What Does Quantum Theory Mean?

For most of us, quantum physics is mysterious and unfathomable. When shown a blackboard full of symbols, our eyes tend to glaze over.

Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash

For people who actually work with the theory, things aren’t much better. They’ve been trying for a century to understand what the theory tells us about the world we live in without much success. One cliche often used to describe this mysterious quality of quantum physics is, “shut up and calculate.”

That’s actually good advice for most engineers. The theory allow us to design our age’s most powerful tools, from the transistor to the cell phone and beyond. Never mind that it also tells us that the supposed building blocks of the world, the fundamental particles, don’t have definite values, such as position and momentum, until they’re measured.

I contend that quantum physics shows us that the world we experience is fully dependent on our observation of it. It believe it further shows us that the independent reality of the world we experience (i.e. independent of us) is an illusion.

If that were true, it would follow that our strategies for living are rendered obsolete by this understanding. Our cherished strategies for getting along in life are all dependent on the idea that the world is an “is.” An “is” is something that appears to us as it actually is, and is something that would be that way whether or not there is somebody around to observe it. According to quantum theory, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

This begs the question, “What does this mean for human beings?”

Ruediger Schack, in the online publication The Conversation, has pointed out that “The starting point for most philosophers of physics is that quantum mechanics must somehow provide a description of the world as it is independently of us, the users of the theory.”

Quantum physics, I believe, flatly denies this interpretation. Instead, it describes the world as a field of weighted possibilities (i.e. probabilities) for the results of any experiment that will be performed on the world. Quantum laws are all about the results of observations. As far as we know, they do so with complete accuracy.

But right there, physics is inseparable from consciousness. Isn’t it meaningless to talk about the results of experiments or observations without implicitly referring to the conscious being that’s doing the experimenting?

Quantum theory further shows that any attempt to measure or observe any part of the world causes the field of possibilities to collapse into the one possibility that is actually observed. But then, after the measurement is complete, the field somehow resumes its probablistic nature before the next observation.

There have been many attempts to interpret this finding, none of which is truly definitive. For a century, physicists have argued about how observation of a system can cause one possibility to emerge from a field of possibilities when the laws of quantum physics contain no mechanism for this emergence.

Since we always start from the assumption that the world exists independently of us, once we encounter quantum theory as a description of probable outcomes of experiment, we assume that these probabilities are somehow inherent in the physical system we’re observing. Yet, a century and more of theorizing has yet to provide a mechanism that yields these probabilities.

I believe that the most plausible resolution of this quandary lies in the following recognition.

The world we experience is actually a picture formed in our brains by interpretation of sensory data. That is, what we think of as the external world is in reality an interpretation of the data our brains receive via our sense organs, and all such interpretations are conditioned by past experience, trauma, memory, and many other subjective factors.

Equipped only with our sensory apparatus for inquiring into the world, we have no way of getting outside of these interpretations and observing the external world directly. The “real” world, assuming there is such a thing, is thus unknowable.

How does the probablistic nature of quantum theory show up in this description?

One possibility is that we could interpret our sensory data in many ways, the most probable of which is in accord with what our culture has taught us, what “everybody knows,” common sense.

When we look at the world as an interpretation of something that is in itself essentially unknowable, optimizing our experience is no longer about solving problems or trying to change conditions. Instead, it is about crafting our interpretations to optimize the quality of our experience.

Another of our culture’s profound illusions is that the resources required for our physical and emotional wellbeing are limited. That would be true if the world were “real” in the scientific sense. The definition of “real” in physics is that “objects have definite properties independent of observation.” The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was in part awarded for the demonstration that this is not the case, that the objects composing the world do not have definite properties when they are not being observed. We are interpreting signals that represent something, but that something is not the objective reality we think it is.

To summarize: The world we experience is the product of interpretation of something which is itself unknowable. Scarcity, the limits we believe apply to the available supply of physical stuff, is part of this interpretation. The field of possibilities we are interpreting is not limited; that field is infinite. In other words, interpretation as a phenomenon is not limited unless belief places a limitation upon it. To the degree to which I free myself from a belief in limitation, I am free to interpret the field of possibililties so as to optimize the quality of my own experience.

This argument shows, I believe, that so-called zero-sum games are artificial. Zero-sum games are systems in which what one gains another must lose. Again, that would be true if the world were “real,” if the stuff of the world were limited.

Believing in the finiteness of resources is required for zero-sum games. And this belief is the source of most, if not all, of our human misery. Ultimately, we fight over scarce resources: territory, wealth, and ideas which are themselves based on scarcity, such as markets, political and other arguments.

As I endeavor to see the world as it really is, waiting for me to observe it and thus make it real, I find…

I no longer believe in the finiteness of any of that which is required for the most joyful and satisfying experience of life.

In order to see the world as it really is, I find I must relinquish the habit of describing it incessantly. I find I must quiet the internal dialog that constantly interprets the world according to my needs, fears, and desires. Obviously, that’s been called “Be Here Now.” And in the right-now, the experience is complete and satisfying.

If I’m not experiencing satisfaction right now, it’s not because I don’t have the world, the sum of its building blocks, in the right place at the right time… it’s because I’m not experiencing being “right now!”

That’s hard to hear, isn’t it?