Micro-Worlds and Quantum States
Now you see it, now you don't -- or is it the other way around?
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As with quantum states, many social micro-worlds are possible. Zillions are already part of our culture. Each of us experiences many of them, and each of us is at the center of each of our own worlds -- our personal virtual realities. There could be many more.
Could each of the possible worlds have a certain probability of occurring? Compared with "objects" of the atomic world -- following Walker's use of the term for unrealized quantum states -- the possibles are potential micro-worlds. They only become actualized when they are observed, -- whenever we exercise pattern recognition skills that have them as objects of consciousness, or when we understand and grasp them mentally as rational products.
Here's what Walker says about quantum mechanics:
Observation is just a euphemism for consciousness, for mind; this interpretation of quantum mechanics says that the system undergoes
state vector collapse because of our mind!In the same way, perhaps, when a micro-world is first observed (created in observation), at that moment consciousness enters the scene. Before that moment the micro-world is at best a potential with some chance of occurring. At the moment of "vector collapse," or creation, it becomes a specific entity, a new micro-world.
Each micro-world is unique, and only by virtue of skills can we attend to its creation. However awareness develops, it is only purposeful action that can identify and organize the observation. It is a human creation. No observation or measurement can occur unless you first have an idea how to proceed with it; awareness precedes and defines its class structure.
Feature a house cat grasping the significance of a lecture on nutrition, or baseball, let alone a subject like QM! The cat has no awareness of nutrition, baseball, or quantum states -- or books, or words, or ideas, or most other things human. These "things" aren't part of the arsenal of the cat; they don't exist. But we can imagine the cat being aware of a thing or two not existing for us; it has its own classification network.
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Physicists and philosophers, alike, are still debating the issue of observing the world of atoms, or elementary particles. One view of what can be known about the atom is the Copenhagen interpretation, espoused particularly by Niels Bohr.
In Bohr's view, the interaction between the observer and the observed, at the moment of observation, is un-analyzable, because the quantum is indivisible. Here is a quote from Einstein's Moon, by F David Peat, describing the situation:
... To find out about an atom, or an elementary particle, a scientist carefully sets up an experiment, with racks of electronic equipment, meters, dials, Geiger counters, and other detectors [not to mention the experimenter (the ultimate observer)]. The result of the experiment -- which causes a dial to move or a Geiger counter to click -- always involves an interaction between this large-scale apparatus and the quantum object. After all, if there were no interaction, if no transaction between the experimental apparatus and the atomic world took place, then nothing would have registered.
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We already know that the quantum is indivisible, for this is the basic principle of quantum theory. Therefore, when an atom interacts with a detector, some interchange of energy is involved and this must involve at least one quantum or a series of one-quantum interactions. ...
This means that we can never know exactly where any quantum comes from -- we can never divide it into contributions made by atom and by apparatus -- which implies that the moment the detector and the atom interact, the whole situation becomes an unanalyzable whole....
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