Notes on Interview with a Qbist in the Making by David Mermin
Link to article
Link to Schlosshauer's website
Link to Mermin's website
Vocab
EPR--Einstein, Podolsky Rosen Paradox--These guys believed that quantum physics was inadequate because "if interacting systems satisfy separability and locality, then the description of systems provided by state vectors is not complete" (from stanford encyclopedia), arguing that this happened because the information about the outcomes was already contained in the particles in some "hidden parameters" for which quantum mechanics had no explanation. I totally do not understand this except that it was considered a problem in quantum mechanics.
Qbism: quantum Bayesian--or the idea that probability has degrees of belief
I woke up this morning wondering why I keep reading all this physics stuff? To what purpose. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the first question Schlosshauer poses having to do with this issue. Obviously, these physicists draw to physics is very different than my own--I don't get most of this. And I certainly can't grapple with the math or equations. But I still find it incredibly compelling. Part of that is simply the desire to "understand" the universe to the extent that it is understandable but on a more practical level, to understand how people "be". I didn't know that physics would shed so much light on that topic or create so many additional questions, and that has been exciting.
It fascinates me that most people are NOT interested in physics. Part of that is certainly our schooling where physics is presented as such a complicated topic that only genius' pursue it. But that's not really true. Sure, if you want to be a physicist you've got to get some really complicated stuff, but almost everyone would benefit from less technical introduction to the material and the foundational questions that are raised.
It feels somewhat like there are these two layers of society: one that has grappled with physics and the foundational issues raised by science in general and has a very different understanding of the world than the other that acts like it doesn't exist. There seems to be a whole crop of people (most people) who operate as if the world doesn't exist, like they can live in this "invented" world without acknowledging the "real" world. I don't think this is a changeable state of affairs but its persistence fascinates me.
In this article, Mermin responds to questions posed by Max Schlosshauer in his book Elegance and Enigma. Schlosshauer has asked a bunch of physicists to respond to these questions, but here are Mermin's responses with his own annotations.
Questions Mermin raises:
Is the experience of personal consciousness beyond the reach of physical theory as a matter of principle--Mermin believes yes, although Stapp and Pauli, maybe, believe no. Wonder what Fuchs would say? If it is beyond the reach of physical theory, where does that put it?
Is the scope of physics limited to constructing "relations between the manifold aspects of our existence"? He also answers this yes, but has no explanation.
Criticism of many worlds theory: they apply quantum mechanics to our very awareness of our experience, which he says "makes no sense".
Physics is "a tool to help us find powerful and concise expressions of correlations among features of our experience" (p. 4). But, he does not believe that it can shed light on our awareness (our consciousness) of that experience.
Quantum Mechanics is "a set of rules for organizing our knowledge with a view to improving our ability to anticipate subsequently acquired knowledge" (p. 5). This is why I like it so much--it is a way of seeing that helps us to continually see better. In this sentence, he means knowledge to be what we perceive. (Clearly, the distinction has to be made between what we perceive and what is and how our perceiving in itself affects what we perceive though probably doesn't affect what is.
Quantum states, as far as I can tell from Mermin's discussion, are computational tools that predict correlations among our perceptions.
Makes an important distinction, I think, in his answer to the question: does quantum mechanics imply irreducible randomness in nature" (p. 6) (back to our determinism question). His answer is yes if we mean that there is irreducible randomness in the answers to the questions WE can ask. So, nature itself is not necessarily random, just the answers we can get are.
correlations have physical reality and not reality (physical reality means they can be accounted for by a physical theory) (p. 7). Makes a very clear cut distinction between these two (of two or more?) realities--the physical (that we can measure and to some degree predict) and the real which is outside of our tools. Conscious awareness, in contrast, has reality and not physical reality. . .we have no theory to explain it but it exists, is how I understand this.
Quantum probabilities: Mermin believes these are objective in the sense that they are an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics but they are also subjective in that we use them to help organize our perceptions. I guess what he's saying is they are not a consequence of us but they provide us with information in a subjective way.
Things I wish I knew
Bell Inequalities
Non locality and locality--does this refer to the wave/particle duality? Laurekaninen states that the particle is localizable while the wave extends in space and time (and is not localizable). They are complimentary and the collapsing wave function is the two becoming one, no longer separate?
