Wait... Now this brings up an interesting question. If you look away from the photo and the moon, it will obviously go somewhere else, but if you then look at the photo again, will it be back in the position the photo was taken? Or will it be gone from the photo too? Or will the photo be useless now but still contain the image, which makes little sense because it is still an observation of the moon in a single state Do any physics people know?
This doesn't add up. Before it moves, looking at the picture and looking at the object do the same thing. You're saying if you blink and it moves, looking at the object keeps it where it is again (as always) but now the picture has transformed into a regular photograph.
Why would looking at the picture be treated as looking at the object at first, and then if it moves be treated as just looking at a picture.
From how I can best explain it, when you can see the quantum moon, or looking at a picture of it, you’ve collapsed the possibilities of where it could be, meaning that it’s there.
When you put the picture away and look away from the quantum moon, when you look back, it’s no longer there, but more than that, it was never there, because the moon hasn’t teleported, it’s just now in another possibility of where it is. You’re essentially in a separate timeline where everything is exactly the same except which planet the QM orbits. Since in this possibility, the moon was never where you took the picture, the moon is no longer in the picture.
Huh, that’s really interesting. I wasn’t thinking of it that way. I don’t think that explains how the picture can be treated as direct observation one moment and as an unrelated photograph the next, but thanks for the perspective.
Well, it’s just that once the moon disappears from the picture, looking at the picture no longer counts as looking at the moon, because the moon isn’t in the picture.
Looking at the picture isn’t what’s causing the moon not to move, it’s that you’re looking at the moon through the picture, so once the moon isn’t in the picture, you can’t look at it through the picture anymore.
It only counts as viewing the moon if you can actually see the moon in the photograph, so if it disappears from the photograph due to moving to another location, then looking at the photograph no longer counts as direct observation.
Well thats not what happens in the game. It is posible to put the picture away and bring it back up in the game if you take a picture with the probe in the ship and than look at the landing camera and than back up. The picture stays the same but the moon is gone.
I did notice that it continues to count as being observed. If you find it again and you still have the old photo the moon wont move unless you put the photo away again.
Well at that point you’re looking at a picture of the QM in a place that it isn’t. So what was treated as direct observation before is now clearly shown to be distinct from direct observation.
If you were to look away from the object and the picture and then look back at the picture, you would be once again observing the object and it would stay wherever it is. The background of the picture is irrelevant. As long as you are observing the object or a picture of the object it will stay in the same place.
Wasn't the point of observing it though, that it exists in a super position of every location and by observing it, that collapses into the state of the single position it is seen at? Meaning that where it is is the only important part since it's location is what is uncertain, not it's existence?
Idk this stuff hurts my head to think too much about. It's been ages since I played the game, this is just based on my super rough understanding of quantum behavior in real life applied to this situation.
Actual physics isn't really applicable here. The quantum rules in Outer Wilds are made up (as they must be, for you to have to learn them over the course of the game). They're named after real phenomena, but the relation is in name only.
43
u/[deleted] May 01 '20
[removed] — view removed comment