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Slap a "quantum" on it = Instant flux capacitor (mander.xyz)
submitted 9 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] DudeBro@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"observing changes the result" doesn't mean conciousness attempting to look at it changes the result, there is nothing special about conciousness (in quantum mechanics)

"observing changes the result" means we try to measure atoms and fields but unfortunately our measurement tools are also made out of atoms and fields which interact with the atoms and fields we are trying to measure, giving us a different result than if we don't attempt to measure it

It does bring up interesting questions about what the "real" behavior of reality is tho, since anything we observe is technically different than what it would be if left alone. We can only ever know what a slightly altered state of reality is

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Think of it like this:

You can use a tennis ball machine to measure how far away a house is by firing the tennis ball at a constant velocity, timing how long it takes the tennis ball to come back to you, multiplying that time by the velocity, and dividing by 2 (since you measured the distance for a round trip). This works pretty darn well for measuring the distance to houses.

But now try this same trick to measure the distance to another ball. When your measuring ball hits the ball you want to measure, it doesn't stay resolutely planted in the ground like that nice friendly house. The energy from your measuring ball bounces the ball being measured off into the distance. Even if you could get your measuring ball to return, the ball you measured isn't in the place you measured it.

Replace that tennis ball with a photon, and you have the basic picture. There's no such thing as passive observation. Measuring something interacts with that thing. Conventional measurement is like in the case with the house, the thing being measured is so much bigger and more stable than the thing we're measuring with that the effect is negligible. But once you start trying to measure something on the same scale as your measuring tool, the ensuing chaos makes it basically impossible to get useful measurements.

[–] chitak166@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What happens if you try to cut a photon in half with a knife?

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The edge of a knife has to be thinner than the thing it's cutting, and we haven't found anything thinner than a photon

[–] chitak166@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Clearly you haven't seen my penis.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

By that implication it's fundamentally impossible for anyone to see it.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

If only conciousness did affect reality, it would salvage the soul, which sadly doesn't appear to exist - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/

[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Quantum mechanics makes no difference, just throw cheese at it, if it eats the cheese it's cool and we can get along, if it doesn't we need to shoot it.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

Hey, that's racist against asian people.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

I wouldn't call it weird, just unconventional.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Continental philosophy in a nutshell. Find some cool sciencey concept, and abstract it beyond anything that is reasonable.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What would oceanic philosophy be then? Dilute everything?

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Continental philosophy is so named because the Brits referred to the philosophers in continental Europe thus. The opposing school is more generally known as analytical philosophy, and posits that rigorous logic can be applied to philosophy.

Continental philosophy: "love should be a dimension, just like time, that would be awesome."

Analytical philosophy: "I'll buy you a beer if you can prove to me that the electron exists."

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So, continental philosophy then simply introduces more variables to tackle the problem, while analytical philosophy tries to make actual progress?

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sort of. Continental philosophy is great if you're a stoner, a hopeless romantic, have preconceived religious notions that your philosophy must have a carve out for, or if you write for Hollywood.

Sometimes you get all four. See for example, the "totally scientifically plausible movie, Interstellar!" which posits that love permits time travel... Which this meme format would work great for ;)

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

a hopeless romantic

so basically french, then

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This always bugs me. Quantum Mechanics isn't actually that difficult. It has some nasty maths, yes, but that's mostly slog work, rather than an impossibility. 90% of it is the Schroedinger's equation + boundary conditions.

The main issue is that you have to abandon the particle model of reality. This is deeply engrained into our brains. If you try and understand it as "Particles + extras", you will fail. You have to think of it as "Waves + extras". It then, suddenly makes logical sense.

It does have some interesting implications, however, about deeper reality however. E.g. what exactly IS decoherence, from a physical point of view. Also, what is physically happening, dimensionally, when a wave is complex, or even pure imaginary. These are beyond the scope of QM however.

[–] bouh@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The problem of quantum mechanic is that the physics it shows us is not intuitive, and it sometimes breaks other laws of physics.

Quantum intrication means that information travels faster than light for example. Counterfactuality also breaks causality.

It's not the maths that are the problem, it's that it doesn't make physical sense in the world we currently understand. And the equations explain nothing. They merely describe a a world that doesn't make sense.

Quantum mechanic is like having a machine from the future that does cool things, but you don't understand how it works. It's like people did chemistry before they understand what chemistry was. We do uber cool things with it, but it is a spotlight on our ignorance at the same time.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Actually, I think it's time to reveal, that to some people QM is actually pretty intuitive.

It's just that the masses and the news media don't understand it, so they assume that nobody does. The particle worldview is deeply ingrained into many people's brains, because it's deeply useful to them on a day-to-day basis. If you loosen that requirement, then there's literally nothing standing in your way to accept a wave-worldview.

[–] bouh@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What about the Copenhagen interpretation debate? What about the non-locality?

These are academic debates, not people ones. Saying that quantum mechanic is intuitive is arrogant at best. You may have a perfect understanding of the current theory and how to use it, and you maybe comfortable using it everyday, but then you should be aware of the limits shouldn't you?

Otherwise it's like alchemy.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago

Yeah ok, I get your input. The point is, that most of the arguments, that say that QM is "unintuitive", boil down to the fact that some people are simply unwilling to accept that the world is "not made of particles".

Some people adhere to this worldview like to a religion. You cannot argue with religion. Therefore, for most people, there is little hope to come to terms with QM. However, I am saying, that if you "give up" on a particle worldview, then QM isn't so super weird as lots of people always make it seam.

Yeah, there's some strange issues going on. But I'm saying, that a lot of these aren't so mad to think about if you give up on your particle worldview. Coherence, for example, boils down to a system which isn't simply described by "that atom goes there and this atom goes here". It's different, but consistent. It still reveals a consistent model with a measurable outcome. Just that this model is like taking public transport instead of riding your own car. Sometimes, you gotta mix things up to see the bigger picture.

[–] montechristo@feddit.de 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

To elaborate on this, the Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of a single particle, is a wave equation and hence a lot of classical intuition from e.g. electrodynamics can be applied. It is many-body systems, i.e. systems composed of many interacting particles, which is not only mathematically complex but can also defy classical expectations due to emerging phenomena, etc.