Have experimenters just demonstrated multiple realities?

[Jason Resch]

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

Jason

[Lawrence Crowell]

Bell’s theorem demonstrates locality and realism cannot be true of a quantum system. If one performs measurements of observables, eigenvalues that real, then locality does not apply. Wigner’s friend argument illustrates how we can show reality may be abandoned. The following experiment illustrates this. Two observers may witness nature in ways that are not commensurate with each other. The observer then cannot be completely removed from nature.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

This is a Bell type of experiment where locality is imposed, but two observers witness two different version of reality. There is then a loss of objectivity to reality, which is the flip side or dual to the standard Bell inequality violation used to demonstrate nonlocality. 

LC

On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 9:45:10 AM UTC-5 Jason wrote:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

Jason

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 4:19 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is a Bell type of experiment where locality is imposed, but two observers witness two different version of reality. There is then a loss of objectivity to reality, 

It seems to me it would be more accurate to say this experiment demonstrates the loss of one unique reality not of reality in general, and the only things consistent with it would be something like Everett's Many Worlds or Superdeterminism. Both ideas are crazy but one must be true, and Many Worlds is less crazy.

John K Clark

[spudb...@aol.com]

Have repetition experiments been additionally conducted, do you know. Maybe, along Schrodinger's kittens, will we get a bit of evidence of Schrodinger's Cat, sitting on Wigner's Friend's shoulder? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com>
To: Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Aug 15, 2020 10:44 am
Subject: Have experimenters just demonstrated multiple realities?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

Jason

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[Brent Meeker]

Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution it's plausible that Alice and Bob's choices are determined too...they're not unphysical beings .

Brent

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[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 5:27 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution it's plausible that Alice and Bob's choices are determined too...they're not unphysical beings .

There's a difference between living in a universe where everything has a cause, and living in a universe where nature conspires to fool us, as with Descartes's evil demon.

Jason

 

Brent

On 8/15/2020 1:19 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Bell’s theorem demonstrates locality and realism cannot be true of a quantum system. If one performs measurements of observables, eigenvalues that real, then locality does not apply. Wigner’s friend argument illustrates how we can show reality may be abandoned. The following experiment illustrates this. Two observers may witness nature in ways that are not commensurate with each other. The observer then cannot be completely removed from nature.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

This is a Bell type of experiment where locality is imposed, but two observers witness two different version of reality. There is then a loss of objectivity to reality, which is the flip side or dual to the standard Bell inequality violation used to demonstrate nonlocality. 

LC

On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 9:45:10 AM UTC-5 Jason wrote:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

Jason

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[Lawrence Crowell]

You are holding onto a standard idea of realism. The problem is this means we have no way of putting our finger on what is meant by realism. Taking it further, realism only holds when we make observations that abandon locality. Experimental errors in measuring violation of Bell inequalities, in particular with nonlocality, can mean an uncertainty in realism even if we are making observations that have no locality. Our standard concepts of realism is simply a pure idealism, almost a fantasy.

LC

[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 6:27 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution

Superdeterminism postulates two things, determinism and one specific initial condition; the problem I have with it is not the determinism part it's the initial condition. Although there are an infinite number of initial conditions the universe could have started in Superdeterminism says that for no particular reason (that is to say because of nondeterminism) the universe started out in the one and only initial condition that, after billions of years of deterministic evolution, would result in our being fooled by every single one of our scientific experiments into thinking that things were nondeterministic when they were really deterministic, even though there was no reason the universe started out in that state, and thus the entire scientific enterprise is a complete waste of time. So the universe has conspired to make fools of us all, in fact it would be more than just a conspiracy, if Super determinism was true it would not be out of place to say the entire purpose of the universe is not 42 as the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy says but instead the ultimate answer to the question of life the universe and everything is to make us look stupid.
I find this all a bit hard to swallow.

John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 8:33 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You are holding onto a standard idea of realism. The problem is this means we have no way of putting our finger on what is meant by realism.

