There's No Objective Reality

[Heyo]

Not sure I really understand that or what they mean, does it only apply to quantum mechanics?

It only applies to quantum mechanics - for now.

Lets say there is an apple on the table then what these people are saying is, that the objective reality of the apple being on the table is not really the case, for some people the apple is a banana?

Not exactly. If you have a fruit that can be an apple and a banana at the same time (as long as you are not looking) then it is possible that you might find it to be an apple when you look and your friend might see a banana. Iow, it only applies to objects in superposition.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Apparently physics and mystics agree - there is no 'objective reality' or some other root assumption upon which physics is based such as locality is not true. Or maybe we don't have freedom of choice.

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 otherwise, this:

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

is really a statement about the subjectivity of observations.
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".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It only applies to quantum mechanics - for now.

This is essentially saying that it applies to all dynamics and physical systems we know of- for now. There is no independent classical realm in which quantum theory somehow fails to apply. Rather, classical physics are approximations to an underlying quantum reality.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Not sure I really understand that or what they mean, does it only apply to quantum mechanics?

There is some important context that is almost entirely missing from both the popular summary in the OP’s link and the corresponding published paper. This is actually a rather perfect example of the numerous ways that popular science presentations distort actual scientific inquiry in diverse ways that harm, rather than help, public understanding of science along with scientific literacy. Over the past 2 years, there have been numerous popular science articles all with sensational claims about a recent experiment or paper on quantum theory that makes it seem to be singular and groundbreaking but all of them are in fact caught up in a tradition that dates back to 2016.

Actually, one could say it all started with the Wigner’s friend gedankenexperiment, but this is problematic for a few reasons, starting with the fact that it was Everett, not Wigner, who presented the first published version in his now infamous thesis (Everett was a graduate student of Wigner’s). Wigner himself, though, was building off of work from the 30s by von Neumann and London & Bauer. In addition, the no-go theorem of the type found in the OP’s link started essentially with the same work by von Neumann in the 30s, as did the problem of such proofs and hidden assumptions that remain the most contested aspects of such works in the literature today (and have since Bohm and Bell first showed how von Neumann had made implicit assumptions that negated the force of his proof). Then there is the fact that the literature since 2016 (and previously) relies heavily on extensions of Wigner’s thought experiment by Deutsch along with the incorporation of work since the 60s on Bohm-EPR and Bell’s theorem(s). But stories have to start somewhere and the renewed interest in Wigner’s friend as well as the author behind the OP’s link started primarily with Frauchiger & Renner.

In 2016, Renato Renner together with co-author Frauchiger published a paper on arXiv titled "Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent.” By the time a newer versions of their work made it into Nature Communications in 2018 with grander sounding but actually more qualified title “Quantum theory cannot consistently describe itself”, it had already generated considerable interest, support, and criticism in the quantum foundations community. Renner remarked at one conference around the time the Nature Communications paper was published that he was not only behind in responding to colleagues who had written him about the 2016 paper, but so far behind he wasn’t caught up on things like bills and everyday correspondences. I know at least one former graduate student whose doctoral dissertation discussed the 2016 paper a year or so before the Nature Communications version was published, and several other papers that were at least originally published (some in print and some on ArXiv) prior to the journal paper as well. Issues such as what constitutes an “agent”, clarifications about self-reference, etc., were already being sorted out, and most importantly the other physicists and philosophers had narrowed much of the focus to the novel use of the Wigner’s Friend gedankenexperiment.

The above paragraph leaves a ton out, but this is a forum post. I have to focus on key parts of the story, and the next one is the use of Frauchiger & Renner’s work by by Časlav Brukner in a paper “A No-Go Theorem for Observer-Independent Facts.” Brukner’s interest in the issue was not new, and his contribution to the 2nd Bell volume and other work reflects this, but it was in this paper that he capitalized on the discussions and papers on the Frauchiger-Renner “paradox”. It was also this paper that resulted in the actual experimental realization behind the OP’s link. In a paper published in Science, Proietti et al. describe the actual experimental test behind the no-go theorem linked to in the OP’s link. Their paper, “Experimental test of local observer independence,” based largely on Brukner’s work and by extension Fruachiger & Renner, was the first big experimental realization observer independence. It generated a lot of press because the findings seemed to indicate conclusively that there is no observer independent reality (this is nonsense, but typical of popular science over-simplifications). It was a rather monumental work by experimentalists that once again confirmed theoretical predictions. It generated a good deal more discussion and theoretical work by physicists. Among these were papers by Bong et al., including the one underlying the OP’s link: “A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner's friend paradox”.

