Amit Goswami

[Mr Manifesto]

According to this article, a 'reputable physicist' (I've never heard of him- but he's never heard of me, either) says that the Universe cannot exist without sentient consciousness. It looks like yet another mis-interpretation of Quantum theory. But I don't know anything about Quantum theory. Can anyone look at this article, specifically:

To give a little background, what had been happening was that for many years quantum physics had been giving indications that there are levels of reality other than the material level. How it started happening first was that quantum objectsobjects in quantum physicsbegan to be looked upon as waves of possibility. Now, initially people thought, "Oh, they are just like regular waves." But very soon it was found out that, no, they are not waves in space and time. They cannot be called waves in space and time at allthey have properties which do not jibe with those of ordinary waves. So they began to be recognized as waves in potential, waves of possibility, and the potential was recognized as transcendent, beyond matter somehow.
But the fact that there is transcendent potential was not very clear for a long time. Then Aspect's experiment verified that this is not just theory, there really is transcendent potential, objects really do have connections outside of space and timeoutside of space and time! What happens in this experiment is that an atom emits two quanta of light, called photons, going opposite ways, and somehow these photons affect one another's behavior at a distance, without exchanging any signals through space. Notice that: without exchanging any signals through space but instantly affecting each other. Instantaneously.
Now Einstein showed long ago that two objects can never affect each other instantly in space and time because everything must travel with a maximum speed limit, and that speed limit is the speed of light. So any influence must travel, if it travels through space, taking a finite time. This is called the idea of "locality." Every signal is supposed to be local in the sense that it must take a finite time to travel through space. And yet, Aspect's photonsthe photons emitted by the atom in Aspect's experimentinfluence one another, at a distance, without exchanging signals because they are doing it instantaneouslythey are doing it faster than the speed of light. And therefore it follows that the influence could not have traveled through space. Instead the influence must belong to a domain of reality that we must recognize as the transcendent domain of reality.

DOes this experiment support the above supposition? I truly appreciate any help.

 

[arcticpenguin]

No. There is no evidence whatsoever that "Entanglement" involves consciousness. All the evidence we have points to consciousness as a product of the functioning of the brain.

 

[Upchurch]

According to this article, a 'reputable physicist' (I've never heard of him- but he's never heard of me, either) says that the Universe cannot exist without sentient consciousness.

Ah, hell. I've heard of him.

He wrote the Quantum Mechanics text book we used in college. No wonder I couldn't wrap my head around the subject, I was reading from a loon. I wish I would have known that at the time and tried suplementing from other text books.

S.O.B.

 

[Dancing David]

This is that 'collapsing the wave function' thing again.

The wave ineract without the observer, some people think you need the observer to have the observed.

Quantum mechanics works judt fine in the abcense of an observer.
Quantum entanglemnt was only obserfed over a very short distance, I don't know if they have replicated the results.

Whatafunkever

 

[Zombified]

The change of state that occurs when a measurement is performed does happen instantaneously, everywhere, but cannot be used for signalling, so even though it appears that something is happening superluminally, you can't actually do any experiment that demonstrates information being signalled faster than light.

The Aspect experiment was a test of Bell's Theorem that validated quantum mechanics and ruled out the possibility of a local hidden variable theory. It was thought to be a better test than simpler EPR experiments because it randomly varied the measurements it performed so that the measurement process could not communicate to the production process. It does not demonstrate superluminal signalling, only that quantum mechanics is a correct theory of nature.

That this somehow implies a "transcendant level of reality" is a completely unjustified leap.

Other parts of that article go into the old consciousness interpretation of quantum mechanics. The consciousness interpretation, unfortunately, brings no new understanding to either quantum mechanics or consciousness, it just sweeps questions under a rug labelled "consciousness."

Then there's this:

In other words, the present science has shown not only quantum paradoxes but also has shown real incompetence in explaining paradoxical and anomalous phenomena, such as parapsychology, the paranormal...

What's there to say about this? There's no evidence that any such foolishness actually happens, so what's to explain? And what should we conclude about the credibility of a scientist who takes them for granted?

If Interesting Ian is listening, he should buy this guy's book, I'm sure he'll love it.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

According to this article, a 'reputable physicist' (I've never heard of him- but he's never heard of me, either) says that the Universe cannot exist without sentient consciousness. It looks like yet another mis-interpretation of Quantum theory. But I don't know anything about Quantum theory. Can anyone look at this article, specifically:



DOes this experiment support the above supposition? I truly appreciate any help.

Soderqvist1: Reality or locality, take your pick?
I have read an interview with John Bell in Paul Davies book, The Ghost in the Atom!
Bell doesn’t select between these, but prefer reality because the other alternative will give us more Problems. Faster than light signalling propagates through the ether, and Einstein’s light speed limits is thus rejected, he has also said that both many worlds interpretation, and consciousness as the collapser of wave function should be, or is worthy to be investigated further!

But I admit locality in space-time, and reject reality in the quantum world, and consider that quantum objects can be non-locally interconnected, just as they where one, they influence each other without exchanging signals, this phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement. I have also read Amit Goswami ’s book the self-aware universe! It is a good book about quantum physics! I have also The Visionary Window, and the Physics of the Soul by the same author! I am just finish with my readings of David Deutsch book The Fabric of Reality; free will is in according with quantum physics' many worlds interpretation! The Fabric of reality has four strands, namely, Everett's many worlds interpretation, Karl Popper 's epistemology, Turing's theory of computation, Richard Dawkins's theory of the selfish gene! The Fabric of Reality can explain, and predict everything that is known according to David Deutsch! This is a link to his home page!

