Open System for Geniuses - by Chronostalker

We continue our critical analysis of Cramer’s "Transactional Interpretation" of quantum mechanics. This interpretation is, for instance, being propagated in connection with "Remote Viewing and Consciousness Entanglement"!

3. Differences between the Transactional and the Copenhagen Interpretations

In this section I want to focus on the differences between the transactional interpretation and the Copenhagen interpretation. I have decided to do this with a question and answer format, asking an interpretation question implicit in the quantum mechanics formalism and then providing answers from the points of view of both the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) and the transactional interpretation (TI). The answers given are based on my understanding of both interpretations, and there is perhaps room for other views of how the CI might answer the questions posed. Where there was this sort of disagreement during the discussion session of this Conference, I will try to indicate this.

"An Overview of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", was an invited paper presented at The 1987 Symposium on Relativistic Quantum Theory and Interpretation, Loyola University, New Orleans, May, 1987. From the web page "Jesuit Identity":

The Jesuit educational network is one of the largest systems in American higher education, with more than 200,000 students currently enrolled in the 28 U.S. Jesuit universities. Worldwide, Jesuit universities and colleges have graduated more than 1,000,000 students.

And what about Jesuits? An excerpt from the web page THE COUNTER REFORMATION

They came to be perhaps the most effective agents in the combat with heresy. Loyola himself felt that the Reformation was the result of ignorance and corruption on the part of the Catholic clergy. He had no very detailed knowledge of the works of the reformers; he forbade his followers to read the writings of heretics, and followed this counsel himself. His own attitude toward heretics was without bitterness; he hoped rather that they might be won back by persuasion. This was the position adopted by his followers, who generally refused to enter the service of the Inquisition, although they tended to be in favor of depriving heretics of civil rights and of banishing them if they could not reconvert them.

Let’s get back to "transactional interpretation" - Cramer continues:

Q1: Does the wave described by the state vector have physical reality?

CI: The state vector does not describe a real physical wave moving through space, but rather a mathematical representation of the knowledge of an observer.

TI: To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space (as opposed to momentum space or other parameter spaces), the formalism is describing real physical waves moving through space which are the first steps in the formation of transactions. The completed transaction describes the exchanged particle.

Discussion: It was pointed out in the Conference discussion that for some quantum mechanical systems (e.g. an ensemble of particles with spin) there is no known formalism capable of representing the system in position space. Therefore, it was argued, it is inappropriate to discuss “waves physically present in space'’. This is a very relevant observation, for the interpretation of a formalism cannot and should not go where the formalism itself does not venture. The TI, when applied to a formalism representing waves in position space, can interpret them as physically present in space. When applied to momentum space formalisms, etc, the issue of physical presence is moot, since it is not clear that “physical presence'’ in an arbitrary parameter space is a meaningful concept.

Now, listen "To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space…". What is the meaning of that sentence? Since publishing of John von Neuman’s opus "Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik" in 1932 the formalism of quantum mechanics is based on Hilbert space, with understanding that position variables are just one of infinitely many commuting systems of observables. Moreover, even in position representations the "waves" (for particles without spin) propagate in 3 times N (N - the number of particles) dimensional space. They are not real physical waves moving through space as Cramer seems to imply. Cramer notices that "this is a very relevant observation", but he stops short of drawing the only reasonable conclusion, namely that his "transactional interpretation" fails to deal with all those case when the standard interpretation, extended by von Neumann and Dirac, works without any problems whatsoever.

To be continued ….

Continue with Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation:

The latter half of my review article[1] provides examples of the use of the transactional interpretation in analyzing the accumulated curiosities and paradoxes (the EPR paradox, Schrodinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend, Wheeler’s delayed choice, Herbert’s paradox, etc.) that have lain for decades in the quantum mechanics Museum of Mysteries. It is shown that the TI removes the need for half-and-half cats, frizzy universes with split ends, observer-dependent reality, and “knowledge'’ waves. It removes the observer from the formalism and puts him back in the laboratory where he belongs.