Everett says everything allowed by Schrodinger's wave equation is physically real, and equally so, and things forbidden by Schrodinger are not.The great advantage of Everett's Quantum interpretation is the simplicity of its assumptions, it says everything, including conscious observers, obey the exact same laws of physics and evolve according to  purely deterministic laws, all other quantum interpretations stick in a whole bunch of additional ifs, buts and howevers at that point. Somebody said Everett is cheap with assumptions but expensive in universes, maybe so but I think an idea that starts with simplicity but produces great complexity is a sign of a good theory, Darwin's theory would be an example. You should always get more out of a theory than you put in or it has no point.

 

> Taking it further, realism only holds when we make observations that abandon locality.

Everett doesn't demand that you abandon locality, if you observe a change in an electron and it moves left rather than right the entire universe splits, if you ask how fast that split propagates through the universe the answer is it doesn't matter; you can assume it happens instantaneously or you can assume it only moves at the speed of light, Everett will make the same prediction about the outcome of an experiment either way.

 

> Our standard concepts of realism is simply a pure idealism, almost a fantasy.

For me the idea that when I turn my head to look at the moon the universe splits into one where I'm looking at the moon and into another where I'm not is crazy, but the idea that the moon isn't real when I'm not looking at it is even crazier. Whatever the true nature of reality turns out to be of one thing we could be certain, it will be absolutely nuts.

John K Clark

[Brent Meeker]

On 8/16/2020 5:52 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 6:27 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution

Superdeterminism postulates two things, determinism and one specific initial condition; the problem I have with it is not the determinism part it's the initial condition. Although there are an infinite number of initial conditions the universe could have started in Superdeterminism says that for no particular reason (that is to say because of nondeterminism) the universe started out in the one and only initial condition that, after billions of years of deterministic evolution, would result in our being fooled by every single one of our scientific experiments into thinking that things were nondeterministic when they were really deterministic, even though there was no reason the universe started out in that state, and thus the entire scientific enterprise is a complete waste of time.

How so?  Do you think Newton and Laplace saw science as a waste of time?  If the world is deterministic, then obviously it is determined by the past (and the future) and the task of science is to determine the state at some time and the law of evolution.  Of course we can't determine the state at some time because the finite speed of light means that we keep being influenced by parts previously outside our past light cone.  The Everttian's (who are common on this list) insist that evolution of the universe is deterministic.

 Your dismay with superdeterminism is the flip side of objections to randomness in QM.  When it was first proposed as fundamental by Born and Bohr, physicists like Schroedinger and Einstein were dismayed that randomness would make science impossible.

Brent

So the universe has conspired to make fools of us all, in fact it would be more than just a conspiracy, if Super determinism was true it would not be out of place to say the entire purpose of the universe is not 42 as the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy says but instead the ultimate answer to the question of life the universe and everything is to make us look stupid.
I find this all a bit hard to swallow.

John K Clark

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[Lawrence Crowell]

The results of this experiment illustrate how the violation of Bell inequalities can lead to contrary reports by two observers on the nature of a system. Remember, even back in the 60s Bell concluded that locality and realism are not compatible. The usual approach is to perform experiments with reality insured, say no boxes with observers witnessing observers, where physics is nonlocal. This experiment turns the tables, where now locality is imposed and objective reality in QM is lost.

The MWI is fine, but I think there may be problems with gravitation. Quantum mechanics is a linear theory, linear vector spaces, Hermitian operators and so forth. Gravitation as an exterior field theory means that quantum gravitation forces QM to be nonlinear. This is an obstruction with the program for quantum gravitation. The difficulty with MWI is that with gravitation we are forced to confront wave function reduction.

The reduction of states induces a_1a_2*e^{iφ} and its complex conjugate a_1*a_2e^{-iφ} to zero without |a_1|^2 and |a_2|^2 being zero. This does reduce the system to a classical-like probability. Yet this process is nonunitary and it is not hard to see that Trρ = Tr(ρ^2) = Tr(ρ^n) = 1 prior to the measurement and after Tr(ρ^n) ≠ 1 for n > 1. So, the system after measurement is in separable states. This is a statistical mixture that has aspects of classicality.

