It's back.
Je suis, nous sommes Wigner! A perspectival exploration of the Frauchiger–Renner paradox by Malcolm Riddoch
Hi Luca,
I am enjoying engaging with your excellent essay, and yes I think there are many correlations to be had between our closed semantic systems!
"the definition of what is real is underdetermined by observation, since we only have indirect access to objects."
From my perspective, I would perhaps rather say that the strictly empirical definition of what is observationally real is to be determined by observing real rather than imagined objects, unless one is observing the reality of one's own inner imagination of course!
But then I guess if you insist on holding to an ontology for which 'real objects' are only ever indirectly observable then ... so long as you 'wear your ontology on your sleeve' so to speak then all your conclusions should follow logically and transparently from that basis ... and will make perfect sense from within that sematic enclosure ... including your insistence that all observations by all observers "must be objective and unique in one world".
So does that make you a colleague of the W's, and you're sitting against the back wall in my fictional M lab observing the ongoing experiment? And you really want to believe in a single world outcome, that your observable world is nonetheless the indirectly real objective world that every other observer must conform to, even if that means the F's really can be squeezed through a Hadamard gate as if they were fleshy qubits?
Dear Malcolm Riddoch,
This is the good thing about Frauchiger-Renner paradox. This essay is the good explanation about it. However, I have a fundamental question about the sharing the reference frame. In this paradox, how to share the fundamental reference frames among them?
Best wishes,
Yutaka
Hi Yutaka,
I'd say your question is precisely what my essay is all about! How would you even begin to define what a 'fundamental reference frame' is, in order to then share it with the others?
From the relative state or relational perspective, the fundamental frame is simply the one you're in. For Many Worlds that means self-locating uncertainty rules the day, and your current branch is your current empirical reality relative to all other branches. I can't see how one can apply this to the W's but then not to the F's! They're all on their own branches until they decohere back together in M.
I've assumed that QBist interpretations are sort of similar, in that what you're concerned with is your own probabilistic beliefs about your own empirical experience of the world, and that the others, W's and F's alike, are also free to assign their own credence to what they perceive as the reality of their own situation.
Hidden variables would suggest that the fundamental frame of reference is the real world of which there is just this one physical reality we're all in. From that perspective I have no idea what a Bohmian might make of their own reality in L, there being just the single underlying entangled physical reality between all the labs ... what do you think?
The experimentalist is similar in that when forced to talk metaphysically about the physical reality they experiment with, the real world is just fundamentally the one we all wake up in! I'd say they're much more comfortable in M just getting on with Hadamarding the fleshy qubit side of the experiment from the only fundamental frame of reference that counts ... our very own observable universe!
For me, it's these basic, pre-mathematical, ontological positions that define the various cross purposes against which quantum foundational debates are always struggling--from the very beginnings of the arguments between supporters of Bohr and Einstein at the fifth Solvay Conference if not earlier.
Do we define the fundamental reference frame with respect to an external classical grid-like spacetime reality within which we're all variously situated?
Or do we define the fundamental reference frame with respect to a universal wave function of which we're each of us an entangled sub-system?
Classical realism or wave function realism or a refusal of these externalist metaphysics in favour of post-Bohrian QBism or experimentalist naivete or any other 'fundamental frame of reference' you might want to include?
What's your poison?
hi Malcolm. very beautiful wordplay.voted highly.Can observer opinions affect the outcome of experiments.please read my take here https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3525.All the best in the essay contest. Thank you.
Dear Malcolm,
This was a very entertaining presentation of the F-R paradox, and a very interesting discussion of it. You probably know the published paper is the second version, the first one being Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent. Here's what I wrote about the first version at that time. About the second version, you may be interested in this reply. You asked "For are you not, as are we not all of us, Wigner?" Of course we are ;) Thanks for this reading and success!
Cheers,
Hi Cristinel,
thank you for both of those papers! And as Renner himself said of the only clear outcome of the debate: "Users of quantum theory cannot consistently decide whether the theory can consistently describe its own use."
Regarding the distinction between classical and non-classical states, and the question of wave function collapse, at the moment neither of these notions are accommodated in my personal philosophical picture of QT as, like Fbar, I'm tending much more towards the non-collapse side of things. Salom's use of 'subjective experience' as a way to rescue a 'subjective collapse' interpretation does highlight the perspectival problem the F-R paradox brings out with respect to the Friends' experience. And it's this problem of 'subjective experience' that for me is getting somewhere towards the heart of the paradox.
The Wigner perspective has an implied 'subjective conscious experience' that either isn't called into question or is used as the standard from which the Friends must conform, and it's also the presumed 'subjective' perspective of the Reader and Narrator, which is 'our' perspective here reading and joining in this discussion.
