Christopher Fuch's website
Website link
Most of the stuff on this website is far beyond my comprehension, but I still look for nuggets that might spark my thinking or lead me to new nuggets. And, not surprisingly, I found lots of interesting stuff.
I would like to find the book, Relativity for the Millions by Martin Gardner. Fuchs says this book stirred his soul and gave him an understanding of relativity "that sustains him today". How cool is that? His reading of that book led to his essay, Quantum Information (link on his website, but there is no date) where he argues that we need a comparable book on quantum theory that the middle or high school student could understand (I agree!).
Fuchs states:
Quantum mechanics has always been about information.
The quantum system represents something real and independent of us
the quantum state includes subjective degrees of belief (Bayes theory) abut the quantum system
Quantum mechanics is about the interplay between the subjective and the objective (here is where we start to see the vestiges of qbism.
Here he asks a very interesting question:
"if the quantum state represents subjective information, then how much of its mathematical support structure might be of that same character" (p. 6).
I interpret this to be asking--the subjective is part of the quantum state and how much of its mathematical support is also subjective? What would that mean to have "subjective" mathematical support?
If we removed all the subjective stuff, Fuchs seems to be saying, what we'd have left would be the full blown theory of quantum theory.
(Aside--gravity is really just the curves in space time. The feeling of gravity is the subjective experience of the experiencer. There is no thing gravity, just as many concepts in quantum theory do not exist except as the subjective experience. . . Space time can tell us something about nature itself while gravity tells us about the observer in nature. Fuchs wants the stuff that tells us about quantum theory itself).
Entangled states affect one another. There is no way to separately measure either. Neither has any "real" state because they affect one another. To put it in Einstein or Fuchs' language, "the quantum state cannot be a 'complete' description of the quantum system" (p. 9). The distinction between state and system matter in this quote and should not be used interchangably. There are no real states or more precisely, perhaps, we cannot know the real states. (like in the humanities, it appears, laws do not apply to things but to observation of things. . . maybe this is a fundamental property of human being. Because human beings are present in all they know, including physics measurements, all we know is defined through the observer bias or the probability of degree of belief. If this is true, doesn't this have huge ramifications for knowledge and for science in particular. To the extent that science somehow attempts to measure discrete things, it is engaging in a false engagement because there are no real things. All is entangled and we are limiting our knowledge when we try to separate them out. The cause of schizophrenia is a gene is simply not just false but an erroneous statement. There is no "cause" of anything nor is there any schizophrenia. There are only human observations of each? Degrees of belief. Hasn't there been extensive debate that we cannot separate the quantum world from the classical or non-quantum world. There isn't a law of small things and a law of larger things? But only the probability of this or that? Or is it more accurate to say that the laws depend on the observer? Or that there are laws but we cannot know them because our observer status interferes?).
Fuchs states: "the quantum state is information. Subjective, incomplete information" (p. 11). He seems to be making a distinction between information which is a human generated body of knowledge and the quantum system which implies something real outside of human.
Fuchs argues that there is something about our world that keeps us from getting more information than that which can be gathered through quantum mechanics. And there is more information out there. Our quantum mechanics view is incomplete. Einstein wanted to know what theory would complete the information. But Fuchs asks, "why is it that the information cannot be completed?"
(Heisenberg states, "The phenomenon under observation produces certain events in our measuring apparatus" (p, 13). Can't that be applied to our interpretation of texts. The measuring apparatus of course is our brain and the book or text is acting on us at the same time we are attempting to "contain" it in an explanation. We are entangled)
How much does math predict that which we "know" in the sense that if we can't measure it, if we can't think of an equation for it, it is not known. Math delimits the knowable. . . ? Darn my poor education! Pages and pages of math in Fuch's article, none of which make any sense to me . . .
So if math can be said to delimit the truly known, then perhaps what literature provides is the guessed, the maybes, the possible. Certainly we need to "understand" both what is known and what is not known but still exists. So, while we can't develop a mathematical equation for why someone acts in a certain way, we can develop empathy, understanding or even experience of the behavior through literature. So, is there anyway by which literature in general is informed by having a better understanding of physics. Or, let's broaden the question, is there anyway that reading is informed by having a better understanding of physics? As critical thinkers, do we benefit from knowing that the world is inherently disrupted, unknowable and systematically skewed because we are our own viewers? It seems that if we read anything that tries to tell us a "truth" that has a "human" involved, we need to be immediately skeptical of the conclusions. Measurements of human behavior are clearly inherently flawed. Are there equations that can remove those flaws to a meaningful extent (I don't mean getting rid of excess variables--doesn't that just make things more unreal because no human exists in a world where excess variables have been removed)?
