It seems extremely unlikely that conscious agents are required to collapse waveforms. If nothing else, consciousness is too vaguely defined to be that important to subatomic processes. (IIRC, Egan’s Quarantine has a good bit of fun with consciousness and collapsing waveforms.)
I’m betting that interacting with another subatomic particle is what collapses a waveform, though even that seems rather weird as I type it. Are some (all?) particles sufficiently particle-like to collapse waveforms, or can two waveforms collapse each other, or is there no point in trying to do this in words?
I don’t think a moderately clueless Schrodinger is enough to turn a sleeping cat into a dead one with the awesome power of Not Knowing What’s Going On. People make perceptual mistakes all the time, and it probably isn’t bending reality, though I’ll grant that if it were fairly rare, it would be very hard to find out.
If interacting with another subatomic particle were sufficient to collapse a waveform, then you couldn’t prepare two particles in an entangled state. But entangled particles are regularly prepared in the lab, so your conjecture seems to have been refuted.
I think the best bet for a collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is some form of spontaneous collapse theory, like GRW.
I had no idea the measurement problem existed. I knew there was a question about what waveform collapse meant, but not that people knew so little (nothing?) about the collapse itself.
In the pre-google state of gazing at ‘GRW’ I came up with General Relativity Wuxia (wrong for all letters). Perhaps waveforms collapse when there’s a duel with a definitive outcome. Excuse me, I’m feeling slightly giddy. There’s got to be a cool science fictional theory, a ridiculous fantasy theory, and an embarrassing new age theory to be fitted into a really remarkable blank spot.
Pure verbal reasoning here—I don’t know the math.
It seems extremely unlikely that conscious agents are required to collapse waveforms. If nothing else, consciousness is too vaguely defined to be that important to subatomic processes. (IIRC, Egan’s Quarantine has a good bit of fun with consciousness and collapsing waveforms.)
I’m betting that interacting with another subatomic particle is what collapses a waveform, though even that seems rather weird as I type it. Are some (all?) particles sufficiently particle-like to collapse waveforms, or can two waveforms collapse each other, or is there no point in trying to do this in words?
I don’t think a moderately clueless Schrodinger is enough to turn a sleeping cat into a dead one with the awesome power of Not Knowing What’s Going On. People make perceptual mistakes all the time, and it probably isn’t bending reality, though I’ll grant that if it were fairly rare, it would be very hard to find out.
If interacting with another subatomic particle were sufficient to collapse a waveform, then you couldn’t prepare two particles in an entangled state. But entangled particles are regularly prepared in the lab, so your conjecture seems to have been refuted.
I think the best bet for a collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is some form of spontaneous collapse theory, like GRW.
I had no idea the measurement problem existed. I knew there was a question about what waveform collapse meant, but not that people knew so little (nothing?) about the collapse itself.
In the pre-google state of gazing at ‘GRW’ I came up with General Relativity Wuxia (wrong for all letters). Perhaps waveforms collapse when there’s a duel with a definitive outcome. Excuse me, I’m feeling slightly giddy. There’s got to be a cool science fictional theory, a ridiculous fantasy theory, and an embarrassing new age theory to be fitted into a really remarkable blank spot.
Right—but that’s part of the point of the post. You read the post, and then reasoned your way from its beginning, to its halfway point.
The post is not claiming that the cat is always dead.