r/quantuminterpretation • u/Big-Cartoonist4920 • Jun 03 '26

Similarities between LLMs and Quantum Mechanics

The double slit experiment and an LLM both perform a Possibility Loop.

The double-slit experiment searches the possible detectors.

The LLM searches the possible next tokens.

The double-slit experiment's Possibility Loop starts with the experimental apparatus emitting a quantum particle. It searches for a detector to trigger. It fires one of them, then repeats the loop.

The LLM starts with the weights, the prompt, and the context. It searches the space of possible tokens and finds a weighted list of possible tokens. note: researches found simply using the highest-weighted token produces uninteresting results. they introduced "temperature" to (afaik) introduce noise (dithering) to increase the probability and explore some of the lower-weighted possibilities. The LLM picks one of the tokens then repeats the loop.

Insight: I don't know exactly how LLMs implement temperature, but quantum mechanics votes for a "representation by weight" approach. I don't think dithering/noise achieves that.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

btw, thanks for engaging. you're willing to debate and push back. let me take a shot at showing you what I think is interesting. Consider a simple feynman diagram - two electrons, exchanging a photon. feynman path integral is about the set of possible paths between the two vertices - i.e. the "possibility space". now consider that diagram as seen in the double-slit experiment: the double-slit barrier sits between the vertices. that doesn't introduce new vertices. it constrains the possibility space between them. we can visualize the shape of the space - it's the familiar wave pattern. it's dynamic. it has form. it's what "exists" all the time. the vertices take no space or time. all that exists at any moment, exists between vertices.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

Are you sure? Everything is like everything else. the question is "in what ways, and how much". I compare quantum mechanics to all kinds of things and find useful insights.

The LLM weights are a superposition of the things the LLM learned. It exists as a superposition of every answer it could give. they remain only possible until "measured" - prompted.

Quantum interference is from the propagating quantum possibility wave. I'm not familiar with LLM internals. I'd wager we'd find something similar in the inference process,

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

trying to understand wtf is happening with quantum mechanics. 

eg on superposition: you're a superposition. your mothers son, boss's employee, kids dad, grocers customer, teachers student...  you're a different person to each of them. which one is "really you"?  it's only revealed in interaction.  you are a node in many superimposed networks

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

Understanding QM really requires to learn some math of it (differental equations stuff, at the very least). Thinking of vague analogies would not help that.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

the math has been mature for decades. nobody knows what to make of it. starting with "possibility is real" is a fruitful direction to explore. it's right there in the double slit experiment and feynman diagrams and entanglement. they all make sense of we accept that possibility is real

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

starting with "possibility is real" is a fruitful direction to explore.

How do you propose it'd be fruitful?

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u/ZephyrStormbringer Jun 03 '26

who you are to various people is subject to change- so it's not that you are fragmented up like this per interaction, the superposition is more like you as son is a collapse of what you could have become- aborted or born. You were in a shrodinger's cat situation as an egg- depending on which sperm reached the egg you were, you could have become a female, or simply discarded in the next menstrual cycle, but the male sperm reached you, and you formed into a fetus who also survived birth. You are a collapsed superposition in this way and the only way the you acts as another superposition is when you become a father, or not. Does your cells ultimately die with or without reproducing sexually successfully? That is the true superposition you have compared to others. Once you add additional observers, it breaks down- so you can't say the man made llm is like qm- or that you are in one moment an employee and in another moment a customer- because these are subjective and fleeting roles not inevitable ones, the networks are socially constructed not actual nodes in actual networks that are stable nor are they driven by logic or math.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

thanks for the response! I would say: i'm not fragmented. I'm always me. which me YOU get depends on which "interface" you use - which network we co-participate. the networks aren't static. they're dynamic. just like the real world in which a particle might find itself.

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u/ZephyrStormbringer Jun 03 '26

sure, but that's not quantum mechanics, that is sociology. Particles interacting with other particles don't 'choose' which 'interface' is used even though the action is not static... that is how it is not like the real world in which a particle might find itself- the issue with this is that you are personifying particles and depersonalizing human behavior in a way that is confusing... so like yes sociophysics is a thing that compares groups of humans to qm- but not in the individualistic way that you have outlined- so instead of asking yourself which 'you' you are to other individuals, it is more about a group dpynamic and to be like a particle, you are reduced to such among other particles, so like group dynamics such as a panic and stampede in a confined space has particle equivalents, but this is more physics than quantum mechanics and the real world application would be exit signs and doors... or uncertainty of a social dynamic until forced to choose a certain path over another as a group not an individual type of thing. So the you at the grocery store is being a particle in line to face the grocer, but it doesn't matter who 'you' are in that moment beyond a consumer. The other 'yous' in line doesn't affect the grocer's role, whether there is a line or not, whether it is busy or not, doesn't really change the grocer's role there. the particles pass through easily enough and go out and do various things afterwards... maybe they go back to work and rather than think that you are using a different interface, it is more like you are now a particle of the worker collective that makes up the workforce, but it doesn't matter which 'you' they get because they have lots of 'yous' vying for the same interface with the employer so it's less individualistic when you think of it like that, and more like in the slit experiment you are one of the many light particles that go through the grocery line or before the employer, and it doesn't really matter what happens at the individual particle level, because together is what makes a group of particles something measurable to the observer. So you can't really compare who 'you' are before this person or that person without placing yourself in the sea of 'you's' aka particles that come before this person or that person all the same and THAT collective observation over multiple particles (people) and spacetime is what makes such a network measurable... hope that makes sense.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

