NO FAIR! You changed the outcome by measuring it!
Fucking brilliant! And all of the upvotes assure me that I’m hanging out with the right bunch of nerds on the internet!
That’s the best use of that meme I’ve seen.
Fyi, there’s a lot of
woo woo(edit: apparently racist term) crap out there that tries to make you believe that somehow the photons can feel that a human is watching them and they choose to behave differently as a result. This is not true. It just means that when you use a detector or some sort of probe that physically interacts with the photons they change their behavior. It’s not magic.The way some of such experiments are done is by creating entangled photons and observing (or not observing) the second photon. No interaction with the first photon, except mysterious instantaneous wave function collapse. Also known as Magic.
Also, their interpretation of what’s happening largely falls apart with the quantum eraser variations.
If it’s collapse from mechanical measurement side effects, why does it go back to an interference pattern when which path information is erased by a polarizer?
Decoherence explains the process; many-worlds explains the rest.
Even the dictionary says woo-woo refers to the sounds ghosts are supposed to make. Don’t trust randos on lemmy.
So you’re telling me that the double slit experiment has reached a sufficient saturation point in modern culture so as to have a conspiracy around it?
I mean, magic is just weird shit that isn’t fully understood yet.
That being said, you might as well look at it as branches.
Each state is a possibility, thus both exist.
The “magic” isn’t that the probabilities of either state being in effect suddenly collapsed and became reality. The magic is that by observing the result, we collapse our own probability and are suddenly aware of the branch that we exist in. But we also exist in that other branch, suddenly aware that we exist in it. But “both” of us are incapable of viewing that other branch.
Which is all mumbo-jumbo, but I’m a fiction writer, so I don’t have to be rigorous :)
“Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.” -Mercedes Lackey or… maybe Larry Dixon. Unclear.
What is an eye and the brain if not organic cameras and computers? This is actually an issue in science philosophy.
There is no material difference between observation through tools and through “the bare senses”. Observation is what matters.
Observing quantum phenomena changes it. The tool does not matter.
It’s not even “observing” in that sense. It’s just an interaction that forces the waveform to collapse. Basically, if anything requires a result, then it collapses. It doesn’t need to record anything or anything like that. It just needs to be effected by (or apply an effect to) the photons.
Actually not correct, words in a lab can mean different things from the popular usage. With Theory being the most popular misconception, as so many people believe that it just means I guess, when in reality it is closer to something we can’t test, but if it weren’t true so many other things that we can test couldn’t possibly be true.
Typically a theory is never proven nor disproven, it is however replaced with a more accurate Theory.
Inside of a laboratory, observation means something less like you saw it, and something more like you measured it. All the observation changing it proves, is that we don’t have a method of measuring it that will not interact with it. Which is to be expected given that Quantum phenomenon is legitimately so small that even a microscopic bacterium would say it’s tiny.
Wheeler’s delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that extracting “which path” information after a particle passes through the slits can seem to retroactively alter its previous behavior at the slits.
from the Wikipedia article on the double-slit experiment
If you read through Wheeler’s delayed choice experiments, all the variations he went through to try to pin this down, well… it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the waveform doesn’t collapse until the moment that someone looks at the data. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the universe is laughing at us every time we try to get a specific answer. This statement from the conclusion is absolutely bonkers if you think about it:
The fact that it is possible to decide whether a wave or particle feature manifests itself long after—and even space-like separated from—the measurement teaches us that we should not have any naive realistic picture for interpreting quantum phenomena.
The method of observation determines whether the photon behaved as a wave or a particle, after the measurement is done.
Our results demonstrate that the viewpoint that the system photon behaves either definitely as a wave or definitely as a particle would require faster-than-light communication. Because this would be in strong tension with the special theory of relativity, we believe that such a viewpoint should be given up entirely.
The photon behavior as recorded changes depending on how you examine the record, even “long after” the record is made and the interpretation should be fixed. It quite literally depends on how you look at it.
There’s a video about how the delayed choice experiment is compatible with existing quantum physics and doesn’t require further weirdness like retrocausality to explain.
I agree but please don’t say woo woo, the term is considered offensive against Asians, plus James Randi, the guy who came up with it, was literally a climate denying pedophile who was the primary science advisor on the thoroughly debunked false memory Foundation.
The term, like this man’s legacy, needs to die.
It is a shame really, I used to be so convinced that magic had to be real, that men of science just didn’t want to hear it because it conflicted with their worldview. God I would give anything for that to be true.
James Randi, the guy who came up with it, was literally a climate denying pedophile
I’m unsurprised that someone born in the twenties with an identity built heavily around being skeptical of anything without a lot of concrete evidence, a stage magician whose whole thing was being angry about psychics, mediums and the like defrauding people would require extraordinary evidence to believe in climate change.
Especially given we’ve been 10 years out from irreversible catastrophe since the 70s, according to various high ranking UN officials with positions related to the environment/climate. When that time passes, releasing a new statement claiming it’s another ten years out and pretending the previous one never happened. For someone like Randi, that’s got to set off the same bullshit detectors that religious leaders predicting apocalypse do.
I’d never heard the claim he was a pedophile before though, at least not outside the same circles accusing him in hushed tones of theft, tax evasion and being a Communist. Got a decent source on that one?
https://news.isst-d.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-false-memory-syndrome-foundation/
https://timesupfoundation.org/the-danger-behind-the-false-memory-myth-2/ (The Time’s Up Foundation site seems to be down, sadly enough)
James Randi served as the primary science advisor on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, basically they were this organization that pushed the idea that there was a disease called “False Memory Syndrome”
What’s False Memory Syndrome? A disease that causes you to randomly remember things that don’t happen, like say being sexually abused by a parental figure or close friend.
The foundation was kind of disbanded, in 2019, when its board was revealed to have basically no evidence that False Memory Syndrome was real, actively discouraged victims of abuse from seeking therapy (for fear that Psychologists would use hypnosis to “Implant a false memory”), and were pretty much all credibly accused of some kind of abuse… Investigations into the foundation showed it didn’t really do any research into the syndrome it claimed to exist, it mostly just built legal defenses for scum bags by sending people to court to say “She says was she was raped, but she’s obviously completely insane and thus probably making it up. Source: Trust me bro”
Birds of a feather flock together… Now it’s possible he joined as a kneejerk response to the Satanic Panic (When people were being coached to say they were molested in the glorious name of Satan as children, claiming “Resurfaced Memories”), but one would think that he would have sounded the alarm when he realized was a science advisor that didn’t do any actual research, just picked up paychecks to say “False Memories are totally a thing, I’m James Randi, do you not believe my appeal to authority claim?”… but he didn’t. Weird.
It’s also sus that Randi was a Science Director of ANYTHING considering he literally was a high school dropout with no science training (Something that honestly casts doubt on the Million Dollar Challenge’s legitimacy if you ask me, now keep in mind, showing Randi as a charlatan does not exonerate the frauds he caught. It merely proves this to be more of a Dexter situation; Dexter being a show in which a serial killer catches other serial killer, Randi being a scammer catching other scammers) I’d compare James Randi’s fraud busting as being similar to a case when Police catch the right guy, but fail to read him the Miranda or respect the 4th Amendment.
There’s also this matter - https://youtu.be/5khkDtUzAlc
Recorded phone sex tapes of Randi speaking with young boys, James Randi claims that he was working with police on a sting operation, but that explanation makes no sense since if teen boys are calling him up for sex… What crime are the teen boys committing? It honestly sounds like they’re the victims of grooming here… So the better question is, how did these young men even get this number in the first place?
So why haven’t you heard of this before? Quite simply JREF has the resources and motive to protect the image of its founder, and since Randi’s reputation is largely positive with most people against him being scam psychics thoroughly debunked as scammers. Making it kind of easy to just claim anyone against Randi is for the likes of Geller or Browne, or is one of the religious fanatics that claimed he was, as you said, an Anti-American Communist… Just play the “No U” card and the skeptic community takes the bait, of course mainstream outlets aren’t going to say this and get these communities out for their blood…
James Randi, was a pseudo-skeptic who liked 'em young.
What koolaid are you sipping? Woo-woo, even in the dictionaries is supposed to refer to sci-fi / ghost sounds. Give me one decent quote to say woo-woo is racist.
