Is the Quantum View of our World Believable?

Is the Quantum View of our World Believable? [1]
Quantum physicists have a saying: "If you don't think quantum physics is weird, you don't understand quantum physics." In spite of the fact that quantum physics comes to some conclusions that seem weird by everyday world standards, I choose to believe that its major findings are correct. In particular, I believe a central finding of quantum physics: we bring the everyday world into being by our observations.
Three variations of the famous two-slit experiment (also called double-slit experiment) point to this conclusion. The classic version of the two-slit experiment, done more than 200 years ago, demonstrated that light traveled as a wave. Light rays passing through two parallel slits displayed characteristic wave behavior (think here of water waves) by interfering with each other, creating a pattern of light and dark patches on a photosensitive screen positioned behind the slits. The patches corresponded to the points on the screen where the peaks and troughs of waves diffracting out from the two slits combined with one another. Light patches occurred when the crests of two light waves came together while dark patches occurred when the crest of one wave met the trough of another wave. Thus, in the classic version of the experiment light was demonstrated to travel as a wave.
However, other research findings suggested that under some circumstances light consisted of discrete quantized packets and in the twentieth century, physicists re-performed the classic two-slit experiment with low-intensity light to show that this interference pattern was evident even when particles of light (photons) passed through the apparatus one at a time. Light, therefore, was shown to exhibit both particle-like and wave-like properties. (These experiments can also be done with other subatomic particles with the same results.)
The second experiment was a modest but important variation of the classic two-slit experiment. In this version, detectors were placed at the slits to determine through which slit a particle was passing. It was found that using detectors destroyed the interference pattern on the screen. The behavior of photons thus was changed depending on whether or not an attempt was made to observe them.
The most astonishing of this important triad of experiments, the delayed-choice experiment, was proposed by John Wheeler in 1978.[2] In this experiment the decision whether to turn on or off the detector was delayed (from our perspective) until after a photon had passed the detector. The astonishing part: it was found that the later decision determined what happened at the earlier time. [3]
Wheeler's conclusion: "[W]e, by observing the universe, contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well."[4] Another way to express this same idea: elementary particles (and the real-world items "composed of" elementary particles) are not there waiting for us to observe them but rather are brought into being by our observations. By our thoughts we bring our world into existence.

Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 2-5 and 27-29. See At the Edge of Time.
2. John Archibald Wheeler, “The ‘Past’ and the ‘Delayed-Choice’ Double-Slit Experiment,” in Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Theory, A. R. Marlow (ed.) (New York, NY: Academic Press, 1978), 9-48.
3. It may be helpful in understanding the double-choice experiment to read an alternate explanation by Paul Friedlander at AlternateExplanation.
4. Tim Folger. Interview with John Wheeler, “Does the Universe Exist if We’re Not Looking?”, Discover, June 1, 2002. See WheelerInt.

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Are We Being Overwhelmed by Complexity?

Are We Being Overwhelmed by Complexity? [Note 1]
Paul's comment regarding the "Ripples in a Pool" post brought to my mind the theme for this Post. In that comment, Paul said that the universe is ever-changing and that increasing entropy is basic to this change—that what is organized gradually becomes disorganized.
To the physicist entropy is a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work. In its  more general form, entropy is defined as the degree of disorder or randomness in a system. In either form, the arrow of time is inescapably associated with increasing entropy.
The thermodynamic definition of entropy preferred by the physicist is appropriate for a universe made of matter—the universe we experience every day. However, that same universe, as seen from the quantum level, is not made of matter but of information; from that level, it can be seen that elementary particles are not tangible objects but are bits of information only. The eminent quantum theorist Paul Davies says, “it is easy to be seduced into believing that there really is a little thing ‘out there’, like a scaled-down version of a billiard ball, producing the results of [our] measurements. But this belief does not stand up to scrutiny." The elementary particles out of which matter supposedly is composed, are not really elementary at all. According to Davies, they are of a secondary, derivative nature. Rather than providing the concrete ‘stuff ’ from which the world is made, these ‘elementary’ particles “… are actually essentially abstract constructions based upon … [our] ‘observation events’ or measurement records.”[Note 2]
Entropy in our universe, seen from this quantum-level perspective, likely takes the form of increasing complexity—our world is accumulating more information than we can responsibly, safely, and usefully manage.
Additional complexity is an unavoidable result of change for with change we must now deal with both the old and the new.[Note 3]  Our attempts to cope with this complexity—to maintain order so that the change improves or at least does not lower the quality of our lives—typically involve technological change, which in turn produces more change and complexity. We seem to be in a desperate—perhaps futile—race to deal with the increasing complexity of our world through technological change. Nevertheless, if we are to deal with what from this perspective seems to be a runaway increase in entropy, it is at this more fundamental level that we should focus our attention.
Change frequently is presented as progress—as an unalloyed good or a necessary evil. But sometimes change is followed by enormously complex problems that we are not prepared to handle. Development of atomic energy and the atomic bomb ushered in the atomic age and, as former president Eisenhower pointed out in his farewell speech of 1961 [Note 4] , the awesome destructive potential of atomic weapons led many nations to feel that a continual state of readiness to respond was a necessary defensive measure to protect their citizens from atomic attacks by other nations. This required the maintenance of standing armies and large defense industries with consequent disruptions to the economies and political structures of nations.
How do we avoid similar mistakes in the future? Some changes—and the change discussed in the previous paragraph may be an example—may be unavoidable at the time the go|no go decision is made. Other changes might cause fewer problems for technologies to solve if we identified in advance those changes that will likely present problems and required that they conform to certain standards in the way they are introduced. But the breakneck rate of current change makes it difficult to see in advance of their introduction which changes will result in problems and what the problems might be.
I liken this inability to see the future to driving at night on a country road. We are driving too fast for the reach of our headlights. If we could slow down and allow the road to be bathed in the glare of our headlights as we advance, the ability to see and avoid problems would be greatly enhanced. This more measured pace might be accomplished by, among other things, limiting corporate political influence in democratic forms of government, appropriate regulation of free enterprise systems, and insuring that diplomacy plays a primary role in foreign policy.
We would do well to heed the sage advice of Fred Rogers, host for many years of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, who told us that we should all slow down, that life should be lived at a pace that allows us to discover that “deep and simple” is better than “shallow and complex.”[Note 5]  We cannot change the arrow of time—our universe will become more complex; perhaps we can slow the rate at which complexity increases.

Notes
1. This Post is adapted from Donald W. Jarrell, At the Edge of Time: Reality, Time, and Meaning in a Virtual Everyday World (North Charleston, South Carolina: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012, rev 2014), 66-68. See At the Edge of Time.
2. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 175.
3. David Deutsch sees unavoidable increase in complexity to be a result of the increasing differentiation of the multiverse of which we are a part. New universes emerge only with change and this change inevitably brings added complexity. Interview with David Deutsch, in P. C. W. Davies and J. R. Brown, The Ghost in the Atom: A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum Physics (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 86. 
4. Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040.
5. See the 2011 DVD, “Mister Rogers and Me.”

Next post on a bi-weekly schedule: October 23, 2015.

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