Why the fuck does observation collapse the wave function. Explain it to me like the idiot I am.
1-virtual universe rendering as we get close to see
2-our instruments interfere with the particle
>>7966490
consciousness
we don't know
Protip: "observation" means something very different in physics than it does in day to day use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZie2QC5Jbc
You can think of the earth as the center of the solar system and expect the sun to rise in the east.
You can think of the sun as the center of the solar system and make gravity make sense.
You can't think of them both simultaneously, but when the need arises, one view makes sense.
Sun centered/earth centered is in superposition and is coherent; the choice to use one or the other decoheres the superposition.
It's just semantics. The way you set the experiment up forces one or the other. The set up is the choice.
>>7966490
Quantum states "decohere" upon interaction with the environment; in very very simple terms, it gets entangled with everything else and the "quantuminess" gets so spread out it effectively vanishes. Instead of a superposition of multiple interfering states, the individual states become "decohered", non-interfering. You end up with separated "blobs" of amplitude, with no information or interaction passing between them.
You are a very warm object made of zillions of atoms interacting with zillions of other photons and atoms around you, so you decohere incredibly fast. When you observe a quantum state, say whether an electron is spin-up or spin-down, you create an entangled state of (electron spin-up / you observe spin-up) vs (electron spin-down / you observe spin-down). This superposition then almost immediately decoheres, leaving the two states almost perfectly isolated and classical. From the point of view of the you who sees it spin-up, the electron has gone from behaving in a quantummy manner to being very definitely spin-up. And because there's equally a totally real but entirely separated state containing a you who sees it very definitely spin-down, you have no way to predict "which one" "you" will be - the outcomes of quantum events for any individual chain of identity seem randomly selected.
>>7966596
(Note one complication: For some reason, your subjective probability of being in the decohered amplitude-blob corresponding to any particular state is dependent on the *square* of the amplitude. This is weird and nobody knows why, and since it requires explaining how the *internal experience* of a physical system arises from the underlying physical dynamics - talking about *what it feels like* to be a quantum system - , solving it may possibly require tackling the Hard Problem of Consciousness. The Born probabilities are weird.)
For a board as smart as you claim to be, you sure can't give uniform answers.
>>7966648
Surprise, a totally uncoordinated unstructured group of heterogeneous anonymous contrarians with no community authorities, minimum credentials, or shared background is not a hive-mind
>>7966490
Nobody really knows/it's an open problem
>The cluster of phenomena described by the expression /wave function collapse/ is a fundamental problem in the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and is known as the measurement problem. The problem is deflected by the Copenhagen Interpretation, which postulates that this is a special characteristic of the "measurement" process. Everett's many-worlds interpretation deals with it by discarding the collapse-process, thus reformulating the relation between measurement apparatus and system in such a way that the linear laws of quantum mechanics are universally valid; that is, the only process according to which a quantum system evolves is governed by the Schrödinger equation or some relativistic equivalent.
>Originating from de Broglie–Bohm theory, but no longer tied to it, is the physical process of decoherence, which causes an apparent collapse. Decoherence is also important for the consistent histories interpretation. A general description of the evolution of quantum mechanical systems is possible by using density operators and quantum operations. In this formalism (which is closely related to the C*-algebraic formalism) the collapse of the wave function corresponds to a non-unitary quantum operation.
>>7966490
>buying into the Copenhagen interpretation
>getting memed this hard by 20th century bullshit
>>7966490
lets say you are going to have a bagel or cereal for breakfast, you can't decide. the two ideas are kind of acting like wave functions in your mind, interfering with each other.
Then you snap, your hungry and you don't really care that much. Thats kind of like the observation.
You find yourself eating a bagel. The wave functions are no longer interacting. They have collapsed. You are no longer moving along both paths in "potentia".
Are you eating cereal in another universe? maybe
>>7966495
you damn sick fuck!
sorry. this bait always gets me
you pick a basis and do a projective measurement, the probability of getting one of the eigenvectors of the basis is proportional to its scalarproduct with the wavefunction
All other information about it is lost, thats what the collape is about
If you have some thousands of copies of the wavefunction, you can repeat the measurement and from the distribution of eigenvector responses you can reconstruct the original wavefunnctiuon
You're bouncing god damn light particles off of stuff and quantum.
>>7966490
It doesn't.
>>7968534
>It doesn't.
This.
Collapse of the wave function is a prerequisite of observation, not the other way around.
