--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0GFntzVcqzEsnxXrXDnpb9y0DhSX1uv0DO_%3DNzVK8c9g%40mail.gmail.com.
> That's kind of him to reply. Aren't functional quantum computers proof that atoms can be in two places at once?
lis
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2nETBQAqcrE4exjAjhhOi%2BRPfo7W4M3C_PbZEmk%3DwE%3Dg%40mail.gmail.com.
> A good letter to Brandes, but I think you use Schroedinger's cat to much. If one imagines a clock attached to the poison vial, then it's clear that on opening the box you will see an alive or dead cat and a running clock or one that marks the exact time in the past that the cat was killed.
> So decoherence theory has answered the problem of why we don't see superpositions of alive and dead cats.
> I notice that you never entertain QBism and seem to dismiss it as "just not an intuitively satisfying theory;
> A good letter to Brandes, but I think you use Schroedinger's cat to much. If one imagines a clock attached to the poison vial, then it's clear that on opening the box you will see an alive or dead cat and a running clock or one that marks the exact time in the past that the cat was killed.The entire purpose of a thought experiment is to help you understand something, if you replace the radioactive decay of an atom, which according to quantum mechanics is supposed to be random, an event without a cause, with a mechanical clock then I don't see how your modification of Schrodinger's cat helps anybody understand anything.
> So decoherence theory has answered the problem of why we don't see superpositions of alive and dead cats.
Decoherence theory is fine but it can't resolve Schrodinger's cat paradox, at least not to my satisfaction.> I notice that you never entertain QBism and seem to dismiss it as "just not an intuitively satisfying theory;
QBism certainly works, but I dismiss it because it's just "shut up and calculate" with a different name.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
wdn
iws
On Sat, Nov 18, 2023, 6:58 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
I read an article called The multiverse is unscientific nonsense by Jacob Barandes, a lecturer in physics at Harvard University, and I wrote a letter to professor Barandes commenting on it. He responded with a very polite letter saying he read it and appreciated what I said but didn't have time to comment further. This is the letter I sent:===========
Hello Professor Barandes
I read your article The multiverse is unscientific nonsense with interest and I have a few comments:
Nobody is claiming that the existence of the multiverse is a proven fact, but I think the idea needs to be taken seriously because:
1) Unlike Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds theory is clear about what it's saying.2) It is self consistent and conforms with all known experimental results.3) It has no need to speculate about new physics as objective wave collapse theories like GRW do.4) It doesn't have to explain what consciousness or a measurement is because they have nothing to do with it, all it needs is Schrodinger's equation.
I don't see how you can explain counterfactual quantum reasoning and such things as the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester without making use of many worlds. Hugh Everett would say that by having a bomb in a universe we are not in explode we can tell if a bomb that is in the branch of the multiverse that we are in is a dud or is a live fully functional bomb. You say that many worlds needs to account for probability and that's true, but then you say many worlds demands that some worlds have “higher probabilities than others" but that is incorrect. According to many worlds there is one and only one universe for every quantum state that is not forbidden by the laws of physics. So when you flip a coin the universe splits many more times than twice because there are a vast number, perhaps an infinite number, of places where a coin could land, but you are not interested in exactly where the coin lands, you're only interested if it lands heads or tails. And we've known for centuries how to obtain a useful probability between any two points on the continuous bell curve even though the continuous curve is made up of an unaccountably infinite number of points, all we need to do is perform a simple integration to figure out which part of the bell curve we're most likely on.
Yes, that's a lot of worlds, but you shouldn't object that the multiverse really couldn't be that big unless you are a stout defender of the idea that the universe must be finite, because even if many worlds turns out to be untrue the universe could still be infinite and an infinity plus an infinity is still the an infinity with the same Aleph number. Even if there is only one universe if it's infinite then a finite distance away there must be a doppelgänger of you because, although there are a huge number of quantum states your body could be in, that number is not infinite, but the universe is.
And Occam's razor is about an economy of assumptions not an economy of results. As for the "Tower of assumptions" many worlds is supposed to be based on, the only assumption that many worlds makes is that Schrodinger's equation means what it says, and it says nothing about the wave function collapsing. I would maintain that many worlds is bare-bones no-nonsense quantum mechanics with none of the silly bells and whistles that other theories stick on that do nothing but get rid of those pesky other worlds that keep cropping up that they personally dislike for some reason. And since Everett's time other worlds do seem to keep popping up and in completely unrelated fields, such as string theory and inflationary cosmology.
You also ask what a “rational observer” is and how they ought to behave, and place bets on future events, given their self-locating uncertainty. I agree with David Hume who said that "ought" cannot be derived from "is", but "ought" can be derived from "want". So if an observer is a gambler that WANTS to make money but is irrational then he is absolutely guaranteed to lose all his money if he plays long enough, while a rational observer who knows how to make use of continuous probabilities is guaranteed to make money, or at least break even. Physicists WANT their ideas to be clear, have predictive power, and to conform with reality as described by experiment; therefore I think they OUGHT to embrace the many world's idea.
And yes there is a version of you and me that flips a coin 1 million times and see heads every single time even though the coin is 100% fair, however it is extremely unlikely that we will find ourselves that far out on the bell curve, so I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that I will not see 1 million heads in a row. You also say that "the Dirac-von Neumann axioms don’t support oft-heard statements that an atom can be in two places at once, or that a cat can be alive and dead at the same time", but there are only two possibilities, either there is an alive cat and a dead cat in two different places or there is a live/dead cat that instantly snaps into being either alive or dead by the act of "measurement" even though the standard textbook Copenhagen interpretation can't say exactly what a measurement is, or even approximately what it is for that matter. In many worlds a measurement is simply any change in a quantum system, it makes no difference if that quantum system is a human being or an unconscious brick wall. So in that sense many worlds is totalitarian because everything that is not forbidden by the laws of Quantum Physics and General Relativity must exist.
You correctly point out that nobody has ever "seen an atom in two places at once, let alone a cat being both alive and dead", but nobody has ever seen infinite dimensional operators in Hilbert space that the Dirac-von Neumann axioms use either, all they've seen is ink on paper in mathematical books. And you can't get milk from the word "cow".
I'll close by just saying although I believe there is considerable evidence in favor of the many worlds view I admit it falls far short of a proof, maybe tomorrow somebody will come up with a better idea but right now many worlds is the least bad quantum interpretation around. And speculation is not a dirty word, without it science would be moribund, Richard Feynman said science is imagination in a tight straight jacket and I agree with him.