This is all just skeletal context for the claims in both the OP’s link and the corresponding published paper. But the point is that to the extent it is novel work, it should be situated within the context of ongoing work both theoretical and experimental since 2016. And that work was novel mainly in combining a lot of previous work going back to the 30s into one package that had to be hashed out over the next few years before researchers could focus on some of the key issues underlying the experimental and theoretical work directly behind the OP’s linked article and corresponding paper. It is within this larger context that any discussions should be taking place.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You can invoke lack of free will instead since that is one of the possible explanations

You can't, really. This loophole remains because closing free choice in order to "solve" this problems results in the negation of the entirety of empirical science, including all quantum theory:
"The condition that the choice of the experiments is taken to be a free one means that the experimentalist must be thought to be able to choose them at will, without being unconsciously forced to one or the other choice by some hidden determinism. This condition has an important role in the proof of the theorem. It is often left implicit because of its apparent obviousness. Here it is explicitly stated. But let it be observed that, when all is said and done, it appears as constituting the very condition of the possibility of any empirical science.”
(emphasis added, p. 64)
d'Espagnat, B. (2006). On Physics and Philosophy. Princeton University Press

 

[Valjean]

... Atheism for instance, claims they have objective reality through science, the same way the theist does through divine revelation. It all sees reality as something outside of themselves. The mystic does not.

Atheists don't claim to have any reality. They just claim a lack of sufficient evidence for God. Nor do they rely on science, which only describes an evidenced reality. Atheism relies on logic.

They know not that for which they argue. Methinks they are simply hearing the words and using them in an inappropriate way, co-opting them for their own agenda. They don't actually understand the basic concepts that all of reality to us, is a mediated affair, and therefore inherently tied to subjectivity. Not many atheists understand this either, as evidenced by their constant claims of evidence supporting objective reality, which they claim to embrace.

Again, atheism doesn't claim any reality. It's not a belief system. Atheism claims theists have not met their burden of proof.

Yes, if a theist claims we cannot know anything, then they have graduated to mystic.

Except those mystics that seek to know It All. Mysticism is about expanded, not limited consciousness.

But very few of them actually would actually say that about their own beliefs. They exclude those somehow. Anyone who claims that what they believe is objective reality in the absolute sense, is under the illusion of the mind, be they theists or atheists.

Almost everyone claims a reality in the objective sense, they just claim different "objective" realities.

Me, I believe in several realities, all real, but all incompatible with the others. All but one of these are subjective realities, though.

The "objective" reality studied by science is third-state. This is the waking-state reality of trees and cars and people, that we perceive every day. Science is the most authoritative descriptor of this reality.
But since the advent of relativity, quantum mechanics, &al, science has jumped the fence and begun theorizing about the nature of other, more expanded realities, and making claims sounding very like mysticism.

 

[Valjean]

I don't think quantum mechanics supports the idea of a single unitary consciousness dreaming the universe.

I agree, but, like atomic theory, it continues the dissection of reality into fewer and fewer units, and, particularly, into components other than mass or energy.

 

[Colt]

LOL. Prove it objectively.

God is so obvious its blinding.

 

[Polymath257]

Apparently physics and mystics agree - there is no 'objective reality' or some other root assumption upon which physics is based such as locality is not true. Or maybe we don't have freedom of choice.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.

Back in 1961, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers—say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend—to experience different realities.
...
And today, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: they have created different realities and compared them. Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct—these realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment.
...
But there are other assumptions too. One is that observers have the freedom to make whatever observations they want. And another is that the choices one observer makes do not influence the choices other observers make—an assumption that physicists call locality.

If there is an objective reality that everyone can agree on, then these assumptions all hold.

But Proietti and co’s result suggests that objective reality does not exist. In other words, the experiment suggests that one or more of the assumptions—the idea that there is a reality we can agree on, the idea that we have freedom of choice, or the idea of locality—must be wrong.

One thing that bothers me about the 'no objective reality' interpretation experiment is the simple fact that Quantum Mechanics predicted the observations in detail, including all the correlations.

If there is no objective reality, how was QM able to make those predictions?

What this tells me is that, like all too many claims along this line, they are trying to fit QM predictions into a classical model. And that *is* guaranteed to give really strange interpretations, but that is simply because you are trying to fit new wine into old wine skins.

Yes, the quantum world is strange. Yes, it takes a lot to reorganize our intuitions to fit the realities it reveals. And yes, it proves that our division of 'things with properties' that are independent of observation is wildly off the mark.

