On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 11:41 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > On 1/5/2025 7:29 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote: > > > > On Sun, Jan 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> >> On 1/4/2025 11:45 PM, Alan Grayson wrote: >> >> >> >> On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 8:06:38 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote: >> >> On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 2:11:02 PM UTC-7 Alan Grayson wrote: >> >> On Saturday, January 4, 2025 at 1:46:26 PM UTC-7 John Clark wrote: >> >> On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 10:00 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> *> Moderation is inappropriate where Trump physics is endorsed. AG * >> >> >> *About a month ago Sean Carroll uploaded a very good video explaining the >> Many Worlds theory, but it's over an hour long so I know there's about as >> much chance of a dilettante such as yourself of actually watching it is >> there is of you reading a post of mine if it's longer than about 100 words. >> * >> >> *The Many Worlds of Quantum Mechanics | Dr. Sean Carroll >> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTmxIUz21bo&t=8s> * >> >> *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis >> <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* >> >> >> *Sure, I'll watch it. But I am still waiting for your reply to my >> question, posed around 10 times, why, based on S's equation, every thing >> that can happen, MUST HAPPEN. And please don't offer your BS that you've >> answered it repeatedly. Such a claim would be blatent lie. Finally, I know >> what you haven't offered the answer. It's really simple. You don't want to >> admit the Emperor has no clothes, as such an admission might trigger a >> coronary when you realize you've been preaching a lie these many years. AG * >> >> >> >> *I watched it. I can't say I fully understand it or believe it. I'll >> probably watch it again. I do know that lately I am less impressed with the >> cat experiment, as I recall a recent comment by Brent; that there's no >> operator which has Alive and Dead as its eigenvalues. This, IMO, means that >> the cat's wf isn't a valid quantum wf. AG * >> >> You're misinterpreting what I wrote. I meant that being alive is a >> superposition of a bazillion of different wave functions so it is >> impossible to formulate a measurement operator which will return just one >> of two values that actually correspond to Alive and Dead. In other words >> the exist a range of states that count as alive, some of which are dying, >> and a range of states that would count at dead, but some of which are >> recovering. It doesn't mean there is no WF of the cat. I means that alive >> and dead are only well defined in the extreme cases because the cat has >> many intermediate states which we can't account for in our measurement >> operator. >> > > In terms of our fuzzy ordinary language this may be true, but in classical > mechanics we have the notion of a "macrostate" which is defined as some > large set of microstates, can we do something similar in QM and just > imagine classifying every possible position eigenstate > > But what's your assurance that position eigenstates are the ones that > provide a binary alive/dead dichotomy? And position of what? > Particles...that doesn't work because the particle positions don't define > an eigenstate of the whole. It's a feature of QM that measurements are > holistic. You have to know what "alive" means in order to measure it. > > Brent > I'm not a vitalist, so I don't think there is any objective quality in nature of "aliveness" such that a human choice of definition could be objectively right or wrong, any more than there is an objective quality of "planetness" such that the recent decision to change the definition to exclude Pluto could be objectively right or wrong. To paraphrase Democritus, in truth there are only atoms and void (or the modern equivalent, say states of quantum fields), all higher level categories are just useful conventions--Sean Carroll's book The Big Picture calls this view "poetic naturalism". Given the understanding that terms like "life" are just a matter of convention, one could come up with a convention that's as precise as one likes, including defining every position eigenstate as either a living thing or not a living thing (and the choice to use position eigenstates rather than momentum would also be a matter of convention). Jesse -- 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 visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAPCWU3%2BvVZRZ2%2BnuiRjhyOvk21rXkAbmAGiBZ8rs%3DSjPqSNoCg%40mail.gmail.com.
