Free will and quantum indeterminacy

partinobodycular · May 30, 2024

This question actually stems from my pondering of the notion of free will. But in the process of thinking about free will I was forced to consider the concepts of quantum indeterminacy and wave function collapse, and those questions are better suited for a sciencey forum like this one.

So here goes.

I only have a 9th grade education so I tend to be a visual thinker. Give me a good gedankenexperiment and I can be lost for hours of pointless mental meandering. A good example of this is 'Schrodinger's cat'. But the more that I consider this seemingly elegant thought experiment, the more confused I get.

One of the main sticking points of Schrodinger's cat is the question of whether the cat is dead, alive, or a combination thereof, before we open the box. There are those who'll argue that the cat was either dead or alive long before we opened the box, for the simple reason that the 'environment causes collapse'. Initially this seems like a logical explanation because the box is full of stuff to interact with... there's the cat, and the detector, and the bottle of poison, and the hammer, and the emitter, and the walls of the box, and the air... that's a lot of stuff for a radioactive decay particle to weave its way through undetected.

Thus the dilemma is resolved, the environment causes collapse, there is no dead and alive cat.

But if you're anything like me then your stupid brain won't stop thinking, and here's what my stupid brain thinks. It's easy to consider the environment as all of this physical 'stuff', but in reality everything in the box, and even the box itself is nothing more than a bunch of indeterminate particles, absolutely no different from the one that I'm concerned about measuring. There's nothing special about those other particles. They're no more entangled with the environment than the particle that I'm concerned about measuring. That radioactive decay particle was emitted by the environment just like all those other particles were. So if those particles are entangled with the environment, then by the same reasoning, so is that radioactive decay particle. But instead, everything inside that box is one big indeterminate cloud of particles.

So that's the first thing that my brain starts to do. It stops visualizing the environment as a bunch of stuff, and starts visualizing it for what it really is, a nebulous cloud of probability. There's nothing different or special about my radioactive decay particle, compared to any other particle.

The second thing that my brain gets confused about is the state of the radioactive emitter. Because until something happens to collapse the wave function, the emitter is also in a state of indeterminacy, of having both emitted, and not emitted a particle. Which means that it has always emitted a particle. There's never a point in time when it isn't in an indeterminate state of having emitted a particle. And this idea can be extended to every other particle in the box. They're all in an indeterminate state of having interacted with that potential radioactive decay particle, and not interacted with that radioactive decay particle. There's never a time when that potential radioactive decay particle isn't being interacted with by a practically infinite number of other indeterminate particles.

This is the point at which my brain gets really confused, because if every particle in the box can be said to have potentially interacted with every other particle in the box, with a greater or lesser degree of probability, then what makes one particular interaction of such preeminent importance that it collapses the entire wave function, and we go from an infinite number of possibilities to just one?

What is it about one particular arrangement of that cloud that makes it collapse the wave function when none of the others do, and if none of them have any particular significance, then what makes it reasonable to assume that one of them just randomly will?

This is where we come full circle back to the question of free will, and the significance of an observer. Because the observer is the only thing that would seem to have a unique perspective that nothing else does... at least relative to me. And if I'm not the cause of the collapse, then that collapse would appear to be random, and how do random events create a determinate reality? @Bradskii, a la Schrodinger, we've got a cat walking around for no other reason than sheer dumb luck.

Now I'm pretty darn sure that me and my 9th grade education have screwed something up in this... I'm just wondering what the heck it is. I'm not here to argue. I'm here to find out where I'm wrong.

The IbanezerScrooge · May 30, 2024

I'm not 100% sure these thoughts address or apply to your OP, but just some thoughts:

1. The whole 'Schrodinger's cat' thought experiment, to me, seems overly philosophical. I think people try too hard to take this philosophical exercise and frame it in reality. I think that's wrong. Obviously the cat is either alive or dead. It's not both or neither in a real sense. It's framed that way because its state is undetermined. We don't know if the cat is alive or dead. There is a probability that it is one or the other, but we don't know. Philosophically this is the same as saying it is both. I think this is what 'Schrodinger's cat' demonstrates. AND THAT'S IT. Taking it further than that is out of bounds IMO.

