A question about the other observers

[EclogiteFacies]

TL;DR Summary

This post links back to a thread I saw on a different forum

Hi everyone
I saw a post on another forum about the physicist Thomas Breuer...
I came across this author scrolling through some of the threads on here
This poster seemed convinced that quantum mechanics had proved the existence of a "distinguished observer"
The most interesting parts of the post I've quoted below (from a different forum)

Thomas Breuer has shown that each observer will not see himself obeying the usual physical laws however a theory is. He also proved that the behavior of a system that contains observer himself is unpredictable for the observer because the initial states cannot be distinguished from each other by any measurement. The theorems concerning self-reference by Breuer are quite similar to Goedel's incompleteness theorem.

This leads to some far reaching implications.

1. The observer will see his own behavior not obeying the usual statistical patterns derived from studying the behavior of other people.

2. Even if there possible to construct a computer that would predict the behavior of other people (at least statistically), a computer that predicts the behavior of the observer himself is impossible however powerful the computer is.

The first thesis leads to a conclusion that even if we assume existence of several intelligent observers (as in Many-Worlds interpretation), and even assume they somehow occur in the same world, their worldlines will diverge just the next moment because their observations about themselves will be different.

This means that the apparent behavior of another person which an observer observes is not actually an intelligent behavior of conscious observer, but envelope of worldlines of a series of intelligent observers which is tangent to the worldlines of some slightly different intelligent observers each moment, but always to a different one.

This leads to a conclusion that the apparent behavior of other people **is not** the normal behavior of a conscious observer as if it behaved the same way as you do, the apparent behavior does not correspond to any intelligent(in the meaning described below) person whatsoever.

This honestly to me seems as if this person has pulled Breuer's papers to their most ludicrous extremes.

I'm sure this isn't what he meant.
I saw a previous post from today on MWI that said we are all equally conscious in different branches. This idea heavily contrasts with that...

Furthermore all physicists I know of are not solipsistic...

This poster also made mention of other humans being probabilistic Turing machines... Referring to free will only existing for the distinguished observer?
Honestly seems like woo but I'm not sure if I know enough to conclude that.

Can anyone make sense of this or something?
Are these just illogical ramblings?
I am not a physicist but I don't understand how people reach such crazy conclusions...
Is this what QM suggests?

 

[PeterDonis]

The most interesting parts of the post I've quoted below (from a different forum)

Please provide a link so the moderators can evaluate this "different forum". (And be prepared to be informed that it's not a valid source.)

 

[EclogiteFacies]

Links to original posts are below

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...oherence-and-scott-aaronsons-freebits-with-kn

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...s-before-the-observer-and-relic-interferences

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4841/what-is-the-wavefunction-of-the-observer-himself (this one makes links to Quantum immortality)

https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1148/I-cannot-find-my-question (where the original quote about other observers is from)

 

[JamieSalaor]

Hello
I'm not a physicist but I've actually spoken to the original poster of those posts.
I spoke to him this week in fact.

They do think that all other human observers that they meet are not conscious/physical equals but instead as you say probabilistic Turing machines (whatever that means).
I think to some extent he thinks other people are basically zombies...?
For some reason though he isn't probabilistic, he has free will and is a 'distinguished observer' ...

That last link you posted shows his post was deleted and probably for good reason...Seeing as the moderator refers to it as borderline...
Notice how all these posts are by the same author. It's not a widely discussed pov.

Also yeah I think is idea of MWI is wrong. I posted the other MWI post yesterday and it basically has nothing to do with consciousness or distinguished observers...

I don't think many actual physicists buy into what he's saying. I think he's divulged too much from those Breuer papers...
Which are largely unpopular and also 25 years old...

Also QI is rubbish, there's a thread on it on here somewhere...
Have a look at this paper by Jacques Mallah
https://arxiv.org/abs/0902.0187

Honestly some people will have very 'alternative' points of view.
Don't take them literally... When they sound as crazy as this they probably are

 

[EclogiteFacies]

Hello, thank you for your reply!
I was just very confused by the content of these posts.
I also noticed no body else other than this one poster was talking about it. But I didn't know whether he had realized something particularly revolutionary or not.

