Quantum physics: our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist

[We Never Know]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren't observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment.

Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

 

[Skwim]

.

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

...Richard Feynman​

.​

 

[Brickjectivity]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Cool. I get lost in the analogies. I understand that their apparatus (a quantum computer) is very complicated, and it requires statistical corrections to operate. If they haven't made any mistakes then they have broken Bell's Inequality. It says this experiment has yet to be repeated by several other labs.

Note that the article says "The facts we experience in our macroscopic world appear to remain safe," so our reality is not what is in question. Not really. Its more like the study indicates there is some kind of a limit to how much information can be drawn from quantum particles, and they're struggling to get past the limit.

 

[George-ananda]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren't observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment.

Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

I agree and understand but I still have to argue with the materialists that say consciousness and observation are not players in the quantum world.

I think their resistance is because how worldview shifting such an acknowledgment would be.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Note that the article says "The facts we experience in our macroscopic world appear to remain safe," so our reality is not what is in question. Its more like the study indicates there is some kind of a limit to how much information can be drawn from quantum particles, and they're struggling to get past the limit.

Two perspectives, both true. 'Pragmatic reality' (Vyavaharika) and 'Absolute reality' (Paramarthika) - Sankara 800 CE.
The idea is even older than that.

 

[Heyo]

I'll have to re-read the paper several times and after I had a second mug of coffee before I understand what they really measured. But it seems that they have shown that decoherence doesn't work as they suspected. Otoh, iirc, decoherence only occurs for the property measured. I.e. measuring polarization at laboratory A doesn't collapse the whole wave function at laboratory B so that Bob can still measure interference.
I need more coffee.

 

[PruePhillip]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren't observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment.

Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

I think the Double Split is the most mysterious phenomenon ever found by science.

 

[wizanda]

The Double Split is because in a stream of data, like in water, if you have a branch or object that can capture density of particles, it can then act as a wave making device in the stream of particles.

As for quantum physics in my NDE I got to see the whole reality upside down: Jacob's Ladder are dimensional steps angels take to Heaven, which are based on the 10 commandments; these are also found in multiple religious architectures.

Here is my summary of the 13 dimensions, there are 14 in total if we include outside; yet for understanding the physics we exist within there are 13.

Maybe explaining the 14th is how people think reality is currently in their model: that it is totally random quantum strands, and after billions of years these formed into a cohesive multiple dimension mathematical structuring system.

Instead this system is all consciousness, as consciousness is the code of the matrix running through each of us to make us right now; there is no reason for quantum strands to be cohesive without Oneness uniting us under a common reality structuring.

Quantum physics: our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist

Thus our reality does exists, and the formulation of strands isn't random, it is logically inside a highly complex, multiple dimension, mathematical structured quantum environment.

Dr Michio Kaku puts it, "The mind of 'God' is like cosmic music, resonating throughout 11 dimensional hyperspace."

To me the Source is like a CPU manifesting our system of reality for us to co-exist within; so the structure of our reality we exist within is as real as anything can be.

Outside of the reality we exist within, where quantum structuring doesn't exist, we couldn't then theorize if it is real, without the methods we have within this matrix, for observation of if it is real.

In my opinion.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts.

So long as the empirical results are in accordance with known, objective facts (actual "facts") which are, thanks to the objective nature of quantum theory, independent of any individual observer or experiment.
The best that can ever be said of any test of reality that claims to have demonstrated the subjective nature of reality empirically is that we cannot trust the claim.
Experiments that are designed and implemented outside of the mind (as opposed to thought experiments) assume a priori that there exists some observer-independent, external reality that we can agree about. In particular, one can easily dismiss any claim that any empirical test which showed the contrary could not possibly have done so: to demonstrate empirically that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment would mean that one has shown AT MOST that one cannot trust THE EXPERIMENT IN QUESTION! After all, any experiment including the one in question is done in the "real world" and perhaps most importantly the results are written up and disseminated with the understanding that the experiment has actually shown something objective about which we can all, in principle, agree.
Put more simply still, this:

In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

is really a statement about the subjectivity of observations (as Wigner originally intended, although the researchers explicitly disagree with Wigner's original purpose which as was in part to emphasize the necessity and importance of consciousness or the conscious observer).

