From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu Thu Feb 20 15:20:47 EST 1992
Article 3733 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!nstn.ns.ca!aunro!ukma!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!netnews.upenn.edu!libra.wistar.upenn.edu
>From: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: QM nonsense
Message-ID: <66142@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 14 Feb 92 15:08:21 GMT
References: <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi> <406@tdatirv.UUCP> <65812@netnews.upenn.edu> <413@tdatirv.UUCP>
Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu
Reply-To: weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
Lines: 31
Nntp-Posting-Host: libra.wistar.upenn.edu
In-reply-to: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)

In article <413@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>|See Wigner and von Neumann's work on measurement.

>How is it nonsense?

QM does not say where wave function collapse occurs.

>Especially if there is an actual experimental result to back it up?

There isn't.  The experiment is one of many over the past decades that
deliberately test quantum weirdness to the maximum.  Every time, things
go as predicted according to QM.

>You may disagree with the interpretation of the experiment, but that
>does *not* make the author's interpretation *nonsense*.

If the author claims his experiment rules out other interpretations, he
is speaking nonsense.  Since the results are as predicted by QM decades
ago--or whenever the idea was first thought up--QM theoreticians could
have "proven" the same result long ago.

The point is, perhaps wave function collapse did occur at the device,
or perhaps it didn't.  In the latter case, the device goes into a QM
superposition of states--Schroedinger's feline effect--and it is only
the human who finally looks at the device that causes wave function
collapse.  There is no way for their experiment to tell the difference.

The mathematics is the same in both cases.  The experimental physics is
too.  The only difference is so far an interpretative one.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu)


