"observing changes the result" doesn't mean conciousness attempting to look at it changes the result, there is nothing special about conciousness (in quantum mechanics)
"observing changes the result" means we try to measure atoms and fields but unfortunately our measurement tools are also made out of atoms and fields which interact with the atoms and fields we are trying to measure, giving us a different result than if we don't attempt to measure it
It does bring up interesting questions about what the "real" behavior of reality is tho, since anything we observe is technically different than what it would be if left alone. We can only ever know what a slightly altered state of reality is
Think of it like this:
You can use a tennis ball machine to measure how far away a house is by firing the tennis ball at a constant velocity, timing how long it takes the tennis ball to come back to you, multiplying that time by the velocity, and dividing by 2 (since you measured the distance for a round trip). This works pretty darn well for measuring the distance to houses.
But now try this same trick to measure the distance to another ball. When your measuring ball hits the ball you want to measure, it doesn't stay resolutely planted in the ground like that nice friendly house. The energy from your measuring ball bounces the ball being measured off into the distance. Even if you could get your measuring ball to return, the ball you measured isn't in the place you measured it.
Replace that tennis ball with a photon, and you have the basic picture. There's no such thing as passive observation. Measuring something interacts with that thing. Conventional measurement is like in the case with the house, the thing being measured is so much bigger and more stable than the thing we're measuring with that the effect is negligible. But once you start trying to measure something on the same scale as your measuring tool, the ensuing chaos makes it basically impossible to get useful measurements.
Every road leads to Plato's cave
My teacher had a good comparison for this: observing macroscoping reality like we do microscopic reality would be like throwing a car at another car to measure its speed or position. Obviously you alter the course of events this way.
Fortunately light doesn't do much in the macroscopic world, so we can use it to observe stuff.
Not quite - observability in quantum mechanics is about the event producing an interaction that could potentially be measured, regardless of whether we actually attempt to measure it. By interacting with other things the superposition is collapsed and we can determine it's current properties, but it's still the "real" behaviour of things, because we can only determine things behaviours from their interactions with other things - not knowing what they do when left alone isn't just about there not being a human around to interacts with them, but about there not being any other particles - no atoms, no electrons, no quarks - for them to interact with either.
just measure everything from the same side it'll all get shifted in the same direction
This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn't actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that's mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger's equation + boundary conditions.
The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as "Particles + extras", you will fail. You have to think of it as "Waves + extras". It then, suddenly makes logical sense.
It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.
The big problem isn't that the math is hard, or that's often impossible to visualise. The problem is that a whole bunch of charlatans intentionally misinterpret what "observing" is in QM, to make money off of gullible victims.
To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied. It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.
The problem of quantum mechanic is that the physics it shows us is not intuitive, and it sometimes breaks other laws of physics.
Quantum intrication means that information travels faster than light for example. Counterfactuality also breaks causality.
It's not the maths that are the problem, it's that it doesn't make physical sense in the world we currently understand. And the equations explain nothing. They merely describe a a world that doesn't make sense.
Quantum mechanic is like having a machine from the future that does cool things, but you don't understand how it works. It's like people did chemistry before they understand what chemistry was. We do uber cool things with it, but it is a spotlight on our ignorance at the same time.
Actually, I think it's time to reveal, that to some people QM is actually pretty intuitive.
It's just that the masses and the news media don't understand it, so they assume that nobody does. The particle worldview is deeply ingrained into many people's brains, because it's deeply useful to them on a day-to-day basis. If you loosen that requirement, then there's literally nothing standing in your way to accept a wave-worldview.
I definitely agree it's unintuitive to the layman. We never have to deal with large scale wave interactions, on the classical physics level. I disagree, however, that we can't understand it. It does make sense, it just doesn't map to our default particle mindset.
I disagree that it breaks the laws of physics though. It just shows some flaws in our methodology. E.g. the speed of light isn't a limit on fundamental speed, but of information. It just happens that the only time we can have transmission without information is via decoherence.
QM is definitely incomplete. We know the what, but not the why. That applies to most of physics however. Newtonian physics is the same. We know what happens, but not why. It's just that Newtonian physics is intuitive to our savannah running brain, while QM requires more mental work.
Quantum entanglement is when the quantum states of two or more objects become linked in such a way that the state of one object seems to instantly affect the state of the other object, regardless of the distance between them. this does not mean that information can travel faster than the speed of light, that's a misconception.
Entanglement is a probabilistic process, it does not transmit classical information faster than the speed of light. The measurement result of a quantum system is inherently random, and it cannot be controlled or transmitted deterministically. The apparent faster-than-light transmission in entangled systems is the result of quantum correlation, and it does not equip systems with a faster way to communicate classical information across spacetime.
You have to think of it as "Waves + extras". It then, suddenly makes logical sense.
Unless you observe the double slit experiment, and then suddenly it's particles again
Sean Carroll had a great take: everything is waves in fields and we know of five fields: Strong Weak Electric Gravity Higgs
Particle behavior arises from interacting waves. So anything that acts like a particle is actually waves interfering with each other.
God doesn't play dice, he surfs, got it.
Consciousness has nothing to do with the "observations" in quantum mechanics. The wave function collapses when we entangle ourselves with the outcome. Whether or not we actually record those "observations" is irrelevant.
