Thought Provoker
Posts: 530 Joined: April 2007
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Hi BWE,
Quote (BWE @ Feb. 20 2010,03:32) | Quote (Thought Provoker @ Feb. 19 2010,17:24) | Furthermore, I suggest that Quantum Mechanics is the only known mechanism where two mutually exclusive "realities" can exist at the same time (quantum superposition). |
But wait... Isn't that exactly what they don't do is exist in multiple realities at the same time? I thought that you had to choose whether you want to look at them in space (position) or time (momentum) and that the reason you couldn't get both is because they don't do both simultaneously. I'm probably wrong. I just learned Schroedinger's equations and Feynman diagrams last year and I'm miss-applying them all over the place,
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Yes, I'm still around. Excuse me for not responding to you earlier. I didn't want to head down a off-topic trail.
But what the heck!
While I enjoy provoking though by making bold statement about Quantum Mechanics, I am really just a "physicist wannabe". That being said, the sense I get from trying to understand how Roger Penrose sees reality is that the apparent quantum superposition actually exists until Objective Reduction occurs.
A simple example is a qubit. from Wikipedia...
"A qubit has some similarities to a classical bit, but is overall very different. Like a bit, a qubit can have two possible values—normally a 0 or a 1. The difference is that whereas a bit must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both."
Initially, the presumption was that superposition wasn't real. As you said "...they don't do both simultaneously". However, after nearly 100 years of experiments, "spooky action at a distance" still confounds general acceptance.
Penrose coined the term Quanglement. Here is a reasonably sounding summary I could conveniently cut and paste...
"In quantum theory, one of the most paradoxical issues is the entanglement of multiple particles in superposed states, which Schrödinger illustrated with his cat and which Einstein considered a reductio ad absurdum of quantum mechanics. Penrose calls quantum entanglement quanglement (2004, p. 407). ... The problem with quanglement is that almost every particle in the universe may be quangled with innumerable others. Quanglement may even create the classical surface of our phenomenal reality. Although physical reality may contain infinities of possible worlds, the fact remains that all we see is a unique classical world. That may be because we quangle with anything we touch and thus force it to join our world (Aczel, 2001)."
What this reviewer sees as a "problem", I see as a likely explaination of reality. That is that quantum effects are quangled with innumerable others in space-time (IOW in both space and time).
With quanglement, future causes can create past effects. This is a parsimonious explaination of Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiments (link).
We tend to instinctively reject such retrocausality because of causal paradoxes (e.g. killing ones ancestors). However, with quanglement classical paradoxes are prevented from happening.
With "spooky action at a distance" the answer is either faster than light communication or retrocausality. Frankly, it is a matter of semantics because they mean the same thing in Minkowskian geometry.
The metaphysical argument of Many Worlds has been offered but, to me, you might as well argue GodDidIt. It is just as valid a possibility and has the advantage of extreme popularity.
As an attempt to make this topical, when the reviewer talks about "anything we touch", it really is anything our conscious mind perceives.
This is why Penrose has been very interested in the possibility of Quantum Consciousness. It is necessary in order to complete his view of reality.
As for Free Will being a separate issue from Consciousness (h/t Tom Ames), I suggest if consciousness is directly linked to creating reality and vice versa, it is pretty much a moot point. We think, therefore we are… so is the universe.
And if you want to call me a Quantum Quack for thinking this, go ahead. You won’t be the first.
EDIT - I see Joy and I posted at the same time. Now you can compare and contrast Joy's beautify prose verses my crude engineering ramblings.
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