Sometimes the path not taken is not taken for a reason. Like, it's scary.
for later
Sometimes the path not taken is not taken for a reason. Like, it's scary.
Murphy has a personal grudge against me.
Murphy's First Law is "P!$$ on Hardastarboard".
The math works, the layman's interpretation does not.
BUMP
The future is not yet set. What a hopeful thing!
Perhaps this is how God gave us "free will" and how Einstein was misguided in saying that "God does not play dice with the universe".
Fascinating post, snarks_when_bored!!! Thank you so much for posting it!
As Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos point out, [in The Non-local Universe], classical physics evolved in the framework of “customary points of view and forms of perception,” which are ultimately rooted in visualizable experience.
But neither the “world” of relativity nor the quantum world are “visualizable” in the standard sense of that word. Which is likely why we think phenomena at the quantum level are so “weird.”
[Niels] Bohr often emphasizes that our descriptive apparatus is dominated by the character of our visual experience and that the breakdown in the classical description of reality observed in relativistic and quantum phenomena occurs precisely because we are in these two regions moving out of the range of visualizable experience…. [p. 90f]* E.g., this is not a “clockwork universe!!!…[Quoting Bohr here] “Just as relativity theory has taught us that the convenience of distinguishing sharply between space and time rests solely with the smallness of the velocities ordinarily met with compared with the speed of light, we learn from the quantum theory that the appropriateness of our visual space-time descriptions depends entirely on the small value of the quantum of action compared to the actions involved in ordinary sense perception”….
“Just as we can safely disregard the effects of the finiteness of light speed in most applications of classical dynamics on the macro level because the speed of light is so large that relativistic effects are negligible, so we can disregard the quantum of action on the micro level because its effects are so small. Yet everything we deal with on the macro level obeys the rules of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, and … unrestricted classical determinism does not universally apply even in our dealings with macro-level systems.* Classical physics is a workable approximation that seems precise only because the largeness of the speed of light and the smallness of the quantum of action give rise to negligible effects.”
Bohr always insisted, however, that the classical language of Newtonian mechanics must be used in describing quantum phenomena, in part for epistemological reasons based on the above observations. Plus he thought of quantum mechanics as a “rational generalization of classical mechanics,” and so the results of quantum mechanical experiments “must be expressed in classical terms.”
For Bohr, quantum mechanics is not an extension of classical mechanics. Instead, he viewed classical mechanics as a subset, or “approximation that has a limited domain of validity,” of a more general physical situation which is comprehensively described by QM.
This is totally amazing stuff!!! The categories of thought that arose in and were shaped by visualizable experience truly are no help here. We need a new way "to look at" the world.
Thanks again for this stimulating essay, snarks!
Statistics is a little unusual compared with ordinary kitchen variety calculus. There are a couple of leaps they make because of the form of the math. I suppose the leaps are okay so long as they seem to be working. They do solve that pesky calculus integral with the -e^2 in it, which most calculus books wave their chalk at and appeal to higher powers.
Feynman was an absolute master in his ability to look at things from many different directions, many different points of view.
Point 2) under "conceptual problems" was especially important, IMO. People who read about quantum entanglement often misconstrue this point (even some otherwise very good physicists I've known).
What we need is a magazine called "Popular Quantum Mechanics."
The assault on the Copenhagen Interpretation continues.
Ping for later
(N.B.: When I say "problems", I don't mean mathematical inconsistencies in the theory or disagreements between the theory and experimental fact--we know of none--but rather refutations of our naive philosophical expectations.)
For example, with Schrödinger's Cat, he shrugs and says, "QM can't predict the future, no problem". But the problem isn't a question of the future; it's a question of the past.
Suppose the decision whether to release the prussic acid occurs at 4:00, and the chamber is opened at 5:00. The cat is in a superposed dead/alive state at 4:30. It will collapse at 5:00 into one state or the other, sure, but that doesn't mean the cat will live or die at 5:00. The death of the cat, if death is the outcome, will have occurred at 4:00. At 4:30, that event is already in the past. At 5:00, when the mixed state collapses into the death eigenstate, the cat will be an hour dead. It's not the future which is indeterminate, but the past.
Furthermore, the author misleads when he says "we never see this". We may not see it with cats in our sadistic basement experiments, but we see it in the lab, with subatomic particles. Indeed, we exploit it as an experimental tool.
I thought you might get a kick out of this - I think I'm going to enjoy pondering it quite a bit.
Dean Koontz wrote a good book called "From The Corner Of His Eye" that involved quantum mechanics. Dean gets into some detail about it as he really does his background research when writing books. I would highly recommend this book for entertainment value as well as a for a little quantum mechanics knowledge.
Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams Stuff Is Made Of
ping
ping for later reading
