Schroedinger's Cat, many-worlds interpretation and free will

[Bahman]

First, what is Schroedinger’s cat: Assume that you build a quantum gun which probability of shooting and not shooting are 50% and 50% respectively. You put this gun together with an alive being, lets say a cat, in a box and close the box. This means that you are not aware of quantum state of gun hence the state of life of cat meaning that cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened. You can read more here. This means that even a macroscopic being could be in a quantum state as it applies to the cats life in this experiment.

Second, what is many-world interpretation: Many-world interpretation was suggested To resolve the Schroedinger’s cat paradox meaning that quantum state of a system never collapse hence there should exist two world in this thought experiment that in one cat is alive and in another one cat is dead. You can read more about many-world interpretation here.

Third, what is free will: the ability to decide in a unbiased situation with at least two options, in another word when the two options are equally likely prior to decision(two options are liked equally). This is similar to Schroedinger’s cat thought. In another word, our mind is in state of affair with two outcomes both have the similar likelihood from third person perspective. What decision the person make affect the microscopic state of person being so the question is what would be state of affair from third person perspective which is paradoxical.

Many-worlds interpretation of course can resolve this paradox with the price that free will is an illusion.

Your thought.

 

[anixx]

First, what is Schroedinger’s cat: Assume that you build a quantum gun which probability of shooting and not shooting are 50% and 50% respectively. You put this gun together with an alive being, lets say a cat, in a box and close the box. This means that you are not aware of quantum state of gun hence the state of life of cat meaning that cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened. You can read more here. This means that even a macroscopic being could be in a quantum state as it applies to the cats life in this experiment.

Second, what is many-world interpretation: Many-world interpretation was suggested To resolve the Schroedinger’s cat paradox meaning that quantum state of a system never collapse hence there should exist two world in this thought experiment that in one cat is alive and in another one cat is dead. You can read more about many-world interpretation here.

Third, what is free will: the ability to decide in a unbiased situation with at least two options, in another word when the two options are equally likely prior to decision(two options are liked equally). This is similar to Schroedinger’s cat thought. In another word, our mind is in state of affair with two outcomes both have the similar likelihood from third person perspective. What decision the person make affect the microscopic state of person being so the question is what would be state of affair from third person perspective which is paradoxical.

Many-worlds interpretation of course can resolve this paradox with the price that free will is an illusion.

Your thought.

Well, first of all, you would hear the gun releasing…
Secondly, quantum state and actual state are two opposing realities. Quantum state takes into account possibility, actual state is the possibility made aware through choice. Once you open the box quantum state becomes actual state, forever. The contrary possibility disappears. Though, quantum state is a theoretical state, that exists only in principle, and not in reality. Schroedinger’s cat (or principle) is a very high level theory, which would imply that our free-will impacts reality. The cat is dead, even if you don’t look at her, or open the box, doesn’t change the fact. It’s actually a discussion about something that isn’t known. And it goes all the way to quantum physics.
In a more christian perspective, this principle can be applied to everlasting life. Once you open the box (when one dies), does one really find out: Heaven or Hell? We have the weapons and the means to discern these things, but at the end of the day, what you chose is what you get. So, free-will. By free-will you choose or reject reality, you don’t change it. Reality in essence, of course, Not in the elements of expression of reality, like you wreck your car into a tree. That doesn’t change reality, but the way it is expressed.

 

[empther]

First, what is Schroedinger’s cat: Assume that you build a quantum gun which probability of shooting and not shooting are 50% and 50% respectively. You put this gun together with an alive being, lets say a cat, in a box and close the box. This means that you are not aware of quantum state of gun hence the state of life of cat meaning that cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened. You can read more here. This means that even a macroscopic being could be in a quantum state as it applies to the cats life in this experiment.

Where do the cat and box come from? God created them.

meaning that cat is both alive and dead until the box is opened.

The cat is either alive or dead before the box is opened,
and I can determine which by opening the box and looking inside.

Trying to explain the universe and reality, and ( are you kidding me? ) free will through quantum mechanics is a waste of time.
Quantum mechanics can do nothing where there is absolutely nothing to work on. God had to create something “in the beginning” ( Genesis 1;1 )

 

[GEddie]

The original SC scenario does not involve a gun.

Instead, there is a piece of radioactive metal inside a detector. The half life of the radioactive metal is such that the odds are 1/2 of it emitting a particle, triggering the detector, which breaks a cyanide gas bulb and kills the cat.

Therefore there is nothing to hear, and you would not know what happened to her until you opened the box. Radioactivity is random, so this is a genuine quantum event.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Bahman]

Well, first of all, you would hear the gun releasing…
Secondly, quantum state and actual state are two opposing realities. Quantum state takes into account possibility, actual state is the possibility made aware through choice.

