On Sun, Feb 23, 2025 at 6:55 PM Brent Meeker <meekerbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
*>> the observer himself must also obey Schrodinger's equation, not just
>> the thing he is trying to predict. So there is no alternative but to resort
>> to probability. *
>
>
> *> No, that can't be the fundamental reason. The HUP doesn't derive from
> the quantum nature of measuring devices. *
>
*We're repeating stuff we've already argued about. On January 10 I said the
following and I still stand behind it and see no reason to change it: *
*"If Quantum Mechanics is correct, and I think it's a pretty damn good
assumption that it is, then in the Schrodinger cat experiment you've got a
superposition of 2 quantum states, { [ ( a live cat) + (the environment
with a live cat in it) + (Brent Meeker in that environment looking at a
live cat) ] + [ ( a dead cat) + (the environment with a dead cat in it) +
(Brent Meeker in that environment looking at a dead cat)] }. Thus Brent
Meeker#1 would say it is an observable fact that the cat is alive and Brent
Meeker#2 would say it is an observable fact that the cat is not alive."*
*The best rebuttal to that you were able to come up with was "And only one
of #1 or #2 has ever been observed", but of course you just made that
statement and provided no evidence that that is indeed the case. If
Schrodinger's equation is correct, which is to say if Many Worlds is
correct, then both observations have been made in the Multiverse, but not
by the same observer. *
> *> SG experiment results don't depend on quantum aspects of the apparatus.*
>
*Of course it does! The electron is in a superposition of spin up and spin
down state, and the SG device is in a superposition of having detected spin
up and detected spin down state, and the human observer is in a
superposition of "having seen the SG device being in the spin up state and
in the spin down state. You are making the assumption that the Heisenberg
cut exists, Many Worlds has no need of that assumption. *
> *> **Zurek proposes that there must be another effect, "envariance",
> whereby interaction with the environment must select only certain a bases
> which survive decoherence.*
>
*Zurek’s "envariance" means that if a system is entangled with its
environment then mathematics insists we assign equal probabilities to
outcomes in which the amplitudes in the quantum state’s expansion are
equal, and obviously the squared magnitudes of the amplitudes. And I don't
need to tell you what that leads to.*
*Wojciech Zurek says he does not have a favorite quantum interpretation and
remains neutral, although his work is compatible with many worlds, and he
does say that the superposition principle is universally applicable and
that interpretations like MWI refuse to draw a quantum-classical boundary,
there is no "Heisenberg cut". *
> *>>No, not if the complex wave is 3-D or higher.*
>>
>
>>Yes, that's Gleason's theorem.
>
>
*Exactly. *
*> It's not 4-D. It's 4N-D where N is the number of particles.*
>
*True, but that just makes my case even stronger*
>> *>> What should a rational observer do if he wants to make bets about the
>> future? **Follow the Born Rule.*
>
>
> *> Which as I've noted depends on MORE than "Just the Schroedinger
> equation.*
>
*I would maintain that if you have Schrödinger's equation and Gleason's
theorem then, provided you do NOT make the assumption that hidden variables
exist (and because Bell's Inequality is violated we know for a fact that
if they do exist they can't be local). And if you do NOT make the
assumption that everyday probability is wrong because the probability
measure of mutually exclusive outcomes occurring is NOT additive. But do
you really want to make that assumption? If you do then you'd have to
conclude that the probability of a coin coming up heads or tails is NOT
equal to the probability of it coming up heads plus the probability of it
coming up tails.*
*It's interesting that Hugh Everett's explanation of why probability is
necessary even though Schrodinger's equation is deterministic is NOT the
only thing leading to the conclusion that the single universe idea must be
wrong. Completely independent of Hugh Everett, string theory says that
there are 10^600 different ways 7 additional spatial dimensions can be
shrunk down and interlaced with each other with each of the 10^600 leading
to a different universe. And independent of both Everett and string theory,
Alan Guth's theory of cosmic inflation along with Andrei Linde's "eternal
inflation" which explains why inflation ever stops, leads to the conclusion
that there must be even more universes, perhaps even an infinite number of
them not just an astronomical number. *
* John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
<https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>*
plb
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