Post: #1

This study (see here for an explanation or read on for my interpretation) builds on a thought experiment by Eugene Wigner that because of the weirdness of quantum physics it should allow two beings to experience different realities. This is because matter and light exists in a superposition of all possible outcomes up until the point that we try to observe/measure it (e.g. the double-slit experiment), where it then changes to being a single objective reality.

His thought experiment raises the question of whether objective facts can exist, which challenges the foundations of science (at least on a quantum scale).



In a study published this week a group of scientists sought to test that assumption by creating two conflicting realities. First they started off by creating a number of quantum entangled photons (light), so the state of them should always be exactly the same.

Next they had an experimenter ("Wigner's friend") in a room measuring the state of these photons, which can exist either in a horizontal or a vertical polarisation. By measuring them they changed from their superposition of both possible polarisations to a single objective reality. An experimenter outside the room ("Wigner") however instead only tested the photons to prove that they maintain their superposition.

This proves that two conflicting physical realities can co-exist simultaneously. The double-slit experiment proved that observation causes the creation of a single reality which we presumed affected everyone, but in fact this experiment proves that parts of the observed reality will only exist for the local observer.

This means not only whenever you observe parts of the world you are affecting it's existence, but also that that change will simply not exist for others if they were not also observing it. You might watch someone standing under the sun and in your reality they're getting hit by particles, but they might be asleep or otherwise unaware and they'll instead experience it as waves, and it's mind-boggling that subjective reality is really that literal.

This is a far less nihilistic perspective of reality than Schrödinger's cat, where reality stops properly existing when people stop looking, with it being sort of shared hallucination of humanity. Instead people everywhere are shaping the world in lots of small ways merely by being there to experience it.

There is an alternative explanation for their findings however, which instead proposes there is an objective reality but it can't be experienced, and there is still a subjective reality which is: quantum nonlocality.

It basically means that matter and light aren't principally stored at their observed location, instead the data about each piece of them is stored somewhere we haven't observed (i.e. a different dimension) and where we observe them is secondary to that.

Think of it like a universe-scale database about the state of each piece of matter and light, and it exists like a website domain lookup (DNS) - you're asking this universal database for some data about what you should be seeing and it pops out some matter and light infront of your eyes just like loading a website. This is how we're able to have quantum entangled particles that can affect each other faster than the speed of light.

This latter explanation is more aligned with the "we're in a computer simulation" hypothesis as well. It is also aligned with the Many Worlds hypothesis which proposes a multi-verse all with different configurations of what each piece of matter and light could be, which is also mind-boggling in it's scale.

What a fascinating time to be alive.

Post: #2

What you envision will happen: a world of people sitting down and pondering the unfathomable mysteries of the universe.
What will actually happen: a world of sluts screaming "just because I slept with 100 guys doesn't mean it's reality"!

Post: #3

Yogis and true mystics have known this for a long time - your reality is shaped by your thoughts and intentions and you build your heaven or hell yourself.

But like Handsome Creepy Eel said - give public this knowledge and they will use it to excuse their worst behaviors by acting in just the opposite way they should for their own good.

Post: #4

I'm starting to notice a rise in people wanting to believe that reality is a "simulation". When you don't understand reality, and are disconnected from it, the simulation theory is what you grasp towards in order to match how you feel about your existence (i.e. that your life is just a series of pixels like the entertainment you consume).

Post: #5

I read a sci-fi novel in which the double-split experiment was used as a test for consciousness. If observation causes light to behave like either a wave or a particle*, what counts as 'observation'? What if a chimp observes it, or a person in a vegetative state?

Eventually the researcher discovers that there is some fraction of human beings who do not cause the change, who don't count as observers and thus must not be conscious beings despite appearing to be just like the rest of us. Hilarity ensues.

Post: #6

cancel

Post: #7

(03-16-2019 12:16 PM)Ryre Wrote:  I read a sci-fi novel in which the double-split experiment was used as a test for consciousness. If observation causes light to behave like either a wave or a particle*, what counts as 'observation'? What if a chimp observes it, or a person in a vegetative state?

Eventually the researcher discovers that there is some fraction of human beings who do not cause the change, who don't count as observers and thus must not be conscious beings despite appearing to be just like the rest of us. Hilarity ensues.

According to current science trough even a lifeless instrument can be an observer.

Post: #8

This is just science testing Kant's hypothesis of noumena and phenomena... and Kant's theory is still holding strong! Always thought it would, excellent find Valentine!!

Post: #9

If the authors really believed that, they wouldn't have bothered publishing.