Quantum states are all actuals in many-world interpretation where as in single-world interpretation only one has a chance to become actual. The Schroedinger’s cat thought experiment however is a paradox in single-world interpretation since it relates a quantum state picture which is probabilistic. In the first picture both appear as a reality and in the second one the state of being is undermined.

Once you open the box quantum state becomes actual state, forever. The contrary possibility disappears.

Just in the case of single-world interpretation.

Though, quantum state is a theoretical state, that exists only in principle, and not in reality. Schroedinger’s cat (or principle) is a very high level theory, which would imply that our free-will impacts reality. The cat is dead, even if you don’t look at her, or open the box, doesn’t change the fact.

No, you cannot say that. Cat is in quantum state, neither dead or alive until you open the box and that is all the trick behind the paradox, otherwise it wouldn’t bother many thinkers like Einstein, Schroedinger, …

It’s actually a discussion about something that isn’t known. And it goes all the way to quantum physics.

Correct. So in reality the death and life of cat depends on your experiment in single-world interpretation.

In a more christian perspective, this principle can be applied to everlasting life. Once you open the box (when one dies), does one really find out: Heaven or Hell? We have the weapons and the means to discern these things, but at the end of the day, what you chose is what you get. So, free-will. By free-will you choose or reject reality, you don’t change it. Reality in essence, of course, Not in the elements of expression of reality, like you wreck your car into a tree. That doesn’t change reality, but the way it is expressed.

And that is the question behind the paradox of free will. How possibly you could choose between two options if you like them equally? Suppose a person like X and Y equally. You put this person in a room and ask him or her to choose between one (third person perspective). Situation like this is paradoxical.

 

[Bahman]

The original SC scenario does not involve a gun.

Instead, there is a piece of radioactive metal inside a detector. The half life of the radioactive metal is such that the odds are 1/2 of it emitting a particle, triggering the detector, which breaks a cyanide gas bulb and kills the cat.

I just simplify it.

Therefore there is nothing to hear, and you would not know what happened to her until you opened the box. Radioactivity is random, so this is a genuine quantum event.
ICXC NIKA

It is in fact a very important thing since the cat’s life is a quantum state, that is not something you can see in normal life. It is not about the fact whether the cat is dead or alive, but most importantly it is the fact that the cat is neither alive nor dead until a person open the box and this per se disturb the quantum state of cat’s life which cause the death or grant life.

That is why that this experiment was subject of discussion between great thinkers, like Einstein, Schroedinger, …

 

[Pat_Albertson]

The Everett many worlds interpretation does not do away with free will because you aren’t aware of the other you. You still “ride” into one (or the other) of two (or more) universes based upon your free choice.

If you choose to answer “no” to what I have just said, then what do you think “the other you” just said?

 

[Bahman]

Where do the cat and box come from? God created them.

The cat is either alive or dead before the box is opened,
and I can determine which by opening the box and looking inside.

Trying to explain the universe and reality, and ( are you kidding me? ) free will through quantum mechanics is a waste of time.
Quantum mechanics can do nothing where there is absolutely nothing to work on. God had to create something “in the beginning” ( Genesis 1;1 )

You always misread my post because of your biased judgment about me.

It is not about whether quantum mechanics can describe free or not but about the similarity of two different thought experiment.

Suppose that there is a person in state of mind who wants to choose between X and Y but the person like both equally. You ask the person to choose one and the person after a while confirms that he has chosen one. The question is what can cause a choice in the case that both option are liked equally. What is your answer to this?

 

[Bahman]

The Everett many worlds interpretation does not do away with free will because you aren’t aware of the other you. You still “ride” into one (or the other) of two (or more) universes based upon your free choice.

If you choose to answer “no” to what I have just said, then what do you think “the other you” just said?

No. The Everett many-worlds interpretation in fact eliminate that actuality of a decision, reducing a decision to a branching process hence free will is gone. You have to strive to randomness in single-world explanation hence there is no free will either in this picture unless you have another candidate rather than randomness which I don’t know what it could be.

 

[abucs]

So let’s say you keep the box closed and a few days later there starts to develop a bad smell from the box.

You open up the box and the dead cat has been decomposing.

What ‘caused’ the choice of the gun firing in this instance?

 

[Bahman]

So let’s say you keep the box closed and a few days later there starts to develop a bad smell from the box.

You open up the box and the dead cat has been decomposing.

What ‘caused’ the choice of the gun firing in this instance?

