Unmaking Sense

When we observe the world by interacting with photons and other particles that act as witnesses, do we interpret the world only in the way in which our brains invent things like colour, secondary qualities as John Locke described them, or do we see the world as it in some sense ‘really is’?

This is the first of three episodes that explores the question of how information about the objects in the world is transferred into us as human observers, and more particularly and importantly how it is transferred into the environment as it monitors the persistence of the objective classical world that emerges from the quantum world.

Once we see that entropy is a measure of deficit, we can immediately extend the notion to concepts themselves and see that when we have things still to learn things still to understand our conceptual entropy is high but when we learn them our conceptual entropy falls. Of course overall entropy must increase but at a conceptual level we can still learn things and we do. 

Entropy can decrease locally but not globally; the total entropy of a closed system cannot decrease but the entropy of a part of it can. Otherwise there would be no order, no life.

Integrating the concept of entropy in thermodynamics, classical and quantum information theory and then extending it to a new class: conceptual entropy as a measure of deficit in concepts or understanding.

Working towards a reconceptualisation of entropy that brings thermodynamics, classical and quantum information under one conceptual umbrella. Boiling kettles, playing snooker and measuring quantum states all come together.

Why analogy often confuses when used to explain quantum processes. Fools rush in …

Why the world can monitor itself and govern its own evolutionary trajectory without any help from human consciousness.

Quantum collapse is not what we think.

If the whole universe is quantum, why is our experience of it classical? The answer lies in the aspects of the world that are persistent under decoherence.

Confirming Bell’s inequality violation using IBM’s quantum hardware and Qiskit. The quantum world is stranger than most people think.

If the markets are always right, as we are often assured, what does that tell us about incommunicable knowledge? Knowledge embedded in collectives that no individual can access alone? Feeling our way towards quantum theory.