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Science

Reality Doesn't Exist Until You Measure It, Quantum Parlor Trick Confirms (science.org) 239

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: The Moon isn't necessarily there if you don't look at it. So says quantum mechanics, which states that what exists depends on what you measure. Proving reality like that usually involves the comparison of arcane probabilities, but physicists in China have made the point in a clearer way. They performed a matching game [Mermin-Peres game] in which two players leverage quantum effects to win every time -- which they can't if measurements merely reveal reality as it already exists. [...] In each round of the game, Alice and Bob share not one, but two pairs of entangled photons on which to make any measurements they like. Each player also has a three-by-three grid and fills each square in it with a 1 or a -1 depending on the result of those measurements. In each round, a referee randomly selects one of Alice's rows and one of Bob's columns, which overlap in one square. If Alice and Bob have the same number in that square, they win the round.

Sounds easy: Alice and Bob put 1 in every square to guarantee a win. Not so fast. Additional "parity" rules require that all the entries across Alice's row must multiply to 1 and those down Bob's column must multiply to -1. If hidden variables predetermine the results of the measurements, Alice and Bob can't win every round. Each possible set of values for the hidden variables effectively specifies a grid already filled out with -1s and 1s. The results of the actual measurements just tell Alice which one to pick. The same goes for Bob. But, as is easily shown with pencil and paper, no single grid can satisfy both Alice's and Bob's parity rules. So, their grids must disagree in at least one square, and on average, they can win at most eight out of nine rounds.

Quantum mechanics lets them win every time. To do that, they must use a set of measurements devised in 1990 by David Mermin, a theorist at Cornell University, and Asher Peres, a onetime theorist at the Israel Institute of Technology. Alice makes the measurements associated with the squares in the row specified by the referee, and Bob, those for the squares in the specified column. Entanglement guarantees they agree on the number in the key square and that their measurements also obey the parity rules. The whole scheme works because the values emerge only as the measurements are made. The rest of the grid is irrelevant, as values don't exist for measurements that Alice and Bob never make. Generating two pairs of entangled photons simultaneously is impractical, Xi-Lin Wang says. So instead, the experimenters used a single pair of photons that are entangled two ways -- through polarization and so-called orbital angular momentum, which determines whether a wavelike photon corkscrews to the right or to the left. The experiment isn't perfect, but Alice and Bob won 93.84% of 1,075,930 rounds, exceeding the 88.89% maximum with hidden variables, the team reports in a study in press at Physical Review Letters.
The researchers have a real-world use in mind for the demonstration: verifying the work of a quantum computer.

"That task is essential but difficult because a quantum computer is supposed to do things an ordinary computer cannot," reports Science Magazine. "[I]f the game were woven into a program, monitoring it could confirm that the quantum computer is manipulating entangled states as it should."
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Reality Doesn't Exist Until You Measure It, Quantum Parlor Trick Confirms

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  • by caviare ( 830421 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:06AM (#62723822)

    Why is it that only Alice and Bob get to play games like this? Why can't the rest of us join in the fun?

  • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:16AM (#62723834)
    This is another example of Bell's Theorem, turned into a nifty game.
    Bell's Theorem however has a gaping hole in its reasoning:
    It assumes random choices in the sampling.

    Superdeterminism is a very clean explanation for violations of Bell's Inequality that avoids really stupid fucking mental gymnastics like the moon possibly not being there when you're not looking at it, but carries a certain amount of baggage that make some scientists freak the fuck out: It negates free will.
    • by TFoo ( 678732 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @03:49AM (#62723962)
      It doesn't just negate free will -- it basically negates science. You can wave away basically any experimental inconsistency with the Superdeterminism magic wand...so what's the point of trying to science? I'm not suggesting that makes Superdeterminism wrong, however.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Black Parrot ( 19622 )

        It doesn't just negate free will -- it basically negates science. You can wave away basically any experimental inconsistency with the Superdeterminism magic wand...so what's the point of trying to science?

        They do science because they're predestined to do science.

      • by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @04:04AM (#62723990)

        It doesn't just negate free will -- it basically negates science.

        No more than Many Worlds.

        You can wave away basically any experimental inconsistency with the Many Worlds magic wand too.

        Analogously in cosmology, multiversal hypotheses, perhaps even the various forms of anthropological principle, also negates science because you can basically wave away anything with "we just happen to be in the universe where X inconsistency is true".

