| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Too Many Kooks Spoil the Brothel" |
| Date: |
12 Aug 2005 06:17:33 AM |
| Object: |
Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
I was thinking (stranger things have happened) -- modern science gives
primacy to empiricism, i.e. observation and experiment. On this basis,
Schroedinger's cat "thought experiment" has no right to claim a place
in science.
Its outside "observer" is not an observer, since by stipulation he
doesn't -- mustn't -- observe anything in the box. The thought
"experiment" is not an experiment, since there is nothing empirical
about it. This "thought experiment" should be better called a
*philisophical specification*, i.e. an imagined particular illustration
of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Of course all the observer observes when the box is opened is what an
observer inside would have seen beforehand -- that the cat is either
definitely alive or definitely dead.
--------------
"Take the money!" "Open the box!"
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| User: "Uncle Al" |
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| Title: Re: Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
12 Aug 2005 11:37:41 AM |
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Too Many Kooks Spoil the Brothel wrote:
I was thinking (stranger things have happened) -- modern science gives
primacy to empiricism, i.e. observation and experiment. On this basis,
Schroedinger's cat "thought experiment" has no right to claim a place
in science.
Wrong - radioactive decay.
Wrong - pumping virtual intermediate states to prevent excited state
decay.
Wrong - quantum eraser and quantum double eraser experiments.
Wrong - Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox and the Bell Inequality.
Its outside "observer" is not an observer, since by stipulation he
doesn't -- mustn't -- observe anything in the box. The thought
"experiment" is not an experiment, since there is nothing empirical
about it. This "thought experiment" should be better called a
*philisophical specification*, i.e. an imagined particular illustration
of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Of course all the observer observes when the box is opened is what an
observer inside would have seen beforehand -- that the cat is either
definitely alive or definitely dead.
Your ignorance gives you great solace, at least until it is breached
by real world empiricism. Go sit on a thumbtack.
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz.pdf
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| User: "Androcles Androcles@ MyPlace.org" |
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| Title: Re: Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
12 Aug 2005 10:24:07 PM |
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"Uncle Al" <UncleAl0@hate.spam.net> wrote in message
news:42FCD055.D166A6FD@hate.spam.net...
[snip crap]
Idiot.
Androcles
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
13 Aug 2005 10:13:54 AM |
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"Wittgenstein, one must not wave hot pokers under the nose of a fellow
philosopher, AND one must not confuse the micro and macroscopic world;
Schroedinger's Rat is merely a false analogy. Large assemblages of
particles are quite a different ball of rat than single particles. Now
---AHHHHHHH THE ***** SEARED OUT MY EYE WITH THAT F**KING
POKER!!!!!!"
A DONSKY-OATSKY, TOODLE-LEWD-WENCH-SKY PRODUCTION
"None climbs so high as he who knows not whither he is going." -Oliver
Cromwell
************* ************ ********** *************
ACHILLES: Oh, I should be delighted. That is, I should be delighted as
long as you're not going to try to snare me in one of your wicked traps
of logic, Mr. T.
TORTOISE: Wicked traps? Oh, you do me wrong. Would I do anything
wicked? I'm a peaceful soul, bothering nobody and leading a gentle,
herbivorous life. And my thoughts merely drift among the oddities and
quirks of how things are (as I see them) I, humble observer of
phenomena, plod along and puff my silly words into the air rather
unspectacularly, I am afraid. But to reassure you about my intentions,
I was only planning to speak of brains and minds this fine day and, as
you know, of course, those things have nothing--nothing whatsoever--to
do with logic!
- Hofstadter
************* ******************
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/cosmology/1.html
The edge of the accessible universe is the causal horizon, a spherical
boundary centered on Earth with a radius of about 15 billion
light-years (the speed of light the age of the universe). Information
from beyond the causal horizon cannot reach us because there has not
been enough time since the Big Bang for any signal to travel so far,
even at the speed of light. But as the universe gets older, the horizon
moves out, bringing more of the unseen universe into view. What is the
nature of the "stuff" beyond the horizon? Lacking information and an
adequate physical theory of the Big Bang itself, cosmologists can only
speculate. Observers on a galaxy a billion light-years away from the
Earth could draw a similar causal horizon around themselves, but their
horizon would include parts of the universe that astronomers on Earth
would not be able to see. Given the assumption that observers see a
similar universe regardless of where they are, the part that we call
unseen must be similar to the part just inside our horizon. From this
argument cosmologists conclude that the part of the universe we can see
is embedded in a much larger universe of the same stuff, possibly
extending to infinity, or possibly not.
***************************************
Complexity Theory states that critically interacting components
self-organize to form potentially evolving structures exhibiting a
hierarchy of emergent system properties.
