The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know

a reply to: aynock

simple but complex, how does that sound?

originally posted by: intergalactic fire
a reply to: moebius

I can't see what that has to do with QM or the german.

Why don't you just call him Max Planck instead of "The German"?

Hmmm... so, he logically drew out where it is down to a multiple universe theory or a no universe theory... heh, beyond all or nothing... either there are zillions of universes... a new one being created with every er... action of any and all quantum particles where it could "act" in more than one way (think about that for a moment... that's a lot of universes being generated)... or this "reality" isn't "real."

Classical minds existing in a quantum universe indeed!

Well, the unreality fits with my personal experiences... though on an existential level, we're certainly "real"... but it's defining terms... this universe isn't made of stuff, it's ...something else less physical... so should we start calling "physics" something else? Heh...

originally posted by: Baddogma
... either there are zillions of universes... a new one being created with every er... action of any and all quantum particles where it could "act" in more than one way (think about that for a moment... that's a lot of universes being generated)...

Yeah, right?

Think of every quantum particle in the entirety of the universe, and then think about all of the actions being done by all of those quantum particles in the entire universe during (say, for example) one click of Planck time...

...That's a an unimaginably large number of universes being created during every single moment of time, and an unimaginably huge number of universes that have already been created in the unimaginably huge number of "clicks" of planck time that has passed since the beginning of the universe.

It's not the Star Trek: TNG idea that every time someone makes a decision that a new universe is created. That is a simplified TV show idea. Rather (as I said above) it would be a new universe spawned simultaneously from every particle, everywhere in the universe, in every moment at the shortest timescale of the universe.

Considering how many universe that would actually be, I really can't believe in this idea of every particle in the universe constantly and continuously creating another universe after every "action" (and particles are in a constant state of doing some action or other).

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

And then take in that every new universe has a myriad of their own particles multiplying new universes, heh and ...wow... that is an expanding cloud of universes...

And the logic does point to one model or the other, and yeah, the "unreal" mind stuff (or at least just non real) version models my own take better... though there was one comment where he said the universes were inaccessible to each other, being other universes and all, but that forgets wormholes... pesky things could connect everything.

*poof* that was some fractal thinking there... glad it collapsed or I might have popped the reality bubble... heh

Living in a 2d and the 3rd is an illusion. So in other words living in one of the multiple holograms.
It feels real and that is what counts in the end

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

originally posted by: mbkennel
There isn't any actual evidence that natural consciousness is particularly dependent on, and requires, uniquely quantum behaviors.

"Uniquely quantum behaviors"

That's a good way of putting it. There is no reason to believe that what people call "consciousness" (whatever that may be) needs uniquely quantum behaviors beyond the way that everything else allegedly behaves according to QM.

To be specific the computational model of quantum computing is different from classical computing. I think brains are really awesome (at some things) classical computers.

a reply to: mbkennel

I think it very likely that consciousness does NOT require a 'quantum computer', i.e. using logic beyond classical computers because of entanglement of qbits. They're just so fragile, requiring extreme near absolute zero temperatures and really tiny, not evolutionarily robust or able to function at noisy wetware 300 Kelvin temperatures.
The thermodynamic relaxation to classical physics is extremely fast and very robust, which is why everything we commonly experience is not quantum mechanical.

i'm suggesting it is still an open possibility - and that there may yet be significant discoveries to be made by science

As difficult as entanglement is to believe, as well as understand, it is a well established property of quantum mechanics. And some physicists are suggesting that birds and other animals might be using the effect to see and navigate Earth's magnetic fields.

The process could work via light-triggered interactions on a chemical in bird’s eyes.

Light would excite two electrons on a molecule in the bird’s eye, switching one onto a second molecule, but the two would remain entangled even though they’re separated.

The Earth’s magnetic field would alter the alignment of the electron’s spins and in the process alter the chemical properties of the molecules. Physicists suspect that the reactions would leave varying concentrations of chemicals throughout the eye, possibly creating a picture of our planet’s magnetic field that would allow birds to orient themselves.

The theory is still in its infancy, but biophysicists already have their eyes on a few chemicals that might enable the birds to detect entanglement.
One such chemical is called cryptochrome and its potential effects already being studied.

It’s thought that that correlated pairs form in cryptochrome in the presence of blue light.

A group of physicists from the University of California at Irvine also studied the European Robin’s ability to sense small quantum changes by tampering with the magnetic field surrounding the birds.

A robin was placed in a cage during migration season and then the physicists switched the polarity of the magnetic field around it. The test indicated that changes on the level of one-thousandth the strength of Earth’s magnetic field would impact the birds’ abilities to orient themselves.

Perhaps even more fascinating is that European Robins might do a better job of detecting quantum entanglement than physics labs currently can. A group of physicists from the University of Oxford have proposed that entanglement could last in a bird’s retina for 100 microseconds, whereas physicists have only been able to make the interaction last for 80 microseconds – despite cooling their experiments to just above absolute zero.

The studies have implications beyond birds as well. A number of fish, reptiles, insects and even mammals are thought to use magnetic fields to navigate.

link

Seeing as how many posters have flown off at a tangent into a separate discussion and haven't even attempted to explain the issue Ron Garrett raises in the video, allow me to bring the thread back to its original intention.

Garrett takes issue with the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM put forward by Bohr and Heisenberg, who state that quanta can exist in two different states at the same time, and that this simultaneity of condition only resolves itself when an interaction of some kind occurs with the quanta and allegedly breaks down its 'wave-function' into either a wave form or a particle. This was argued and debated over for many years by Einstien, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) against Bohr and Heisenberg.

Schroedinger came up with his famous 'cat-in-the-box' thought experiment to highlight the absurdity of Bohr's and Heisenberg's claim for quantum weirdness. Placing a 'live' cat in a sealed box in which there is a device hooked up to a quantum trigger which will release a hammer to break a phial of poison when a random event of atomic decay (the trigger) occurs, and thus will kill the cat.
However, we cannot predict when the random atomic decay will take place, so if we return to the experiment an hour later, we cannot know if the cat is alive or dead. Bohr and Heisenberg interpret this as saying that the cat exists in a duality situation, that it is both 'alive' and 'dead' at the same time. Clearly, to all common sense, this is counter-intuitive, but the two-slit experiment seems to confirm the cat to be both alive and dead, because of the interference patterns (bands of dark and light) obtained during the experiment.

Garrett sees the interference patterns as being obtained due to a natural mechanism of polarisation, and that the slit acts like a polarised reflector against the photon and thus reduces the photon's amplitude, allowing some of the photon's energy through the slit whilst sending some of the photon's energy away at right angles before passing through the slit, which would account for the interference patten. Some aspect of the slit itself is interfering (interacting) with the photon? If this is true, it has profound implications against Bohr's and Heisenberg's interpretation.

Something to bear in mind is that a quanta's alleged wave-particle duality is not broken down into either a wave or a particle simply by our act of observation. Our act of observation is passive and not dynamic. Observation does not send out any energy that can interact with the quanta, it is the quanta that interacts with our sensing mechanisms by being radiated towards us. So let's put another absurd process of thinking to bed...consciousness cannot create natural reality.

Quanta radiating all around us, bathing our bodies, stimulate us into a conscious state, and it is in this way we are energised into consciousness.

a reply to: aynock

some potentially interesting findings more directly related to the brain:

The important conclusion suggested by the experiments is that microtubules - in particular, brain microtubules - are macroscopic quantum systems. Already this would be enormously important conclusion. To my personal opinion, the interpretation in the talk is not convincing at the level of details and TGD inspired modification of the proposal in terms of flux tube coordinate grids making possible TQC architectures with tubulin dimers defining bits defining in turn TQC program looks more plausible to me. A natural generalization of of 1-braid TQC to 2-braid TQC is also highly suggestive in TGD framework and could be seen as evolutionary step assignable to the emergence of microtubules. The interpretation based in Fibonacci conduction paths fails to predict correctly the number of resonances. An attractive interpretation for the resonance frequencies is in terms of phase transitions between A and B type lattices. If A type lattices can be generated only in heff increasing phase transitions induced by AC stimulus at resonance frequencies, one could understand their experimental absence and why super-conductivity like state is generated.

link

a reply to: Nochzwei

it's indeed an illusion in fact dimensions don't exist, well there is only 1 dimension if that would satisfy you.
simple as that

originally posted by: elysiumfire
Clearly, to all common sense, this is counter-intuitive, but the two-slit experiment seems to confirm the cat to be both alive and dead, because of the interference patterns (bands of dark and light) obtained during the experiment.

A cat is not a single isolated quantum particle. The other alternative which I subscribe to is that there is something different in dynamics of macroscopic collections of particles in large numbers which interact with the universe which causes cats to be either alive or dead and not in a superposition.

There was a paper I recently posted that said how a tiny non-unitary part of the time evolution will, in macroscopic systems, result in exponentially growing effects which when combined with decoherence will cause the appearance of collapse into traditional classical states.

Quantum experiments are those which suppress this effect the most.

Or our universe could be a simulation. That means every thing that doesn't seem possible can be explained.