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Indefinite Causal Order in a Quantum Switch

I hope to return to the paper linked in this post, as well as to those in the previous post to specify their relations to physical principles in the everyday, non-quantum regime of our experience. I conjecture for now that the paper of the present post is talking of causality in the secondary, diluted sense which it is talked of by Kant in the Second Analogy of Experience of Critique of Pure Reason. There he tried to defend a principle that "all changes occur according to the law of the connection of cause and effect." But the primary sense of causality is not that dilute one, and anyway his proposed principle is false even in classical regimes (which is what Kant was talking about because that was all that was known of at that time). That a body is moving with no net force applied to it, hence moving in a straight line and at a constant speed, which is a rule of its change of location, does not entail some underlying cause to explain the rule. My conjecture, without having dug into the paper yet, is that the causal order it speaks of is that thin sort that Kant was grappling with and not the stronger, primary sense of cause. The primary sense of cause is one thing making some change in another thing occur. It matters for me which sort of causality is being talked about in the paper because a metaphysics should be formulated to assimilate the entire firm scientific findings of one's era, as Kant tried for in his era and Aristotle tried for in his era.

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1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

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Indefinite Causal Order in a Quantum Switch

I hope to return to the paper linked in this post, as well as to those in the previous post to specify their relations to physical principles in the everyday, non-quantum regime of our experience. I conjecture for now that the paper of the present post is talking of causality in the secondary, diluted sense which it is talked of by Kant in the Second Analogy of Experience of Critique of Pure Reason. There he tried to defend a principle that "all changes occur according to the law of the connection of cause and effect." But the primary sense of causality is not that dilute one, and anyway his proposed principle is false even in classical regimes (which is what Kant was talking about because that was all that was known of at that time). That a body is moving with no net force applied to it, hence moving in a straight line and at a constant speed, which is a rule of its change of location, does not entail some underlying cause to explain the rule. My conjecture, without having dug into the paper yet, is that the causal order it speaks of is that thin sort that Kant was grappling with and not the stronger, primary sense of cause. The primary sense of cause is one thing making some change in another thing occur. It matters for me which sort of causality is being talked about in the paper because a metaphysics should be formulated to assimilate the entire firm scientific findings of one's era, as Kant tried for in his era and Aristotle tried for in his era.

Observe the illustrations in Fig. 1.  There are two distinct and separate causal chains, which diverge due to the application of the control qubit (in a superposition), and the two separate chains are in superposition, see 1(d).  The A that "causes" a B is not the same A "caused" by a B,, the As and Bs are not the same: A1 causes B1 is superposed with B2 causes A2.  As such the title would appear to be misleading, the "causal order" is not indefinite, what is "indefinite" is which of two different causal chains was followed.

Such titles lead to all sorts of pop science misunderstandings... 

Edited by StrictlyLogical
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On 10/11/2021 at 12:33 PM, Boydstun said:

Picture of Particle AND Wave (at the same time!)

(Although likely we should be saying particle-like AND wave-like: a wavicle.)

HT - Dan Edge

 

10 hours ago, tadmjones said:

This article offers a different frame of interpretation of what was ‘captured’. It seems a better view of the image is to see at as capturing the interactions between  light’s ’energy’ and target particles , the light isn’t ‘seen’ or imaged as exhibiting dual aspects as much as what is depicted in the image is the history of the reactions between particles and light as akin to an interference pattern.

https://www.insidescience.org/blog/2015/03/13/no-you-cannot-catch-individual-photon-acting-simultaneously-pure-particle-and-wave

 

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