Painting a QBist Picture of Reality

Lawrence - a very good summary. In my view, many people aren't yet willing to take conceptual steps that were made necessary by QM almost a century ago. Genuinely new models of reality are still too easily dismissed as "new age nonsense". It's become almost a political divide, and obsolete concepts like "an independently existing physical reality" have become non-negotiable articles of faith.

We'll know we're once again making progress when articles about QM aren't full of words like "bizarre", "weird", and "spooky".

Joe, I made it perfectly clear that it is your inconsiderate tedious behaviour that is inappropriate.

Why not add convincing arguments and research, and reconsideration of the replies you have given on your essay page, where it would be appropriate. Some suggestions: Surfaces are not one dimensional. I would be interested to know more about the infinite eye you mentioned and where the eyes of bacteria are located.

Hi Peter,

Redundancy is altered probability in Object reality, collapse could be used as a term to denote when the results ( maybe statistics) are considered, knowledge is updated and it is known that superposition no longer describes the situation; the physics model is swapped to accommodate the new information.

Prior to provocation causing a definite deflection one way or the other the potential for both electron paths is relevant. At some stage swapping to the other path can not happen as it is committed to its path. it has gone too far and doesn't have the energy to swap. So the outcome is inevitable and the potential for either path is lost. Redundancy starts here, as we can say a superposition of the two behaviours necessary for either path is no longer applicable. That is even prior to detection of the outcome by the apparatus. At detection the singular state has been measured, confirmed, even though not yet communicated.That could be called redundancy confirmation. (Prior to observer awareness.)

Dear Georgina,

Simplicity cannot be simplified. Nature must have provided a reality that all creatures could be capable of dealing with. As all of the creatures I have seen have eyes, in order for all creatures to be able to deal with simple natural reality, it am not too outlandish to assume that germs, bacterium and viruses must have some sort of eyes.

You will be pleased to know that my essay, THE SIMPLEST UNIVERSE am being reviewed by certified physicists.

Peace,

Joe Fisher, Realist

Joe my message was ambiguous. I intended to mean -put your comments on your essay page!

Your reply to me is significantly different from one of your replies over on that page where you wrote : "A physical eye must be infinite in size and number. I know that every cell, germ and bacterium must have eyes because of natural consistency. A dimension am not linear."Joe Fisher.

So if your point of view has changed it is important to update your page so that people can know what you think now.

There is something wrong with using the behaviour of specially prepared particles as a model for particles that haven't undergone the same treatment; And arguing that the concept of independently existing reality must be retired to fit the findings. Right now I'm thinking its like having a machine prepare two balls one with spin and one with backspin but the observer has no way of knowing which is which because they look identical. They shoot out of the machine and whichever ball is tested first, by seeing how it deflects on impact, the other ball will act as if it has the opposite spin. We can not extrapolate from that and say all balls in motion can be modeled as a superposition of spins (forward and back), because they haven't had the spin imparting treatment.Also the balls with spin are not communicating with each other to ensure they 'choose' opposite spins at testing.

Dear Georgina,

There is no inconsistency in any of my essay, or in any of the answers I have given for its accuracy. Natural reality must be infinite in its singular visible physical state. Unfortunately, I have to use finite written English language to try to accurately describe that simple real infinite state, which am a logical impossibility. Popes and Scientists and mathematicians are in a worst position than I am. They have to try to explain why they would think that visible infinite surface could possibly have been preceded by a finite state of invisibility.

Joe Fisher, Realist

The other way round is dubious too; saying that for any random electron tested the first time the outcome is random it must also be so for the members of a specially prepared pair. They are not alike because the correlation has been established at preparation. Though we can't know which outcome the individual partners will give they can only give one half of the possibilities each, unlike the randoms. The random electron's outcome will be a matter of how it happens to be behaving when it encounters the provocation of the experimental conditions. Like has to be compared with like. You can't scramble eggs in one bowl and use the mixture to make assumptions about how the unscrambled eggs in another bowl will respond to movement, or vice versa. I realize it may seem an unsophisticated argument, however I think it is preferable to ditching an independent reality.

@ Hughes: Quantum mechanics is really strange in some ways. It is strange in that the wave mechanics results in odd behavior with respect to classical thinking. Essentially Bell's theorem tells us that if we have reality we do not have locality (have nonlocality) and if we have locality then we do not have reality.

@Woodward: My point is that quantum mechanics should be taken as it is without invoking various ideology to make it somehow commensurate with our ordinary sense of reality. Qubism is an extreme ψ-epistemology that ties an interpretation to our conscious existence. At this point one might have to take some sort of pause. It is not so much that it is wrong, but as with all interpretation of QM it is not verifiable. Quantum interpretations are heuristics that have some utility in some problems, but largely the quest for the ultimate interpretation is probably a bit like the search for the holy grail --- it ain't there.