Really? And it happens just because of transactions between advanced and retarded waves? Waves of what? Did Cramer forget that Quantum Field Theory (QFT) - the most advanced part of quantum mechanics - is about quantum fields - that is about operator-valued functions of space and time? There are no waves there - as QFT, especially relativistic one, is usually represented in a Heisenberg picture, not the Schroedinger picture. It is operators that "move in space and time", no wave functions. Moreover, in open systems, and all realistic systems are open, states are represented by density matrices, not by "waves". It is hard to believe that Cramer does not know these elementary facts. (That is elementary, dear Watson!) But if he knows them - how can he not address these fundamental issues at the very beginning? Only because other physicists are all to busy with their stuff so that they have no time to read about "Transactional Interpretation?"

To be continued…

Continue with Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation:

This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating “boundaries'’ of the transaction. The transaction is explicitly nonlocal because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena. When we stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves from the star been traveling for a hundred years to reach our eyes, but the advanced waves generated by absorption processes within our eyes have reached a hundred years into the past, completing the transaction that permitted the star to shine in our direction.

So, Cramer is telling us that physics is much like business: the future and the past are signing a contract "for the purpose" of transferring energy, momentum, etc. It is interesting, who is choosing the exact purpose of this contract? Who and how decides whether it is going to be energy transfer or momentum transfer, or something else? The future is "enforcing correlations"? What correlations? What correlations exist between the universe and the universe? It all sounds much like a world salad. But let us wait. Maybe the "future" will bring some correlation between the TI and the reason Our eyes are allowing the star to shine! Unbelievable! But wait, "ours" means "whose?". What about dog’s eyes? What about a piece of dust in the cosmic space? The star is shining on all of them. It is also shining on itself. So what is really responsible for the star shining?

It is a serious interpretational problem for the Copenhagen interpretation that it characterizes as mathematical descriptions of the knowledge of observers the solutions of a simple second-order differential equation relating momentum, mass, and energy. Similarly, it is a problem for the transactional interpretation that it uses advanced solutions of wave equations for retroactive confirmation of quantum event transactions. While this provides the mechanism for its explicit nonlocality, the use of advanced solutions seems counterintuitive and contrary to common sense, if not to causality. Can this account of a quantum event be truly compatible with the austere formalism of quantum mechanics?

Which second order differential equation relates momentum, mass and energy? And again we have "quantum event". The author does not even try to define it.

From one perspective the advanced-retarded wave combinations used in the transactional description of quantum behavior are quite apparent in the Schrodinger-Dirac formalism itself, so much so as to be almost painfully obvious. Wigner’s time reversal operator is, after all, just the operation of complex conjugation, and the complex conjugate of a retarded wave is an advanced wave. What else, one might legitimately ask, could the ubiquitous psi* notations of the quantum wave mechanics formalism possibly denote except that the time reversed (or advanced) counterparts of normal (or retarded) wave functions are playing an important role in a quantum event? What could an overlap integral combining psi with psi* represent other than the probability of a transaction through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves? At minimum it should be clear that the the transactional interpretation is not a clumsy appendage gratuitously grafted onto the formalism of quantum mechanics but rather a description which, after one learns the key to the language, is found to be graphically represented within the quantum wave mechanics formalism itself.

But quantum mechanics is not just Schrodinger-Dirac formalism! There are books about matrix quantum mechanics, and about quantum mechanics in Hilbert space. The real power of quantum mechanics is somewhere else, not in the wave equations, but in the much more general Hilbert space and algebraic formulation. Is the author trying to tell us that in this much more general and powerful applications his idea fails completely? Wigner’s time reversal is NOT just the operation of complex conjugation. I am sure Cramer knows it perfectly, but he chooses to forget it right now. How time reversal is implemented (if it is implemented at all) depends on the representation. There infinitely many possible representations. The whole book by Dirac is about representations. We can have position, momentum, energy, and all kinds of mixed representations - which we select according to the problem at hand. The form of a particular operator (time reversal, for instance) depends on the chosen representation (that is an orthonormal "bases" in the Hilbert space). In this more general approach psi* is an element of a different Hilbert space - the dual space. Therefore psi and psi* never meet! They live in different worlds!

