I completely agree with Sean about the nature of reality and the possibilities out there. I like his style, in that, he doesn't try to force one particular viewpoint over another, he's just interested in getting at the truth. I get the idea from his mannerisms that he sees all these differing opinions as a dance rather than a battle.
@@briandimattia629 I think I'm a bit like Einstein, slightly autistic, don't commit anything to memory that I can look up. I keep up to date via journals and the internet. I work with computers at a system level.
You have to be incredibly intelligent to explain things this simply. Being a great teacher is very difficult and most people don’t have the intelligence to do it well. I would like to be this man’s neighbor.
In the Trivium rhetoric is the last skill you learn to master. Rhetoric is the ability to transmit information simply and concisely to other individuals. You know you really know something when you can explain it to someone else very eloquently and simply that's when you have mastered your own knowledge.
Every time I watch this video, I'm in the world where Sean hops to the right. In the world where he hopped to the left, I actually gave a bulletproof account of the true nature of QM and our universe. I just can't get back there now.
The West has always been at the forefront of science. However , a few problems are inherent or commonly affecting the scientists from knowing the reality : 1. Language. Typically English. Language js ambiguous. A tool invented by ancient people. An art used to describe science. Problem due to its flaws : ambiguity affects communication, info propagation , discussions, debates, etc. 2. Heavily affected by Christianity. Limited minds affect knowing reality. 3. Based on maths : it works because its its system invented by humans. Of course within its rules it must work. This does not mean it can be used to know reality. It can be a limitation preventing knowing reality. The west is too confident they know a lot when no one in the world knows anything absolutely fundamental in the universe. All theories. My point is , due to all these assumptions and thinking constraints, we are guaranteed not to understand the reality. Its just not possible. What is and has been happening is scientists Believing they are right. The west is living in their own bubble. All human race should come together to find the truth. Look at China, overtaking USA. Why? Did USA not know long ago this is gonna happen? They should know. But what's the reality? Both civilisations do not really understand the other. They live in their own bubble , limiting the possibilities. Ego, Racism, xenophobia, culture, religion etc. Human ignorance
@@boohoo5419 yeah well. At a certain point he says from now one we’re going to look at the observer in a quantum mechanical state and then like five minutes later he says that we observed the cat in a classical state. I don’t know if you know what I mean, I worded it very poorly but man is it hard to follow… you have any advicr for other videos on this topic?
@@bennozelaar his theory is that we are also quantum mechanical systems bcs we are made of particles as well. the cat is classical later bcs he speaks of it after the measurement. we can only measure classical systems and the quantum state diverges at this point. this doesnt make much sense at all. like i said. multiverse theory isnt science. this is as scientific as a priest talking about god. he can make shit up as he goes. if you wanna understand what he talks about start at string theory. then you understand the problem that hes trying to solve.
When I was an undergrad learning QM, my professor would say “shut up and do the math. It works, and that’s as good as you’re going to get.” I see why now.
Professors that've lost their drive for knowledge and try to inspire the same dispassionate attitude in their students do society a disservice. This is why we remember Max Planck better than we do Phillip von Jolly.
I am not a scientist, just an interested party. However, listening to this lecture made me think about when I was a child and I thought about when I moved my finger. Whether that changed the entire universe or created a new one or not was a very insightful thought to have for a person from 45 years ago. It's almost like it's intuitively known to us that things are dynamically changing depending on your perspective
My though of this lecture by professor Sean Carroll is that basically Gravity is merely an Entanglement of all as such, I believe..this way of thinking brings the unification and understanding to describe how quantum and classical mechanics unites and works!
Maybe all measurement taking is extended overtime. If you could measure some fundamentally random quantum phenonenon at an instant, you might get a blurry picture (though it's not clear how a measurement device would record a "blurry" number) , but you cannot. Your measurement necessarily coarse-grains reality, averages a quantum state over time.
You've inadvertently hit on my one reason for not buying many worlds. If true, then it has profound implications for consciousness, because after all, shouldn't we ALWAYS find ourselves in a universe in which we are alive and not one in which we are dead or never existed? That's a given right? So, that means that no matter how many times per second we die in no matter how many worlds, our experience will always be that we are alive, even if we have just narrowly survived death. Here we mix in a little Fermi Paradox just to spice things up; If the above is true, then where are all the great survivors? Where's the person that attempts suicide daily but can never die because we happen to live in a universe where he is still alive? And also if true, doesn't that make us immortal since no matter how unlikely it is that we live to be a 1000 years old, there must be worlds in which technology has allowed us to do so and so we continue to live and have that experience? IOW, many worlds is too messy and leads to too many absurd outcomes. (related to your comment because where are all the people that hit the lottery every time they play, a possibility that is highly unlikely but must happen constantly in a many worlds universe, and also related to Fermi as in "Where are all the tourists?")
I hope every lecturer explain things like this... and yes, we do have resources, we do have our textbooks, but not everything can be covered in our textbooks. Some textbooks only explains the "gist" of the subject, and is not really delving deeper into it. Sometimes I'm feelin' like telling my college professors that if we could learn everything we need from our textbooks, then what's their role in our education? We would ask things, and we will only receive their ramblings, then we would be reminded that we need to finish a couple of lessons within 3 hours including all the mandatory exams. No wonder, I've only gained interest in learning now that I'm working.
This is the first time in hundreds of videos that it has been made clear to me that it's ONLY these special subatomic events that branch the universe and that if some dumb choice of yours doesn't correspond with one, the universe doesn't care. This feels vital and should be in every introduction to the subject. Nice one!
@@fallingintofilm Yeah, I think Prof Sean misspoke, unless his use of "quantum events" means something other than what I think it means. Every mental process involves thousands of quantum events, emitting a lot of protons, recapturing many of them elsewhere in our bodies, and transferring a lot of electrons. Our actions based on our choices involve many, many millions of quantum events over time, probably more. Each choice and each action remove us farther from the world where we first pondered the choice. (I think this is a plausible mechanism for free will when each universe has a fixed future.)
@@beenaplumber8379 The point is that it's not the making of the choice that's branching the universe. In fact, the universe is branching millions of times in the short time you actually make a decision. It's not like before the decision, you were in one branch, and then after the decision, you're in two branches, each with a different outcome to the decision. You're in millions of parallel states. In some you have decided one way, in some the other (and probably many more options outside the binary). The point Sean is making, is that there's no significance to the making of a choice. The branching is happening regardless, and the universe doesn't care. In fact, it might also be possible that you're going to make a decision, and in literally every possible future state that the wave function evolves into, you make the same decision. In which case the wave function can still be branching without even having different outcomes to the choice.
@@TijmenZwaan I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense to me. The millions of branchings that occur anyway make the quantum events associated with my mental process get lost in the chaos. But your last paragraph - I don't agree. Or i need to qualify it. All possible outcomes must exist, in one universe or another. Maybe not as a direct result of a choice, or maybe so, but they must exist.
@@beenaplumber8379 All possible outcomes must exist. However, not all outcomes must be possible. We have no idea whether the wave function contains the possibility for you to have chosen A or B, or that all the possibilities in the wave function all lead to you choosing A. To give an exaggerated example, lets say the choice is to A, walk to the grocery store and B, fly to the grocery store. It's not possible for a human to fly to the grocery store (on their own at least). So even though the wave function exists, and all possibilities therefore must exist, that does not mean that B is actually included in the possibilities.
I dont understand how infinitely minboggling the bifurcation speed of (One) universe is. Sean gives examples of ONE PERSON doing A instead of B, but isn't the wave funktion of that universe bifurcating into different uni AS SOON AS ANY ONE SINGLE PHOTON OR ELECTRON ETC INTERACTING WITH THE ENVIRONMENT?!
Around 35:10, you say 'Decisions in your head are purely classical processes - most of your thoughts have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.' But surely your head (and its brain!) are themselves quantum objects - as are processes running in them? So your decision for pizza or curry (I'd go for curry) is itself a quantum process. You seem to be indicating a curious dualism - quantum, and non-quantum, processes. But my understanding of what you said earlier is that everything is quantum. All quantum, everywhere, everywhen. If this is not so, what have I misunderstood?
What divides the quantum world from the classical world is that different types of Brownian motion are at work. In quantum mechanics we have tachyonic Brownian motion which is orthogonal to the wavelike behaviour. In the classical world orthogonality breaks down and the wavelike behaviour is obliterated, leaving a residue of classical Brownian motion. This idea is pitched at computer simulation. If we want to simulate something simple like an electron in a potential well, then we need to find a way to add tachyonic Brownian motion to the electron. The well needs to have some classical Brownian motion added because it is a dimple in a massive object. I don't mind hearing a claim that tachyonic Brownian motion can split the Universe in half, but I would then suggest that classical Brownian motion can glue it back together again, restoring the Universe that we actually experience. I just cannot locate the world where I win the National Lottery every week.
@@neharai4927 Unfortunately I cannot. It's my idea as far as I know. The idea is that the Minkowski formalism can be taken as a ready-made formalism which describes something deeper, namely that there is one way to travel faster than light which exchanges spacelike and timelike intervals, and another way which exchanges energy and momentum. These two ways are not the same. We can have an oscillation in the first way which can lead to destructive interference, and random motion in the second way which leads to a broken symmetry when an entity interacts with two or more detectors. This entity is definitely both a wave and a particle. Whether it is the typical entity of quantum mechanics remains to be seen, but I feel that I have my foot in the door when it comes to computer simulation.
Once the alternate world you created to decide where to go in front of you does its test, it collapse the incorrect one of maybe even many. It’s exactly what one does when one selects an operational amp for use, you build the test feed back circuit, and that’s where dark matter and energy won’t be found but it’s there, correction was there. So good work, it’s a model that works beyond all the bickering.
Well-presented description of why things made of clay can never perceive the course of events taking place in the Planck time. This is perhaps not so mysterious. Otherwise, we might think ourselves to be lost in a sort of fog.
I am from India. Hearty congratulations to the new scientist channel! Sean Carroll is my favourite physicist.The way Carroll explains science is commendable. 💐🌹
The limit to understanding seems to be in the ability of the mind to grasp the uncountably large and uncountably small. If a different system for understanding these proportions is learned though considerable practice (just as learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide took considerable practice). A billion millimeter cubes in a line is 1000km long but can be conceptualized using 3D - so it can be thought of as being a cubic meter. A billion billion billion in a row is 100 million light years, which is a cube with 1000km sides. This is an intellectual tool that allows all things to be conceptualized and realized
I think ultimate understanding has something to do with the making of predictions. Knowing a thing is knowing its behavior. I have the feeling that my question, 'what are fields made of', either cannot be answered outside of mathematics or any material explanation of them must be metaphorical and their 'reality' beyond understanding. But I see now that it must be that way with everything. All our understanding exists only as metaphorical ideas. The way we think has as much influence on what we think as does actuality. Cheers!
