pcalau12i

don’t mind me i have autism

Many worlds theories are rather strange.

If you take quantum theory at face value without trying to modifying it in any way, then you unequivocally run into the conclusion that ψ is contextual, that is to say, what ψ you assign to a system depends upon your measurement context, your “perspective” so to speak.

This is where the “Wigner’s friend paradox” arises. It’s not really a “paradox” as it really just shows ψ is contextual. If Wigner and his friend place a particle in a superposition of states, his friend says he will measure it, and then Wigner steps out of the room for a moment when he is measuring it, from the friend’s perspective he would reduce ψ to an eigenstate, whereas in Wigner’s perspective ψ would instead remain in a superposition of states but one entangled with the measuring device.

This isn’t really a contradiction because in density matrix form Wigner can apply a perspective transformation and confirm that his friend would indeed perceive an eigenstate with certain probabilities for which one they would perceive given by the Born rule, but it does illustrate the contextual nature of quantum theory.

If you just stop there, you inevitably fall into relational quantum mechanics. Relational quantum mechanics just accepts the contextual nature of ψ and tries to make sense of it within the mathematics itself. Most other “interpretations” really aren’t even interpretations but sort of try to run away from the conclusion, such as significantly modifying the mathematics and even statistical predictions in order to introduce objective collapse or hidden variables in order to either get rid of a contextual ψ or get rid of ψ as something fundamental altogether.

Many Worlds is still technically along these lines because it does add new mathematics explicitly for the purpose of avoiding the conclusion of irreducible contextuality, although it is the most subtle modification and still reproduces the same statistical predictions. If we go back to the Wigner’s friend scenario, Wigner’s friend reduced ψ relative to his own context, but Wigner, who was isolated from the friend and the particle, did not reduce ψ by instead described them as entangled.

So, any time you measure something, you can imagine introducing a third-party that isn’t physically interacting with you or the system, and from that third party’s perspective you would be in an entangled superposition of states. But what about the physical status of the third party themselves? You could introduce a fourth party that would see the system and the third party in an entangled superposition of states. But what about the fourth party? You could introduce a fifth party… so on and so forth.

You have an infinite regress until, at some how (somehow), you end up with Ψ, which is a sort of “view from nowhere,” a perspective that contains every physical object, is isolated from all those physical objects, and is itself not a physical object, so it can contain everything. So from the perspective of this big Ψ, everything always remains in a superposition of states forever, and all the little ψ are only contextual because they are like perspectival slices within Ψ.

You cannot derive Ψ mathematically because there is no way to get from inherently contextual ψ to this preferred nonphysical perspective Ψ, so you cannot know its mathematical properties. There is also no way to define it, because each ψ is an element of Hilbert space and Hilbert space is a constructed space, unlike background spaces like Minkowski space. The latter are defined independently of the objects the contain, whereas the former are defined in terms of the objects they contain. That means for two different physical systems, you will have two different ψ that will be assigned to two different Hilbert spaces. The issue is that you cannot define the Hilbert space that Ψ is part of because it would require knowing everything in the universe.

Hence, Ψ cannot be derived nor defined, so it can only be vaguely postulated, and its mathematical properties also have to be postulated as you cannot derive them from anything. It is just postulated to be this privileged cosmic perspective, a sort of godlike ethereal “view from nowhere,” and then it is postulated to have the same mathematical properties as ψ but that all ψ are also postulated to be subsystems of Ψ. You can then write things down like how a partial trace on Ψ can give you information about any perspective of its subsystems, but only because it was defined to have those properties. It is true by definition.

In a RQM perspective it just takes quantum theory at face value without bothering to introduce a Ψ and just accepts that ψ is contextual. Talking about a non-contextual (absolute) ψ makes about as much sense as talking about non-contextual (absolute) velocity, and talking about a privileged perspective in QM makes about as much sense as talking about a privileged perspective in special relativity. For some reason, people are perfectly happy with accepting the contextual nature of special relativity, but they struggle real hard with the contextual nature of quantum theory, and feel the need to modify it, to the point of convincing themselves that there is a multiverse in order to escape it.

That’s literally China’s policies. The problem is most westerners are lied to about China’s model and it is just painted it as if Deng Xiaoping was an uber capitalist lover and turned China into a free market economy and that was the end of history.

The reality is that Deng Xiaoping was a classical Marxist so he wanted China to follow the development path of classical Marxism (grasping the large, letting go of the small) and not the revision of Marxism by Stalin (nationalizing everything), because Marxian theory is about formulating a scientific theory of socioeconomic development, so if they want to develop as rapidly as possible they needed to adhere more closely to Marxian economics.

Deng also knew the people would revolt if the country remained poor for very long, so they should hyper-focus on economic development first-of-foremost at all costs for a short period of time. Such a hyper-focus on development he had foresight to predict would lead to a lot of problems: environmental degradation, rising wealth inequality, etc. So he argued that this should be a two-step development model. There would be an initial stage of rapid development, followed by a second stage of shifting to a model that has more of a focus on high quality development to tackle the problems of the previous stage once they’re a lot wealthier.

The first stage went from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin, and then they announced they were entering the second phase under Hu Jintao and this has carried onto the Xi Jinping administration. Western media decried Xi an “abandonment of Deng” because western media is just pure propaganda when in reality this was Deng’s vision. China has switched to a model that no longer prioritizes rapid growth but prioritizes high quality growth.

One of the policies for this period has been to tackle the wealth inequality that has arisen during the first period. They have done this through various methods but one major one is huge poverty alleviation initiatives which the wealthy have been required to fund. Tencent for example “donated” an amount worth 3/4th of its whole yearly profits to government poverty alleviation initiatives. China does tax the rich but they have a system of unofficial “taxation” as well where they discretely take over a company through a combination of party cells and becoming a major shareholder with the golden share system and then make that company “donate” its profits back to the state. As a result China’s wealth inequality has been gradually falling since 2010 and they’ve become the #1 funder of green energy initiatives in the entire world.

The reason you don’t see this in western countries is because they are capitalist. Most westerners have an mindset that laws work like magic spells, you can just write down on a piece of paper whatever economic system you want and this is like casting a spell to create that system as if by magic, and so if you just craft the language perfectly to get the perfect spell then you will create the perfect system.

The Chinese understand this is not how reality works, economic systems are real physical machines that continually transform nature into goods and services for human conception, and so whatever laws you write can only meaningfully be implemented in reality if there is a physical basis for them.

The physical basis for political power ultimately rests in production relations, that is to say, ownership and control over the means of production, and thus the ability to appropriate all wealth. The wealth appropriation in countries like the USA is entirely in the hands of the capitalist class, and so they use that immense wealth, and thus political power, to capture the state and subvert it to their own interests, and thus corrupt the state to favor those very same capital interests rather than to control them.

The Chinese understand that if you want the state to remain an independent force that is not captured by the wealth appropriators, then the state must have its own material foundations. That is to say, the state must directly control its own means of production, it must have its own basis in economic production as well, so it can act as an independent economic force and not wholly dependent upon the capitalists for its material existence.

Furthermore, its economic basis must be far larger and thus more economically powerful than any other capitalist. Even if it owns some basis, if that basis is too small it would still become subverted by capitalist oligarchs. The Chinese state directly owns and controls the majority of all its largest enterprises as well as has indirect control of the majority of the minority of those large enterprises it doesn’t directly control. This makes the state itself by far the largest producer of wealth in the whole country, producing 40% of the entire GDP, no singular other enterprise in China even comes close to that.

The absolute enormous control over production allows for the state to control non-state actors and not the other way around. In a capitalist country the non-state actors, these being the wealth bourgeois class who own the large enterprises, instead captures the state and controls it for its own interests and it does not genuinely act as an independent body with its own independent interests, but only as the accumulation of the average interests of the average capitalist.

No law you write that is unfriendly to capitalists under such a system will be sustainable, and often are entirely non-enforceable, because in capitalist societies there is no material basis for them. The US is a great example of this. It’s technically illegal to do insider trading, but everyone in US Congress openly does insider trading, openly talks about it, and the records of them getting rich from insider training is pretty openly public knowledge. But nobody ever gets arrested for it because the law is not enforceable because the material basis of US society is production relations that give control of the commanding heights of the economy to the capitalist class, and so the capitalists just buy off the state for their own interests and there is no meaningfully competing power dynamic against that in US society.

