If the sun blew up...

[Crunchy Cat]

I cut all the unimportant rambling and am at least left with your paraphrase of a few of the postulates.

Wow, I'm impressed by your arrogance. It rivals that of religious extremists all over the world. I'll call you Osama henceforth in recognition of your achievement.

You deceptively chose not to do as I asked to go to the FIRST link under the google search for "Postulates of quantum mechanics" and instead either used a different search engine or kept looking until you found one with them in a different order so as to loose the important second one to an irrelevent latter one.

There was nothing deceptive about it Osama. It was defiance of your silly dominnance game.

You paraphrase the first as

You shouldn't have cut the completeness aspect as it changes the meaning! The first one is not merely a statement about probability of location, but is a statement that EVERYTHING you can at all know about the system is *completely* determined by the wave function, not just that it is determined by the wave function and not just that its position alone is determined by the wave function. You should have quoted it thus:

wahttp://vergil.chemistry.gatech.edu/notes/quantrev/node20.html
Therefor when the wave function Psi is a sum or continuum of Eingenstates, the state of the system is indeterminate. There is nothing more than probability about what particular Eigenstate you will find it in upon the measurement that is described by the wave function, and because the wave function is complete the indeterministic state descibed by the wave function is all that there exists to know about it. This is the importance of the completeness statement that you cut. Now compare that information with what I said:

Now had you been honest and gone to the first link under the search I gave you, you would have found that the second in the order at that link was

http://vergil.chemistry.gatech.edu/notes/quantrev/node20.html
This corresponds to where I said

The fourth you paraphrase

This corresponds to where I said

Now that's what I am talking about, support the argument with evidence! I fully agree with all the postulate definitions referenced. What I don't agree with is your 'grand observer' assertion (which of course rests on at least one of your interpretations of the postulates which I don't agree with).

I see the conflict stemming from the interpretation of what an observer is. I think you might view it exclusively as a sentient being. This is evidenced by your responses and assertions (and the fact that when I proposed clarification of my interpretation you did not respond):

things can exist without people seeing them, half the molecules in the world existed when nobody could see them so surely it could when we all die

No, not in a definite or collapsed state.

If such a reality existed then yes of course, if all sentient life forms within it disappeared then all states of reality would become indeterminate. This isn't how reality works however. The very fact that humans (sentient life forms) can create and detect indeterminate states (Bose Einstein Consensate / Interference Patterns of small particles) shows there's something wrong with that interpretation.

In information theory, an observer is any system which receives information from variables. In the quantum world, if an observer is required to yield a definitive state then that observer can be anything (a wall, a rock, heat, feathers, dirt, glass, etc.). If there was only one system that could receive information and no corresponding feed then I suspect the state would be indeterminate. Fortunately, there are observers everywhere and they all have the relationship of being able to receive information from each other. Remove sentient life and all those observers still exist (just not the sentient ones); hence, there is no need for some cosmic sentient uber-chicken to suddenly pop into observation mode to produce definitive states. I'll speculate that the desire for someone to make the observer role exlusively sentient is a result of a human's natural tendency to put eyes, ears, and a mouth on everything.

 

[Trilairian]

...

I cut the irrelevent part, everything. You are a layman whose interpreting incomplete peices of the information. I am the expert testimony in this matter, so it doesn't matter what you think.

 

[Provita]

If the sun exploded, destroying the Earth, would the universe still exist? I mean, can the physical universe exist without anything to observe it? Must there be an outside observer (ie. "God")? Does time have meaning without anyone to observe?

Possibilities I've thought of:
1. God exists, and would keep directing the universe and probably create life again.
2. God does not exist now, but would come into existence when no other life existed, and disappear after making new life.

-Assume there is no other life in the universe.
-This is a thought experiment. Please do not argue by saying the sun won't explode, or life probably exists elsewhere. Anything else is fine.

The Universe existed before humans existed, before dinosaurs ruled the earth, before there was even such thing as life on earth. Something can exist without being observed. Nothing can be observed without an observer.

If God exists and we all died, he may create life again or just say screw it... how the hell would know and how the hell could we know? I'd say he would make new life, but that is just because things would get sorta boring...

If God doesnt exist now, and somehow miraculously came into existence without someone creating him, and then created new life, and then somehow dissapeared:

1) why did he dissapear?
2) why did he create new life if he just was going to go *poof! gone* ?
3) why wasnt he in existence before?
4) how did he just come into existence?

Time may have meaning without anyone observing because eventually new life may be created due to that time. At one point in time (time time time) the universe was lifeless... assuming that there is no other life, Earth doesnt have life either. it isnt until a chance lightning bolt (according to theory ofcoarse) hit some simple amino acids (im doing this by memory, if im wrong, bare with me) and created the first RNA ...

Without time, RNA wouldn't have been created and then there would never eventually be observers.

On the other hand, if that will never happen again, then time has no meaning and neither does the Universe. BUT, things can exist without meaning or use... look at Jello.

To put it simpley: The Universe existed before living things could observe it and before living things could observe time, thus it can exist afterwards...

 

[Crunchy Cat]

I cut the irrelevent part, everything. You are a layman whose interpreting incomplete peices of the information. I am the expert testimony in this matter, so it doesn't matter what you think.

Awww and you even cared enough to tell me. Blessed art thou my dear Osama.