To be continued…

USA is going downhill faster and faster. Reuters brings the most alarming news today: USA is telling the world what “freedom” means when interpreted

Last Update: Monday, April 25, 2005. 9:40am (AEST)
US incarceration rate climbs

The US penal system, the world’s largest, maintained its steady growth in 2004,
the US Department of Justice reported.

The latest official half-yearly figures found the nation’s prison and jail
population at 2,131,180 in the middle of last year, an increase of 2.3 per cent
over 2003.

The United States has incarcerated 726 people per 100,000 of its population,
seven to 10 times as many as most other democracies.

The rate for England is 142 per 100,000, for France 91 and for Japan 58.

The figures issued by the department’s statistical unit showed that 12.6 per
cent of black males in their late 20s were behind bars.

The comparable rate for Hispanic males was 3.6 per cent and for whites 1.7 per
cent.

“Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the
world in imprisonment,” said Jason Ziedenberg, executive director of the Justice
Policy Institute, a think-tank that studies prison issues.

According to the Justice Department, violent crime in the United States fell by
over 33 per cent from 1994 to 2003 and property crimes fell by 23 per cent.

Yet the prison population has continued to climb, increasing an annual average
of 3.5 per cent since 1995, partly due to high recidivism.

Within three years of their release, two of every three prisoners are back
behind bars.

Criminologists attribute the growth in the prison population to “get tough on
crime” policies that have subjected hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug
and property offenders to long mandatory sentences.

“We have to be concerned about an overloaded system which sentences many
offenders quickly and is not doing a good job of sorting out people who should
be incarcerated from people for whom other responses would produce better, less
expensive results,” said Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing
Project, a Washington think-tank.

The rise in the prison population varies by state.

Since 1998, 12 states experienced stable or declining incarceration rates but
crime rates in those states declined at the same rate as in the other 38.

Texas, with 704 per 100,000 people in state prisons, incarcerates almost seven
times as many as Maine, at 149 per 100,000.

It costs around $22,000 to lock up one person for a year.

The United States spends about $57 billion annually on its prison and jail
system.

Women remain the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, increasing by
2.9 per cent over the year to over 103,000.

In 1980, the United States imprisoned 12,000 women.

In addition, the United States jails around 283,000 people with serious mental
illnesses and almost 92,000 foreigners.

This country is bringing the world to destruction. In science the situation is deteriorating as well, though not with the same speed. Not yet. A quote from Peter Woit blog:

Peter, it looks like there are two seperate issues here:

1) Emminent scientists with proven track records are attempting to think deeply about speculative ideas which appear completely crazy to others. Some, like Weinberg, even had the temerity to make an experimental prediction based on anthropic reasoning. Others, like Arkani-Hamed and Dimopolous, are continuing this ridiculous trend, making assumptions and following the reasoning through to extract experimental predictions from fine-tuning scenarios.

This abandonment of science from some of its leading stars is appalling. People simply shouldn’t consider these ideas as it’s obvious that they’re wrong and won’t lead anywhere.

2) Other leading scientists, like Dyson and Vilenkin, are receiving money from templeton, an organisation which clearly has an agenda that many of us disagree with. While there’s no suggestion that templeton is dictating the research of these people, it’s disgusting that they would accept the money, especially in the current climate where the DOE are showering departments with funds.

We continue with J. G. Cramer’s "An overview of the Transactional Interpretation". Second paragraph reads:

At the interpretational level, the nonlocality of the quantum mechanics formalism is a source of some difficulty for the Copenhagen interpretation. It is accommodated in the CI through Heisenberg’s “knowledge interpretation'’ of the quantum mechanical state vector as a mathematical description of the state of observer knowledge rather than as a description of the objective state of the physical system observed. For example, Heisenberg in a 1960 letter to Renninger wrote[3], “The act of recording, on the other hand, which leads to the reduction of the state, is not a physical, but rather, so to say, a mathematical process. With the sudden change of our knowledge also the mathematical presentation of our knowledge undergoes of course a sudden change.'’ The knowledge interpretation’s account of state vector collapse and nonlocality is internally consistent but is regarded by some (including the author) as subjective and intellectually unappealing. It is the source of much of the recent dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen interpretation.