Question: Are there a finite number of possible superpositions for a given subatomic particle? If quantum particles are not particles but waves, that would seem to mean that superpositions would not be quantifiable, and not countable. And if this were true, wouldn't a new branch have infinite outcomes? If anyone could speak on this, I would appreciate it!
If you think about it, in a quantum world the number of possible superposed states MUST be finite, because all of the variables that distinguish one state from another are quantised
I remember David Wallace's reply to this in his book The Emergent Multiverse. The "collapse" phenomenology is the point-like intersections of continuous waves, so in the math that's an infinite number. The catch is that two arbitrarily close points in that continuum will have exactly the same phenomenology; there's no observable fact that could distinguish them. So it's not appropriate to call them "separate branches". Once you start thinking like that, you see that the issue of what actually defines a "branching" can be really nuanced and complex; you have to dig into how the actual observation may change from our perspective. Also there's the problem of chaos, the butterfly effect, e.g., where two nearby points won't appear differentiated early on, but after some amount of time they take surprisingly divergent paths. The branching happens later but was already set in motion earlier, so when is it fair to call it a "branching"? It gets complicated! Edit: You also have to keep in mind that we, as classical objects, observe ourselves taking a random walk through the continuum. Countless other versions of us are taking their own random walks through the continuum. What we usually mean by "world" is the path of that random walk, and a branching a divergence in that walk. In that context, what we're talking about is a version of us, our world, that's taking almost exactly the same walk as us through the Hilbert space continuum, arbitrarily close, so close that there's no observational difference. Our consciousnesses and the reality we observe are exactly the same in every way. Does that make us the "same person" in the "same world"? I think yes; but it's more of a philosophical question than a scientific one at that point.
There is no such thing as a collapse of the wave function, so no, it does not break the speed of light. It doesn't do anything other than to confuse people who don't understand physics.
So how does the entanglement explanation of gravity relate to the hypothetical graviton? Is there a quantum field with bosons that carry the force of gravity, or this would be an alternative explanation where there is no quantum field of gravity?
This answers the question of free will (stay with me). I make a choice (a sum of several quantum events), which determines which universal branch I take. It does not affect the universe I left behind. Each and every universe is fixed, but we choose the subsets of universes we experience. I think Prof Sean is mistaken when he says decisions are not quantum events. As far as we know (I'm a retired neuroscientist), decisions are a sum of electrochemical interactions in the brain, all of which emit photons, and all of which involve electron shuffling. Our actions are the same, whether muscular or glandular. If a quantum event is all that's needed, there ya go. Our choices result in many thousands of them, and our corresponding actions result in many millions, and it's all volitional.
I think you got it backwards, this would actually disprove the free will. As such your decision is mere result of probability of quantum event and free will and decision making is thus an illusion. In your interpretation the person making the decision is not the one actually making it, the outcome of quantum event is.
@@sssummmak I have made one or two assumptions here, the most important being that I can create chemical changes in my brain and body by will. I can raise my hand by will, and raising my hand causes quantum events. Some might argue that my hand will rise on its own and be accompanied by the delusion that I caused it to happen. But of what evolutionary advantage would that kind of self-deception be? Absent any empirical evidence to decide that matter, I can't reject your criticism as impossible, so I will say this might put the answer to the question of freewill under the Many Worlds theory, but like everything in science, nothing is certain. I favor my choice as the agent of change in the world around me because it fits all of my subjective observations so far, and if I am correct, that provides a viable pathway for freewill. That's a sorta anthropic principle thing there - if it were different, freewill could not exist - but since freewill is the question right now, I am giving this as a hypothesis that fits under the umbrella Many Worlds theory. Show me that the quantum events result in my perception that I have made a choice, and you will have refuted my hypothesis. Until then, you have pointed out a valid weakness in it, though your criticism shares the identical weakness - lack of empirical evidence.
@@beenaplumber8379 I personally also prefer thinking I have a free will and by self observation I have reached similar conclusion untill disproven. But you brought up interesting idea. If indeed processees in our brains are result of quantum events, even the decision itself may be simple result of such an event. in other words, in one universe you want to do thing a and in universe you want to do b. In both you feel that it is your own free decision.
@@sssummmak It still seems to come down to whether the quantum events precede or follow the thoughts. I guess we could be tossed randomly (or at least unpredictably) from universe to universe, telling ourselves "I meant to do that!" My hypothesis is scarcely better though, as I think you've aptly pointed out. I think what I was really happy about at first is that there is now a framework for freewill. It still may or may not be a truth, but there's a path to getting there now. Before Many Worlds, it was either yes or no, with freewill proponents sometimes needing to add a bit of god power to justify freewill as superior. I think many Worlds gives us the possibility to find something more than a chicken-or-egg type conundrum. But you're absolutely right - the more I think about it, the more I see the equal likelihood of agency vs. riding along. But there's another cool possibility - you lose the grandfather paradox with many worlds. Invent a time machine, go back in time & kill your grandfather, and all you've done is kill him in that timeline, not the one you originated in. You can mess with the past all you want because it's not going to affect the timelines you followed to get there. That's still cool!
@@beenaplumber8379 I'm confused. Where are your thoughts supposed to come from if not from activity in your brain? Regarding the physics of (non existent) free will, I would recommend this video: ruclips.net/video/zpU_e3jh_FY/видео.html
(0:50) But the photon that is "split" to the rt or lt is detected by sensors made by fallible Homo sapiens, and the particle accelerator is made by fallible Homo sapiens too. What I'm getting at is the Homo sapiens, particle accelerator, the sensors, and other variables that includes the electric grid, the iphone, the Universe Splitter app have been corrupted by fallible Homo sapiens and the deterministic Universe. Therefore, "randomness" is an illusion. It would be better if Carroll, instead of doing what the app tells him, does a headstand and simultaneously hops to the lt instead.
Great lecture! One thing I don’t get... ok, no split when choosing pizza over Chinese. And: yes, there is a split on every quantum experiment. But the latter cannot be the only case. I’m missing the link between seemingly probabilistic results and seemingly classical everyday life. What are the ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ cases the universe splits up? And about how many times does this occur?
You don't violate conservation of energy if you assume that both universes exist as a wave function, but only one of those universes receives the mass-energy content of the universe.
Here's what I don't get. Dr. Carroll is asking (11:50) what counts as "observation." Why don't we just get on the horn with the lab experimenters and ask them what they did to make the wave function collapse? This is what drives me crazy about quantum mechanics. It's not the weirdness of it. That I can live with. What drives me up the wall is that they never tell us what they actually did, but instead use some BS metaphor about how light behaves differently depending on whether our eyes are open or closed. I even saw a video where Carroll covered his eyes and then uncovered them, to illustrate the difference. There's no way that could be the case, for if it were, we would never observe the wave pattern in the double-slit experiment!
What you're asking in fact is: what is a measurement ? Answer: I make a measurement when I put in contact a big object with the thing I wanna study in such a way I can notice (with my eyes) a change on the big thing. And all that in a reproducible manner. In fact, when put in contact the big object acts as an environnement for the particle you wanna study and interacts with it such that this particle will behave in a unique way (and not many at the same time). All the other ways this particle could have been are canceled : these are incompatible due to the complex way the particle interacts with all the constituants of the big object. This phenomenon is called decoherence.
@@QuanticSniperTGL Thank you for taking the time to respond. I guess I'm asking what a measurement is. What I'm really asking is, what does one specifically do to cause decoherence? Do I stick my finger in front of the beam? Do I pass it through a sheet of glass? Polarized material? If the answer is as simple as using macro objects to interfere with quantum objects, then why are we talking about measuring and observing? What's the big mystery? Why are inquisitive physics students striking fear into their professors by asking these questions?
@@Ascoundrel My "striking fear" comment was based on something Dr. Carroll said (12:50), "...if the students have these questions, we tell the students to shut up." In fact, I did define my inquisition perfectly clearly. Look at around 12:00 and you see a list of questions that Carroll asks (e.g., "can an earthworm do an observation?"). He further states, "none of these questions have [traditional] answers." Why not? The situations he lists are all things that can be examined experimentally. Why can't we determine whether an earthworm can trigger the collapse of a wave form? All we need to do is get an earthworm and introduce it into the experiment. I can't make it any clearer, so if you still don't understand, I don't know what else to tell you. If you are able to answer these questions, then by all means, I am listening.
@Tiktaalik r I am sure that I am misunderstanding something. I'm just frustrated that nobody can answer my simple questions. I don't care much about Schrodinger's cat, since it is purely a thought experiment, and I am happy to take a Bayesian approach to it if it comes to that. What I usually tell people is that quantum collapse does not occur because of consciousness, but because "observation" of particles requires interaction with the particles, which in turn affects the behavior of particles. The issue I'm having is with the double-slit experiment. My understanding is that, first of all, the double-slit is a physical experiment, and not just a thought experiment. Secondly, that it creates a wave pattern on the wall behind it. And thirdly, that if the light coming through the slits is "observed" or "measured," the light on the back wall stops being a wave pattern and becomes two slits of light. All I'm trying to find out is, what literal thing did experimenters do to change the wave pattern to the straight lines? I know they didn't just open their eyes and look at it, for if that were so, we would never see the wave pattern in the first place. So did they stick a glass sheet in front of the light? Did they shine a laser across the light path? Did they stick their finger partly in front of it? It should be a simple matter for someone to explain what they literally did, and yet nobody ever does, which is why I'm so frustrated.
I don't think people don't like the many-worlds interpretation, I think people love this idea. The Hollywood productions reflect that in last two decades. I think Copenhagen interpretation is closer to our experience and more faithful to Occams razor.
If we seriously consider the experiment of "Wigner's Friend", we have to accept a multi-world interpretation. An observer in his world is in his time, and for him a division of his world arises in his time. However, for transcendents outside the universe the universe is stationary.
@@schakiarligonde1736 When the entanglement of quantum superposition extends to include an observer, it evolves into a state of multiple coexisting worlds.
after he hoped, people were like should we clap? so like 5 people clapped, thank God its would have been awkward if he just stood there for 5 seconds only to proceed.
hmmm does this relate to the question of free will in some way? that we "have free will" in a quantum way, that is any choice is an infinite choice but free will becomes entangled so our experience is there is no free will? hmmm.
Just a small thing : the universe cannot _be split at the same moment,_ because _"the universe at the same moment"_ does not have any meaning, *and Sean Carroll knows it perfectly.* *Speaking of "many minds" instead does nor require any put-aside of Relativity, Special nor General.*
@@jamescollier3 According to GR there is no such thing as "the universe" (at a given time), but as many different universes as possible observers, with just a coherence contraint. Right ?
yes!!! loved that too! he is all about getting Hugh the credit he deserves. PS I wonder if any of these folks consider it disrespectful when we use their first names...
Everett was a true genius but he was bitterly let down by the scientific establishment of the time. I'm so gald Dr Carroll gives the appropriate credit to his groundbreaking work.
