An "observer" is just the measurement taken between probabilities

>an "observer" is just the measurement taken between probabilities

Stop fucking memeing me.

an observer is anything in the environment that interacts with a quantum state

It's poorly introduced but a simple concept. Any measurement involves photons or some other particle impacting the system and its destination being measured. The impact disturbs the system.

an observer is a conscious human bean

Why is it presenting in such a "we da real human bean" way in nearly every popular outlet it's introduced. It doesn't even seem to be a case of pop scie, it's just plain misleading.

Some dude on quora said that that may seem to be the intuitive answer but it's actually more mysterious than that. The expected discrepancy is controlled for in the calculations yet there still remains a deviation from the anticipated result. A conscious observer really does affect the result in a way that goes beyond the interaction of their measurement tools.

As soon as an observer has observed the action has already concluded, rendering any observation pointless :^)

Some dude on quora? Great source Bruh.

>Why is it presenting in such a "we da real human bean" way in nearly every popular outlet it's introduced.
No fucking clue. A lot of decent lectures try to get past that quickly. It's been a long time so I'm not 100% on this, but I believe MIT 8.04 w/ Allan Adams made a good effort to avoid this. Although he does choose to avoid words like "spin" and make up new terms for the introduction.

>Some dude on quora said that that may seem to be the intuitive answer but it's actually more mysterious than that. The expected discrepancy is controlled for in the calculations yet there still remains a deviation from the anticipated result. A conscious observer really does affect the result in a way that goes beyond the interaction of their measurement tools.
What do you expect from quora? It's quantum decoherence and has absolutely jack-shit to do with human beans and consciousness. We know how this shit works, that's how we can make quantum annealing processors.

The fuck is up with this quora hate? Quora is excellent.

>Quora is excellent

...

>>>Some dude on quora said ... observation = conscious observer
>>Some dude on quora? Great source Bruh.
>What's up with this quora hate?
??? It's clearly not always reliable, that's the relevant issue.

The idea of observing is to then implement the knowledge gained from the observation to achieve some goal, whether it's making a fucking machine to achieve new levels of genital stimulation or creating a bomb to cow the enemies of a nation.

>abloo abloo muh observation im special this universe is tailored for me and my free will exists

>1) Your consciousness doesn't emit the light that is needed to hit the particle and count it as "observed"
>2) Even if it did, the act of collapse from the superposition happens when the light HITS the particle, and for your consciousness to register it as an observation, that light has to return to your eye (or whatever apparatus you use), meaning it happened before the observation
>3) If that light didn't get reflected to the apparatus, the superposition would've still been collapsed, the only difference would be that you wouldn't observe it. You simply wouldn't possess the information for the collapse of the probabilities
>4) Everything is constantly bombarded by everything else around it. Without any observation whatsoever, and even before consciousness existed in the entire Universe, that principle still existed and probabilities were still collapsed, else conscious life would be impossible to form

Q.E.D

This is bullshit. Interaction with other particles =/= collapsing the wavefunction. Interaction is reversible, collapse is not.

Photons do not collapse the wavefunction. Get your pop sci misunderstandings out of here.

>light HITS the particle
It cannot "hit" the particle because prior to the collapse the particle doesn't have a definite position.

I agree that consciousness is overblown, but that linear view of time is a bit questionable. Quantum interactions happen in such a way that they are consistent with the rest of the universe both played forwards and backwards in time (see quantum erasers), so the role of a "consciousness" can't be refuted just by considering causal chains in one direction. The "act of observing", as defined by CCC proponents, would still play a crucial role in determining the overall outcome, even if it happens after the event in question.

>wat is decoherence?

Placebo is a hell of a thing

What the fuck are you talking about?

>linear view of time is a bit questionable.
Only if you play with semantics, not science.

The wave function does not collapse.

It's an illusion, much like the flow of time and free will.

Come at me bro.