It’s a play on “Wu” actually
Source or gtfo
So did you even read or just copy articles where the title agrees with you? The first one is “according to google”. The only article i saw crop up on google use the term derogatory(as per the article) to describe woo-woo was on medium, talking about how it makes people who believe in the supersticious and paranormal feel bad (much like the second article you linked). If you actually read them, you would see there is only one negative implication in the first article, and it is not in the origins of the word but in the “message” of “western superiority”, because god forbid we actually ask people to back up their claims.
Where is the racist connection then? Maybe just look up the origins of the word on the dictionary and admit you are spouting bullshit?
Can someone who understands science explain this to me (what im getting at is its a pregnancy test)
The double slit expiriment demonstrates the duality of the nature of a photon: that it’s both a wave and a particle.
When a photon is “observed” (or detected) it has the properties of a particle. However when it’s travelling it acts like a wave and can demonstrate interference patterns with other photons.
So when you pass photos through two tiny slits, instead of them just passing right through like a particle, they interfere with each other and when the wave pattern collapses when it is observed on the wall, you see the interference.
That being said, I don’t think this cartoon makes sense. I get what they are driving at, as they are saying it acts differently when not observed, but this is not what happens. Also this isn’t a ln experiment that deals with observation forcing an outcome, but as I noted it’s about the duality. Additionally, the wave pattern on the top is what you would you observe when looking at, so I’m not sure why that is what it would be like if you were looking away.
But maybe I’m missing something.
The double slit experiment is about observation.
When you fire photons through the double slits, one photon at a time, they cause wave interference patterns with themselves as if each photon travelled through both slits.
Yet if you set something up to measure which slit each photon passed through, they no longer interfere with themselves, and give you the two straight lines pattern, rather than the interference pattern.
When you fire photons through the double slits, one photon at a time, they cause wave interference patterns with themselves as if each photon travelled through both slits.
You’re right, I forgot about this part of it.
The interference pattern only appears after firing many many photons. They’re still a photon (packet of energy) when creating an interference pattern. It’s the distribution and probability of its location that changes. Not the physical “shape”.
Edit: to clarify further
When not being detected, it’s still just one dot that appears on the sheet. As more and more are fired, the interference pattern shows to show as each photon hits the screen
It’s all about the distribution possibilities.
Thanks mate.
The meme confuses two things in quantum mechanics. One is the double slit experiment, which confirms that light behaves both as a wave and a particle. That’s what the meme is showing here.
However it’s also throwing in Schrodinger’s, which states that until you look at something it exists in all states - the classic theoretical example being the cat in a box, which is both alive and dead until you open the box. That doesn’t make much sense in the real world, but when looking at quantum particles it is provably true.
Here is another meme that more accurately explains things: https://mander.xyz/post/5143468
Just to complete the set of “principles of quantum mechanics that people know of but don’t fully understand”, there’s the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that you can either know the position of something or its momentum (ie where it’s going). The more accurately you measure one of these, the less accurate any measurement is of the other.
Edit: However there’s also what /u/Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone said below:
The double slit experiment is about observation.
When you fire photons through the double slits, one photon at a time, they cause wave interference patterns with themselves as if each photon travelled through both slits.
Yet if you set something up to measure which slit each photon passed through, they no longer interfere with themselves, and give you the two straight lines pattern, rather than the interference pattern.
So maybe the meme was referring to this variation on the double slit experiment, rather than Schrodinger.
That’s the best use of this meme I’ve ever seen. Bravo.
So how long until someone comes in here and claims that this it disproves materialism?
“But but the Double Slit!” Is my favorite pseudoscience argument
Brilliant. Do you call this quantum consciousness, quantum mind or something? At least in German its Quantenbewusstsein. After all these years i remember that photons notice you observe them and behave differently, because it’s ducking interesting.
Actually scam artist call this Quantum Consciousness and believe that it proves that quantum physics is just the old magic under a new name.
Everyone else just calls this the Dual slit experiment
I mean it is quantum awareness at least, artful phrasing just makes it a bit misleading.
Do you call this quantum consciousness, quantum mind or something?
Nope, we call it wave-function collapse.
More like double-slut lmao
Very clever, made me laugh
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Ok that’s pretty good lol