On 10/8/2024 7:23 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:
On Tuesday, October 8, 2024 at 1:35:01 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote:
On 10/8/2024 4:14 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Oct 8, 2024 at 5:55 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]>
wrote:
/> I think I get it./
*I think you don't.*
/> If you admit that Schrodinger was correct that
superposition does NOT mean a system is in all states of its
superposition state before measurement, then the Many-Worlds
interpretation is also falsified./
*But if "*/a system is in a superposition of states/*" does NOT
mean when"*/allstates/*" occur "*/simultaneously/*" then what the
hell does it mean? Even Newton, even Aristotle, even Og the
caveman, had no problem with an object being in 2 different
places _AT 2 DIFFERENT TIMES_, what made Quantum Mechanics so
revolutionary is that it seem to say that one thing could be at
two different places _AT THE SAME TIME_. *
Here's how I present it in my popular lectures. There is a range
of states in a subspace "ALIVE" and another range of states in a
subspace "DEAD". The cat starts out in one of the alive states
and moves thru series of superpositions from ALIVE to DEAD, the
dark red dotted line. These are not different simple conditions
of the cat; they are different /probability amplitudes/
corresponding to the cat's state. The physical state of the cat
is a vector in this Hilbert space, but it is very much more
complicated, and I've collected all that complication into "OTHER
VARIABLES". So the state of the cat evolves along the magenta
dotted line, which projects onto the simpler dark red dotted line.
*But since Schrodinger idealizes a physical reality, where there is no
continuous evolution of the Cat from Alive to Dead, I don't see this
as an explanation or refutation of the lesson Schrodinger tried to
offer about superposition. AG*
I often see it written that "Before measurement, the system is not
in any definite state." But I think this is misleading. The
system is in a definite state, it's just not a state for which we
have an operator that would return that state as an eigenstate.
Brent
*Without an eigenstate for the Cat's state, it's dubious whether
Schrodinger's thought experiment is valid within the context of QM,
and moreover, whether QM can be applied to macro objects which also
have no obvious eigenstates. *
*Some completely isolate object may be quantum mechanical and
macro...but that's essentially impossible to arrange.*
*But the SG experiment does seem to indicate, along with Bell
experiments, that it's possible for a superposition to be valid where
its constituents are all NOT pre-existing states. Do you agree with
this latter conclusion, *
What is it a superposition *OF*, if not pre-existing states? The
formulation I object to is saying that "It's not in any definite state,
not even in a superposition of states". To say a superposition be
"valid" is strange terminology. I don't know what it could mean except
that the object was in a coherent mixture of two different states. i.e.
a superposition.
Brent*
*
*and if not, why? AG *
*
*
*When Schrodinger came up with his cat thought experiment he did
it to prove that Quantum Mechanics must be wrong, or at least
incomplete. But he forgot that when you're making a Reductio Ad
Absurdumproof it's important that the results be logically
paradoxical and not just very strange. What he really proved is
that Quantum Mechanics is weird. *
/> But you're not alone in denying reality./
*Yes, besides me Hugh Everett and Sean Carroll and Max
Tegmarkand a majority, or at least a very significant minority,
of quantum physicists believe that realism is probably untrue.
It looks like you believe in realism, therefore unless you
abandon the scientific method you must conclude that locality or
determinism or both are untrue. *
*> */Pretty sad when you think about it/
*That sounds like somethingDonald Trumpwould say, and in fact he
does, very often. *
John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>**
tst
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