On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 02:10:44PM -0800, agrayson2...@gmail.com wrote: > > > On Saturday, December 23, 2017 at 2:11:32 PM UTC-7, Russell Standish wrote: > > > > On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 09:20:05AM -0800, agrays...@gmail.com > > <javascript:> wrote: > > > > > > My tentative solution to the wave collapse problem is to trash wave > > > mechanics (which is not Lorentz invariant) and use Heisenberg's Matrix > > > Mechanics. No waves, nothing to collapse. Is this a cop-out? AG > > > > In matrix mechanics, the wave function is replaced by a vector, and > > collapse is replaced by a projection onto a basis vector. > > > > Projections are not unitary (except for the identity matrix), and that > > is the problem with any collapse type theory. > > > > Thanks. That's clears enough. Collapse by another name. CMIIAW, but even if > it were a unitary process, it would in effect be a local hidden variable, > forbidden by results of Bell experiments. But let's talk about "unitary" > which I think is equivalent to "linear". Why is non unitary, that is non > linear bad? Because it means irreversible? I do believe that some > measurement processes are in fact irreversible in principle, and not simply > in the statistical sense, that is, FAPP. IIRC, Bruce proved that for spin > measurements on Avoid2, but it was not well received. AG >
Unitary does not mean linear. Projection operators are linear. Unitary means that applying the operator to a group of vectors preserves their lengths and the angles between them. Effectively just a coordinate transformation. Another property conserved is overall probability. By constrast projections (or as my maths lecturer was fond of saying "elephant foot map") squash things. Like the cockroach under my shoe, lengths and angles between components are not preserved. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Senior Research Fellow hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Economics, Kingston University http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
