Federica wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 2:53 pm
Cleric, thank you so much for all the patient clarifications in your post!
Now I see how I hadn’t fully understood the ins and outs of the experiment. Is it possible that the simulator disregards the case of single photons, since even at the lowest photon intensity, the beam splitter still splits the ‘discrete’ amount of light into two ‘things’ that end up interfering (which might be the reason why they call it “waves” mode, not “photons” mode)?
In this connection, on the planar intellectual-perceptual plane, I wonder if a photon can be technically split? In the simulator they make it split and they make it interfere with itself at the other edge of the box, if I am getting it right. But with google I don’t find answers that sound clear-cut for my level of understanding of these things.
This ‘splitting’ in the visualization is not a mistake. It is neither really ‘splitting’. You can think of it as if the two
alternative histories of the same photon are visualized simultaneously.
In fact, the logic of the ‘quantum game’ (I use this in the wider sense) is very clear and not that complicated. All the complications come when we continuously try to fit that logic into our classical intuitions.
I’ll try to make this a little more accessible. I remember back in the day, CD-ROMs were just becoming widespread and computer games were already taking advantage of it. Those who were into computers at that time remember that the most widespread portable medium was the
3.5” floppy diskette. Its capacity was 1.44MB. In contrast, a CD-ROM’s capacity was an incredible 650MB. This allowed game developers to include much more graphical material in the game and especially video. Today it’s hard to appreciate this since we have youtube in our pocket but then to see motion video on a computer screen was something very exotic.
I remember one game that took full advantage of these storage possibilities and made a game that was entirely video based. It was called “A Fork In the Tale”.
Basically it’s a first-person video adventure where you get various clickable choices on the screen through which you decide how the story proceeds. In this way the story continuously branches into alternative scenarios (it’s said that there are 50 different game endings). That’s nothing exciting in itself – many games have had non-linear plots. But I thought about the fact that all these alternative paths must be
filmed even though the player runs only through a single branch of this bifurcating tree.
Another example is the gamebooks which were very popular in my country in the nineties. These were books with numbered chapters where you start from 1 and after you read the story of the chapter some choice has to be made. For example “If you want to enter the forest turn to 34. If you want to go through the mountains go to 87.” The structure of these gamebooks could be represented graphically as branching tree (although, often branches could recombine or send you back):
Now it turns out that quantum mechanics is all about tracing
all these possible branches that a system can transform through.
In classical mechanics we follow a single branch. In fact, we don’t think about it as a branch but simply as the arrow of time. Then we try to understand how at each frame along that arrow, objects affect each other through their central forces and thus transform into the next frame.
In quantum mechanics every possible interaction between elements is a different ‘fork in the tale’. Actually the web quantum game draws that forking tree for us in the upper right corner:
The above is the tree of the bomb experiment. The dot on the left is the branch leading to explosion. Then below we have the two other alternative branches – detection at the right or top.
The whole secret of learning to think quantum mechanically is to always keep in mind these alternative branches, these alternative possible paths through which the system can evolve.
For this reason, if we imagine that the photon
splits at the first half-silvered mirror, we’re already misled. Nothing splits. There’s
only one photon. The ‘splitting’ is in fact the visualization of the two possible branches in the tale that the photon can take. They are simply displayed simultaneously. This would be analogous to reading the gamebook and when you turn to chapter 34 to see also chapter 87 superimposed.
And now comes the really weird part. These alternative branches are
not independent. They
interfere. Actually, this is probably a point that may not have been sufficiently clarified in my previous posts. If we think in classical terms and imagine the photon as an apple, and we have only a classical arrow of time (no alternative branches), then we indeed imagine as if the apple is split in half at the half-mirror, the two halves fly on their own, then meet at the second mirror, collide there, merge again in a whole apple and because of some weird mathematics it can go only one of the ways. But this is not what interferes. The photon never splits. What interferes are the
alternative possible histories of the photon.
Think how unintuitive from a classical perspective this is. Imagine that you’re going to the mall. You can go through the park or through the city square. You choose the former. You arrive at the mall and spontaneously decide to go to the store on the right to buy a new dress. Now most people would laugh if they are told that their possible alternative of going through the city square would arrive at the exact same moment at the mall and that the interference of these alternatives makes it 100% certain that you go to the store on the right, instead of another one.
Of course, I’m giving this picture only to amplify the QM example, I’m not saying that we should reason about our human actions in precisely this way. Yet spiritual perception shows that something similar indeed happens. Ashvin quoted how we have to be attentive for all the things that
do not happen to us.
