Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality

Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality

George Musser

Nearly 60 years ago, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner captured one of the many oddities of quantum mechanics in a thought experiment. He imagined a friend of his, sealed in a lab, measuring a particle such as an atom while Wigner stood outside. Quantum mechanics famously allows particles to occupy many locations at once—a so-called superposition—but the friend’s observation “collapses” the particle to just one spot. Yet for Wigner, the superposition remains: The collapse occurs only when he makes a measurement sometime later. Worse, Wigner also sees the friend in a superposition. Their experiences directly conflict.

Now, researchers in Australia and Taiwan offer perhaps the sharpest demonstration that Wigner’s paradox is real. In a study published this week in Nature Physics, they transform the thought experiment into a mathematical theorem that confirms the irreconcilable contradiction at the heart of the scenario. The team also tests the theorem with an experiment, using photons as proxies for the humans. Whereas Wigner believed resolving the paradox requires quantum mechanics to break down for large systems such as human observers, some of the new study’s authors believe something just as fundamental is on thin ice: objectivity. It could mean there is no such thing as an absolute fact, one that is as true for me as it is for you.

 “It’s a bit disconcerting,” says co-author Nora Tischler of Griffith University. “A measurement outcome is what science is based on. If somehow that’s not absolute, it’s hard to imagine.”

For physicists who have dismissed thought experiments like Wigner’s as interpretive navel gazing, the study shows the contradictions can emerge in actual experiments, says Dustin Lazarovici, a physicist and philosopher at the University of Lausanne who was not part of the team. “The paper goes to great lengths to speak the language of those who have tried to merely discuss foundational issues away and may thus compel at least some to face up to them,” he says.

Regarding the idea that these experiments would suggest relativism, Kastrup offers an alternative:

 So now, at last, Massimiliano Proietti and collaborators at Heriot-Watt University, in the U.K., seem to have confirmed RQM; as predicted by quantum mechanics, there may well be no objective physical world.

Yet, our perceptions of the world beyond ourselves are quite consistent across observers: if you were to sit next to me right now, we would describe my study in very similar, mutually consistent ways. Clearly, observers must share an environment of some sort, even if such an environment is not physical—i.e., not describable by physical quantities.

Possible solutions to this dilemma have been proposed. For instance, writing for this magazine last year, I maintained that physical quantities describe merely our perceptions and are, therefore, relative to each of us as observers. What is really out there, underlying our perceptions, is constituted not by physical but by transpersonal mental states instead. Perceived physicality is merely a representation of that surrounding mental environment, brought into being by an act of observation.

Of course there are other alternatives, as noted in a Sci-Am article regarding the experiment noted in the OP:

This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory

Vaidman, who was also not involved in the new work, is less enthused by it, however, and criticizes the identification of Wigner’s friend with a photon. The methods used in the paper “are ridiculous; the friend has to be macroscopic,” he says. Philosopher of physics Tim Maudlin of New York University, who was not part of the study, agrees. “Nobody thinks a photon is an observer, unless you are a panpsychic,” he says. Because no physicist questions whether a photon can be put into superposition, Maudlin feels the experiment lacks bite. “It rules something out—just something that nobody ever proposed,” he says.

Tischler accepts the criticism. “We don’t want to overclaim what we have done,” she says. The key for future experiments will be scaling up the size of the “friend,” adds team member Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University. The most dramatic result, he says, would involve using an artificial intelligence, embodied on a quantum computer, as the friend. Some philosophers have mused that such a machine could have humanlike experiences, a position known as the strong AI hypothesis, Wiseman notes, though nobody yet knows whether that idea will turn out to be true. But if the hypothesis holds, this quantum-based artificial general intelligence (AGI) would be microscopic. So from the point of view of spontaneous collapse models, it would not trigger collapse because of its size. If such a test was run, and the local-friendliness bound was not violated, that result would imply that an AGI’s consciousness cannot be put into superposition. In turn, that conclusion would suggest that Wigner was right that consciousness causes collapse. “I don’t think I will live to see an experiment like this,” Wiseman says. “But that would be revolutionary.”

Reilly, however, warns that physicists hoping that future AGI will help them home in on the fundamental description of reality are putting the cart before the horse. “It’s not inconceivable to me that quantum computers will be the paradigm shift to get to us into AGI,” she says. “Ultimately, we need a theory of everything in order to build an AGI on a quantum computer, period, full stop.”