Link to Schlosshauer's website
Link to Mermin's website
Vocab
EPR--Einstein, Podolsky Rosen Paradox--These guys believed that quantum physics was inadequate because "if interacting systems satisfy separability and locality, then the description of systems provided by state vectors is not complete" (from stanford encyclopedia), arguing that this happened because the information about the outcomes was already contained in the particles in some "hidden parameters" for which quantum mechanics had no explanation. I totally do not understand this except that it was considered a problem in quantum mechanics.
Qbism: quantum Bayesian--or the idea that probability has degrees of belief
I woke up this morning wondering why I keep reading all this physics stuff? To what purpose. So I was pleasantly surprised to see the first question Schlosshauer poses having to do with this issue. Obviously, these physicists draw to physics is very different than my own--I don't get most of this. And I certainly can't grapple with the math or equations. But I still find it incredibly compelling. Part of that is simply the desire to "understand" the universe to the extent that it is understandable but on a more practical level, to understand how people "be". I didn't know that physics would shed so much light on that topic or create so many additional questions, and that has been exciting.
It fascinates me that most people are NOT interested in physics. Part of that is certainly our schooling where physics is presented as such a complicated topic that only genius' pursue it. But that's not really true. Sure, if you want to be a physicist you've got to get some really complicated stuff, but almost everyone would benefit from less technical introduction to the material and the foundational questions that are raised.
It feels somewhat like there are these two layers of society: one that has grappled with physics and the foundational issues raised by science in general and has a very different understanding of the world than the other that acts like it doesn't exist. There seems to be a whole crop of people (most people) who operate as if the world doesn't exist, like they can live in this "invented" world without acknowledging the "real" world. I don't think this is a changeable state of affairs but its persistence fascinates me.
In this article, Mermin responds to questions posed by Max Schlosshauer in his book Elegance and Enigma. Schlosshauer has asked a bunch of physicists to respond to these questions, but here are Mermin's responses with his own annotations.
Questions Mermin raises:
Is the experience of personal consciousness beyond the reach of physical theory as a matter of principle--Mermin believes yes, although Stapp and Pauli, maybe, believe no. Wonder what Fuchs would say? If it is beyond the reach of physical theory, where does that put it?
Is the scope of physics limited to constructing "relations between the manifold aspects of our existence"? He also answers this yes, but has no explanation.
Criticism of many worlds theory: they apply quantum mechanics to our very awareness of our experience, which he says "makes no sense".
Physics is "a tool to help us find powerful and concise expressions of correlations among features of our experience" (p. 4). But, he does not believe that it can shed light on our awareness (our consciousness) of that experience.
Quantum Mechanics is "a set of rules for organizing our knowledge with a view to improving our ability to anticipate subsequently acquired knowledge" (p. 5). This is why I like it so much--it is a way of seeing that helps us to continually see better. In this sentence, he means knowledge to be what we perceive. (Clearly, the distinction has to be made between what we perceive and what is and how our perceiving in itself affects what we perceive though probably doesn't affect what is.
Quantum states, as far as I can tell from Mermin's discussion, are computational tools that predict correlations among our perceptions.
Makes an important distinction, I think, in his answer to the question: does quantum mechanics imply irreducible randomness in nature" (p. 6) (back to our determinism question). His answer is yes if we mean that there is irreducible randomness in the answers to the questions WE can ask. So, nature itself is not necessarily random, just the answers we can get are.
correlations have physical reality and not reality (physical reality means they can be accounted for by a physical theory) (p. 7). Makes a very clear cut distinction between these two (of two or more?) realities--the physical (that we can measure and to some degree predict) and the real which is outside of our tools. Conscious awareness, in contrast, has reality and not physical reality. . .we have no theory to explain it but it exists, is how I understand this.
Quantum probabilities: Mermin believes these are objective in the sense that they are an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics but they are also subjective in that we use them to help organize our perceptions. I guess what he's saying is they are not a consequence of us but they provide us with information in a subjective way.
Things I wish I knew
Bell Inequalities
Non locality and locality--does this refer to the wave/particle duality? Laurekaninen states that the particle is localizable while the wave extends in space and time (and is not localizable). They are complimentary and the collapsing wave function is the two becoming one, no longer separate?
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