The claim that this or any research could show that quantum theory makes actual facts about the physical world subjective is an objective claim about the physical world that the authors are telling us cannot be said to be objectively true.
In short, the claim is self-defeating- "this statement is false".

Chris Fuchs and Asher Peres (along with a few others) have explored perhaps the most radical form of this kind of approach to quantum theory which they claim requires no interpretation (and that, in particular, their QBism or quantum Bayesianism is simply "quantum theory" itself). I've heard them present on this topic and talked to Fuchs (he works not far away from me). Fuchs perhaps especially has been trying to make it clear both to critics and to advocates that QBism, which holds quantum theory to be entirely a subjective probability calculus in which its users are given a formal framework that yields the best odds of predicting the results of experiments, is a realist approach. That is, he and most of the QBists believe that the subjective nature of quantum theory in no way stops quantum theory from being realist. Rather, it proposes a more comprehensive view of reality.
Regardless, even if one were to agree that quantum theory is inherently subjective in that it yields local, observer-dependent probabilities it does so via a universal, observer-external framework which can be tested (and has been for over a century) objectively.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I'll have to re-read the paper several times and after I had a second mug of coffee before I understand what they really measured. But it seems that they have shown that decoherence doesn't work as they suspected. Otoh, iirc, decoherence only occurs for the property measured. I.e. measuring polarization at laboratory A doesn't collapse the whole wave function at laboratory B so that Bob can still measure interference.
I need more coffee.

No. This goes back all the way to EPR and to the (better) reformulation of EPR given by Bohm in his 1951 textbook Quantum Theory. When EPR, mostly following Einstein (whose idea formed the basis for the paper) questioned the completeness of quantum mechanics it was because Einstein though he had finally defeated Bohr (and Heisenberg). One could know absolutely everything about a quantum system perfectly because for certain systems (like those involving paired photons or particles with spin states "measured" via polarization) the measurement which is carried out in lab A determines immediately and completely the measurement results that will be found in lab B even though they have not yet been carried out. Bohr's reply is notoriously dense and obscure, but until Bohm's reformulation and better still Bell's use of Bohm in Bell's 1964 paper, most simply assumed Bohr had once again defeated Einstein's attempt.
He hadn't. Einstein had unwittingly demonstrated quantum theory to be nonlocal. When a physical system prepared in e.g., a singlet state (and therefore represented by a single wavefunction or ray in Hilbert space), measurements in lab A will and have been shown to "collapse" the wavefunction of the system, determining the outcome of experiments that would be or will be carried out in laboratory B.
This much was already given before Bell. What Bell did was show how to determine whether or not the apparent nonlocality of results like these could in principle be explained by local factors. Violations of his inequality from the 80s onward have in the main shown that this is impossible (Bohmian mechanics allows for such hidden variables, but is even more nonlocal in character).
Also, decoherence is moot. Decoherence and consistent histories are supposed to explain how it is possible for systems to exhibit classical behavior outside of the lab (i.e., without being "measured" in any experiments). That is, it is invoked to explain why larger systems apparently do not exhibit what are described as uniquely quantum behavior. Put incredibly simplistically, it is supposed to tell us why we don't need any observers or experiments for the classical world we experiment to exist at all- decoherence causes spontaneous "collapses" quickly, constantly, and ubiquitously such that the quantum behavior of microsystems disappears outisde of carefully controlled experiments.
The paper linked to in the summary linked to by the OP is one of many that shows how invoking decoherence can run into problems quite easily. It doesn't explain the basic mechanisms behind the quantum-to-classical transition, it presupposes them.