China does tax the rich but they also have an additional system of “voluntary donations.” For example, Tencent “volunteered” to give up an amount that is about 3/4th worth of its yearly profits to social programs.

I say “voluntary” because it’s obviously not very voluntary. China’s government has a party cell inside of Tencent as well as a “golden share” that allows it to act as a major shareholder. It basically has control over the company. These “donations” also go directly to government programs like poverty alleviation and not to a private charity group.

I have the rather controversial opinion that the failure of communist parties doesn’t come down the the failure of crafting the perfect rhetoric or argument in the free marketplace of ideas.

Ultimately facts don’t matter because if a person is raised around thousands of people constantly telling them a lie and one person telling them the truth, they will believe the lie nearly every time. What matters really is how much you can propagate an idea rather than how well crafted that idea is.

How much you can propagate an idea depends upon how much wealth you have to buy and control media institutions, and how much wealth you control depends upon your relations to production. I.e. in capitalist societies capitalists control all wealth and thus control the propagation of ideas, so arguing against them in the “free marketplace of ideas” is ultimately always a losing battle. It is thus pointless to even worry too much about crafting the perfect and most convincing rhetoric.

Control over the means of production translates directly to political influence and power, yet communist parties not in power don’t control any, and thus have no power. Many communist parties just hope one day to get super lucky to take advantage of a crisis and seize power in a single stroke, and when that luck never comes they end up going nowhere.

Here is where my controversial take comes in. If we want a strategy that is more consistently successful it has to rely less on luck meaning there needs to be some sort of way to gradually increase the party’s power consistently without relying on some sort of big jump in power during a crisis. Even if there is a crisis, the party will be more positioned to take advantage of it if it has already gradually built up a base of power.

Yet, if power comes from control over the means of production, this necessarily means the party must make strides to acquire means of production in the interim period before revolution. This leaves us with the inevitable conclusion that communist parties must engage in economics even long prior to coming to power.

The issue however is that to engage in economics in a capitalist society is to participate in it, and most communists at least here in the west see participation as equivalent to an endorsement and thus a betrayal of “communist principles.”

The result of this mentality is that communist parties simply are incapable of gradually increasing their base of power and their only hope is to wait for a crisis for sudden gains, yet even during crises their limited power often makes it difficult to take advantage of the crisis anyways so they rarely gain much of anything and are always stuck in a perpetual cycle of being eternal losers.

Most communist parties just want to go from zero to one-hundred in a single stroke which isn’t impossible but it would require very prestine conditions and all the right social elements to align perfectly. If you want a more consistent strategy of getting communist parties into power you need something that doesn’t rely on such a stroke of luck, any sort of sudden leap in the political power of the party, but is capable of growing it gradually over time. This requires the party to engage in economics and there is simply no way around this conclusion.

You people have good luck with this? I haven’t. I don’t find that you can just “trick” people into believing in socialism by changing the words. The moment if becomes obvious you’re criticizing free markets and the rich and advocating public ownership they will catch on.

On the surface, it does seem like there is a similarity. If a particle is measured over here and later over there, in quantum mechanics it doesn’t necessarily have a well-defined position in between those measurements. You might then want to liken it to a game engine where the particle is only rendered when the player is looking at it. But the difference is that to compute how the particle arrived over there when it was previously over here, in quantum mechanics, you have to actually take into account all possible paths it could have taken to reach that point.

This is something game engines do not do and actually makes quantum mechanics far more computationally expensive rather than less.

Any time you do something to the particles on Earth, the ones on the Moon are affected also

The no-communication theorem already proves that manipulating one particle in an entangled pair has no impact at al on another. The proof uses the reduced density matrices of the particles which capture both their probabilities of showing up in a particular state as well as their coherence terms which capture their ability to exhibit interference effects. No change you can make to one particle in an entangled pair can possibly lead to an alteration of the reduced density matrix of the other particle.