Nonlocality - if there is any at all, is not the source of any difficulty. The difficulty lies somewhere else: in the fact that QM is incomplete. It if was complete, nobody would pay any attention to apparent difficulties with nonlocality. The "knowledge interpretation" is indeed a problem, as we are not told how to describe individual physical system in an objective way. Heisenberg did not know the answer, so he tried to make his failure into a failure of everybody. But the "knowledge interpretation is not internally consistent" at all. Because the "knowledge" itself is not a part of the theory. A theory that pretends to be generally valid but then blames the most important process (verification of the theory with experiments) on external concepts that are not part of the theory (change of "knowledge") is not internally consistent. It is being considered as "internally consistent" only due to wishful thinking and lack of courage of the physicists and philosophers. The dissatisfaction with the Copenhagen interpretation because of its "knowledge interpretation" is not "recent" at all. It is as old as quantum mechanics itself.

The author has proposed an alternative and more objective interpretation of the quantum mechanics formalism called the transactional interpretation (TI). It employs an explicitly nonsocial “transaction'’ model for quantum events. This model describes any quantum event as a “handshake'’ executed through an exchange of advanced and retarded waves and is based on time symmetric Lorentz-Dirac electrodynamics and on “absorber theory'’ originated by Wheeler and Feynman. In the absorber theory description any emission process makes advanced waves (schematically represented by the time dependence exp(i omega t)) on an equal basis with ordinary “retarded'’ waves (exp(-i omega t)). Both advanced and retarded waves are valid orthogonal solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation, but in conventional electrodynamics the advanced solutions are conventionally rejected as unphysical or acausal. Wheeler and Feynman used a more subtle boundary condition mechanism to eliminate the non-causal effects of the advanced solutions.

Here we meet the first undefined concept: "quantum event". What is a "quantum event?" How does it differ from an "ordinary event"? It is a always a good idea to define the concepts one is using - otherwise no one will be able to understand the author. Then we have the concept of "advanced and retarded waves", but we are not told what kind of waves they are supposed to be? Waves of what in what? If "waves" are at the foundations of QM, then we immediately have a problem. Because quantum mechanics works perfectly well in a two-dimensional Hilbert space, that is how the simplest spin system is being described. But then there is no place fro "waves" whatsoever. Is the author going to abandon 90% of quantum mechanics that deals with spin systems? "Both advanced and retarded waves are valid orthogonal solutions of the electromagnetic wave equation"??? This sentence does not have any meaning whatsoever. What are "orthogonal solutions?" Orthogonal to what? In which space they are orthogonal? What has electrodynamics to do with quantum mechanics? For instance with quantum gravity?

In the Wheeler-Feynman picture when the retarded wave is absorbed at some time in the future, a process is initiated by which canceling advanced waves from the absorbers erase all traces of advanced waves and their “advanced'’ effects, thereby preserving causality. An observer not privy to these inner mechanisms of nature would perceive only that a retarded wave had gone from the emitter to the absorber. The absorber theory description, unconventional though it is, leads to exactly the same observations as conventional electrodynamics. But it differs in that there has been a two-way exchange, a “handshake'’ across space-time which led to the transfer of energy from emitter to absorber.

Now, if we have a more complicated theory, that involves more processes, including mysterious "erasing all traces", but "leads to exactly the same observations" as the simpler theory - what’s the point of developing such a theory?

To be continued…

Let’s discuss Cramer’s “Overview of the Transactional Interpretation“. The paper was published in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics 27, 227 (1988). This journal is known from its rather liberal attitude to the quality of the papers that are being accepted. Some papers are very good and innovative, some are speculative and controversials, some are simply wrong. But in almost every issue one can find something of interest. After a short introduction Cramer proceeds to the first section "Summary of the Transactional Interpretation". Let us analyze this summary, paragraph after paragraph, and let us see what makes sense and what not.

