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The Observer That Had To Touch (Quest for Entropy #11)

Marijus Masteika

Published Aug 18, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quest for Entropy #11: I spent this whole quest watching my machines. Then I understood that watching can never work. - Nothing here derives quantum mechanics, the Born rule, or measurement. A no-go result says what a class of approaches cannot do; it builds nothing. - The temporal Bell inequality is Leggett and Garg's, from 1985, with a large and good literature around it. - The ping-pong balls explain why measurement has to be an interaction, and that is all I use them for. They are not an explanation of the uncertainty principle — "we bumped it" is a famously insufficient account of that, and the real story is deeper than clumsiness.

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.21998254

Related papers

Temporal Correlations

George Jaroszkiewicz

Introduction Our aim in this chapter is to extend the Bell inequality discussion in Chapter 17 to its temporal analogue, known as the Leggett–Garg (LG) inequality . Bell inequalities involve spatial nonlocality, that is, signal observations distributed over space. It was shown by Leggett and Garg that analogous inequalities involving temporal nonlocality can be formulated (Leggett and Garg, 1985). We shall discuss one of these, known as the LG inequality . We saw in Chapter 17 that Bell inequalities are based on certain classical mechanics (CM) assumptions about the nature of reality. Likewise, the LG inequality is based on two CM principles that are not incorporated into quantum mechanics (QM). Definition 19.1 The principle of macrorealism asserts that if a macroscopic (that is, large-scale) system under observation (SUO) can be observed to be in one of two or more macroscopically distinct states, then it will always be in one or another of those states at any given time, not in a quantum superposition of those states, even when it is not being observed. This principle is a foundational principle in CM but is incompatible with QM in at least two ways. First, it is vacuous, as it asserts the truth of a proposition in the absence of empirical validation: how can we define the concept of always , without introducing counterfactuality? Second, it is violated in quantum theory, for instance, in path integral calculations. This principle in embedded in the nexus of issues explored in this book. The quantized detector network (QDN) version of it takes the form “If any SUO can be observed in any number of possible states, then it will be observed in one of them in any run.” This is a near tautology. The classical version says the same thing but makes an additional assertion about something going on in the absence of observation, which is the vacuous element that QM cannot accept. Definition 19.2 The principle of noninvasive measurability asserts that the actual state an SUO is in can always be determined cost-free, that is, without having any effect on that state or on its subsequent dynamical evolution. This principle is subtle. We experience its apparent validity all the time in our ordinary lives: we look at objects and they appear not to change by those acts of observation.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Nov 28, 2017•0 citations

The Machine (Quest for Entropy #2)

Marijus Masteika

Quest for Entropy #2: how a clockwork with no dice fakes quantum mechanics — the machine taken apart, the exam it passed, and the one wall it cannot get past. This is a demonstration, not a discovery about nature. It does not say our universe is a clockwork, does not reinterpret quantum mechanics, and does not dodge Bell's theorem — the hidden machinery is global, not local, exactly because Bell rules out the local kind (we checked). The recipe was found by an optimizer and only later shown to sit at a fixed point of the geometry; the build is engineering, and we say so. The claim is only this: quantum-looking behaviour can come out of a deterministic machine plus a physical measurement — not that this is why our world is quantum. Everything here describes one family of machines at the settings we tested, and where it fails, it fails in public.

•Jul 28, 2026•0 citations

Building a Wave (Quest for Entropy #5)

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Quest for Entropy #5: I wanted a probability cloud that spreads into a shape and then stops — and oscillates. I built six worlds to find one. Here is exactly how each of them failed. - Nothing here is a claim about how quantum mechanics works, and no Born rule is derived or attempted. This is what classical probability distributions can and cannot do. - Six systems, one ruler, finite runs. The ordering held at every resolution I tried; the exact numbers are the ruler's.

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Are violations to temporal Bell inequalities there when somebody looks?

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The possibility of observing violations of temporal Bell inequalities, originally proposed by Leggett and Garg as a mean of testing the quantum-mechanical delocalization of suitably chosen macroscopic bodies, is discussed by taking into account the effect of the measurement process. A general criterion quantifying this possibility is defined and shown not to be fulfilled by the various experimental configurations proposed so far to test inequalities of different forms.

arXiv:quant-ph/9908030•Europhysics Letters (EPL)•Aug 15, 1999•10 citations

The Universe with No Dice (Quest for Entropy #1)

Marijus Masteika

How much of quantum mechanics can a machine with no dice fake? This deposit accompanies the article "The Universe with No Dice" (Quest for Entropy #1), which builds a fully deterministic, classical toy universe and shows that a bounded observer inside it counts Born-rule statistics and double-slit interference to within about one percent of the quantum prediction, with the model's exact failure mode published as a falsifiable limit rather than hidden in error bars. Article: https://questforentropy.substack.com/p/the-universe-with-no-dice Code and reproduction instructions: https://github.com/masteris777/quest-for-entropy-the-universe-with-no-dice

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The Machine Takes a Quantum Exam (Quest for Entropy #3)

Marijus Masteika

Quest for Entropy #3: twenty questions, one deterministic clockwork, and the two answers it could not give. This is a demonstration, not a discovery about nature. The scorecard says one family of machines, at one frozen setting, reproduced twenty specific behaviours — it does not say our universe is a clockwork, does not reinterpret quantum mechanics, and does not dodge Bell's theorem, since the hidden machinery here is global, not local. Question 16 is unfinished, not won: the certified pair sits exactly on the classical bound, and entanglement remains unreproduced. Question 6 is a confessed failure, and the cliff-or-floor dichotomy is a named conjecture, measured on both sides and proved on neither. Every number behind this piece is at the machine's own precision, about one percent, and every pass means "within that".