        Actually, superdeterminism isn't as bad as that, because there is one objective reality. It doesn't negate science, like the others I mentioned, so much as severely limit it to being unable to account for everything without taking into account the entire system for its entire history. "Localized" science is still very much reliable. Planes will still fly. Computers will still compute.

        • "Localized" science is still very much reliable. Planes will still fly. Computers will still compute.

          I struggled to explain that science is only dependent on statistical independence at the philosophical level. At the practical level, it doesn't matter if the system is deterministic or not... but I like your concise summary better.

        • In "History of Time" Stephen Hawking waved away the entire Universe. When asked when the Universe will end, Stephan Hawking said, it ends when you die. When you can no longer observe the Universe it will cease to exist for you, and that is all that should matter to you. I thought that was an odd opinion for a Big Bang Astrophysicist since that means the Universe did not exist before he was born and now that he's gone, well?
          • by narcc ( 412956 )

            What a foolish thing to say. People put an awful lot of effort into making sure they're remembered. Hawking did as well, which makes him a hypocrite.

      • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

        It doesn't just negate free will -- it basically negates science. You can wave away basically any experimental inconsistency with the Superdeterminism magic wand...so what's the point of trying to science? I'm not suggesting that makes Superdeterminism wrong, however.

        It does negate science, but only at a deeply philosophical level. At a practical level, there's no difference whether or not your perception of free will is truly free or not.

        • by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @08:15AM (#62724314)

          It doesn't just negate free will -- it basically negates science. You can wave away basically any experimental inconsistency with the Superdeterminism magic wand...so what's the point of trying to science? I'm not suggesting that makes Superdeterminism wrong, however.

          It does negate science, but only at a deeply philosophical level. At a practical level, there's no difference whether or not your perception of free will is truly free or not.

          This is why Philosophy majors have a really hard time finding employment.

          • Hahaha! Nice. More to the point than how I was going to put it.
          • Archaeology is the search for fact ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.
            • Archaeology is the search for fact ... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

              Truth in matters of philosophy is so malleable, that it eventually becomes a pick your philosophy, and it becomes your truth.

              I have a friend who is a philosopher, and we do have interesting conversations, because yeah - I'm more interested in facts than 30 different deep insights that might be truth, yet oppose each other. Which is why he is interested in what I have to say as well - me being more "practical" in nature.

              But I take it as interesting advisement, although it can be migraine producing.

              For

              • by narcc ( 412956 )

                Truth in matters of philosophy is so malleable, that it eventually becomes a pick your philosophy, and it becomes your truth.

                Your cartoon version of philosophy strongly disagrees with reality.

          • This is why Philosophy majors have a really hard time finding employment.

            I think if you take the time to measure that, you'll find your statement is not true.

            --
            .nosig

          • Philosophy majors have a really hard time finding employment.

            Not really, you'll find philosophy majors in all industries you can imagine.

            Taking myself, only having a philosophy degree, as an example:
            I have in my professional career been programming (assembler, Fortran, SQL, C...), designing digital circuits with microcontrollers, administering systems and databases, teaching (philosophy, logic, mathematics, programming and sysadmin), doing stellar photometry at an observatory, selling books (for a brief period only to discover that I'm not a salesman, but I know

    • by Potor ( 658520 ) <farker1@gmai l . com> on Friday July 22, 2022 @04:34AM (#62724024) Journal
      My problem here is with the cute intro. If the moon is not there when I am not looking at it, do its gravitational effects then magically disappear as well? Or if they don't, does not that mean that I cannot not always be perceiving the moon in some manner? Does this then not confirm Leibniz's observation that every subject (monad) reflects every other subject in the universe in the manner it can? I.e. not only that to be is to be perceived, but also that to be is to perceive?
      • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @04:46AM (#62724036)

        If the moon is not there when I am not looking at it, do its gravitational effects then magically disappear as well?

        Depends. They're presumably superpositional as well (though QM is lacking in that department currently)

        Or if they don't, does not that mean that I cannot not always be perceiving the moon in some manner?

        I'm happy to inform you that you are acutely aware of the problem with the Copenhagen Interpretation.

        Does this then not confirm Leibniz's observation that every subject (monad) reflects every other subject in the universe in the manner it can? I.e. not only that to be is to be perceived, but also that to be is to perceive?

        A reasonable deduction. That would be the... non-local realist interpretation of QM. I'm personally a fan of the local one, myself. Mostly because attempts at deriving the standard model without taking into account relativity were abject failures.
        Hell, even Schrödinger's equation is wrong, and must be replaced with Dirac's because- as it turns out- wave your hands all you like, QM is inconsistent without taking the rules established by locality into account, even if on the other hand you deny their reason for existing.