Albert Einstein distrusted quantum mechanics (QM) in part because he perceived in its formalism what he called “spooky actions at a distance'’[2]. The action-at-a-distance characteristic that worried Einstein is now called nonlocality. It is generally acknowledged to be inextricably embedded in the quantum mechanics formalism. Let us then define our terms. Locality means that isolated parts of any quantum mechanical system out of speed-of-light contact with other parts of that system are allowed to retain definite relationships or correlations only through memory of previous contact. Nonlocality means that in quantum mechanical systems relationships or correlations not possible through simple memory are somehow being enforced faster-than-light across space and time. Close examination of the correlations present in recent experimental tests of Bell’s inequality provide concrete examples of such nonlocality.

Einstein did not reject quantum mechanics because its "spooky action at a distance". He simply noticed that QM is incomplete. In particular he was unhappy with the role that is being played by "chance": “God does not play dice" - he would say to Bohr, and Bohr would respond: “Einstein, stop telling God what to do". Nonlocality is not generally acknowledged to be inextricably embedded in the quantum mechanics formalism. The title of a standard textbook by Rudolf Haag, one of the seniors of quantum field theory, and a founder of algberaic approach, is "Local quantum physics". In Concluding Remarks to the Second Edition of Local Quantum Physics Haag writes:

The conceptual structure proposed above incorporates the essential message of quantum-physics and does not seem to be at odds with known experimental findings. At the present stage it is not clear whether this structure should be regarded only as an idealization suitable in a certain regime of phenomena or whether a fundamental theory based on this picture can be developed. This would demand a more general definition of events and links, in other words a deeper understanding of the "division problem". It might demand a finer division of "decisions of nature", related to the quantum of action rather than to collision processes between-stable structures. The relation of events to space-time must be clarified. It is here that some differences from the standard formalism will be manifested. One of the factors in favor of the picture presented is precisely this point.- It seems ultimately unsatisfactory to accept space-time as a given arena in which physics has to play. This feature persists even in general relativity where a 4-dimensional space-time continuum is a priori assumed and only its metric structure depends on the physical situation. In particular, in the absence of all matter and all events there would still remain this continuum, void of significance. This aspect was one of the factors that motivated the author to introduce the notion of "event" as a basic concept with the ultimate aim of understanding space-time geometry as the relations between events [Haag 90a]. The other motivation was, of course, the desire to separate the laws of quantum physics from the presence of an observer [Haag 90b]. In this respect it appears that theorists discussing quantum processes inside a star or in the early universe necessarily transcend Bohr’s epistemology.

