From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Thu Feb 20 15:22:03 EST 1992
Article 3858 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: QM nonsense
Message-ID: <427@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 92 21:13:07 GMT
References: <jbaxter.697533284@adelphi> <406@tdatirv.UUCP> <65812@netnews.upenn.edu> <413@tdatirv.UUCP> <66142@netnews.upenn.edu> <ABOULANG.92Feb15194336@icarus.bbn.com> <66422@netnews.upenn.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 31

In article <66422@netnews.upenn.edu> weemba@libra.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
|And I responded to your posting then, in the same way I'm responding to
|Stanley Friesen: it does not rule the extreme view out, since they still
|make the same experimental predictions.
|
|All the experiment can do is emphasize experimentally just how weird the
|extreme view is.  Schroedinger's cat was the first theoretical description,
|and the debate is still alive.


It is true that this is a *possible* interpretation, but I have this problem
with it:

It posits that the experimental apparatus is in a superposed state that is
*theoretically* *indistinguishable* from the non-superposed state in *all*
*concievable* experiments.

At this point I say - positing a superposition of states serves no theoretical
purpose, and is no longer required by any prediction of the theory, so throw
it out as a needless complication.  "A difference that makes no difference
is no difference" - the superposition states of quantum particles are
*observable*, at least indirectly, through such things as self-interference 
patterns and 'watched-pot' effects.


In short, as long as superpositons have observable consequences, I am forced
to accept them, where they do not, I see no reason to believe they exist.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)