        But the cute intro is actually an accurate description of the predominant interpretation of QM, currently. Though there appears to be real movement away from that.
        A few generations of particle physicists really took Bell's arguments to heart, and so it was very very ingrained that Copenhagen was a rational explanation due to the observed violations of Bell's inequality, and the general disregard for any possibility that your choices may not be statistically independent.

        • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @06:42AM (#62724186)

          Copenhagen was a rational explanation due to the observed violations of Bell's inequality, and the general disregard for any possibility that your choices may not be statistically independent.

          Copenhagen was always extremely flimsy if you require a meat magic soul to “measure” instead of a simple particle interaction that breaks the isolation of the system. Further, for superdeterminism, you can remove the possibility of the universe conspiring between past overlapping light cones to somehow magically keep observers and measurements consistent by picking the randomizing agent from a light cone outside the other persons thus removing any possibility of a classical causal link. For example, each could use the polarization of a photon from a distant galaxy as the seed. The idea that non-causally connected areas of space time conspire somehow to keep consistency really isn’t a clean explanation in my opinion. It certainly breaks the “common” sense linear deterministic progression of time.

          • by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @08:08AM (#62724294)
            Superdeterminism is the only interpretation of QM that is logically consistent. The problem is that people really don't like the implications. If you read the opinions of some of the older greats on it, they dismiss it out of hand without consideration, on the grounds of free will. Which is frankly fucking shocking, because there is precisely zero scientific evidence for "free will", and beyond that, it's not even a rational fucking concept given the breadth of scientific knowledge.
            They're happier with non-locality applied inconsistently across the frameworks than to believe that their brains might not house a metaphysical soul that is not bound by its past light cone.

            Copenhagen is so logically broken that QM is incompatible with itself in that interpretation. Wigner's Extended Friend being the principle example. To engage in such mental gymnastics, and then dismissing determinism out of hand as an assault on free will? It gives me a fucking headache.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

              Copenhagen is so logically broken that QM is incompatible with itself in that interpretation. Wigner's Extended Friend being the principle example. To engage in such mental gymnastics, and then dismissing determinism out of hand as an assault on free will? It gives me a fucking headache.

              Here's an article that will suffice in headache generation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

              The important aspect for me is that measurements of people's brain waves show that before a conscious level decision is made in activities that are not reflexive, some sub conscious activity is found, so it follows that there was no free will involved.

              Well, I gotta call bullshit - as do the authors, although more politely, and long winded.

              To bring this to a personal level, as opposed to the solipsistic end

              • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

                Well, I gotta call bullshit - as do the authors, although more politely, and long winded.

                I've ready it, and I agree with your assessment. It isn't proof one way or another. In fact, I'm quite certain it is as unprovable as superdeterminism itself. Just as unprovable as the concept of free will.

                Was my dream state problem solution something that was pre determined at the moment of the big bang? Was the so called big bang predetermined by something before it? Or was it something my mind determined as true, creating a möbius loop of my own mind as a non-free will center of the universe?

                That's a bit reductive.
                A better way of putting it would be that your dream state was inevitable as of the big bang.
                I.e., the state could only evolve in one way. Pre-determined is a bad word to use at all, really, because it implies that the entire state is there in the beginning, and that's just not tru

                • Well, I gotta call bullshit - as do the authors, although more politely, and long winded.

                  I've ready it, and I agree with your assessment. It isn't proof one way or another. In fact, I'm quite certain it is as unprovable as superdeterminism itself. Just as unprovable as the concept of free will.

                  Was my dream state problem solution something that was pre determined at the moment of the big bang? Was the so called big bang predetermined by something before it? Or was it something my mind determined as true, creating a möbius loop of my own mind as a non-free will center of the universe?

                  That's a bit reductive. A better way of putting it would be that your dream state was inevitable as of the big bang. I.e., the state could only evolve in one way. Pre-determined is a bad word to use at all, really, because it implies that the entire state is there in the beginning, and that's just not true.

                  Well, time ran backwards might disagree - but I'm muddying the waters here.

                  I often get incredulous responses to my dreaming of solutions - I mean I come up with some pretty detailed outcomes. It's one reason why people I work with figure out they can "load me up" with something they are working on, then go away. I come into work the next morning with their solution.

