Theiss Research
Project Title
Conscious of a Classical World in a Quantum Universe
Project Summary
We live in a quantum Universe. Yet, we are convinced that our everyday world is classical. The question of how quantum weirdness gives way to classical behavior has been with us since the beginning of modern quantum theory – that is, for nearly a century. The explanations given so far focus on the behavior of quantum systems and how the information about them is acquired – on the so-called quantum measurement problem. Yet, our perceptions and the way they are interpreted by our consciousness is ultimately responsible for the classical nature of the model of the world we construct. Progress has been made on the quantum measurement problem by using abstract models selected for their tractability rather than realism. Accomplishments of this strategy include decoherence, which shows how flagrant quantumness is suppressed in systems interacting with their environments. Quantum Darwinism goes beyond decoherence. It analyzes how the information about systems of interest to observers is disseminated – with the help of the environment that caused decoherence -- throughout the Universe. Our goal is to go a step further and analyze how our senses acquire this information, and how is it processed by our neural networks, resulting ultimately in perception of objective classical reality.
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