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Article 4977 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: lookup tables again
Message-ID: <1992Apr7.123023.4230@cs.ucf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992Apr4.173208.16061@math.okstate.edu>
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 12:30:23 GMT

In article <1992Apr4.173208.16061@math.okstate.edu> gindrup@math.okstate.edu  
(Eric `'d'kidd' G..) writes:
| In article <1992Apr03.170149.39582@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark  
Rosenfelder) writes:
| >Why do I say that?  Oh, the famous two-slit experiment.  There's no way
| >to tell where on the screen the electron will end up.  All you get is
| >probabilities.  
| 
| Well, if one performs the two-slit experiment in such a way that only one
| electron is emitted at a time, it STILL won't end up in one place.  "The"
| electron is smeared out over the screen and all your left with is a 
| distributed electron.  I.e. The electron is observed all over the card where
| its interference amplitudes are real and positive.  Film which is exposed
| in this manner does not get made up of a single point, but instead is made
| up of the expected interference banding - from one electron interfering
| with itself.
 
I believe this need clarification.  In the two slit experiment you do observe a  
single flash of light on a fluorescent screen, or a single grain of silver  
halide in the emulsion is primed to convert to silver in development.  The  
probabilities of seeing the flash or developing an exposed grain do follow the  
interference bands, so that the interference pattern is built up one flash at a  
time.  

That is what is strange.  Particle-like dectection (single flashes) are  
governed by wave-like mechanics.  If the electron were indeed smeered all over  
the screen then all would be pure wave mechanics and there would be no mystery.   
On the other hand pure particle mechanics won't due either since the  
interference bands disappear when the particle passes through only one slit.  

Put the two mechanical views together using the magic of Heisenberg's infinite  
matrix algebra/Schrodinger's equation/von Neumann's Hilbert space formulation  
and you get quantum mechanics.  The problem which no one has solved yet is to  
provide an intuitively satisfying interpretation of the mathematics.  Once  
conclusion from all the recent bruhaha about Bell's inequality is that  
particles do not exist independent of the observer.