Isn't that specifically what he's saying isn't happening at 35:00? "If you don't know whether to order pizza or curry for dinner tonight and you finally make a decision, that doesn't mean there's another universe in which you ordered another one".
@@dantenotavailable What I am saying 'If you have come to a decision about ordering pizza or curry, your conclusion may have been to stay in for pasta'
@@life42theuniverse It may have been, but it might also not have been one of the possibilities. It could very well be that the wave function had no possible states where he saw left/right on the screen, but jumped in the other direction. The fact that all possible worlds and all possible outcomes exist simultaneously does not mean that everything is possible to exist or happen.
"Why do we see things in location?" Maybe it's the same reason we can watch multiple things at the same time. The U.S. Open TV coverage will split screen and show 2 tennis games at once. Hard as I try, I can't watch both games at the exact same time. Maybe our ability to comprehend what we see is limited to seeing one world at a time.
So does that mean with black holes there's a quantum particle there and that's actually where it is? Or is it that that's a place of significant entanglement which might be the same thing a point where the many worlds converge and the particle of all the worlds overlapping on each other is actually in that spot. So the degree of entanglement of the many worlds is proportional to the mass and energy of that spot until you get a single concentration and convergence and the "big bang" happens again. So the "probalistic" overlapping position of the other worlds is actually the mass in which I see and interact given I don't know which world I'm actually in. It's like probablistic mass that actually makes up the mass and material of the world I can actually live and breath in and interact with
Really enjoyed this presentation. I'm already a big fan of Mind Scape. One question: where does the energy come from to create the new branches of the entire universe?
@@Vld45 How does the mass energy of 511keV of an electron split? Where do you get the 1GeV for the proton in a hydrogen from? To be honest, you are just another one of those guys who don't know how quantum mechanics actually works. The result is that folks like Sean Carroll can pull one over you with the stupid MWI interpretation. :-)
Maybe the measurement problem is the same than in photography. If you take too long exposure, you will see blurred image. We should just measure faster 10e-33sec or similar. Some have suqqested that there are universal clock in that speed.
in a certain experiment you can see particles fly out of objects that radioactivly decay, if it was a wave it would radiate in a sphere in all directions. the double slit experiment shows a wave? so it collapses under observation. we are all in the same system connected by the fields that atoms get there mass.
What's the difference between an observation & an event? If a photograph is taken then not viewed for 100yrs. Are the silver halide crystals in the emulsion in superposition for all that time? Which is the observation. The photograph or the viewing of the photograph? Or are the states of the photographic crystals events or a stored observation?
And that's the entire point. The idea of observation is simply not well defined. Which is why the many worlds interpretation is much more appealing. "Are the silver halide crystals in the emulsion in superposition for all that time?" Yes. In fact, it will never get out of that superposition. There is no wave function collapse, so superpositions are permanent. What happens is that you as the observer also become entangled with what you're observing, so you also go into a superposition. We are just experiencing one branch of the larger superposition of the universe.
In that case(a crazy amount of "particles" interacting simultaniously) how does that universe wave function even "keep track" of it self? So to speak...
Why would it need to? It simply has to obey the rules. On a much smaller, more digestible scale, the ants in Langtons' Ant sims don't need to "keep track" of anything, they just obey the rules of their universe, and stuff happens
This was a decent lecture! He really stepped up his game. Sometimes I think he gets stuff wrong about the Many Worlds Interpretation and says stuff that isn't actually compatible with it, but he was good here. It was lit! But I strongly disagree with the claim here @ 34:42 "When a quantum mechanical system in a superposition becomes entangled with its environment and decoheres, that's when the universe branches. If you don't know whether to order pizza or curry for dinner tonight and you finally make a decision that doesn't mean there's another universe in which you ordered the other one unless you used the phone to do a quantum number generator. Decisions in your head are purely classical processes. Most of your thoughts have nothing to do with quantum mechanics." That's a bold claim to say MWI being true doesn't matter for our thoughts and that they would still be purely classical, but the bigger issue is implying that only the subatomic superpositions cause the "Branching" and otherwise the universe is classical. I think that misses the point and falls in the same problem copenhagen does for having different rules at different scales. The whole point of MWI is that everything is actually a quantum mechanical system and everything in the universe is actually in superposition. The same rules that apply at the subatomic level still apply at the macrolevel scale. Although it might look like you could never be anything other than running with classical physics, on the scale on the entire universe you absolutely are in superposition with every possible state allowed by the Schrodinger equation. There are timelines with events that have only a .000000000001% chance of happening under the Schrodinger equation, but because of the tail problem, that happens some timeline. Every single possible path in MWI has to happen in some branch. So as far as ordering pizza and curry in separate universes, that's a given. And considering quantum tunneling exists where particles are somehow able to cross barriers they do not have enough energy to cross classically it makes no sense to say it is impossible for your thoughts to be different in other timelines or that it is a purely classical process unaffected by MWI. Under MWI being true this would assert that every single particle has a probability of quantum tunneling, and that this must be realized in some timeline as all possible paths are taken. Going deep enough even the interactions of your brain, since it is also made of subatomic particles as everything else is, should have subatomic variation of which can lead to different outcomes as time moves forward and each path is taken in some timeline. So no way is there no universe where you buy curry. You don't need an app on a phone to "split" the universe, it's happening every single possible moment and in ways much more drastically than said in this lecture. But it was still a nice informative lecture. I just think sometime Sean worries about the actual implications of MWI turning people away so he tries to hype it down to make it more accessible.
@@markanthmore Lmao but joking aside yes. If MWI is true it doesn't need a silly phone app to "split" timelines bruh. It would be like saying you need a cellphone for the laws of the universe to work. Though of course he was using that analogy to try to explain when he thinks "splitting" happens and also to explain that certain events may not necessarily be possible to happen, you still gotta admit the analogy just doesn't really fit and is gonna confuse the hell out of people if they take it literally.
No. It means there is substantial evidence for a hypothesis or theory, but not enough for a scientific consensus. I suspect you know that though. Would you prefer scientists didn't hypothesize? That would bring science to a halt.
Kinda blew my mind! Newtonian physics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and now this. If it holds up, it really is of that magnitude, right? Pinch me! Because Many Worlds has a correlate, Many Minds, that is like an algebraic transformation of Many Worlds, only IMO it's simpler because it does not assume a universe. The only first principle is the thinking observer. It's almost a solipsism like that, but not quite. Anyway, from that one assumption, "I think, therefore I am," Schrödinger's equation and all of quantum mechanics is emergent, and therefore so is everything else. I hope I live long enough to see this work out! (With my luck, I'll probably kick the bucket when we have another turn-of-the-20th-century moment when we realize that we've barely scratched the surface of a whole new underlying system.)
@blindwillie99 Because, for all you know, consciousness might be the only thing there is. What makes you so sure you need anything of any complexity in order to dream up a world where brains and complexity are required to think? The surest sign that you don't know something is the certainty with which you think you know it. Certainty makes terrible scientists. "How can anyone seriously posit" is another way of saying "I can't think of a basis to posit." Then you give up and give your Nobel to the next in line. That's a crisis of imagination, or lack thereof. "I can't think of how, therefore it's not valid." A scientist from the Mayo Clinic gave a talk at my lab once, and he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, on a flawed research program. He couldn't make sense of his data, so he concluded his hypothesis must be correct because he couldn't think of a better explanation - never mind that his data did not support his hypothesis either. When he left, we all had a few chuckles at the poor guy's expense. Narrow thinking and closed minds block learning. Einstein's best work all came directly from his wide-open mind and incredibly fertile imagination. Sadly, his worst work came from just the opposite - things he refused to consider because they seemed preposterous to him. Give yourself a chance to go through the brilliant phase before settling in the humdrum monotony of narrowed expectations.
@@beenaplumber8379 Try thinking without a brain. You want to believe that consciousness is fundamental only because you don't want your personal awareness to come to a permanent end at death. The psychology here is obvious.
@@b.g.5869 There's another example. You have a hypothesis (my motives + the need for a brain led to my conclusion), and you can't think of a better explanation. That is a starting point, not a basis for a conclusion. Your only evidence is reason, but reason can only get us to a hypothesis, not a scientific conclusion. (That is a very common misconception among non-scientists.) The problem, and the strongest challenge to research in psychology, is that no one can know the internal experiences of another person (without ESP). They are not directly subject to scientific study. That is why psychological diagnoses are defined by statistical variation from normal behavior, not internal experiences. (Their lack of correlation of disorders to neural processes has also thrown a real monkey wrench into the field of psychological research, yet even that could not give us access to internal experiences.) I would like to amend my own statement of my first principle: I am aware, therefore I am. Thinking might imply some cognitive process that doesn't require awareness, but it might require a flesh computer (no one can say for sure). Neuroscientists can't even say where different types of memories are stored. (Certain types of task memories might be stored in the motor groups that perform those tasks, for instance.) You can speculate about my motives if you like, but the evidence for that is scant. You can speculate you need a brain to think (or maybe to be aware), but again, the evidence is scant. In any case, the Many Minds theory requires an observer, nothing more. I think the pertinent question for you is how much evidence do you really have that a brain is required first in order to have an observer? Even defining an observer is problematic under quantum theory. I think you might have fallen into that trap where you assume things that are intuitive to you must be true. The whole weirdness of quantum theory is that it is so very counter-intuitive. You don't know more than I do, and I don't know more than you do. (I'm a retired neuroscientist, so you think I might claim to know more than you, but I don't. This is far broader than the study of one organ system.) The difference is that you are *assuming* a lot more than I am. Do you realize how little you know, how little you can know, about all this? I think the basis for your confidence is misplaced. I'm just excited by all this theoretical work because it's beginning to make so much more sense to me now!
@@beenaplumber8379 Interesting debate here. Your position made me think of Donald Hoffman - I wonder if you are familiar with his work? From what I can gather, he is working on developing a mathematical model which posits consciousness is fundamental and matter emergent. I believe his goal is to use the model to attempt to derive general relativity equations, Schrodigners equations etc.
Sean Carroll makes it seem like it the coppenhagen interpretation is more weird than the many worlds interpretation. Both are strange. One essentially says that our consciousness manifests reality, the other say that there are an infinite number of universes.