Best wishes
John K Clark=========
lis
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0vyg04KhVrQsoS4M55ihGpVB6Cht_H9Znvkoisnh5CBQ%40mail.gmail.com.
>> The entire purpose of a thought experiment is to help you understand something, if you replace the radioactive decay of an atom, which according to quantum mechanics is supposed to be random, an event without a cause, with a mechanical clock then I don't see how your modification of Schrodinger's cat helps anybody understand anything.
> I didn't replace the atom. I connected a clock to the vial so there's a record or when it is broken.
>> QBism certainly works, but I dismiss it because it's just "shut up and calculate" with a different name.
>When calculate the impact of two boxcars do you refuse to use the concept of inertia becasue there's no storybook about where it comes from?
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/e4c9a0a2-e4f3-4e50-8dd4-e414f6488220%40gmail.com.
On Sun, Nov 19, 2023 at 4:54 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:>> The entire purpose of a thought experiment is to help you understand something, if you replace the radioactive decay of an atom, which according to quantum mechanics is supposed to be random, an event without a cause, with a mechanical clock then I don't see how your modification of Schrodinger's cat helps anybody understand anything.> I didn't replace the atom. I connected a clock to the vial so there's a record or when it is broken.OK so now is the clock that exists in the 12:01 State, and the 12:02 and the 12:03 and the 12:04 and the... 12:59 state, and it doesn't snap into one particular state until you open the box. How was that better than the original experiment?>> QBism certainly works, but I dismiss it because it's just "shut up and calculate" with a different name.
>When calculate the impact of two boxcars do you refuse to use the concept of inertia becasue there's no storybook about where it comes from?No of course not, and I'm not saying people shouldn't use shut up and calculate or its pseudonym "QBism", I'm just saying it's not a bad thing if somebody wants to look a little deeper into the nature of inertia, because the discovery of the Higgs field and the Higgs particle partially solves the mystery of inertia, at least it explains why quarks have mass and can explain about 1% of the mass of macroscopic objects, and that's a start. If people just give up we will never find any answers.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/58da6cb0-2751-4a51-9b12-c290acc22b84n%40googlegroups.com.
There seems to be a conflation between the multiple worlds of Everett and the eternal inflation of a multiverse.
> It has been suggested that the cosmic multiverse and the quantum multiverse of Everett are the same thing. But I think that this idea is patently ridiculous.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3-Rg71cjDP5PY%3Dg38hPb86u25Cabe631Lk%3DjDRM9geCg%40mail.gmail.com.
> Depends what you mean by "couldn't be true"--my understanding is that Einstein's EPR paper was just asserting that there must be additional elements of reality beyond the quantum description
> Depends what you mean by "couldn't be true"--my understanding is that Einstein's EPR paper was just asserting that there must be additional elements of reality beyond the quantum descriptionYes, Einstein thought he had proven that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because nature just couldn't be that ridiculous. But it turned out nature could be that ridiculous. The moral of the story is that being ridiculous is not necessarily the same thing as being wrong.
>> Einstein thought he had proven that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because nature just couldn't be that ridiculous. But it turned out nature could be that ridiculous. The moral of the story is that being ridiculous is not necessarily the same thing as being wrong.> Nevertheless, being ridiculous is no indication that an idea is correct. Evidence matters, and there is no evidence that the multiverse of Everett has anything to do with cosmology. In fact, there is no direct evidence that the quantum multiverse even exists.
> Depends what you mean by "couldn't be true"--my understanding is that Einstein's EPR paper was just asserting that there must be additional elements of reality beyond the quantum descriptionYes, Einstein thought he had proven that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because nature just couldn't be that ridiculous. But it turned out nature could be that ridiculous. The moral of the story is that being ridiculous is not necessarily the same thing as being wrong.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3bTNE_YRgRpnmVh8rxKT01A4xtDvEPr%2BRrgE6jLmoanw%40mail.gmail.com.
Just an interesting quote.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUiGBGzi2XwOfdv0OW0SM-0TUOBtPyhiZSYXfAgm9QQKrg%40mail.gmail.com.
> Just an interesting quote.
“The idea that they [measurement outcomes] be not alternatives but *all* really happen simultaneously seems lunatic to him [the quantum theorist], just *impossible*. He thinks that if the laws of nature took *this* form for, let me say, a quarter of an hour, we should find our surroundings rapidly turning into a quagmire, or sort of a featureless jelly or plasma, all contours becoming blurred, we ourselves probably becoming jelly fish. It is strange that he should believe this. For I understand he grants that unobserved nature does behave this way – namely according to the wave equation. The aforesaid *alternatives* come into play only when we make an observation - which need, of course, not be a scientific observation. Still It would seem that, according to the quantum theorist, nature is prevented from rapid jellification only by our perceiving or observing it. [........] The compulsion to replace the "simultaneous* happenings, as indicated directly by the theory, by *alternatives*, of which the theory is supposed to indicate the respective *probabilities*, arises from the conviction that what we really observe are particles - that actual events always concern particles, not waves."
-Erwin Schroedinger, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Dublin Seminars (1949-1955) and Other Unpublished Essays (Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, Connecticut, 1995), pages 19-20.
Just an interesting quote.
“The idea that they [measurement outcomes] be not alternatives but *all* really happen simultaneously seems lunatic to him [the quantum theorist], just *impossible*. He thinks that if the laws of nature took *this* form for, let me say, a quarter of an hour, we should find our surroundings rapidly turning into a quagmire, or sort of a featureless jelly or plasma, all contours becoming blurred, we ourselves probably becoming jelly fish. It is strange that he should believe this. For I understand he grants that unobserved nature does behave this way – namely according to the wave equation. The aforesaid *alternatives* come into play only when we make an observation - which need, of course, not be a scientific observation. Still it would seem that, according to the quantum theorist, nature is prevented from rapid jellification only by our perceiving or observing it. [........] The compulsion to replace the "simultaneous* happenings, as indicated directly by the theory, by *alternatives*, of which the theory is supposed to indicate the respective *probabilities*, arises from the conviction that what we really observe are particles - that actual events always concern particles, not waves."-Erwin Schroedinger, The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Dublin Seminars (1949-1955) and Other Unpublished Essays (Ox Bow Press, Woodbridge, Connecticut, 1995), pages 19-20.
