Wave particle dualism - an illusion?

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I guess the following idea might be just another example for how a student has not understood a major point of his studies but, it could actually turn out to be at least interesting.
First of all we probably all know explanations of higher dimensions that are trying to make things more understandable by describing a world of twodimensional beings.
For the twodimensional beings a threedimensional being could probably do things that seem impossible to the twodimensional ones. The threedimensional one might for example be able to fold the paper, which is what the twodimensional ones call the world, because they only see this part of the universe. The 3-dimension one could then hop from one point to another and this way just appear and dissappear wherever he wants.
This example has been picked up by many science fiction authors, so it's nothing new, and there's a bunch of other ideas we all have already heard of and which lead into unexplaneable phenomenons for the 2dimensional creatures.
What i am trying to explain here is not how we could try to figure higher dimensions.
The point i am making is in the first place: Phenomenons based on dimensions that are higher than what a creature can perceive tend to create phenomenons that seem to be unexplanable or even paradox and irrational to this creature.
My idea is basically that the wave particle dualism is such a phenomenon.
What if we are actually observing something that takes place in more than 3 dimensions, actually more than 4 if we include timespace?
The equation that Schroedinger developed obviously provides an excellent tool for describing the processes taking place. But the fact that his equation is a solid peace of mathematics doesn't mean that it contains ultimate truth.
It may describe a part of our reality but at the same time it may describe only a slice of it.
I noticed a wave-phenomenon, that is based on an optical illusion:
Do you have one of these ventilators (like on your table e.g.) that keep moving from one side to another and are surrounded by these wires, that protect you and your children from getting their fingers in danger? If you have one of them next time you turn it on observe it consciously, but don't look at it, rather look through it. You will notice that there is a slight optical illusion taking place, because you will have the impression of seeing the wires creating the impression of a wave.
This is only the result of two different movements creating an overlay and can also easily be observed by simply putting two layers of transparent curtain over each other and moving them. Waves seem to occur.
Our eyes watch a threedimensional event and read it as something twodimensional.
Such overlays of movements can also be observerd in acoustics where it would be called a beat.
What if the wave-nature of particles that we observe in the double-slit experiment is a three dimensional illusion of a process that is actually (at least) 4 dimensional? Plus, if i wonder what would happen, if i tried to measure the wave i observe in my ventilator, i would definitely never manage to get the wave into my hands, but always only one of the strings.
Which is what happens when we apply a measureing in the double-slit experiment: As soon as we try to get a hold of the wave it turns out to be a particle. Our measuring can not take place in more than 3 dimensions, so we can never catch more than the wire.
H.P. Stapp said a sentence which i am going to translate as precise as possible into english:
"A subatomic particle is not an independently existing analysable unit. It is basically a number of interrelations which stretch to the outside, towards other things. "
I think this translation should be somewhat precise enough.
This could as well be a description of a wave that only appears when an overlay of several movements take place.
Now, if i take the curtainlayers as a basis, there is actually two different movements. If however i look at the ventilator, there is only one movement, and the appearance of the wave totally depends on the perspective of the observer.
A ball rotationg in 3 dimensions can create an illusion of a wave if you look from a twodimensional perspective.
Could such a wave be described in a mathematical equation?
Definitely it could, however not with my poor mathematical skills that are just good enoug for trigonometry.
What if this equation would turn out to look familiar when you compare it to Schroedinger's equation?

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@Exebeche,

Someone's been reading Flatland... Wink

2 Replies

@Kielicious,

who who who who?

0 Replies

@Exebeche,

Hi Exebeche. There are physical theories that rely on higher dimensions. One of the earliest was Kaluza-Klein theory, which showed that general relativity in 4 spatial dimensions yields electromagnetism in three of them. KK suggested that this additional 4th dimension was compactified like a circle, and was invisible macroscopically because the circumference was so small (like a hosepipe that, when viewed from sufficient distance, appears to be a 1D line).

More famously, string theory, superstring theories and M-theory predict compactified higher dimensions. Most superstring theories have 10 spatial dimensions (one has 26).

Personally I like the idea. All particle waves have a real and imaginary component, the real corresponding to real (3D) space. If you look at the imaginary component as space also, instead of a wave you get a spiral or, in the particle's rest frame, a circle. Mathematically this follows from the fact that momentum in relativity (and so in the Dirac equation, the relativistic Schrodinger equation) linearly defines energy, but the momentum operator is a linear differential. The only wavefunction whose differential is proportional to itself (which is required by the Dirac equation) is an exponential function, and the only non-decaying and non-diverging exponentials are complex: i.e. have real and imaginary sinusoidal components.

I've been mulling this over, and its interesting that many mysterious quantities emerge from such a view: rest mass emerges from the momentum in compact space, and for charged particles moving in this space, spin in 3D space also emerges. And of course the wave-like nature follows too.

There is another, based on the holographic principle, that goes the other way: the state of a thing is uniquely defined by its surface area, not its volume. For instance, the state of a black hole is uniquely defined by its event horizon. The suspicion is that the cosmological horizon (event horizon of the universe) may also contain all of the information about the universe, i.e. the universe is 2 dimensional, with the illusion of 3 dimensions being a consequence of low-energy behaviour (a black hole, which is high energy, acts more obviously like a 2D object). One of the benefits of such a view, I believe, is that gravity as per Einstein's relativistic equation, emerges naturally, though the graviton (quantum theoretical gravity particle) also emerges naturally out of string theory, so the evidence goes both ways.

