Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics

11 August 2011

Quantum mechanics developed in the last century to deal with the tiniest parts of nature. It seemed that classical physics, which applied to everything from stars to grains of sand, should have sufficed. But it didn’t. A whole new theory was needed. To it we owe modern bombs and modern computers. It’s been called the most empirically powerful and accurate theory ever developed.

But quantum theory has been a pain, or at any rate a challenge, for philosophers since its beginning. In the first place, the quanta turn out to be neither particles, or waves --- each of which classical physics could deal with --- but something that shares the properties of both, in a way that is impossible to picture. This used to bother people more than it does now. There is a consensus that if we can understand things mathematically, or at least physicists can, we don’t need picture them.

More worrisome is the strange role for the observer in quantum mechanics. The idea seems to be that the systems move along from quantum state to quantum state in predictable and unproblematic ways as long as there is no observer. But these quantum states are justprobabilitiesabout what’s happening. But as soon as there is an observer, things have to resolve themselves one way or the other. And this seems tonotbe determined by the quantum state.

So, to use Schrödinger’s famous example, you put a cat in a box with bottle of gas rigged up so that if a particle ends up in one place, it will be released and the cat will die, but if doesn’t’ end up in that place, the cat will be OK.

Quantum theory tells us exactly what the probabilities are, but not what happens. But when someone opens the box and looks in, the cat is alive or dead. Some how the observer forces the world make up its mind in some way the laws of quantum physics don’t.

Well some physicists, and some philosophers, say that what happens is the world splits, with the cat living in some and not in others, matching the probabilities. I think that is really weird.

These problems have been around for almost a century. Lately, in the past quarter century, attention has focused on yet another problem,entanglement.一些物理学家关于纠缠的说法让我们哲学家觉得我们被踢回了柏拉图的洞穴,我们熟悉的世界,在空间中蔓延,随着时间变化,被降级为一种幻觉。

Here’s how I understand it. Suppose that Ken and I are particles generated by some subatomic process. We fly off in opposite directions at close the speed of light. After a while we each raise one of our hands---simultaneously, relative to an observer at the place where we began.

似乎我们有50%的几率会举起同样的手。但事实证明,我们有四分之三的时间是这样做的。Somehow, what one of us does depends on what the other does. Our states are entangled, even if after a few minutes we are thousands or even millions of miles apart. But how?

我们不能互相影响,因为没有信号能以光速传播,从我到肯,或者肯到我,及时协调行动。It seems like this better-than-chance correlation would be amiracle.

但这就是量子的工作方式。Quantum physicistsknowthis. But they don’t believe in miracles, so they are finding it hard to explain.

And some of their attempts at explaining I really find upsetting. Our guest, Jenann Ismael, uses the analogy of a kaleidoscope to explain one idea.

当你观察万花筒时,你会看到一个东西——一块红色的玻璃,在一个位置,另一个位置是另一个完全对称的东西。当你转动万花筒的末端,对称依然存在。

So you ask yourself how their positions remain coordinated ---- some hidden connection perhaps? Some entanglement?

但事实上,隐藏的联系只是身份。由于镜子的作用,你可以两次看到同一块红色玻璃。

So one idea, one I really find philosophically distressing, is that our life in space and time is a little bit like living in a kaleidoscope. There are other dimensions, ones we can’t perceive, and along those dimensions, things, like the Ken particle and the John particle, that seem after a few minutes to be millions of miles apart, are quite close together --- maybe they are even the same thing.

It is like we live in Plato’s cave, or Ismael’s Kaleidoscope, seeing shadows or mirror images, with no way of knowing what the true relations between the causes of those images are.

Comments(18)


Harold G. Neuman's picture

Harold G. Neuman

Thursday, August 11, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

I have never put much stock in any relationship be

I have never put much stock in any relationship between philosophy and the quantum thing. It has not troubled me, and I cannot imagine why it should. If what you have characterized as entanglement is anything at all like complexity (as characterized by Kauffman), then we are on reasonably solid sand. If we put enough heat and/or pressure on sand, it gets fairly stable. It is not clay or concrete, no, but it is not water either.
There have been some great mathematicians and physicists who were also philosophers. There have been philosophers who were also mathematicians and/or physicists. And so, what is my point? Well, the relationship between science and philosophy is tenuous at best. When we try to comingle the two, we end up with confusion---or chaos. So, what really happened to that hypersonic craft that was launched? Was it lost in the ocean, or did it skip the time/space continuum and flop in another dimension? Socrates would not care. Sartre might have been mildly intrigued. You can impute your own ideas to others.
As the sage (Kehlog Albran) wrote in his masterwork, THE PROFIT: If a goldfish should want a vacation, who would know? Precisely.