I have another explanation for the question of Schrodinger cat that is very simple and I am sure that is right: the mechanism that activates the poison, in this case is also a detector of the quantum state, therefore the cat will never be in a superposition of states, but it will be dead or alive not both, and this regardless of the open or closed box, or who observes
Pilot Wave theory is the most intuitive straight forward interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but it is clearly incompatible with Special Relativity, but it is compatible with Galilean Relativity, where space and time are absolute and field propagation is not limited by the speed of light. I propose that Relativity is just an optical illusion. Relativity has a simple built in logical fallacy, and no theory based on a logical fallacy can be true, no matter how many experiments seem to prove it, or how many people say it is true. Below is a very simple logical argument highlighting the logical fallacy, using the same terminology Einstein used to derive Relativity. According to Relativity, observers on a moving train and on a stationary train platform will disagree on the size of the ""Train"" and the passage of time on the ""Train"". This is a complete logical contradiction if the size and the passage of time of the train are real. If the size of the train is real, then the ""Train"" can not be both contracted and not contracted. The same goes for the observed passage of time on the ""Train"". If these effects are observed, then the only possible conclusion is that it is an optical illusion. Things that are real must appear to be same from all frames of reference. If not, then by definition it is an illusion. Again the argument is very simple and it is the argument Einstein used to derive Relativity, and no acceleration is used in the argument. A train with length (L) traveling at constant velocity (v) relative a stationary observer on a station platform. According to Relativity, the stationary observer will see the train contracted (L/r, where r is the Relativistic gamma), whereas an observer on the train will see it not contracted (L). So the train is both contracted (L/r) and not contracted (L) depending on the observer. This is a complete contradiction (L not equal L/r) and can not be true if length is real. The same argument applies to passage of time on the Train, where both observers will disagree on the passage of time. If time is real, it can not be both dilated and not dilated (T not equal rT). If space and time are observed to be both large and small simultaneously for one inertial reference frame, such as the ""Train"", then it must be an optical illusion. This argument is only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more evidence including both theoretical and experimental, so please keep reading. Hi my name is Dr William Walker and I am a PhD physicist and have been investigating this topic for 30 years. It has been known since the late 1700s by Simone LaPlace that nearfield Gravity is instantaneous by analyzing the stability of the orbits of the planets about the sun. This is actually predicted by General Relativity by analyzing the propagating fields generated by an oscillating mass. In addition, General Relativity predicts that in the farfield Gravity propagates at the speed of light. The farfield speed of gravity was recently confirmed by LIGO. Recently it has been shown that light behaves in the same way by using Maxwell's equations to analyze the propagating fields generated my an oscillating charge. For more information search: William Walker Superluminal. This was experimentally confirmed by measuring radio waves propagating between 2 antennas and separating the antennas from the nearfield to the farfield, which occurs about 1 wavelength from the source. This behavior of gravity and light occurs not only for the phase and group speed, but also the information speed. This instantaneous nature of light and gravity near the source has been kept from the public and is not commonly known. The reason is that it shows that both Special Relativity and General Relativity are wrong! It can be easily shown that Instantaneous nearfield light yields Galilean Relativity and farfield light yields Einstein Relativity. This is because in the nearfield, gamma=1since c= infinity, and in the farfield, gamma= the Relativistic gamma since c= farfield speed of light. Since time and space are real, they can not depend on the frequency of light used. This is because c=wavelength x frequency, and 1 wavelength = c/frequency defines the nearfield from the farfield. Consequently Relativity is an optical illusion. Objects moving near the speed of light appear to contract in length and time appears to slow down, but it is just what you see using farfield light. Using nearfield light you will see that the object has not contracted and time has not changed. For more information: Search William Walker Relativity. Since General Relativity is based on Special Relativity, General Relativity must also be an optical illusion. Spacetime is flat and gravity must be a propagating field. Researchers have shown that in the weak field limit, which is what we only observe, General Relativity reduces to Gravitoelectromagnetism, which shows gravity can be modeled as 4 Maxwell equations similar in form to those for electromagnetic fields, yielding Electric and Magnetic components of gravity. This theory explains all gravitational effects as well as the instantaneous nearfield and speed of light farfield propagating fields. So gravity is a propagating field that can finally be quantized enabling the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics. The current interpretation of quantum mechanics makes no sense, involving particles that are not real until measured, and in a fuzzy superposition of states. On the other hand, the Pilot Wave interpretation of Quantum Mechanics makes makes much more sense, which says particles are always real with real positions and velocities. The particles also interact with an energetic quantum field that permeates all of space, forming a pilot wave that guides the particle. This simpler deterministic explanation explains all known quantum phenomena. The only problem is that the Pilot Wave is known to interact instantaneously with all other particles, and this is completely incompatible with Relativity, but is compatible with Galilean Relativity. But because of the evidence presented here, this is no longer a problem, and elevates the Pilot Interpretation to our best explanation of Quantum Mechanics. *RUclips presentation of above argument: ruclips.net/video/sePdJ7vSQvQ/видео.html *Paper it is based on: William D. Walker and Dag Stranneby, A New Interpretation of Relativity, 2023: vixra.org/abs/2309.0145
Quantum mechanics is about possibilty, but usually among so many possibilities only one or few will be realized, the percentage of realization depends on the conditions which favorite the chance to occur ,right?
Time is very interesting to say the least... to say the most would take an infinite amount of space. I just said that now... and it is then. Glory be to what was, is, and will be.... thank you 😊 Such an awesome observation obviously observed by observing observers in observatories. More than meets the eye. Just think about how many atoms are in front of you while you read what is on your screen... then think.... how many atoms are in this "I" that's controlling your mind right now? 👁
If we put more than 3 observers at the same time to open the cat box, if they all have the same conclusion, will the thinking of superposition still exists?
Entanglement is not an irreversable process. In fact it is very fragile because it requires specific conditions (very low temperatures etc) Otherwise the whole universe would be entangled since the Big Bang.
@@neharai4927 Of course entanglement can happen anywhere anytime but lasts only for a very short time. If we want to maintain it for a long time, for example in quantum computers, we must keep the temperature close to zero.
*SERIOUS opinions only, please:* I'm not smart. So, I have to ask: Must each of these "splits" create its own "big bang" somewhere else with the creation of a new universe? Or does the parallel world just sort of divide off within this universe? (Insults to my person will be ignored.)
Not a serious opinion, simply an explanation: there isn’t another big bang because there isn’t a creation of a new universe. The wave function which describes the one universe simply evolves in such a way that a term with amplitude A becomes a set of i€{1,…,N} new terms with amplitudes Ai such that the sum of (Ai)^2 = A^2. There is only one universal wave function. It is simply a superposition of orthogonal states.
I'm just saying maybe I don't understand something. But I think Marletto believes in this which would technically break the very laws of thermodynamics she considers impossible to break? I don't see how you could believe in that and give up on a perpetual motion machine. Every time you look or measure or make a decision the universe branches off, breaking one of the laws that makes perpetual motion impossible. Wouldn't our universe taken as a complete system be a perpetual motion machine?
But the electron wave function values are essentially zero, except in the shells around the nucleus. So saying the atom is mostly empty space still seems valid.
@SeanCarroll, This is an excellent speech as far as public speaking techniques go -- but I think it can be greatly enhanced if you add a few words about how do fields work - that there can be fields that are cross-interacting, self-interacting and non-interacting. AND, non-self-interacting fields are actually fairly easy to visualize - very much like the sound waves in a 1D string, or surface waves in a pond. if you spend a few words on explaining that some events are interacting (and produce a split) and some are non-interacting (waves just travel on their own and move away from each other, maybe even going through each other without distortion) the entire story will be much more believable. You can do it!
@@HawthorneHillNaturePreserve Thank you for entangling me back to this topic a full year later. I enjoyed this lecture today as much as I enjoyed it back then. A year after, I understand more of it. As to yourself -- does spreading hate make you feel smarter? Please let me know.
I've watched this lecture several times now and each viewing is as engaging as the first. Dr Carroll is a stellar lecturer.
Agreed
Yes, I’m still stuck on how does a wave spin?
@@sbschamp10 I thought I was getting close to having an intuitive understanding of QM, and then you had to go and ask a question like that.
i watched it then i didn't watch it and i understand but don't comprehend. i think i got a better grasp when i wasn't watching it.
He's great. I'd like to watch him and Lawrence kraus have a conversation
An absolute masterpiece. Sean Carrol is a great communicator and surely one of top guys in his field.
EWW44WAqaW3TDW !qaqrydtd
I completely agree with Sean about the nature of reality and the possibilities out there. I like his style, in that, he doesn't try to force one particular
viewpoint over another, he's just interested in getting at the truth. I get the idea from his mannerisms that he sees all these differing opinions
as a dance rather than a battle.
As a non physicist who left school at 16 but with an overwhelming interest in cosmology I think I actually understood that.
Lovely, nice to hear. Its been 4 months since your comment, how has your interest manifested itself in your life up too this point?
@@briandimattia629 I think I'm a bit like Einstein, slightly autistic, don't commit anything to memory that I can look up. I keep up to date via journals and the internet. I work with computers at a system level.
No you don't , quantum mechanics is short is insisting this world is a Matrix a simulation and not real at all. Now tell me you understand it.
You have to be incredibly intelligent to explain things this simply. Being a great teacher is very difficult and most people don’t have the intelligence to do it well. I would like to be this man’s neighbor.
In the Trivium rhetoric is the last skill you learn to master. Rhetoric is the ability to transmit information simply and concisely to other individuals. You know you really know something when you can explain it to someone else very eloquently and simply that's when you have mastered your own knowledge.
Every time I watch this video, I'm in the world where Sean hops to the right. In the world where he hopped to the left, I actually gave a bulletproof account of the true nature of QM and our universe. I just can't get back there now.
From many worlds theory you can also deduct that time travel is analogous to travelling between parallel worlds.
They're actually different 'worlds' in the same universe; Carroll explained this.
Many universes refers to the multiverse of eternal cosmic inflation.
you smokin the indicar sativa? Oh, wait more like shrooms or acid? Let me know please I gotta kno
The West has always been at the forefront of science. However , a few problems are inherent or commonly affecting the scientists from knowing the reality :
1. Language. Typically English. Language js ambiguous. A tool invented by ancient people. An art used to describe science. Problem due to its flaws : ambiguity affects communication, info propagation , discussions, debates, etc.
2. Heavily affected by Christianity. Limited minds affect knowing reality.
3. Based on maths : it works because its its system invented by humans. Of course within its rules it must work. This does not mean it can be used to know reality. It can be a limitation preventing knowing reality.
The west is too confident they know a lot when no one in the world knows anything absolutely fundamental in the universe. All theories.
My point is , due to all these assumptions and thinking constraints, we are guaranteed not to understand the reality. Its just not possible. What is and has been happening is scientists Believing they are right. The west is living in their own bubble. All human race should come together to find the truth. Look at China, overtaking USA. Why? Did USA not know long ago this is gonna happen? They should know. But what's the reality? Both civilisations do not really understand the other. They live in their own bubble , limiting the possibilities. Ego, Racism, xenophobia, culture, religion etc. Human ignorance
That was a great lecture!
I wish I could like this video ten times. Subscribed.
My man Sean has mastered his craft
What craft is that?
Ah, but which craft? Or is that, witch craft?
Every once in a while I come back to this lecture to try and understand it! Diving in right now, wish me luck!
its pseudo science. so.. dont know what you try to understand. nothing of this is testable..
@@boohoo5419 yeah well. At a certain point he says from now one we’re going to look at the observer in a quantum mechanical state and then like five minutes later he says that we observed the cat in a classical state. I don’t know if you know what I mean, I worded it very poorly but man is it hard to follow… you have any advicr for other videos on this topic?
