Quantum Physics: conscious universe (General)

by David Turell , Tuesday, May 29, 2018, 20:40 (2368 days ago) @ David Turell

More on how quantum experiments require conscious observers and indicate the universe is the result of consciousness. One of the authors, Kafatos, has produced two books I have read:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/coming-to-grips-with-the-implications...

"Taken together, these experiments indicate that the everyday world we perceive does not exist until observed, which in turn suggests—as we shall argue in this essay—a primary role for mind in nature. It is thus high time the scientific community at large—not only those involved in foundations of QM—faced up to the counterintuitive implications of QM’s most controversial predictions.

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"We are often misinterpreted—and misrepresented—as espousing solipsism or some form of “quantum mysticism,” so let us be clear: our argument for a mental world does not entail or imply that the world is merely one’s own personal hallucination or act of imagination. Our view is entirely naturalistic: the mind that underlies the world is a transpersonal mind behaving according to natural laws. It comprises but far transcends any individual psyche.

"The claim is thus that the dynamics of all inanimate matter in the universe correspond to transpersonal mentation, just as an individual’s brain activity—which is also made of matter—corresponds to personal mentation. This notion eliminates arbitrary discontinuities and provides the missing inner essence of the physical world: all matter—not only that in living brains—is the outer appearance of inner experience, different configurations of matter reflecting different patterns or modes of mental activity.

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"The inanimate world is a single physical system governed by QM. Indeed, as first argued by John von Neumann and rearticulated in the work of one of us, when two inanimate objects interact they simply become quantum mechanically “entangled” with one another—that is, they become united in such a way that the behavior of one becomes inextricably linked to the behavior of the other—but no actual measurement is performed.

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"a conscious observer may be indispensable, an idea further elaborated by one of us with regard to so-called “delayed choice quantum eraser” experiments. The bottom line is that we cannot know that detectors actually perform measurements, for we cannot abstract ourselves out of our knowledge. Recall Max Planck’s position: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.”

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"The problem, however, is that decoherence cannot explain how the state of the surrounding environment becomes definite to begin with, so it doesn’t solve the measurement problem or rule out the role of consciousness. Indeed, as Wojciech Zurek—one of the fathers of decoherence—admitted, …an exhaustive answer to [the question of why we perceive a definite world] would undoubtedly have to involve a model of ‘consciousness,’ since what we are really asking concerns our [observers’] impression that ‘we are conscious’ of just one of the alternatives.

"As a matter of fact, peculiar statistical characteristics of the behavior of entangled quantum systems (namely, their experimentally confirmed violation of so-called “Bell’s and Leggett’s inequalities”) seem to rule out everything but consciousness as the agency of measurement. Some then claim that entanglement is observed only in microscopic systems and, therefore, its peculiarities are allegedly irrelevant to the world of tables and chairs.

"But such a claim is untrue, as several recent studies (e.g. 2009, 2011 and 2015) have demonstrated entanglement for much larger systems. Last year, a paper reported entanglement even for “massive” objects. Moreover, quantum superposition has been observed in systems as varied as small metal paddles and living tissue. Clearly, the laws of QM apply at all scales and substrates.

"What preserves a superposition is merely how well the quantum system—whatever its size—is isolated from the world of tables and chairs known to us through direct conscious apprehension. That a superposition does not survive exposure to this world suggests, if anything, a role for consciousness in the emergence of a definite physical reality."

Comment: These conclusions about consciousness and quantum mechanics cannot be avoided. The universe is based on quantum mechanics through the mind of God. Standing in front of a bus has nothing to do with this theory. All of this is at the level of energy particles which follow quantum rules and then join together to form the matter we appreciate.