Guest's picture

Guest

Thursday, August 11, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Poor Ken and John, you find yourselves chained lik

Poor Ken and John, you find yourselves chained like so many others in the scientific cave of shadowy uncertainty and don't know what to do. The blind faithful are there as well and see the shadows too.
If you only allowed me to simply turned on the light, you would find your own Way, the Way to freedom. You would see for yourselves with your own eyes that the chains have no reality, and as for the shadows, they would absolutely disappear.
Don't be afraid, the light is only truth, the truth that will set you free.
Let there be light,
=
MJA

Guest's picture

Guest

Friday, August 12, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

I think our experience of the world is less an ill

我认为我们对世界的体验与其说是一种幻觉,不如说是对孩子们的谎言。当我们和孩子交谈时,我们会谈论太阳的升起和落下。随着孩子长大,我们向他们解释说,不,实际上地球绕着太阳转,而不是太阳绕着地球转。然后,随着他们对世界的理解进一步发展,我们可能会继续解释,实际上,这一切都是相对的——两者都围绕着对方运行,你想要的任何一个都可能被当作中心。然而,我们很少向小孩解释这一点,因为在他们发育的那个阶段,这很复杂,很难理解。
我们对世界的经验并不适合试图解释世界的科学家,甚至也不适合试图理解世界的哲学家。它是为寻求喂养和繁荣的动物而优化的。我们体验这个世界的方式非常适合在我们的肚子里吃东西,在我们的头上盖房子。
Once we have accomplished that goal, then we take the time to reexamine the world, and we find that many of our useful beliefs are not actually true, in much the same way that the Earth going around the Sun is not realy true. Things are far more complex and interesting than that. And we are able, by dint of our efforts, to begin to understand this more complex world. We find that matter and energy are much more similar to one another than we thought, that most of the apparently solid objects we interact with are actually mostly empty space, and yes, that objects can apparently influence one another instantaneously at a distance.
Does that mean that our previous understanding of the world was false? In some sense, sure. Should that worry us? I say no, no more than the man who comes to understand that it's all relative should be upset when he looks at the horizon and sees that the sun still seems to be rising.
Plus, of course, if this all falls apart, and we are left with no society, no accumulated knowledge, no science or philosophy, our senses will still allow us to fill our stomachs and get our of the weather. Sure, some truth will be nice, but I'll take meat and illusion over truth and hunger. Once your stomach is full, you have all the time in the world to hunt truth.

Guest's picture

Guest

Friday, August 12, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

我想我们总会发现问题。For some,

我想我们总会发现问题。对于其中的一些,或者许多,我们将找到答案。因为这是不断进化的人类意识的本质——正如一些哲学家正确地断言的那样,我们也能做到这一点。GroovyJ偶然发现了其中的一点:饱腹是非常重要的。亚伯·马斯洛(Abe Maslow)用他的需求层次理论清晰地概括了这一点,无论我们变得多么老练,我们总是会把床和早餐放在最优先的位置,以及保护自己免受那些拒绝我们享受这些舒适的人的手段。像诺伊曼一样,我也想知道13000英里每小时的楔形据说失败了两次。
It costs a lot to launch such a contraption. And when they fail and we learn little from the failures, it makes you skeptical about things like the national debt and how seriously anyone takes that issue. The Chinese are nervous about it. This makes me chuckle. Dollars, yen, euros, yuan, pounds sterling and francs are not quanta. Meat and illusion over truth and hunger? Aptly put---I think I like this GroovyJ. He sounds vaguely like someone I know.
公共哲学?它就在……某个地方。

Guest's picture

Guest

Saturday, August 13, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Theories and faiths are uncertain at best Truth is

Theories and faiths are uncertain at best
Truth is absolute
"God doesn't play dice"
So why oh why do they
Do you?
Truth is more simple than thought!
=
MJA

Guest's picture

Guest

Saturday, August 13, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Truth is simpler than thought. We might deconstruc