@@bennozelaar his theory is that we are also quantum mechanical systems bcs we are made of particles as well. the cat is classical later bcs he speaks of it after the measurement. we can only measure classical systems and the quantum state diverges at this point. this doesnt make much sense at all. like i said. multiverse theory isnt science. this is as scientific as a priest talking about god. he can make shit up as he goes. if you wanna understand what he talks about start at string theory. then you understand the problem that hes trying to solve.
Stellar presentation that helped me think about the subject, and actually form my own opinion on the relationship between Gravity and the Many Worlds.
When I was an undergrad learning QM, my professor would say “shut up and do the math. It works, and that’s as good as you’re going to get.” I see why now.
Shut up and calculate. There's nothing to see here.
@@b.g.5869 certainly not the deepest mysteries of the universe
Professors that've lost their drive for knowledge and try to inspire the same dispassionate attitude in their students do society a disservice.
This is why we remember Max Planck better than we do Phillip von Jolly.
@@Chance57 so true
14 year old here, love this stuff!!
Same!
@@poopityscoopity2042 god
I am not a scientist, just an interested party. However, listening to this lecture made me think about when I was a child and I thought about when I moved my finger. Whether that changed the entire universe or created a new one or not was a very insightful thought to have for a person from 45 years ago. It's almost like it's intuitively known to us that things are dynamically changing depending on your perspective
Outstanding lecture not to mention compelling arguments.
Wow. Wonderfully explained.
Great Video. Really interesting. I’m learning all the time. 😀👍
My though of this lecture by professor Sean Carroll is that basically Gravity is merely an Entanglement of all as such, I believe..this way of thinking brings the unification and understanding to describe how quantum and classical mechanics unites and works!
Maybe all measurement taking is extended overtime. If you could measure some fundamentally random quantum phenonenon at an instant, you might get a blurry picture (though it's not clear how a measurement device would record a "blurry" number) , but you cannot. Your measurement necessarily coarse-grains reality, averages a quantum state over time.
I need a quantum lottery ticket generator. That way, I'll always be in a world where I win the jackpot!
Not a bad username or point there dude!
@@benjammin8184 I agree about the username
the chances of other people winning is so low i ought to win every week.
You've inadvertently hit on my one reason for not buying many worlds. If true, then it has profound implications for consciousness, because after all, shouldn't we ALWAYS find ourselves in a universe in which we are alive and not one in which we are dead or never existed? That's a given right? So, that means that no matter how many times per second we die in no matter how many worlds, our experience will always be that we are alive, even if we have just narrowly survived death. Here we mix in a little Fermi Paradox just to spice things up; If the above is true, then where are all the great survivors? Where's the person that attempts suicide daily but can never die because we happen to live in a universe where he is still alive? And also if true, doesn't that make us immortal since no matter how unlikely it is that we live to be a 1000 years old, there must be worlds in which technology has allowed us to do so and so we continue to live and have that experience? IOW, many worlds is too messy and leads to too many absurd outcomes. (related to your comment because where are all the people that hit the lottery every time they play, a possibility that is highly unlikely but must happen constantly in a many worlds universe, and also related to Fermi as in "Where are all the tourists?")
Then you are the only concious human being in this universe. All alone to spend your winning money.
I hope every lecturer explain things like this... and yes, we do have resources, we do have our textbooks, but not everything can be covered in our textbooks. Some textbooks only explains the "gist" of the subject, and is not really delving deeper into it. Sometimes I'm feelin' like telling my college professors that if we could learn everything we need from our textbooks, then what's their role in our education? We would ask things, and we will only receive their ramblings, then we would be reminded that we need to finish a couple of lessons within 3 hours including all the mandatory exams. No wonder, I've only gained interest in learning now that I'm working.
Professor Sean Caroll deserves an honorary Nobel Prize for his services in communication of Physics. Check out his podcast "Mindscape"!
This is the first time in hundreds of videos that it has been made clear to me that it's ONLY these special subatomic events that branch the universe and that if some dumb choice of yours doesn't correspond with one, the universe doesn't care. This feels vital and should be in every introduction to the subject. Nice one!
I’m not sure that’s true.
@@fallingintofilm Yeah, I think Prof Sean misspoke, unless his use of "quantum events" means something other than what I think it means. Every mental process involves thousands of quantum events, emitting a lot of protons, recapturing many of them elsewhere in our bodies, and transferring a lot of electrons. Our actions based on our choices involve many, many millions of quantum events over time, probably more. Each choice and each action remove us farther from the world where we first pondered the choice. (I think this is a plausible mechanism for free will when each universe has a fixed future.)
@@beenaplumber8379 The point is that it's not the making of the choice that's branching the universe. In fact, the universe is branching millions of times in the short time you actually make a decision. It's not like before the decision, you were in one branch, and then after the decision, you're in two branches, each with a different outcome to the decision. You're in millions of parallel states. In some you have decided one way, in some the other (and probably many more options outside the binary).
The point Sean is making, is that there's no significance to the making of a choice. The branching is happening regardless, and the universe doesn't care.
In fact, it might also be possible that you're going to make a decision, and in literally every possible future state that the wave function evolves into, you make the same decision.
In which case the wave function can still be branching without even having different outcomes to the choice.
@@TijmenZwaan I understand what you're saying, and it makes sense to me. The millions of branchings that occur anyway make the quantum events associated with my mental process get lost in the chaos.
But your last paragraph - I don't agree. Or i need to qualify it. All possible outcomes must exist, in one universe or another. Maybe not as a direct result of a choice, or maybe so, but they must exist.
@@beenaplumber8379 All possible outcomes must exist. However, not all outcomes must be possible.
We have no idea whether the wave function contains the possibility for you to have chosen A or B, or that all the possibilities in the wave function all lead to you choosing A.
To give an exaggerated example, lets say the choice is to A, walk to the grocery store and B, fly to the grocery store.
It's not possible for a human to fly to the grocery store (on their own at least). So even though the wave function exists, and all possibilities therefore must exist, that does not mean that B is actually included in the possibilities.
I dont understand how infinitely minboggling the bifurcation speed of (One) universe is. Sean gives examples of ONE PERSON doing A instead of B, but isn't the wave funktion of that universe bifurcating into different uni AS SOON AS ANY ONE SINGLE PHOTON OR ELECTRON ETC INTERACTING WITH THE ENVIRONMENT?!
What a fantastic and informative video
Around 35:10, you say 'Decisions in your head are purely classical processes - most of your thoughts have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.' But surely your head (and its brain!) are themselves quantum objects - as are processes running in them? So your decision for pizza or curry (I'd go for curry) is itself a quantum process. You seem to be indicating a curious dualism - quantum, and non-quantum, processes. But my understanding of what you said earlier is that everything is quantum. All quantum, everywhere, everywhen. If this is not so, what have I misunderstood?
What divides the quantum world from the classical world is that different types of Brownian motion are at work. In quantum mechanics we have tachyonic Brownian motion which is orthogonal to the wavelike behaviour. In the classical world orthogonality breaks down and the wavelike behaviour is obliterated, leaving a residue of classical Brownian motion.
This idea is pitched at computer simulation. If we want to simulate something simple like an electron in a potential well, then we need to find a way to add tachyonic Brownian motion to the electron. The well needs to have some classical Brownian motion added because it is a dimple in a massive object.
I don't mind hearing a claim that tachyonic Brownian motion can split the Universe in half, but I would then suggest that classical Brownian motion can glue it back together again, restoring the Universe that we actually experience. I just cannot locate the world where I win the National Lottery every week.
Where can I learn about tachyonic browniab motion? Can u suggest some book?
@@neharai4927 Unfortunately I cannot. It's my idea as far as I know. The idea is that the Minkowski formalism can be taken as a ready-made formalism which describes something deeper, namely that there is one way to travel faster than light which exchanges spacelike and timelike intervals, and another way which exchanges energy and momentum. These two ways are not the same.
We can have an oscillation in the first way which can lead to destructive interference, and random motion in the second way which leads to a broken symmetry when an entity interacts with two or more detectors. This entity is definitely both a wave and a particle. Whether it is the typical entity of quantum mechanics remains to be seen, but I feel that I have my foot in the door when it comes to computer simulation.
Once the alternate world you created to decide where to go in front of you does its test, it collapse the incorrect one of maybe even many. It’s exactly what one does when one selects an operational amp for use, you build the test feed back circuit, and that’s where dark matter and energy won’t be found but it’s there, correction was there. So good work, it’s a model that works beyond all the bickering.
My idea but other worlds might say otherwise, no difference.
You guys rock.
"Atoms are mostly wave function." Favorite quote from this.
Well-presented description of why things made of clay can never perceive the course of events taking place in the Planck time. This is perhaps not so mysterious. Otherwise, we might think ourselves to be lost in a sort of fog.
I am from India. Hearty congratulations to the new scientist channel! Sean Carroll is my favourite physicist.The way Carroll explains science is commendable. 💐🌹
Absolutely fantastic! Just brilliant!
Love you Sean thanks for trying so hard to help us understand
The limit to understanding seems to be in the ability of the mind to grasp the uncountably large and uncountably small. If a different system for understanding these proportions is learned though considerable practice (just as learning to add, subtract, multiply and divide took considerable practice). A billion millimeter cubes in a line is 1000km long but can be conceptualized using 3D - so it can be thought of as being a cubic meter. A billion billion billion in a row is 100 million light years, which is a cube with 1000km sides. This is an intellectual tool that allows all things to be conceptualized and realized
I think ultimate understanding has something to do with the making of predictions. Knowing a thing is knowing its behavior. I have the feeling that my question, 'what are fields made of', either cannot be answered outside of mathematics or any material explanation of them must be metaphorical and their 'reality' beyond understanding. But I see now that it must be that way with everything. All our understanding exists only as metaphorical ideas. The way we think has as much influence on what we think as does actuality. Cheers!
Still can not figure it out , but some how I can Imagen it , different hand movement in all directions?
Question: Are there a finite number of possible superpositions for a given subatomic particle? If quantum particles are not particles but waves, that would seem to mean that superpositions would not be quantifiable, and not countable. And if this were true, wouldn't a new branch have infinite outcomes? If anyone could speak on this, I would appreciate it!
If you think about it, in a quantum world the number of possible superposed states MUST be finite, because all of the variables that distinguish one state from another are quantised
I remember David Wallace's reply to this in his book The Emergent Multiverse. The "collapse" phenomenology is the point-like intersections of continuous waves, so in the math that's an infinite number. The catch is that two arbitrarily close points in that continuum will have exactly the same phenomenology; there's no observable fact that could distinguish them. So it's not appropriate to call them "separate branches". Once you start thinking like that, you see that the issue of what actually defines a "branching" can be really nuanced and complex; you have to dig into how the actual observation may change from our perspective. Also there's the problem of chaos, the butterfly effect, e.g., where two nearby points won't appear differentiated early on, but after some amount of time they take surprisingly divergent paths. The branching happens later but was already set in motion earlier, so when is it fair to call it a "branching"? It gets complicated!