LC

It bears remembrance that it was Einstein himself whom first suggested that there may be a hidden variable which would allow that two particles at a distance could both respond as if there is a rigid spacetime connection directly between the two. It is QM in its axiomatic regime of absolute seperateness of any events which makes 'entanglement' spooky. And rather than hidden, the correct question as to what variable might constantly relate across a distance should be; "what is it we are ignoring?".

In efforts to obtain a unified field theory, when a 5th dimension has been inserted into GR on an ad hoc provisional basis, Mawell's equations emerge. And this strongly argues for Faraday's own observation that the orthogonal relationship of direction of field orientation to direction of motion observed consistently in electromagnetic field behavior, is the same as the abstract geometric relationship devised more than two millennia earlier by the school of Pythagoras, and that where there is a field there is spacetime and where there is spacetime there is a field operationally orthogonal.

A dimension is that by which we construct a measure, whether it be the side of a box or the surface of a sphere. The 5th dimension might well be had as an obverse of SR where it is commonly taken that the time parameter advances from relative rest up to light velocity. As a scalar value the speed of time at light velocity could exist at comensurate light velocity when spatial extension of the field domain ceases to itself propogate further. And that the rigid, instantaneous, connection inherent to the flat geometry component in spacetime is evident only where there exists a maintained perfect alignment of spin orientations of a singlet pair (as consistently observed), and the limit of separation in an experiment is relativistic to the duration of preparation and production of the singlet pair creating its own gravitationally discrete domain in a topological measurement scheme.

Lawrence, my point: Two errors of thinking; 1. Entangled electrons have properties that always give different outcomes on testing of the two partners therefore (error) any random electron must have the same property. 2. Any random electron tested the first time by a Stern Gerlach apparatus shows a fully random outcome therefore (error) any one of the entangled pair tested first will give a fully random outcome. In both of these assumptions like is not being compared with like as (it is highly likely) the behaviour of the entangled electrons are altered from that of the random un-entangled ones. It would also be a mistake to think that the property induced by provocation of the apparatus on a random electron is the same as for an entangled one. The former endures if retested with the same orientation but is lost with a different orientation, becoming random again, whereas the entangled electron seems to interact with all orientations not completely loosing its difference from its partner and becoming just like a random ordinary, entangled electron. Contrary to your "My point is that quantum mechanics should be taken as it is without invoking various ideology to make it somehow commensurate with our ordinary sense of reality. " I think it is very important to consider the foundations of the theory and question them - rather than just accept the mathematics and claim that reality must be dispensed with and/or non local superluminal communication is happening. See also my reply to Anonymous Jan. 31, 2017 @ 21:08 GMT

Denoting the outcome of the test of the first partner of the entangled pair as fully random prior to testing is replacing the Object reality with human knowledge. It isn't possible to know which of the partners is the first tested. This step is put into the mathematics and the construct becomes about knowledge. Having done that, it doesn't seem right to say (on the basis of the mathematics) that there is no independent reality. In Object reality a ball with backspin will only give results consistent with its momentum and likewise a ball with spin. That idea can be extrapolated to other objects with opposite momenta. It is only lack of knowledge that makes the pre-test outcomes fully random.

Re previous post, Feb. 1, 2017 @ 21:09 GMT: I should have said '....will only give results consistent with its momentum and angular momentum....' and 'That idea can be extrapolated to other objects with opposite angular momentum'.

I think there's an independent reality. I only take issue with calling it a physical reality. The word 'physical' denotes nothing at this point. All we have are observations, i.e. facts of which we've become aware. And there's no one-to-one correspondence between these facts and the conceptual entities we call particles. In the case of entanglement, one fact might be about multiple particles.

I believe there's an independently existing reality, because I believe there are other conscious beings, and that their experiences, their 'stories', continue even if mine ends. That belief is based entirely on faith, in the sense that I can't offer proof; but that faith isn't based on either science or religion.

Taking a Bayesian stance to probability in QM is not new, and aligns with the view that subjectivity is baked into QM. But "participatory realism" sounds like an oxymoron, or at least like wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.

Phil

"According to QBism, the wavefunction is no longer to be thought of as an objective measure of the probability of getting an outcome of a quantum experiment that two observers will necessarily both agree upon."

The wavefunction corresponds to probability (the Born Rule), precisely because squaring a Fourier Transform yields a "power spectrum"; accumulated energy per bin. Hence, when the energy arrives in discrete, equal amounts (quanta), then the accumulated-energy within each bin, divided by the quanta, yields the number of quanta per bin. In other words, it is a histogram (being inferred from a measured power spectrum), which is why the whole process yields probability estimates.

Rob McEachern