Truth is simpler than thought. We might deconstruct that notion, but the exercise seems futile. To me. If, in the first instance, we could not or did not think, truth would be meaningless in our human milieu. We would be reduced to to reactionism---the province of the reptilian brain: fight or fly, preserve one's self and thereby increase the odds of passing along one's genes. Thought is important to humans. As is truth (although not as much it seems in today's world.) Is the one more simple than the other? I wonder. Perhaps that is a subject for a post and show?
This is either a deep subject, or a tautological paradox. Or something else.
在我看来。

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, August 14, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

A public statement of truth: The infinite immeasu

A public statement of truth:
宇宙的无穷无尽的力量就是一个人真正的自我。
And how does One find the power, the beauty, the purity, the absolute?
消除了措施,消除了不平等,消除了任何疑问的阴影。
Be One,
=
MJA

mirugai's picture

mirugai

Sunday, August 14, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

PONDERING THE IMPOSSIBLE Whatever is improbable

PONDERING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Whatever is improbable, probably isn?t. For our purposes, reality = normative reality. Quantum mechanics: strangely, when power is applied to electrons, instead of moving proportionately to the power, the electrons wait until some threshold of additional power is added, then jump to another orbit, in a discrete jump. Strange; in this ?quantum leap,? like the proverbial ?leap of faith,? all kinds of improbable and seemingly unreal stuff happens, and is suggested, as the show pointed out, today.
I loved the philosophical ramifications of the issue, posed by the guest philosopher, when she queried as to ?What you think needs to be explained.? That is, think about what stuff we need explanations for, and why, and even more importantly, what stuff we either don?t need an explanation for, or don?t WANT an explanation for. The non-philosopher needs almost nothing explained, in order to address reality, and spends almost no time investigating explanations. Philosophers want everything explained, as illustrated by the wonderful fish tank video example. And pondering explanations for the impossible and improbable are among the central occupations of philosophy.
I am always looking for methodologies; a few methodologies of the impossible are: 1. deconstruction, which seeks to describe the territory when meaning is gone, and 2. integral calculus, which seeks to describe what happens as you get closer and closer to some point, which you never can reach.
As the guest pointed out, the conceptual problems of quantum physics are minimized by thinking of it as a mechanical process, but what is most striking about q.m. is its other-mechanics. This is another philosophical impossibility problem: confusing, quite naturally, ?observation? and ?reality.? It is (almost) impossible not to.
And, finally, the wonderful question, which seems to need many universes in order to be visualized, is ?probability? reality?

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, August 14, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

If I so humbly may: "Truth is simpler than though

If I so humbly may:
"Truth is simpler than thought. We might deconstruct that notion, but the exercise seems futile."
Truth is.
&
"is probability reality?"
Is a most uncertain way.
To be a scientist ye must have faith!
Science = Religion hmmmmm
There is a better way, "A Path less Traveled"
And it has meant all the unity to me.
Be One,
=
MJA

Guest's picture

Guest

Monday, August 15, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

It isn't that we don't understand the relationship

并不是我们不了解这些关系,而是我们有数学工具来描述它们。就像牛顿提供了月亮和潮汐之间的数学关系一样。问题在于如何将这些关系交流成宏观的理解。我们似乎并不像量子力学描述的那样生活在概率宇宙中。因此,我们很难在直观的层面上理解它,但这对科学来说并不新鲜。《科学史》告诉我们,当牛顿提出他自己的物理学观点时,也出现了类似的争议。我们只是花了些时间才接受它们是有质量的粒子的“本质”。同样地,我们今天也面临着不能正确理解“什么是”概率位置的问题。但随着新一代的接受,这种观念开始消失。
这也涉及到另一点,解释。一些科学哲学家呼吁用共同语言来解释一切。为什么每件事都要解释清楚?为什么我们必须把我们能放进数学语言里的东西放进普通语言里?我们有数学语言来描述和解释粒子之间的关系。我们的共同语言太贫乏了,无法描述这些东西,这是可以预料的,因为它从未被开发出来处理像量子力学这样的现象。

Guest's picture

Guest

Monday, August 15, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Wilber has said:"and just so" so many times that w