The term they should have used from the get-go is "measurement" instead of "observation". Humans will always tack on mystical mumbo jumbo if given a chance, muddying up the waters for us laymen trying to learn, and "measurement" sounds much more neutral to me.
Everybody knows you need to fall off your toilet and hit your head on the sink for instant flux capacitor.
IMO, the perceived inscrutability of quantum mechanics is mostly the result of the dominance of the "shut up and calculate" approach to the question of interpretation.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why focusing on the math and ignoring the rest is a good approach to have when you're actually doing practical scientific work in the field. But if you're wanting quantum physics to "make sense", then you're asking about what it actually says about the underlying reality, and that's a question that requires thinking about interpretations of QM.
Once you start thinking about it in terms of a particular interpretation (or category of interpretation), then QM makes as much sense as any other high level physical theory (certainly no worse than general relativity.)
The various interpretations help in processing the math, but isn't the same as understanding - there are a bunch of fundamental facts about quantum mechanics that we just don't understand, even though we know the elements exist, that they happen, and even how we can take advantage of them.
The difference between quantum mechanics and other high level theories like relativity is actually quite large, because the higher level interactions all derive from quantum level states and interactions. At the point where question marks really start popping up (weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity, dark matter &/ energy) it's almost always a matter of quantum mechanics getting involved and being weird.
My quantum mechanics professor started our first lecture with "if you think you understand quantum mechanics you do not understand quantum mechanics", because there are still some really big question marks around our understanding of it. Especially what in the fuck spin actually is.
The various interpretations help in processing the math
In the same sense that the territory helps in processing the map, I suppose.
but isn't the same as understanding - there are a bunch of fundamental facts about quantum mechanics that we just don't understand, even though we know the elements exist, that they happen, and even how we can take advantage of them.
I'm not sure what you mean here; discussions of interpretation are literally about understanding these facts.
The difference between quantum mechanics and other high level theories like relativity is actually quite large, because the higher level interactions all derive from quantum level states and interactions. At the point where question marks really start popping up (weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity, dark matter &/ energy) it's almost always a matter of quantum mechanics getting involved and being weird.
Going to have to disagree with you here, relativity, both special and general, get just as weird without any need to invoke quantum physics. And they're not the only one. The only difference is that we have a general consensus on how to interpret them, which we don't with QM.
My quantum mechanics professor started our first lecture with "if you think you understand quantum mechanics you do not understand quantum mechanics", because there are still some really big question marks around our understanding of it. Especially what in the fuck spin actually is.
I think this is equivocating a bit; there is a difference between the things we don't understand about quantum physics, and the things we just straight up don't know. I think it's possible to understand quantum physics, with the caveat that understanding means recognizing that there are things about it that we simply do not know.
I think a degree of shut up and calculate is needed, at least in the beginning. Without a solid math based understanding of the fundamentals, trying to prognosticate on the ‘meaning’ of it is inevitably going to fall into pop-sci style stuff. You’ve gotta know what you’re dealing with a little.
I'm not so sure. I think a degree of shut up and calculate if you actually want to get a physicists level understanding, a large degree. But I strongly believe that it's no harder to give a clever layman a working understanding of the underlying concepts, in purely conceptual terms. Honestly, I think the reason the quantum mechanics has been so prone to pop-sci charlatans is that legitimate science communicators keep trying to explain it in interpretation-agnostic terms, which makes it sound far more mystical and paradoxical than it is.
Quantum mechanics makes no difference, just throw cheese at it, if it eats the cheese it's cool and we can get along, if it doesn't we need to shoot it.
Hey, that's racist against asian people.
Have you seen the movies? The only sane person who messed with quantum stuff is the camera man, and he never speaks of anything.
I believe once we fully understand consciousness, we'll understand the nature of reality. Of course, I could be wrong.
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone understands exactly what consciousness is for and why we have one, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
I hope that's not true. Just a constant horse and carrot.
It always worked out in Alpha Centauri. Boom two free techs. gg
We're never going to 'understand consciousness' because it comes to conclusions we don't like, so it's in our best interests to not understand it.
Continental philosophy in a nutshell. Find some cool sciencey concept, and abstract it beyond anything that is reasonable.
What would oceanic philosophy be then? Dilute everything?
Continental philosophy is so named because the Brits referred to the philosophers in continental Europe thus. The opposing school is more generally known as analytical philosophy, and posits that rigorous logic can be applied to philosophy.
Continental philosophy: "love should be a dimension, just like time, that would be awesome."
Analytical philosophy: "I'll buy you a beer if you can prove to me that the electron exists."
"Consciousness affects outcomes" is such a cringe take, it's more like, you're in a 3d slice of time and where you inhabit is based on what you do and you're allowed to do anything within that as long as it's self-consistent, with things self-correcting if they're not.
We have the many-worlds interpretation that makes perfect sense (as long as you accept that consciousness is just a function of the particles in your brain and not some spiritual essence detached from the laws of physics), but Niels Bohr had to convince everyone that Quantum Mechanics is not supposed to make any sense just so that he could win his argument against Albert Einstein, so now everyone think it's just another interpretation on equal footing with the Copenhagen nonsense.
I wouldn't call it weird, just unconventional.
all i know about quantum physics is that its what killes black dwarfs
If only conciousness did affect reality, it would salvage the soul, which sadly doesn't appear to exist - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/
I wish conciousness had a role in it, because that would imply we had some kind of essence that effected the universe, something we could call a soul