Post: #10

(03-16-2019 10:29 AM)Roosh Wrote:  I'm starting to notice a rise in people wanting to believe that reality is a "simulation". When you don't understand reality, and are disconnected from it, the simulation theory is what you grasp towards in order to match how you feel about your existence (i.e. that your life is just a series of pixels like the entertainment you consume).

It's a replacement for religion. The powers that be are really pushing simulation theory for a reason.

Post: #11

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  you're asking this universal database for some data about what you should be seeing and it pops out some matter and light infront of your eyes just like loading a website.

I think thats why time slows when you move (relativity). Its the system loading the new area youre in like a video game. Like buffering.

Post: #12

(03-16-2019 01:09 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  If the authors really believed that, they wouldn't have bothered publishing.

How do you know they published anything?

Post: #13

(03-16-2019 01:15 PM)VNvet Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 10:29 AM)Roosh Wrote:  I'm starting to notice a rise in people wanting to believe that reality is a "simulation". When you don't understand reality, and are disconnected from it, the simulation theory is what you grasp towards in order to match how you feel about your existence (i.e. that your life is just a series of pixels like the entertainment you consume).

It's a replacement for religion. The powers that be are really pushing simulation theory for a reason.

No, religion is explaining simulation theory to people who have no language even for words like "simulation" much less "virtual reality", "NPC", "rendering", "pixel", "information unit" and similar.

In ancient times when East was smarter then West they had names like Maya and Sansara to describe these things. West got religion instead. Under religion you could not muse about the nature of reality because you had to observe muh Bible and nothing else until age of enlightenment.

The idea is as old as humanity.

I must both agree and disagree with the great Roosh on this one.
I must disagree for this theory is not for losers who don't understand life. The smarter a man becomes, the more he realizes that there are many things he does not know and only a fool thinks he knows everything.
But I must agree - Roosh see your subliminal word choice "disconnected". Yes exactly - you begin to doubt the matrix as you disconnect from it. Be comfortable, well fed and well adjusted in the Matrix and you will never want to doubt it. You cannot disconnect from reality which is the only one. So You see You believe in simulation theory in some subconscious level yourself.

After all the whole Red pill thing we are all in is taken from Simulation theory of the matrix movie and we all have uncovered that layer of the Matrix. There are more layers.

One more thing - in my experience there is one thing where I have observed individuals shaping their realities the most. It is in the ability to attract a good woman. Some guys say such can be found, others do not believe there are good women anymore. All red pill guys, that can sleep with common women easily. It is directly because these guys put themselves in different universes. I know red pill men who find a good woman and will have a happy family and I know red pill men who will only ever meet sluts and become all cynical. It is the result of their mindset that changes their reality and it is observable from aside. One might argue how much it is just psychology and how much it is mind altering reality, but it happens all the time.

Post: #14

(03-16-2019 12:23 PM)Mage Wrote:  According to current science trough even a lifeless instrument can be an observer.

It's weirder than that though. The instrument can make the observation, but the wave doesn't actually collapse until you have the "information" about the observation. The wave then collapses in the past. Or so it seems...

https://youtu.be/H6HLjpj4Nt4

There are now a bunch of physicists doing "Backwards Flips" (As AMS would say) to come up with a way to explain this away without including consciousness, but I haven't seen a model as convincing as Tom Campbell's "information based" reality model.

Post: #15

(03-16-2019 01:40 PM)Hammerhead Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 12:23 PM)Mage Wrote:  According to current science trough even a lifeless instrument can be an observer.

It's weirder than that though. The instrument can make the observation, but the wave doesn't actually collapse until you have the "information" about the observation. The wave then collapses in the past. Or so it seems...

https://youtu.be/H6HLjpj4Nt4

There are now a bunch of physicists doing "Backwards Flips" (As AMS would say) to come up with a way to explain this away without including consciousness, but I haven't seen a model as convincing as Tom Campbell's "information based" reality model.

I hope you are right, but It is all very questionable.

Post: #16

(03-16-2019 01:37 PM)Mage Wrote:  No, religion is explaining simulation theory to people who have no language even for words like "simulation" much less "virtual reality", "NPC", "rendering", "pixel", "information unit" and similar.

In ancient times when East was smarter then West they had names like Maya and Sansara to describe these things. West got religion instead.

This is spot on. In order to describe any complex system that we can't directly observe we have to use a metaphor of some sort. That could be religion, computer simulation, etc. What metaphor is the closest to the actual underlying reality? We have to build that metaphor based on all the available data we have at this point in time and refine it when new data becomes available.

