Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:56 am
I do not think most quantum physicisits believe that consciousness, or human intelligence, is the thing causing collapse. In the no-collapse approaches, like Many Worlds, the idea is that "measurement" and "entanglement" are almost synonymous - as a quantum system becomes entangled with its environment, the wave functions you were tracking before done collapse into a single value, rather the different pieces of the wave function decohere.
I was under the impression that you realized that decoherence does not account for the "collapse" of the wave function.
As I suggested in an earlier post...
seeds wrote: ↑Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:20 am
...even though decoherence seems to offer a possible clue as to why objects are
separate from each other, it still does not solve the mystery of how the objects acquire their observable, touchable, hearable, tasteable, and smellable 3-D forms suspended in this spatial arena we call a "universe."
The point is that decoherence has nothing to do with the collapse of the wave function.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:56 am
Because the measuring devices are ALSO made of quantum particles, and humans are ALSO made of quantum particles, so everything that makes us up must also be a part of the wave function.
That cannot be claimed about the human
mind, which is the most essential aspect of what "makes us up."
The human
mind, or, more specifically, the human
"I Am-ness" that sits at the throne of our consciousness,
cannot be measured by any conventional means, and therefore cannot be confirmed as being part of the wave function.
Indeed, that is one of the main problems with hardcore materialism, in that it treats the wondrous reality of a human mind as if it were no more significant than a single electron or photon.
And that is precisely why we are subjected to such
ridiculous theories as Everett's "Many Worlds Interpretation" (MWI), which assumes that a unique human mind (soul/consciousness) can be duplicated faster than you can make copies of your résumé at Kinkos.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:56 am
I personally don't trust any interpretation of quantum mechanics that relies on demarcing when a 'macroscopic measurement' has taken place - as if the laws of physics have to be somehow aware of macroscopic objects and how the wave functions of various particles are interacting with them. I believe in strong locality in the universe, so the concept that any fundamental rules of the evolution of the universe would rely on knowledge of macroscopic objects, including humans, seems apriori extremely unattractive to me...
That's fine, you can "believe" whatever you wish.
However, all you have to do now is resolve the mystery of the
"measurement problem" by providing an irrefutable explanation as to what the mechanism is that transforms nebulous fields of quantum waves into positionally-fixed phenomena that we can see, and touch, and hear, and smell, and taste.
(And again, no, "decoherence" is not the answer.)
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