Re: Quantum spookiness in the brain?

Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Would it be appropriate to gloss your view as: the only way to find
out what happened to the cat is to get into the cat box yourself - and
when you do so, people outside don't know what happened, it really is
still /not/ decided what happened (even though it's the past) unless
they too are inside the box?

Yes. But it isn't just *my* view.

People, physicists, who work in QM, talk about wave functions
all the time. Some get to talking about them as if they
have a reality of their own.

They don't. They are human constructs. We construct them
to fit a model, an experiment, or whatever, but *we* construct
them.

Add to that the following confusion. One can determine the
state of a system from its wave function, or, if the wavefunction
is a composite, we can determine the probabilities of observing
one out of several possible states.

Since we believe that systems have states, we then get to believe
that they have wave functions, whether we invent them or not.
Indeed, this leads to the thinking that wave functions exist
on their own.

It gets to be a serious philosophical problem. Take some
physical system. We think it might be in one or another
state. We do NOT believe for a moment that it doesn't have
a state. We just believe that we don't know what that state
is.

So we make measurements and measure things about the system.

Then we construct theories involving wave functions to explain
what we've observed.

But the point is that *we* construct them according to what
we (think we) know about the system.

Different observers can know different things. My example
was about two sets of observers who don't communicate.
Others have given examples of "entangled" observations
where the outcome of one measurement depends on a previous
measurement. There is linkage between the experiments because
the same system is being "messed with".[0]

In my example there is no "messing" with the cat.[1]

So there is really nothing amazing about my example once
one understands that there is no *THE* wavefunction of
a given system.


[0] Such experiments get "entangled" in Bell's Theorem
or as it is sometimes known Bell's Inequality. This is
another matter entirely.

[1] Yes, I know that the photons entering our eyes were
reflected off the cat but I'm not going to even think that
those photons changed the cat's life span in any way. This
is a macroscopic experiment, not an example of Compton scattering.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Superposed observers (was No new Einstein)
    ... >>observers, which is barely mentioned in other approaches. ... a measurement result to be a physical object. ... >whether the cat is alive or dead. ... Nick, but is not yet alive or dead relative to me. ...
    (sci.physics.research)
  • Re: Quantum spookiness in the brain?
    ... identical brains will think absolutely the same thoughts and make ... have absolutely identical brains because of quantum uncertainty. ... Consider the Schrodinger's Cat Modified: ... and hidden from the first observers by ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Quantum spookiness in the brain?
    ... identical brains will think absolutely the same thoughts and make ... have absolutely identical brains because of quantum uncertainty. ... Consider the Schrodinger's Cat Modified: ... and hidden from the first observers by ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution is NOT random
    ... There is only a live cat wave function. ... on what the observers know about the system. ... Take a single die. ...
    (talk.origins)