Post: #17

(03-16-2019 01:48 PM)Mage Wrote:  I hope you are right.

All mainstream scientists are part of the new religion of "materialism". They dare not suggest that consciousness is anything more than a byproduct of the atoms in the brain, else they will be laughed out of their profession never to work again. The mainstream explanation is that an entire new universe spawns off at every microsecond there is a "choice" available aka the many worlds theory. Where is all the extra mass and energy coming from to create these new universes? This is what I mean by doing "Backwards Flips" to avoid the problem of consciousness. I suspect many physicists realize consciousness having a special quality is a much simpler explanation, but can't admit that in public or face ostracism.

Post: #18

(03-16-2019 01:16 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 01:09 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  If the authors really believed that, they wouldn't have bothered publishing.

How do you know they published anything?

Published what?

Post: #19

(03-16-2019 01:16 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 01:09 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  If the authors really believed that, they wouldn't have bothered publishing.

How do you know they published anything?

Post: #20

This is kind of a scientific establishment equivalent of postwar deconstructive postmodernist philosophers like Foucault and Derrida who have paved the way to anti-traditionalist degeneracy, declaring that up is down and morality is relative. What follows then is that immorality is OK. This of course is not only bullshit, but also evil.

Post: #21

(03-16-2019 03:20 PM)realologist Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 01:16 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

(03-16-2019 01:09 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  If the authors really believed that, they wouldn't have bothered publishing.

How do you know they published anything?

Published what?

Nothing, subjectivologist.

Post: #22

Most folk live their lives as if the world they see & touch is 'solid'.
Whereas, even without going into the 'crazy' realm of quantum physics, even staying at the atomic level. The world is not really solid.

Then when we do ponder quantum physics. The whole situation becomes far more malleable.

Reality is what it is. Simulation or otherwise. It's our perceptions that are either incomplete or incorrect.

Post: #23

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  This study (see here for an explanation or read on for my interpretation) builds on a thought experiment by Eugene Wigner that because of the weirdness of quantum physics it should allow two beings to experience different realities. This is because matter and light exists in a superposition of all possible outcomes up until the point that we try to observe/measure it (e.g. the double-slit experiment), where it then changes to being a single objective reality.

His thought experiment raises the question of whether objective facts can exist, which challenges the foundations of science (at least on a quantum scale).

Spooky. Only a few days ago was I catching up on the latest research in Quantum physics. I've always been fascinated by it. I was nearly chucked out of Junior school at 8 years old for disrupting the class by trying to teach them the Standard Model of sub-atomic particles. And I've been at it ever since!

I've come across some quite recent research which backs up what you've found here as well. Of course it's all linked, but this thing that I've found seems to be a parallel to these experiments.

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  In a study published this week a group of scientists sought to test that assumption by creating two conflicting realities. First they started off by creating a number of quantum entangled photons (light), so the state of them should always be exactly the same.

Next they had an experimenter ("Wigner's friend") in a room measuring the state of these photons, which can exist either in a horizontal or a vertical polarisation. By measuring them they changed from their superposition of both possible polarisations to a single objective reality. An experimenter outside the room ("Wigner") however instead only tested the photons to prove that they maintain their superposition.

This proves that two conflicting physical realities can co-exist simultaneously. The double-slit experiment proved that observation causes the creation of a single reality which we presumed affected everyone, but in fact this experiment proves that parts of the observed reality will only exist for the local observer.

Even though this is a different experiment by different people, it really does seem to back up the work of Rafael Chaves et al in the up and coming field of causal modeling. In this experiment he took Wheeler's (not Wigner) gedanken a step further again. There have been experiments since 1999 that gave the shock result that Wheeler was right (they didn't have the scientific equipment to measure it at enough accuracy till then - so they waited a couple of decades).

The upshot of this being that events in the future can influence events in the past. You must be familiar with Wheeler's delayed choice experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%27...experiment

This is called retro-causality. And it breaks time's arrow and the second law of thermodynamics as I understand it with regard to entropy.

It's a controversial idea for many obvious reasons. And Wheeler didn't think it existed:

The retrocausal explanation, which Wheeler does not accept, says that with the detection screen in place, interference must be manifested.

Several ways of implementing Wheeler's basic idea have been made into real experiments and they support the conclusion that Wheeler anticipated — that what is done at the exit port of the experimental device before the photon is detected will determine whether it displays interference phenomena or not. Retrocausality is a mirage.