Deutsch is a physicist, winner of the 1998 Paul Dirac prize for theoretical physics and a researcher at the Centre for Quantum Computation at Oxford University's Clarendon Laboratory. http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html

Both Deutsch and Goswami ’s interpretation are still valid, but both cannot be true, but I firmly believe that, further experiments will invalidate one of them!

I will be back at Monday!

 

[Tez]

Re: Re: Amit Goswami

further experiments will invalidate one of them!

I will be back at Monday!

Further experiments will invalidate both of them...

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Re: Re: Re: Amit Goswami

TO TEZ

Further experiments will invalidate both of them...

Soderqvist1: how do you know that, and why are you not included in your own verdict? I explicitly mean that; both quantum decoherence and wave function collapse cannot be truth, at least one is invalid! The most workers in quantum cosmology (the whole universe is a wave function), and especially in quantum computation, are adherents to the many worlds interpretation according to David Deutsch! I have Julian Brown’s book, and this is an excerpt from the book, on Deutsch home side!

Minds, Machines and the Multiverse, The Quest for The Quantum Computer
QUANTUM COMPUTING TAKES A QUANTUM LEAP, in the International Herald Tribune, was occasioned when researchers at MIT, IBM, Oxford University, and the University of California at Berkeley reported in 1998 that they had succeeded in building the first working computers based on quantum mechanics.

In 1994 Peter Shor, a computer scientist working at AT&T's Bell Labs in New Jersey, discovered how a quantum computer could solve a very important mathematical problem, one that had long been known to be beyond the reach of ordinary computers. He showed how a quantum computer could calculate the factors, or divisors, of very large numbers extremely rapidly. Solving this particular problem had implications that went far beyond mathematics.

To compute simultaneously along as many as 10⁵⁰⁰ or more different pathways. As Deutsch argues in his book The Fabric of Reality, such an unimaginably large number presents believers in a single universe with a gargantuan problem: There are only about 10⁸⁰ atoms in the entire visible universe, an utterly minuscule number compared with 10⁵⁰⁰. So if the visible universe were the extent of physical reality, physical reality would not even remotely contain the resources required to factorize such a large number. Who did factorize it, then? How, and where, was the computation performed? For Deutsch the only answer that makes any sense is that different parts of the calculation are performed in different universes, all 10⁵⁰⁰ of them.
http://www.simonsays.com/excerpt.cfm?isbn=0684814811

Soderqvist1: I have not found anything about quantum computation in Goswami 's books, but he follow Bohr's feeling that consciousness collapses the wave function, and Wigner' s immaterial mind hypothesis is the collapser of wave function in quantum cosmology! This is a quote from Werner Heisenberg home side!

4. The Copenhagen interpretation
Bohr felt that an experimental observation collapsed or ruptured (his term) the wave function to make its future evolution consistent with what we observe experimentally. Bohr understood that there was no precise way to define the exact point at which collapse occurred. Any attempt to do so would yield a different theory rather than an interpretation of the existing theory. Nonetheless he felt it was connected to conscious observation as this was the ultimate criterion by which we know a specific observation has occurred.
http://www.mtnmath.com/faq/meas-qm-4.html

Amit Goswami professor of theoretical physics at university of Oregon
The interpretational difficulties of quantum mechanics can be solved with the hypothesis (von Neumann, 1955; Wigner, 1962) that consciousness collapses the quantum wave function. The paradoxes raised against this hypothesis have now all been satisfactorily solved (Bass, 1971; Blood, 1993; Goswami, 1989, 1993; Stapp, 1993). http://www.swcp.com/~hswift/swc/Summer99/goswami9901.htm

 

[Tez]

Peter, I find BOTH interpretations ridiculous. That is what I meant.

The vast majority of the "quantum mysteries" are reproducable in a classical probability theory - a fact only realised in the last two years - so none of the standard interpretations you list have had a chance to catch up.

No - I dont have an interpretation I favour, though these results give me a strong inkling of what is important (and uniquely quantum) and what isnt - most of those interpretations you list were constructed specifically to resolve paradoxes that we now see are not quantum mechanical at all. Thus, although they may still be paradoxical, they could have been pondered by an 18th century probability theorist and have nothing to do with physics.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Regarding your "just so story"!

Ridicules?
How are ridicules compatible with David Deutsch's International Award on Quantum Communication 2002 for ‘theoretical work on Quantum Computer Science’, and his paper The Structure of the Multiverse is to appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society? http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html

 

[Tez]

Re: Regarding your "just so story"!

Ridicules?
How are ridicules compatible with David Deutsch's International Award on Quantum Communication 2002 for ‘theoretical work on Quantum Computer Science’, and his paper The Structure of the Multiverse is to appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society? http://www.qubit.org/people/david/David.html

Peter I know perfectly well who David is. I work in the field of quantum information theory - a field he played a great part in instigating, as well as quantum foundations.

He doesnt come to conferences, and I've never bothered to go and meet him (though plenty of my friends and colleagues have, and next time I'm at Oxford I will probably make the effort).

If and when I do, I will be quite happy to tell him I think his ideas are ridiculous - they ignore several significant advances in our understanding of QM. I'm sure he will defend himself better than by saying "But look I have a nice web page and lots of prizes".

And just for the record - his ideas do not represent what the "majority" fo quantum mechanical engineers believe, nor even what the majority of quantum information theorists believe, by ANY stretch of the imagination. I know this - I've been to many conferences from as varied as "condensed matter physics" to "philosophy of physics" where polls were taken about what people believed.