But that does NOT mean there is no objective reality. It only means that objective reality doesn't conform to the ideas that philosophy seems to *think* are 'necessary'.

Yes, entanglement is strange if you are stuck in classical philosophy. it is easy to get into 'backwards causation' and 'no objective reality' if you aren't *very* careful to interpret the results using quantum mechanics as opposed to classical ideas. But, with care, you realize this is simply not what is actually going on.

In this experiment, there are three separate measurements of entangled photons produced by three different emitters. The results of the experiment *are* the objective reality. The specific measurements are *interpreted* as saying 'this photon is polarized vertically' or not, but in practice, the actual results of the observations are probabilistic. And the relevant probabilities are well predicted by QM.

The issue comes when comparing the observations and claiming that two are 'detecting the same thing or not'. This is the classical idea that goes wrong. They are NOT detecting the same thing because they are doing measurements of very different entangled photons. There are *correlations* between the results of the measurements, but that is ALL that can be said.

 

[Valjean]

God is so obvious its blinding.

So why isn't there universal consensus?
Can you name two or three of these 'blinding' indications of God?

 

[Windwalker]

Atheists don't claim to have any reality.

Certainly they do. How many times have you heard the atheist demand of the theist, 'where's your evidence'? Or, that they tout that the theist is out of touch with reality, and so forth. Cleary, they have a an idea of what reality actually is, to be able to deny that God is consistent with that reality that have in mind.

They just claim a lack of sufficient evidence for God.

I of course have heard this soft-sell argument. I used to identify as an atheist myself for about 10 years of my adult post-religious life. Even then I knew this was lame. Of course it is a positive statement. "I do not believe God exists", is a declaration of belief. Just change the words ever so slightly, "I believe God does not exist", and it becomes quite clear. "I believe reality is God-free". That's a belief statement.

If you mean to soften atheism to basically agnosticism, which is neither believing nor disbelieving something "due to a lack of sufficient evidence", then that makes agnosticism not even a thing anymore. I don't accept that argument. Atheism is distinctly different than agnosticism. Atheism is an affirmation of a belief that ultimate reality does not contain God. "I believe God does not exist" is not a statement an agnostic would make. It certainly is what an atheist says however.

Again, I was an active atheist for 10 years as an adult. I knew my own thinking then, as well as all those fellow atheists I had association with, as well as those whom I read. I don't lack any understanding about what atheism is here.

Except those mystics that seek to know It All. Mysticism is about expanded, not limited consciousness.

Not sure what you mean here. Mysticism seeks "unknowing" in order to see Truth itself. Knowing the Absolute, is not the same things as comprehension with the mind. It is apprehension with our being, rather than our intellect. I agree mysticism is about expanded consciousness, but that is not the same thing as an expanded belief system. Mysticism is all about not-knowing.

Almost everyone claims a reality in the objective sense, they just claim different "objective" realities.

You are making my argument for me about atheism here.

Regarding the mystic again here, I think the mystic while they may approach the world as "objective reality", that is more just provisional or functional, rather than literal and absolute. Most people, the average person, assumes that what they think about reality, is objectively true about reality.

Very few understand that all of that is a construct of the mind superimposed upon reality that defines what reality is to them. It's a feedback loop system, and most are quite uncomfortable with that uncertainty if accepted. "I don't believe God exists", is a statement of certainty, and reflects quite accurately that principle of Maya, the illusion of the mind that the world is as we think it is.

Me, I believe in several realities, all real, but all incompatible with the others. All but one of these are subjective realities, though.

Objective reality includes the subject itself as part of it. So it's all subjective, strictly speaking. What truly is, is not what our minds see it as. We are not seeing the "in itself". All reality for us is mediated through our subjective eyes. And that applies not only to the individual, but the collective group as well. "Consensus reality" is a thing.

Science, is a consensus reality, for instance. It's a lens, a filter, through which we attempt to know or relate to the world. Religion does that same thing, in its mythic symbolisms. Functionally, it's the same in that regard.

Both religion and science use symbols to speak about their perceptions of reality, one uses gods and higher beings and sacred texts, the other uses atoms and quarks and mathematics. We're still the same monkeys with big brains however trying to translate experience. Same things, just different focus and levels.

The "objective" reality studied by science is third-state. This is the waking-state reality of trees and cars and people, that we perceive every day. Science is the most authoritative descriptor of this reality.

It's the most authoritative for a clockwork universe, linear Newtonian reality perspective. Certainly. But that not the most authoritative perspective for humanness or 'being human'. In fact, it often fails quite miserably to translate reality for our 'beingness' needs. It says very little about the real substance of being human.

