[Melchior]

Originally Posted by joelr

Thanks for the link.
In the earlier experiment where the physicist is eliminated after collapsing the wave (assuming all information is bound by light speed here) the wave MUST remain collapsed even if the scientist is disintegrated.

Otherwise after the first scientist is removed, another scientist could come into the room, see the wave as it was before the first man collapsed it - as a wave and all would seem fine. The problem is that another man located in space a few light minutes away could potentially suddenly decide to look in his telescope and see the photons carrying the image of the first scientist with the wave collapsed, holding up a sign with the detector information. He could even video the scene.

If he then got in his spaceship with the video (he stopped looking and missed the disintegration part) and went to the lab he would find the 2nd scientist who has seen only the wave version. When the photons from the telescope scientist reached him would the wave suddenly change to particles?
And when the telescope scientist arrived at the lab with the video there would be a paradoxial violation of some sort.


The erasure experiment is usually interpreted as - if a consciousness learns particle information from a past event then the past event changes to fit the present circumstances.

You're welcome. What I was saying though is that it doesn't 'remain' collapsed because the 'collapse' information was destroyed. In the scenario you described, the scientist who actually caused the collapse, even if he was destroyed, sent out information to another, 3rd, scientist who was then able to reach the 2nd one. I'm saying that if the 1st scientist saw a 'collapsed wavefunction' and that information could not reach anyone else by any means possible (i.e. outside of his light cone so to speak), those people would not see the collapsed wavefunction that the 1st scientist saw. There would be no paradox, it would be the same as the detector with scrambled data scenario. We 'know' that the detector essentially measured the electron as it passed through the slits but because it didn't tell us anything useful, the electron still had the interference pattern. When it did give us the clumping pattern, was when information was available to us whether or not that information could come to us in the future or not. So, what would happen in the scenario you just described here would be that the 2nd scientist would see the collapse so that when the 3rd scientist came in, there would be no paradox of sorts. However, that doesn't mean that the wavefunction 'must' remain collapsed. This also reminds me of the advanced and retarded waves used in the Transactional Interpretation I also posted on earlier.

There are simultaneous interactions, that was predicted in the EPR paradox used to prove quantum mechanics was wrong - because it requires simultaneous interactions between entangled particles. In 1982 Alain Aspect proved the interactions were in fact faster than light. Recent experiments have confirmed that to a much speedier degree. We can't ever measure "simultaneous" literally of course but the interactions are proven to be much faster than light and probably are instant like the math says. Einstein called it spooky action at a distance.

Well, not that the interaction is simultaneous, but more like the whole thing is a single interaction as it operates at the same energy level (or something like that, it's been about a year since I read something pertaining to this issue)... As for the 'faster than light' travel, I had also read somewhere that the interaction cannot be used to transmit 'useful' information faster than the speed of light. This means that we're still stuck at 'up to' speed of light transfer of information concerning the world around us.

For all we know the wave collapse information might also be instant which changes things. No tests have been done for that. It is a violation of Special Relativity to have casual events happen instantly. They should test for that anyway.

Eyesight isn't required to collapse a wave, just thoughts. Hearing will do as well as the fact of simply having the detector information available you when checking the results on the screen. You don't have to see it or touch it, it just has to be available for you to know. A detector or a supercomputer can have it also but if they won't give it too you then it will not effect the results.
There seems to be a clear difference here.

There is no clear difference though, except for the person doing the detection. if it was another person doing the detection, acting as the detector, and if they won't give you the information, then it is the same situation as if it were the supercomputer. I agree that the information just has to be available for you to know for you to see the collapsed wavefunction, and I think you would agree with me that this information could come from any source, especially from another person. The problem with just thoughts though is that while most of the time it gives accurate results, it can 'create' something that really isn't there and would contradict what interactions are actually happening (i.e. hallucinations).

But yes, we see, read, experience something different if information is not available. Keep in mind that having or not having information should not effect anything in the physical world. This is counter intuitive in the Newtonian, physical model.
There are no particles/interactions that can explain how this could possibly happen. How could a wave "know" information about it is available to a consciousness?? This is not possible in the current model. What's weirder is that this is the substance of the physical world. Consciousness seems to be the only factor concerning the creation of this substance. This has profound implications.

I think the limit on knowledge of position/momentum, the probabilistic nature of mass/energy and the random chaos of the subatomic world is what ends up giving a sense of time to consciousness. The quantum sub-world is probably needed to give a seemingly solid but still unpredictable future experience. If the quantum world were Newtonian and like little billiard balls what would happen?

I thought what you've been telling all this time is that having or not having information does affect the physical world, with all this stuff on consciousness and whatnot. In any case though, I'd agree to that statement that the 'physical' world is not affected by what we 'know'. And about consciousness itself, I think I said this previously somewhere but I'm of the opinion that consciousness in the sense of a 'knowledgeable' observer is an illusion because all that makes up consciousness is the same stuff that makes up the rest of a particle's interactions. Therefore, the wavefunction doesn't need to 'know' what consciousness 'knows', only interact according to the rules we've found through quantum mechanics, and thus it only seems as though it knows. If we see, hear, experience something different than is what is currently of the physical world, that could either be from faulty information or a lack of information (from being outside the light cone or something).

Consciousness only feels as though it were special because you have it, or like to think that you do (well, it certainly makes things easier anyway... >.>). There is no 'creation' of physical substance, only interactions among what is already there, consciousness included. If you think of each particle-wave as acting on its own based on the environment it's in and the interactions it's involved in as having a bit of consciousness, then it becomes apparent that the 'rules' that I had mentioned upon above fit together with it and there are no paradoxes.

As for the sense of time and continuity, I'm not sure of that just yet, but I'm guessing it is closely related to the 'interval' required for any information to travel anywhere else (at the speed of light). that and spacetime is such that if not traveling through the space dimensions, particle-waves travel through the time dimension. I'm less sure about continuity and the direction of time, except that I think that at the fundamental level, the wavefunctions are continuous with respect to spacetime and perhaps one of the directions wins out just like how with the weak interaction, left handed particles win out.