 

[ratiocinator]

But in a paper recently published in Science Advances, we show that in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts. In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective.

Observers are powerful players in the quantum world. According to the theory, particles can be in several places or states at once—this is called a superposition. But oddly, this is only the case when they aren't observed. The second you observe a quantum system, it picks a specific location or state—breaking the superposition. The fact that nature behaves this way has been proven multiple times in the lab—for example, in the famous double slit experiment.

Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn't exist

As far as I can see the main problem with this is how they define "observer":

Before we describe our experiment in which we test and indeed violate inequality (2), let us first clarify our notion of an observer. Formally, an observation is the act of extracting and storing information about an observed system. Accordingly, we define an observer as any physical system that can extract information from another system by means of some interaction and store that information in a physical memory...

...Recalling the above definition of an observer, we use the entangled photon pairs from sources SA and SB as the physical systems that, through interaction in a type-I fusion gate (17, 18) between modes a, α′ and b, β′, respectively (see Fig. 2), are able to extract information and thereby establish their own facts.

(from the paper)
​

So these are not "measurements" or "observations" in the normal sense of classical scale objects, so it seems to ignore most aspects of the measurement problem.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If they haven't made any mistakes then they have broken Bell's Inequality. It says this experiment has yet to be repeated by several other labs.

Both in his original 1964 and in later formulations, Bell explicitly showed how his inequality was (to use your word) "broken" by quantum theory. In section IV of his paper, entitled "contradiction", the "main result" the "will be proved" was how quantum theory violated the inequality Bell gave in his paper. He states explicitly that an advantage even of this, his earliest formulation, was that it could be easily generalized in principle to actual physical experiments (and was in the early 80s). A central point of Bell's paper was to prove it was possible to violate Bell's own inequality, thereby showing the impossibility of explaining the prediction of quantum theory via local hidden variables.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So these are not "measurements" or "observations" in the normal sense of classical scale objects, so it seems to ignore most aspects of the measurement problem.

The definition includes all such measurements and observations specifically to highlight the kinds of issues that the measurement problem involves. It is phrased in about the most general way possible (as is typical in such papers and discussions) so that one cannot make claims about the nature of the results being due the nature of the observer per se. All observations and measurements must fit their definitions, making any results the most general possible. The issue is not that the paper ignores the measurement problem at all. Quite the contrary: it is designed partly to explicitly show how would-be dismissals that such a problem exists via reference to decoherence or similar attempts to get around the issue will ultimately fail.
The issue is the claims the authors make about how what their results show about the nature of the quantum/classical cut and the emergence of the classical realm. They show that any attempt to bypass the measurement problem using appeals to spontaneous collapse or even to non-collapsing "branches" will ultimately fail to explain how to reconcile the probabilistic predictions of a theory that is supposed to describe fundamental properties of the physical world. This does not mean, however, that "facts" are subjective but that probability theory can be. Because quantum theory is irreducibly statistical in nature, attempts to formulate a realist version in which the states of quantum systems exist objectively and the classical world recoverd via decoherence or Everret-type branching or what have you will still leave us in a situation in which predictions of the theory will yield outcomes that are local and observer-dependent.

 

[Salvador]

Which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct for explaining where an electron is exactly positioned as it passes through the slits of a double-slit apparatus? Does the unobserved electron have a definite position?

 

[We Never Know]

Cool. I get lost in the analogies. I understand that their apparatus (a quantum computer) is very complicated, and it requires statistical corrections to operate. If they haven't made any mistakes then they have broken Bell's Inequality. It says this experiment has yet to be repeated by several other labs.

Note that the article says "The facts we experience in our macroscopic world appear to remain safe," so our reality is not what is in question. Not really. Its more like the study indicates there is some kind of a limit to how much information can be drawn from quantum particles, and they're struggling to get past the limit.

It will be interesting to see where this study goes in the next 10 years.

 

[Martin]

.