But since the advent of relativity, quantum mechanics, &al, science has jumped the fence and begun theorizing about the nature of other, more expanded realities, and making claims sounding very like mysticism.

Yes, the complexity sciences as well push more into the terrain of the mystics. The reason being is that its dealing with the nonlinear aspects of reality, as opposed to the linear Newtonian cause and effect reality.

The mystic delves into the nondual. Modern empirical sciences is inherently dualistic in approach, that there is a strict divide between subject and object. That's what mystics say is an illusion, and the more recent complexity sciences also demonstrates to be far from a complete picture.

I think all these things are useful, but when held provisionally as a perspectives, and not absolute statements of what reality really is and does and does not contain, such as God. We should be careful that how we hold reality in our minds, is not mistaken as its actuality. I appreciate agnosticism more than theism or atheism in this regard. It dovetails more with the mystic's approach. "I don't know" is the beginning of Wisdom.

 

[Valjean]

Certainly they do. How many times have you heard the atheist demand of the theist, 'where's your evidence'? Or, that they tout that the theist is out of touch with reality, and so forth. Cleary, they have a an idea of what reality actually is, to be able to deny that God is consistent with that reality that have in mind.

No. We're simply pointing out that the claimant hasn't met his burden of proof. We're not addressing a reality claim, we're pointing out an error in logic.

I of course have heard this soft-sell argument. I used to identify as an atheist myself for about 10 years of my adult post-religious life. Even then I knew this was lame. Of course it is a positive statement. "I do not believe God exists", is a declaration of belief. Just change the words ever so slightly, "I believe God does not exist", and it becomes quite clear. "I believe reality is God-free". That's a belief statement.

This is not an argument. We don't need an argument. The burden of proof is not on us, it's on you. We're arguing nothing, just pointing out that your argument is flawed.
Logically, until you can make a convincing, well-evidenced argument for your claim, it's assumed to be false.
Falsity is the default, not an assertion.

If you mean to soften athseism to basically agnosticism, which is neither believing nor disbelieving something "due to a lack of sufficient evidence", then that makes agnosticism not even a thing anymore.

Atheism is agnosticism. True, there are atheists who assert God doesn't exist. In these cases they assume a burden, but the single feature common to all flavors of atheism is lack of belief. It is definitive.

I don't accept that argument. Atheism is distinctly different than agnosticism. Atheism is an affirmation of a belief that ultimate reality does not contain God. "I believe God does not exist" is not a statement an agnostic would make. It certainly is what an atheist says however.

No, it's not.
A definition involves a feature unique to the thing defined. The single thing common to all varieties of atheism is lack of belief. Lack of belief is definitive of atheism.

True, there are other schools of atheism, with their own beliefs, but these assume a burden of proof, for their positive assertions. They are atheist only inasmuch as they conform to atheism's unique, definitive feature: lack of belief.

Not sure what you mean here. Mysticism seeks "unknowing" in order to see Truth itself. Knowing the Absolute, is not the same things as comprehension with the mind. It is apprehension with our being, rather than our intellect. I agree mysticism is about expanded consciousness, but that is not the same thing as an expanded belief system. Mysticism is all about not-knowing.

How is it about not-knowing? Mysticism is God-perspective. It's expanded consciousness; total knowledge; total comprehension.
What does an expanded consciousness not know?

You are making my argument for me about atheism here.

Regarding the mystic again here, I think the mystic while they may approach the world as "objective reality", that is more just provisional or functional, rather than literal and absolute. Most people, the average person, assumes that what they think about reality, is objectively true about reality.

Yes, out there are different realities, and each seems "objective" to the one perceiving it.
Dreaming seems real and objective to the dreamer. Waking-state seems real and objective to those living it, but both are, in actuality, subjective. Neither conforms to the reality described by modern physics.
When one wakes from a dream, the unreality of the dream becomes obvious. When one wakes from waking-state, the unreality of waking-state becomes obvious. Waking to the ultimate reality; directly grokking the reality described by theoretical physics is what mysticism is all about.

Objective reality includes the subject itself as part of it. So it's all subjective, strictly speaking. What truly is, is not what our minds see it as. We are not seeing the "in itself". All reality for us is mediated through our subjective eyes. And that applies not only to the individual, but the collective group as well. "Consensus reality" is a thing.

Science, is a consensus reality, for instance. It's a lens, a filter, through which we attempt to know or relate to the world. Religion does that same thing, in its mythic symbolisms. Functionally, it's the same in that regard.