I'm not sure I can answer your question beyond: yes, it is reasonable and possible that the number of dimensions of the universe is different to those we perceive. I hope that helps.

1 Reply

@Kielicious,

Kielicious wrote:

Someone's been reading Flatland...

Hello Kielicious
I know the word flatland from some essays or metaphors.
This is in fact something i refer to.
The way you use it, it sounds like a name of a book or story. Could it be that the essays i read refer to this?
If so, i am certainly interested in what the original source is, and of course what are the recognitions resulting from it.
Further your comment looks like you insinuate that my idea is copied from this source.
I have no problem with finding out that somebody else had the same ideas before me. Happens a lot to me, and actually, i am used to find out that someone had the same idea, only much more sophisticated.
I'm totally fine with that, because whenever that happens it also shows me that my ideas are not just weird.
In any case i am interested in what the flatland-idea says about this issue.
Even if it comes up with the same question just in other words, it would already be interesting to read in which way the same question can be asked in other words.
Because sometimes the way a question is being asked already opens a door to a completely different answer.
In some cases, knowing that the answer is 42, doesn't help because you don't know the according question.
I think if you tell me more about flatland it can only add to the topic.

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Exebeche wrote:

Hello Kielicious
I know the word flatland from some essays or metaphors.
This is in fact something i refer to.
The way you use it, it sounds like a name of a book or story. Could it be that the essays i read refer to this?
If so, i am certainly interested in what the original source is, and of course what are the recognitions resulting from it.
Further your comment looks like you insinuate that my idea is copied from this source.
I have no problem with finding out that somebody else had the same ideas before me. Happens a lot to me, and actually, i am used to find out that someone had the same idea, only much more sophisticated.
I'm totally fine with that, because whenever that happens it also shows me that my ideas are not just weird.
In any case i am interested in what the flatland-idea says about this issue.
Even if it comes up with the same question just in other words, it would already be interesting to read in which way the same question can be asked in other words.
Because sometimes the way a question is being asked already opens a door to a completely different answer.
In some cases, knowing that the answer is 42, doesn't help because you don't know the according question.
I think if you tell me more about flatland it can only add to the topic.

Tis true! It is a book authored by Edwin Abbott and the book talks alot about what you are talking about: the concept of other dimensions. Its a really good book (from what I've read because I didnt finish it) and it talks about objects from different dimensions going to other dimensions and trying to convince the other dimension that another dimension exists. Man, I used the word dimension alot in that sentence lol.

Here is an excerpt:

wiki wrote:

The story is about a two-dimensional world referred to as Flatland. The unnamed narrator, a humble square (the social caste of gentlemen and professionals), guides us through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The Square has a dream about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland), and attempts to convince the realm's ignorant monarch of a second dimension, but finds that it is essentially impossible to make him see outside of his eternally straight line.

Here is the link --> Flatland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think you'd enjoy the book.

0 Replies

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Mathematically this follows from the fact that momentum in relativity (and so in the Dirac equation, the relativistic Schrodinger equation) linearly defines energy, but the momentum operator is a linear differential. The only wavefunction whose differential is proportional to itself (which is required by the Dirac equation) is an exponential function, and the only non-decaying and non-diverging exponentials are complex: i.e. have real and imaginary sinusoidal components.

Hello Bones-O!

And once again many thanks for your answer.
I am familiar with string theory and M-theory and their up to 26 dimensions.
However the above sentence gives me something to chew on, i guess i will need somebody's help for translating this into my language (which in this case i don't mean german Surprised

).
This plus the things you mentioned in a different thread may take me a little while before i can reply adequately.
I'll be back. :cool:

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Exebeche wrote:

Hello Bones-O!

And once again many thanks for your answer.
I am familiar with string theory and M-theory and their up to 26 dimensions.
However the above sentence gives me something to chew on, i guess i will need somebody's help for translating this into my language (which in this case i don't mean german ).
This plus the things you mentioned in a different thread may take me a little while before i can reply adequately.
I'll be back. :cool:

I'll try and explain a little more easily (I didn't go into detail before as it was an aside).

Okay, you so you've got a wave equation (Dirac's) and a wave that must be a solution to that wave equation whose form is unknown. To get information out of such a wave, we have to operate on it with mathematical constructs called, funnily enough, operators for which the wave is in an allowed state. For instance, if u(x) is my wave, and my operator P gives me the momentum of that wave, we have what's called an eigenvalue equation:

P*u(x) = p*u(x) [1]

P is operator, p is eigenvalue - the actual momentum. It transpires that the form of the momentum operator is:

P = -(ih/2pi)(d/dx) [2]

(d/dx) isn't a number or anything like that: it simply takes the derivative of what the operator acts on with respect to x. For instance:

(d/dx) x^2 = 2x

For [1] to be true, i.e. for u(x) to remain unchanged except by the multiplicative constant p, u(x) has to take the form of an exponential, since it has the property:

(d/dx)e^(k*x) = k*e^(k*x),

i.e. the exponential remains unchanged by operation. However, exponentials rapidly decay to 0 or diverge to infinity unless they are complex, i.e. of the form:

e^(ikx) = cos(kx) + i*sin(kx)

which describes a circle in complex (real + imaginary) space.

1 Reply

@Bones-O,

Bones-O! wrote:

Yep. First off, I said 'we' earlier, suggesting I "believe" in the probabilistic interpretation of QM. Actually I don't, but I accept that, at present, it's the best we've got.