Wilber has said:"and just so" so many times that we who have read his sage professions got bored with the comment. Yet, after reading this post and the comments thus far, I am ashamed to say (but will say): and just so. The beauty and discrepancy of language is that it reaches us on our own level. It took me forty or more years to notice, and fifty five years to form my own reactions; to begin to FORMULATE my own ideas---to SAY IT, as a favored blog has advised. Chance favors the prepared mind. Chaos will defeat the faint-of-heart.
There are levels of consciousness, and those depend upon how interested we are in what is going on, outside of our immediate milieu.Or, whether we have 'awakened' to something other than the superficiality of CURRENT popular culture*. This is fairly simple stuff, if you think about it. If you do not think about it, it is rendered irrelevant, for the reasons previously set forth. Well, all of this is subject to criticism and/or change---philosophy is like that; to a lesser degree, perhaps, so are physics and mathematics.
(*流行文化是相对的,因为它已经存在了很长一段时间——我们不是进化思想的终点。我希望)。

Guest's picture

Guest

Monday, August 15, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

I am interested in further interpretation of the f

I am interested in further interpretation of the fish tank analogy. The "unified reality" is the 3-D fish in the tank and perceptual confusion is caused by the observer's experience of the two projections from different angles. Can we be more specific about the interpretation in the case of the EPR experiment---two particles fly off in different directions and the subsequent correlated observations?
回顾一下:对不同粒子的知觉是知觉混乱。对这种相关性的解释是,存在一个“单一”粒子,而观察者(通过物理的魔力(摄像机))从两个不同的角度感知这个单一粒子。这似乎就是万花筒的类比派上用场的地方:一个工具和多个图像。
This unification of the two particle idea as really being two aspects of the same particle has a cost, it seems. In reducing the number of particles it is now possible to ask for the "true" number of unreduced particles. Is there only one electron, one up-quark, ..., and one photon? Such an idea, once put forward (more or less tongue-in-cheek) by John Wheeler can work for fermions because of the continuity of the fermion lines in Feynman diagrams. However, bosons, specifically photons, need not have this property and are "created and destroyed." If there are multiple "real particles", how can they be counted, if that is even possible? To my knowledge, the observation of a particle in a cosmic ray may well be entangled with a particle in another galaxy, but this should not matter to an experiment on earth. Yet to describe the dynamics of the "real particle" one might need information from all of its projections. Does this imply the impossibility of a fundamental physics, since initial data is---in principle---unavailable where it seems needed? How does Dr. Ismael's theory deal with these issues? Is it unresolved and the subject of research or is there an explanation to which someone can direct me?
Further, in such an explanation it seems as though spacial separation (at least non-causal separation) is unreal and would, presumably, be modeled in quantum mechanics as an operator. On the other hand, the ability of the "real" particle to move seems to imply that space is real and substantive (as a container, in the real, higher dimensional world, at least). Even more dramatically, it seems that the perceived motion of the two particles in the projective space is not caused by any motion in the real, higher dimensional space. Rather it is an artifact of the projectors---hitherto unmodeled. It seems then that there must be a physics of the projectors as well as one of the real particles in the higher dimensional space. Where then do the projectors live? But perhaps I carry the analogy too far.
To explain separation in the projection world seems to imply a radical revision of the QM rules (in the projection world) because non-relativistic QM, quantum field theory and string theory all presuppose a "background metric" which implies a pre-existing space-time arena in which particles interact. This arena can evolve, according to general relativity, and its evolution is dependent upon the mass-energy density of the particles, but it is not just a function of the particles. I understand that this is not true in some formulations of quantum gravity, for example in some of the ideas proposed by Rovelli and Smolin. Is there a philosophical debt or connection between Ismael's ideas and that of these thinkers?
Thanks,

Guest's picture

Guest

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Once One finds the truth, He then must practice i

Once One finds the truth,
He then must practice it,
Practice living it.
真正的生活。
And then there is the sharing,
The beautiful gift of giving,
For if One finds a treasure
That could unite our world,
It must be shared,
And that takes patience
还有大量的练习。
Practice practice,
=

Guest's picture

Guest

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Question regarding quantum mechanics: A)If there

Question regarding quantum mechanics:
A)If there are infinite universes with infinite possibilities than is there an alternate universe with a "God" like creator? (Assuming ours isn't)
B) How does our concious ability to create new ideas affect the infinite possible universes? Ex. Before humanity created the idea of a unicorn through creative thought, were there previously existing alternate universes containing unicorns? If this is not so, would an individual with concious freewill be a creator like "God" of infinite universes?

