On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 5:28 AM John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 1, 2024 at 9:19 PM Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> > wrote: > > *> But when we ask what this means physically we are faced with a problem >> the distributive law applied to the tensor product of the initial >> superposition and the environment means that the original environment must >> be duplicated before any interaction takes place. It is very hard to make >> physical sense of this.* >> > > *In Quantum Mechanics "measurement" is a non-commutative operator, the > order in which measurements are performed can profoundly affect the > outcome. And you're right, it is indeed hard to make physical sense out of > that, it's weird but it's a fact, and physicists have been trying to figure > it out for about a century now and there is still no consensus. It's > especially hard for the Copenhagen people because, although it's an > extremely important concept in their theory, they can't tell you exactly > what a "measurement" is, nor can they explain why Quantum Mechanics doesn't > seem to work on people or their measuring equipment and only works for the > things that they're measuring. * > Irrelevant comment! > > *Pilot Wave theory does a little better but at the price of greatly > increase complexity, in addition to Schrödinger's Equation it also needs > another equation called the Pilot Wave Equation that is non-local and very > complex and does nothing but go around erasing all those other annoying > worlds that Schrodinger's Equation says is there. That's why some call the > pilot wave interpretation Many Worlds theory in denial. It's also very odd > that the pilot wave can affect an electron's motion but the electron has > absolutely no effect on the wave. Nothing else in physics is like that. For > everything else in the universe if X effects Y then Y is going to have at > least some effect on X, but not if X is a pilot wave.* > Another irrelevant comment. > *What causes the environment to duplicate? How can this even be > possible? * > > *From the Many Worlds point of view, that's equivalent to asking why is > there something rather than nothing, and no theory can give an entirely > satisfactory answer to that question, at least not yet. Many Worlds is bare > bones no nonsense Quantum Mechanics with no silly bells and whistles > attached, such as the pilot wave equation. All Many Worlds says is that > everything always obeys Schrodinger's Wave Equation, it never collapses, > and the sum total of reality is the Universal Wave Function. The multitude > of worlds that some people find so upsetting is just a consequence of that, > if you want to get rid of them you're going to have to invent a > disappearing worlds theory such as pilot wave or objective collapse theory, > but that would enormously complicate things and personally I think quantum > mechanics is complicated enough as it is.* > The multitude of worlds is not the issue. The naive application of the distributive law is the problem. I question whether this rule is applicable in QM. If it is not, then MWI collapses for that reason alone. 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 [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRkppjhLh_ZeHsLMgpxWX%2BknG50eSMGVOdk--fYFdbVFA%40mail.gmail.com.