--Il 21/11/2023 16:43 +01 Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
On Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 3:32 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:> Depends what you mean by "couldn't be true"--my understanding is that Einstein's EPR paper was just asserting that there must be additional elements of reality beyond the quantum descriptionYes, Einstein thought he had proven that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because nature just couldn't be that ridiculous. But it turned out nature could be that ridiculous. The moral of the story is that being ridiculous is not necessarily the same thing as being wrong.EPR was ultimately right. QM, as the understood was incomplete, for it wasn't acknowledged that there as an infinity of simultaneously existing states all of which persisted after measurement. It was assuming that measurement somehow changed things and made states disappear and do so faster than light which EPR authors couldn't swallow. Their intuition proved correct, there are no FTL influences.Jason--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3bTNE_YRgRpnmVh8rxKT01A4xtDvEPr%2BRrgE6jLmoanw%40mail.gmail.com.--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUiGBGzi2XwOfdv0OW0SM-0TUOBtPyhiZSYXfAgm9QQKrg%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1533872897.23972.1700583456959%40mail1.libero.it.
According to Schroedinger (1935) the psi-function is a catalogue of expectations.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUjVcQ0jpkZnQ4ML-9HgE%2Bogctbq%2BA_42J18xaFWzP%2B0sw%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv23%2BDuEDnedh_dk40W-wq7KcDM%3DtEdj58ZwSDE9jB5YnA%40mail.gmail.com.
On Mon, Nov 20, 2023, 3:32 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Depends what you mean by "couldn't be true"--my understanding is that Einstein's EPR paper was just asserting that there must be additional elements of reality beyond the quantum descriptionYes, Einstein thought he had proven that quantum mechanics must be incomplete because nature just couldn't be that ridiculous. But it turned out nature could be that ridiculous. The moral of the story is that being ridiculous is not necessarily the same thing as being wrong.
EPR was ultimately right. QM, as the understood was incomplete, for it wasn't acknowledged that there as an infinity of simultaneously existing states all of which persisted after measurement. It was assuming that measurement somehow changed things and made states disappear and do so faster than light which EPR authors couldn't swallow. Their intuition proved correct, there are no FTL influences.
--
Jason
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3bTNE_YRgRpnmVh8rxKT01A4xtDvEPr%2BRrgE6jLmoanw%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUiGBGzi2XwOfdv0OW0SM-0TUOBtPyhiZSYXfAgm9QQKrg%40mail.gmail.com.
>> There is plenty of direct evidence that quantum weirdness exists, even the father of the Copenhagen Interpretation Niels Bohr admitted that "Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum theory does not understand it ". Something must be behind all that strangeness and whatever it is it must be odd, very very odd. Yes, many world's idea is ridiculous, but is it ridiculous enough to be true? If it's not then something even more ridiculous is. As for the Copenhagen interpretation, I don't think it's ridiculous, I think it's incoherent, and if you ask 10 adherents what it's saying you'll get 12 completely different answers, but they all boil down to "just give up, don't even try to figure out what's going on". But I think one must try.
> I think that's very unfair to Bohr. His basic observation was that we do science in a classical world of necessity.
> Only in a classical world can we make measurements and keep records that we can agree on.
> when we study the microscopic world we must use quantum mechanics, but our instruments must be classical.
> You can treat a baseball as a quantum system composed of elementary particles; but your measurements on it must still give classical values.
> Since the development of decoherence theory this boundary can be quantified in terms vanishing of cross-terms in a reduced density matrix.
> What is left unexplained, in MWI as well as Copenhagen, is the instantiation of a random result with probability proportional to the diagonal elements of the reduced density matrix.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1P3G1%3DVMYSmE4Lsq4-dy%3Ddn%3D%2BFR0L%3DxaqJxbEqFNBorg%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1P3G1%3DVMYSmE4Lsq4-dy%3Ddn%3D%2BFR0L%3DxaqJxbEqFNBorg%40mail.gmail.com.
> You pretty much ignored everything I wrote
> and were exercised to refute the idea of Heisenberg's cut, which neither Bohr or I endorsed.
> Do you deny that science relies on definite recorded results
> and simply postulating an evolving wave function
> does nothing without a theory of how we see definite events?
> Many world has no clear explanation of how many worlds there are and how they get weighted or divided
> Decoherence theory at least gives us an idea of why a measurement in the general sense produces an apparently classical world.
On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 1:59 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You pretty much ignored everything I wrote
What the hell?! I went over what you said point by point.
> and were exercised to refute the idea of Heisenberg's cut, which neither Bohr or I endorsed.I don't know about you but Bohr insisted that we treat electrons as quantum objects but our measuring instruments as classical objects. He also insisted that human observers were classical objects, but he never specified exactly where the dividing line between the quantum world and the classical world was. And if that dividing line isn't the "Heisenberg cut" then what is? But to be fair to you it's difficult to know exactly what Bohr endorsed because much of his philosophical prose is virtually unreadable; that's one reason the Copenhagen adherence can't agree about fundamentally important things even among themselves.
> Do you deny that science relies on definite recorded resultsExperimental results are necessary but they are not sufficient, you also need a theory to make sense of it all, otherwise it's just a bunch of numbers.
Experiments can never prove that a theory is correct but it can prove that a theory is wrong, and it can prove that some theories are less bad than others.
> and simply postulating an evolving wave functionPostulating "an evolving wave function" is one way to put it, and a way to say the same thing with different words is "Schrodinger's equation is correct". You're the one who postulates that Schrodinger's equation must be wrong because all those other worlds simply couldn't exist, that would just be too strange; so despite what the equation says the function must collapse for some reason. But neither you nor anybody else knows how to fix the equation. As for me, I say if something isn't broken then don't fix it.
> does nothing without a theory of how we see definite events?
I've already gone over that in some detail, if you disagree with what I wrote that's fine but be specific about your objection, I refuse to just keep repeating myself.> Many world has no clear explanation of how many worlds there are and how they get weighted or divided
I've already gone over that in some detail, if you disagree with what I wrote that's fine but be specific about your objection, I refuse to just keep repeating myself.
> Decoherence theory at least gives us an idea of why a measurement in the general sense produces an apparently classical world.
Decoherence is fully compatible with Many Worlds, in fact the interpretation simply wouldn't work without it. Simply put, when decoherence occurs the universe splits, and when the universe splits decoherence occurs.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1RMf-LQmshU13PO2swHtG_V-fWq85GzKiFWx8rzfdOyg%40mail.gmail.com.