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

...Richard Feynman​

.​

And of course at the human scale we're defined by Newtonian mechanics. Gravity and such.
I get frustrated with all the new-age nonsense about QM. It's certainly nothing to do with "spirituality".

 

[Heyo]

When a physical system prepared in e.g., a singlet state (and therefore represented by a single wavefunction or ray in Hilbert space), measurements in lab A will and have been shown to "collapse" the wavefunction of the system, determining the outcome of experiments that would be or will be carried out in laboratory B.

Non-destructive polarization filters:

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct for explaining where an electron is exactly positioned as it passes through the slits of a double-slit apparatus?

Unfortunately, there is no simple way even to characterize the interpretation which is commonly called the orthodox, standard, or Copenhagen interpretation. For one thing, this textbook-style category is usually attributed to Bohr and Heisenberg and is given in terms of fairly simply axioms that are usually quite similar. They all involve the so-called collapse of the wavefunction. But Bohr explicitly rejected this idea. For him, it was completely unnecessary as there was no physical system corresponding to the wavefunction that COULD collapse anyway. Heisenberg disliked the wavefunction formalism and its would-be physical implications (his preference was for a formulation in terms of algebras of observables, a version that he was a principle founder of). The Schrödinger developed the wavefunction formalism and showed how (and under what circumstances) it could be viewed as equivalent to Heisenberg's matrix formulation although with complex-valued functions in (the original wavefunctions of Schrödinger) in a higher (usually infinite) dimensional space equipped with a suitable norm or inner product so as to allow for them to be orthogonal functions in said space. The textbook claim that the two formalisms are equivalent is not precisely accurate even on purely formal grounds for purely formal reasons (e.g., the lack of an isomorphism between the function space of Schrödinger and the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space that was more appropriately identified with the obervable algebras of von Neumann and Heisenberg). Conceptually, the two pictures were quite different and often led researchers down different paths.
Feynman, of course, rejected both and formulated his own in order to understand QM. His has the advantage of being directly related to questions such as explaining "where an electron" goes, but the disadvantage of the answer "everywhere at all times". Informally and over simplistically, in Feynman's path integral approach we simply treat the electron as always taking all possible routes and integrate over this totality weighted by the possibilities obtained by the action principle or similar heuristics.
That's mostly just the mathematical framework. The interpretation even when trying to build a consistent picture of just e.g., the orthodox or Copenhagen take is highly nuanced and problematic. Bohr regarded the question "where an electron is positioned" as meaningless up until the point that one states it was measured in such-and-such a way. Heisenberg did as well, but in a different sense: namely, his was an operational stance in which it isn't meaningful to ask such questions because we only ask about what we can measure, NOT (as for Bohr) because the whole quantum realm is a mathematical, non-physical realm.
QBists side with Bohr. Bohmian's introduce an entirely seperate, added ontology into the whole scheme which doesn't work well for relativistic quantum theory and is explictly nonlocal in elementary quantum mechanics.
And speaking of relativity, the whole picture changes when one tries to ask such questions of systems in a more complete, accurate version of quantum theory that allows for photons and electrons to behave as interacting quatum systems. We lose even the idea that one can say anything about a single photon because there isn't really any such thing (photons are truly idistinguishable "clicks" that are triggered by a device which can register field excitation). Virtual electrons become part of the picture, as do the fact that the theory tends to yield infinities for any physically meaningful question about any system even as simple as an electron.

Does the unobserved electron have a definite position?

No. But this is dealt with in a minority of interpretations (such as the Bohmian version) in a way that allows the question to yield something like a "yes" in the non-relativistic case. For most, "electron" is a word used to describe equivalence classes of measuring contexts and their probable outcomes.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Non-destructive polarization filters:

Not quite. The term "non-destructive" is second probably only to "teleportation" in being highly misleading and is only slightly superior to tests or experiments which are supposed to describe single photons. But it is certainly true that in quantum optics (terminology aside) a number of ingenious methods have been devised which have advanced quantum foundations considerably, non-destructive paradigms being a prime example.