In general though, what is occurring is the initial quantum state is coupled to other states. We may consider a needle state as an idealization so that

a_1|1〉 + a_2e^{-iφ}|2〉 → a_1|1〉|↑〉 + a_2e^{-iφ}|2〉|↓〉

for the needle state with 〈↑|↓〉 = 0. We have an expanded density matrix then, where if we trace over the needle states Tr_↕ρ =ρ_{½, -½ }. We are then in effect making an effective theory where the needle states, usually for a more massive system with frequencies or energy much larger than for the system of interest, are ignored. These needle states sample the phase of the system of interest around the unit circle in the Argand plane in a time much smaller than the angular frequency of the phase. I am making a time argument here, and the discussion was for a time independent system, but we can replace time with momentum or wave vector k. So, what has happened then is this precious quantum phase has been transferred to the needle states, and if we trace them over or out then we miss them. This is analogous in ways to coarse graining in statistical mechanics.

We then have to confront the problem of how QM and GR mesh, and while MWI has some nonlocality properties that might fit with GR, such as nonlocalization of energy etc, there is a problem with this nonlinearity. A perturbative approach I have worked leads to fractal geometry.  These fractals have the structure of entanglement that compose spacetime. This seems contradictory in some ways. The subject of quantum entanglement is vast. One can look at it according to geometry, such as in the elementary case the Fubini-Study metric space. Another approach is algorithmic complexity, such as the work of Aaronson. There is also an interesting development of late called MIP* = ER, which states the class of entangled multiple interactive proof (MIP), where entangled is MIP*, is equivalent to the set of recursively enumerable (RE) algorithms. Recursively enumerable problems are those that can execute an output, but have no terminus. Algorithms that compute fractals are RE, because the fractal has infinite complexity in principle. This means that in principle a Mandelbrot set contains information equivalent to a type of entangled system. This means I think that spacetime encodes the same information as quantum information, and in fact the two are interchangeable. I am not sure how MWI would fit with this. 

LC

[John Clark]

On Sun, Aug 16, 2020 at 5:43 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>> Superdeterminism postulates two things, determinism and one specific initial condition; the problem I have with it is not the determinism part it's the initial condition. Although there are an infinite number of initial conditions the universe could have started in Superdeterminism says that for no particular reason (that is to say because of nondeterminism) the universe started out in the one and only initial condition that, after billions of years of deterministic evolution, would result in our being fooled by every single one of our scientific experiments into thinking that things were nondeterministic when they were really deterministic, even though there was no reason the universe started out in that state, and thus the entire scientific enterprise is a complete waste of time.

 

> How so?  Do you think Newton and Laplace saw science as a waste of time?

No, I don't think Newton and Laplace were wasting their time, and that's why I don't think Superdeterminism is true, almost no working scientist does.

 > If the world is deterministic, then obviously it is determined by the past (and the future)

You're talking about two different things. The Game Of Life is perfectly deterministic, if you know the present state you can predict the next state , however you can't say what the previous state was, that information has been lost. 

 > Your dismay with superdeterminism is the flip side of objections to randomness in QM. 

It's not the deterministic part of Superdeterminism that I object to, it's the unique initial condition that it insists on that I object to , the insistence that out of the infinite number of initial states the universe could've started out in it started in the one and only state that resulted in making fools of us all.

> When it was first proposed as fundamental by Born and Bohr, physicists like Schroedinger and Einstein were dismayed that randomness would make science impossible.

Einstein didn't like randomness but he disliked non-locality even more, and he hated Superdeterminism most of all. 

John K Clark

[Lawrence Crowell]

Superdeterminism says the independence between setting up an experiment and the outcome of the experiment is not correct. This does in some ways rattle a foundation of the philosophy of science. This idea has been a cornerstone of science from the start. The independence of choosing the configuration of experimental initial conditions from the outcome is being challenged in part by this experimental verification that objective reality is limited in violations of Bell inequalities where locality is upheld. The Wigner’s friend in this experiment can conclude there is some initial condition dependency in the outcome. 

