On Tue, Jan 7, 2025 at 4:05 PM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > On 1/6/2025 7:47 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote: > > > > On Mon, Jan 6, 2025 at 2:50 AM Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> >> On 1/5/2025 9:46 PM, Jesse Mazer wrote: >> >> >> >> 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). >> >> So you're saying if you make "alive" and "dead" arbitrary then you can >> measure them. >> > > Not completely arbitrary because our choice of definition depends on > practical utility, but increasingly arbitrary when you get to classifying > edge cases. Consider the case of "species" categories in biology--there is > obviously a good case for having some such definition because of the way > organisms only interbreed with sufficiently similar organisms, but on the > other hand evolutionary theory makes it obvious there's no exact natural > boundary between an ancestor species and a descendant species, so if you > want an exact definition in terms of the set of possible genomes that > qualify as a species, where you set the boundary will be pretty arbitrary > with nothing in nature to force the decision. > > Are you just making a rhetorical point here, or do you actually disagree > that all our higher-level categories outside fundamental physics are > somewhat arbitrary in this sense? > > I do not disagree. I agree that *most* higher-level categories outside > fundamental physics are somewhat arbitrary in this sense; they rely on > arbitrary choices of boundary cases. > OK, so hopefully you'd agree that the degree of arbitrariness in defining a "living cat" vs. "no living cat" operator just reflects the inherent fuzziness of our ordinary linguistic categories outside of physics, and isn't a special difficulty about defining such concepts in a quantum as opposed to classical context, nor is it a product of some deficit in our knowledge about a wholly objective property called "life". If so, I just wanted to clarify because I'm not sure if Alan was clear on this or if he imagined you were talking about one of these latter two types of problems. 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]. 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