This unquestioned super observer experience/perspective, always in each case one's own, only becomes problematic when we Wigners are forced to consider the 'conscious experience' of the Friends who are otherwise assumed to be simple physical systems evolving unitarily in quantum states that are interchangeable with qubits--which is what Renner explicitly argues.
And I just can't see how if we arbitrarily assign ourselves a 'super observer' Wigner status, how can we then not allow the Friends the same priority from their perspectives? If Wigner is Wigner then we are all Wigner!
But questions such as 'what is subjective experience?' or 'what is consciousness?' are I think red herrings that lead the debate away from the nonetheless related but fundamental question: What is the 'observer' and their 'empirical observational experience'? The original Wigner's Friend argument falls down that philosophy of mind rabbit hole and then you get ridiculous debates about how a thing called 'consciousness' can cause the 'collapse' of unobservable physical quantum states ... which doesn't really advance the debate much past Elisabeth of Bohemia's objections to Descartes' substance dualism over 300 years ago.
For me, the mind-numbing circularity of the F-R paradox isn't anything to do with the quantum formalism but much more to do with the tortured metaphysics and the conceptual bogs we start to drown in as soon as we try and even just simply picture how an observer and their observational experience might be related to whatever the frak a 'quantum state' might be said to be ... in terms of whatever ontology of physical reality one subscribes to.
There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with how we conceive of the 'observer' and thus 'observations'. Everett for example, for all the wonders of his concept of the universal wave function still pictures its observer subsystem as a simple physical automaton which again as a model of 'us observers' isn't much advanced on the Renaissance clockwork automata that so fascinated early modern natural philosophy.
And so it goes on and around, quantum foundations seems to me to be entangled in a tangle of half thought out occidental ontologies and sedimented concepts with ancient, mediaeval and renaissance roots. Which just reflects the state of contemporary philosophy in general. But we have to first work through a tangle in order to dis-entangle our entanglements and things do seem to be loosening up slowly! At least that's as far as my optimism allows me to go :)
Dear Prof. Malcolm Riddoch
Your wonderful experience in astonishes me. I was very lucky to see your nice essay in these hundreds of essays in this contest. It is presented as a simple discussion. I am just quoting your words from your above post replied to Prof Stoica on May. 9, 2020 @ 07:52 GMT
...............There seems to be something fundamentally wrong with how we conceive of the 'observer' and thus 'observations'. Everett for example, for all the wonders of his concept of the universal wave function still pictures its observer subsystem as a simple physical automaton which again as a model of 'us observers' isn't much advanced on the Renaissance clockwork automata that so fascinated early modern natural philosophy.
And so it goes on and around, quantum foundations seems to me to be entangled in a tangle of half thought out occidental ontologies and sedimented concepts with ancient, mediaeval and renaissance roots..............................
So A fundamental revamping needs to be done in Quantum Physics, you mean to say... So can you list the fundamental concepts to be considered for forming a new theory.....?
Last but not least, hope you can spend a little of your time to a have a look at my essay" A properly deciding, Computing and Predicting new theory's Philosophy - https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3416"
Best wishes to your essay :)
=snp
Hi Malcolm!
This is a fantastic essay! I absolutely love how you bake the narrative of different perspectives right into your point: That different perspectives result in different observations and conclusions. Honestly, I could not think of a better way to illustrate this example, so bravo to you! In fact, I think this observer-dependent perspective is exactly what we need to understand biological evolution and other complex systems. Huge congrats on a fantastic essay!
Cheers!
Alyssa
Hi SNP,
"So can you list the fundamental concepts to be considered for forming a new theory.....?"
Yes ... and no? While I personally think philosophy is great for looking at things from a widest angle perspective and critically pulling theories apart from there, what you end up with is a lot of disconnected, confused/conflated bits of ontology and open ended questions without any guarantee of ever coming to an overall consistently agreed view ... or even knowing if such an ontological overview is even possible ... or not ... which is also why I think a lot of people find philosophers and philosophy rather annoying--Socrates was fundamentally correct!
So given this fundamental conceptual indeterminacy I'd say 'bootstrapping' is perhaps the second fundamental concept for thinking about quantum foundations.
My own guess as to what comes next would be that first we really need to ditch classical realism concerning an 'external physical reality' ... which probably means that a lot of people will need group therapy philosophy sessions where they all join hands singing Kumbaya as they let go of deeply held early modern superstitions about an unobservable supersensuous world where God is dead but real things nonetheless reside ... and so only with this 'letting go' (Gelassenheit) can we all walk together as one into the brave new 21st C information/theoretic world of structural wave function realism!
And in this vein I prefer observer dependent notions of reality where the observer experience is based on the 'irreducible Heraclitean flux' of phenomenal experience (cf. Husserl) and the 'experiencer' is fundamentally an observational/relational process rather than an observer thing already in a world. A first person perspective that can dynamically reconstitute our 3D+t reality such that space and time are emergent phenomena definitely appeals to my phenomenological biases!