If one configures the experiment to abandon locality this problem may not occur. This means superdeterminism may then be something that occurs with a loss of reality and is in in a complementarity another configuration that abandons locality. I also think this has a bearing on Gödel’s theorem as a foundation to QM. A development of late called MIP* = ER, which states the class of entangled multiple interactive proof (MIP), where entangled is MIP*, is equivalent to the set of recursively enumerable (RE) algorithms. Recursively enumerable problems are those that can execute an output, but have no terminus. Algorithms that compute fractals are RE, because the fractal has infinite complexity in principle. This means that in principle a Mandelbrot set contains information equivalent to a type of entangled system. Interestingly, the RE condition appears equivalent to situations with superdeterminism.

LC

[Lawrence Crowell]

On Sunday, August 16, 2020 at 4:43:20 PM UTC-5 Brent wrote:

On 8/16/2020 5:52 AM, John Clark wrote:

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 6:27 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution

Superdeterminism postulates two things, determinism and one specific initial condition; the problem I have with it is not the determinism part it's the initial condition. Although there are an infinite number of initial conditions the universe could have started in Superdeterminism says that for no particular reason (that is to say because of nondeterminism) the universe started out in the one and only initial condition that, after billions of years of deterministic evolution, would result in our being fooled by every single one of our scientific experiments into thinking that things were nondeterministic when they were really deterministic, even though there was no reason the universe started out in that state, and thus the entire scientific enterprise is a complete waste of time.

How so?  Do you think Newton and Laplace saw science as a waste of time?  If the world is deterministic, then obviously it is determined by the past (and the future) and the task of science is to determine the state at some time and the law of evolution.  Of course we can't determine the state at some time because the finite speed of light means that we keep being influenced by parts previously outside our past light cone.  The Everttian's (who are common on this list) insist that evolution of the universe is deterministic.

 Your dismay with superdeterminism is the flip side of objections to randomness in QM.  When it was first proposed as fundamental by Born and Bohr, physicists like Schroedinger and Einstein were dismayed that randomness would make science impossible.

Brent

Superdeterminism is complementary to randomness in the way nonreality and nonlocality are. Superdeterminism is an uncomfortable pair of shoes to wear, and when they get to hurting too much you put on the shoes of nonlocality. Nonlocality rankled with the ordinary sense of physics coming out of classical mechanics. The loss of reality, which is just the complementarity to nonlocality in violations of Bell's inequality, does not say everything is pure chaos, and is just a quirky result in experiments that demand locality. 

LC

[Bruno Marchal]

On 15 Aug 2020, at 16:44, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

It shows only that there is no unique objective physical reality. With the many histories, or with mechanism, the core of the physical reality remains first person plural, and thus objective, at least in some sense. 

Bruno

Jason

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 16 Aug 2020, at 00:41, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 5:27 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Why not adopt ultra-determinism.  Since Everettians insist on strictly determinist evolution it's plausible that Alice and Bob's choices are determined too...they're not unphysical beings .

There's a difference between living in a universe where everything has a cause, and living in a universe where nature conspires to fool us, as with Descartes's evil demon.

I agree. Super-determinism is about the same as saying “because God made it that way”. It is not an explanation, but an invitation to not pursue the search. It is about the same as "shut up and calculate” or “shut up and pray (and give us money by the same token)”.

I think  that de-Broglie/Bohm wave-pilot theory is also a form of superdeterminism (which happens to be hardly covariant). It does look like "conspiracy theories" indeed. This one adds infinitely many zombies in the picture, but I do think t’Hooft form of super determinism will also entail many zombies, although I have never thought on that… Plausibly.

Bruno

Jason

 

Brent

On 8/15/2020 1:19 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Bell’s theorem demonstrates locality and realism cannot be true of a quantum system. If one performs measurements of observables, eigenvalues that real, then locality does not apply. Wigner’s friend argument illustrates how we can show reality may be abandoned. The following experiment illustrates this. Two observers may witness nature in ways that are not commensurate with each other. The observer then cannot be completely removed from nature.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05080

This is a Bell type of experiment where locality is imposed, but two observers witness two different version of reality. There is then a loss of objectivity to reality, which is the flip side or dual to the standard Bell inequality violation used to demonstrate nonlocality. 

LC

On Saturday, August 15, 2020 at 9:45:10 AM UTC-5 Jason wrote:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/

Jason

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