                  To my thought process, in some respects, I'm not terribly concerned if it's free will or an evolvement that had no other outcome. Well, othe

              • To bring this to a personal level, as opposed to the solipsistic end of most of the no free will arguments. Certainly in my case, I dream answers to problems I'm working on. Being asleep, I'm hardly conscious at the time. But the Idea that I am disproving free will by that action is kinda hard to prove. It merely means that my noggin is using a process to extract a solution. Just like a person can have a sub-conscious assessment prior to whatever their decision is.

                I’ve often found that when making a choice about something it is influenced by a chorus of previous experiences combined with past introspection - providing a guide that I have created out of “will”. So to me as well it does not see odd that I could simultaneously have pre-choice activity correlated with the choice itself. Further, to me the whole sense of free will argument is utter nonsense as the information complexity of the universe will always be far higher than what is calculable

      • I see this as two separate observations.

        If you look at the moon, then you're visually observing it. If you detect gravity, then you're gravity-observing it. You could do one and not the other, and presumably one could be true without the other. I guess if I stole the moon and replaced it with a picture, you could visually observe it and still believe it to be there, and only if you got your grav meter out would you (possibly) think otherwise.

        Likewise if you use the reasoning "the moon is right there! See!"

      • by RonVNX ( 55322 )

        You mean if I close my eyes and drive my 1970's vehicle down the highway, I *am* going to hit things? How terribly disappointing.

      • by narcc ( 412956 )

        My problem here is with the cute intro.

        The moon thing was an old tongue-in-cheek criticism of quantum physics. This is also a pop sci article, so keep your expectations low and assume an astonishing level of imprecision, if not a lot that's flat-out wrong.

        To your question as simply as possible, observing the gravitational effects of the moon counts as observing the moon here. Leibniz doesn't enter into this at all. This looks a lot like Bell's inequality to me, but I'm only looking at the same crap pop sci article linked in the summary. (I a

    • by Sique ( 173459 )
      I guess, people whose word for reality comes from Latin "realitas" have more problems with the concept than people, whose word is differently derived. The Latin "realitas" comes from "res", meaning thing, and thus, for realitas-people, reality needs some kind of thinginess, or the Thing As Such.

      This is quite different for instance for people who speak Danish or German. For them, the word reality (virkelighed in Danish, Wirklichkeit in German) derives from "to effect" (virker, wirken). Thus, simply from th

      • And yet, a blind German will tell you the moon is real even if they've never been to the beach.
        • Just not Werner Heisenberg
        • by Sique ( 173459 )
          Not really, except they can tell you of an effect the Moon has, they have experienced (it could be an effect of an effect of an effect of an effect though).

          In German, there is a saying: You are talking like a blind man about colors.

          This contradicts your point and proves mine.

    • There would only be two good explanations for things not being there when you look at them. Either we would have to literally create the universe with our minds, or it would have to be a simulation.

      I'm not married to the simulation idea, it has a certain appeal but I know I'm biased. I don't buy the other idea at all, though.

      • Eh that's specious, because you have to make some gymnastics about what you mean by "exist". Even if the universe is a "simulation", if something is "realized" when you look at it - something else had to be there to generate the thing when focus was there. So did the measured thing exist all along, or not?

        That is - I'd say if you have the rules to "procedurally generate" a measurement response, then those responses do exist even if you don't "perform" the measurement.

        • Even if the universe is a "simulation", if something is "realized" when you look at it - something else had to be there to generate the thing when focus was there. So did the measured thing exist all along, or not?

          Well that's the point, something had to be there, but because you weren't looking closely at it, it could be an approximation. Then if you look closely later to see what happened, the math can be done then. The approximation is used until you get close enough (or look close enough) for it to matter.

          No, I don't think this is how it works, it's just fun to think about.

      • There would only be two good explanations for things not being there when you look at them. Either we would have to literally create the universe with our minds, or it would have to be a simulation.

        I'm not married to the simulation idea, it has a certain appeal but I know I'm biased. I don't buy the other idea at all, though.

        Well first off the moon analogy is stupid because on earth we are deeply within its gravity well and it’s removal would have immediate and massive world wide consequences. You can’t not observe it indirectly.

        Secondly, if it’s observed, it’s there - that’s simply a tautology that is accurate of reality. You might mean it’s not there if you’re not looking. In that case there are many possible explanations, from pilot wave to many worlds. The idea that all of s

    • by RobinH ( 124750 )
      You are correct. In fact, both the religious idea of an omniscient God, and the QM idea of Superdeterminism both imply that the future is already determined, and yet both systems simultaneously hold onto a form of free will and say that our present choice of actions are meaningful and determine the future. Put another way: whether you will make good choices or bad choices is already determined, but if you do end up making good choices it's because you choose to make good choices now, so do your best to ma
      • whether you will make good choices or bad choices is already determined, but if you do end up making good choices it's because you choose to make good choices now, so do your best to make good choices.