2. The observer affecting reality I think is similar. This is a philosophical view of reality, and I think it comes from how we perceive reality. When the state of things is unknown, like 'Schrodinger's cat', we can only deal in probabilities and things can be in different states simultaneously. Are they that way in reality? I don't think so. Saying that making an observation determines the outcome or changes the outcome of some process because of the "observer effect" I think is a misrepresentation. It's not that observing a thing changes the probability of any one outcome, it's that it eliminates other outcomes that, until an observation was made and states in a specific snapshot of time were known, all had some probability because things were not know and now that they are known some states and outcomes probabilities are reduced to zero or near zero. Nothing was changed by the observation, it's just that the observer can now make more accurate predictions about the outcome and reduce the number of paths to possible outcomes that, prior to the observation, had significantly non-zero probabilities.

This consequently is why I generally dislike philosophy. It tends to leak from it's purview and distort reality in ways that, to me, are not useful, and in many cases are outright misleading. Stay in your lane!

Halbhh · May 30, 2024

partinobodycular said:
This question actually stems from my pondering of the notion of free will. But in the process of thinking about free will I was forced to consider the concepts of quantum indeterminacy and wave function collapse, and those questions are better suited for a sciencey forum like this one.

So here goes.

I only have a 9th grade education so I tend to be a visual thinker. Give me a good gedankenexperiment and I can be lost for hours of pointless mental meandering. A good example of this is 'Schrodinger's cat'. But the more that I consider this seemingly elegant thought experiment, the more confused I get.

One of the main sticking points of Schrodinger's cat is the question of whether the cat is dead, alive, or a combination thereof, before we open the box. There are those who'll argue that the cat was either dead or alive long before we opened the box, for the simple reason that the 'environment causes collapse'. Initially this seems like a logical explanation because the box is full of stuff to interact with... there's the cat, and the detector, and the bottle of poison, and the hammer, and the emitter, and the walls of the box, and the air... that's a lot of stuff for a radioactive decay particle to weave its way through undetected.

Thus the dilemma is resolved, the environment causes collapse, there is no dead and alive cat.

But if you're anything like me then your stupid brain won't stop thinking, and here's what my stupid brain thinks. It's easy to consider the environment as all of this physical 'stuff', but in reality everything in the box, and even the box itself is nothing more than a bunch of indeterminate particles, absolutely no different from the one that I'm concerned about measuring. There's nothing special about those other particles. They're no more entangled with the environment than the particle that I'm concerned about measuring. That radioactive decay particle was emitted by the environment just like all those other particles were. So if those particles are entangled with the environment, then by the same reasoning, so is that radioactive decay particle. But instead, everything inside that box is one big indeterminate cloud of particles.

So that's the first thing that my brain starts to do. It stops visualizing the environment as a bunch of stuff, and starts visualizing it for what it really is, a nebulous cloud of probability. There's nothing different or special about my radioactive decay particle, compared to any other particle.

The second thing that my brain gets confused about is the state of the radioactive emitter. Because until something happens to collapse the wave function, the emitter is also in a state of indeterminacy, of having both emitted, and not emitted a particle. Which means that it has always emitted a particle. There's never a point in time when it isn't in an indeterminate state of having emitted a particle. And this idea can be extended to every other particle in the box. They're all in an indeterminate state of having interacted with that potential radioactive decay particle, and not interacted with that radioactive decay particle. There's never a time when that potential radioactive decay particle isn't being interacted with by a practically infinite number of other indeterminate particles.

This is the point at which my brain gets really confused, because if every particle in the box can be said to have potentially interacted with every other particle in the box, with a greater or lesser degree of probability, then what makes one particular interaction of such preeminent importance that it collapses the entire wave function, and we go from an infinite number of possibilities to just one?

