Autism and Quantum Mechanics
I can't be the only one who absolutely hates the idea of a particle having two states at once, right? Is it just a personal thing or is it tied somehow to the fact that autistic people generally have more binary thinking?
Forgive me if it's a stupid question. I'm still trying to figure out how this all works and whether I'm autistic or not.
It's probably not just because you're autistic. Quantum states are a little mind-blowing. But I do like the implication that I get to determine what's "real" because the quantum universe doesn't collapse into a single state until my consciousness interacts with it.
There is absolutely no evidence that consciousness causes wavefunction collapse (that is, if wavefunction collapse even happens at all, but that is a different discussion entirely).
Oh?
Don't worry! Quantum Mechanics a scientific model we use to understand and work with reality, not reality itself.
The difference may seem subtle, but it is important. E.g. my bank account represents my money. At some point it may have a negative amount on it. I could model this as I own anti-money that obliterate real money when put in the same account. I can have a perfectly functioning personal economy with this interpretation. But in reality, it's the bank having to cover some transactions for me when they shouldn't have and are expecting I cover it with a deposit.
(Though I could probably ask for funding for a large currency collider to search for for the anti-money particle.)
The quantum model has many interpretations as to what underlying reality it may model. Some scientists like the "many worlds" interpretation where a particle is in one state in one universe and another state in another universe - at some point reality branches and one version of you continue in each universe (I think it's silly). What you are describing is the "Copenhagen interpretation" which is popular but many scientists reject it. Some scientists don't want to interpret reality from the model and just work with the math as math.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
Okay, thank you! My first introduction to quantum mechanics was in a magazine when I was like 11 and they used the cat analogy and I've been confused ever since! I was just sitting there thinking, "But, the cat is only one or the other. It doesn't matter whether you look at it. There's no magic going on. It's just random chance, right?"
(Maybe the fact that I was even wondering how quantum mechanics works at age eleven could be a sign that I'm autistic. Idk lol)
Haha, yes. The cat analogy was created intentionally to demonstrate that the Copenhagen Interpretation was ludicrous. Media, however, just... ran with it because it sounded cool.
It's a good sign that you found it annoying. Erwin Schrödinger would be proud.
As for autistic, the resources in the sidebar may help you discover more.
Quantum mechanics doesn't have "particles", it has "quanta". They're fundamentally different things. Your intuition about particles does not apply to quanta.
Think of light. You can shine a red light and a blue light on a surface at the same time. Even with a purely classical vew this gets modeled as a superposition (addition) of the intensities. That's still wrong for how quantum superpositions work, those are adding the probability density functions of a propersty of the quanta, not the properties directly. But it's closer.
To me it reads like we just don't understand it enough yet to describe it properly. We're relentlessly told that states in the quantum world just don't behave in a way that can be intuitively described, I don't know near enough to dispute that, so I really don't have much option but to accept it. Maybe you (me too) would just like things to be... neater(?)
I always thought it was just not possible to measure the state without changing it, so we have no way of even guessing. Schrödinger's Cat is actually a terrible analogy imho, I always liked to think of it like christmas presents - you don't know what the inside looks like until you open it. It could be anything!
But then again, once we open it we know it has always been that. Maybe a chameleon in a box and we can't know what color it had at a given time, even if we open it later? :::
Schrödinger's cat is indeed a terrible analogy, but so is the Christmas presents one. A cat is always either alive or dead, and the contents of a Christmas present are determined before opening it. But the state of a quantum particle is fundamentally ambiguous before measurement. This is demonstrated by experiments breaking the Bell inequality if you want to know more!
… the state of a quantum particle is fundamentally ambiguous before measurement. This is demonstrated by experiments breaking the Bell inequality …
No, the state is not what's ambiguous, but rather a single, definitive value of the variable is what does not exist unless it's already in an eigenstate of said variable.
Yes, I am aware of what you meant, but your wording may be misleading.
I always thought it was just not possible to measure… without changing [the system being measured]
This is the observer effect, which is certainly not unique to quantum mechanics.
I always liked to think of it like christmas presents - you don’t know what the inside looks like until you open it. It could be anything!
That analogy is suggestive of hidden variables. Hidden variables theories are severely constrained by observed violations of Bell's inequality. Without loopholes like non-locality, there cannot be a "hidden" definite value underlying a superposition state.
Just to add another interpretation (that's not exactly correct, but might rest your mind a little bit): when you measure a single particle (or molecule) it's kind of hard to predict the outcome - so it's useful to think of particles having two states (or molecules having more vibrational states, for instance). When you add a lot of particles or molecules together, the population behavior gets a lot more predictable, and this situation is closer to what we are used to in the real world, that's one of the reasons quantum mechanics feels unnatural. It's also somewhat similar to how a single person can be different and unpredictable, but marketing can easily get insights from large populations. Imagine studying a million people and figuring out 0.5% of them are blonde and have AB+ blood type. When you look at this, you might ask what does 0.5% of people even mean: it's only 1 in 200, but depending on how you think about it, it looks very weird - what does half person even mean in the real world? In the end, it's more a matter of how we interpret things, and trying to compare quantum behavior with real-world analogies will always be weird.
I like to think of it in this way. They have a mathematical model of a thing which works by supposing the thing is in two states at once as long as its true state has not been determined. That just means that it is actually irrelevant what state a thing is/was in, or if the thing even exists/existed (!), as long as it didn't interact with anything (or is being observed which implies an interaction).
Does the moon exist when you turn your back at it and close your eyes? --> It might not, and it would not make a difference if it didn't.
Im a least a lil autistic and I for one love quantum mechanics, if you view existence from a "Schrödinger's Cat" kinda perspective it explains anything paranormal and personally allows me to believe this world is anything more than a bleak, capitalist dystopia from time to time. Certainly explains away the ongoing issue of extraterrestrials if you conceptualize multitudes of reality coexisting at once, anyways.
What gets me is the uncertainty principle.
Like... no fucking shit you can't know the state of a thing until it's observed. You can't know until you know, you know? But you can still take a fucking guess.
And, it's still a certain way until observed. It doesn't somehow change suddenly because it's been observed!
No, that's entirely wrong. That's really the core idea. A particle is not in a certain way, it is in an undefined state. The very fact that you look at it, involes exchanging information (like sending another particle at it and see "how it bounces back", to make a very primitive example).
Observing something intrisically means interacting with it and that interaction will affects the state of the particle.
You appear to be discussing quantum indeterminacy, measurement, and wavefunction collapse rather than the uncertainty relation. Also, quantum indeterminacy is not a matter of "knowledge", as you seem to suggest.