Edit: You also have to keep in mind that we, as classical objects, observe ourselves taking a random walk through the continuum. Countless other versions of us are taking their own random walks through the continuum. What we usually mean by "world" is the path of that random walk, and a branching a divergence in that walk. In that context, what we're talking about is a version of us, our world, that's taking almost exactly the same walk as us through the Hilbert space continuum, arbitrarily close, so close that there's no observational difference. Our consciousnesses and the reality we observe are exactly the same in every way. Does that make us the "same person" in the "same world"? I think yes; but it's more of a philosophical question than a scientific one at that point.
the audio quality if off...i've seen this lecture before and it was better if i am recalling correctly
is the wave function collapsing or decoherence breaking the speed of light ?
There is no such thing as a collapse of the wave function, so no, it does not break the speed of light. It doesn't do anything other than to confuse people who don't understand physics.
So how does the entanglement explanation of gravity relate to the hypothetical graviton? Is there a quantum field with bosons that carry the force of gravity, or this would be an alternative explanation where there is no quantum field of gravity?
This answers the question of free will (stay with me). I make a choice (a sum of several quantum events), which determines which universal branch I take. It does not affect the universe I left behind. Each and every universe is fixed, but we choose the subsets of universes we experience. I think Prof Sean is mistaken when he says decisions are not quantum events. As far as we know (I'm a retired neuroscientist), decisions are a sum of electrochemical interactions in the brain, all of which emit photons, and all of which involve electron shuffling. Our actions are the same, whether muscular or glandular. If a quantum event is all that's needed, there ya go. Our choices result in many thousands of them, and our corresponding actions result in many millions, and it's all volitional.
I think you got it backwards, this would actually disprove the free will. As such your decision is mere result of probability of quantum event and free will and decision making is thus an illusion. In your interpretation the person making the decision is not the one actually making it, the outcome of quantum event is.
@@sssummmak I have made one or two assumptions here, the most important being that I can create chemical changes in my brain and body by will. I can raise my hand by will, and raising my hand causes quantum events. Some might argue that my hand will rise on its own and be accompanied by the delusion that I caused it to happen. But of what evolutionary advantage would that kind of self-deception be? Absent any empirical evidence to decide that matter, I can't reject your criticism as impossible, so I will say this might put the answer to the question of freewill under the Many Worlds theory, but like everything in science, nothing is certain.
I favor my choice as the agent of change in the world around me because it fits all of my subjective observations so far, and if I am correct, that provides a viable pathway for freewill. That's a sorta anthropic principle thing there - if it were different, freewill could not exist - but since freewill is the question right now, I am giving this as a hypothesis that fits under the umbrella Many Worlds theory. Show me that the quantum events result in my perception that I have made a choice, and you will have refuted my hypothesis. Until then, you have pointed out a valid weakness in it, though your criticism shares the identical weakness - lack of empirical evidence.
@@beenaplumber8379 I personally also prefer thinking I have a free will and by self observation I have reached similar conclusion untill disproven. But you brought up interesting idea. If indeed processees in our brains are result of quantum events, even the decision itself may be simple result of such an event. in other words, in one universe you want to do thing a and in universe you want to do b. In both you feel that it is your own free decision.
@@sssummmak It still seems to come down to whether the quantum events precede or follow the thoughts. I guess we could be tossed randomly (or at least unpredictably) from universe to universe, telling ourselves "I meant to do that!" My hypothesis is scarcely better though, as I think you've aptly pointed out.
I think what I was really happy about at first is that there is now a framework for freewill. It still may or may not be a truth, but there's a path to getting there now. Before Many Worlds, it was either yes or no, with freewill proponents sometimes needing to add a bit of god power to justify freewill as superior. I think many Worlds gives us the possibility to find something more than a chicken-or-egg type conundrum. But you're absolutely right - the more I think about it, the more I see the equal likelihood of agency vs. riding along.
But there's another cool possibility - you lose the grandfather paradox with many worlds. Invent a time machine, go back in time & kill your grandfather, and all you've done is kill him in that timeline, not the one you originated in. You can mess with the past all you want because it's not going to affect the timelines you followed to get there. That's still cool!
@@beenaplumber8379 I'm confused. Where are your thoughts supposed to come from if not from activity in your brain?
Regarding the physics of (non existent) free will, I would recommend this video: ruclips.net/video/zpU_e3jh_FY/видео.html
Great lecture by Sean Carroll
Can someone please point out good lecture defending the opposite view? Thanks
Carroll simply detests Bohr lol he almost can't contain it. Anyways, always deeply fascinating to listen to Carroll dissecting QM
Also misspelled his first name😂 Niels- not Neils
(0:50) But the photon that is "split" to the rt or lt is detected by sensors made by fallible Homo sapiens, and the particle accelerator is made by fallible Homo sapiens too. What I'm getting at is the Homo sapiens, particle accelerator, the sensors, and other variables that includes the electric grid, the iphone, the Universe Splitter app have been corrupted by fallible Homo sapiens and the deterministic Universe. Therefore, "randomness" is an illusion. It would be better if Carroll, instead of doing what the app tells him, does a headstand and simultaneously hops to the lt instead.
Well Explained 👍
The last 5 minutes blew my mind
What is the mathematics? Feynman sum of integral path?
Or is just philosophy?
Mathematics of what? Many worlds? It doesn't have any "mathematics" of its own. It's just a (false) reinterpretation of standard quantum mechanics.
What is quantum information conservation law
Great lecture! One thing I don’t get... ok, no split when choosing pizza over Chinese. And: yes, there is a split on every quantum experiment. But the latter cannot be the only case. I’m missing the link between seemingly probabilistic results and seemingly classical everyday life. What are the ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ cases the universe splits up? And about how many times does this occur?
You don't violate conservation of energy if you assume that both universes exist as a wave function, but only one of those universes receives the mass-energy content of the universe.
Here's what I don't get. Dr. Carroll is asking (11:50) what counts as "observation." Why don't we just get on the horn with the lab experimenters and ask them what they did to make the wave function collapse? This is what drives me crazy about quantum mechanics. It's not the weirdness of it. That I can live with. What drives me up the wall is that they never tell us what they actually did, but instead use some BS metaphor about how light behaves differently depending on whether our eyes are open or closed. I even saw a video where Carroll covered his eyes and then uncovered them, to illustrate the difference. There's no way that could be the case, for if it were, we would never observe the wave pattern in the double-slit experiment!
What you're asking in fact is: what is a measurement ?
Answer: I make a measurement when I put in contact a big object with the thing I wanna study in such a way I can notice (with my eyes) a change on the big thing. And all that in a reproducible manner.
In fact, when put in contact the big object acts as an environnement for the particle you wanna study and interacts with it such that this particle will behave in a unique way (and not many at the same time). All the other ways this particle could have been are canceled : these are incompatible due to the complex way the particle interacts with all the constituants of the big object.
This phenomenon is called decoherence.
@@QuanticSniperTGL Thank you for taking the time to respond. I guess I'm asking what a measurement is. What I'm really asking is, what does one specifically do to cause decoherence? Do I stick my finger in front of the beam? Do I pass it through a sheet of glass? Polarized material?
If the answer is as simple as using macro objects to interfere with quantum objects, then why are we talking about measuring and observing? What's the big mystery? Why are inquisitive physics students striking fear into their professors by asking these questions?
@@Ascoundrel My "striking fear" comment was based on something Dr. Carroll said (12:50), "...if the students have these questions, we tell the students to shut up."
In fact, I did define my inquisition perfectly clearly. Look at around 12:00 and you see a list of questions that Carroll asks (e.g., "can an earthworm do an observation?"). He further states, "none of these questions have [traditional] answers." Why not? The situations he lists are all things that can be examined experimentally. Why can't we determine whether an earthworm can trigger the collapse of a wave form? All we need to do is get an earthworm and introduce it into the experiment.
I can't make it any clearer, so if you still don't understand, I don't know what else to tell you. If you are able to answer these questions, then by all means, I am listening.
@Tiktaalik r I am sure that I am misunderstanding something. I'm just frustrated that nobody can answer my simple questions. I don't care much about Schrodinger's cat, since it is purely a thought experiment, and I am happy to take a Bayesian approach to it if it comes to that. What I usually tell people is that quantum collapse does not occur because of consciousness, but because "observation" of particles requires interaction with the particles, which in turn affects the behavior of particles.
The issue I'm having is with the double-slit experiment. My understanding is that, first of all, the double-slit is a physical experiment, and not just a thought experiment. Secondly, that it creates a wave pattern on the wall behind it. And thirdly, that if the light coming through the slits is "observed" or "measured," the light on the back wall stops being a wave pattern and becomes two slits of light.
All I'm trying to find out is, what literal thing did experimenters do to change the wave pattern to the straight lines? I know they didn't just open their eyes and look at it, for if that were so, we would never see the wave pattern in the first place. So did they stick a glass sheet in front of the light? Did they shine a laser across the light path? Did they stick their finger partly in front of it? It should be a simple matter for someone to explain what they literally did, and yet nobody ever does, which is why I'm so frustrated.
I don't think people don't like the many-worlds interpretation, I think people love this idea. The Hollywood productions reflect that in last two decades. I think Copenhagen interpretation is closer to our experience and more faithful to Occams razor.
If we seriously consider the experiment of "Wigner's Friend", we have to accept a multi-world interpretation. An observer in his world is in his time, and for him a division of his world arises in his time. However, for transcendents outside the universe the universe is stationary.
This isn’t true at all
@@schakiarligonde1736 When the entanglement of quantum superposition extends to include an observer, it evolves into a state of multiple coexisting worlds.
after he hoped, people were like should we clap? so like 5 people clapped, thank God its would have been awkward if he just stood there for 5 seconds only to proceed.
hmmm does this relate to the question of free will in some way? that we "have free will" in a quantum way, that is any choice is an infinite choice but free will becomes entangled so our experience is there is no free will? hmmm.
Very interesting. I hope as we learn more about the mechanisms behind awareness this will become clearer
Decisions don't split up the world.The branching has nothing to do with the brain.
with every potential branching energy gets potentially doubled, and conservation is blown into pieces.🤔
But the energy in the universe itself is conserved
At 07:00, did he actually get the time dependent Schrödinger equation wrong? ^^ I'm pretty sure he forgot the hbar. Or is he using atomic units?
Just a small thing : the universe cannot _be split at the same moment,_ because _"the universe at the same moment"_ does not have any meaning, *and Sean Carroll knows it perfectly.*
*Speaking of "many minds" instead does nor require any put-aside of Relativity, Special nor General.*
He's just saying: the math/equation dictates the universe splits. 25:55
@@jamescollier3 According to GR there is no such thing as "the universe" (at a given time), but as many different universes as possible observers, with just a coherence contraint. Right ?