Sure, the role of a die is completely determined... quantum effects aren't going to make any macroscopic difference. Likewise for RNGs.

The difference with QM is that things can actually be in one state or another. For instance, an electron may be an extended wave, however if I examine part of that extended region, I will either find that the electron is absent altogether or entirely within that part.

All other states (position can be a state) are the same and behave the same way. An electron may have a range of wave 'components' (not 'parts') each with a different momentum, however if I measure the momentum I find the entire electron to have the same momentum.

These are two of the postulates of QM:

1. Any system may be described as being in a linear combination of basis states.
2. If I measure with respect to that basis (for instance the basis of position states), I measure the system to be in a single state.

What happens in between is open to interpretation, but the idea that the particle wave represents the probability of the particle's position (and the magnitude of other states in the wavefunction represent the probability of being in that state) has been extenstively tested and found 100% accurate.

There are other interpretations, though, such as many-worlds interpretation.

I do only understand this to a certain degree.
Part of the problem might be my language barrier.
Part of it is certainly that "simple" scientific terms turn out to take a bunch of years to be correctly understood.
It looks to me like we do in fact observe some kind of paradox behaviour.
When you say :
"however if I examine part of that extended region, I will either find that the electron is absent altogether or entirely within that part."
What do you mean by examine? Measure it or calculate it?
My guess would be measure it.

Did you know that the growth of patterns in an animal fur can be described as wave functions?
Alan Turing found out that these patterns appear as a result of chemical waves.
The growth of spots in a leopards fur as well as the stripes on a zebra can be described by wave-functions of chemical reactions.
Though i am far from ever being able to read a function like that i wonder what all these equations look like to someone who has the mathematical competence.
Couldn't a subatomic particle as well be (like a spot in a leopards fur) a result of a much (much!) more complex process taking place in a higher dimension?

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Okay, that's weird.

Exebeche wrote:

What do you mean by examine? Measure it or calculate it?
My guess would be measure it.

You guess right. It has to be. There's no way to calculate it - if we could, it would be deterministic. When we calculate the position, we find the particle still extended across the whole region, not just the part we look at.

Exebeche wrote:

Did you know that the growth of patterns in an animal fur can be described as wave functions?
Alan Turing found out that these patterns appear as a result of chemical waves.
The growth of spots in a leopards fur as well as the stripes on a zebra can be described by wave-functions of chemical reactions.

I did not know that.

Exebeche wrote:

Couldn't a subatomic particle as well be (like a spot in a leopards fur) a result of a much (much!) more complex process taking place in a higher dimension?

Wave-particle-leopardfur triality? Maybe. I don't know. I like the idea of compactified (circular) higher dimensions because it seems to answer where mass, spin and frequency could come from. These dimensions are modelled in string theory. But no-one knows.

0 Replies

@Exebeche,

"The complete Universe can be defined/described as the sum-total of all Perspectives." - Book of Fudd (9:02:10)

3 Replies

@nameless,

nameless wrote:

The electron "knows" that both holes are open. Yet, if observed, an electron is seen to go through one hole or the other, and is registered on the detector as a particle. It is as though the electron experiences or even creates a parallel world in which it is in two places at once-a process that can never be observed directly, for the moment an attempt is made to do so, the wave function immediately collapses. The particle "knows" it is being watched! It also behaves as if it knows what other particles are doing.

And we both know, that an electron doesn't know anything.
Don't worry, i am not going to accuse you of being antropomorphizing. Of course you didn't really mean that the electron "knows" anything.
However using this word so easily is at the same time a temptation of ignoring the non-antropomorphizing aspects.
Because: What does it actually mean that the electron knows about us observing it?
In physical terms this can only mean that the electron is affected by information coming from the observation.
In other words the participants object and observer relate to each other in a way that we haven't figured out yet.
Instead of claiming parallel worlds i find it an economical approach to first of all consider that the observed system stretches across the local frame that we consider the location where the process is taking place.
To speak less abstract:
Remember the citation of Stapp in the beginning. The electron is something that can not be seen as an isolated object. It actually stretches in all directions towards other system constituents.
It is not a wave nor a particle, it is a sum of relations between system constituents.
I do not claim that these relations certainly DO take place in a higher dimension, but:
IF these relations took place in a higher spacial dimension that we don't realize, we would be very likely to observe phenomenons that seem somehow paradox.
Maybe it doesn't even have to be a spacial dimension. Might even be in time. Very abstract however.
Certain is that we observe paradox behaviour.

nameless wrote:

Personally, I think that the notion of 'illusion' is spurious, a false (usually egoic) distinction. Everything exists! Even 'so-called' illusion. Something that exists can hardly conform to the classical notion of 'illusion'.
Whatever is perceived, is 'reality', a feature of 'Reality'.

No no no, please don't get on this path. Maybe this is one of the little details where german language differs from english.
When i use the word illusion i do not question the existence of the wave particle dualism.
What i mean is, this effect could be an effect of reality playing a trick on our senses.
In other words the source of the illusion is totally real - however our perception plays a trick on us.
Like these sounds e.g. , you know when something sounds like it's getting up to higher frequences all the time, but it never ends.
It's as if reality is playing a trick on our acoustic perception system.
The wave particle dualism might be just the same.
However it's not our senses being tricked, it's our mind.
Put two layers of transparent curtain on each other and move it: You will see something like a wave appear.
Now imagine this was observed by 2dimensional creatures who only see like the "shadow" of it.
They will see the process and whitness the movement, but when they try to analyse it they are likely to be confronted with strange questions.
The same for us. The movement of the curtain layers is even easy to analyse.
A ball that consists of wires also creates such effects when it rotates (Remember the fan), creating the twodimensional impression of a wave, however being a whole threedimensional movement.
If you see only the shadow of this movement you might be able to describe it mathematically.
However when you touch it (measure it), you will always hold only a single point of the wire in your hands.

nameless wrote:

"The complete Universe can be defined/described as the sum-total of all Perspectives." - Book of Fudd (9:02:10)

I never heard of this book but i am extremely positive about this sentence.