        It arguably doesn't make sense; if you make good choices in such a reality, you were always going to make them, likewise bad ones.

    • Isn't super determinism not testable and so more in the realm of philosophy or religion than science?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        You are correct.
        However, it's no less testable than the Copenhagen Interpretation.

        QM being what it is doesn't tell us what a measurement is, or why it's weird. It doesn't try to.
        All we can try to do is philosophize as to what makes sense to lead to those statistics.
        Bell's Theorem put us in a bit of a pickle in that it basically gave us 2 options:
        Copenhagen is a rational interpretation of the nonsensical observations of QM.
        or,
        The Universe is merely a big fucking state machine, and everything in your
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      There is no reasonable interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the moon isn't there if you're not looking at it. The moon is more than large enough to observe itself.

      Superdeterminism doesn't negate free will either. There's no room in any of our laws of physics for free will.

      The big problem with superdeterminism is that it seems to require too much correlation be preserved regarless of space and time. The same amount between processes three feet apart on a lab bench as between photons that have been tr

      • There is no reasonable interpretation of quantum mechanics in which the moon isn't there if you're not looking at it. The moon is more than large enough to observe itself.

        No. In Copenhagen, the moon most certainly cannot observe itself.
        If you're arguing that Copenhagen is not reasonable, we don't disagree. But many, many scientists would.

        Superdeterminism doesn't negate free will either.

        It most certainly does. Free will requires a choice. In a deterministic universe, that is something you simply don't have. You can think you have it, for sure. But even thinking you had it was merely a result of the deterministic state.

        There's no room in any of our laws of physics for free will.

        That's untrue, as physics are known today.
        It would be accurate to say there's no room in our biological k

        • It would be accurate to say there's no room in our biological knowledge for free will, though.

          Eh. If free will can exist, our biological knowledge doesn't contradict it either, because of the unknowns — mostly in the brain. We still don't know specifically how memory works, only some stuff about where it might live and how to interfere with it. Since a lot of cognition seems to be about memory, that means we don't really know that much about decision-making. We can see which parts of the brain light up during it, and we know roughly what happens where, but that's limited.

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The Copenhagen interpretation isn't a written document so I'm not sure exactly what you mean. If you're Heisenberg then sure, "observation" means some magic consciousness looking at something. That is indeed unreasonable for a lot of reasons. If you're a physicist that's currently alive and you're not high, "observation" is just interaction with a large enough system. The moon is plenty large enough.

          Superdeterminism can't "negate free will" because there isn't any such thing. If you think free will could ma

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      The real problem is that they misunderstand "measurement". Humans aren't the ones doing the measurement, they're only involved in setting things up and noticing the results.

      Superdeterminism is, indeed, one solution. I prefer the EWG multi-world model. There are others. They sound different in English, but they are modeled by exactly the same math, so there's really no valid way to choose between them.

      What this showed is that quantum indeterminacy is real. That's all. And it was the result everyone sho

      • The real problem is that they misunderstand "measurement". Humans aren't the ones doing the measurement, they're only involved in setting things up and noticing the results.

        The "Measurement Problem" is not solved, and certainly not by you.
        In Copenhagen, the classical cut indeed happens at the instrument, but only if in the hands of a human. That's why we have the laughable satire of Schrödinger's Cat. Indeed, if you have no way of reading the value of that sensor, then it's as superpositional as the cat and the poison.

        Superdeterminism is, indeed, one solution.

        Superdeterminacy is the only interpretation to date that is logically consistent.

        I prefer the EWG multi-world model. There are others. They sound different in English, but they are modeled by exactly the same math, so there's really no valid way to choose between them.

        MWI is perhaps the most insane of all interpretations.
        So rather than acce

    • by Asynchronously ( 7341348 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @09:58AM (#62724556)

      Of course I have free will, I didn’t have any choice.

      - Christopher Hitchens

  • absurd (Score:5, Informative)

    by etash ( 1907284 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:25AM (#62723842)
    Schrodinger's cat was an example to show the absurdity of copenhagen's interpretation, not a manual for reality.
    • When I'm drunk, my version of reality differs strongly from those around me. Question is: which is which is real?
      • That's only a question for you. Everyone else knows. And so do you, when you wake up with a hangover. Arguably it's a demonstration of relativity. From where you're standing, you're sober. From where everyone else is standing, you look like a putz.