So it is crucial to understand that what interferes is not different photons. As a matter of fact, different photons are fully transparent to each other, they pass through each other. What interferes are the complex amplitudes assigned to the different branches that the
whole system can take. If there’s a second photon in the system everything becomes more complicated. In the analogy, if you leave your home with a friend now there are 4 possible branches – 1/ you both go through the park 2/ you both go through the city square 3/ you go through the park, your friend through the square 4/ you go through the square, your friend through the park. Now all these branches have their corresponding complex amplitudes and can interfere. This hints at the reason why calculating quantum systems is feasible only for relatively simple configurations. Otherwise, as the elements increase, the possible ‘forks in the tale’ increase exponentially. This is why even with our supercomputers it is not presently possible to make a full simulation of a more complex molecule (let alone a whole cell).
Now if we understand this, we can think about Steiner and the Schrodinger equation. All these things that we described above, these branching alternatives were not at all thought about at the time Schrodinger wrote down the equation. He started much more modestly. De Broglie proposed the wave-particle dualism and Schrodinger came up with an equation through which it is possible to calculate the spectrum of that wave, so to speak (not unlike the way we can calculate the possible
modes of vibration of a guitar string. The requirement that the string must be stationary at its end filters out only the compatible wavelengths/frequencies out of the infinitely many possible). Interference of alternative paths that a system can take is not something that was initially obvious from the equation in its original form. Even the interpretation of the squared modulus of the complex amplitude as probability came later by Max Born – Schrodinger didn’t know what those ‘waves’ which his equation described, really were.
With all this I want to show that there were many additional developments that led to the later understanding of quantum theory as a superposition of alternative branches of the tale. These things don’t just pop out if we put an imaginary coefficient in front of the diffusion equation. They are not even particularly obvious from the start. It is for this reason that I lean towards Steiner using the imaginary coefficient as a metaphor for a third quality in addition to positive and negative. Expecting that such an equation has the potential to become a model for interfering alternative branches of the tale is quite a long shot.
Federica wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 2:53 pm
I have tried to integrate the above, and all that follows, as carefully as I could, and to meditate on expanding the now to 8 minutes (or simply on expanding the now between the two poles). I am unable to find an orientation that tells me whether or not I'm on the right track. With the Caduceus, there's the interference of Scaligero's thought of the white and black snakes, Lucifer and Ahriman, and I cant’t realize the symbolism you indicated (the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual). I am little more mobile focusing on what you called "Solar intervals", where I try to ask what an interval is, out of space and out of time, beyond the Earthly “spacetime intervals”. This leads me to rather obvious ideas, such as uninterrupted wisdom, uninterrupted love, and uninterrupted becoming - in the sense of smooth gradients of each, that I can aspire to realize.
These qualities of continuous wisdom, continuous love, and intentional becoming, that we’re called to abandon ourselves into, appear like the
opposite of interference? It makes me wonder if interference - and those angular wave shifts that shape interference, as you explained - are what light has to do on the Earthly plane, in order to bridge duality, to keep the space-time fabric of physicality coherent? And that maybe at the core of the Solar Being, the thought of interference loses all reality. If this is meaningful, the true nature of light may have nothing of the quality of interference, which is only the self-reflection of Earthly nature in the encompassing smoothness and unity of light.
From this perspective, in the true nature of light, intervals are the qualitative, unbroken Christ impulses of wisdom, love and karma/becoming. Could the Earthly phenomenon of light be seen as the one pole we start from, the one edge of the bridge that allows us to aspire to connect with those divine qualities? In this sense, light could be understood as an ever-present helping hand that comes down to our entangled state and guides us up, orthogonally, towards the Sun state. Attuning oneself to this State would mean letting oneself be attracted to the eternal qualities of the “Solar intervals”, sacrificing the filters of the intellectual craving (thinking), the egoism (feeling) and the comforting/infantilizing hand of ineluctability/destiny (will). Not sure if there’s anything worth recycling from these musings…
Hopefully, the considerations above give another way of thinking about interference. Probably for you interference symbolizes conflict and opposition and that’s why you expect that at the higher levels everything is much more smoothed out. There’s no doubt that in the higher orders, the Cosmic metamorphoses are much more integrated and harmonized but we can still conceive of interference. It’s just that we don’t have to necessarily associate this with pain and conflict.
Think of it thus. Even in a much more harmonious state of existence, as long as there’s temporality, there’s still flow through a specific evolutionary tale. There are infinitely many other possible tales and in a certain sense they all exist simultaneously in the Eternal. Our tale could be experienced only if somehow analyzed out of the Eternal. In a sense, from our relative perspective it’s probability is high, while the probability of all the other tales is low.
Seen in this way, this interference is not to be seen as painful conflict but the Divine Technique through which the Eternal potential can be ‘delaminated’, so to speak, such that individual evolutionary tales can be experienced which lead back to the Eternal (where we can assume all the infinite potential integrates as an eternal simultaneous whole).
