• Re: A Comment on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

    From trolidous@21:1/5 to Quadibloc on Tue Jan 2 10:53:32 2024
    On 1/2/24 01:15, Quadibloc wrote:
    This group appears to be the place to put it, but i see the group looks
    like it is now dead.

    There are various definitions of 'death', however
    the belief that 'all thought is invalid, because
    all thought is 'insane'' as the only mode of
    reasoning around here has choked a lot out of it.

    Many of you have seen books or magazine articles where it is claimed
    that quantum mechanics means that science now acknowledges that
    Mind and Consciousness play an important role in the real Universe.

    There is philosophic materialism and philosophic idealism,
    but it seems to me that considering the idea that it is
    possible for the 'universe' to be 'real' in some manner,
    might be a starting point for useful discussion about
    physics.

    I say that this is bunk.

    Schrodinger's Cat was an illustration of where the Copenhagen
    Interpretation leads: since the equations of quantum mechanics are
    _linear_, the collapse of the wave function never takes place.

    So a cat in an insulated box could be in a superposed state of being
    alive or dead at the same time.

    The word 'time' is being used here, but that is also
    not trivial. The wave function has to actually collapse
    to determine what happens to the cat later in time.

    Since nobody sees half-alive stray cats walking down the street,
    when reality encounters human consciousness, it must have
    already turned classical. This is the last possible moment for that
    to happen.

    Because we didn't have any clue as to _when_ or _how_ the wavefunction collapses - Roger Penrose had one theory, that it's when things are big enough that _gravity_ gets involved - instead of biasing people by adding
    a fake nonlinear term to Schrodinger's Equatiion, the Copenhagen Interpretation was a _placeholder theory_ to add to quantum mechanics
    so that it wouldn't be provably false by predicting the existence of half-alive stray cats walking the streets.

    That's what the Copenhagen Interpretation was, a placeholder, a stop-gap.

    I tend to think that pragmatics is viable when it comes
    to quantum mechanics.

    An electron or proton does not have an infinite number
    of fine degrees of possible masses or charges.

    Then when it comes to light, it also transfers energy
    or momentum in steps based upon a 'frequency' or
    'wavelength', but it takes 'time' or 'length' to
    establish what that 'frequency' or 'wave length' is.

    Not a discovery that Mind and Consciousness must necessarily have
    control over physical reality, thus validating centuries of woo-woo.

    John Savard

    I have a basic question.

    Who went from Plank's constant and the increments of energy
    and momentum transfer in light, to derive from it the mass
    and charge of the electron?

    My guess is that this was done a while back, but the
    grad student who did it wanted an actual professorship
    at a university and did not want to be labeled as a
    loonie that no one wanted to hire, and so the papers
    that showed how that was done was sold as very low
    key and uncrontroversial so the person could actually
    get hired at a college or university.

    Who did that and when?

    It is clear that some things are 'quantized' in
    the universe. The electron and proton do not
    have an infinite number of fine degrees of possible
    masses or charges.

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