Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests

Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests

Olena Shmahalo

One of the most remarkable ideas in this theoretical framework is that the definite properties of objects that we associate with classical physics — position and speed, say — are selected from a menu of quantum possibilities in a process loosely analogous to natural selection in evolution: The properties that survive are in some sense the “fittest.” As in natural selection, the survivors are those that make the most copies of themselves. This means that many independent observers can make measurements of a quantum system and agree on the outcome — a hallmark of classical behavior.

This idea, called quantum Darwinism (QD), explains a lot about why we experience the world the way we do rather than in the peculiar way it manifests at the scale of atoms and fundamental particles. Although aspects of the puzzle remain unresolved, QD helps heal the apparent rift between quantum and classical physics.

Horodecki and other theorists have also sought to embed QD in a theoretical framework that doesn’t demand any arbitrary division of the world into a system and its environment, but just considers how classical reality can emerge from interactions between various quantum systems. Paternostro says it might be challenging to find experimental methods capable of identifying the rather subtle distinctions between the predictions of these theories.

Still, researchers are trying, and the very attempt should refine our ability to probe the workings of the quantum realm. “The best argument for performing these experiments probably is that they are good exercise,” Riedel said. “Directly illustrating QD can require some very difficult measurements that will push the boundaries of existing laboratory techniques.” The only way we can find out what measurement really means, it seems, is by making better measurements.

I don't pretend to have a good understanding of even classical physics, let alone QM, but at a first, shallow glance - wouldn't this interpretation of QM freeze out at least some of the ideas tying QM into psi phenomena?

I don't pretend to have a good understanding of even classical physics, let alone QM, but at a first, shallow glance - wouldn't this interpretation of QM freeze out at least some of the ideas tying QM into psi phenomena?

Maybe...how do you see it...

I don't pretend to have a good understanding of even classical physics, let alone QM, but at a first, shallow glance - wouldn't this interpretation of QM freeze out at least some of the ideas tying QM into psi phenomena?

At the birth Of QM up to the present time QM theory has nothing directly to say about psi. The persistence of QM as an explanation started with a few men whom formalized QM that were influenced by eastern mysticism.

[url=Does mysticism have a place in quantum mechanics today, or is the idea that the mind plays a role in creating reality best left to philosophical meditations? Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin argues the former - not because physicists today should account for consciousness in their research, but because knowing the early history of the philosophical ideas in quantum mechanics is essential for understanding the theory on a fundamental level.][/url]https://m.phys.org/news/2009-06-quantum-...otten.html

Quantum... Darwinism...

Sounds like the usual overreach of Darwinism to explain things completely outside of the areas of supposed expertise...

If it can't even explain where all of the various species came from, I have serious doubts it can explain anything else.

Quantum... Darwinism...

Sounds like the usual overreach of Darwinism to explain things completely outside of the areas of supposed expertise...

If it can't even explain where all of the various species came from, I have serious doubts it can explain anything else.

The name felt odd to me as well, but from Wikipedia:

Darwinian significance

Perhaps of equal significance to the light this theory shines on quantum explanations is its identification of a Darwinian process operating as the selective mechanism establishing our classical reality. As numerous researchers have made clear any system employing a Darwinian process will evolve. As argued by the thesis of Universal Darwinism, Darwinian processes are not confined to biology but are all following the simple Darwinian algorithm:

1. Reproduction/Heredity; the ability to make copies and thereby produce descendants.
   
2. Selection; A process that preferentially selects one trait over another trait, leading to one trait being more numerous after sufficient generations.
   
3. Variation; differences in heritable traits that affect "Fitness” or the ability to survive and reproduce leading to differential survival.
   
   

Quantum Darwinism appears to conform to this algorithm and thus is aptly named:

1. Numerous copies are made of pointer states
   
2. Pointer states evolve in a continuous, predictable manner, that is descendants inherit many of their traits from ancestor states.
   
3. Successive interactions between pointer states and their environment reveal them to evolve and those states to survive which conform to the predictions of classical physics within the macroscopic world.
   
4. The analogy to the Variation principle of "simple Darwinism" does not exist since the Pointer states do not mutate and the selection by the environment is among the pointer states preferred by the environment (e.g. location states).
   
   

From this view quantum Darwinism provides a Darwinian explanation at the basis of our reality, explaining the unfolding or evolution of our classical macroscopic world.

This doesn't feel wholly satisfying, especially regarding "pointer states"...isn't the "environment" also a set of pointer states undergoing this same selection process in all its parts?...

Maybe...how do you see it...

I don't see anything clearly on this subject   But this would seem to rule out the idea that "consciousness causes collapse," for example.

I don't see anything clearly on this subject   But this would seem to rule out the idea that "consciousness causes collapse," for example.

Ah gotcha - is that a big part of most QM explanations for Psi?

IIRC most QM explanations for Psi are more reductionist, at least in that they involve quantum biology rather than a consciousness transcendent/independent of a brain.

For example even the panpsychist/Platonist Hammeroff who has (with Penrose) an "Objective Collapse" theory (Orch-OR) referenced precognition research without mention of consciousness causing collapse (CcC).

There could be some theories that would falter - some [of] Radin's ideas,  along Henry Stapp's conjectures about Psi relating to CcC.

The name felt odd to me as well, but from Wikipedia:

Darwinian significance


This doesn't feel wholly satisfying, especially regarding "pointer states"...isn't the "environment" also a set of pointer states undergoing this same selection process in all its parts?...

1. Reproduction/Heredity; the ability to make copies and thereby produce descendants.
   
2. Selection; A process that preferentially selects one trait over another trait, leading to one trait being more numerous after sufficient generations.
   
3. Variation; differences in heritable traits that affect "Fitness” or the ability to survive and reproduce leading to differential survival.
   

The claim follows the "party line" of Darwinist religious belief that this blind, purposeless process automatically can "evolve" anything, especially supremely complicated irreducibly complex machine-like systems. The complex system of the laws of physics could be looked at this way as an irreducibly complex machine-like system. I think that the falsity of that Darwinistic claim has been amply shown in the area of living organisms, so it is extremely likely to also be false with regard to the "evolve-ability" of reality as a whole.

Here's the 2009 Zurek paper going deep into the idea of QD:

In the end one might ask: “How Darwinian is Quantum Darwinism?”. Clearly, there is survival of the fittest,and fitness is defined as in natural selection – through the ability to procreate. The no-cloning theorem implies competition for resources – space in [E]– so that only pointer states can multiply (at the expense of their complementary competition). There is also another aspect of this competition: Huge memory available in the Uni-verse as a whole is nevertheless limited. So the question arises: What systems get to be “of interest”, and imprint their state on their obliging environments, and what are the environments? Moreover, as the Universe has a finite memory, old events will be eventually “overwritten” by new ones, so that some of the past will gradually cease to be reflected in the present record. And if there is no record of an event, has it really happened? These questions seem far more interesting than deciding closeness of the analogy with natural selection [40]. They suggest one more question: Is Quantum Darwinism (a process of multiplication of information about certain favored states that seems to be a “fact of quantum life”) in some way behind the familiar natural selection?