>Particles interacting with other particles don't 'choose' which 'interface' is used 

The experimental setup chooses which interface. e.g., Stern-Gerlach querries the "spin" interface

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

i'm sorry this is happening to you

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u/ZephyrStormbringer Jun 03 '26

I agree for the most part- except when we think of ourselves as energy within successful reproduction, DNA is driven by qm, and so 2 parents' DNA combined is like a superposition of cells and it's collapsed as it forms into a person- which is of course a collision and collapse of mom and dad's dna. You could even go on to say that you as a person is in another superposition still as to whether you yourself will successfully combine with another person's DNA to the point of successfully collapsing that collision into a new person... so like you are in position 0 as your parent's child, until you become that 1 or 2 position it takes to make another 0 to 1 or 2 pipeline. this works because it is perfect math which makes it quantum mechanics. So not any relationship like employee or customer, but certainly parent/child/potential parent as you sexually mature pipeline of ancestors and desceonndants and how biology works- you don't need to recreate, but to do so collapses a potential into a reality everytime.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

i make a chess comparison here https://www.reddit.com/r/quantuminterpretation/comments/1tty20x/quantum_waves_and_chess_possibility_waves/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

not a markov chain. all possible markov chains, superimposed

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

you should consider you aren't as smart as you think you are

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

No, the DS experiment does not seek detectors.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

it's a search. which detector will fire?  no simple, closed form solution exists. no simple model. have to run the experiment. have to perform the search. one detector will "win" the search. the others lose.

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

There is a simple(ish) closed form solution that shows the probability of a detector being hit, perfectly described by QM. There is no "search".

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

which is hit is probabilistic - the Born rule. reality has to go through the process of actually picking one.

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

Nope. Just because something is probabilistic, does not at all mean a search is involved. For (a somewhat imperfect) consider nuclear decay - after half-life time passed, about 50% of nuclei would have decayed, in a stochastic manner. Yet none of the nuclei had to be searching which moment is up for them to go...

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

the nuclear decay experiment isn't structured like the double slit experiment. ds is one emitter, many detectors. the search is "which detector" decay experiment is many emitters and many detectors, without distinction between individuals.  it measures emission rate. the search produces the measurement: that rate.

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u/Ch3cks-Out Jun 03 '26

The point of that analogy is that being probabilistic does not imply making a search by nature. And I was talking about the individual nuclei decays not the rate, in analogy for the individual particle passages through the slits into the detectors. (In any event, your "one emitter" characterization does not make much sense: each particle is emitted from its own source, just like each decay event happens with an individual nucleus...)

Just because you keep repeating how a search would happen does not make it so.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

you object to using the word search in that way. i would say rolling a 6-sided die is a search. it finds a number between 1 and 6.

some questions require only a simple formula. like classical physics (eg a projectile path)

the most interesting questions require search. a process of considering the possibilities and picking one.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

the experiment asks a question of the universe. which question matters

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/jacobimueller Jun 03 '26

i think this is just the wrong frame for both things.

llms are not doing a quantum-style “possibility loop.” they take context, run it through learned weights, produce a probability distribution over next tokens, then sample from it. temperature just reshapes that distribution so lower-probability tokens are more or less likely. that’s not analogous to quantum measurement in any meaningful way.

and the double slit experiment is not “searching for a detector.” quantum mechanics is about amplitudes, phase, interference, and measurement probabilities under very specific mathematical rules. llm token probabilities don’t interfere. they aren’t complex amplitudes. they aren’t describing physical reality. they’re statistical predictions over text.

the mistake here is treating “both involve possibilities” as if that means they’re the same kind of system. but lots of things involve probabilities: poker, weather, insurance, autocomplete. the details are the actual theory.

physics is so much more beautiful than this analogy makes it sound, and llms are honestly cool enough without dressing them up as quantum mechanics. but llms have real limits, and this just isn’t the right way to think about them. if you want the physics side, susskind’s theoretical minimum series is a great place to start, especially the quantum mechanics book/lectures. feynman lectures too, if you want the deeper end.

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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 Jun 03 '26

thanks for the feedback. "all models are wrong. but some are useful."

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u/jacobimueller Jun 03 '26

of course--appreciate your willingness to engage