On Monday, June 11, 2018 at 10:57:59 PM UTC, Brent wrote:
>
>
>
> On 6/11/2018 3:22 PM, agrays...@gmail.com <javascript:> wrote:
>
>
>>> I am not sure this make sense (with the SWE). The cat is always
>>> isolated, in some sense.
>>>
>>
>>
>> * IMO totally wrong. In fact now you're contradicting what you wrote in a
>> recent post. The cat is NEVER ISOLATED, VIRTUALLY BY DEFINITION OF WHAT
>> MACRO MEANS. NEVER ISOLATED IMPLIES NEVER IN A SUPERPOSITION. AG *
>>
>
> * In the real world the cat is never isolated, nor can it be isolated
> insofar as it consists of a huge number of particles already entangled with
> its environment. This is the meaning of "macro" ! If you insist on
> imagining it as isolated for your thought experiment, you will generate a
> paradox, as Schroedinger did. AG*
>
>
> Schroedinger obviously chose a cat to emphasize the absurdity, but it also
> makes the analysis hard to think about. Not only is the cat macroscopic,
> the atomic decay is distributed over a continuum. I think it helps to think
> of a simpler experiment in which the atom is just in a box which is lined
> with photographic plates. So the atom is in a superposition of undecayed
> and decayed and interacted with a silver halide atom. It is clear that it
> is the interaction with the silver halide atom that gets amplified to a
> macroscopic dot of silver which decoheres the system in orthogonal "worlds"
> in which the spot is in different places and happens at different times.
>
> Brent
>
*I don't see how a single silver halide atom is amplified to a macroscopic
dot of silver. Going back to my analysis, I think I have shown the fallacy
of using a macro entities in a superposition (since they can never be
isolated). But this is the starting point of decoherence theory, as
exemplified by the wf Bruce recently presented for a spin 1/2 measurement
(where the apparatus, observer and remaining environment appear in the
superposition). AG*
--
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.