What is it about one particular arrangement of that cloud that makes it collapse the wave function when none of the others do, and if none of them have any particular significance, then what makes it reasonable to assume that one of them just randomly will?

This is where we come full circle back to the question of free will, and the significance of an observer. Because the observer is the only thing that would seem to have a unique perspective that nothing else does... at least relative to me. And if I'm not the cause of the collapse, then that collapse would appear to be random, and how do random events create a determinate reality? @Bradskii, a la Schrodinger, we've got a cat walking around for no other reason than sheer dumb luck.

Now I'm pretty darn sure that me and my 9th grade education have screwed something up in this... I'm just wondering what the heck it is. I'm not here to argue. I'm here to find out where I'm wrong.

If we could definitely answer the similar questions that some of your questions are like, then we'd have solved the main riddle of Quantum Mechanics that exercised Einstein (and motivated his debate with Bohr). We can't answer all questions. Not yet.
But we do have many theories.
We don't know if any of these competing unalike ideas about what causes wavefunction collapse (to a definite state) may be right (if any), or even whether there is really a collapse that is happening....it's all up in the air. These many competing theories called interpretations of quantum mechanics may all be wrong, though one can argue that at least the simple basic Copenhagen Interpretation is right in what little it says, but it leaves open questions that have engaged a lot of people for a long time now. Reading about the various competing QM interpretatives is very interesting once you are thinking about questions like you have. I've used at times the general wiki (linked below), since it has a list of the various interpretations in short summaries, but also embedded links (which is very useful), so I'd recommend it.

(I'll comment that in my personal subjective opinion that the first in the list, Many Worlds, seems the least useful to think about to me personally, as it's like saying (this is my opinion) 'we'll just avoid the problems like collapse by imagining everything happens that could (in other worlds)' -- so in my view this seems like giving up on the basic problem which may be solvable someday....; though this doesn't mean I can 100% rule out some aspect of Many Worlds of course, but rather I think of it more like a collection of parts on a work bench that isn't yet a useful thing (heh heh...) ;-> ). But there are many other more interesting ideas in the list. I think you'll find it quite interesting.)

Interpretations of quantum mechanics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

AV1611VET · May 30, 2024

Whenever I see the word "quantum" in a title, I know it's going to be a long OP.

Chesterton · May 30, 2024

AV1611VET said:
Whenever I see the word "quantum" in a title, I know it's going to be a long OP.

Ha ha, yeah, I once got into a debate with Wiccan_Child in Exploring Christianity. It went for about a year and a half, and the posts to each other got so long that we exceeded the number of characters that the CF software could allow a post to contain, so we had to break up our communications into two and even three posts.

AV1611VET · May 30, 2024

Chesterton said:
Ha ha, yeah, I once got into a debate with Wiccan_Child in Exploring Christianity. It went for about a year and a half, and the posts to each other got so long that we exceeded the number of characters that the CF software could allow a post to contain, so we had to break up our communications into two and even three posts.

WOW!

Musta been a doosey of a debate.

Wiccan Child was a Mensan, if I remember correctly.

(Or close to one.)

Did you see the exchanges between Thaumaturgy and Glenn Morton (RIP) here on the subject of AGW?

Bradskii · May 30, 2024

I'm with Ibaneezer and Halbhh on this. The cat was Schrödinger's way of trying to formulate a problem that is unimaginable into a concept that we could understand. It's not possible to imagine what quantum effects look like. They are only accessible via maths. So Edwin suggested his cat-in-a-box scenario as an analogy. That's it.

And quantum effects, as far as I have been to determine, don't bubble up into the classical physics world. The macro world operates as per Newton. Otherwise it couldn't operate in any meaningful way.

Chesterton · May 31, 2024

AV1611VET said:
WOW!

Musta been a doosey of a debate.

Wiccan Child was a Mensan, if I remember correctly.

(Or close to one.)

Yeah I recall him saying he was a Mensa member. I liked him. I would not have expected that I would like a British homosexual atheist Wiccan scientist, but I did.