Science is our most accurate description of 3rd state, though some of it's ventures into quantum reality do seem to describe a mystical state.

Both religion and science use symbols to speak about their perceptions of reality, one uses gods and higher beings and sacred texts, the other uses atoms and quarks and mathematics. We're still the same monkeys with big brains however trying to translate experience. Same things, just different focus and levels.

One uses fantasy and folklore. The other uses evidence and tests it.

It's the most authoritative for a clockwork universe, linear Newtonian reality perspective. Certainly. But that not the most authoritative perspective for humanness or 'being human'. In fact, it often fails quite miserably to translate reality for our 'beingness' needs. It says very little about the real substance of being human.

Science isn't about sociology. It's not meant to promote human happiness or comfort. It's a stark description of a reality. People are free to make of it what they will.

The mystic delves into the nondual. Modern empirical sciences is inherently dualistic in approach, that there is a strict divide between subject and object. That's what mystics say is an illusion, and the more recent complexity sciences also demonstrates to be far from a complete picture.

I think all these things are useful, but when held provisionally as a perspectives, and not absolute statements of what reality really is and does and does not contain, such as God. We should be careful that how we hold reality in our minds, is not mistaken as its actuality. I appreciate agnosticism more than theism or atheism in this regard. It dovetails more with the mystic's approach. "I don't know" is the beginning of Wisdom.

Yes, science is traditionally dualistic. It describes waking-state reality. I don't see it as much concerned with metaphysics.[/quote]

 

[Windwalker]

No. We're simply pointing out that the claimant hasn't met his burden of proof. We're not addressing a reality claim, we're pointing out an error in logic.

Yet you make a positive assertion that reality has no God. That's not asking for a burden of proof. That's stating a belief that you hold about reality, and seeking for proof to challenge that positive assertion. Again, an agnostic can say "I don't see a reason to believe", but the atheist will say, "No God". It's not simple lack of belief. That's agnosticism.

This is not an argument. We don't need an argument. The burden of proof is not on us, it's on you. We're arguing nothing, just pointing out that your argument is flawed.

You assume my beliefs here. I'm not making an argument about proofs for God. I'm only saying that saying atheism is just a lack of belief, is a bogus claim. It is a positive statement that no God exists. That moves squarely out of simply not believing in something, not having proof or evidence to lead you to believe, to outright declaring "No-God", as the very name itself spells that exactly, "A-Theism" No-God. "I do not believe in God", is not one bit different than saying" I believe (in the affirmative) that God does not exist". That is a statement of belief, not "not knowing".

Logically, until you can make a convincing, well-evidenced argument for your claim, it's assumed to be false.
Falsity is the default, not an assertion.

You automatically assume that any claim is false that you don't have evidence for? That goes beyond mere atheism, that's cynicism. Cynicism is irrational. Again though, it's not "my claim". I haven't asserted what it is I believe, other than to allude I favor the mystical insight, which goes beyond the dualistic theist/atheist coinage. Atheism is forever wedded to theism. It's in the name.

Atheism is agnosticism.

It is? Female is male? Orange is green? Why do we have different words for these then?

This is the definition of agnosticism:

a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God.
​

Contrast this with atheism:

disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods
​

The first is saying it's a person who does not claim disbelief in God. The 2nd definition say the atheist claims disbelief in God. There is the big difference. Are you saying that we should just get rid of agnosticism, and say anyone who is not a traditional theist is an atheist? Just get rid of the distinction of atheism, and say everyone is an atheist, including babies, until they become a theist? Atheism rules, in other words?

True, there are atheists who assert God doesn't exist. In these cases they assume a burden, but the single feature common to all flavors of atheism is lack of belief. It is definitive.

I am familiar with the weak/strong distinctions of atheism. The "weak" atheist, will say they simply lack belief in God, whereas the strong atheism denies the existence of God. The latter is very much making a statement of faith, and they are not few in number. In my experience, most Ex-believers are of the strong atheist flavor. The 'weak' atheist, I would say is maybe more agnostic. Whereas the strong atheist is a believer in no-God as a matter of faith. If we mean agnosticism, then that is the word we should use.

No, it's not.
A definition involves a feature unique to the thing defined. The single thing common to all varieties of atheism is lack of belief. Lack of belief is definitive of atheism.

No it's not. What defines atheism is in the name itself "No-God". By saying God does not exist, you affirm a belief. A child of 2 has a lack of belief about God, but that certainly does NOT mean that child should be identified as an atheist! That's absurd. Theism and atheism are by definition, beliefs about God.

