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Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve?

https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-mysteries-of-quantum-mechanics-beginning-to-dissolve-20260213/
36•wjb3•1h ago

Comments

jadbox•36m ago
How does "quantum darwinism" effectively select a state? Like how does that work in principle- what is the selection criteria.
thyristan•32m ago
Energy.
goatlover•28m ago
The article asks the same question in the last part, wondering whether it's just randomly selected. MWI proponents have always argued decoherence leads to the entire world being put into superposition as decoherence just spreads entanglement to the environment. The math never says entanglement destroys superposition beyond a certain point of complexity (many different entangled systems forming the environment).

The author does say the approach is a combination of Copenhagen and MWI, removing the outlandish parts of both. Seems to preserve the randomness of the former though.

Nevermark•33m ago
> None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse.

Actually, the "many worlds" "interpretation", simply treats the equations as meaning what they say.

And it is misnamed. The field equations describe a highly interconnected "web universe" of "tangles" (what I call spans of entangled states) and "spangles". (My shorthand for superpositions, i.e. disjoint versions of particles. Think of all the alternate lines leading from and two distinguishable states, like star patterns.) Basically, a graph of union and intersection relations where all combinations, individually and en masse, are determined exactly by the laws of conservation.

That's an amazingly good property for a theory. And we have it.

By including all consistent versions, no external information is required by the theory. It is informationally complete. An actual explanation.

Forces disappear. They become passive in an interesting way. Histories where information cancel, leave structured distribution patterns behind, which to us look like forces. Cancellation is just information being conserved. Not an active force. But the results appear active.

In a similar way to how the evolutionary umbrella seems very smart and creative, when really, it is just poorly adapted individual creatures independently cancelling themselves out blindly, leaving a statistical improvement behind.

There is no additional information needed to explain the effect of quantum "collapse" because it is already explained by the fast bifurcation of disjoint tangles when lots of particles interact in an unorganized manner. It is thermodynamics being thermodynamics.

Anyone attempting to invent a mechanism for "collapse" is like someone trying to explain why the spherical Earth appears "flat" by introducing additional speculative theories. Despite the spherical world theory already explaining why it looks flat locally.

And the only reason to not take the field equations as a plain reading, is the result is "too big" for someone's imagination.

Our everyday experience doesn't limit reality, despite humans having trouble with theories that reveal a bigger reality, over and over and over.

Bluntly: The total field equations preserve information - that is the plain implication for having both unions (tangles) and intersections (spangles) of alternate versions.

Anything else requires magical information to choose collapses, in order to explain something already explained. In other words, it requires dressed up voodoo. And by "re-complicating", uh, "re-explaining" the already explained, introduces a ridiculous new puzzle: Where does all that pervasively intrusive relentless injection of information (that determines every single extricable particle interaction!), come from? Saying it "Just Happens" is like someone "explaining" their pet version of a creator with "Just Is". It is a psychological non-taulogy for "Don't Ask Questions".

spot5010•18m ago
The part that I have trouble wrapping around with many worlds interpretation is how I as an observer end up in one of the many bifurcations. Any links you can share that will help me with understanding that is welcome!

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/) goes into this in some depth, and it seems like the right way to think about it is say that "I" in one branch is a different entity than the "I" in a different branch. I have somehow not been able to grok it yet.

And I agree about the naming. I really dislike the name "many worlds interpretation", which seems to imply that we have to postulate the existence of these additional worlds, whereas in fact they are branches of the wavefunction exactly predicted by standard quantum mechanics.

Sharlin•10m ago
Everybody is utterly confused by the hard problem of consciousness. That's just how it is.
uh_uh•6m ago
I'd say we are confused about both the lowest (quantum) and highest level (consciousness) phenomena of the known Universe. Quite humbling.
borissk•18m ago
I think you're right, the many worlds interpretation makes the most sense. Unfortunately out current technology is very far from delivering any experimental confirmation or denial of any of the mainstream interpretations.
lukol•25m ago
opens coat Hey kid, wanna try some superdeterminism?
general_reveal•23m ago
Quite frankly, Quantum is probably known or solved by a nation state (probably the United States). Similar to AI, they will release it in a safe roll out (as they deem it).
andirk•15m ago
Maybe, but the AI we see in the mainstream today -- generative image/video/text creations and Large Language Model chatbots -- were done via non-governmental public and private companies. And a lot of the work hitting the scene loudly and somewhat prematurely. My understanding is the amount of and type of compute needed for Quantum is pretty intense, so there'd be a huge footprint from its manufacturing to keep it hidden.
borissk•23m ago
Are the Mysteries of Quantum Mechanics Beginning to Dissolve? I don’t think so.

Zurek’s Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism is thought-provoking, but it’s still speculation without broad buy-in from researchers. We might need ASI to crack these mysteries — our brains weren’t built for this kind of problem.

Noaidi•16m ago
"Thus the wave function can’t tell us what the quantum system is like before we measure it. "

Nothing is a particle, all measured things are a probability that we make a certainty when we measure them.

When you stop looking at things as things, but instead, see them as probabilities, it will all make sense. My hand and the beer bottle I pick up are both probabilities. Since the mind cannot navigate the world based on probabilities it turns them into certainties.

Physical science is is the only way we can perceive quantum science. There is no "collapse" outside of our brains perception.

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