@@Paganel75 sorry. You lost me. Lol
I love how the observer is Hugh Everett.
yes!!! loved that too! he is all about getting Hugh the credit he deserves. PS I wonder if any of these folks consider it disrespectful when we use their first names...
@@JoeHynes284a little late, but if they were anything like the physicists of today, I’d say most of them would prefer it.
@@Muongoing.97c I think you are absolutely correct, but I still refer them as doctor or professor or at least I try to
Everett was a true genius but he was bitterly let down by the scientific establishment of the time. I'm so gald Dr Carroll gives the appropriate credit to his groundbreaking work.
Yes, he was a true genius who made his main mistake in the second sentence of his thesis. ;-)
1:55 there are also the worlds that you are told to jump right and you jump left and when told to jump left you jump right.
Isn't that specifically what he's saying isn't happening at 35:00?
"If you don't know whether to order pizza or curry for dinner tonight and you finally make a decision, that doesn't mean there's another universe in which you ordered another one".
@@dantenotavailable What I am saying 'If you have come to a decision about ordering pizza or curry, your conclusion may have been to stay in for pasta'
@@life42theuniverse It may have been, but it might also not have been one of the possibilities. It could very well be that the wave function had no possible states where he saw left/right on the screen, but jumped in the other direction.
The fact that all possible worlds and all possible outcomes exist simultaneously does not mean that everything is possible to exist or happen.
Do the branches of the wave function effect the curvature of space in the ‘vicinity’.
"Why do we see things in location?" Maybe it's the same reason we can watch multiple things at the same time. The U.S. Open TV coverage will split screen and show 2 tennis games at once. Hard as I try, I can't watch both games at the exact same time. Maybe our ability to comprehend what we see is limited to seeing one world at a time.
So does that mean with black holes there's a quantum particle there and that's actually where it is? Or is it that that's a place of significant entanglement which might be the same thing a point where the many worlds converge and the particle of all the worlds overlapping on each other is actually in that spot. So the degree of entanglement of the many worlds is proportional to the mass and energy of that spot until you get a single concentration and convergence and the "big bang" happens again. So the "probalistic" overlapping position of the other worlds is actually the mass in which I see and interact given I don't know which world I'm actually in. It's like probablistic mass that actually makes up the mass and material of the world I can actually live and breath in and interact with
The new problem is that cats are always sleeping anyways
Really enjoyed this presentation. I'm already a big fan of Mind Scape. One question: where does the energy come from to create the new branches of the entire universe?
That's like asking "Where does the energy for Santa Claus come from?"
It doesn't come from anywhere since the universe splits.There is no new energy being created.
@@Vld45 So now you have to prove experimentally that the total mass-energy of the new universe is zero. Good luck with that.
@@lepidoptera9337 How did you infer that the energy is zero? Did you even read my last sentence? The energy that already is, splits.
@@Vld45 How does the mass energy of 511keV of an electron split? Where do you get the 1GeV for the proton in a hydrogen from? To be honest, you are just another one of those guys who don't know how quantum mechanics actually works. The result is that folks like Sean Carroll can pull one over you with the stupid MWI interpretation. :-)
Maybe the measurement problem is the same than in photography. If you take too long exposure, you will see blurred image. We should just measure faster 10e-33sec or similar. Some have suqqested that there are universal clock in that speed.
in a certain experiment you can see particles fly out of objects that radioactivly decay, if it was a wave it would radiate in a sphere in all directions. the double slit experiment shows a wave? so it collapses under observation. we are all in the same system connected by the fields that atoms get there mass.
time is relative
I hope one day I see Sean Carroll debating Tim Moudlin.
If there is any book on this topic many world interpretation plz recommend
Carroll's new book
@@arevogtmoum6224 name
@@physicsstudent3176 I would bet that Are Vogt Moum is refering to "Something Deeply Hidden"!
The Beginning of Infinity has a chapter on it, maybe The Fabric of Reality too, both by David Deutsch
What's the difference between an observation & an event?
If a photograph is taken then not viewed for 100yrs. Are the silver halide crystals in the emulsion in superposition for all that time?
Which is the observation. The photograph or the viewing of the photograph?
Or are the states of the photographic crystals events or a stored observation?
And that's the entire point. The idea of observation is simply not well defined. Which is why the many worlds interpretation is much more appealing.
"Are the silver halide crystals in the emulsion in superposition for all that time?"
Yes. In fact, it will never get out of that superposition. There is no wave function collapse, so superpositions are permanent.
What happens is that you as the observer also become entangled with what you're observing, so you also go into a superposition.
We are just experiencing one branch of the larger superposition of the universe.
In that case(a crazy amount of "particles" interacting simultaniously) how does that universe wave function even "keep track" of it self? So to speak...
Why would it need to? It simply has to obey the rules. On a much smaller, more digestible scale, the ants in Langtons' Ant sims don't need to "keep track" of anything, they just obey the rules of their universe, and stuff happens
a wonderful teacher
I think Sean is very entangled with the quantum theory.
@4:30 He's name is "Niels bohr" :-)
و ریمان رو اگر بگم اونجا چی میگید ؟؟؟
This was a decent lecture! He really stepped up his game. Sometimes I think he gets stuff wrong about the Many Worlds Interpretation and says stuff that isn't actually compatible with it, but he was good here. It was lit!
But I strongly disagree with the claim here @ 34:42 "When a quantum mechanical system in a superposition becomes entangled with its environment and decoheres, that's when the universe branches. If you don't know whether to order pizza or curry for dinner tonight and you finally make a decision that doesn't mean there's another universe in which you ordered the other one unless you used the phone to do a quantum number generator. Decisions in your head are purely classical processes. Most of your thoughts have nothing to do with quantum mechanics."
That's a bold claim to say MWI being true doesn't matter for our thoughts and that they would still be purely classical, but the bigger issue is implying that only the subatomic superpositions cause the "Branching" and otherwise the universe is classical. I think that misses the point and falls in the same problem copenhagen does for having different rules at different scales. The whole point of MWI is that everything is actually a quantum mechanical system and everything in the universe is actually in superposition. The same rules that apply at the subatomic level still apply at the macrolevel scale. Although it might look like you could never be anything other than running with classical physics, on the scale on the entire universe you absolutely are in superposition with every possible state allowed by the Schrodinger equation. There are timelines with events that have only a .000000000001% chance of happening under the Schrodinger equation, but because of the tail problem, that happens some timeline. Every single possible path in MWI has to happen in some branch. So as far as ordering pizza and curry in separate universes, that's a given.
And considering quantum tunneling exists where particles are somehow able to cross barriers they do not have enough energy to cross classically it makes no sense to say it is impossible for your thoughts to be different in other timelines or that it is a purely classical process unaffected by MWI. Under MWI being true this would assert that every single particle has a probability of quantum tunneling, and that this must be realized in some timeline as all possible paths are taken. Going deep enough even the interactions of your brain, since it is also made of subatomic particles as everything else is, should have subatomic variation of which can lead to different outcomes as time moves forward and each path is taken in some timeline. So no way is there no universe where you buy curry. You don't need an app on a phone to "split" the universe, it's happening every single possible moment and in ways much more drastically than said in this lecture.
But it was still a nice informative lecture. I just think sometime Sean worries about the actual implications of MWI turning people away so he tries to hype it down to make it more accessible.
@@markanthmore Lmao but joking aside yes. If MWI is true it doesn't need a silly phone app to "split" timelines bruh. It would be like saying you need a cellphone for the laws of the universe to work. Though of course he was using that analogy to try to explain when he thinks "splitting" happens and also to explain that certain events may not necessarily be possible to happen, you still gotta admit the analogy just doesn't really fit and is gonna confuse the hell out of people if they take it literally.
Wait, isn’t the phrase “likely to be true” the same as a fictional story based slightly on true events?
No. It means there is substantial evidence for a hypothesis or theory, but not enough for a scientific consensus. I suspect you know that though. Would you prefer scientists didn't hypothesize? That would bring science to a halt.
No
Wow, goosebumps around 52m when I realised what he was getting at. Incredible if it holds true.
Kinda blew my mind! Newtonian physics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and now this. If it holds up, it really is of that magnitude, right? Pinch me! Because Many Worlds has a correlate, Many Minds, that is like an algebraic transformation of Many Worlds, only IMO it's simpler because it does not assume a universe. The only first principle is the thinking observer. It's almost a solipsism like that, but not quite. Anyway, from that one assumption, "I think, therefore I am," Schrödinger's equation and all of quantum mechanics is emergent, and therefore so is everything else. I hope I live long enough to see this work out! (With my luck, I'll probably kick the bucket when we have another turn-of-the-20th-century moment when we realize that we've barely scratched the surface of a whole new underlying system.)
@blindwillie99 Because, for all you know, consciousness might be the only thing there is. What makes you so sure you need anything of any complexity in order to dream up a world where brains and complexity are required to think? The surest sign that you don't know something is the certainty with which you think you know it. Certainty makes terrible scientists. "How can anyone seriously posit" is another way of saying "I can't think of a basis to posit." Then you give up and give your Nobel to the next in line. That's a crisis of imagination, or lack thereof. "I can't think of how, therefore it's not valid."
A scientist from the Mayo Clinic gave a talk at my lab once, and he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, on a flawed research program. He couldn't make sense of his data, so he concluded his hypothesis must be correct because he couldn't think of a better explanation - never mind that his data did not support his hypothesis either. When he left, we all had a few chuckles at the poor guy's expense. Narrow thinking and closed minds block learning. Einstein's best work all came directly from his wide-open mind and incredibly fertile imagination. Sadly, his worst work came from just the opposite - things he refused to consider because they seemed preposterous to him. Give yourself a chance to go through the brilliant phase before settling in the humdrum monotony of narrowed expectations.
@@beenaplumber8379 Try thinking without a brain.
You want to believe that consciousness is fundamental only because you don't want your personal awareness to come to a permanent end at death. The psychology here is obvious.
@@b.g.5869 There's another example. You have a hypothesis (my motives + the need for a brain led to my conclusion), and you can't think of a better explanation. That is a starting point, not a basis for a conclusion. Your only evidence is reason, but reason can only get us to a hypothesis, not a scientific conclusion. (That is a very common misconception among non-scientists.) The problem, and the strongest challenge to research in psychology, is that no one can know the internal experiences of another person (without ESP). They are not directly subject to scientific study. That is why psychological diagnoses are defined by statistical variation from normal behavior, not internal experiences. (Their lack of correlation of disorders to neural processes has also thrown a real monkey wrench into the field of psychological research, yet even that could not give us access to internal experiences.)
I would like to amend my own statement of my first principle: I am aware, therefore I am. Thinking might imply some cognitive process that doesn't require awareness, but it might require a flesh computer (no one can say for sure). Neuroscientists can't even say where different types of memories are stored. (Certain types of task memories might be stored in the motor groups that perform those tasks, for instance.)
