From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!keele!nott-cs!ucl-cs!news Thu Feb 20 15:21:13 EST 1992
Article 3778 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!uknet!keele!nott-cs!ucl-cs!news
>From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: QM nonsense
Message-ID: <2335@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 16 Feb 92 14:25:32 GMT
Sender: news@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Lines: 32

>> From:    stgprao@xing.unocal.com (Richard Ottolini)
>> 
>> QM is a precisely defined mathematical description based on that the universe
>> appears digital at small scales.  Physicists who use digital computers for
>> understanding other types of physics run into this mathematics all the time.
>> Attributing mystical significance to this mathematics about the nature of
>> the universe or minds is an interesting exercise, but kind of overdoing it.
>> Reminds me whenever a new mathematical concept is invented, some people
>> over interpret it.  For example, when the concept of negative numbers was
>> started to be accepted by mathematicians (a controversy in its day) others
>> attributed magical properties to negative numbers.

QM is many things to many people. You say that the QMW description
"...appears digital at small scales." Curious. This is just not true.
And spacetime is not digital.

In Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" on page (UK hardback)

	``The discrete states of an atom, for example, are those with
	a definite energy, momentum, and total angular momentum. A
	general state which `spreads' is a superposition of such
	discrete states.''


And what of second quantization? QM is not complete, one must proceed
to a quantum field theory, by quantizing the wave function.

____

Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3703
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk        UUCP: ...!{uunet,uknet}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT


