u/Big-Cartoonist4920

https://share.gemini.google/7yy9jLWd6xkP

<edit> https://share.gemini.google/9U3vtdRCZbQi told it to make it phone friendly

https://preview.redd.it/32vjntwg71ah1.png?width=759&format=png&auto=webp&s=0146bec0407e36379d45b9bc6bc0aec8b00a17a3

I share this not as a "this is truth". Rather as an interesting example of what we can expect in the near future. I didn't do anything to make this app. I just had a conversation about the double-slit experiment and asked it to make a visualization for what it was saying. Hold on Toto. We're not in Kansas anymore.

"the unresolved question of how and why a quantum system in a state of probability (superposition) collapses into a single, definite reality when observed or measured"

science IS measurement. i would be ok if they were the same word. science is the practice of the scientific method: "measure it". science is expressly limited to measurement and the measurable. "real" things that don't/can't result in a measurement don't exist in science.

the double slit experiment, for example, is a measurement apparatus, designed to produce a measurement. the production of the measurement is how we know it's working. if it didn't, we would keep going until it did.

"hey let's all gather around the measurement machine and ponder why measurement seems to be important."

A coin flip is a quantum event. Wait what?! we see the coin the whole time - it's classical physics the whole way. so, where's the quantum?

The coin toss isn't about the coin. it's about the coin/rest-of-the-world system. "Heads" and "tails" are short for "came to rest, with the faces oriented perpendicular to a gravitational field."

That state has two possibilities. If we consider that state while the coin is in the air (ie without measuring it), we conclude that both possibilities remain - the system exists in a state of both heads and tails until the coin comes to rest in a gravitational field and we see which face is up. That constitutes the "measurement". the superposition collapses, and all prior possibilities vanish.

Unlike a property like, say position, heads and tails aren't traditionally load bearing. not much is built on top of them. Except maybe gambling. all layers of reality are equally real. we don't experience the load bearing of the coin flip like we experience the load bearing of position, say. there are, of course, differences. but, in this respect, they're the same: reality exists in a superposition until measured.

While the coin is in the air, the bet exists in a state of superposition, entangled with the state of the coin/rest-of-world system. we don't discard the tickets, because it's possible we won. we won't know until we measure it. until then, all issues related to the bet remain indeterminant.

We just aren't being pedantic enough. (be careful what you wish for)

The double slit experiment and an LLM both perform a Possibility Loop.

The double-slit experiment searches the possible detectors.

The LLM searches the possible next tokens.

The double-slit experiment's Possibility Loop starts with the experimental apparatus emitting a quantum particle. It searches for a detector to trigger. It fires one of them, then repeats the loop.

The LLM starts with the weights, the prompt, and the context. It searches the space of possible tokens and finds a weighted list of possible tokens. note: researches found simply using the highest-weighted token produces uninteresting results. they introduced "temperature" to (afaik) introduce noise (dithering) to increase the probability and explore some of the lower-weighted possibilities. The LLM picks one of the tokens then repeats the loop.

Insight: I don't know exactly how LLMs implement temperature, but quantum mechanics votes for a "representation by weight" approach. I don't think dithering/noise achieves that.

The double slit experiment and an LLM both perform a Possibility Loop.

The double-slit experiment searches the possible detectors.

The LLM searches the possible next tokens.

The double-slit experiment's Possibility Loop starts with the experimental apparatus emitting a quantum particle. It searches for a detector to trigger. It fires one of them, then repeats the loop.

The LLM starts with the weights, the prompt, and the context. It searches the space of possible tokens and finds a weighted list of possible tokens. note: researches found simply using the highest-weighted token produces uninteresting results. they introduced "temperature" to (afaik) introduce noise (dithering) to increase the probability and explore some of the lower-weighted possibilities. The LLM picks one of the tokens then repeats the loop.

Insight: I don't know exactly how LLMs implement temperature, but quantum mechanics votes for a "representation by weight" approach. I don't think dithering/noise achieves that.

Link to supporting pdf

Consider that possibility is fundamental, and that what we call actual is downstream.

That reversal sounds strange at first, because we are used to starting with objects. We imagine a particle as a tiny thing, then ask where it went, which slit it used, and why it later behaved like a wave. Starting from actuality, the double-slit experiment becomes a paradox almost immediately.

Start from possibility instead, and the explanation becomes more natural.

The wave function is not “where the particle really is.” It is the evolving structure of what can still happen. The slits shape that possibility structure. The possible paths interfere. The detector interaction culls the field into one actual record. The record updates the world.

In other words:

>The wave is not the particle acting weird. The particle is the record of possibility becoming definite.

That is the conceptual reversal.

We are beings made of stable matter, living downstream from protons, atoms, chemistry, bodies, instruments, and records. So we naturally assume actuality comes first and possibility is just our uncertainty about it. But the double-slit experiment suggests the opposite: actuality may be what structured possibility becomes after interaction.

Once you accept that possibility is doing real work, the rest of quantum mechanics stops looking like a collection of disconnected weird tricks. Interference, measurement, path integrals, Feynman diagrams, and entanglement all start to rhyme.

The better starting point is:

>The wave function represents evolving weighted possibility between interactions.