On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 06:45:59PM +0100, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > I'm just arguing that the experiment with the rifle and the geiger > counter does not imply any second law anomaly. Yes, you are "forcing" > your consciousness to "move" to states where the atom never decays, > but if you consider the larger system, entropy is increasing as normal > because of the preparation and maintenance of the apparatus needed for > the experiment. > > Do you think this makes sense? > > Telmo Menezes. >
I think this is an intriguing idea, but I can't say yet whether it is right. Let me paraphrase, as some of the discussion on this thread has been barking up the wrong trees. Whilst the second law holds in a first person statistical sense (as pointed out by a number of people), entropy is in fact conserved in a third person sense (conservation of probability, unitarity of evolution etc.) What Telmo is suggesting is a little different. He is saying that the quantum suicider will still see entropy increasing in er universe, as the atom and rifle is not an isolated system, and the thermodynamic costs of maintaining the experimental aparatus cause entropy to be raised elsewhere in the suicider's universe. This strikes me as similar to Slizard's analysis of the Maxwell daemon, and could probably be handled the same way. Unfortunately I don't have the time now to refresh my memory of how these arguments work - but perhaps Brent can do the analysis? Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