•Jul 28, 2026•0 citations
Quest for Entropy #11: I spent this whole quest watching my machines. Then I understood that watching can never work. - Nothing here derives quantum mechanics, the Born rule, or measurement. A no-go result says what a class of approaches cannot do; it builds nothing. - The temporal Bell inequality is Leggett and Garg's, from 1985, with a large and good literature around it. - The ping-pong balls explain why measurement has to be an interaction, and that is all I use them for. They are not an explanation of the uncertainty principle — "we bumped it" is a famously insufficient account of that, and the real story is deeper than clumsiness.
Introduction Our aim in this chapter is to extend the Bell inequality discussion in Chapter 17 to its temporal analogue, known as the Leggett–Garg (LG) inequality . Bell inequalities involve spatial nonlocality, that is, signal observations distributed over space. It was shown by Leggett and Garg that analogous inequalities involving temporal nonlocality can be formulated (Leggett and Garg, 1985). We shall discuss one of these, known as the LG inequality . We saw in Chapter 17 that Bell inequalities are based on certain classical mechanics (CM) assumptions about the nature of reality. Likewise, the LG inequality is based on two CM principles that are not incorporated into quantum mechanics (QM). Definition 19.1 The principle of macrorealism asserts that if a macroscopic (that is, large-scale) system under observation (SUO) can be observed to be in one of two or more macroscopically distinct states, then it will always be in one or another of those states at any given time, not in a quantum superposition of those states, even when it is not being observed. This principle is a foundational principle in CM but is incompatible with QM in at least two ways. First, it is vacuous, as it asserts the truth of a proposition in the absence of empirical validation: how can we define the concept of always , without introducing counterfactuality? Second, it is violated in quantum theory, for instance, in path integral calculations. This principle in embedded in the nexus of issues explored in this book. The quantized detector network (QDN) version of it takes the form “If any SUO can be observed in any number of possible states, then it will be observed in one of them in any run.” This is a near tautology. The classical version says the same thing but makes an additional assertion about something going on in the absence of observation, which is the vacuous element that QM cannot accept. Definition 19.2 The principle of noninvasive measurability asserts that the actual state an SUO is in can always be determined cost-free, that is, without having any effect on that state or on its subsequent dynamical evolution. This principle is subtle. We experience its apparent validity all the time in our ordinary lives: we look at objects and they appear not to change by those acts of observation.
Quest for Entropy #2: how a clockwork with no dice fakes quantum mechanics — the machine taken apart, the exam it passed, and the one wall it cannot get past. This is a demonstration, not a discovery about nature. It does not say our universe is a clockwork, does not reinterpret quantum mechanics, and does not dodge Bell's theorem — the hidden machinery is global, not local, exactly because Bell rules out the local kind (we checked). The recipe was found by an optimizer and only later shown to sit at a fixed point of the geometry; the build is engineering, and we say so. The claim is only this: quantum-looking behaviour can come out of a deterministic machine plus a physical measurement — not that this is why our world is quantum. Everything here describes one family of machines at the settings we tested, and where it fails, it fails in public.
How much of quantum mechanics can a machine with no dice fake? This deposit accompanies the article "The Universe with No Dice" (Quest for Entropy #1), which builds a fully deterministic, classical toy universe and shows that a bounded observer inside it counts Born-rule statistics and double-slit interference to within about one percent of the quantum prediction, with the model's exact failure mode published as a falsifiable limit rather than hidden in error bars. Article: https://questforentropy.substack.com/p/the-universe-with-no-dice Code and reproduction instructions: https://github.com/masteris777/quest-for-entropy-the-universe-with-no-dice
Quest for Entropy #3: twenty questions, one deterministic clockwork, and the two answers it could not give. This is a demonstration, not a discovery about nature. The scorecard says one family of machines, at one frozen setting, reproduced twenty specific behaviours — it does not say our universe is a clockwork, does not reinterpret quantum mechanics, and does not dodge Bell's theorem, since the hidden machinery here is global, not local. Question 16 is unfinished, not won: the certified pair sits exactly on the classical bound, and entanglement remains unreproduced. Question 6 is a confessed failure, and the cliff-or-floor dichotomy is a named conjecture, measured on both sides and proved on neither. Every number behind this piece is at the machine's own precision, about one percent, and every pass means "within that".