***********************
Thomas Munnecke's, Riverside, Ca., letter to Scientific American,
August, 1981 (verbatim).
Sirs,
I am happy to see that there has been no response to Dr.
Hofstadter's column on self-reference ["Letters," SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,
May]. Those who look at self-reference perch themselves precariously
on Ockham's Razor, tottering between hopeless confusion and fantastic
insight. One might as well open a dictionary and find, "recursion: see
recursion." He who is able to see recursion gains fresh insight into
it.
I am reminded of a conversation between an ancient philosopher,
Hee Hoo (whose epitaph reads , "Who is buried in Hoo's tomb?), and W.
V. Hee:
Hoo: What is a question that is also its own answer?
Hee: Why not, "Why not?"?
Hoo: "Why not?"? Why not!
******************************
"A Man should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and
die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert A. Heinlein
****************************
Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the
vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples' lives, a system
which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such
people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the
system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from! - Douglas
Hofstadter ("Goedel, Escher, Bach", p. 37)
************************
"In the human brain, there is gullibility. How gullible are you? Is
your
gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could
a
neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your
gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are
pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation."
- Douglas Hofstadter
****************
"I never did believe in miracles,
but I've a feeling it's time to try.
I never did believe in the ways of magic,
but I'm beginning to wonder why."
*************************
"There's much more to this magical world than what it seems."
- Some song
****************
We accept mathematical and psychological constructivism, but we go
further. We call our evolutionary philosophy physically constructive in
the sense that systems can only be understood in terms of the
(physical) processes which manifest them and by which they have been
assembled. This is certainly true for physical and biological systems,
but also holds for formal, symbolic, and semantic systems. In
particular, we hold that semantics, language, and mathematics must
always be understood in the context of the physical basis of their
operation---on the physical systems (e.g. sense organs, brains,
machines, computers) which transmit, receive, and especially interpret
physical tokens
- Principia Cybernetica
******************************
"My main aim in this Chapter is to communicate some of the images which
help me to visualize how consciousness arises out of the jungle of
neurons; to communicate a set of intangible intuitions, in the hope
that these intuitions are valuable and may perhaps help others a little
to come to clearer formulations of their own images of what makes minds
run. I could not hope for more than that my own mind's blurry images
of minds and images should catalyze the formation of sharper images of
minds and images in other minds."
Douglas R. Hofstadter
"Godel, Escher, Bach", p. 686-687
**************
There before him, a glittering toy no Star-Child could resist,
floated the planet Earth with all its peoples.
He had returned in time.
Down there on that crowded globe,
the alarms would be flashing across the radar screens,
the great tracking telescopes would be searching the skies -
and history [as it had hitherto been known] would be drawing to a
close.
A thousand miles below,
he became aware that a slumbering cargo of death had awoken,
and was stirring sluggishly in its orbit.
The feeble energies it contained were no possible menace to him;
but he preferred a cleaner sky.
He put forth his will, and the circling megatons flowered in a silent
detonation that brought a brief false dawn to half the sleeping globe.
Then he waited, marshalling his thoughts and
brooding over his still untested powers.
For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do
next.
But he would think of something.
Ah, yes! Invest in stocks!
*******************
I'll be performing my daily solid matter eliminations amongst plants of
type Gossypium which have grown to an above average height.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
12 Aug 2005 09:29:40 PM |
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Sorry Little Al is an example of one of those
kooks
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Schroedinger's Darn Cat |
12 Aug 2005 09:16:49 PM |
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Too Many Kooks Spoil the Brothel wrote:
I was thinking (stranger things have happened) -- modern science gives
primacy to empiricism, i.e. observation and experiment. On this basis,
Schroedinger's cat "thought experiment" has no right to claim a place
in science.
Its outside "observer" is not an observer, since by stipulation he
doesn't -- mustn't -- observe anything in the box. The thought
"experiment" is not an experiment, since there is nothing empirical
about it. This "thought experiment" should be better called a
*philisophical specification*, i.e. an imagined particular illustration
of the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Of course all the observer observes when the box is opened is what an
observer inside would have seen beforehand -- that the cat is either
definitely alive or definitely dead.
So you spotted the OBVIOUS flaw: now apply the same principal to the
"observer" who "sees" AE's train shrink due to velocity.
The light rays involved, which are claimed to define the arguement for
the shrinkage, do NOT at any time, strike the eye of the track-side
"observer". That is, he IS NOT an observer at all, and has no idea when
to activate his stopwatch or look at his ruler. The whole scenario is
based on FAITH.
(faith: the ability to believe *****)
Jim G
c'=c+v
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