Atla wrote: ↑Thu Jun 28, 2018 1:01 pm
I think modern neuroscience has proven the identity of "mind" events and "physical" events beyond reasonable doubt. And no "special stuff" was found in the head.
Those that differ would differ, citing mere correlation between what neuroscience detects and mind processes, and if they posit "special stuff", it's undetectablity is probably why it is special. Modern neuroscience in fact makes the same assumption you do, but that doesn't stop it from being an assumption.
Anyway, I have a hard time parsing your opinion from the science behind it. What is your preferred interpretation, and are you open minded to some other interpretations?
"QM observer" doesn't necessarily imply something alive or anything "special" as in non-physical, but still there seems to be a certain kind of structure involved imo.
It needs to imply something, because you use it a lot in this post, and things that are not QM observers are dismissed by calling them a collection of atoms. This seems inconsistent since in the end, if neither of us posits a supernatural observer role, then the QM observer is just a collection of atoms as well.
Reality is probably nonlocal so it doesn't matter how "far" the observers are from the experiment.
You mean an observation causes nonlocal changes to reality? Physicists consider that a significant mark against an interpretation, but not disproof. Only Copenhagen and Wigner interpretations seem to have a role for a QM observer and also non-locality, but I think you say you don't support those. I'm trying to guess your view here.
The "role" of the QM observer is significant, from our point of view. That's the whole point, denied by all the woo interpretations. It doesn't necessarily have to be human / part of a human / doesn't have to go or extend through a human though, or life in general for that matter.
OK. Making life special is inconsistent, I agree. Life could not have originated without life to collapse a massive wave function into something that was life. I'm still trying to figure out what you consider to play the role of 'QM observer' that is not just an atom collection.
The QM observer also remains in superposition but that's not how it appears to us from our point of view. Observation in QM is neither an effect nor a cause; there are only correlations. "Knowledge" in the usual sense isn't really involved either, correlations are.
At one end we have collapsed stuff and on the other we have stuff in superposition, but they are all part of one and the same world.
Sounds only a little like Everett interpretation, but there is no collapse there, so no QM observer role at all, and it is local, and you say otherwise, and it posits one wave function, but multiple real worlds, and you say one world here. OK, maybe not Everett, but what else has observers in superposition?
Agree, but I find myself gravitating towards the relational interpretation where things are real only in relation to something.
I couldn't follow you here. QM is always relational (from our point of view at least), but these relative-to-each other things are also all part of the same world; I can't make sense of the idea that a part of it doesn't exist / isn't real in some sense.
Article in the usual place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationa ... _mechanics
It is explained there better than I can. Distant planet X (10 BLY distant, when the universe appears 13.8 BY old) doesn't exist to me because I haven't collapsed its wave function even to the point where the planet formed yet. Similarly, Earth and the moon are nonexistent to them, and were they to train their perfect telescope on our location, light arriving there in billions of years from here and now would not find Earth here because the wave function of this area right now, relative to planet X, has pretty much a zero probability of something like Earth forming, let alone having the moon or life or humans.
implies that I am in superposition myself, which only some interpretations support
Let's be honest here, any interpretation that doesn't support this, is basically saying: ok I give up, let's come up with some random idea as the explanation.
You seem to be dismissing all but a couple interpretations. That doesn't sound like being honest, it sounds like bias. Dismiss them if they are self-inconsistent, but they're not 'random ideas' if they are consistent.
I don't consider myself to be in superposition. That doesn't fit with any possible notion of what 'I' am. Am I guilty of littering yesterday? Yes and no if I'm in superposition. Am I alive? Yes and no. The view degenerates into zero knowledge about ones self, and I need an identity to function. The relational view defines reality in relation to what matters to one collapsed state, and the other worlds are not real to me since they don't concern me. The cat in the box is in superposition in relation to the guy outside the box, but is not in superposition to the cat. The dead cat does not exist in relation to the live one. This neatly solves the cat scenario without positing this Heisenberg cut.