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Maths, like quantum physics, has observer problems

Gödel, quantum physics and the subjectivity of maths

6th February 2024
| Edward Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at University of California, Berkeley, and author of the international bestseller “Love and Math” published in 19 languages.
2,501 words
Read time: approx. 13 mins

We are well aware by now of the observer problem in quantum mechanics. Human subjectivity appears to play a key role in the results of quantum experiments. However, the observer problem reaches far beyond just quantum mechanics, argues Edward Frenkel. 

 

In the episode The Path to the Black Lodge of David Lynch’s iconic series Twin Peaks, Annie (played by Heather Graham) recites to Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) a famous quote by the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg, “What we observe is not reality itself but reality exposed to our method of questioning.”

This quote elegantly encapsulates what is often referred to as “observer-dependence” in quantum mechanics: Depending on how we set up an experiment, quantum reality will expose itself in various ways, with different experimental setups revealing different, seemingly contradictory forms. For example, in the famous double-slit experiment, electrons will reveal themselves as waves if we don’t put detectors behind the slits but will appear to us as particles if we do put the detectors. Thus, our choice of experimental protocol influences what pattern of behavior we observe. This makes the first-person perspective an integral part of modern physics.

Edward Frenkel
6th February 2024

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Sergey Shevchenko 8 February 2024

This TVI article is an example of mainstream philosophical publications, where the author addresses to fundamental phenomena/notions “Matter” and “Consciousness”,

- fundamentally having at that [as all other authors in mainstream philosophy and sciences, since in the mainstream philosophy and sciences all really fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all in this case “Matter”, “Consciousness”, “Space”, “Time”, “Energy”, “Information”, are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational]

- only some transcendent imagination about what he writes about means.

Correspondingly this TVI article really is nothing else than some speculative set of speculative really scientifically ungrounded wordings that have too indirect relation to what really exists and happens in material structures and in humans’ consciousnesses.

The fundamental phenomena/notions above can be, and are, rigorously scientifically defined only in the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s philosophical 2007 “The Information as Absolute” conception, recent version of the basic paper see
in Google, arXiv

- where [more concretely in the Planck scale informational physical model, see links in the linked paper above], including, it is rigorously scientifically shown that in any/every real physical

[i.e. if we don’t say about some cases in some spiritual practices, say in Yoga, etc., ]

experiments any “observer problem” fundamentally cannot, and so doesn’t, exist.

Though, of course, some “observer problems” exist in the purely human’s consciousnesses product “mathematics”; say, oligophrenics cannot prove a lot of Euclidean geometry theorems; but by no means these [non-Euclidean geometry, etc.] theorems cannot be proven at all by some other “observers”.

rrwilla 7 February 2024

Interesting piece. Consciousness is always the epistemological starting point, no matter what the field!