In the original experiment it was assumed that the gun either fire or it doesn’t after certain time period, lets call it T. The basic idea behind this thought experiment is that the cat is an quantum state of dead and alive once T expires since her life is attached to a quantum state of gun hence it is only by opening the box that we change the mixed quantum state through our measurement and discovering death or life.

 

[polytropos]

No. The Everett many-worlds interpretation in fact eliminate that actuality of a decision, reducing a decision to a branching process hence free will is gone. You have to strive to randomness in single-world explanation hence there is no free will either in this picture unless you have another candidate rather than randomness which I don’t know what it could be.

The cases aren’t analogous. If the two possibilities for free decisions are extreme modal realism (ie. all possibilities are actualized in distinct, equally real worlds) and genuine randomness (which seems to be the disjunction you are taking the QM case to represent), then there is no freedom.

 

[Bahman]

The cases aren’t analogous. If the two possibilities for free decisions are extreme modal realism (ie. all possibilities are actualized in distinct, equally real worlds) and genuine randomness (which seems to be the disjunction you are taking the QM case to represent), then there is no freedom.

Could you please elaborate?

Lets stick to single-world interpretation and forget about randomness. There is no chance that an agent could make an decision when options are liked equally. In simple word the agent is trapped. Otherwise, one option is liked more than another and there is no need for free will since there is preference toward an option than another and agent would choose the one who s/he prefers more. So there is no real meaning for free will in single-world interpretation hence many-worlds interpretation is necessary to have free will.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

First, what is Schroedinger’s cat: Assume that you build a quantum gun which probability of shooting and not shooting are 50% and 50% respectively. …

Nothing in Schroeder’s thought experiment has anything to do with our daily life, It is a labratory experiment only. We don’t live in his laboratory. In fact, it has been demonstrated that in an actual laboratory setting, as opposed to a thought problem, the test object would have to be much smaller than a cat and environmental factors would have to be much different. Nothing in quantum mechanics has anything to do with free will. Besides, the real world we live in is not governed, macroscopically, by quanturm particles, we don’t live inside of an atom where these activities take place. The whole thing is a red herring as far as free will is concerned.

And another thing no one really knows what a " wave function " really is. See the following from National Geographic Daily News : … At the very heart of quantum theory—which is used to describe how subatomic particles like electrons and protons behave—is the idea of a wave function. A wave function describes all of the possible states that such particles can have, including properties like energy, momentum, and position.

“The wave function is a combination of all of the possible wave functions that exist,” says Martell. “A wave function for a particle says there’s some probability that it can be in any allowed position. But you can’t necessarily say you know that it’s in a particular position without observing it. If you put an electron around the nucleus, it can have any of the allowed states or positions, unless we look at it and know where it is.”

But we do know that when not interferred with the quanta behave naturally, as they should. It is only when we attempt ot observe the quanta that we find that what we " observe " depends on what we are looking for. The observing lab equipment disturbs the natural state of the quanta. So we really do not know what the quanta is in its natural state.

Linus2nd

 

[Pat_Albertson]

No. The Everett many-worlds interpretation in fact eliminate that actuality of a decision,** reducing a decision to a branching process** hence free will is gone.

But how do you know the branching process even exists? You don’t have any experience of it, nor does anybody else… On the other hand, you (or at least I) do know free will exists because you (well, then I, or me, I know I experience it directly) experience it directly. Theoretical explanations of the world must encompass all of the data, not just some of it.

You have to strive to randomness in single-world explanation hence there is no free will either in this picture unless you have another candidate rather than randomness which I don’t know what it could be.

You will have to translate “strive to randomness” into English for the rest of us, because right now that is an unintelligible phrase.

 

[polytropos]

There is no chance that an agent could make an decision when options are liked equally. In simple word the agent is trapped.

Nonsense. If I like both options equally and I know that, then I have nothing to lose by picking one over the other. I just pick one.

That doesn’t mean that I picked the one I picked randomly. I picked it for a reason, namely the fact that I liked it. (I tend to deny that rather-thans are necessary for specifying decisions. A decision can be rational and free without my being able to give you a reason for my choosing A instead of B. I merely need a reason for choosing A.)

Otherwise, one option is liked more than another and there is no need for free will since there is preference toward an option than another and agent would choose the one who s/he prefers more.

Goodness and its many guises are not, in my view, so easily quantified, so one’s reaction to the differing goodnesses of two options is not a deterministic inclination to select the greatest goodness.

One option one might be confronted with is between sinning and abstaining from sin. The [apparent] goods in each case are not of the same sort. Freedom is not limited to an arbitrary selection of two things. I will be weighing moral principles against perceived benefits of indulgence, and there will be other factors involved as well (how well I have cultivated my virtues to respond more readily to actual goods, etc.). Can I be said to “prefer” one option or the other before choosing, such that my preference decides my choice? No.