AV1611VET said:
Did you see the exchanges between Thaumaturgy and Glenn Morton (RIP) here on the subject of AGW?

No, I don't recall those names. I guess I didn't.

AV1611VET · May 31, 2024

Chesterton said:
Yeah I recall him saying he was a Mensa member.

Yup.

Chesterton said:
I liked him.

I did too.

Chesterton said:
I would not have expected that I would like a British homosexual atheist Wiccan scientist, but I did.

LOL -- ya, he had a certain "charm" about him.

Very cordial to talk to.

And a nice sense of humor.

Here's one of our exchanges that made me chuckle.

AV1611VET said:
Have you ever met Nigel Short?

Wiccan Child said:
Yes. As a Briton, I have met all other British people, since we all live within five miles of the Queen.

But no, I haven't met him. I hear he's an OK chess player, though.

Ask a physicist anything.

2PhiloVoid · May 31, 2024

The IbanezerScrooge said:
I'm not 100% sure these thoughts address or apply to your OP, but just some thoughts:

1. The whole 'Schrodinger's cat' thought experiment, to me, seems overly philosophical. I think people try too hard to take this philosophical exercise and frame it in reality. I think that's wrong. Obviously the cat is either alive or dead. It's not both or neither in a real sense. It's framed that way because its state is undetermined. We don't know if the cat is alive or dead. There is a probability that it is one or the other, but we don't know. Philosophically this is the same as saying it is both. I think this is what 'Schrodinger's cat' demonstrates. AND THAT'S IT. Taking it further than that is out of bounds IMO.

2. The observer affecting reality I think is similar. This is a philosophical view of reality, and I think it comes from how we perceive reality. When the state of things is unknown, like 'Schrodinger's cat', we can only deal in probabilities and things can be in different states simultaneously. Are they that way in reality? I don't think so. Saying that making an observation determines the outcome or changes the outcome of some process because of the "observer effect" I think is a misrepresentation. It's not that observing a thing changes the probability of any one outcome, it's that it eliminates other outcomes that, until an observation was made and states in a specific snapshot of time were known, all had some probability because things were not know and now that they are known some states and outcomes probabilities are reduced to zero or near zero. Nothing was changed by the observation, it's just that the observer can now make more accurate predictions about the outcome and reduce the number of paths to possible outcomes that, prior to the observation, had significantly non-zero probabilities.

This consequently is why I generally dislike philosophy. It tends to leak from it's purview and distort reality in ways that, to me, are not useful, and in many cases are outright misleading. Stay in your lane!

Just to be analytically clear: Philosophy isn't some "one thing, doing one thing," and the term itself has become awash these days in an ocean of obscurity. We probably need to get rid of the term and replace it with a more expansively defined term of "Critical Thinking" so that some more or less inefficient form of philosophy, like Speculation, can be more aptly replaced by efficient forms of philosophy.

So, while I agree with you that thought experiments like Schrodinger's Cat don't necessarily help us to more fully grasp and analyze the physics of our world, or in understanding the possible tangibility of something like Free-Will (or Determinism even), this doesn't mean that the failure of some thought experiment like that of Schrodinger's should prompt us to throw out the essential analytic elements of "Philosophy."

Instead, we should be pressed harder to look at the disciplines which Philosophy covers and actually represent as avenues of Critical Thinking so we can recognize when we, ourselves, are using these very things in forming our own viewpoints about the nature of the World, with the disciplines I'm referring to being: Logic, Epistemology, Esthetics, Ethics and [the limits of] Metaphysics, along with a long list of sub-disciplines that are part and parcel of the very thought processes by which we engage the world, both historically speaking and scientifically.

essentialsaltes · May 31, 2024

partinobodycular said:
This is the point at which my brain gets really confused, because if every particle in the box can be said to have potentially interacted with every other particle in the box, with a greater or lesser degree of probability, then what makes one particular interaction of such preeminent importance that it collapses the entire wave function, and we go from an infinite number of possibilities to just one?

You're correct that all these other quantum systems are doing this and that, absorbing and emitting light or infrared photons.