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Exebeche;65016 wrote:

And we both know, that an electron doesn't know anything.
Don't worry, i am not going to accuse you of being antropomorphizing.
Of course you didn't really mean that the electron "knows" anything.

Perhaps you neglected to notice that what I offered was a quote from David Bohm's book. The words are not mine. Of course electrons don't 'know' anything. I certainly can't support such a 'literal' interpretation.

Quote:

What does it actually mean that the electron knows about us observing it?
In physical terms this can only mean that the electron is affected by information coming from the observation.

I can hang with this. His wording is poor. He's a physicist, not a philosopher/linguist. I di like your generous interpretation of his unfortunate words.

Quote:

In other words the participants object and observer relate to each other in a way that we haven't figured out yet.

The perceiver and the perceived are one. (Ref: 'Book of Fudd' quote)
Thats how I see that they 'relate'.

Quote:

It is not a wave nor a particle, it is a sum of relations between system constituents.

Good. Understood. I can see why you like my definition of the complete Universe.
Everything exists (in context)! The complete context for any'thing' in the Universe is the entire Universe! 'I', for instance, cannot be fully defined without including, no matter how ephemeral, the 'rest' of the Universe, including your (and all others) Perspectives of me. Same for you. The Universe is like a great tapestry, all interconnectedness and totality. Without the tiniest thread, the entire thing must be different.

Quote:

we would be very likely to observe phenomenons that seem somehow paradox.

We observe what our limitations allow. We think about what we observe and posit 'paradox'. What else from such limited vision recycled through 'thought'?

Quote:

Certain is that we observe paradox behaviour.

Paradox is not a direct observation, it is a product of 'thought' (the semi-toxic excretia of a functioning brain).
Not all see 'paradox' (I see 'paradox' as sign of cognitive error).

Quote:

No no no, please don't get on this path. Maybe this is one of the little details where german language differs from english.
When i use the word illusion i do not question the existence of the wave particle dualism.
What i mean is, this effect could be an effect of reality playing a trick on our senses. In other words the source of the illusion is totally real - however our perception plays a trick on us.

'Reality' doesn't play tricks on our senses, what we sense/perceive/conceive IS 'reality'. If I see a pink unicorn on the grass, it is 'reality' for this Perspective (even if for no other, all Perspectives are unique, and valid as such!), a 'real' feature of the Complete Reality of the Universe/existence.

Quote:

Like these sounds e.g. , you know when something sounds like it's getting up to higher frequences all the time, but it never ends.

It ends when perception ends. What is not perceived doesn't exist. No evidence at all to the contrary. A 'belief'...

Quote:

It's as if reality is playing a trick on our acoustic perception system.
The wave particle dualism might be just the same.
However it's not our senses being tricked, it's our mind.

It's medieval language and western philosophy that is the inadequacy. New language is necessary to represent the 'new world' opened to us by QM.

Regarding the so called 'duality' (another poor word, 'context' would be so much more precise to our modern understanding), I think that R.A.W.'s quote is relevent;

"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." -Robert Anton Wilson

Perspective!

Quote:

I never heard of this book but i am extremely positive about this sentence.

Thank you.
The book is my work.

1 Reply

@nameless,

nameless wrote:

Perhaps you neglected to notice that what I offered was a quote from David Bohm's book. The words are not mine.

Sorry for that.

nameless wrote:

The perceiver and the perceived are one. (Ref: 'Book of Fudd' quote)
Thats how I see that they 'relate'.

Well, personally i wouldn't subscribe to this, although i have to say it is not contradictory to the way i see the universe.
I normally tend to say in cases like this that it might turn out that e.g. perceiver and percieved are one.
There is an uncertain number of theories which can be called cosmological (maybe also philosophical), which are equal in the particular way that they are unproven but also not falsified (string theory and quantum loop gravity being popular examples).
The way i read your words here you have a strong tendency towards the Kopenhagen interpretation:

nameless wrote:

It ends when perception ends. What is not perceived doesn't exist. No evidence at all to the contrary. A 'belief'...

Now the Kopenhagen interpretation is not my favorite one, but unless we have a complete and consistent cosmology, i am also not rejecting it.
Although i would probably not express it so ultimately.

nameless wrote:

I can see why you like my definition of the complete Universe.
Everything exists (in context)! The complete context for any'thing' in the Universe is the entire Universe! 'I', for instance, cannot be fully defined without including, no matter how ephemeral, the 'rest' of the Universe, including your (and all others) Perspectives of me. Same for you.