Usually the orthodox interpretation is then silently ignored but there are some efforts to build a rational bridge from the standard formalism to such areas of physical theory, most prominently the work by Gell-Mann and Hartle [Gen 90, 94]. It uses the concept of "consistent histories" introduced by Griffiths [Griff 84] and extended by Omnes [Omnes 1994]. One criticism of this concept is that consistent histories embodying some established facts are highly non-unique. This led Omnes to the distinction between "reliable properties" and truth.
Still another motivation comes from the following consideration. The general mathematical structure of standard quantum theory is extremely flexible. Its connection to physical phenomena depends on our ability to translate the description of circumstances (e.g., experimental apparatus) to a specification of operators in Hilbert space. Apart from the case of very simple systems, the success in this endeavor is due to the fact that for most purposes no precise mathematical specification is needed. Thus, for the treatment of collision processes in quantum field theory it suffices to give a division of "all" observables into subsets which relate to specified space-time regions. However, in addition to-this classification of observables one uses the postulate of strict relativistic causality. Some consequences of this postulate have been verified by the check of dispersion relations to regions with an extension far below 10-13 cm. On the other hand it seems highly unlikely that the construction of an instrument of intrinsic size of, say, 10-15 cm and the control of its placement to such an accuracy could be possible even in principle, i.e., that we may assume the existence of such observables. But it is not unlikely that we can attribute to high energy events a localization of this order of magnitude though we have no means of verifying this in the individual case. Thus the indirect check by means of dispersion relations could be explained by the existence of sharply localized events rather than sharply localized observables.
The realization of a specific result in each individual measurement has been recognized by many authors as a challenge to the theory of measurement which cannot be explained using only the dynamic law of quantum theory applied to the interaction of a quantum system with a macroscopic device but needs an additional postulate. In the words of Omnes this is "a law of nature unlike any other". In a series of papers Blanchard and Jadczyk suggested a formalism in which irreversibility is introduced in the dynamics of the coupling of a quantum system with a classical one and thereby obtained a (phenomenological) description of this aspect of measurements (see, e.g., [Blanch 93, 95]).
The evolutionary understanding of reality was proposed many years ago by A.N. Whitehead [Whitehead 1929]. His writings have influenced philosophers and theologians, but few physicists. A notable exception are the papers by H.P. Stapp in which he outlines a theory of events having many features in common with the evolutionary picture described above [Stapp 77, 79]. It is a pity that these seminal papers did not receive the attention they deserve and unfortunate that I became aware of them too late to incorporate an adequate discussion of this work. The first two postulates in [Stapp 77] are identical with those underlying the evolutionary picture. Differences in views concern his postulate 3 (momentum conservation) and the meaning of causal independence. Especially the discussion of the EPR-effect in [Stapp 79] differs from the treatment above and leads to a different assessment of the lessons. In physics D. Finkelstein suggested an approach to the space-time problem based on similar concepts [Fink 68]. C.F. von Weizsacker tried for many years to draw attention to the fundamental difference between facts as related to the past and possibilities as related to the future and argued that for this reason the statistical statements in physics must always be future directed [Weiz 73].
‘Whatever the ultimate fate of these ideas, we should recognize that the standard formalism of quantum physics is not sacrosanct and will probably be modified in future theories. With regard to the interpretation there is no basic disagreement with the epistemological analysis of Niels Bohr but an appeal to accept that physical theory always transcends the realm of experience, introducing concepts which can never be directly verified by experience though they must be compatible with it.

When discussing Bell’s inequality Haag writes (pp. 107-108)

Axiom E combines several features abstracted from conventional field theoretic models. The main principle expressed by it is the causal structure of events. Two observables associated with space-like separated regions are compatible. The measurement of one does not disturb the measurement of the other. The operators representing these observables must commute.
To avoid possible confusion it must be stressed that this has nothing to do with the discussion around the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and Bell’s in-equality. There one is dealing with the joint probability distribution of measure­ments on two far separated particles coming from a common root e.g. as decay products of an unstable particle. If a neutral particle decays into two oppositely charged ones it will surprise nobody that a charge measurement on one of the decay products suffices to tell us the charge of the other one, no matter how far away it is. This is due to the correlation resulting from charge conservation, not to a causal influence between the charge measurements in space-like separated regions. The total experiment includes, of course, the preparation of the state of the unstable particle, by which the charge (resp. spin) are fixed. If, instead of the charge, we consider the angular momentum, the situation becomes indeed more curious. Instinctively one would like to associate with each of the particles (once they are sufficiently separated) an "objective", "real" state which determines the probability of finding a specific result in the subsequent measurement of the angular momentum component in any chosen direction. As Bell has shown [Bell 64] this picture, together with angular momentum conservation, demands that a certain inequality must hold for the joint probability distributions for such measurements on the two particles. This inequality is not satisfied in the quantum mechanical description. Very fine experiments have been performed to check this inequality. They appear to speak for quantum mechanics and against the inequality. What is the message of this? It does not relate to a physical influence propagating faster than light but it illustrates in a particularly drastic way that the concept of a materially defined "physical system" has to be handled with extreme care. This latter is a mental construct whose correspondence to "reality" is (sometimes) questionable (compare [d’Espagnat 1979]). We shall give a thorough discussion of this problem in Chapter VII. Here we note only that the existence of correlations between far space-like separated events does not contradict the limitation of causal influences to time-like directions as de­manded by axiom E.

