Comment by dcow
2 years ago
“The proton is a quantum mechanical object that exists as a haze of probabilities until an experiment forces it to take a concrete form.”
I’m getting really tired of hazy probability distributions and waves that only collapse and materialize when observed. I 100% accept that QM is a useful tool to model our current understanding based on increasingly sophisticated observations, but I fundamentally don’t believe that a proton is some shape shifting quantum soup of energy that doesn't form until someone comes around and thinks about it. That is unless reality is approximated and expensive compute is directed only toward what’s being observed to better enhance the simulation.
I probably need to add that I am also tired of simulation theory.
I really suspect we just aren't good enough at observing things or don’t exist in enough dimensions to understand what we’re observing. And so the cross sections we are able to pin down end up looking like they are part of some probabilistic system.
I still have bets on this all being a massive game of life.
In the opposite direction, I feel mildly annoyed when people expect a precise/clear answer to questions which can be answered mostly/better with probability distributions.
Considering how you can test statistics in real life (ex: Buffon's Needle) there must be something very "statistical" embedded in reality itself (it is true that quantum mechanics pushes everything very far so can seem to complex).
Statistics and probability don’t bother me and we should use them more. Describing the very nature of the world as a soup of probability out of which observations arise and events take place, however, is getting tired. Superposition is a worn out teaching tool not an actual description of reality.
For my personal purposes I resolved the issue by looking at elementary particles as if they are only the "probability" waves. Never anything else. Measurement is just an interaction and it reshapes the waves making them narrower. But they never become pointlike particles with specified location or momentum. They are always more or less fuzzy.
If they are all bound into macroscopic object they are sharper and as a result they can make other elementary particles they "measure" (interact with) also sharper.
If particles interact with fuzzier part of macroscopic object, like an edge of a slit, they can become fuzzier, more wavy.
So the proton really is that shapeshifting soup. Never anything else. If you hit it with something hard enough it becomes momentarily disturbed into a bit sharper state that can tell us something but it immediately goes back to soup because of chaotic microscopic interactions inside.
The matter looks sharp only on macroscopic level. At the level of particles it's always fuzzy, but we have trouble of ditching the concept of little balls bouncing of each other because the math describing exchange of energy and momentum between those fuzzy "waves" looks like there were some small balls bouncing. But this comes, I believe accidentally only from the fact that all forces have sort of spherical symmetry.
QFT is the most well-tested physics theory mankind has developed and certainly is not a "haze" as the pop-sci articles write.
What they mean by the "haze of probabilities" is that you need to iterate over all possible configurations of the gluons and quarks in the proton to produce experimental predictions.
It is for sure computationally ludicrous, but conceptually it's really not better or worse than to say that particles are billiard balls moving around by Newton's Equations. You're just more used to the latter, but spend some time working with for example Lattice QCD and you get completely used to the former being the "actual" underlying physics rules.
QFT is not complete. It’s one lens through which we model our observations of micro systems. Being well tested just means it’s precise, not accurate.
That does not follow. What inaccuracies are you thinking about?
IIUC, that is just a hidden variables theory. Bells theorem tells us that it would at least be non-local which is just as weird/interesting IMO.
I really enjoyed this Minute Physics and 3Blue1Brown video describing hidden variables and Bell's theorem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcqZHYo7ONs
As you said, it's implies that we're not failing to measure some "hidden variable" that would explain probabilities away, but that the vary nature of these objects is probabilistic.
In my understanding a wave function doesn't collapse just when someone observes it; it collapses when it participates in any physical event.
"I fundamentally don’t believe that a proton is some shape shifting quantum soup of energy that doesn't form until someone comes around and thinks about it." is the way quantum mechanics is often portrayed in pop sci, but it simply can't be true. Quantum mechanics existed just fine before there was anyone to observe it and think about it.
It reflects the fact that the measurement apparatus, environment in general and the observer in particular are all also part of the "wave function". Until these are linked to the system to be observed (like the proton), the system has to be analyzed as the full set of possible configurations of its constituents.
After you link it up with the apparatus, it is pulled into the system as a new part of it, and so on. The more stuff you pull into the system, the less number of different configurations you sum over, eventually you end up with a single configuration with an observer that has a clear measurement result in her mind. This process is what is called "wavefunction collapse" in old physics texts (and a lot of modern pop-sci accounts).
What sets this apart from other purely probabilistic theories is that it's non-local, the entire linked system from the proton to the measurement apparatus to the observer has to be taken into account in the calculations if you are to be thorough. In local theories you can separate the parts of the system and handle them separately, like you could say "there is a 1% probability that a charm quark pops out in the upper left part of the proton every second" etc. You can't really do this in QM/QFT, and this is what in essence leads to all of the counter-intuitive results and confusion..
I get what you mean, but still I'd rather accept probabilistic particles than the 11-dimensional bull that is string theory.
> I still have bets on this all being a massive game of life.
You might be right!
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-h...
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but wouldn’t a “massive game of life” also be a simulation? I guess there’s a difference between a mechanistic simulation with emergent intelligence vs a Matrix-like one designed to accommodate (an) intelligence. It’s an important distinction but they’re both simulations.
Yes, the universe is a quantum computer that is continuously calculating itself.
“Simulation theory” suggests we’re part of some other being’s simulation.
> I fundamentally don’t believe that a proton is some shape shifting quantum soup of energy that doesn't form until someone comes around and thinks about it
This is a pop-sci analogy. I find it tiring as well.
The many worlds interpretation doesn't paint the picture this way. It paints it as a recursive for-each loop iterating over all solutions to the next step of the physics function.
> I still have bets on this all being a massive game of life.
...on the back of a giant turtle, amiright?
How bout placing your bets on this instead: it's the evaluation of an algorithm ("physics") on a data structure ("the universe"), and like all algorithms, exists eternally and independent of any substrate.