[Avodah] observer effect

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 05:57:30AM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Anyone think about the relationship between the observer effect and the
> leidat hasafeik in the 10 store cases (kavua vs kol dparish mruba)?
> 
> The term observer effect in quantum physics means that the act of observing
> something will influence the thing being observed and by the observation,
> waves turn into particles...

Tangent about quantum mechanics (QM)... There are a lot of interperations
of QM, explanations about what is really happening that all yield the
same math an the same experimental results. Science cannot distinguish
between them, since the same results means they cannot be tested.

The Copenhagen Interpretation was popular for the first decades of QM,
largely because it was produced by its biggest names -- Bohr, Born and
Heisenberg. (I bet you can guess where they were when they discussed
the idea!)

For a few decades, now, it has not been accepted as a given, and in fact
fell to minority status. Some now thing collapse is caused by decoherence
(just too many particles are involved), or gravity, or it doesn't collapse
at all -- something else is going on.


But now, on to Torah...

I have posted on this topic on Avodah repeatedly, since way back in
vol 1.

R Aqiva Eiger makes a chiluq between qavua and kol deparish. Rov is only
meaningful in cases where the subject of the uncertainty is the metzi'us
of the object. But if the object is qavua, it once had a known metzi'us and
thus a halachic state. In the case of qavua, the doubt is about the din.

My own feeling is that halakhah is about tiqun hanefesh, and therefore
its metzi'us is not the object as it is in-and-of-itself, but how people
relate to the object, and how they are supposed to relate to it. And
therefore when the physical state is in doubt, my mind is entertaining
both possibilities, and that is my relationhip with it.

And this principle can be extended to explain why eidus is terei kemei'ah,
and we don't use rov.

Or why there is a chazaqah deme'iqarah, etc...

I wrote several blog posts on the subject under the category "Phenomenology":
https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/category/phenomenology/

The most recent one was about my excitement when I found out from something
by RYGB that R Gedalia Nadel said something similar first:
https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/2018/01/24/phenomenalism-baruch-shekivanti
(Quote and translation, there.)


> validated with the double-slit experiment which revealed that particles are
> in the state of potential until they are observed. The outcome of the
> double-slit experiment depends on what the physicists try to measure: If
> they set up detectors beside the slits, the photons act like ordinary
> particles, always traversing one route or the other, not both at the same
> time. However, if the physicists remove the detectors, each photon seems to
> travel both routes simultaneously like a tiny wave, producing the striped
> pattern. This is the observer effect. A single outcome is realized out of
> many possibilities

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 I always give much away,
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   and so gather happiness instead of pleasure.
Author: Widen Your Tent              -  Rachel Levin Varnhagen
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF