A person who would state they fully understand quantum mechanics is the last person i would trust to have any understanding of it.
I find this sentiment can lead to devolving into quantum woo and mysticism. If you think anyone trying to tell you quantum mechanics can be made sense of rationally must be wrong, then you implicitly are suggesting that quantum mechanics is something that cannot be made sense of, and thus it logically follows that people who are speaking in a way that does not make sense and have no expertise in the subject so they do not even claim to make sense are the more reliable sources.
It’s really a sentiment I am not a fan of. When we encounter difficult problems that seem mysterious to us, we should treat the mystery as an opportunity to learn. It is very enjoyable, in my view, to read all the different views people put forward to try and make sense of quantum mechanics, to understand it, and then to contemplate on what they have to offer. To me, the joy of a mystery is not to revel in the mystery, but to search for solutions for it, and I will say the academic literature is filled with pretty good accounts of QM these days. It’s been around for a century, a lot of ideas are very developed.
I also would not take the game Outer Wilds that seriously. It plays into the myth that quantum effects depend upon whether or not you are “looking,” which is simply not the case and largely a myth. You end up with very bizarre and misleading results from this, for example, in the part where you land on the quantum moon and have to look at the picture of it for it to not disappear because your vision is obscured by fog. This makes no sense in light of real physics because the fog is still part of the moon and your ship is still interacting with the fog, so there is no reason it should hop to somewhere else.
Now quantum science isn’t exactly philosophy, ive always been interested in philosophy but its by studying quantum mechanics, inspired by that game that i learned about the mechanic of emerging properties. I think on a video about the dual slit experiment.
The double-slit experiment is a great example of something often misunderstood as somehow evidence observation plays some fundamental role in quantum mechanics. Yes, if you observe the path the two particles take through the slits, the interference pattern disappears. Yet, you can also trivially prove in a few line of calculation that if the particle interacts with a single other particle when it passes through the two slits then it would also lead to a destruction of the interference effects.
You model this by computing what is called a density matrix for both the particle going through the two slits and the particle it interacts with, and then you do what is called a partial trace whereby you “trace out” the particle it interacts with giving you a reduced density matrix of only the particle that passes through the two slits, and you find as a result of interacting with another particle its coherence terms would reduce to zero, i.e. it would decohere and thus lose the ability to interfere with itself.
If a single particle interaction can do this, then it is not surprising it interacting with a whole measuring device can do this. It has nothing to do with humans looking at it.
At that point i did not yet know that emergence was already a known topic in philosophy just quantum science, because i still tried to avoid external influences but it really was the breakthrough I needed and i have gained many new insights from this knowledge since.
Eh, you should be reading books and papers in the literature if you are serious about this topic. I agree that a lot of philosophy out there is bad so sometimes external influences can be negative, but the solution to that shouldn’t be to entirely avoid reading anything at all, but to dig through the trash to find the hidden gems.
My views when it comes to philosophy are pretty fringe as most academics believe the human brain can transcend reality and I reject this notion, and I find most philosophy falls right into place if you reject this notion. However, because my views are a bit fringe, I do find most philosophical literature out there unhelpful, but I don’t entirely not engage with it. I have found plenty of philosophers and physicists who have significantly helped develop my views, such as Jocelyn Benoist, Carlo Rovelli, Francois-Igor Pris, and Alexander Bogdanov.
I find myself in agreement with your perspective although my own perspective is very different.
I have naturally shy’d away from existing philosophical literature and influences because i felt they stopped me from coming up with answers myself. Just like you i find great joy in exploring solutions to mystery.
I have been exploring the concepts of my concious and the reality i find in a very to me organized and structured (autistic) way but as i side effects i have my own interpretation of concepts like what is “information” (the relation between more then a single something )
While i find my concepts often don’t translate well in language compared with conventional knowledge its critical to note that as i am reading up more as a matured person I find it adds to my personal understanding rather then contradicting it.
I received a lot of knowledge from playing the outer wilds and things like the dual slit experiment but i assure you i don’t take games literally and most knowledge gaining is connecting pre existing dots in my head after being inspired.
There is a good reason why my comment may seem mystifying,
Part is rooted in an observation i made that objective truth can never be fully known. But hear me out.
All our observations are made trough a subjective lens is too easy of an argument i also have a historical example to illustrate.
The plague mask and outfit used flowers because knowledged people at the time thought the sick was in the smell. We know this is not true but the general idea was close enough and it did have a noticeable benefitial effect.
The breakthrough is also important in the chain that lead to further knowledge later on.
The science was incorrect but also good enough to be useful.
In the same pattern we believe we understand most materials but a more advanced future scientist could know things that leaves us no better then the plague doctors in general.
I made an important secondary conclusion based on experience.
There is no benefit to be gained by dismissing the most reasonable incorrect knowledge when there is no reasonable “more correct” interpretation to be found.
I am still not convinced these translate my thoughts well but what this second part odoes is solve the mystic sentiment you mention.
We should strive to find solutions to the unknown because we know there is useful knowledge to be gained.
We should apply the reasonable knowledge we find to better our understanding and lives.
But what we should also do and this is the sentiment i am personally worried about is keep looking beyond our understanding and keep trying to challenge what we do know.
What i initially found when exploring quantum mechanics is that early ideas where dismissed because they challenged what we thought we knew well and thats a line of thinking i find personally shocking when coming for i scientist. I salivate when reality breaks my initial understanding of reality because its such an opportunist. Finding out just how wrong you are is a major step to get more correct.
I do have additional personal bias because of my differences in interpretation. I cant be put it more fairly then this “i experience some kind of dogma about established knowledge when i present my own interpretation of often the same concept, which worries me for our ability to evolve our understanding of the concept” This happens frequently so i experience a surplus of dogmatic scientific arguments around me. Even if they may not be as dogmatic if new knowledge was present in a compatible interpretation.
I hope this clarified my posts a bit, thanks for the detailed reply.
I find this sentiment can lead to devolving into quantum woo and mysticism. If you think anyone trying to tell you quantum mechanics can be made sense of rationally must be wrong, then you implicitly are suggesting that quantum mechanics is something that cannot be made sense of, and thus it logically follows that people who are speaking in a way that does not make sense and have no expertise in the subject so they do not even claim to make sense are the more reliable sources.
It’s really a sentiment I am not a fan of. When we encounter difficult problems that seem mysterious to us, we should treat the mystery as an opportunity to learn. It is very enjoyable, in my view, to read all the different views people put forward to try and make sense of quantum mechanics, to understand it, and then to contemplate on what they have to offer. To me, the joy of a mystery is not to revel in the mystery, but to search for solutions for it, and I will say the academic literature is filled with pretty good accounts of QM these days. It’s been around for a century, a lot of ideas are very developed.
I also would not take the game Outer Wilds that seriously. It plays into the myth that quantum effects depend upon whether or not you are “looking,” which is simply not the case and largely a myth. You end up with very bizarre and misleading results from this, for example, in the part where you land on the quantum moon and have to look at the picture of it for it to not disappear because your vision is obscured by fog. This makes no sense in light of real physics because the fog is still part of the moon and your ship is still interacting with the fog, so there is no reason it should hop to somewhere else.
The double-slit experiment is a great example of something often misunderstood as somehow evidence observation plays some fundamental role in quantum mechanics. Yes, if you observe the path the two particles take through the slits, the interference pattern disappears. Yet, you can also trivially prove in a few line of calculation that if the particle interacts with a single other particle when it passes through the two slits then it would also lead to a destruction of the interference effects.
You model this by computing what is called a density matrix for both the particle going through the two slits and the particle it interacts with, and then you do what is called a partial trace whereby you “trace out” the particle it interacts with giving you a reduced density matrix of only the particle that passes through the two slits, and you find as a result of interacting with another particle its coherence terms would reduce to zero, i.e. it would decohere and thus lose the ability to interfere with itself.
If a single particle interaction can do this, then it is not surprising it interacting with a whole measuring device can do this. It has nothing to do with humans looking at it.
Eh, you should be reading books and papers in the literature if you are serious about this topic. I agree that a lot of philosophy out there is bad so sometimes external influences can be negative, but the solution to that shouldn’t be to entirely avoid reading anything at all, but to dig through the trash to find the hidden gems.
My views when it comes to philosophy are pretty fringe as most academics believe the human brain can transcend reality and I reject this notion, and I find most philosophy falls right into place if you reject this notion. However, because my views are a bit fringe, I do find most philosophical literature out there unhelpful, but I don’t entirely not engage with it. I have found plenty of philosophers and physicists who have significantly helped develop my views, such as Jocelyn Benoist, Carlo Rovelli, Francois-Igor Pris, and Alexander Bogdanov.
I find myself in agreement with your perspective although my own perspective is very different.
I have naturally shy’d away from existing philosophical literature and influences because i felt they stopped me from coming up with answers myself. Just like you i find great joy in exploring solutions to mystery.
I have been exploring the concepts of my concious and the reality i find in a very to me organized and structured (autistic) way but as i side effects i have my own interpretation of concepts like what is “information” (the relation between more then a single something )
While i find my concepts often don’t translate well in language compared with conventional knowledge its critical to note that as i am reading up more as a matured person I find it adds to my personal understanding rather then contradicting it.
I received a lot of knowledge from playing the outer wilds and things like the dual slit experiment but i assure you i don’t take games literally and most knowledge gaining is connecting pre existing dots in my head after being inspired.
There is a good reason why my comment may seem mystifying,
Part is rooted in an observation i made that objective truth can never be fully known. But hear me out.
All our observations are made trough a subjective lens is too easy of an argument i also have a historical example to illustrate.
The plague mask and outfit used flowers because knowledged people at the time thought the sick was in the smell. We know this is not true but the general idea was close enough and it did have a noticeable benefitial effect.
The breakthrough is also important in the chain that lead to further knowledge later on.
The science was incorrect but also good enough to be useful.
In the same pattern we believe we understand most materials but a more advanced future scientist could know things that leaves us no better then the plague doctors in general.
I made an important secondary conclusion based on experience.
There is no benefit to be gained by dismissing the most reasonable incorrect knowledge when there is no reasonable “more correct” interpretation to be found.
I am still not convinced these translate my thoughts well but what this second part odoes is solve the mystic sentiment you mention.
We should strive to find solutions to the unknown because we know there is useful knowledge to be gained.
We should apply the reasonable knowledge we find to better our understanding and lives.
But what we should also do and this is the sentiment i am personally worried about is keep looking beyond our understanding and keep trying to challenge what we do know.
What i initially found when exploring quantum mechanics is that early ideas where dismissed because they challenged what we thought we knew well and thats a line of thinking i find personally shocking when coming for i scientist. I salivate when reality breaks my initial understanding of reality because its such an opportunist. Finding out just how wrong you are is a major step to get more correct.
I do have additional personal bias because of my differences in interpretation. I cant be put it more fairly then this “i experience some kind of dogma about established knowledge when i present my own interpretation of often the same concept, which worries me for our ability to evolve our understanding of the concept” This happens frequently so i experience a surplus of dogmatic scientific arguments around me. Even if they may not be as dogmatic if new knowledge was present in a compatible interpretation.
I hope this clarified my posts a bit, thanks for the detailed reply.