      • When I'm drunk, I can see both realities.

    • The human and probably other brains is a device to record patterns of group sense input which we call memories. It also flavors these patterns with emotional responses, derived from DNA inheritance or subsequent events out of experience. This is purely automatic but, unlike a computer, the brain is alive and it functionally relates these saved patterns and from them derives various metaphors at different levels of abstraction. What we call thinking is a process that matches up these experience collections t
    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      It's Copenhagen interpretation; named after the city, not a person.

    • by Sneftel ( 15416 )

      Schroedinger's Cat is the worst type of gedankenexperiment: One where, rather than reaching a fundamentally logical conclusion, you stop halfway and say "but that would be too weird so QED". Reality doesn't care what you think is absurd.

    • Now you tell me. I've been keeping these closed boxes around for years, but yeurgh, they stink.

    • Yeah. It's not the scientist looking in the box that determines the cat's final state. It's the janitor coming into the lab at the end of the day to empty the trash. He finds either the cat's corpse or the contents of a full litterbox.

  • Me: "Surprise doesn't exists because you cannot measure it beforehand. This party is ruined."

  • Silly headline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ei4anb ( 625481 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @02:36AM (#62723856)
    "Reality Doesn't Exist" is a much catchier headline than "Bell's theorem confirmed yet again"
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @03:01AM (#62723896)

    Watching the news these days, it seems reality doesn't exist 'til we make it up.

  • if for no other reason than a "measurement" is simply interacting particles, not a scientists peering at an experiment.

    As for hidden variables - thats far too simplistics as the reality underlying quantum mechanics could easily be "running" an algorithm that produces that exact results that we see (which dovetails nicely with the simulation theory of reality) but saying that quantum mechanics as fundamental with no lower level structure simply because it can't be constrained by simple alternate rules is ign

  • If a photon falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

    • The photon, the air currents from it's motion, the sound, and the rest of the forest are all just waves.

      If the perfect wave happened and there was nobody there to surf it, did it still happen? Prove it.

      • Worse- if the perfect wave were to happen and lower the Universe into a lower ground state, and no one were there to observe it... Would it still kill us?
    • If a photon falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

      Depends. Is it entangled with another photon where there is someone around to hear it?

  • they got closer to the 8/9 promised by conventional results than to the 9/9 promiised by QM.

  • Dude, ostriches had the right idea all along!

  • "Reality doesn't exist until you measure it"...absolute bullshit. Reality is defined by interaction events ("something happening"). There's nothing to measure without an interaction, and every measurement is itself an interaction, so the headline is just tautological clickbait.

    The actual story, about a method of verifying computational results, wouldn't get as much attention.
    • Reality is defined by interaction events ("something happening"). There's nothing to measure without an interaction

      No, but you can infer that things have been happening between measurements when they change. The whole notion that those things don't happen until we can tell they interacted with something is silly. They just aren't relevant until then. It doesn't mean they didn't exist, we just couldn't tell.

      The idea that things don't happen when they're not interacting with something else is just another way to exaggerate our importance, because we interact with stuff and want to feel important about it.

      • Exactly. There's no difference between an interaction where a person is measuring something and one purely between "inanimate" participants. We are fully part of the universe, and nothing whatsoever about us is outside of it. And if a science journalist tries to explain QM by defining "observation" as "anything at all happened," they're just bullshitting and arbitrarily defining terms to suit their analogy.
  • God just forgot to protect some global variable with a mutex, and He designed atomics all wrong. Turns out atoms aren't atomic, so at its deepest levels, the universe has undefined behaviour.
  • by Grokew ( 8384065 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @04:19AM (#62724012)
    How can I stop measuring it?

    Sensory overload is a bitch.

  • Thereâ(TM)s another explanation, which is that Alice and Bob are fated to chose numbers they chose, and the referee fared to choose that row and column.

  • by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @08:11AM (#62724304)
    when mathematicians believe their math defines reality instead of describes reality.

    It's amazing that there are people who actually, deep down, believe this shit. The moon's still there if you look away from it you fucking morons.
  • by douglasfir77 ( 6439950 ) on Friday July 22, 2022 @08:49AM (#62724414)
    So if I do not measure my tax liability it therefore does not exist? Try telling that to the IRS. Checkmate quantum physics! /s

If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol

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