I obviously don't think all other people are less 'conscious' than me.
I just wanted to know whether this guy had a point or not, or if he was a very alternative minority.

Strange.
Thank you!

 

[JamieSalaor]

No worries.
But I'm not at all an expert in physics so maybe someone more clued up can verify what I said.

 

[EPR]

He can be a solipsist all day long any day of the week. We don't care.

 

[JamieSalaor]

Well you got to remember we are only probabilistic Turing machines.
So, maybe he predicted us not caring.
If only we were as free and as conscious as him..

 

[EclogiteFacies]

So do you not think Breuer proves that solipsism is true?
Has this original poster got the wrong idea?
Thank you!
Its very disconcerting to find that physicists think these things.

 

[JamieSalaor]

I don't know, I very much doubt he has.. You think it would be more talked about.
I'm not a physicist.
Hopefully someone who understands this better can answer your question and perhaps explain what Breuer actually meant.

 

[PeterDonis]

Links to original posts are below

And those posts in turn contain links to actual publications by Breuer:

https://homepages.fhv.at/tb/tb/cms/index.html?download=tbDISS.pdf

https://homepages.fhv.at/tb/tb/cms/index.html?download=tbPHILSC.pdf

https://homepages.fhv.at/tb/tb/cms/index.html?download=QuantumTuring-v2b.pdf

These are what you should be looking at to see what Breuer's position actually is.

So do you not think Breuer proves that solipsism is true?
Has this original poster got the wrong idea?

Based on an initial skim of the links I gave above, I would say the answers are "no" and "yes". But you should take a look and see for yourself.

 

[EclogiteFacies]

I had a read but I couldn't quite understand exactly what the paper was saying...
It was a bit beyond my skill sets...
But I didn't think this paper made any real mention of other observers being unconscious.
Also solipsism is not mentioned once in any of these papers...

I suppose I just don't understand how the forum poster reached those conclusions.. As i couldn't get his impression from Breuer's work..

 

[PeterDonis]

I suppose I just don't understand how the forum poster reached those conclusions

If I had a dollar for every time I saw a poster like that on the Internet, I'd be retired now.

 

[JamieSalaor]

Lol, jokes on us when it turns out he's right and we are all actually Turing machines and he's the king of this branch...

I also had a look at his work and did not get the impression he had proved solipsism...
You'd think that there would be more than 5 citations if he had proved something so revolutionary. (not to criticize his work as I'm sure it is perfectly adequate for what he is actually trying to say)...

Honestly some people just believe what they want to believe.

 

[EclogiteFacies]

Hello thank you everyone.
Its nice to know that's not what he's implying...
I sort of assumed the original poster was off the mark when nobody else anywhere was discussing these conclusions..
It was just the same guy on multiple platforms

Weird

 

[JamieSalaor]

Ye he was on the QI thread too...
Man's got an affinity for woo I suppose...

 

[EclogiteFacies]

Interesting!
Has anyone got any more comments of the Breuer paper.
Maybe some insight into where these crazy ideas come from? I imagine many people here know more physics than me

Thanks every for your time

 

[JamieSalaor]

Again I don't really know enough to comment on it...
I'm sure someone else will eventually!

 

[PeterDonis]

Maybe some insight into where these crazy ideas come from?

I'm not sure anyone can usefully explain that.

 

[EclogiteFacies]

What would it even mean to be a probabilistic Turing machine?
Are human brains comparable to Turing machines? And if so why wouldn't the distinguished observer be any different? Is it because they can't measure themselves? But surely another observer can measure them?
Like I don't understand where that comes from...

 

[PeterDonis]

Has anyone got any more comments of the Breuer paper.

After skimming the references given in post #11, I would say that a key point Breuer is making is that there is a tension between two things we naturally want to believe about any physical theory, or at least any theory that is thought to be comprehensive (i.e., it's a general theory rather than one confined to a specific domain):

(1) We want to believe that the theory is universal, i.e., that it can potentially describe everything in the universe, including ourselves;

(2) We want to believe that the states desribed in the theory are knowable, i.e., that we can in principle know exactly what state the theory assigns to the actual universe and everything in it.