>Quantum interactions happen in such a way that they are consistent with the rest of the universe both played forwards and backwards in time
And yet each interaction is NOT time reversible (unlike classical mechanics),

>linear view

The flow of time is questionable faggot, not its linearity, whatever the fuck that means.

I'm assuming you're referring to our perception of time, which isn't even linear, it's logarithmic.

Every interaction is time reversible, if you simply stop subscribing to the Copenhagen Interpretation.

What is this, a fucking cult?

>Quantum interactions happen in such a way that they are consistent with the rest of the universe both played forwards and backwards in time

But that's not true. You're implying that if I get the universe an hour back in time, and then an hour ahead back to "now", it would basically be absolutely identical to where I started from, which means that random processes that are independent of causality (the requirement for randomness to be classified as actually random) don't exist, as "replaying" the Universe will always end up with the same outcome.

Note: inability to gather information =/= random. A "randomness" is defined as an event without a cause. Such a thing can not exist in our Universe as everything is an effect from the Big Bang, hence not random and fully deterministic. Unpredictability due to lack of tools to derive information =/= random.

Randomness is an illusion, as is the flow of time, free will and your mum's chastity.

> it would basically be absolutely identical
It could still be absolutely identical even if everything is 100% random.
Chance is miniscule though


Even if everything seems deterministic it can still be random

>Even if everything seems deterministic it can still be random

Even if everything seems random, it can still be deteministic.

>Every interaction is time reversible, if you simply stop subscribing to the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Nope.
You don't need the Copenhagen Interpretation to see qm involves non-time-reversible interactions.

Continue...

not the same as collapse

Didn't deny that.

No, but it provides the basis for an exaplanation of collapse.

I know.

>No, but it provides the basis for an exaplanation of collapse.
It doesn't, unless you're a brainlet who is satisfied with pseudo-intellectural drivel and never questions what he's told.

This isn't religion user.

We're dealing with science here, and therefore I have no need to be 'satisfied'.

I'm a math spazz actually, and I rather like the many worlds interpretation of QM.

>I'm a math spazz actually
What field of math?

>I have no need to be 'satisfied'.
>I rather like the many worlds interpretation
1. You are contradicting yourself here by admitting the role of your own subjective preference.
2. Many worlds is begging the question and not giving an explanation for the collapse of the wavefunction.

>1. You are contradicting yourself here by admitting the role of your own subjective preference.

I know nothing for certain, nobody fucking can.

Causation is just a high degree of correlation, beyond that which can be explained by chance, and the mere fact that we observe something changes its form entirely.

I don't know anything for certain and I don't care.

The fact that I subjectively prefer the many worlds interpretation is simply resultant of a lifetime of envirnmental condition, the likes of which we could never determine.

It's irrelevent.

>2. Many worlds is begging the question and not giving an explanation for the collapse of the wavefunction.

It's hypothetical, as is much in this field.

There are hypotheses that account for the wave function collapse, which state that no such collapse ever occurs.

Also, I work mainly in algebraic geometry.

environmental conditioning*

>I know nothing for certain, nobody fucking can.
Literally "u cannot know nuffin". Get your pseudo-philosophy out of here.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Science is based on falsifiable logic.

It sets off on the premise that we cannot be certain of anything, and therefore we a resigned to making accurate approximations.

I think it's down to people misinterpreting the use of the word "observe", which implies some kind of thinking agent to be there.

Decoherence is an approximation to collapse; you can't explain collapse away as decoherence.
In fact, you can have collapse without any interaction.

>collapse is not

Have an experimental proof for that?

No it's not. Science isn't based on any reasoning principles. What it's based on is the same messing around and theorizing humans have always done, with one exception: people document well how they ran their experiments so they can be challenged more easily.

99% of new science came from people just getting ideas and rolling with it, which isn't special or unique to human history. People need to stop trying to "distinguish" between science and nonscience because there really is none beyond induction and simple inferences that compound to form a larger picture.