A child of 2 neither believes nor disbelieves. They are neutral, or 'agnostic' at best, neither affirming nor denying, but simply "not knowing". It's simply not a question yet in their minds. The best word for a "lack of belief" either way, is just simply "open", not any isms whatsoever, neither affirming (theism) nor denying (atheism). If it's not even examined, it's nothing, not even any 'ism' yet.

How is it about not-knowing? Mysticism is God-perspective. It's expanded consciousness; total knowledge; total comprehension.

Wrong. Comprehension is something that you mentally comprehend, like being able to explain how something works. No mystic will claim a comprehension of God, that they "understand God". If they claim that, they haven't got off the launching pad of the ego yet. They will however claim an apprehension of the Divine, which is to say they understand the reality of the Divine, but they are unable to fully understand it. Comprehension means you full understand it.

Does anyone, other than fundamentalists, claim to fully understand God? Do you claim to comprehend God? I hope you don't.

Check here what the difference is between Comprehension and Apprehension. It's a good explanation: Difference Between Apprehension and Comprehension | Difference Between

What does an expanded consciousness not know?

Everything beyond its own level. Pretty much 99% of the Universe, or the Divine itself, is utterly beyond knowing. The mystical approach is to rest in the Unknown. There is a reason mystics use the term the Unknown, or the Void, or the Abyss, or the Mystery as metaphors to describe that experience of the Ineffable. All of these words mean they are utterly beyond the human mind to grasp or comprehend.

What an expanded consciousness, or these higher levels of consciousness do, is help to break the illusion of Maya, or mistaking our thoughts and ideas about reality with reality itself. The mystical experience breaks the ceiling, allowing us to peer into the Infinite, and realize that we in fact know nothing at all! It doesn't give you all knowledge. The human brain cannot contain it. You would have to be bigger than God, to comprehend God.

Yes, out there are different realities, and each seems "objective" to the one perceiving it.
Dreaming seems real and objective to the dreamer. Waking-state seems real and objective to those living it, but both are, in actuality, subjective. Neither conforms to the reality described by modern physics.
When one wakes from a dream, the unreality of the dream becomes obvious. When one wakes from waking-state, the unreality of waking-state becomes obvious. Waking to the ultimate reality; directly grokking the reality described by theoretical physics is what mysticism is all about.

I would disagree that they are actually truly seeing beyond the veil of the material reality to the non-material or spiritual reality. They are brushing up against it, to be sure, but quantum mechanics is not the secret doorway to the Divine. Everything is the Divine, and all sciences tells us about is the exterior material world. They aren't going to one day find God back there, considering it's all been God all along.

Science is our most accurate description of 3rd state, though some of it's ventures into quantum reality do seem to describe a mystical state.

Quantum reality exposes the interconnectedness of all things, and that does mirror better what the mystical experience has been saying all along. But as I said, they aren't peering into the Kingdom of Heaven or some such thing when looking at strings and whatnot. It's still the material world, but a different perspective of that Creation of the Divine. I appreciate what it says, but don't mistake it as the key to unlocking God.

One uses fantasy and folklore. The other uses evidence and tests it.

That's unfair, and untrue. One uses mystical symbolism and mythologies, the other technical language. They are both still using a language as a metaphor to describe something beyond the words themselves. As far as evidence and tests, you don't think that religious systems of mythologies are not tested and have evidence supporting them? Maybe not to scientific standards, of course not.

But people do not adopt systems like these if they have no utility. If it doesn't prove practical worth and value, it would be discarded. YET, these mythologies, like the Garden of Eden myth, endure generation after generation! There has to be truth-value there for it to endure like that, right? Joseph Campbell certainly argued that about what makes a good myth.

Science isn't about sociology. It's not meant to promote human happiness or comfort. It's a stark description of a reality. People are free to make of it what they will.

It is not a stark description of reality. It's a way of talking about reality, and concluding it as either good or bad, stark or harsh truth, etc, is purely philosophical and not scientific. Society interprets science through the lens of whatever current philosophy is prevalent. So science gets sadly entwined with materialistic philosophies, that say no God, only nature. That is not science. That's belief.

Yes, science is traditionally dualistic. It describes waking-state reality. I don't see it as much concerned with metaphysics.

[/QUOTE]
I'm really not sure I agree it describes a waking state realty. I don't attach it in any way to the different states of consciousness, other than just dualistic consciousness.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

One thing that bothers me about the 'no objective reality' interpretation experiment is the simple fact that Quantum Mechanics predicted the observations in detail, including all the correlations.

