191–200 of 249 posts
Just remember that in quantum physics, any interaction between two particles is a measurement.
Schrödinger's cat thought experiment was meant to highlight the absurdity of stochastic thinking by taking it to the extreme, not as a description of reality.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would quite possibly be the worst optimization ever. "Yeah, I could have tracked and updated n values pretty cheaply, but instead I decided to exponentiate an exponentially huge matrix and use that to update a vector containing 2^n complex numbers associated with the possible assignments of the original n bits. Also, you should use bogosort. It's the best."
Maybe the 2^n version is necessary to support consciousness?
/jk
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always find it fascinating at just how much of our fundamental physics ends up being constraints on information movement. The laws of thermodynamics are about entropy, general relativity puts constraints on the movement of information (for example, Spooky Action as a Distance(tm) is faster than light, but you can't transmit information with it), the Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much information you can…
I'm fascinated by such things also. I often can't help thinking of God as a programmer, though I don't know how much of that is confirmation bias of my priors as a theist and a programmer. But I've always thought the periodic table and DNA both felt a lot like code...
I'm not familiar with this particular experiment, but all my pondering on the subject - as a layman - leads me to a simple conclusion. The properties these experiments are measuring are simply bogus. They are not well defined. The answer that comes out is not some intrinsic property of the "particle", but the result of the environment in which the particle interacted with the "measurement" system, so to speak. The pa…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory
I'm saying the answer doesn't exist because the question is not really valid in some sense.
Which kind of coincides with the idea that "the observable doesn't exist until measured", but I'm taking a little further and saying, it doesn't exist even when "measured" because you're not really measuring the thing you think you're measuring.
I'm not familiar with this particular experiment, but all my pondering on the subject - as a layman - leads me to a simple conclusion. The properties these experiments are measuring are simply bogus. They are not well defined. The answer that comes out is not some intrinsic property of the "particle", but the result of the environment in which the particle interacted with the "measurement" system, so to speak. The pa…
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.h...
Essentially, yes, it's bogus science. Quantum physics are much more complex than these articles ever bring on. But by explaining it simply, it sounds awe inspiring and so it propagates across social media. Over and over again.
It isn't that particles exist in multiple states until they are measured. It is that the mechanism by which you measure very small things affects the outcome.
The linked article is titled "Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness". Please don't exaggerate the title. These experiments do not show that "reality doesn't exist until it's measured". First, "realism" [1] is not the same thing as "reality". "Realism" basically means "physical quantities have a definite value". "Reality" is that thing that determines your experimental outcomes. Don't mix them up. Second, inter…
A standard case of mixing (or actually confusing) epistemology with ontology. That is to say that something doesn't exist until we get to know something about it. Or, by all means, knowing something about something is posterior to us being here AND that something being there. Here lies the danger of dismissing philosophy as a bag of words when compared with the Holy Science that works, bitches .
And perhaps someday we'll get to meet the great programmer in the sky the developed the simulation we are living in and we will ask him why he designed it that way and he will say something like "oh I just wanted to optimize the code so I simply excluded reality subroutines when there were no beings looking. I just never thought you guys would notice. As soon as I saw that you guys noticed the flaw, I was going to lo…
I always find it fascinating at just how much of our fundamental physics ends up being constraints on information movement. The laws of thermodynamics are about entropy, general relativity puts constraints on the movement of information (for example, Spooky Action as a Distance(tm) is faster than light, but you can't transmit information with it), the Uncertainty Principle puts limits on how much information you can…
http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html says: at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows…