The ‘consciousness causes quantum collapse’ hypothesis (2017)

This kind of thing has always seemed redundant to me. We already have a perfectly good understanding of how decoherence causes effective collapse, by making branches of the wavefunction unable to interfere with each other. This follows automatically from the basic rules of quantum mechanics, without having to add any extra ingredients, and is absolutely necessary to get the predictions to come out right (e.g. in cosmology, where there were no conscious observers at all).

This article proposes to add an extra, ad hoc collapse mechanism determined by a system's integrated information, but what's the point? At best, it will be a more complicated rephrasing of an effect that already happens automatically, in which case it is unnecessary by Occam's razor.

This all fell from Eugene Wigner's ideas, https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments... -- and he was convinced (quite rightly in my opinion) that "consciousness" causes wave function collapse. The only mistake there perhaps is thinking that consciousness is unique to humans (or any "living" thing.) Consciousness itself has traditionally been defined as a product of the brain; I think at some point we'll figure out that the formation of the brain is more likely the result of consciousness. This implies that everything is "conscious" (i.e. any quanta), and that consciousness is better defined as something that is capable of updating its state as a result of observation, rather than something uniquely human. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory - a more recent view on the nature of reality, moves in theses lines and is something I myself subscribe to. Ultimately I believe that reality is subjective from the ground up, that there is no such thing as objective reality. This is hard to comprehend since we are hard wired to state things objectively. It's a form of the "many worlds" view, except you must remember that the idea that there "are" many worlds is an objective statement, and in a universe that is entirely subjective from the observer's point of view, this utterance is not compatible with that view. It's a form of solipsism, yes, but a strict one nonetheless.

Seems to be a far cry from explaining the Hard Problem of consciousness.

As for the meat of the text (pardon the pun, I just re-read “they’re made out of meat” yesterday), my amateur understanding is that there may be some degree of quantum effects in the microtubules of the brain, but that decoherence is very localized and limited, thus unlikely to have broader impact on physical systems at large. To this end, it’s unclear how a shared physical reality such as ours would allow for quantum effects from a measurement experiment, through the non quantum systems to the brain. Can someone explain the basis of the hypothesis presented by the paper in simple terms?

Lee Smolin’s book, “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution” is largely about particle/wave duality and an alternate theory that never caught on: the Pilot Wave theory. It’s a Realist alternative to the Anti-Realist school of Heisenberg, etc.

As Feynman used to say, “nobody understands quantum physics”. I really don’t have a clue which theory is more “correct”. But the book’s interesting, and I recommend it.

Also, an exploration of consciousness and quantum physics is central to the Dalai Lama’s, “The universe in a single atom”. Another book I highly recommend. He’s passionate about science, and it’s a thought provoking book. In “The Profound Mind”, he goes further into various philosophies, and has some really interesting things to say on consciousness, subjectivity, etc.

Quantum Mechanics attracts a lot of “woo”. I didn’t find the Dalai Lama’s books to fall into that category — more philosophical than anything else. Just worth mentioning.

It’s a shame, in general, how much pseudoscience surrounds Quantum Mechanics — the reality of things is plenty interesting and confounding on its own! [Edit: not at all meant as a judgement on this particular article; just following a train of thought.]

As far as I understand - we can make a random number generator decide if the automated observation of the photons passing the slits happens or not and then the pattern on the screen will change from one to the other randomly.

So we're pretty sure it's not consciousness that causes the collapse, right? Unless the RNG or the camera is conscious :)

Sean Carroll mentions something to the effect that we are just part of the measurement. I personally feel more comfortable with that explanation as it seems detached from the human need to feel special.

I just don't see why consciousness would require any sort of special physics. We live in a world full of emergent phenomena, and consciousness seems like it should just be another one of them.

This is all neatly sidestepped by many-worlds: the wavefunction collapses that you observe send you down one trouser of time. It may look like you're influencing the world, but you're really just being dragged along by it. Non-sentient things are doing the same thing in the same way.

There is no collapse. One can create pairs of entangled particles and send streams of these in opposite directions - left and right for example. When particles on the left are measured, it causes the so-called collapse of the wave function and that of its paired particle that went to the right. This means one can "collapse" the wave functions of one stream of particles (right) by taking measurements of the other (left). The thing is, the particles on the right behave exactly the same way regardless of weather their wave function has been collapsed. In other words, no one can tell if this collapse has even occurred. Why is it talked about as a discrete event?

Cixin Liu's book Ball Lightning brilliantly incorporates this phenomenon into the plot, for anyone interested in a sci-fi book recommendation.

(Of course, his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is amazing too and required reading.)

It seems to me that you can't think that consciousness causes quantum collapse, and also hold to a purely materialist idea of consciousness. Because if consciousness is a purely material phenomenon, then it arises from a bunch of interactions of quantum systems. Then "consciousness causes quantum collapse" reduces to "a bunch of quantum interactions cause quantum collapse", which is kind of unhelpful.

To put it a different way: For this to make any sense, consciousness has to be something different. It can't be just material.

It’s photography. (The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland)

The concept that consciousness might cause quantum collapse is untestable. Quantum systems that have not been observed by conscious observers are fundamentally unobservable, by definition. Let me put that another way. No conscious mind will ever be able to observe anything about a quantum system that has never been observed by a conscious mind.

Does the question "can a computer cause quantum collapse?" have an answer?

Does the Earth or the apple cause the gravity?

Utter nonsense. Collapse is caused by interactions between particles, humans got nothing to do with it.

No.

"Observation" involves interacting with the system under test, thereby necessarily changing the system. It is this interaction that results in quantum collapse.

Yes.

With our consciousness, we become curious and ask questions. We devise experiments that lead to quantum collapse.

Is "consciousness" the only cause of quantum collapse? I guess that depends on the simulation we're in.

By Betteridege's Law - no of course not.

For a slightly better answer we need physicists rather than philosphers - and need to consider at what scale the quantum measures work - and what scale they're observing at.

Even if true, there must be at least one other parameter, since consciousness does not determine the particular state the wave collapses.

This was brought up in the energy healing episode of Netflix’s Goop docuseries.

The tools physics uses to measure elementary particles lacking the precision to not disturb the system being observed is a failure of the tools and not sufficient to reasonably imply that human consciousness has anything to do with the fact that observing a system disturbs the system under observation.

Far more interesting and grounded along these lines is Penrose’s Orch OR; consciousness is a fundamental physical structure or law of the universe itself that our brains have evolved to access.