chippy_pensoi

Well thanks for your time and everything fellas, but is anyone going to answer my original questions? Or is it just ‘beyond me’ and that’s that?

Obviously full understanding, or grasping of the process and components, is not the point here, just an overall understanding that is good enough, or accurate enough. Or perhaps you don’t understand your field well enough Yes, you’re quite right, just checked: He may not have said it! I stick by it though.

Okay, yes it is, if that’s what you want to call it. But I am asking for is understanding of the science part. Okay good, so as I am (yes, perhaps clumsily) defining paradox (slightly elastic, but consistent with ordinary usage) whatever reality QM points to is paradoxical, in the same sense as the duck-rabbit reality: it cannot be ‘held’ in the mind, at once.

Could you have a go at thinking about my duck-rabbit analogy? The point here is that, with the optical illusion I quoted, there is only the illusion of ‘somewhere in between’. Really there is no way whatsoever to hold, in your mind, the two interpretations at once. If you see what I mean, could you explain how QM really is ‘somewhere in between’ and not the paradox of the duck-rabbit image? So many scientists tell me, but without explaining why. I understand that I can never understand it deeply or fully without studying Physics for years, but I also know it is possible to understand this well enough to work out if my basic idea is right or wrong and, without going in depth, why: in the same way I can understand enough of Godel’s theorum, Kant’s philosophy or Darwin’s theory without having studied them for years.

It is the meaning, or close enough to be intelligible. A paradox is something which combines opposites, or contradictions in a way that reasoning, opinion or mental-imaging cannot grasp. I am not appealing to etymology, but to an ordinary person’s ability to understand language – with some flexibility. At anyrate… …the astronaut analogy is an attempt to express a contradictory reality that two sets of measuring instruments identify as non-contradictory or, as you say ‘what we measure it to be’. I am asking about the reality that the measurements are of. This might be meaningless to a physicist in his lab, but it is the root of my endeavours (and many other non-scientists interested in QM) and I am looking for clarification of the trunk and branches, if you will.

Einstein once said if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it. This is true for every field of enquiry I do understand well, so, assuming you agree (which you might not) and assuming you do understand QM, can you explain to me, simply, which of my four points is incorrect, and how? No problem if not, of course, but that is what I am asking for here, not a five year graduate course.

Okay. Let’s say we are astronauts exploring a new world. This world is totally inhospitable, with a poisonous and also completely opaque atmosphere, too gloomy to see. We therefore have to wear suits that are fitted with various instruments that read the environment. You and I are walking through an area of this world and we come across something. Our instruments tell us that it is moving, that it is carbon-based, that it seems to ingesting part of the environment, that it is about 10kg and as large as a dog, and so on. We conclude that it is some kind of ‘animal’ – and are we not justified in reaching such a conclusion? Even of attempting to ‘picture’ what the thing really is (‘behind’ the measurements, so to speak) Now let’s say that we move on and come across another thing on this world. We ‘read’ it, but this time my instruments tell me it is stationary, silicon-based, weights about 100okg, is as large as a house and your instruments tell you that it is moving extremely quickly, that it is about 10 grammes and the size of an oak leaf. Now, assuming that our instruments are completely accurate (in this future machines never break down), are we not still justified in trying picture what we have come across…? and are we not justified in assuming that we cannot? We can measure it, predict its movements, meaningfully speak about our readings and so on, but we cannot picture it. The meaning of paradox, originally, is ‘distinct from opinion’, one of many ordinary meanings that it still retains (it is rarely a good idea to exclusively rely on specialised technical definitions of words in ordinary discourse). Why not? Is this not precisely what our readings of quantum mechanics tell us, or if not ‘the case and not the case’ at least ‘one case and simultaneously another completely different case’.

Those few who think about it – if ajb is correct. Fine. But can you, or anyone else, help me to understand this? But I’m not talking about behaviour, or measurements, I’m talking about what the thing must be that is being measured / exhibiting behaviour. When the mind tries to picture it – well, it can’t, in the same way it cannot picture both ‘meanings’ of the duck-rabbit image above. This is what I mean by ‘paradox’ – unavailable to normal picturing.

Okay, but could you help me understand this? A lot of descriptions I have read of QM suggest that what the measurements must refer to is an extremely bizarre (I am suggesting ‘paradoxical’) state in which quantum systems are simultaneously exhibiting two contradictory states which ‘collapse’ into one or the other upon measurement. Is this not so, and if not, can you explain the error, because if it is an error, a lot of pop-science expositions of QM seem to be sharing it!

Thanks for the replies. I am not asking these questions as a scientist in order to further scientific understanding, but as an ordinary person trying to understand what is going on in Deep Science, and then what implications it might have for life outside the sciences. So, may I ask, is my understanding of points 1, 2 and 3 correct, at least, before we get into the philosophical implications?

Hello. New here: Sorry if this has been asked before, but can someone who understands physics please clear up my understanding of the implications of quantum mechanics. Which of the following four statements is false, if any, and why? 1. The behaviour of quantum systems is elegantly described by Schrödinger’s equation, which describes a wave (or wave ‘function’ – not quite sure of the difference). 2. When measured (e.g. in the famous double-slit experiment) quantum systems display or ‘collapse’ into particle-like behaviour. 3. It would seem that quantum systems exist in some kind of state that the mind simply cannot picture; in the same way it can picture, say, a duck. The inability of the mind to grasp wave-particle duality is the same as its inability to grasp the meaning of the duck and rabbit of the famous image at the same time… …all it can do is oscillate between the two interpretations, or blankly witness the image as it is without interpretation. 4. The famous thought experiment suggested by schrodinger is an attempt to illustrate the mind-boggling strangeness of the consequences of all this – that, until consciousness exists, reality can be, at the same time, one thing and its opposite: a paradox. I have been reading David Chalmers, who elegantly summarises the state of philosophical theorising about Quantum Mechanics. All avenues seem to lead either to extremely weak theories (e.g. that microscopic systems magically and arbitrarily change when they reach a certain size), or extremely bizarre ones (that the entire universe existed in a non-discrete superposed state until consciousness existed to collapse it into discreteness). Could it be that reality is paradoxical; meaning that reality is, essentially, impossible to grasp in the mind, only measure? I hope I have made myself clear, and hope someone with a background in quantum physics is patient enough to help me. Thanks