If there is no objective reality, how was QM able to make those predictions?

The "no objective reality" part (and what bother me most about these popular articles that keep coming) comes from the popular/sensationalist science reporting. Depending on which paper one reads and/or which author one talks to, these and similar results tend to be reported in the literature as indicating the inability of quantum theory to make predictions that are independent of the observer (a.k.a. no-go on observer-independent facts, relative (possibly stable) facts, the inability for quantum theory to make objective predictions about quantum theory, etc.)

What this tells me is that, like all too many claims along this line, they are trying to fit QM predictions into a classical model.

It is important to realize that the paper underlying the OP skimps on a lot of the issues because it is mostly an experimental realization of a particular no-go theorem already published: A No-Go Theorem for Observer-Independent Facts (although the authors do briefly discuss the "other" main extended Bell-Wigner scheme in their paper, it is a realization of Bruckner's).

In this experiment, there are three separate measurements of entangled photons produced by three different emitters. The results of the experiment *are* the objective reality. The specific measurements are *interpreted* as saying 'this photon is polarized vertically' or not, but in practice, the actual results of the observations are probabilistic. And the relevant probabilities are well predicted by QM.

This is not really true and more importantly misses the point. Firstly, while it is true that there are 6 coincident photon measurements recorded, these are not the only measurements made (otherwise, why use any QND or similar non-destructive quantum photonics measurement realization?). In fact, the entire thing revolves around the transmission of the "friends'" measurements so that this can be compared with the choice of Alice and Bob either to perform their own Bell-state measurement (which is entirely non-classical, by the way), i.e., A0=B0= |h><h|⊗|“photon is h”><“photon is h”|— |v><v|⊗|“photon is v”><“photon is v”|, or to "check" the recorded measurement of their friends (these being defined in the paper as A1=B1= depends upon what they actually did experimentally or the description given in the main component of the paper in equation 4, at least in the version published in Science).
The entire point is to realize a way in which quantum predictions can actually be tested against quantum predictions, precisely to determine if these can be regarded as objective measurements as you seem to be describing them. The answer is basically "no", repeatedly in various experimental arrangements either as Gedankenexperiment or actually realized empirically.

The issue comes when comparing the observations and claiming that two are 'detecting the same thing or not'. This is the classical idea that goes wrong. They are NOT detecting the same thing because they are doing measurements of very different entangled photons. There are *correlations* between the results of the measurements, but that is ALL that can be said.

No, it isn't. After all, the problem is the failure to find objective "correlations", to put it naively and incredibly simplistically.

 

[sayak83]

Apparently physics and mystics agree - there is no 'objective reality' or some other root assumption upon which physics is based such as locality is not true. Or maybe we don't have freedom of choice.

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.

Back in 1961, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers—say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend—to experience different realities.
...
And today, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: they have created different realities and compared them. Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct—these realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment.
...
But there are other assumptions too. One is that observers have the freedom to make whatever observations they want. And another is that the choices one observer makes do not influence the choices other observers make—an assumption that physicists call locality.

If there is an objective reality that everyone can agree on, then these assumptions all hold.

But Proietti and co’s result suggests that objective reality does not exist. In other words, the experiment suggests that one or more of the assumptions—the idea that there is a reality we can agree on, the idea that we have freedom of choice, or the idea of locality—must be wrong.

The popular article is not very well written. I am sharing the paper for deeper analysis.
@Meow Mix @Polymath257 @LegionOnomaMoi

Another hyper-interesting no-go theorem derived recently. (this is open access)
A no-go theorem for the persistent reality of Wigner’s friend’s perception | Communications Physics

Many popular interpretations (excluding hidden-variable interpretations like Bohmian mechanics) implicitly satisfy the principle that legitimate probability assignments should depend linearly on the initial quantum state. It appears in light of our theorem that the consequence of such a commitment is that one must in general either prohibit the use of present information to predict the future (drastically scaling down the predictive power of quantum theory) or deny that unitary quantum mechanics makes valid single-time predictions on all scales. That such a radical conclusion is necessary in general does not affect the fact that for all practical purposes, that is, in normal conditions when sufficient amounts of decoherence are present, one can continue to successfully use present information for predictions.

Our results might also raise interesting questions about the persistence of identity for the friend. If it is not possible for the friend to use the Born rule—or any other rule linear in the quantum state of the system—to assign a joint probability distribution to her observed outcomes before and after Wigner’s measurement, then to what extent can the friend at these two different times be considered the same agent? It is conceivable, although counter-intuitive, that the friend at t1 and the friend at t2 should be legitimately considered to be two distinct agents. Conceptually speaking, this would be a costly conclusion to make in general, since these “two agents” share many common memories about their past. In that case, one could reach similar conclusions to the ones of Cavalcanti15, and say that the friend’s outcome at t2 is not an event from the point of view of the friend at t1, and vice versa.

