Are we not only 'observers', but 'influencers' and 'co-creators'?

[Brad Watson_Miami FL]

A primary aspect of quantum mechanics is: the observer affects the experiment. My question to the members of this forum is: Are we also 'influencers' and 'co-creators'? Does it depend on the experiment being carried out or is the effect of consciousness consistent throughout? Thanks and please elaborate on your answers.

 

- Brad Watson, Miami, FL

independent researcher and theorist

[Mr Skeptic]

Think of it this way: suppose that you were entirely blind, but had a near-limitless supply of tennis balls. You could "see" by throwing tennis balls at objects and seeing how they bounce off. If you were trying to "look" at a light-weight object, you'd move it around a lot because the tennis balls are fairly heavy. A similar problem arises with the very small things: photons have momentum, so they will nudge the items that you are trying to observe with them. Even worse, to get a clearer picture you need to use a small enough "ball", but the shorter the wavelength the higher the momentum. This limits how well you can observe an object, since you either will not be able to tell exactly where it is or where it is going, and trying to do so will nudge it. One of the more popular models of quantum mechanics describes things as being in a certain wavefunction, and observing the wavefunction collapses it. Thus, observers such as people, sunlight, cameras, or rocks will collapse wavefunctions if the interact with a particle.

[darkenlighten]

This one is annoying, I've seen this misunderstanding multiple times. Its not because that we personally are aware of the observation but the method in which we observe, such as Mr. Skeptic is stating. It's not our mind or consciousness that has anything to do with collapsing the wave function or affecting an event, but due to the fact that we have to change the system in order to find out what is going on.

[swansont]

A primary aspect of quantum mechanics is: the observer affects the experiment.

 

Not so much. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is not the same as the observer effect. The primary aspect of QM is that basically everything is a wave, with certain properties being quantized, and the HUP is a result of that.

 

And, as the preceding posts point out, consciousness is not required to collapse a wave function.

[Xerxes]

I agree - "observers" don;t come into it.

 

Try this.

 

You will often see the uncertainty principle explained from what has become known as the "realist" perspective. Namely, that if you want to look at an electron, say, then you have to bombard it with a photon, which changes its energy, position, etc. That's fine as an illustration, but that's all it is.

 

So, it was proposed in, oh I dunno, 1920-something by de Broglie that elementary particles like, say the electron, had "wave-like" properties. And some-one else (M. Born?) found that the square of the wavefunction is the probability of finding our electron at any place at any time; it's called it's "probability density"

 

Now the wavefunction is a measure of the electron's energy - different energy, different wavefunction. (Technically it's an energy eigenfunction).) It therefore follows if you know the energy, you know the wavefunction, and if you know that then, by taking the square, you have a probability density plot. But that's all you have! You don't know precisely where it is.

 

Let's now say you do know where it is. What does your probability density plot look like now? It's a flat line with only a single P = 1 peak, the location. The only way we know of to get a plot like that from a "wave" is to take a whole lot of different waves, each representing different energies, such that "peaks and troughs" destructively interfere except in one place, where the interference is constructive, generating the single peak representing exact location.

 

But then you don't know which wave, which energy eigenvalue, "belongs" to the electron. So the uncertainty principle doesn't say "we can't find out experimentally", or in other words, "observers collapse the wavefunction", it says these two properties - energy and location - cannot as a matter of principle both be known simultaneously to the same level of precision.

[PhDwannabe]

Think of it this way: suppose that you were entirely blind, but had a near-limitless supply of tennis balls. You could "see" by throwing tennis balls at objects and seeing how they bounce off. If you were trying to "look" at a light-weight object, you'd move it around a lot because the tennis balls are fairly heavy. A similar problem arises with the very small things: photons have momentum, so they will nudge the items that you are trying to observe with them. Even worse, to get a clearer picture you need to use a small enough "ball", but the shorter the wavelength the higher the momentum. This limits how well you can observe an object, since you either will not be able to tell exactly where it is or where it is going, and trying to do so will nudge it. One of the more popular models of quantum mechanics describes things as being in a certain wavefunction, and observing the wavefunction collapses it. Thus, observers such as people, sunlight, cameras, or rocks will collapse wavefunctions if the interact with a particle.

 

This one is annoying, I've seen this misunderstanding multiple times. Its not because that we personally are aware of the observation but the method in which we observe, such as Mr. Skeptic is stating. It's not our mind or consciousness that has anything to do with collapsing the wave function or affecting an event, but due to the fact that we have to change the system in order to find out what is going on.

 

 

OK, maybe a simple laudation is kind of inappropriate for a thread post, but, umm, holy crap! FINALLY somebody explains this! I hear mystics of all shapes and sizes bringing up the observer-collapse-of-the-wavefunction to buttress the theory behind whatever crystal healing or past-life channeling they're selling, and I NEVER know how to explain it! Why did no instructor ever put it like this/why did I never manage to intuit this myself? Thanks guys!

[Widdekind]

If I might make a "war-game" analogy, to (say) Squad Leader or some such, a (human) experimenter setting up some apparatus, is like "choosing the terrain" map-boards on which to play. And, those particular "map-boards" will, obviously, affect how the "battle" of the experiment unfolds. Using different "map-boards" will generate different dynamics.

 

But, in this analogy, the "playing pieces" of the (actual) particles "move themselves" across the chosen terrain, according to the dynamical equations of motion (Schrodinger / Klein-Gordon Wave Equations; Type I Process) and measurement (Wave Function Collapse; Type II Process), which can (sometimes, seemingly) show non-local instantaneity.

[Brad Watson_Miami FL]

Think of it this way: suppose that you were entirely blind, but had a near-limitless supply of tennis balls.

 

Mr Skeptic,

 

Pardon me for cutting your quote off, but I choose not to deal with ridiculous hypothetical scenarios. I'm constantly 'creating' and documenting real non-coincidental synchronic reactions. In other words, I choose reality and recognize my influences on it.

Edited October 8, 2010 by Brad Watson_Miami FL

[lemur]

Mr Skeptic,

 

Pardon me for cutting your quote off, but I choose not to deal with ridiculous hypothetical scenarios. I'm constantly 'creating' and documenting real non-coincidental synchronic reactions. In other words, I choose reality and recognize my influences on it.

 

He was just trying to explain a concept with an analogy that you could picture fairly easily. Concepts are part of reality and you influenced this one negatively by eschewing it only because it was explained in the form of an analogy. Analogies are also part of reality, btw, unless you've narrowed your reality to a subset of the universal set of everything that exists.

Edited October 8, 2010 by lemur

[Mr Skeptic]

What is so ridiculous about it? How exactly does it fail as a metaphor to reality? Do you think you can "see" in any other way than as described, other than that your "tennis balls" are smaller (but still have momentum)?