Most of the stuff on this website is far beyond my comprehension, but I still look for nuggets that might spark my thinking or lead me to new nuggets. And, not surprisingly, I found lots of interesting stuff.
I would like to find the book, Relativity for the Millions by Martin Gardner. Fuchs says this book stirred his soul and gave him an understanding of relativity "that sustains him today". How cool is that? His reading of that book led to his essay, Quantum Information (link on his website, but there is no date) where he argues that we need a comparable book on quantum theory that the middle or high school student could understand (I agree!).
Fuchs states:
Quantum mechanics has always been about information.
The quantum system represents something real and independent of us
the quantum state includes subjective degrees of belief (Bayes theory) abut the quantum system
Quantum mechanics is about the interplay between the subjective and the objective (here is where we start to see the vestiges of qbism.
Here he asks a very interesting question:
"if the quantum state represents subjective information, then how much of its mathematical support structure might be of that same character" (p. 6).
I interpret this to be asking--the subjective is part of the quantum state and how much of its mathematical support is also subjective? What would that mean to have "subjective" mathematical support?
If we removed all the subjective stuff, Fuchs seems to be saying, what we'd have left would be the full blown theory of quantum theory.
(Aside--gravity is really just the curves in space time. The feeling of gravity is the subjective experience of the experiencer. There is no thing gravity, just as many concepts in quantum theory do not exist except as the subjective experience. . . Space time can tell us something about nature itself while gravity tells us about the observer in nature. Fuchs wants the stuff that tells us about quantum theory itself).
Entangled states affect one another. There is no way to separately measure either. Neither has any "real" state because they affect one another. To put it in Einstein or Fuchs' language, "the quantum state cannot be a 'complete' description of the quantum system" (p. 9). The distinction between state and system matter in this quote and should not be used interchangably. There are no real states or more precisely, perhaps, we cannot know the real states. (like in the humanities, it appears, laws do not apply to things but to observation of things. . . maybe this is a fundamental property of human being. Because human beings are present in all they know, including physics measurements, all we know is defined through the observer bias or the probability of degree of belief. If this is true, doesn't this have huge ramifications for knowledge and for science in particular. To the extent that science somehow attempts to measure discrete things, it is engaging in a false engagement because there are no real things. All is entangled and we are limiting our knowledge when we try to separate them out. The cause of schizophrenia is a gene is simply not just false but an erroneous statement. There is no "cause" of anything nor is there any schizophrenia. There are only human observations of each? Degrees of belief. Hasn't there been extensive debate that we cannot separate the quantum world from the classical or non-quantum world. There isn't a law of small things and a law of larger things? But only the probability of this or that? Or is it more accurate to say that the laws depend on the observer? Or that there are laws but we cannot know them because our observer status interferes?).
Fuchs states: "the quantum state is information. Subjective, incomplete information" (p. 11). He seems to be making a distinction between information which is a human generated body of knowledge and the quantum system which implies something real outside of human.
Fuchs argues that there is something about our world that keeps us from getting more information than that which can be gathered through quantum mechanics. And there is more information out there. Our quantum mechanics view is incomplete. Einstein wanted to know what theory would complete the information. But Fuchs asks, "why is it that the information cannot be completed?"
(Heisenberg states, "The phenomenon under observation produces certain events in our measuring apparatus" (p, 13). Can't that be applied to our interpretation of texts. The measuring apparatus of course is our brain and the book or text is acting on us at the same time we are attempting to "contain" it in an explanation. We are entangled)
How much does math predict that which we "know" in the sense that if we can't measure it, if we can't think of an equation for it, it is not known. Math delimits the knowable. . . ? Darn my poor education! Pages and pages of math in Fuch's article, none of which make any sense to me . . .
So if math can be said to delimit the truly known, then perhaps what literature provides is the guessed, the maybes, the possible. Certainly we need to "understand" both what is known and what is not known but still exists. So, while we can't develop a mathematical equation for why someone acts in a certain way, we can develop empathy, understanding or even experience of the behavior through literature. So, is there anyway by which literature in general is informed by having a better understanding of physics. Or, let's broaden the question, is there anyway that reading is informed by having a better understanding of physics? As critical thinkers, do we benefit from knowing that the world is inherently disrupted, unknowable and systematically skewed because we are our own viewers? It seems that if we read anything that tries to tell us a "truth" that has a "human" involved, we need to be immediately skeptical of the conclusions. Measurements of human behavior are clearly inherently flawed. Are there equations that can remove those flaws to a meaningful extent (I don't mean getting rid of excess variables--doesn't that just make things more unreal because no human exists in a world where excess variables have been removed)?
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