Guest's picture

Guest

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

TO KEN AND JOHN: Well, you knew you would get peo

TO KEN AND JOHN:
Well, you knew you would get people fired up with quantum mechanics, didn't you? What was it that Dennett said in his FREEDOM EVOLVES?: If you make yourself small enough, you can externalize virtually everything. Inasmuch as the quantum world is about the very small and very fast, I guess it IS part of us, whether we choose to recognize it or no.

Guest's picture

Guest

Saturday, August 27, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

It is fashionable to pooh-pooh the links people ha

It is fashionable to pooh-pooh the links people have made between Quantum Physics and Buddhism, but read a little Dogen on 'Being Time' and look at the Many-Worlds cosmologies of the Vajrayana, and perhaps a little bit of wonder will surface at how such insights into the physical reality of time as a dimension and the many-worlds view of Everett-Wheeler could have been arrived at merely by a peculiar form of introspection where the aim is to exhaust conventional thought to the point where it stops and allows a new form of 'seeing' the timelessness of each moment as experience itself becomes quantized. It is no less surprising than Wheeler's appreciation of his student Everett's original interpretation. The real issue that irritates science is that usually interpretations are irrelevant to theories, just as Newton asserted 'I make no hypothese', except in the case of quantum mechanics where interpretations cease to become an irrelevant accessory to theory, and start to become as important as the theory. After all, the real puzzle of religion, when you get right down to it, is: 'what possible difference to the universe could it make what I do or do not Think?'

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, September 11, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

Given the requirement of infinite time for evoluti

Given the requirement of infinite time for evolution to resolve the issues of probability for the existing physical circumstances of this universe, other issues and questions are evident.
除非进化由于某些物理规律而停止,否则人类特征的进化将继续变化,以涵盖物理的范围和不断演化的自然规律。
If human characteristics will continue to evolve, then entity characteristics have already evolved beyond potential human characteristics given an infinite time in the past for the evolution to have occurred. This would include the ability of evolved entities to master sub atomic laws, time cone, curved space issues and a lot more since we don?t understand the physical world well enough to set technical limits. Extending the concept of infinity and evolution a bit further, entity characteristics will have already evolved to encompass and master all known physical laws and much more.
The position that evolved entities have not solved the transcendence from a human form to forms that encompass all physical law is a position that limits evolution beyond the conditions of known science given infinity.
Having entities evolved to the extent of known physical law, and with our rudimentary understanding of physical law, to a state beyond known physical law, the conclusion would be the existence of entities capable of creating or manipulating existence far beyond what is required to create our singular universe.
这很简单,不需要任何信仰的飞跃,除了人类已经并且正在进化,时间不是从我们的宇宙创造开始的,但时间在各个方向都是无限的。
或者,用现有的科学证明,消除无限和定义所有的存在只包括我们所观察到的宇宙是如此不可能,以至于需要一只指导的手。或进化的实体。
Another alternative is a circumstance where existence has been in place long enough for our universe to occur, but not long enough for evolved entities that master the laws of physics to form. The in-between position that there?s been enough time to generate the start of our universe but not enough time for sentient beings to evolve who master laws of nature is an arbitrary limit and is not the simplest solution. The in-between position is an example of the ego-centric position that precludes the use of any physics that cannot be proved with the scientific method (science).
As if you are the epitomy of infinite evolution.
There doesn?t seem to be a case for eliminating evolution given existing scientific knowledge.
Either we have a singular universe that is impossible to exist without a guiding hand. Or we have a multiverse with the existence of entities that have the ability to create universes, send messengers to less evolved entities such as humans and create a plausible platform for evolution.
Either way, the logical conclusion is the existence of a creator who has mastered all physical law.
如果你能提供一个超越已知物理状态的进化平台,会吗?t你吗?你真的相信在无限的时间里,人类赢了吗?不能进化到超越我们现在的物理状态而成为永恒的存在?特别是进化实体的存在可以告诉我们什么?
There?s plenty of room to use the term God in here, but you can use your own term.
Any comments you have to re-direct this chain of thought will be appreciated.

Guest's picture

Guest

Sunday, September 11, 2011 -- 5:00 PM

A Redirect: Nature is truly a lawless state of ju

A Redirect:
Nature is truly a lawless state of just or equitable freedom.
The truth is self-evident.
=
MJA