I can see how our understanding of the universe correlates. You say everything exists in context. This is very similar to my concept of information.
It would probably take a few more words to express why and how 'information' is defined by how things relate to each other.
A quick explanation might be that information does not exist without a context. Information can never consist of only one constituent. It takes at least one more something (may it be a spacecoordinate) that it can relate to.
When two things like subatomic particels collide they exchange information about each other. At the same time they hold information about how they relate to the system in which they exist: movement in space depending on gravity, etc.
Information is constituted by relations, which is what you call context.
It was Norbert Wiener himself who called information the third quantity in the universe next to energy and matter.
My guess would be that 'the way things relate to each other' has been underestimated in the times of classical physics.
By the way, you mentioned a change of paradigms introduced by QM. I would say that the physics of complex dynamic systems, sometimes referred to as chaos theory causes a change of no less extent. We have nowadays something like a physical model of life. This is only one of the keys to an enormous change of mentality that can already be seen with people who understand modern physics (as oppose to classical physics).

nameless wrote:

'Reality' doesn't play tricks on our senses, what we sense/perceive/conceive IS 'reality'. If I see a pink unicorn on the grass, it is 'reality' for this Perspective (even if for no other, all Perspectives are unique, and valid as such!), a 'real' feature of the Complete Reality of the Universe/existence.

This could be seen as wether idealism or radical constructivism.
However it takes the discussion a bit to far. I agree that a mind is a part of what we call reality. I tend to see the single minds as splinters of glass containing small reflections of the universe, or what we call 'reality'.
There certainly is a wide consensus that there is a reality that we all share. I know that there are also other ideas like in solipsism, but the majority of philosophies takes for granted that we all share what we perceive as an outer reality.
Further there are certainly different kinds of illusions. A pink unicorn seen as a result of some LSD can be seen as part of reality because the mind seeing it is part of reality.
However we are getting close to wondering wether or not the unicorn has an ontological existence.
This would certainly be a dead end. I do not like to discuss ontological questions as well as i don't like discussing with a solipsist.
Anyway the unicorn can be called an illusion if caused by LSD.
There are however other illusions which are caused by the way our senses work, and which will be seen by all the other humans as well.
We all have seen illusions like that, pictures with patterns that seem to be moving, etc.
Even though also existing in our minds only, these illusions have a more obvious relationship to the reality that we all share.
An idealist might say that our mind creates the whole outside reality, whereas a radical constructivist says we create this reflection of reality inside of ourselves.
No matter what, they pretty much are based on an actually existing reality.
And no matter which idea we prefer, we can say that some illusions have a more obvious relationship to reality than others.
Some of them are caused simply by our mind reacting with a false interpretation to an input. The interpretation being false can most of the time be proven using other senses and sometimes it feels just funny.

I consider the wave movement that appears when you put two layers of curtain over each other an optical illusion. Maybe there is a description of this process that is more precise in terms of what really happens, but using this word due to language conventions we have, everybody just knows what i mean.

The wave particle dualism being an illusion refers to the interference patterns that appear, showing that the electron passed the slits as a wave.
With the curtain we have a two dimensional illusion.
In this case we might have a three dimensional illusion.
The process that causes the interference pattern might take place in a dimension higher than three.
Being threedimensional beings we can never grab the whole process as such.
The logical result is that whenever we try to grab the process we can only get a hold of a three dimensional part of the whole process:
The particle.
I wonder if what i say sounds clear and understandable to anybody?

nameless wrote:

Regarding the so called 'duality' (another poor word, 'context' would be so much more precise to our modern understanding), I think that R.A.W.'s quote is relevent;
"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." -Robert Anton Wilson

I read almost of Wilson's books.
I appreciate him for his intelligent humour as can be seen above. However i sometimes have the feeling that his humour skips into preaching. There was a point when i wasn't sure anymore if he was taking his LSD fantasies too serious. Wilson is high quality intellectual entertainment and even a source of recognition but i wouldn't see it as a source of truth.

1 Reply

@nameless,

nameless;64830 wrote:

When a single electron is aimed at the wall, the pattern displayed on the detector indicates wave interference.

Have they actually ever done an experiment where only one electron was aimed at the wall? Cause that matters.

nameless;64830 wrote:

The electron "knows" that both holes are open. It also behaves as if it knows what other particles are doing.

I know this is probably a stupid question but in order for the electron to behave the way it does in the experiment, why are both of your statements necessary?

I ask if there was ever an experiment where only one electron was fired because perhaps the result of a wave interference is an emergent property from the complexity of many electrons fired together and they are sort of meshed together. Is it just an assumption physicists make that only one electron would behave the same way?

If the electron 'knows' the behaviour of it's counterpart electrons then the wave function may not collapse due to this 'information interaction' in observing the phenomenon.

2 Replies

@Holiday20310401,

Holiday20310401;65311 wrote:

Have they actually ever done an experiment where only one electron was aimed at the wall? Cause that matters.

yes

Quote:

I know this is probably a stupid question but in order for the electron to behave the way it does in the experiment, why are both of your statements necessary?

TRhey are not 'my' statements, they are a quote. A poorly worded quote, but the point remains.

Quote:

I ask if there was ever an experiment where only one electron was fired because perhaps the result of a wave interference is an emergent property from the complexity of many electrons fired together and they are sort of meshed together. Is it just an assumption physicists make that only one electron would behave the same way?

Good thinking, but as i said, I think that they have observed a single photon. Do some research, its all over the net.

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If the electron 'knows' the behaviour of it's counterpart electrons then the wave function may not collapse due to this 'information interaction' in observing the phenomenon.

The electron 'knowing' anything is obvious metaphor, and poor wording, as far as I can see. But, as I said, he's the physicist, not the poet.

The point is that the apparent 'duality' is a matter of Perspective/context.

0 Replies

@Holiday20310401,

Hi Hol - Maybe I can help here.

Holiday20310401;65311 wrote:

Have they actually ever done an experiment where only one electron was aimed at the wall? Cause that matters.