>> Bohr insisted that we treat electrons as quantum objects but our measuring instruments as classical objects. He also insisted that human observers were classical objects, but he never specified exactly where the dividing line between the quantum world and the classical world was. And if that dividing line isn't the "Heisenberg cut" then what is? But to be fair to you it's difficult to know exactly what Bohr endorsed because much of his philosophical prose is virtually unreadable; that's one reason the Copenhagen adherence can't agree about fundamentally important things even among themselves.
> The point is that Bohr (unlike Heisenberg) didn't regard the "cut" as part of physics. It was a choice of our description. It could be chosen anywhere up to the macroscopic
> This more like QBism
>> Experimental results are necessary but they are not sufficient, you also need a theory to make sense of it all, otherwise it's just a bunch of numbers.
> Experimental results include theoretical interpretations which get written up in arXiv.org, all of which are macroscopic and classical so we can all read them and agree on what they say.
> it's all necessarily classica
> Anyway you're sure Many Worlds is better than than just noting that probability means one thing happens and others don't.
.
On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 5:55 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bohr insisted that we treat electrons as quantum objects but our measuring instruments as classical objects. He also insisted that human observers were classical objects, but he never specified exactly where the dividing line between the quantum world and the classical world was. And if that dividing line isn't the "Heisenberg cut" then what is? But to be fair to you it's difficult to know exactly what Bohr endorsed because much of his philosophical prose is virtually unreadable; that's one reason the Copenhagen adherence can't agree about fundamentally important things even among themselves.
> The point is that Bohr (unlike Heisenberg) didn't regard the "cut" as part of physics. It was a choice of our description. It could be chosen anywhere up to the macroscopic
OK, but Let me ask you this, like Bohr does that explanation satisfy your curiosity about the fundamental nature of reality so much that you don’t think anybody should even try to find something better, so we should just give up?
Are you absolutely certain nobody will ever find an explanation a little more satisfying than that?
Should Galileo have been satisfied with "things fall to the ground because it is their nature to do so", should Newton have been satisfied with that, or Einstein? If we never even try to find something better than that we will certainly never find it.
> This more like QBism
Nobody is saying that QBism a.k.a. Copenhagen, a.k.a. Shut Up And Calculate, doesn’t work; if you’re an Engineer who doesn't care what's going on and just wants to make money with a new gadget it’s fine.
>> Experimental results are necessary but they are not sufficient, you also need a theory to make sense of it all, otherwise it's just a bunch of numbers.> Experimental results include theoretical interpretations which get written up in arXiv.org, all of which are macroscopic and classical so we can all read them and agree on what they say.
Everybody agrees on what the results of an experiment are, but they disagree about what they mean. Without the General Theory Of Relativity the LIGO results are just squiggles produced by 2 mirrors 2 1/2 miles apart. So the mirrors squiggle, who cares?
> it's all necessarily classica
Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works.
> Anyway you're sure Many Worlds is better than than just noting that probability means one thing happens and others don't.
That's not what probability means.
Probability is a real number between zero and one that can be used to make money by making bets on what you will see next provided you only make bets when that number is greater than 0.5 and you make enough bets. And quantum mechanics can tell you what that number is.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2Tr8eYxgnT9VQ%2BW6Yn2s8AY8dykHg%2BH9Mrov3mkb4d8Q%40mail.gmail.com.
>> Let me ask you this, like Bohr does that explanation satisfy your curiosity about the fundamental nature of reality so much that you don’t think anybody should even try to find something better, so we should just give up?
> No, but we shouldn't adopt a just-so-story out of desperation to avoid saying, "We don't know."
> Are you absolutely certain that the long sought theory of quantum gravity will not change our view of QM?
>> Should Galileo have been satisfied with "things fall to the ground because it is their nature to do so", should Newton have been satisfied with that, or Einstein? If we never even try to find something better than that we will certainly never find it.
> You're the one who is saying, "I've found the truth and it's MWI."
> Not me. You criticize me because QBism isn't enough interpretation for you. It leaves too much open.
>>Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works.
>The explanation is in print which is classical.
>> Probability is a real number between zero and one that can be used to make money by making bets on what you will see next provided you only make bets when that number is greater than 0.5 and you make enough bets. And quantum mechanics can tell you what that number is.
> But MWI says all the bets win. It doesn't tell you will only see one result.
> It doesn't take the probabilities seriously. How is it even an interpretation without interpreting the Born rule.
> When I think of MWI I think "results become orthogonal" should say "...and then all but one vanish." But that violates the dogma that only the Schroedinger equation is needed.
On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 4:12 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Let me ask you this, like Bohr does that explanation satisfy your curiosity about the fundamental nature of reality so much that you don’t think anybody should even try to find something better, so we should just give up?
> No, but we shouldn't adopt a just-so-story out of desperation to avoid saying, "We don't know."
Why is saying Schrodinger's Equation means what it says a desperation just so story?
> Are you absolutely certain that the long sought theory of quantum gravity will not change our view of QM?
No.
>> Should Galileo have been satisfied with "things fall to the ground because it is their nature to do so", should Newton have been satisfied with that, or Einstein? If we never even try to find something better than that we will certainly never find it.
> You're the one who is saying, "I've found the truth and it's MWI."
That is simply untrue! I dare you to find a post of mine where I said the thing that you're quoting! I've been very careful in NOT saying that because I don't believe it's true. I never said we had proved many worlds exist, what I said is that the Many Worlds Interpretation is the least bad quantum interpretation currently available.
> Not me. You criticize me because QBism isn't enough interpretation for you. It leaves too much open.
QBism is not an interpretation, it just says if you perform a quantum calculation in a certain way you will get the correct answer. And that is certainly true.
>>Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works.
>The explanation is in print which is classical.If you're right and an explanation of how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works that only uses classical concepts is in print then they must've used invisible ink to print it because I've never seen it and I don't know anybody who has. And I've looked!
>> Probability is a real number between zero and one that can be used to make money by making bets on what you will see next provided you only make bets when that number is greater than 0.5 and you make enough bets. And quantum mechanics can tell you what that number is.
> But MWI says all the bets win. It doesn't tell you will only see one result.
"You" will only see one result In an experiment because there is one "you" for every outcome that does not violate the laws of physics, however Brent Meeker will see every result that is not physically impossible. The reason the previous sentence sounds rather odd is because the English language will need to be modified in the way it handles personal pronouns if the Many Worlds idea ever becomes generally accepted.
> It doesn't take the probabilities seriously. How is it even an interpretation without interpreting the Born rule.
I've already explained why I think MWI does a good job explaining why the Born rule is what it is and does what it does, if you disagree with something specific I said then point it out and we'll debate it, if you do a good job I'll even change my mind, but don't just say every word is wrong and leave it at that and expect that convinced me.
> When I think of MWI I think "results become orthogonal" should say "...and then all but one vanish." But that violates the dogma that only the Schroedinger equation is needed.
And that is exactly why MWI does NOT say "...and then all but one vanish." You're confusing MWI with Copenhagen a.k.a. QBism a.k.a. Shut Up and Calculate.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv2%2Bc%3DR2fc2wzz-u5-0cBiAUmrLkC2%3Dy2pBuNhepgvMxEQ%40mail.gmail.com.
[John] Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works.
[John] Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works.
[Brent] The explanation is in print which is classical.[John] If you're right and an explanation of how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works that only uses classical concepts is in print then they must've used invisible ink to print it because I've never seen it and I don't know anybody who has. And I've looked!
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03137 Ruth Kastner wrote an interesting paper about Quantum Erasure and Delayed Choice
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/2063434390.902526.1700821592628%40mail1.libero.it.
> Let's review the bidding John. I said the classical world was necessary to science
> You attempted to counter this by challenging me to explain the quantum eraser experiment without quantum mechanics
> ...a complete non-sequitur.
> I replied that our quantum mechanical explanations are written out in classically behaving ink. I never said explanations must be in classical terms,
> I said they must be classically embodied.
On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 1:48 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:On Fri, Nov 24, 2023 at 5:36 AM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's review the bidding John. I said the classical world was necessary to scienceAnd if that's all you had said we wouldn't be having an argument, but you insisted that classical concepts were also sufficient to do science. You even claimed that an "explanation is in print" that explains why the Quantum Eraser Experiment does what it does and doesn't do what it doesn't do that, as my challenge specified, uses only classical concepts. But you don't say where I can find this revolutionary article that would certainly change physics forever if it actually existed.
> You attempted to counter this by challenging me to explain the quantum eraser experiment without quantum mechanics
You seem to have difficulty remembering things I have said and yet you find it very easy to remember things that I did NOT say, therefore I will provide an exact quote of the challenge I gave to you:
"Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works."
And I am still waiting for that explanation from you. In fact for about a century the entire world has been trying to find an explanation for quantum weirdness using only intuitive classical physics, and they have failed spectacularly.
> ...a complete non-sequitur.
What is a complete non-sequitur?> I replied that our quantum mechanical explanations are written out in classically behaving ink. I never said explanations must be in classical terms,
Again I will use exact quotes as I wish you had. My challenge to you was:"Using only classical concepts explain to me how and why the Quantum Eraser Experiment works."
And the best response to my challenge that you could come up with was:"The explanation is in print which is classical"
There seems to be a conflation between the multiple worlds of Everett and the eternal inflation of a multiverse.
Brent
On 11/19/2023 4:49 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
The real problem is that anything involving the multiverse, say some quantum field signature from the earliest quantum cosmology, is stretched by inflation into a red-shifted spectrum beyond measurability. The multiverse is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which is supported by data, but information about the multiverse may never be detected.
LC
On Saturday, November 18, 2023 at 5:58:15 AM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
I read an article called The multiverse is unscientific nonsense by Jacob Barandes, a lecturer in physics at Harvard University, and I wrote a letter to professor Barandes commenting on it. He responded with a very polite letter saying he read it and appreciated what I said but didn't have time to comment further. This is the letter I sent:===========
Hello Professor Barandes
I read your article The multiverse is unscientific nonsense with interest and I have a few comments:
Nobody is claiming that the existence of the multiverse is a proven fact, but I think the idea needs to be taken seriously because:
1) Unlike Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, the Many Worlds theory is clear about what it's saying.2) It is self consistent and conforms with all known experimental results.3) It has no need to speculate about new physics as objective wave collapse theories like GRW do.4) It doesn't have to explain what consciousness or a measurement is because they have nothing to do with it, all it needs is Schrodinger's equation.
I don't see how you can explain counterfactual quantum reasoning and such things as the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester without making use of many worlds. Hugh Everett would say that by having a bomb in a universe we are not in explode we can tell if a bomb that is in the branch of the multiverse that we are in is a dud or is a live fully functional bomb. You say that many worlds needs to account for probability and that's true, but then you say many worlds demands that some worlds have “higher probabilities than others" but that is incorrect. According to many worlds there is one and only one universe for every quantum state that is not forbidden by the laws of physics. So when you flip a coin the universe splits many more times than twice because there are a vast number, perhaps an infinite number, of places where a coin could land, but you are not interested in exactly where the coin lands, you're only interested if it lands heads or tails. And we've known for centuries how to obtain a useful probability between any two points on the continuous bell curve even though the continuous curve is made up of an unaccountably infinite number of points, all we need to do is perform a simple integration to figure out which part of the bell curve we're most likely on.
Yes, that's a lot of worlds, but you shouldn't object that the multiverse really couldn't be that big unless you are a stout defender of the idea that the universe must be finite, because even if many worlds turns out to be untrue the universe could still be infinite and an infinity plus an infinity is still the an infinity with the same Aleph number. Even if there is only one universe if it's infinite then a finite distance away there must be a doppelgänger of you because, although there are a huge number of quantum states your body could be in, that number is not infinite, but the universe is.
And Occam's razor is about an economy of assumptions not an economy of results. As for the "Tower of assumptions" many worlds is supposed to be based on, the only assumption that many worlds makes is that Schrodinger's equation means what it says, and it says nothing about the wave function collapsing. I would maintain that many worlds is bare-bones no-nonsense quantum mechanics with none of the silly bells and whistles that other theories stick on that do nothing but get rid of those pesky other worlds that keep cropping up that they personally dislike for some reason. And since Everett's time other worlds do seem to keep popping up and in completely unrelated fields, such as string theory and inflationary cosmology.
You also ask what a “rational observer” is and how they ought to behave, and place bets on future events, given their self-locating uncertainty. I agree with David Hume who said that "ought" cannot be derived from "is", but "ought" can be derived from "want". So if an observer is a gambler that WANTS to make money but is irrational then he is absolutely guaranteed to lose all his money if he plays long enough, while a rational observer who knows how to make use of continuous probabilities is guaranteed to make money, or at least break even. Physicists WANT their ideas to be clear, have predictive power, and to conform with reality as described by experiment; therefore I think they OUGHT to embrace the many world's idea.
And yes there is a version of you and me that flips a coin 1 million times and see heads every single time even though the coin is 100% fair, however it is extremely unlikely that we will find ourselves that far out on the bell curve, so I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that I will not see 1 million heads in a row. You also say that "the Dirac-von Neumann axioms don’t support oft-heard statements that an atom can be in two places at once, or that a cat can be alive and dead at the same time", but there are only two possibilities, either there is an alive cat and a dead cat in two different places or there is a live/dead cat that instantly snaps into being either alive or dead by the act of "measurement" even though the standard textbook Copenhagen interpretation can't say exactly what a measurement is, or even approximately what it is for that matter. In many worlds a measurement is simply any change in a quantum system, it makes no difference if that quantum system is a human being or an unconscious brick wall. So in that sense many worlds is totalitarian because everything that is not forbidden by the laws of Quantum Physics and General Relativity must exist.
You correctly point out that nobody has ever "seen an atom in two places at once, let alone a cat being both alive and dead", but nobody has ever seen infinite dimensional operators in Hilbert space that the Dirac-von Neumann axioms use either, all they've seen is ink on paper in mathematical books. And you can't get milk from the word "cow".
I'll close by just saying although I believe there is considerable evidence in favor of the many worlds view I admit it falls far short of a proof, maybe tomorrow somebody will come up with a better idea but right now many worlds is the least bad quantum interpretation around. And speculation is not a dirty word, without it science would be moribund, Richard Feynman said science is imagination in a tight straight jacket and I agree with him.
Best wishes
John K Clark=========
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
lis
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/58da6cb0-2751-4a51-9b12-c290acc22b84n%40googlegroups.com.
On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 7:45 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:>> There is plenty of direct evidence that quantum weirdness exists, even the father of the Copenhagen Interpretation Niels Bohr admitted that "Anyone who is not shocked by Quantum theory does not understand it ". Something must be behind all that strangeness and whatever it is it must be odd, very very odd. Yes, many world's idea is ridiculous, but is it ridiculous enough to be true? If it's not then something even more ridiculous is. As for the Copenhagen interpretation, I don't think it's ridiculous, I think it's incoherent, and if you ask 10 adherents what it's saying you'll get 12 completely different answers, but they all boil down to "just give up, don't even try to figure out what's going on". But I think one must try.> I think that's very unfair to Bohr. His basic observation was that we do science in a classical world of necessity.Bohr was a great scientist but I think he was a lousy philosopher. Bohr thought there was a mystical interface between quantum events and conscious awareness, some call it the "Heisenberg Cut", but neither Bohr nor Heisenberg could explain the mechanism behind this mysterious phenomenon nor could they say exactly, or even approximately, where the hell the dividing line between the classical world and the quantum world is. By contrast Many Worlds has no problem whatsoever explaining the mechanism behind the Heisenberg cut or where the dividing line is because the Heisenberg cut does not exist and there is no dividing line, everything is quantum mechanical including the entire universe. I think this is the reason the Many Worlds interpretation is more popular among cosmologists than among scientists in general.
>> And the best response to my challenge that you could come up with was:"The explanation is in print which is classical"
> Can you tell the difference between the above and "The explanation is classical and is in print."
> I never said there were not explanations using quantum concepts like Hilbert space and the Born rule.
> This started with me pointing out, like Bohr, that all science: experiments, records, results, theories are necessarily in a classical world.
> To say that those theories may postulate quantum world does not invalidate it.
iyu
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1C2QL1yRn9XpEwyL9ea1dqK8wPwE_CfuxkbLOLsS%2BzaQ%40mail.gmail.com.
> Everything we know about QM comes from observations, each of which is seeing a result, not a superposition of results.
> This is the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation. Do you disagree with any of that?
--
Brent
--iyu
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1C2QL1yRn9XpEwyL9ea1dqK8wPwE_CfuxkbLOLsS%2BzaQ%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/66669d83-e864-4023-a8cf-85ec07c0989c%40gmail.com.
This started with my point that we test, observer, infer, write papers, attend conferences, discuss and write down theories, all in a classical world. Everything we know about QM comes from observations, each of which is seeing a result, not a superposition of results. This is the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation. Do you disagree with any of that?
Brent
It seems that, on page 270 of this paper, Feynman said something about Everett and his "universal wave-function"
https://edition-open-sources.org/media/sources/5/Sources5.pdf
s.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1C2QL1yRn9XpEwyL9ea1dqK8wPwE_CfuxkbLOLsS%2BzaQ%40mail.gmail.com.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/66669d83-e864-4023-a8cf-85ec07c0989c%40gmail.com.
It seems that, on page 270 of this paper, Feynman said something about Everett and his "universal wave-function" https://edition-open-sources.org/media/sources/5/Sources5.pdf
s.
On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 5:14 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:> Everything we know about QM comes from observations, each of which is seeing a result, not a superposition of results.
But nothing we observe in the quantum realm can be predicted or explained unless we use theories that postulate that a superposition of results must exist. Or to put it another way, the fact that those theories produce correct results comes as close to proving as science ever gets that a superposition of results do exist, or at least they did until something called a "measurement" occurs.
> This is the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation. Do you disagree with any of that?
Copenhagen needs an additional postulate that Many Worlds does not, Copenhagen needs something called "measurement" that somehow causes most of those results to be completely obliterated so that only the "real" one remains.
But Copenhagen does not explain what a "measurement" is, nor does it explain what attribute the "real" one has that allows it to survive the brutal measurement process that the other results do not have.
Copenhagen does not explain why some are more real than others, Many Worlds says the obvious answer to this dilemma is that they are all equally real, so there is nothing that needs explaining.
--
nf)
--
Brent
--iyu
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1C2QL1yRn9XpEwyL9ea1dqK8wPwE_CfuxkbLOLsS%2BzaQ%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/66669d83-e864-4023-a8cf-85ec07c0989c%40gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv0ym-k%3DvTroJtV4Low0d3oeBL4BMjRYcksP2bR_Cazuxw%40mail.gmail.com.
>> Copenhagen does not explain why some are more real than others, Many Worlds says the obvious answer to this dilemma is that they are all equally real, so there is nothing that needs explaining.
>Except how many of them are they,
> when exactly is the split,
> and how do they instantiate the probabilities that we measure.
>>> and how do they instantiate the probabilities that we measure.>> There is one observer for every quantum state Schrodinger's cat is in.>That is exactly the problem. That would suggest that the two outcomes (dead or alive) are equally likely. But it can easily be arranged that one outcome is more probable than the other. MWI cannot account for unequal probabilities.
Jason
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUgtYO0DDpC-yd2N-Fxs4G8jvaUdbYMiQZLq%3DeLUAFynFA%40mail.gmail.com.
>> There are a googolplex number of Bruce Kelletts, all of which are in very slightly different quantum states but they all observe that, although Schrodinger's cat is in slightly different quantum states, the cat is alive in all of them. And there are 3 googolplexes of Bruce Kelletts, all of which are in very slightly different quantum states but they all observe that, although Schrodinger's cat is in slightly different quantum states, the cat is dead in all of them. Therefore if Bruce Kellett had no other information than before he opened the box he would bet that there is only one chance in four he would see an alive cat when the box was opened.>Nonsense. Where did the 3:1 ratio come from?
> I know the decay rate of the radioactive source. I can arrange to open the box when there is only a 10% chance that the atom has decayed.
> In that case I clearly have a 90% chance of seeing a live cat when I open the box. Similarly, I can arrange for any probability between zero and one of seeing a live cat. Whereas, if there is always a live cat branch and a dead cat branch, my probability of seeing a live cat is always 50%, contrary to the laws of radioactive decay.
> That seems to entail other problems. 1/3 of infinity is the same size as infinity.
>>> I can arrange for any probability between zero and one of seeing a live cat. Whereas, if there is always a live cat branch and a dead cat branch, my probability of seeing a live cat is always 50%, contrary to the laws of radioactive decay.>> That would be true only if the cat had one and only one property, the alive/dead property. But, except for Black Holes, all macroscopic objects have an astronomical number of properties and most of them are not binary, however in the cat thought experiment you're only interested in one of them and it is binary, the alive/dead property. You're not interested in the precise position or momentum of a particular electron in the cat's left toenail. So there are an astronomical number of cats, and there are an astronomical number of Bruce Kelletts, and all of them are in very slightly different quantum states, but the astronomical number of Bruce Kelletts who observe a living cat when the box is opened is 9 times larger than the astronomical number Bruce Kelletts who observe a dead cat. So before the box was opened all the Bruce Kelletts would expect to see a living cat, but 10% of them would be surprised.> None of that is in the Schrodinger equation. The infinities are all of your own making,
On Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 5:00 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I can arrange for any probability between zero and one of seeing a live cat. Whereas, if there is always a live cat branch and a dead cat branch, my probability of seeing a live cat is always 50%, contrary to the laws of radioactive decay.>> That would be true only if the cat had one and only one property, the alive/dead property. But, except for Black Holes, all macroscopic objects have an astronomical number of properties and most of them are not binary, however in the cat thought experiment you're only interested in one of them and it is binary, the alive/dead property. You're not interested in the precise position or momentum of a particular electron in the cat's left toenail. So there are an astronomical number of cats, and there are an astronomical number of Bruce Kelletts, and all of them are in very slightly different quantum states, but the astronomical number of Bruce Kelletts who observe a living cat when the box is opened is 9 times larger than the astronomical number Bruce Kelletts who observe a dead cat. So before the box was opened all the Bruce Kelletts would expect to see a living cat, but 10% of them would be surprised.
> None of that is in the Schrodinger equation. The infinities are all of your own making,
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
2) You can use bafflegab, as Niels Bohr did, to conceal the fact that the universe is odd, very very odd.
I don't like the first option because I do like William of Ockham. And I don't like the second option because I do like clarity. Maybe tomorrow something better will pop up but as of today the only quantum interpretation that doesn't use either of the above two options is Many Worlds.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
qqb
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1oNwtEBomszARqEMYXUdo2-0zLi9cTeeYC%2B8JGJ4SwHw%40mail.gmail.com.
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
----
2) You can use bafflegab, as Niels Bohr did, to conceal the fact that the universe is odd, very very odd.
I don't like the first option because I do like William of Ockham. And I don't like the second option because I do like clarity. Maybe tomorrow something better will pop up but as of today the only quantum interpretation that doesn't use either of the above two options is Many Worlds.
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
qqb
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv1oNwtEBomszARqEMYXUdo2-0zLi9cTeeYC%2B8JGJ4SwHw%40mail.gmail.com.
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/4f924191-8ea6-4552-b640-5510eecf0e1e%40gmail.com.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:22 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
That is absolutely correct. If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/d4c5cd49-55a7-425c-a35d-a61c2c1b9665%40gmail.com.
>> If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
> Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 4:55 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:On 11/28/2023 1:33 PM, John Clark wrote:
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
That is absolutely correct. If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.Is it found in Copenhagen?
> John is doing a lot of flailing around in an attempt to avoid the question of where the Born Rule comes from, and the fact that it is actually incompatible with the many worlds approach.
>> If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
> Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 4:55 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/28/2023 1:33 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:22 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
That is absolutely correct. If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.
Is it found in Copenhagen?
> John is doing a lot of flailing around in an attempt to avoid the question of where the Born Rule comes from, and the fact that it is actually incompatible with the many worlds approach.How so?
> the Born Rule is a necessary additional hypothesis in order to connect the theory with experiment.
> You have to explain the origin of probabilities
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 5:08 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:> the Born Rule is a necessary additional hypothesis in order to connect the theory with experiment.True, and for that reason theory does not have to derive the Born Rule, but theory does have to be compatible with it.
> Given a long series of N spin measurements, MWI says that there is always one person who sees N spin-ups. Since this observation is certain, it has probability one. Whereas the Born probability of seeing N ups is 1/2^N. A clear contradiction.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 5:14 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:> Given a long series of N spin measurements, MWI says that there is always one person who sees N spin-ups. Since this observation is certain, it has probability one. Whereas the Born probability of seeing N ups is 1/2^N. A clear contradiction.The probability that Bruce Kellett will see N spin-ups is indeed one. However the probability that you will see N spin-ups is not. As I mentioned before, for this sort of discussion the way the English language handles personal pronouns needs to be modified.
> Everettians have to derive the Born rule
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 5:28 PM Bruce Kellett <bhkel...@gmail.com> wrote:> Everettians have to derive the Born ruleNobody needs to derive the Born rule because we know from experiment that it's true, a quantum interpretation just needs to be compatible with it, and MWI certainly is.
>> The probability that Bruce Kellett will see N spin-ups is indeed one. However the probability that you will see N spin-ups is not. As I mentioned before, for this sort of discussion the way the English language handles personal pronouns needs to be modified.> It is not a question of whether you will see the N spin-ups, or whether it is just one copy of Bruce Kellett that will see this.
--
Brent
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/79e091f7-152e-48b8-9317-b186d51f9c2e%40gmail.com.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 5:12 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:On 11/28/2023 1:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Yes, because Copenhagen explicitly included it and didn't pretend the the Schroedinger equation was everything.On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 4:55 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:On 11/28/2023 1:33 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:22 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
That is absolutely correct. If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.
Is it found in Copenhagen?If both Interpretations must assume it, I don't see how that's a special weakness of MWI.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 5:12 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/28/2023 1:57 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
Yes, because Copenhagen explicitly included it and didn't pretend the the Schroedinger equation was everything.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023, 4:55 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 11/28/2023 1:33 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 4:22 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
That is incorrect. Schrodinger's equation, the thing that generates the complex wave function, says nothing, absolutely nothing, about that wave function collapsing, So if you don't like philosophical paradoxes but still want to use Schrodinger's equation because it always gives correct results, you only have 2 options:
1) You can stick on bells and whistles to Schrodinger's equation to get rid of those other worlds that you find so annoying even though there's no experimental evidence that they are needed.
> You can do exactly the same thing the MWI fans do and apply the Born rule to predict the probability of your world.
That is absolutely correct. If you're an engineer and are only interested in finding the correct answer to a given problem then Shut Up And Calculate works just fine. MWI is only needed if you're curious and want to look under the hood to figure out what could possibly make the quantum realm behave so weirdly.
Except that in spite of many attempts the application of the Born rule isn't found under the hood.
Is it found in Copenhagen?
If both Interpretations must assume it, I don't see how that's a special weakness of MWI.
> the Born rule is incompatible with MWI. It is not incompatible with the CI.
> MWI fans assert that it is superior because it doesn't assume the Born rule, only the Schroedinger equation. I wouldn't claim that the (modern) version of Copenhagen is superior to MWI, I'm just unconvinced of the converse.
[Bruce] Not really comparable. The probability of what ball you get is distinct from the fact that the ball exists. MWI is not a theory about what you will see. Any theory about that is necessarily a single world theory since you only see one ball. MWI is a theory about what exists, and its claim is that many worlds all exist with probability one.
Principle of least information? Omniverse -> Multiverse -> Universe?
"Jaynes' followers propose a profound connection between action and information, such that the principle of least action and the laws of thermodynamics both derive from basic symmetries of logic itself. We need only accept that all conceivable universes are equally likely, a principle of least information. Under this assumption, we can imagine a smooth spectrum from metaphysics to physics, from the omniverse to the multiverse to the universe, where the fundamental axis is information, and the only fundamental law is that you can never assume more than you know." -- David Dalrymple
> For comparison you could posit a theory, MWI*, which is MWI plus the provision that only one exists with probability as defined by the Born rule. Would MWI* be a different interpretation than modern-CI?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv00iaJKxfguE7bjmyViNO3nYnCtEaNf9o9fs81yOtAYBg%40mail.gmail.com.
On 11/29/2023 4:00 AM, John Clark wrote:
> MWI fans assert that it is superior because it doesn't assume the Born rule, only the Schroedinger equation. I wouldn't claim that the (modern) version of Copenhagen is superior to MWI, I'm just unconvinced of the converse.A pretty convincing argument can be made that if the Many Worlds idea is true then the Born Rule must have the ability to predict the most probable outcome of any quantum experiment and as an added bonus, unlike its competitors, it can do so without adding any random elements. However I admit nobody has ever been able to prove that Many Worlds is the only possible explanation of why the Born Rule works, and we already know from experiments that it does. Put it this way, if Many Worlds is true then the Born Rule works, and if the Born Rule works (and we know that it does) then Many Worlds MIGHT be true. But that's still a hell of a lot better than any other quantum interpretation anybody has managed to come up with, at least so far. I'm not certain Many Worlds is correct, but I am certain its competitors are wrong, or so bad they're not even wrong.
And as far as assumptions are concerned, every scientist, not just physicists, has no choice but to assume that probability must be a real number between zero and one, and all the probabilities must add up to exactly one for any given situation, because otherwise the very concept of probability would make no sense. And we know that taking the square root of the absolute value is the only way to get a number like that out of a complex function like Schrodinger's wave equation. If Many Worlds is true, and If each version of Brent Meeker makes bets In accordance with the laws of probability so derived, then more Brent Meekers will make money by following the advice given by the Born Rule than if they followed any other betting strategy. Yes some Brent Meekers will still go broke even if they follow the Born Rule, but most will not.
Yes, I knew all that. But does it follow from the Schroedinger equation alone. Reading the Carroll/Sebens paper is suggestive, but it depends on transforming to a basis that makes the number of components match the Born rule. But it seems to me that one could transform to basis where the number of components did not match the Born rule. Their example is chosen so that in the transformed basis each component has amplitude 1 , but that's just scaling. They even start with eqn (33) which is not normalized. So it shows how to convert a weighted superposition into a branch count. But it appears to me that it could produce any number of branches. The example is chosen to neatly produce all branches of amplitude 1, but that cannot be significant since eqn(35) is not normalized. So the number of branches is not actually determined and could be anything.
[Bruce] Not really comparable. The probability of what ball you get is distinct from the fact that the ball exists. MWI is not a theory about what you will see. Any theory about that is necessarily a single world theory since you only see one ball. MWI is a theory about what exists, and its claim is that many worlds all exist with probability one.
Principle of least information? Omniverse -> Multiverse -> Universe?
"Jaynes' followers propose a profound connection between action and information, such that the principle of least action and the laws of thermodynamics both derive from basic symmetries of logic itself.
We need only accept that all conceivable universes are equally likely,
a principle of least information. Under this assumption, we can imagine a smooth spectrum from metaphysics to physics, from the omniverse to the multiverse to the universe, where the fundamental axis is information, and the only fundamental law is that you can never assume more than you know." -- David Dalrymple
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/1771043491.3511581.1701268032292%40mail1.libero.it.
On Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 7:43 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For comparison you could posit a theory, MWI*, which is MWI plus the provision that only one exists with probability as defined by the Born rule. Would MWI* be a different interpretation than modern-CI?In that case MWI* would be the same as CI un that neither could explain why Schrodinger's equation and the Born rule treat one world very differently from all the others that makes it more real. MWI* we have to start talking about measurement and observers and all that crap.
Bruce
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLQL8jz5p5AvoaZAr4%2B06KfsAC8KwA2ZaJpWhDDoYAifpA%40mail.gmail.com.