 

[Meow Mix]

The popular article is not very well written. I am sharing the paper for deeper analysis.
@Meow Mix @Polymath257 @LegionOnomaMoi

I will be doing homework for the night, so I will need to read in-depth tomorrow. However just from the abstract, you get claimed observer-dependence only by assuming absolute locality and free choice.

Free choice is probably OK. But locality has probably been out the window for a lot of quantum interpretations for a long time. This seems aimed at people looking to hang onto it still.

But even then they might be able to. With these Bell inequality things you get a garden variety of interpretations. A locality-preserver is just going to tell you that locality is preserved in Many Worlds interpretation.

Anyway I'll need to read it possibly tomorrow, homework permitting.

Adding to my misc folder on Zotero.

 

[Meow Mix]

@Polymath257 is going to love the Dirac notation /s

 

[Polymath257]

The "no objective reality" part (and what bother me most about these popular articles that keep coming) comes from the popular/sensationalist science reporting. Depending on which paper one reads and/or which author one talks to, these and similar results tend to be reported in the literature as indicating the inability of quantum theory to make predictions that are independent of the observer (a.k.a. no-go on observer-independent facts, relative (possibly stable) facts, the inability for quantum theory to make objective predictions about quantum theory, etc.)


It is important to realize that the paper underlying the OP skimps on a lot of the issues because it is mostly an experimental realization of a particular no-go theorem already published: A No-Go Theorem for Observer-Independent Facts (although the authors do briefly discuss the "other" main extended Bell-Wigner scheme in their paper, it is a realization of Bruckner's).


This is not really true and more importantly misses the point. Firstly, while it is true that there are 6 coincident photon measurements recorded, these are not the only measurements made (otherwise, why use any QND or similar non-destructive quantum photonics measurement realization?). In fact, the entire thing revolves around the transmission of the "friends'" measurements so that this can be compared with the choice of Alice and Bob either to perform their own Bell-state measurement (which is entirely non-classical, by the way), i.e., A0=B0= |h><h|⊗|“photon is h”><“photon is h”|— |v><v|⊗|“photon is v”><“photon is v”|, or to "check" the recorded measurement of their friends (these being defined in the paper as A1=B1= depends upon what they actually did experimentally or the description given in the main component of the paper in equation 4, at least in the version published in Science).
The entire point is to realize a way in which quantum predictions can actually be tested against quantum predictions, precisely to determine if these can be regarded as objective measurements as you seem to be describing them. The answer is basically "no", repeatedly in various experimental arrangements either as Gedankenexperiment or actually realized empirically.

No, it isn't. After all, the problem is the failure to find objective "correlations", to put it naively and incredibly simplistically.

My problem is that I don't see why objectivity means they should be able to construct a joint probability P(A_0 ,B_0, A_1 ,B_1). That seems to be the point that QM disagrees with.

We have the correlations P(A_x B_y). Those were measured and are not at issue.

In a lot of ways, this seems similar to the Aspect experiment where there cannot be such a joint probability. I've always liked Mermin's article on this: http://web.pdx.edu/~pmoeck/lectures/Mermin longer.pdf

But the key for classical views is precisely that probabilities are in a commutative space while quantum theory has them associated with operators that do not commute, which is what allows for the violation of Bell-type inequalities.

 

[Meow Mix]

My problem is that I don't see why objectivity means they should be able to construct a joint probability P(A_0 ,B_0, A_1 ,B_1). That seems to be the point that QM disagrees with.

We have the correlations P(A_x B_y). Those were measured and are not at issue.

In a lot of ways, this seems similar to the Aspect experiment where there cannot be such a joint probability. I've always liked Mermin's article on this: http://web.pdx.edu/~pmoeck/lectures/Mermin longer.pdf

But the key for classical views is precisely that probabilities are in a commutative space while quantum theory has them associated with operators that do not commute, which is what allows for the violation of Bell-type inequalities.

Oo I had not seen Legion’s response. I still haven’t read this paper. I don’t know when I’ll have the time.

 

[Meow Mix]

i.e., A0=B0= |h><h|⊗|“photon is h”><“photon is h”|— |v><v|⊗|“photon is v”><“photon is v”|,

It would be soooo nice if we could get LaTeX functionality or something on the forum.