You can't perfectly piece that smashed vase back together after breaking it. Having said that I read an article in the Daily Mail about some Russian scientists actually really doing that. They broke times arrow as well. I'll try to dig it out. Remind me if I forget. Imagine all the pool balls on a table just reversing back in time after being smashed all over the table top. This counters the second law of thermodynamics of course and all that we believe about entropy: the propensity for all matter and energy to decay in to a chaotic state. That is why everything and everyone must die, and nothing lasts forever. Look on my works ye mighty...

This really is very exciting, because even though this is obviously a related kind of experiment, it is in fact distinctly discrete from the works of Chaves. But with a very similar conclusion. And another parallel being the conclusion those other Russian scientists came to with their experiment. Though really their experiment has proved the opposite of what they did: that you can travel back in time. Get used to contradictions. There is no sense in this world when you are trying to understand 'reality'.

The double-slit experiment proved that observation causes the creation of a single reality which we presumed affected everyone, but in fact this experiment proves that parts of the observed reality will only exist for the local observer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_nonlocality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_...al_realism

I'm struggling with the whole locality thing. There are just so many contradictions in all of this. There are in the experiments as well. And the scientists don't even agree among themselves. Does the fact that "this experiment proves that parts of the observed reality will only exist for the local observer" imply nonlocality? Because all these experiments are leaning towards the de Broglie interpretation -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta..._mechanics

Ah, fucking BINGO - GOTCHA!

Right this makes perfect sense. I was getting confused by the term nonlocality and how it applies to the observer alone. It's a contradictory term. This is in total keeping with the bolded paragraph there. The key is:

De Broglie–Bohm theory
Main article: De Broglie–Bohm theory

The de Broglie–Bohm theory of quantum mechanics (also known as the pilot wave theory) is a theory by Louis de Broglie and extended later by David Bohm to include measurements. Particles, which always have positions, are guided by the wavefunction. The wavefunction evolves according to the Schrödinger wave equation, and the wavefunction never collapses. The theory takes place in a single space-time, is non-local, and is deterministic. The simultaneous determination of a particle's position and velocity is subject to the usual uncertainty principle constraint. The theory is considered to be a hidden-variable theory, and by embracing non-locality it satisfies Bell's inequality. The measurement problem is resolved, since the particles have definite positions at all times.[16] Collapse is explained as phenomenological.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta...ohm_theory

------------------------

phenomenology (countable and uncountable, plural phenomenologies)

(philosophy) The study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.

-------------------

We are getting in to the whole philosophical Anti-Reality thing here as well. We've kind of left Quantum Physics and are in to philosophy, like anything when you dig deep enough. There is no reality. It's what you decide it is at the time, as you measure it. Funny ah?

The nonlocality thing is important. It's a key corner stone to even begin to understand any of this. Keep with me.

The whole De Broglie-Bohm interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is at odds with the more commonly accepted Copenhagen interpretation which is kind of the main yardstick with all of the different interpretations out there. Like I said, lots of contradictions. We are all in the wild here.

The Copenhagen interpretation is the "standard" interpretation of quantum mechanics formulated by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg while collaborating in Copenhagen around 1927. Bohr and Heisenberg extended the probabilistic interpretation of the wavefunction proposed originally by Max Born. The Copenhagen interpretation rejects questions like "where was the particle before I measured its position?" as meaningless. The measurement process randomly picks out exactly one of the many possibilities allowed for by the state's wave function in a manner consistent with the well-defined probabilities that are assigned to each possible state. According to the interpretation, the interaction of an observer or apparatus that is external to the quantum system is the cause of wave function collapse, thus according to Paul Davies, "reality is in the observations, not in the electron".


https://www.quantamagazine.org/closed-lo...-20180725/


For Wiseman, the debate over Copenhagen versus de Broglie-Bohm in the context of the delayed-choice experiment is far from settled. “So in Copenhagen, there is no strange inversion of time precisely because we have no right to say anything about the photon’s past,” he wrote in an email. “In de Broglie-Bohm there is a reality independent of our knowledge, but there is no problem as there is no inversion — there is a unique causal (forward in time) description of everything."

This last paragraph is key as well.

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  This means not only whenever you observe parts of the world you are affecting it's existence, but also that that change will simply not exist for others if they were not also observing it. You might watch someone standing under the sun and in your reality they're getting hit by particles, but they might be asleep or otherwise unaware and they'll instead experience it as waves, and it's mind-boggling that subjective reality is really that literal.