Thus we see that Cramer’s statement about non-locality is at least misleading.

To be continued…

After searching the net I realized that the movie has already been dealt with on the Peter Woit blog “Not Even Wrong” and also in an article in Popular Mechanics. Popular Mechanics quotes David Z. Albert:

One of the few legitimate academics in the film, David Albert, a philosopher of physics at Columbia University, is outraged at the final product. He says that he spent four hours patiently explaining to the filmmakers why quantum mechanics has nothing to do with consciousness or spirituality, only to see his statements edited and cut to the point where it appears as though he and the spirit warrior are speaking with one voice. “I was taken,” Albert admits. “I was really gullible, but I learned my lesson.”

I would not recommend Popular Mechanics to anyone who really wants to know the truth. David’s Albert statement that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with consciousness - if he really stated it this way - is his personal opinion that is questionable. It is enough to search arxiv.org for the term “mind” and you will find several papers by H. P. Stapp who is trying to make some progress in this area. Stapp’s papers are not very convincing, yet the fact is that quantum theory is not yet understood, there is a vivid discussion about its foundations, and there is no clear cut solution that would be accepted by all experts. Whether it has something to do with consciousness, what kind of consciousness, and what is consciousness anyway - these are all valid questions.

There are some comments about David Albert on another blog Preposterous Universe

David Albert is also known for being perhaps the sole respectable person to appear in the movie What the #$*! Do We Know?, a docu-drama about quantum mechanics and consciousness. (I haven’t actually seen the movie, but Peter Woit has. FYI, “#$*!” is usually pronounced as “bleep”, but more colorful renderings are allowed.) The movie was made by crackpots, who want to argue that consciousness and quantum mechanics are inextricably intertwined, to the extent that we can literally change reality by appropriately focusing our mental states. David was asked by the producers to sit for an extended interview about the mysteries of quantum mechanics, and he innocently agreed. After five hours of filming, in which he patiently explained to them that their views were completely crazy, they chopped up the footage into short sounds bites of quotes like “Yes, that’s an important question,” and interspersed them throughout the film. David is on record as saying that his views were dramatically misrepresented by the movie. Another lesson learned: if anyone wants to get you on film, you have to establish that you trust them not to twist your words against themselves.

Now, read the abstract of the paper by late Euan Squires “What are quantum theorists doing at a conference on consciousness?”

The reason why orthodox quantum theory necessarily invokes consciousness is explained. Several procedures whereby the Born probability rule can be introduced are discussed, and reasons are given for prefering one in which consciousness selects a unique realised world. Consciousness is something outside of the laws of physics (quantum mechanics), but it has a real effect upon the experienced world. Finally, orthodox quantum theory is shown to require that consciousness acts non-locally.

Or, even better, read the paper. Many of the statements of the film makers may have been crazy indeed, yet to negate the fact the same subject is being discussed by the physicists as an “open question” was not only a mistake, it was sending a distorted view of the real situation as seen by the scientists, Remember that David Z. Albert was promoting Bohmian mechanics - a theory that is seriously flawed and is itself being promoted by some physicists while hiding its serious flaws behing a fancy mathematical terminology.

Erich Joos, ends his 1999 paper “Elements of Environmental Decoherence” with the following sentence:

So it seems that both alternatives still have conceptual problems and
both are hard to test because of decoherence. We should not be surprised,
however, if it finally turned out that we do not know enough about consciousness
and its relation to the physical world to solve the quantum mystery.

Even if Joos’ paper itself can be criticised for several reasons, nevertheless - physicists are aware of the possible, perhaps even very important, connection between the consciousness and the message of quantum theory.

