Question:
Does the double slit experiment prove dualism is wrong?
anonymous
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Does the double slit experiment prove dualism is wrong?
Three answers:
OldPilot
2009-06-20 13:21:58 UTC
Also what does consciousness have to do with the waveform collapse. doesn't the detector collapse the waveform?



Knowledge has an energy value. When you make an observation, you add energy to the system which changes it. Not a good analogy but it is the best I can do: Consider a telepathic shoplifter, when the shoplifter is aware that he is being watched he does not shoplift. When he is not being watched he does. Just watching him changes his behavior. His telepathic ability is the analog to knowledge about the system. (Try to think of a way to acquire and store knowledge that does NOT require a little energy.)



The behavior of sub-atomic particles is known to be random with no discernible pattern. Things like the Two Slit Experiment shows the energy knowledge effect and you cannot predict which slit a given photon will go through (though we know if both slits are open, it goes through both.



If i don't look at the results until later does that mean the outcome of the experiment is still undecided.



No. It means you do not know. It is more like a sporting event that you bet on. Say a horse race you bet on and were watching. The horse you bet on was running neck and neck with another horse. The race ended in a photo finish. Did you win or lose? The race is over. One horse won, but we don't know which. We will not know until we look at the photo.
charcinders
2009-06-20 11:16:34 UTC
I'm not sure it proves dualism one way or the other, but then I don't know much about the theory of dualism. It seems to me that it is an unnecessary complication and that mind is very obviously a product of matter, but I digress...



In the Copenhagen interpretation, it is always the observation that collapses the wave function. This leads to some very strange conclusions, for instance, if an observer is in the room watching the equipment and his colleague is in another room, then to the observer the experiment has completed and the outcome is known, but to his colleague the experiment and the observer are still in a superimposed state, until he opens the door and asks what the outcome was.

This is an example of the silliness that comes out of the Copenhagen interpretation when extended to the human scale, as exemplified by Schrodinger's famous cat.

The alternative is the many-worlds interpretation. Here the decision is made at the detector, but the experiment creates multiple versions of the universe in which different outcomes of the experiment have happened.

What the many worlds interpretation says about consciousness is that it is not a single strand running through time. Instead it is an infinitely branching tree; there are an infinite number of copies of me all experiencing different versions of reality, and new ones are being created all the time.



The many worlds view clearly drives a coach and horses through concepts like the soul and sin, so I think that those with even a slightly religious bent have a hard time accepting it.

Other people have a problem with the idea of continuous creation of new universes. I prefer to think of it as the discovery of pre-existing possibilities. What we experience as time then is a random walk through the space of all possible states of the universe.
Let'slearntothink
2009-06-20 04:38:35 UTC
In relativity or in quantum mechanics propounding the principle of duality; one thing is common. In both observer becomes the part of the experiment. The results of an experiment are not independent of the observer as is the classical view. But that does not mean that observer's mind can influence the matter directly. Mind can decide to do some thing material and that will change the outcome. So there is nothing like no separation over mind and matter. Mind is essential to interact with matter,and that is all after that the natural laws, whether classical (deterministic) or quantum (in-deterministic) take over.


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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