Chinese Room, and Searle instantly got livid, like Robert Fripp these days when a fan asks him to play 21st CSM. There was a lot of yelling after that, but it can all be summed up as "I moved on, you haven't".
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:00PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:41AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:17AM (2 children)
Cower in fear, you Sophist!
'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards and philosophers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'
But no, you did not offend, you just exposed your total ignorance of academic philosophy, which makes me think that perhaps that Philosophers need to do more public service and education. A bit of familiarity would make caricatures like yours rather impossible.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:44AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:48PM (1 child)
No. Was it the confused cousin of Leibniz? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:33PM
"A Leibnitz? In Austria?"
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:37PM
Is Quantum Theory About Reality or What We Know?
Yes.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:11PM (8 children)
If it was just what we know, tunnel diodes wouldn't tunnel and die shrinks wouldn't be so challenging. On the experimental side, if it was just what we know, sodium atoms wouldn't tunnel through a diffraction grating too fine to pass a sodium atom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)
I'm no expert either way but I would be very surprised if no one could come up with a non-quantum explanation for the observations behind these claims if significant motivation was involved.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:44PM
There's been a long time to do so and plenty of motivation. But each and every experiment shows that Heisenberg's uncertainty isn't just a limitation of measurement, or measurability. In a sense, it's a limitation on the resolution of reality itself.
If there's a deterministic layer below that, we haven't the slightest clue on how to probe it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:54PM
but I would be very surprised if no one could come up with a non-quantum explanation for the observations behind these claims
Sure, God willed it so, for example.
But if you're looking for an explanation that will pass empirical muster, you will inherently have a non-classical explanation. Quantum is merely the label for that.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:41PM (2 children)
Perhaps that is because there are no sodium atoms just wave packets that mimic the behavior of one? And those wave will have no problem passing through a material made up of other waves.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:46PM (1 child)
And that puts us right back to quantum mechanics being about reality rather than our ability to measure reality.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:13PM
In that case the theory should be able to predict physical phenomena such that one can build things without some measurements that because of practical reasons can't be had.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
It seems to be that what they're arguing is that it is almost as if there were some information we don't know about, like some kind of variables that are hidden to us. And if we were somehow cognizant of what these variables were, we could put them into our equations and have a fully deterministic model. I can't believe nobody has ever thought of this, this Hidden Variable explanation of quantum mechanics! It is so devilishly obvious, somebody must have thought of it before, and I'd swear I've heard of it before, but it just doesn't seem to ring a Bell.
(Score: 1) by Demena on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:16AM
A straw man perhaps? I read it as suggesting other mechanisms not hidden variables. And since we do not yet have an explanation for something as simple as inertia it is clear we do not know all the mechanisms.
If you are going to make a forlorn attempt to irrationally scathing please do not abuse the names of good people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:31PM (5 children)
Feel free to poke holes in this speculation. Suppose light really is a wave. Light waves mostly do not impact matter except on rare occasions. These rare interactions would LOOK LIKE particles.
Consider sound waves. Mostly they don't affect matter around them, but if intense or long enough, they can degrade materials, like make paint peel. The peeling paint will peel in a spotty way. If you crank up the sound and/or run it long enough, the peeling will show a standard interference pattern, just like "lots" of light does in aggregation.
Suppose light waves can "degrade" atoms, or otherwise affect them in a detectable way. If light waves are not detectable to our instruments other than when they degrade an atom, it would look like particles from our perspective because the "impacts" are usually rare enough to look spotty.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:32PM (4 children)
OK, so a wave with the energy of one photon, generated by a single-photon source, is split on a beam splitter. The two partial waves go towards two separate detectors. Detector 1 clicks. How does detector 2 know that it may not click as well?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:27AM
Detector 1 clicks. How does detector 2 know that it may not click as well?
Well, the obvious
rebuttalexplanation is that Detector 1 told it! They are in cahoots! This is why the "Prisoner's Dilemma" never works on the Quantum Level. Wow, it all becomes clear now!(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:09AM
Can I just say that something about this question coming from a user called Maxwell's Daemon is immensely satisfying? :D
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Demena on Sunday May 07 2017, @09:18AM (1 child)
Google Pilot Wave Theory. Note that it has been demonstrated with classical materials.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday May 07 2017, @10:51AM
No need to google it, I know what a pilot wave theory is. And it explicitly contradicts the assumptions in the comment I answered to, because in pilot wave theories there are particles in addition to waves.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.