<story><title>Chaos: The real problem with quantum mechanics</title><url>http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/05/chaos-real-problem-with-quantum.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lisper</author><text>It is important to note that there is a hidden agenda in this essay: Sabine is a superdeterminist, and so her presentations have to be viewed through that lens.  As a superdeterminist, she is committed to idea that classical reality is &amp;quot;actually real&amp;quot; (for some value of &amp;quot;actually real&amp;quot; -- see below).  And so Hyperion&amp;#x27;s chaotic behavior is actually real, and QM cannot account for that.  All of which is true.&lt;p&gt;But there is an alternative view of classical reality which is that it is not &amp;quot;actually real&amp;quot; (the scare quotes are important here), that it is all just a sort of shared illusion among sentient beings.  And QM &lt;i&gt;can&lt;/i&gt; account for &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt;, i.e. the math of QM can (and does) describe a set of mutually entangled observers all of which agree on an observation, notwithstanding that the observation has not actual referent in the model.  And &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; is actually what we observe.  We do not directly observe Hyperion.  What we observe is our own subjective perception of seeing Hyperion, and having everyone around us report their own subjective perception of seeing Hyperion.  The &amp;quot;actual existence&amp;quot; of a classical entity, i.e. an actual physical referent for &amp;quot;Hyperion&amp;quot; seems like a plausible explanation for this, but what QM tells us is that this explanation is wrong.  But Sabine, as a committed superdeterminist, rejects this idea.  But she&amp;#x27;s not being up-front about that.&lt;p&gt;The problem with QM is not chaos, it is the fact that it is incompatible with classical intuition.  The chaos thing just brings this incompatibility into very sharp focus.</text></comment>
<story><title>Chaos: The real problem with quantum mechanics</title><url>http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/05/chaos-real-problem-with-quantum.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>armchairhacker</author><text>&amp;gt; But the vast majority of physicists today think the collapse of the wave-function isn’t a physical process. Because if it was, then it would have to happen instantaneously everywhere.&lt;p&gt;Why can&amp;#x27;t WFC be a physical process? Yes, when a photon on the Moon is measured it immediately changes the &amp;quot;wave function&amp;quot; of a photon on Earth from 50&amp;#x2F;50 to 100&amp;#x2F;0. But the wave function was always a probability, and probabilities always allow for hidden information. To the observer, entangled or not the calculation is still 50&amp;#x2F;50. And you can&amp;#x27;t e.g. &amp;quot;force&amp;quot; 1,000 entangled photons all to be positive to create an unlikely unusual scenario.&lt;p&gt;WFC collapse or no, both observers experience their own independent 50&amp;#x2F;50 photon collapse. It doesn&amp;#x27;t matter which observer measures first or if there is no &amp;quot;first&amp;quot; at all. The WFC may or may not be instantaneous because it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter. The fact that the particles are entangled doesn&amp;#x27;t affect observer A until he&amp;#x27;s able to observe observer B and vice versa.&lt;p&gt;For all we know all of our particles could be entangled with other particles halfway across the universe, it can&amp;#x27;t affect us until the speed of light reaches us so we can observer ourselves that the other particles are entangled.&lt;p&gt;Also why Hyperion isn&amp;#x27;t blurred, despite the fact that all of the particles which affect it are too small to be measured, is because Hyperion isn&amp;#x27;t too small to be measured. The particles aren&amp;#x27;t too small to be &amp;quot;measured&amp;quot; by Hyperion when they affect Hyperion, and just because Hyperion is further away from us doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it behaves and differently. And by seeing Hyperion&amp;#x27;s chaotic orbit we still can&amp;#x27;t predict those &amp;quot;unmeasurable&amp;quot; particles.</text></comment>