The double-slit experiment is a thought experiment, but equivilent experiments have been performed with the same results.

Holiday20310401;65311 wrote:

I know this is probably a stupid question but in order for the electron to behave the way it does in the experiment, why are both of your statements necessary?

I ask if there was ever an experiment where only one electron was fired because perhaps the result of a wave interference is an emergent property from the complexity of many electrons fired together and they are sort of meshed together. Is it just an assumption physicists make that only one electron would behave the same way?

If the electron 'knows' the behaviour of it's counterpart electrons then the wave function may not collapse due to this 'information interaction' in observing the phenomenon.

The electron doesn't really "know". In the case of the double-slit experiment, if I put a detector at one slit the electron wavefunction will either collapse at the detector and start again from there, or it will collapse so not be at the detector, so the other slit. So the wave goes through both holes, but what comes out past the detector is a wave from one slit or a wave from where the detector collapsed the original. If I remove the detector there's nothing to collapse the wavefunction so it goes through both. Essentially the detector measures a binary position value: it's here or it's not. If it's not, naturally the wavefunction has collapsed such that it only follows a path through the other slit. It's not so spooky.

This holds for single-electron experiments - this is how they tested that electrons don't interfere with each other: each electron interferes only with itself.

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Exebeche;65274 wrote:

There is an uncertain number of theories which can be called cosmological (maybe also philosophical), which are equal in the particular way that they are unproven but also not falsified (string theory and quantum loop gravity being popular examples).
If a theory is not 'proven' it is either refuted somehow or tentatively accepted.

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The way i read your words here you have a strong tendency towards the Kopenhagen interpretation:
Quote:Originally Posted by nameless
It ends when perception ends. What is not perceived doesn't exist. No evidence at all to the contrary. A 'belief'...

Now the Kopenhagen interpretation is not my favorite one, but unless we have a complete and consistent cosmology, i am also not rejecting it.
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I can see how our understanding of the universe correlates. You say everything exists in context. This is very similar to my concept of information.
It would probably take a few more words to express why and how 'information' is defined by how things relate to each other.

My understanding of 'information' is the product of Mind (the quantum possibility/probability wave field, 'undifferentiated potential) when observed by Conscious Perspective. The 'information', as collectively perceived by all Conscious Perspectives, is the complete Universe.

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A quick explanation might be that information does not exist without a context.

Information is context, is the Universe/existence. It is only by the inherently limited nature of Perspective that the 'undifferentiated' (of a monism) can be perceived to be 'differentiated' (context as the perceived Universe).

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Information can never consist of only one constituent.

Mind-stuff.

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It takes at least one more something (may it be a spacecoordinate) that it can relate to.

The appearance of context by limited perception, a view of the resulting (Mind-stuff) 'information waves'.

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When two things like subatomic particels collide they exchange information about each other.

The 'particles' are 'information waves', just as is everything perceived as Universe.

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It was Norbert Wiener himself who called information the third quantity in the universe next to energy and matter.

He almost has it. First, 'energy and matter' are non-different than each other, the only 'apparent' distinction is related to velocity.
Energy to matter to thoughts to quasars to gravity to burgers and dreams, all is 'composed' of 'Mind-stuff', 'information'.

My guess would be that 'the way things relate to each other' has been
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underestimated in the times of classical physics.
By the way, you mentioned a change of paradigms introduced by QM. I would say that the physics of complex dynamic systems, sometimes referred to as chaos theory causes a change of no less extent. We have nowadays something like a physical model of life. This is only one of the keys to an enormous change of mentality that can already be seen with people who understand modern physics (as oppose to classical physics).

It's a whole new world opened to us.

" Again and again some people in the crowd wake up,
They have no ground in the crowd,
And they emerge according to much broader laws.
They carry strange customs with them
And demand room for bold gestures.
The future speaks ruthlessly through them."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past."
-Maurice Maeterlinck

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Quote:Originally Posted by nameless
'Reality' doesn't play tricks on our senses, what we sense/perceive/conceive IS 'reality'. If I see a pink unicorn on the grass, it is 'reality' for this Perspective (even if for no other, all Perspectives are unique, and valid as such!), a 'real' feature of the Complete Reality of the Universe/existence.

However it takes the discussion a bit to far. I agree that a mind is a part of what we call reality.

An integral part, non-different than...

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I tend to see the single minds as splinters of glass containing small reflections of the universe, or what we call 'reality'.

There is only one Mind. But I can translate what you are saying thusly;
"The complete Universe is defined/described as the sum-total of all Perspectives!" - Book of Fudd
Every Perspective a reflection of a portion of the Universe, a 'mirror shard of Perspective.
I can see youPerspective...

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There certainly is a wide consensus that there is a reality that we all share.

We are all the blind men surrounding the elephant, with most arguing that what they see in front of themselves is the 'sole' truth, the 'sole' true Perspective, but all are.
'We' are truly defined by everyone that we have ever met!

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I know that there are also other ideas like in solipsism, but the majority of philosophies takes for granted that we all share what we perceive as an outer reality.

There has never been any evidence of an 'out there'. As I see it, any and all notions of an 'out there' are simply more 'information'.

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Further there are certainly different kinds of illusions. A pink unicorn seen as a result of some LSD can be seen as part of reality because the mind seeing it is part of reality.

