On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 11:37 AM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 10/18/2013 12:42 AM, Jason Resch wrote: > > But that's not compatible with Bruno's idea of eliminating the >> physical - at least not unless he can solve the basis problem. >> >> > Could you do me a favor and explain what the basis problem is in a way > that a 6th grader could understand? I've found all kinds of things said on > it, and they all seem to be asking different things. > > > For physicists, it's part of the problem of explaining the emergence of > the classical world from the quantum world. Decoherence can diagonalize > (approximately) a reduced density matrix IN SOME BASIS. > Is this the same basis as in "momentum basis" and "position basis", or is it some other usage of the term? Forgive my ignorance, but what does it mean to "diagonalize a reduced density matrix"? > Being diagonal in one basis means it's superposition in some other > basis. So for physicists the problem is saying what privileges or picks > out the particular bases we see in experiments. Why do our instruments > have needles that are in eigen states of position, while some other things > (e.g. atoms) are in eigen states of energy or eigen states of momentum. > For physicists there are some suggestive, but not fully worked out answers > to these questions, e.g. you get position eigenstates because the > interaction term of the Hamiltonian is a function of position. But those > answers assume the physics. If you want to reconstruct physics from > experiences, you can't borrow the physical explanation to say why your > experiences are classical. > > I think the assumption that experiences are classical comes from the classicality of Turing machines (which are the supposed mechanism by which experiences are manifest). Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