So if one electron jogs to the left, but in an alternate timeline it jogs to the right, there really is a different quantum state, or collapse into one of two different possible outcomes. But to our eyes, it makes no difference. Whether one electron jogs to the left or jogs to the right, the overall 'state' of the quantum system is indistinguishable at the macroscopic level. You can't see with your eyes all of the zillions of indistinguishable quantum flickerings going on. But they are indeed there.

As a pretty good analogy (if I do say so myself) think of the gas filling a balloon. If we had to describe the 'state' of the gas by the position and velocity of each molecule of gas in the balloon. #1, that would be a lot of information. #2 it would all change second by second as the molecules move around and bounce off the walls of the balloon, etc.

But usually, for our purposes, we describe the macro-state of the system with just a few things. Volume, Pressure, Temperature, total number of molecules. In a static system, all these values are constant, despite the bajillions of molecules each doing their own thing. The balloon looks the same as it did a second ago, or three minutes from now.

At the statistical level, the same is true for all the quantum things going on in a box with a cat in it. It's a box with a cat in it. Sure, the cat moves around, as do the air molecules. So if we had to describe all of that, it's changing, but at the macro-est level, it's a box with a cat in it.

What Schrödinger was getting at with his thought experiment was.... what happens if you 'magnify' a quantum event to the macro-level. One radioactive decay is a single quantum event. But if we connect that to a cat-killing device, there is a macro state difference between a box with a live cat in it, and one with a dead one in it.

So, there's nothing particularly special about that one radioactive atom compared to all the other quantum things that are indeed going on. But it is picked out by the thought experiment because it was precisely probing how or if micro-changes lead to macro-changes in the state of a system.

partinobodycular said:
And if I'm not the cause of the collapse, then that collapse would appear to be random, and how do random events create a determinate reality?

It doesn't. That's why it's quantum indeterminacy. As far as we can tell, reality is not fully determined by its prior state.

Other than in trumped up gedankenexperiments, this is not likely to show up in any way obvious to our senses. NASA can predict where its spacecraft will go without worrying about quantum randomness making them teleport into the heart of the Sun.

Bob Crowley · May 31, 2024

There's an article here about the cross-over from the quantum world to the classical world, which I think is where the conversation is heading.

How Does the Quantum World Cross Over?

The universe according to quantum mechanics is strange and probabilistic, but our everyday reality seems nailed down. New experiments aim to probe where—and why—one realm passes into the other

www.scientificamerican.com

As for free will being the result of a bunch of probabilistic quantum encounters, I think our mind is ultimately spiritual. I've often said that the night my father died he appeared in my bedroom. I was trying to get to sleep on a hot humid night when I felt something like someone touching my back.

I rolled over and as I did something started to take shape near the door. It turned out to be my father. We had a conversation and at the end he gave this bloodcurdling scream. Then he just disappeared into eternity.

The point is though that we were talking yet he had no body to be talking with, no eyes to see with, no ears to hear with, no brain to think with - his body was lying dead in his flat several kilometres away. As it turned out it wouldn't be found for another four days.

I'm a dualist obviously to use the metaphysical term. I believe that over and above the quantum physical world and the classical physical world there is a spiritual world. I think we're going to find that ultimately our 'free will' operates there. We are certainly going to answer for our actions as my father found out.

To take an extreme case why SHOULDN'T Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and all the rest pay for what they did to so many other people, or if you like how they used their "free will"?

AV1611VET · May 31, 2024

Bob Crowley said:
I rolled over and as I did something started to take shape near the door. It turned out to be my father. We had a conversation and at the end he gave this bloodcurdling scream. Then he just disappeared into eternity.

The point is though that we were talking yet he had no body to be talking with, no eyes to see with, no ears to hear with, no brain to think with - his body was lying dead in his flat several kilometres away. As it turned out it wouldn't be found for another four days.

Makes me wonder what you talked about.

Chesterton · May 31, 2024

AV1611VET said:
Here's one of our exchanges that made me chuckle.