So if it is a real feature of 'Reality'/Universe, where does the 'illusion' come in? The egoic notion (and western philosophical fantasy) of existential seperation of this existing and that not/an illusion, is a fallacy. Everything exists, even the obsolete notion of 'illusion' and 'fantasy'. Any discrimination is a Perspectivally based subset of 'everything exists'.
An interesting read can be found here;
No(-)Justifiation Justifies The Everything Ensemble

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However we are getting close to wondering wether or not the unicorn has an ontological existence.

There are many 'subsets' within the complete 'set' of "Everything exists!"

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Anyway the unicorn can be called an illusion if caused by LSD.

Depends on the particular Perspective and the particular 'subset'.
LSD is no real differentiation. Your brain produces it's own, anyway! Only ego claims 'true vision' and that of others, for whatever reason, 'untrue' if 'different'.

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There are however other illusions which are caused by the way our senses work, and which will be seen by all the other humans as well.

A spurious and unsupportable assertion.
I don't 'believe' in 'illusion'. Obsolete...

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No matter what, they pretty much are based on an actually existing reality.

They are inherent features of the Complete Universe/Reality!
Do you not understand the 'limitations' of your () senses? In front of your eyes is absolute darkness. Is it an illusion to think that there is color 'out there' somewhere? Is it an 'illusion' to believe the 'evidence' of your senses? Naive realism has long been refuted. Do you actually think that there is 'sound' outside your ears? Perfect silence! The same with all of our senses. We do not see the 'movie' out there, but it is playing on the 'inside' of our eyelids as we sleep...

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And no matter which idea we prefer, we can say that some illusions have a more obvious relationship to reality than others.

No 'relationship' to reality, everything is reality/Universe, One.

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The wave particle dualism being an illusion refers to the interference patterns that appear, showing that the electron passed the slits as a wave.
With the curtain we have a two dimensional illusion.
In this case we might have a three dimensional illusion.
The process that causes the interference pattern might take place in a dimension higher than three.
Being threedimensional beings we can never grab the whole process as such.
The logical result is that whenever we try to grab the process we can only get a hold of a three dimensional part of the whole process:
The particle.
I wonder if what i say sounds clear and understandable to anybody?

I think that you might find this excerpt regarding the nature of the effect of language on observation interesting;

The case for using E-Prime rests on the simple proposition that "isness" sets the brain into a medieval Aristotelian framework and makes it impossible to understand modern problems and opportunities. A classic case of GIGO, in short. Removing "isness" and writing/thinking only and always in operational/existential language sets us, conversely, in a modern universe where we can successfully deal with modern issues.

To begin to get the hang of E-Prime, consider the following two columns, the first written in Standard English and the second in English Prime.
Standard English English Prime
1. The photon is a wave. 1. The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments.
2. The photon is a particle. 2. The photon appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.
3. John is unhappy and grouchy. 3. John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office.
4. John is bright and cheerful. 4. John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.
5. The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford. 5. In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the hit-and-run accident as a blue Ford.
6. That is a fascist idea. 6. That seems like a fascist idea to me.
7. Beethoven is better than Mozart. 7. In my present mixed state of musical education and ignorance Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me.
8. Lady Chatterly's lover is a pornographic novel. 8. Lady Chatterly's lover seems like a pornographic novel to me.
9. Grass is green. 9. Grass registers as green to most human eyes.
10. The first man stabbed the second man with a knife. 10. I think I saw the first man stab the second man with a knife.

In the first example a "metaphysical" or Aristotelian formulation in Standard English becomes an operational or existential formulation when rewritten in English Prime. This may appear of interest only to philosophers and scientists of an operationalist/phenomenologist bias, but consider what happens when we move to the second example.

Clearly, written in Standard English, "The photon is a wave," and "The photon is a particle" contradict each other, just like the sentences "Robin is a boy" and "Robin is a girl." Nonetheless, all through the nineteenth century physicists found themselves debating about this and, by the early 1920s, it became obvious that the experimental evidence depended on the instruments or the instrumental set-up (design) of the total experiment. One type of experiment always showed light traveling in waves, and another type always showed light traveling as discrete particles.

This contradiction created considerable consternation. As noted earlier, some quantum theorists joked about "wavicles." Others proclaimed in despair that "the universe is not rational" (by which they meant to indicate that the universe does not follow Aristotelian logic. ) Still others looked hopefully for the definitive experiment (not yet attained in 1990) which would clearly prove whether photons "are" waves or particles.

If we look, again, at the translations into English Prime, we see that no contradiction now exists at all, no "paradox," no "irrationality" in the universe. We also find that we have constrained ourselves to talk about what actually happened in spacetime, whereas in Standard English we allowed ourselves to talk about something that has never been observed in spacetime at all -- the "isness" or "whatness" or Aristotelian "essence" of the photon. (Niels Bohr's Complementarity Principle and Copenhagen Interpretation, the technical resolutions of the wave/particle duality within physics, amount to telling physicists to adopt "the spirit of E-Prime" without quite articulating E-Prime itself.)

The weakness of Aristotelian "isness" or "whatness" statements lies in their assumption of indwelling "thingness" -- the assumption that every "object" contains what the cynical German philosopher Max Stirner called "spooks." Thus in Moliere's famous joke, an ignorant doctor tries to impress some even more ignorant lay persons by "explaining" that opium makes us sleepy because it has a "sleep-inducing property" in it. By contrast a scientific or operational statement would define precisely how the structure of the opium molecule chemically bonds to specific receptor structures in the brain, describing actual events in the spacetime continuum.