I realize that stated in this way it all sounds very abstract but I believe that thinking through these things can stimulate our higher Imagination when taken in the right way. There’s no doubt that in the far future we
won’t be talking about interfering wavefunctions, potentials and alternative timelines. Then we’ll simply live intuitively through the spiritual reality, without trying to make a carbon copy in thoughts. But for the time being, at least in my personal experience, these lines of thought could be tremendously fruitful and in many ways act as scaffolds around which actual experiences could coalesce.
Federica wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 2:53 pm
Now coming back to the experiment and its weirdness:
I would say that the weirdness you highlight here is only real if, after holding onto the quantum understanding, as you say, the quantum physicist abandons it the moment she tries to interpret the results. I mean, if the scenario without bomb - 100% of energy coming to the detector on the right - is
not weird (since one has gotten used to QM), then the fact that the photon’s point of reception tells something about the path it did
not take should also
not be weird. It’s only weird from a Newtonian perspective, correct? But as long as one is expecting non-locality, as a Q-physicist, why be shocked by a photon not behaving like an apple? In this sense, it seems to me that there's only one weirdness, and this is non-locality. The wave function itself is the weirdness, that is, the possibility of interference, the fact that in the absence of a bomb, all the light goes to the right detector.
What to say about this weirdness? Trying to become as aware as possible of the classical gestures that shape photons into flying apples, maybe one could say that the idea of photon intensity, or quantity of light, only serves our intellectual thought alignments, while spiritual light can’t be broken into intervals, only our Earthly thoughts about light can. Interference - probabilistic manifestation - would then be more like the nature of spacetime manifestation, once pervaded by light, rather than the true nature of light itself?
I realize this is not the beginning of an explanation of how all light ends in the right detector… Cleric, I know these attempts are probably well off track and funny, but my hope is that you will acknowledge the effort and write chapter three on the understanding of light
.
Once again, in the light of our present discussion, the weird part should be more clear too. First, non-locality in itself doesn’t draw the full picture. There could be non-locality also in a world that develops along a single time arrow. This simply means objects can affect each other at a distance, without propagating effects through space no faster than the speed of light. For example, when we generate a pair of entangled photons and send them in opposite directions light years away, and Alice measures one, this instantaneously affects the state of Bob’s photon. This is non-locality. But notice that we don’t really need to involve alternative branches here.
The reason Sabine finds the bomb experiment weird is because through its dramatic effect, it reminds us that these alternative branches
can’t be easily ignored. It’s not that something simply passes its effects non-locally. It seems the Universe should somehow know that in one of the alternative paths an explosion is imminent. Here ‘know’ is used in the ordinary materialistic sense. It simply means that the alternative path is something real within the Universe.
It is weird because for the most part physicists have taken quantum mechanics as some statistical quirk (Einstein surely took that position). Our immediate sensory experience is that we traverse a single linear tale. Alternatives seem to exist only in our fantasy. Summing up the amplitudes of these alternatives is seen by many just as some strange statistical way of calculating probabilities. Even today few would readily conceive that these alternatives could be something real. But the bomb experiment places things in such a way that it seems that the exploding alternative is something real and it interferes with our alternative.
It is called weird because scientists are not entirely sure what to make out of it. Of course, all these theories are in the end just thoughts. They can’t ‘prove’ that there are indeed branches of reality. But still, at the present state of the theory it is difficult to interpret it in terms of a single timeline. And since most scientists, like Sabine, hold on to whatever is sensorily real (thus the single timeline) they won’t jump out and say “... thus alternative timelines are real.” Instead, they keep an indeterminate position and say “That’s weird.”
This reminds me of the time when we made a lucid dreaming metaphor. We said that that the path to lucidity can most easily be threaded if we pay attention to the
contradictions. Then instead of simply accepting them as they are, we follow their threads which in themselves will lead us to higher synthesis. Now this QM example is more convoluted but nevertheless reminded me of this. It is as if the scientists encountered a dream contradiction, yet choose not to follow its threads. Instead they say “That’s weird” and continue dreaming on their way, gradually becoming numb to it.
Again, I’m not saying that this particular experiment should make us say “So alternative timelines are real!” In a way they are. But the whole matter is about in
what way exactly. If we simply fantasize timelines in our intellect we won’t go too far either.
In any case, what Ashvin said, certainly holds true – that in this dream state we have grown numb not only to the mystery in scientific experiments but also in everything around us. Which reminds of something else.
A wise clown once said ![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)
“If magic is all we’ve ever known, then it’s easy to miss what really goes on.”
PS: I didn't address the more serious questions about the nature of light as spiritual experience. We'll have to continue with that in the future.