So in this essay contest papers such as Flavio del Santo on intuitionistic/constructive maths, and especially Markus Mueller's notion of ontic structural realism, are standouts for me, along with Sara Imari Walker's work on maths/information/physicality/complexity. It's certainly encouraging to see how far theorising has come just the last 30 years, and the younger generations now appear to have increasingly more freedom to push the boundaries of what's thinkable in quantum foundations without jeopardising their science careers. Should be very interesting to see how far quantum computing pushes that envelope over the next decade!
And how about you? What are your possibly fundamental concepts?
Dear Prof. Malcolm Riddoch
Thank you very much for your detailed reply, and thanks for introducing me to your friends essays, who have similar thoughts. This method will give me a fundamental approach to the quantum mechanics. I will go thro' all of them and contact back to you ASAP.
I mainly worked in cosmology , I am yet to enter into the world of Quantum Physics, i will do that in discussion with you and your friends...
Meanwhile you asked me about my possible fundamental concepts??
These are the Fundamental concepts of Dynamic Universe Model taken from my essay, Have a look at my essay for further details....
C.1. Logical and Physical foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model:
-No Isotropy
-No Homogeneity
-No Space-time continuum
-Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy
-No singularities
-No collisions between bodies
-No blackholes
-No warm holes
-No Bigbang
-No repulsion between distant Galaxies
-Non-empty Universe
-No imaginary or negative time axis
-No imaginary X, Y, Z axes
-No differential and Integral Equations mathematically
-No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition
-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models
-No many mini Bigbangs
-No Missing Mass / Dark matter
-No Dark energy
-No Bigbang generated CMB detected
-No Multi-verses
C.2. Main ETHICAL foundational principles of Dynamic Universe Model:
-Human Accrued knowledge should be free to all
-Concept should come out from the depth of truth;
-Authors / Scientists thinking should go towards perfection;
-Logic should be simple
-Theory's predictions should be verifiable experimentally, by anyone and anywhere with the same conditions
-Computations / computer programs should be simple
-ontological realism of senses produced information
-New theory lead us forward into ever-widening thought and action experiments
-Let the new theory lead us into that heaven of freedom.
C.3. Main PHYSICAL and COSMOLOGICAL foundational principles of "N-Body problem solution: Dynamic Universe Model":
-Natural universe regularly undergoes change in shape due to mutual Dynamical
Gravitational forces.
-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies
-Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way
-All bodies dynamically moving
-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium
-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe
-Single Universe no baby universes
-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only
-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..
-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass
-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step
-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering
-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet
-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy
-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.
Best wishes to your essay
=snp
Thanks Alyssa,
and you are much too kind! My little essay is probably a great demonstration of my own confusion regarding the ontological mess that is quantum foundations. But I agree that the observer dependent perspective is looking interesting across a raft of different disciplines dealing with various aspects of our real world.
I've added a comment and question regarding just that to your own excellent essay on Computing Complex Systems. And i'm enjoying the interdisciplinary network here on FQXi, which is exactly what is needed to keep things moving forwards!
Regards,
Malcolm
Dear Prof. Malcolm Riddoch
hope you are satisfied with my above post, then
Hope you will have a look my essay and rate it
Best
=snp
Hi snp,
and yes no fear, I rated your essay on May 12!
As for your Dynamic Universe Model, well there's a lot of fundamental concepts there! For me, starting from my fundamental concept of fundamental conceptual indeterminacy I can only say that I agree with 'dynamis' as a fundamental concept and all that it implies.
Dynamis as pure potentiality from which constantly emerges actuality/enargeia with entelecheia as its organizing principle is, again for me, at the centre of the ever-changing essence of an observer dependent universe.
What comes to presence and what leaves, in its becoming and constant dissolution, what is / what it gives comes from nowhere and nowhere does it go, thus time and its spatiality and all things are in flux/dynamis.
Which is to say the wave function of the universe is pure potentiality from which this humble sub-system is constantly evolving in a reflection of that potentiality as the actuality of its observable universe. And I think it's that dynamic moment of actualisation--the observer's 'phenomenal experience'--that is the crux of this entelecheiac matter!
Wheeler saw the general picture decades ago, but the mathematical formalists are still largely stuck in their early modern classical delusions. I'm interested in how we might construct a semantic bridge between that old classical world and the quantum world picture that is slowly forming on the horizon of our collective understanding. And so your own stirring of that pot here on FQXi is also very much to the point!
Dear Prof. Malcolm Riddoch
Thank you for remembering me even after the contest is over and posting a nice reply. As this post is related to my essay I copy this post to my essay and reply it there. Please have a look there and reply there ....
Thank you for rating my essay on 12th it self, What ever it may be; it is your frank opinion , and thanks for that!!
Best
=snp