In simpler words, the Aristotelian universe assumes an assembly of "things" with "essences" or "spooks" inside of them, where the modern scientific (or existentialist) universe assumes a network of structural relationships. (Look at the first two samples of Standard English and English Prime again, to see this distinction more clearly.)

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"All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." -Robert Anton Wilson

I read almost of Wilson's books.
I appreciate him for his intelligent humour as can be seen above. However i sometimes have the feeling that his humour skips into preaching. There was a point when i wasn't sure anymore if he was taking his LSD fantasies too serious. Wilson is high quality intellectual entertainment and even a source of recognition

i wouldn't see it as a source of truth.

Hey, 'truth' is where you find it.
I see it everywhere!

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@Exebeche,

Wave/particle duality is explained by the uncertainty principle, which says that one cannot equally know the measurement of an object's position and its momentum. The wave function is a mathematical representation of the probability of finding a photon at a particular position.

Physicist Victor Stenger explains the wave/particle duality in this article:

Quantum Physics Quackery (Skeptical Inquirer January 1997)

1 Reply

@hue-man,

nameless;65327 wrote:

My understanding of 'information' is the product of Mind (the quantum possibility/probability wave field, 'undifferentiated potential) when observed by Conscious Perspective. The 'information', as collectively perceived by all Conscious Perspectives, is the complete Universe.

I am definitely going to start a thread about 'information' in the near future.
Not to continue this exciting topic seems hard to me.
However it is a topic opening a door to a whole new dimension of physics and philosphy that will take us lightyears away from the original issue.
Let me just say the following from my point of view: Intelligence is the ability of processing information functionally, and (our) consciousness is intelligence at a complex level, perception is something that already takes place at a low level without consciousness: Two atoms meeting each other say "how are you doing?", when two particles collide they inevitable exchange all sorts of information about each other. 'Observing' is an active way of perceiving.
Particles perceiving information about their environment is enough observation for the universe to exist.
So far for my point of view. I don't really share your philosophy however i notice that my ideas sometimes lead to conclusions that are kind of similar to yours.
Finding and analyzing these points of contact however really leads to far in this thread. However i am curious where it might lead us.

nameless;65327 wrote:

Again and again some people in the crowd wake up,
They have no ground in the crowd,
(...)

You have an interesting background in literature. What's the title of this poem? I am curious to find out what it sounds like in german.

nameless;65327 wrote:

9. Grass is green. 9. Grass registers as green to most human eyes.

What you say about the use of language appears to be totally in accordance with my idea of it. However it doesn't look a hundred percent consistent when i read a sentence like this of yours:

nameless;65327 wrote:

There is only one Mind.

What makes you so totally sure that this is the truth? You can only claim that you know it by intuition.
This makes your believe a religious system.
There's nothing to be said against believing in mystical quantum concepts. But are you conscious of the shift from scientific to religious territory that you are making?
If you say science is another believe system - fine, but it is based on completely different rules.
As long as someone can see the line between these systems it's totally ok, but i wouldn't accept if you said that's all the same.
(Even then i wouldn't mean it as a rejection, i find this conversation too interesting.)
I wanna try to start a thread about the Kopenhagen interpretation, this might be a good point to discuss quantum mystics (i think you are not going to take this term as an insult).
Looking forward to reading you.

hue-man;65574 wrote:

Wave/particle duality is explained by the uncertainty principle, which says that one cannot equally know the measurement of an object's position and its momentum. The wave function is a mathematical representation of the probability of finding a photon at a particular position.
Physicist Victor Stenger explains the wave/particle duality in this article:
Quantum Physics Quackery (Skeptical Inquirer January 1997)

That's a really good summary.
What i found particularly interesting in the context of this thread was the following sentence:

"As noted, the wave function is simply a mathematical object used to calculate probabilities. Mathematical constructs can be as magical as any other figment of the human imagination-like the Starship Enterprise or a Roadrunner cartoon. "

This is a way of expressing that mathematics does not represent reality.
It can only provide descriptions of reality.
It can be as incomplete as any other formal system, including human language.
Newton's formulas have been approved so many times that humanity felt vain enough for claiming if they had all knowledge about all particles in the universe at one moment they would be able to predict the complete future and recalculate the past (see Laplace's demon) .
In those days all knowledge about the whole universe appeared to be already there, due to Newton's simple equations.
They were proven hundreds of thousands of times.
However they turned out to be only a description of a (very very) particular part of the universe.
Only a description of that part of the universe that we can touch and perceive with our senses.
Einstein's relativity completely levered this reality.
This shows how an equation can appear to be perfect, but turn out to be only a blindfolded description of reality.
Philosophically speaking:
Imagine the world is a tea cup.
Imagine: If there had been a deaf person who was used to be drinking a cup of tea around Johann Sebastian Bach when he played the organ, this deaf person might have noticed little circles in his tea cup whenever Bach played the organ.
He might have been able to describe the little waves in his tea cup creating the according equations (functions), and he might even have been able to connect these equations to the notes on Bach's compositions, which would make his equations functions depending on functions.
He would have had a description of his tea cup (world, universe...) according to the notes on a paper.
But he wouldn't have known anything about the music (sound waves).
His functions would have proven a hundred percent correct. But still they would have been incomplete.

QM is highly suspected of being incomplete.

I know that my idea of the wave particle duality being a dimension related illusion is a product of a simple mind.
But ...
What does it take to find out about it?
Has anyone ever made the effort of thinking about what higher dimensional process the wave function could be a product of?

1 Reply

Wave particle dualism - an illusion?

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