On Monday, July 30, 2018 at 4:58:07 PM UTC, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 5:16 PM, <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > *>Why obsess about the alleged FTL collapse of the wf?* > > FTL is not the problem, every experimental result and every quantum > interpretation I've ever heard of says information can not travel faster > than light because that is the top speed of causation. >
*Your response is a good example why these discussions are a waste of time. When I wrote the above, I immediately noted that the wf has infinite extent (as does the probability density). This would imply INSTANTANEOUS propagation when the wf is created -- much worse than FTL! Why then are the True Believers obsessed with the collapse problem but ignore the problem I have noted with wf itself? They might as well reject QM at the get-go, but pick-and-choose in an inconsistent way. AG * > >> > >> *Forget collapse.* > > Many, perhaps most, physicists do exactly that because they believe in the > "Shut Up And Calculate" quantum interpretation and are only interested in > predicting how far to the right a indicator needle on a meter moves in a > particular experiment. But for some of us that feels unsatisfying and would > like to have a deeper understanding about what's going on at the quantum > level and wonder why there is nothing in the mathematics that says anything > about a wave collapsing. Most of all they want to know what exactly is > a "measurement" and why it so mysterious. > >> *> **Interpret the superposition as offering information only, just like >> knowing the probability of winning some slot machine. The only difference >> is the use of complex amplitudes.* > > > If the universe acted like a slot machine physicists would not be so > worried and Everett would have never felt the need to dream up anything as > strange as the Many Worlds idea, but it doesn't. If I'm playing 2 slot > machines at the same time then the probability of me winning increases, but > if they were quantum slot machines the probability of winning don't add up > in the same way they do in our normal macro world, in certain circumstances > the probability of winning could decrease or even drop to zero if I played > 2 machines at once. Quantum probabilities don't add together in the same > way that slot machine probabilities do, and the reason for that is that > probability must always be a real number between zero and one, but > Schrodinger's wave function deals with complex numbers. So a way must be > found to go from the complex function which we can calculate but not > observe to probabilities which we can observe but not calculate without the > help of complex numbers, and that is the Born Rule. The square of the > magnitude of a particle's complex wavefunction at a point is always a > positive real number, and the Born rule says that is the probability of > finding that particle at that point. > > The square of the absolute value of the wavefunction can give us a Real > number that is a probability, but because Schrodinger's function contains > complex numbers 2 very different wave functions can produce the exact same > probability of finding a particle at a point. So if you measure a particle > at a point you know where it is but you still don't know what its unique > wave function was at that point, so you don't know what the wave would have > evolved into at some other point if you had not observed it and collapsed > the wave. > > John K Clark > > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