You can speculate about my motives if you like, but the evidence for that is scant. You can speculate you need a brain to think (or maybe to be aware), but again, the evidence is scant.
In any case, the Many Minds theory requires an observer, nothing more. I think the pertinent question for you is how much evidence do you really have that a brain is required first in order to have an observer? Even defining an observer is problematic under quantum theory. I think you might have fallen into that trap where you assume things that are intuitive to you must be true. The whole weirdness of quantum theory is that it is so very counter-intuitive.
You don't know more than I do, and I don't know more than you do. (I'm a retired neuroscientist, so you think I might claim to know more than you, but I don't. This is far broader than the study of one organ system.) The difference is that you are *assuming* a lot more than I am. Do you realize how little you know, how little you can know, about all this? I think the basis for your confidence is misplaced. I'm just excited by all this theoretical work because it's beginning to make so much more sense to me now!
@@beenaplumber8379 Interesting debate here. Your position made me think of Donald Hoffman - I wonder if you are familiar with his work? From what I can gather, he is working on developing a mathematical model which posits consciousness is fundamental and matter emergent. I believe his goal is to use the model to attempt to derive general relativity equations, Schrodigners equations etc.
Sean Carroll makes it seem like it the coppenhagen interpretation is more weird than the many worlds interpretation. Both are strange. One essentially says that our consciousness manifests reality, the other say that there are an infinite number of universes.
I have another explanation for the question of Schrodinger cat that is very simple and I am sure that is right:
the mechanism that activates the poison, in this case is also a detector of the quantum state, therefore the cat will never be in a superposition of states, but it will be dead or alive not both, and this regardless of the open or closed box, or who observes
Nope.
Pilot Wave theory is the most intuitive straight forward interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, but it is clearly incompatible with Special Relativity, but it is compatible with Galilean Relativity, where space and time are absolute and field propagation is not limited by the speed of light. I propose that Relativity is just an optical illusion. Relativity has a simple built in logical fallacy, and no theory based on a logical fallacy can be true, no matter how many experiments seem to prove it, or how many people say it is true. Below is a very simple logical argument highlighting the logical fallacy, using the same terminology Einstein used to derive Relativity.
According to Relativity, observers on a moving train and on a stationary train platform will disagree on the size of the ""Train"" and the passage of time on the ""Train"". This is a complete logical contradiction if the size and the passage of time of the train are real. If the size of the train is real, then the ""Train"" can not be both contracted and not contracted. The same goes for the observed passage of time on the ""Train"". If these effects are observed, then the only possible conclusion is that it is an optical illusion. Things that are real must appear to be same from all frames of reference. If not, then by definition it is an illusion.
Again the argument is very simple and it is the argument Einstein used to derive Relativity, and no acceleration is used in the argument. A train with length (L) traveling at constant velocity (v) relative a stationary observer on a station platform. According to Relativity, the stationary observer will see the train contracted (L/r, where r is the Relativistic gamma), whereas an observer on the train will see it not contracted (L). So the train is both contracted (L/r) and not contracted (L) depending on the observer. This is a complete contradiction (L not equal L/r) and can not be true if length is real. The same argument applies to passage of time on the Train, where both observers will disagree on the passage of time. If time is real, it can not be both dilated and not dilated (T not equal rT). If space and time are observed to be both large and small simultaneously for one inertial reference frame, such as the ""Train"", then it must be an optical illusion.
This argument is only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more evidence including both theoretical and experimental, so please keep reading. Hi my name is Dr William Walker and I am a PhD physicist and have been investigating this topic for 30 years. It has been known since the late 1700s by Simone LaPlace that nearfield Gravity is instantaneous by analyzing the stability of the orbits of the planets about the sun. This is actually predicted by General Relativity by analyzing the propagating fields generated by an oscillating mass. In addition, General Relativity predicts that in the farfield Gravity propagates at the speed of light. The farfield speed of gravity was recently confirmed by LIGO.
Recently it has been shown that light behaves in the same way by using Maxwell's equations to analyze the propagating fields generated my an oscillating charge. For more information search: William Walker Superluminal. This was experimentally confirmed by measuring radio waves propagating between 2 antennas and separating the antennas from the nearfield to the farfield, which occurs about 1 wavelength from the source. This behavior of gravity and light occurs not only for the phase and group speed, but also the information speed. This instantaneous nature of light and gravity near the source has been kept from the public and is not commonly known. The reason is that it shows that both Special Relativity and General Relativity are wrong! It can be easily shown that Instantaneous nearfield light yields Galilean Relativity and farfield light yields Einstein Relativity. This is because in the nearfield, gamma=1since c= infinity, and in the farfield, gamma= the Relativistic gamma since c= farfield speed of light. Since time and space are real, they can not depend on the frequency of light used. This is because c=wavelength x frequency, and 1 wavelength = c/frequency defines the nearfield from the farfield. Consequently Relativity is an optical illusion. Objects moving near the speed of light appear to contract in length and time appears to slow down, but it is just what you see using farfield light. Using nearfield light you will see that the object has not contracted and time has not changed. For more information: Search William Walker Relativity.
Since General Relativity is based on Special Relativity, General Relativity must also be an optical illusion. Spacetime is flat and gravity must be a propagating field. Researchers have shown that in the weak field limit, which is what we only observe, General Relativity reduces to Gravitoelectromagnetism, which shows gravity can be modeled as 4 Maxwell equations similar in form to those for electromagnetic fields, yielding Electric and Magnetic components of gravity. This theory explains all gravitational effects as well as the instantaneous nearfield and speed of light farfield propagating fields. So gravity is a propagating field that can finally be quantized enabling the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics.
The current interpretation of quantum mechanics makes no sense, involving particles that are not real until measured, and in a fuzzy superposition of states. On the other hand, the Pilot Wave interpretation of Quantum Mechanics makes makes much more sense, which says particles are always real with real positions and velocities. The particles also interact with an energetic quantum field that permeates all of space, forming a pilot wave that guides the particle. This simpler deterministic explanation explains all known quantum phenomena. The only problem is that the Pilot Wave is known to interact instantaneously with all other particles, and this is completely incompatible with Relativity, but is compatible with Galilean Relativity. But because of the evidence presented here, this is no longer a problem, and elevates the Pilot Interpretation to our best explanation of Quantum Mechanics.
*RUclips presentation of above argument:
ruclips.net/video/sePdJ7vSQvQ/видео.html
*Paper it is based on: William D. Walker and Dag Stranneby, A New Interpretation of Relativity, 2023: vixra.org/abs/2309.0145
I believe there is a part of me that is a physicist. It is not the choice I made but still connected. I feel this is why I am so attentive to Physics.
Well, that part should be rolling on the floor laughing right now.
Quantum mechanics is about possibilty, but usually among so many possibilities only one or few will be realized, the percentage of realization depends on the conditions which favorite the chance to occur ,right?
No, under the Many Worlds interpretation, ALL of them are realised, but as soon as the split occurs, they can no longer exchange information
@@talltroll7092 So there's no free will & we're living each possibility out, individually? What determines the reality we ARE in?
Fascinating!
Who said it can't be tested? Please
he must have done this kinda of lecture for so thousands of times
My opinion of Carroll has only gone up over the years
Time is very interesting to say the least... to say the most would take an infinite amount of space.
I just said that now... and it is then.
Glory be to what was, is, and will be.... thank you 😊
Such an awesome observation obviously observed by observing observers in observatories.
More than meets the eye.
Just think about how many atoms are in front of you while you read what is on your screen... then think....
how many atoms are in this "I" that's controlling your mind right now? 👁
If we put more than 3 observers at the same time to open the cat box, if they all have the same conclusion, will the thinking of superposition still exists?
No. That's the same as 1 cat
Damn I'm dumb.
That is a readily falsifiable hypothesis. Nice one! Now collect your data.
Entanglement is not an irreversable process. In fact it is very fragile because it requires specific conditions (very low temperatures etc) Otherwise the whole universe would be entangled since the Big Bang.
But plants n brains are constantly doing quantum entanglement even in room temperature.
@@neharai4927 Of course entanglement can happen anywhere anytime but lasts only for a very short time. If we want to maintain it for a long time, for example in quantum computers, we must keep the temperature close to zero.
*SERIOUS opinions only, please:* I'm not smart. So, I have to ask: Must each of these "splits" create its own "big bang" somewhere else with the creation of a new universe? Or does the parallel world just sort of divide off within this universe? (Insults to my person will be ignored.)
Not a serious opinion, simply an explanation: there isn’t another big bang because there isn’t a creation of a new universe. The wave function which describes the one universe simply evolves in such a way that a term with amplitude A becomes a set of i€{1,…,N} new terms with amplitudes Ai such that the sum of (Ai)^2 = A^2. There is only one universal wave function. It is simply a superposition of orthogonal states.
I'm just saying maybe I don't understand something. But I think Marletto believes in this which would technically break the very laws of thermodynamics she considers impossible to break? I don't see how you could believe in that and give up on a perpetual motion machine. Every time you look or measure or make a decision the universe branches off, breaking one of the laws that makes perpetual motion impossible. Wouldn't our universe taken as a complete system be a perpetual motion machine?
If somebody tells you atoms is mostly empty space; that's not true. Atoms is mostly wave-function!
But the electron wave function values are essentially zero, except in the shells around the nucleus. So saying the atom is mostly empty space still seems valid.
@@raygromer a 'cloud' of probabilities
Why is there only two outcomes when the box is opened , shouldn’t their be infinite possibilities like the cat becomes an orange ? And they all split
By what physical mechanism does the cat become an orange? Alchemy?
In During lockdown event happend??
Before lockdown
How does Sean Carroll explain the violation of conservation of energy.
There is no violation of conservation of energy.
Sean Carroll, i think maybe we need a 10 billion dollar double slit experiment to figure it out ;) A highly advanced setup -.-
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@SeanCarroll, This is an excellent speech as far as public speaking techniques go -- but I think it can be greatly enhanced if you add a few words about how do fields work - that there can be fields that are cross-interacting, self-interacting and non-interacting. AND, non-self-interacting fields are actually fairly easy to visualize - very much like the sound waves in a 1D string, or surface waves in a pond. if you spend a few words on explaining that some events are interacting (and produce a split) and some are non-interacting (waves just travel on their own and move away from each other, maybe even going through each other without distortion) the entire story will be much more believable. You can do it!
Right - because he had unlimited time in which to explicate all elements of QM. Sheesh.
@George Rey, I’ll get right on that! - Sean Carroll
@@HawthorneHillNaturePreserve Thank you for entangling me back to this topic a full year later. I enjoyed this lecture today as much as I enjoyed it back then. A year after, I understand more of it. As to yourself -- does spreading hate make you feel smarter? Please let me know.
I would like to volunteer to be in the box.
I promise to write down everything that happens.
Before and after opening the box.