But, according to some theories, the observer is still more deeply involved in this quantum event, the determination of the location of a particle. Before the electron gets whacked with the other particle, it is said to be in a state of “superposition,” existing partially in all possible locations. It is at the moment of observation by a conscious mind that the electron “chooses” one of the possible locations to materialize in, collapsing it’s wave-packet and becoming a particle for the split second it takes to be hit by the other particle. David Albert, in the book “Quantum Mechanics and Experience,” says:

“perhaps the collapse occurs precisely at the last possible moment; perhaps it always occurs precisely at the level of consciousness, and perhaps, moreover, consciousness is always the agent that brings it about.”

Albert goes on to say,

“The brain of a sentient being may enter a state wherein states connected with various different conscious experiences are superposed; and at such moments the mind connected with that brain opens it’s inner eye and gazes on the brain, and that causes the entire system (brain, measuring instrument, measured system, everything) to collapse…”

Therefore, if this theory is true, consciousness is essential to the reality of things for it is consciousness that collapses the subatomic particles that make up everything from superposition into a definite position, changing the Universe from an aggregation of probability waves and superposed particles into the somewhat more definite reality that we know. And that, of course, is the meaning of the Participatory Anthropic Principle, that the Universe needs conscious observers to bring it from existing in all probabilities into one reality. We are not detached observers of a movie-reality playing before us that we are powerless to interact with. We are, in a certain sense, the cameramen.

The point is that we do not know what consciousness is - we have just a rough idea, but no clear cut understanding and no place in our formalism for it. What if it is the Universe itself that is conscious - in a sense - and “we”, human observers, are not as important as the inventors of the Participatory Anthropic Principle would like us to think that we are ….

After some traveling around the globe I am back to my blogging. Instead of continuing with "What is time?" theme - which does not really deserve any more ridicule than it was already assigned to, I thought it is worthwhile to spend some time/energy on commenting upon the famous documentary "What The Bleep Do We Know?" The Website says:

What the Bleep Do We Know!? gives voice to the modern day radical souls of science, bringing their genius to millions. These maverick heroes at the cutting edge of their fields are at the forefront of a Paradigm shift even greater than those of the geniuses who preceded them. And this shift involves the greatest uncharted territory yet -

Human Consciousness itself.

Who are these "radical souls of science?" These geniuses? Dr. John Hagelin, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, Dr. William Tiller, Dr. Fred Alan Wolf. ? Let’s start from the end. What about Fred Alan Wolf? We go to the web page "Dr. Fred Alan Wolf THE YOGA OF TIME TRAVEL: A Bleeping Physicist’s Prospective" and we read there:

Dr. Wolf’s Santa Monica Bleep presentation is entitled THE YOGA OF TIME TRAVEL: A Bleeping Physicist’s Prospective. He will be showing us how quantum physics shows that time travel is inevitable and how the mind plays a key role in its achievement.

# Participants will be able to comprehend how the concepts of time and mind are reconcilable—and can, in fact, have the same meaning.
# Participants will recognize that the mind works by a process of defocusing and focusing, which means learning how to let go of memories and learning how to focus in on possibilities.
# Participants will see that the practice of focusing and defocusing creates subjective time and makes time travel a necessary part of the way that mind functions and the way time works.

Are you having fun already? Not too fast! Physicist Fred Alan Wolf is not publishing in physics journals. Go to the page "Here are my articles and reprints that you can download for free!" and you will find that the publications of FAW are not targeting scientists, and they are not written in a scientific language. Therefore analyzing them, taking them part, making fun of them, etc. would be all too easy. We need to start with something more ambitious, something at least as ambitious as "What is time?" by Connes and Rovelli. Looking for "scientific" papers that are being quoted by FAW as a basis for his speculations, we find Cramer’s "Transactional Interpretation" papers quoted in particular in Wolf’s "The Timing of Conscious Experience: A Causality-Violating, Two …" The abstract of the paper can be found in Krasnov Institute Seminars Abstracts. So we have something to start with. Cramer’s papers are available online from his website. We will start wit An Overview of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", International Journal of Theoretical Physics 27, 227 (1988); Of course an "overview" is not the same as the "full presentation", yet it has been published independently, so it should make sense (or no) when read independently - otherwise what would be the point of publishing it?

To be continued…