Why Quantum Mechanics Is an Inconsistent Theory | Roger Penrose & Jordan Peterson

let me say something else which outside the laws are known physics and this is not something that people normally even recognize as a problem i mean they do but they shove it under the carpet which is what's known as the collapse of the wave function now you see current quantum mechanics strictly speaking is an inconsistent theory that's rather brutal way of saying what einstein and schrodinger and even dirac said that quantum mechanics is incomplete and the way to explain this is okay there's a wonderful equation which tells you how things stay a state evolves in

quantum mechanics called the schrodinger equation now the schrodinger equation tells you if you know what the state of a system is now the schroding equation tells you what it will be tomorrow if you like the evolution of that state is governed by this wonderful equation due to irvine schrodinger the trouble is that it doesn't that's to say the way physicists usually use the schrodinger equation is to work out certain probabilities of what an observation on the system would tell you so what you have to do is you wheel out of the cupboard and a measuring

device in this measuring device you set it on the the system which is evolving according to the schroding equation and it measures it and the process of measurement does not follow the schrodinger equation right it gives you a probabilistic answer this or this or this that's another outside the system problem it's certainly outside the schrodinger equation right right right and schrodinger was terribly worried about this i mean he produced his cat in the box and all sorts of things you see he clearly realized there was a problem as did einstein there's no question about that

some others didn't well they took a different view they said look we don't understand the theory well enough and that's more that we're saying where schrodinger's not saying that he's saying we understand it well enough to see that that's not the way the world operates when you make a measurement on the system it does not follow the schrodinger equation and that's what people understand about quantum mechanics but it's it's a sort of vague set of rules about it doesn't tell you what constitutes a measurement right right yeah that's a big trouble that's the big trouble

yeah yeah they say if you do a measurement then it just becomes probability for what this or that or the other but it doesn't say what kind of a device makes a measurement now there's one school of thought which has been going on from way back to the early days of quantum mechanics wigner in particular promoted this point of view that it's the conscious being observing the system and that means that's what wheeler believed i believe i really like to believe quite a lot of people believe that i think von neumann had a similar sort

of view i'm not quite so sure about his view but certainly wigner and i talked to vigner about this yeah i got the feeling from thinking he wasn't quite as dogmatic he was made out to be on this issue he just thought this was a possibility i think but anyway that's people often refer to it as the wigner view that is a conscious being who makes a measurement that's not my view my view is that it's almost the opposite of that view that there is an objective physical process which which deviates from the schrodinger equation

in which the state does collapse so that it becomes one or the other or the other with certain probabilities and that this has to do with when gravity is brought into the picture and there's reasons for believing this i don't want to go into that but there is reason i'd like you to go into it if you would be willing to because i'm i mean i'm very well it's a very clear mathematical calculation there's not a question about it it's quite what you do with it you see and what you do with it according to

me is to say okay it tells you that this system has a lifetime and and it will in that lifetime become one or the other without a measurement it's sort of that's right yes without what's so interesting to me that that you're interested in consciousness and you see the that consciousness in this goodell theorem sort of manner and i would think the most predictable thing for you to believe as a consequence of that would be that it is conscious measurement that collapses the the the the quantum indeterminacy the waveform and yet you don't you think

that that it will that statistical vagueness will collapse into something that's essentially is it either or is it binary is it zero one the collapse no you mean probably no there's a probability it'll do one right right but when the probability collapses mean well if it's a two-state system you see you might have an object which is in a superposition of here and here yeah that was direct's first lecture i remember and he took out his piece of chalk and said what and he was talking about atoms according to quantum mechanics or particles a quantum

paragraph can be here or it can be here or it can be an estate which is partly here and partly here at the same time and then he took out a piece of chalk and people tell me he used to break it in two i can't quite remember because my mind was drifting away from what he was saying and i was looking out of the window and thinking about something completely different and unfortunately it only came back after he'd gone on to the next topic so i missed the explanation which was probably a good thing

as i think back on it because probably the explanation was something sort of to calm you down and stop worrying about the problem i suspect it was something like that so you don't think that conscious a conscious observer per se is necessary to collapse the wave absolutely that is what i don't i mean i'm agreeing with you i don't believe that yes but you do think that if i'm not mistaken that the presence of a of an observer in the universe that is to say that or the observation of the universe by us is that

true to say is fundamental to the universe not really that's that's an interesting question but it's not part of my view the world would be there quite independently of whether they were creatures yes of consciousness yes yes