Some of the interpretations seem either illogical (superdeterminism, wherein the future influences the present/past) or unfalsifiable (MWI). I think trying to actually map out a causal chain from the future into the past is harder than most believe, whereas MWI makes incredibly bold claims (a factorial growth of universes) that we have to take for granted.

Regarding the idea that these experiments would suggest relativism, Kastrup offers an alternative:




Of course there are other alternatives, as noted in a Sci-Am article regarding the experiment noted in the OP:

This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory




Some of the interpretations seem either illogical (superdeterminism, wherein the future influences the present/past) or unfalsifiable (MWI). I think trying to actually map out a causal chain from the future into the past is harder than most believe, whereas MWI makes incredibly bold claims (a factorial growth of universes) that we have to take for granted.

I think that one better alternative would be the multi-participator virtual reality simulation concept, such as Marcus Arvan's. Unlike any of the mentioned theories, it can account for all of the weird aspects of the underlying world entailed by quantum mechanics theory. All these aspects would merely be artifacts of exactly how the world simulation was programmed in its higher reality. To make this at least possible we ourselves would not be simulated beings, but would be the users or participators in the simulation. The article of the Op carefully avoids considering this possible solution.

Of course, this approach also has problems, such as it's unfalsifiability, and the fact that it still leaves unexamined and fundamentally not understandable the ultimate nature of the higher reality of the simulation. To speak nothing of the fundamental possibility of there being an indefinite number of yet higher simulation realities.

I think that one better alternative would be the multi-participator virtual reality simulation concept, such as Marcus Arvan's. Unlike any of the mentioned theories, it can account for all of the weird aspects of the underlying world entailed by quantum mechanics theory. All these aspects would merely be artifacts of exactly how the world simulation was programmed in its higher reality. To make this at least possible we ourselves would not be simulated beings, but would be the users or participators in the simulation. The article of the Op carefully avoids considering this possible solution.

Of course, this approach also has problems, such as it's unfalsifiability, and the fact that it still leaves unexamined and fundamentally not understandable the ultimate nature of the higher reality of the simulation. To speak nothing of the fundamental possibility of there being an indefinite number of yet higher simulation realities.

Arvan's version of P2P is falsifiable - he predicts the character of quantum level reality has to differ within the brain compared to the rest of the simulation as that is the interface between higher and lower frames.

I think the big problem for P2P, however, is entanglement. Arvan suggests this occurs due to issues with the simulation, but would we really expect that kind of glitch? 

But in general I do agree Arvan's ideas work in a functional sense, in that this lower frame of reality is formed from a higher frame and is a "simulation" in that sense. Borges suggested we ourselves created this universe but left some "cracks" as reminders of who we really are - quantum mechanics feels like one of those cracks...

Arvan's version of P2P is falsifiable - he predicts the character of quantum level reality has to differ within the brain compared to the rest of the simulation as that is the interface between higher and lower frames.

I think the big problem for P2P, however, is entanglement. Arvan suggests this occurs due to issues with the simulation, but would we really expect that kind of glitch? 

But in general I do agree Arvan's ideas work in a functional sense, in that this lower frame of reality is formed from a higher frame and is a "simulation" in that sense. Borges suggested we ourselves created this universe but left some "cracks" as reminders of who we really are - quantum mechanics feels like one of those cracks...

We should consider the high probability that the creators of the simulation are not omniscient and omnipotent - even they can make mistakes. And any complex engineering design inevitably has to entail multiple complex tradeoffs between different conflicting requirements and available solutions. Or it could simply be their playfulness or whimsy or appreciation for paradox at the expense of the users or participators.

There being all these possibilities that could explain any conceivable apparent "glitch" seems to me to be the reason why the P2P virtual world simulation theory appears to be unfalsifiable.

Well I get to add yet another piece of evidence to the pile for reasons my past life memories are probably real. This is starting to sound like some of the stuff that IDS gateways were said to work off of.

Nothing new but a recent article by one of the people who conducted the aforementioned experiments:

New quantum paradox throws the foundations of observed reality into question

Eric Cavalcanti

Although a conclusive test may be decades away, if the quantum mechanical predictions continue to hold, this has strong implications for our understanding of reality — even more so than the Bell correlations. For one, the correlations we discovered cannot be explained just by saying that physical properties don't exist until they are measured.

Now the absolute reality of measurement outcomes themselves is called into question.

Our results force physicists to deal with the measurement problem head on...

All of this does not imply that you can choose your own reality. Firstly, you can choose what questions you ask, but the answers are given by the world. And even in a relational world, when two observers communicate, their realities are entangled. In this way a shared reality can emerge.