Ask a physicist anything.

Believe it or not, I remember that exchange. Given the relatively small population of Britain, I don't think it was entirely unreasonable to ask if he'd met him. Unlike when my nephew was in Italy while the TV show Baywatch was popular, and two different Italian men asked him if he'd ever met Pamela Anderson.

Anyway I don't want to go too far off topic here, so my opinion about the OP is yes and no. At the same time.

Halbhh · May 31, 2024

partinobodycular said:
how do random events create a determinate reality?

Averaging of vast numbers of particles. A good conceptual example: air in a room -- though all the particles are moving randomly, you can rely on having enough air to breath where you are sitting because even though all the air molecules are moving randomly, the odds of too much of the air moving to one side of the room leaving you in a relative lack of air at your location is infinitesimally small, statistically, since each molecule is as likely to move right as it is to move left.

Also of interest If quantum events are truly random (as seems today to be the most plausible, perhaps even likely, situation), the reason complex objects you use (like your car or a toaster) don't rapidly fall apart (most of them take time to fall apart and might last quite a while until they even have a failure in some component after enough time even if just sitting unused a long enough time) is that objects we use are composed of very vast numbers of particles, so that it doesn't matter if some of the particles stop being in a useful participation (from our point of view) for the functional structure of the object, because there are so many particles. Some more simple machines might take centuries to enter into a non-useful state, and the simplest of all might sometimes be preserved for millenia in a still useful condition. But...given enough time, most tools/machines will degrade.

partinobodycular · May 31, 2024

Bradskii said:
And quantum effects, as far as I have been to determine, don't bubble up into the classical physics world.

Well quantum computing may have something to say about that, but they've been saying that for twenty-five years now. Could it be just another example of humans copying something that nature has already accomplished?

Bob Crowley · May 31, 2024

AV1611VET said:
Makes me wonder what you talked about.

My opening words were "How the hell did you get in here!!?" The place was locked up tight which didn't help on a hot night in January in Brisbane.

He didn't reply to that and moved to the foot of the bed. He then said "I've (come or been sent) to apologise to you for the way I've treated you. We had no idea what you were going through."

I can't remember whether he said he had "come" or "been sent". I think it was the latter.

I snarled back "You mean you had no idea what you were doing to me!" It went on from there.

Incidentally he "stood" at the foot of the bed, but was sort of wavering around.

I wondered why he was not standing rock steady, but I've come to realise that we move at about 220 kms per second through the background radiation which permeates the universe. It's left over from the Big Bang.

I was held in position in the bedroom by gravity, but he was pure spirit. His body was some kilometres away. This meant that he was not held by gravity. So he either had to provide his own impetus or something else had to hold him there. I think it was the "something else", and it was probably not very concerned that his charge moved around a little bit. What's a couple of feet of sideways drift when you're holding somethng moving at 220 kms per second (792,000 kms per second)?

Our guardian angels would face the same logistics issue, as we all hurtle around the universe at 220 kms per second.

AV1611VET · May 31, 2024

partinobodycular said:
Could it be just another example of humans copying something that nature has already accomplished?

I have a thread on this: Biomimicry

AV1611VET · May 31, 2024

Bob Crowley said:
I was held in position in the bedroom by gravity, but he was pure spirit.

Interesting.

Have you been on the Art Bell or George Noory program?

Bradskii · May 31, 2024

partinobodycular said:
Well quantum computing may have something to say about that, but they've been saying that for twenty-five years now.

I'll admit I know diddly squat about quantum computing. I think I need to give myself a crash course.

Free will and quantum indeterminacy

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I can't believe what I'm hearing...

Everything You say is Life to me

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

Whats So Funny bout Peace Love and Understanding

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Whats So Funny bout Peace Love and Understanding

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

I'm done.

Fact-Based Lifeform

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SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

Whats So Funny bout Peace Love and Understanding

Everything You say is Life to me

Well-Known Member

Well-Known Member

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

SCIENCE CAN TAKE A HIKE

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

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