This is a far less nihilistic perspective of reality than Schrödinger's cat, where reality stops properly existing when people stop looking, with it being sort of shared hallucination of humanity. Instead people everywhere are shaping the world in lots of small ways merely by being there to experience it.

There is an alternative explanation for their findings however, which instead proposes there is an objective reality but it can't be experienced, and there is still a subjective reality which is: quantum nonlocality.

It basically means that matter and light aren't principally stored at their observed location, instead the data about each piece of them is stored somewhere we haven't observed (i.e. a different dimension) and where we observe them is secondary to that.

Mind blown! You know I missed that 'quantum nonlocality' bit, in all honesty I didn't see it and there it pops up in the nut of what you are trying to explain. Like I said, it's central to understanding any of this. It's why I spent over an hour scratching my head with how it applies to the other stuff that is starting to make sense.

The main core of De Broglie-Bohm theory is determinism and nonlocality. As per your post title: "There is no objective reality" until it is observed subjectively, conjuring it in to life.

Quantum entanglement, spooky action at a distance, information paradox. Local realism and nonlocality.

Local realism
Einstein's principle of local realism is the combination of the principle of locality (limiting cause-and-effect to the speed of light) with the assumption that a particle must objectively have a pre-existing value (i.e. a real value) for any possible measurement, i.e. a value existing before that measurement is made.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_...al_realism

Local realism is a feature of classical mechanics, and of classical electrodynamics; but quantum mechanics theories reject the principle, based on the experimental evidence of distant quantum entanglements: an interpretation that Einstein rejected (as being a paradox)

So the evidence is mounting up more and more for Quantum nonlocality as espoused by De Broglie-Bohm interpretation. Was Einstein wrong about that as well? Well, not wrong, just confused. Like the rest of us. Then again, he might have been wrong, and right at the same time. Or neither. Or both!

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  Think of it like a universe-scale database about the state of each piece of matter and light, and it exists like a website domain lookup (DNS) - you're asking this universal database for some data about what you should be seeing and it pops out some matter and light infront of your eyes just like loading a website. This is how we're able to have quantum entangled particles that can affect each other faster than the speed of light.

Maybe one day we will find evidence for the Tachyon.

A tachyon (/ˈtækiɒn/) or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always travels faster than light. Most physicists believe that faster-than-light particles cannot exist because they are not consistent with the known laws of physics.[1][2] If such particles did exist, they could be used to build a tachyonic antitelephone and send signals faster than light, which (according to special relativity) would lead to violations of causality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  This latter explanation is more aligned with the "we're in a computer simulation" hypothesis as well. It is also aligned with the Many Worlds hypothesis which proposes a multi-verse all with different configurations of what each piece of matter and light could be, which is also mind-boggling in it's scale.

What a fascinating time to be alive.

The Many Worlds hypothesis is also a fascinating interpretation along with the Copenhagen and De Broglie-Bohm ones.

Many-worlds interpretation
In the many-worlds interpretation, both realism and locality of action are retained,

Realism. Local Realism. Anti-realism. Locality. Nonlocality.

(03-15-2019 11:04 PM)Valentine Wrote:  What a fascinating time to be alive.

Yes.

This post is already far too long. I'll put forward that parallel research I talked about earlier and how it ties in with the research that you presented.

(sorry for any formatting issues. It's late and and that's a lot or word-salad to get through on my part - this is for my notes as much as anything else, but maybe some others can make sense of it.)

Damn, I forgot how much of a bitch it is to debug HTML. I should have used an IDE for this post...

Post: #24

Very interesting thread.

One thing bothers me though : the leap (voluntarily or not) made between the quantum level and the macro one.
Let's admit 1 photon can have a different state, depending on the observer.
This is crazy, yes.
But does it imply there's Any notable effect on the macro level?

We can find individual atoms which have different states, but maybe a balance is naturally found when taking a larger quantity of them, to give the exact same result for all observers?
Has there been any experience with a large quantity of atoms?

Post: #25

(03-16-2019 07:32 PM)CynicalContrarian Wrote:  Most folk live their lives as if the world they see & touch is 'solid'.
Whereas, even without going into the 'crazy' realm of quantum physics, even staying at the atomic level. The world is not really solid.

Then when we do ponder quantum physics. The whole situation becomes far more malleable.

Reality is what it is. Simulation or otherwise. It's our perceptions that are either incomplete or incorrect.

The reality is that reality including everything on this earth and inside it is 99.99% vacuum.

And if the world isn't really solid and seems like a simulation. Leads to some strange conclusions as this person has done: