On 12/29/2013 3:31 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 5:29 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:On 12/29/2013 2:01 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sun, Dec 29, 2013 at 1:47 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: On 12/28/2013 6:41 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 8:32 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: On 12/28/2013 4:45 PM, Jason Resch wrote:On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 7:12 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: On 12/27/2013 10:31 PM, Jason Resch wrote:To that I would add the purely epistemic "non-intepretation" of Peres and Fuchs. "No interpretation needed" -- I can interpret this in two ways, one way is to just take the math and equations literally (this leads to Everett), the other is "shut up and calculate", which leads no where really.2. Determined by which observer? The cat is always either dead or alive. It's just a matter of someone making a measurement to find out. So are you saying that before the measurement the cat is neither alive nor dead, both alive and dead, or definitely alive or definitely dead? If you, (and I think you are), saying that the cat is always definitely alive or definitely dead, then about about the radioactive atom? Is it ever in a state of being decayed and not decayed? If you say no, it sounds like you are denying the reality of the superposition, which some interpretations do, but then this leads to difficulties explaining how quantum computers work (which require the superposition to exist).Superposition is just a question of basis. An eigenstate in one basis is a superposition in another. Can you provide a concrete example where some system can simultaneously be considered to be both in a superposition and not? Is this like the superposition having collapsed for Wigner's friend while remaining for Wigner before he enters the room??? Every pure state can be written as a superposition of a complete set of basis states - that's just Hilbert space math. So then when is the system not in a superposition?When it's an incoherent mixture of pure states. What makes it incoherent though?If the density matrix is not a projection operator, i.e. rho^2 =/= rho, it's incoherent. But really I just meant that in theory there is a basis in which any given pure state is just (1,0,0,...). In theory there is a 'dead&alive' basis in which Schrodinger's cat can be represented just like a spin-up state is a superposition is a spin-left basis. So if someone keeps alternating between measuring the spin on the y axis, and then the spin on the x axis, are they not multiplying themselves continuously into diverging states (under MWI)? Even though these states only weakly interfere, are they not still superposed (that is, the particles involved in a simultaneous combination of possessing many different states for their properties)?Right, according to Everett, the world state becomes a superposition of states of the form |x0,x1,...> where each xi is either +x, -x, +y, or -y. And per the Bucky Ball, Young's slit experiment, the spins don't have to observed by anyone. If the silver atom just goes thru the Stern-Gerlach apparatus and hits the laboratory wall, the superposition is still created. If it just goes out the window and into space...it's not so clear.An electron in a superposition, when measured, is still in a superposition according to MWI. It is just that the person doing the measurement is now also caught up in that superposition. The only thing that can destroy this superposition is to move everything back into the same state it was originally for all the possible diverged states, which should practically never happen for a superposition that has leaked into the environment.In Everett's interpretation a pure state can never evolve into a mixturebecause the evolution is via a Hermitian operator, the Hamiltonian. Decoherence makes the submatrix corresponding to the system+instrument toapproximate a mixture. That's why it can be interpreted as giving classical probabilities. Are there pure states in Everett's interpretation? Doesn't one have to consider the wave function of the universe and consider it all the way into the past?I suppose the universe could have started in a mixed state, but most cosmologists would invoke Ockham and assume it started in a pure state - which, assuming only unitary evolution, means it's still in a pure state. Of course since inflation there can be entanglements across event horizons, so FAPP that creates mixed states.In any case, returning to the original point that began this tangent, do agree that QM interpretations which are anti-realist (or deny the reality of the superposition) are unable to describe where the intermediate computations that produce the answer to a quantum computation, take place?They take place in a quantum computer.And the quantum computer is a coherent, long-lived superposition with a number of real states exponential with the number of its qubits.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a number of real states"? It has only one state (which is in a complex Hilbert space), which can be written as a superposition of some set of basis states - but that's true of my refrigerator too.
If superpositions are real and long-lived, and involve an arbitrary number of particles, it seems there is no reason that people could not also be in superpositions.What would Fuchs say about quantum computation?It's a physical process whose outcome is predicted by QM.We limit the power and effectiveness our own theories and stifle progress, when we don't put forward theories that make bold statements about reality.
And we divert progress when we adopt intuitively appealing theories with no operational content and try to reify them.
Bohr's (and seemingly Fuch's) positions are so conservative as to never be falsified,
Nevertheless they both published more papers than Everett (whose interpretation doesn't seem testable either - if it were, it would be a theory instead of an intepretation).
but they also inhibit progress and new understandings. For example, general purpose quantum computers may not have been invented had Deutsch not been operating under Everett's paradigm.
Feynman wrote about quantum computation well before Deutsch.
"You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Laue>, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established." --- Einstein in a letter to Schrodinger
Everybody believes in reality. Nobody agrees on what it is. :-) 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-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