So there is no real meaning for free will in single-world interpretation hence many-worlds interpretation is necessary to have free will.

I don’t see how single- or many-worlds interpretations of QM are relevant here.

 

[KingCoil]

Originally Posted by Bahman
First, what is Schroedinger’s cat: Assume that you build a quantum gun which probability of shooting and not shooting are 50% and 50% respectively. …

I don’t see anyone rebutting Linus2 telling everyone that they are into a silly exchange because it is all a thought experiment, and the laboratory itself is all in the mind of the author of the paradox.

The way I see it, there are no paradoxes in quantum mechanics except in the minds of the physicists who write about them paradoxes.

Quantum mechanics has to do with photons, and they exist in empirical reality, and particle physicists and engineers work with them to produce inventions like laser printers.

But tell me you guys here who are waxing so learned about the paradox cat, what practical uses do you or can you divine with the socalled paradoxes of quantum mechanics?

KingCoil

 

[empther]

I knew from post one this thread would be a hopeless mess.

You always misread my post because of your biased judgment about me.

It is not about whether quantum mechanics can describe free will? ] or not but about the similarity of two different thought experiment.

Free will has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, as somebody else mentioned, and should not have been mentioned in a thread about quantum mechanics, which seems to be whatever you want it to mean.
Quantum mechanics is too complicated to discuss thoroughly in a website forum like this.

 

[Bahman]

Nothing in Schroeder’s thought experiment has anything to do with our daily life, It is a labratory experiment only. We don’t live in his laboratory. In fact, it has been demonstrated that in an actual laboratory setting, as opposed to a thought problem, the test object would have to be much smaller than a cat and environmental factors would have to be much different. Nothing in quantum mechanics has anything to do with free will. Besides, the real world we live in is not governed, macroscopically, by quanturm particles, we don’t live inside of an atom where these activities take place. The whole thing is a red herring as far as free will is concerned.

Whether the is s relation with free will and quantum mechanics is subject of another thread.

This thought experiment is well accepted paradox among physicist most importantly those who pioneer the idea, such as Einstein, Schroedinger, etc. The idea is simple, could quantum mechanic manifest itself in our daily life. The answer is yes, example: computer you are using is a quantum device, superconductivity, quantum hall effect and many others. This is sentence from Einstein: “that the state of an unstable keg of gunpowder will, after a while, contain a superposition of both exploded and unexploded states”.

And another thing no one really knows what a " wave function " really is. See the following from National Geographic Daily News : … At the very heart of quantum theory—which is used to describe how subatomic particles like electrons and protons behave—is the idea of a wave function. A wave function describes all of the possible states that such particles can have, including properties like energy, momentum, and position.

We know what wave function is when it comes to describing subatomic system. Wave function has a expansion depending on observable namely eigenstates and the norm of the coefficient of each eigenstate give the probability that system is within that state and that is the idea behind Schroedinger’s cat experiment namely the state of life a being could coherently depend on state of a subatomic device since the state of life cat as well can be a superposition of death and life with appropriate probability.

“The wave function is a combination of all of the possible wave functions that exist,” says Martell. “A wave function for a particle says there’s some probability that it can be in any allowed position. But you can’t necessarily say you know that it’s in a particular position without observing it. If you put an electron around the nucleus, it can have any of the allowed states or positions, unless we look at it and know where it is.”

That is correct and that is the state of life or death of cat as well. State of life cat is unknown state unless we open the box and know what is the state of art, by which we disturb the quantum system.

But we do know that when not interferred with the quanta behave naturally, as they should. It is only when we attempt ot observe the quanta that we find that what we " observe " depends on what we are looking for. The observing lab equipment disturbs the natural state of the quanta. So we really do not know what the quanta is in its natural state.
Linus2nd

So the state of life cat is dead and alive.

 

[Bahman]

But how do you know the branching process even exists? You don’t have any experience of it, nor does anybody else… On the other hand, you (or at least I) do know free will exists because you (well, then I, or me, I know I experience it directly) experience it directly. Theoretical explanations of the world must encompass all of the data, not just some of it.

Many-worlds interpretation is in fact a solution that could resolve the paradox. This situation is paradoxical since from third person perspective, the person who does the experiment, the cat is in a mixture of death and life but from first person perspective, cat perspective view, she is either dead or alive.

You will have to translate “strive to randomness” into English for the rest of us, because right now that is an unintelligible phrase.

I meant how you could resolve the situation a person who is involved in a decision making with two options and they are liked equally? The person either stay in trap of uncertainty forever or s/he finally resolve the problem and make a decision. My question from you is that what candidate do you know that could resolve this situation if it is not randomness?