Breuer basically shows that no physical theory (classical or quantum) can satisfy both of those requirements: if it really is a universal theory, describing ourselves as well as everything else we observe, there is no way we can pin down the exact state that any system that includes ourselves is in.

 

[JamieSalaor]

Seems very far from the conclusions drawn in the original post...
Seems far from solipsism. At least of the type that denies other observers.
Maybe he's saying that we cannot know everything about reality, but we knew that anyway.. That's hardly solipsism.

I would say he is underlining our limitations if anything.
I'm still confused about the original post.. But I suppose I shouldn't expect to not be..

Thanks for the info!

 

[EclogiteFacies]

Thanks for the answer! Really appreciate you doing the reading.
I also don't see how this has anything to do with everyone else being unconscious
Just seems to me we can't know everything! But surely no one ever thought we would

 

[JamieSalaor]

I reckon the conclusion is don't worry about it.
The original poster was way off the mark.

 

[AlexCaledin]

(1) We want to believe that the theory is universal, i.e., that it can potentially describe everything in the universe, including ourselves;
(2) We want to believe that the states desribed in the theory are knowable, i.e., that we can in principle know exactly what state the theory assigns to the actual universe and everything in it.

- hmmm... then, Hartle's Spacetime QM seems satisfactory because the macroscopic reality we're observing can be thought of as being the universe quantum state after the complete collapse (no matter when exactly that collapse occurs or occurred).

 

[PeterDonis]

Hartle's Spacetime QM seems satisfactory because the macroscopic reality we're observing can be thought of as being the universe quantum state after the complete collapse

No, it can't. This is the type of thing that Breuer discusses in his paper: we are part of the "universe quantum state", and he gives mathematical theorems that show it is impossible for one part of an entangled quantum state to gain sufficient information to specify the entire state. (Note that Hartle, AFAIK, did not even consider such possible counter-arguments; he didn't prove, mathematically, the claim about reality that you are describing; he just assumed it. Breuer is basically saying no, you can't make that assumption.)

 

[EclogiteFacies]

What does that mean then for the original post then.
Can't help but get the impression that since Breuer's work discusses 'we'. He would very much disagree with the original post..
Again, we are part of the universe quantum state. He isn't excluding other observers at all.

 

[PeterDonis]

What does that mean then for the original post then.

If you are asking if what I said in #26 means that some of the things in that stack exchange thread might be correct, no, it doesn't.

 

[AlexCaledin]

...it is impossible for one part of an entangled quantum state to gain sufficient information to specify the entire state...

- now, it's too strong requirement this time, of course, about specifying the whole observable reality (especially if taking into account its imaginary fine-grained structure). But still, we can know, in principle, the observable properties of any particularly interesting thing, even of some piece of a human brain, and all such properties together do specify the actual spacetime universe which is one of the QM-"alternatives" according to Hartle.

 

[EclogiteFacies]

If you are asking if what I said in #26 means that some of the things in that stack exchange thread might be correct, no, it doesn't.

What about post #21?

I didn't get the impression you were hinting at staclexchange stuff being right

I'm going to give Hartle's work a read.
Thanks for everything!

 

[PeterDonis]

What about post #21?

I didn't get the impression you were hinting at staclexchange stuff being right

Correct.

 

[PeterDonis]

we can know, in principle, the observable properties of any particularly interesting thing, even of some piece of a human brain

Yes, if you only need to know particular observable properties that are compatible with each other.

all such properties together do specify the actual spacetime universe

You can't know all such properties together. You can only know a subset of them. That subset is not sufficient to specify an entire state for the universe.

 

[JamieSalaor]

What about post #21?

I didn't get the impression you were hinting at staclexchange stuff being right

I'm going to give Hartle's work a read.
Thanks for everything!

Honestly mate don't worry about it. That stackexchange stuff was nutty...