On Thursday, April 3, 2014 3:07:26 AM UTC+1, Liz R wrote: > > On 3 April 2014 14:39, <ghi...@gmail.com <javascript:>> wrote: > >> >> On Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:24:28 AM UTC+1, Liz R wrote: >>> >>> gbhibbsa, I'm getting a bit confused here. All I said is that >>> wavefunction collapse isn't an observed fact, which seems to me a fairly >>> reasonable statement, because we can't observe entities like wavefunctions >>> directly, and we certainly can't observe their collapse directly. Some >>> people would say we can't observe *anything* directly, but under the >>> normally understood meaning of "observe" it seems reasonable to say that we >>> observe the images on our retinas, and hence that we can observe the dots >>> on a screen, and we can also be reasonably said to be able to observe the >>> pattern they make. I'm not saying anything about the MWI or Copenhagen or >>> whatever here, merely that (in normal usage of "observe") we can observe >>> dots on a screen, and we can't observe abstract theoretical entities like >>> wavefunctions, or their collapse. >>> >> >> I apologize for the extensive subset of my much more extensive range of >> shortcomings causing up to all of that confusion. >> >> May I try again...this time boiling it all down to a single >> request? Based on what was at the time the widely accepted proxy for >> the more problematic meaning of 'observation', what was observed that gave >> rise in the first place to the widely perceived, arguably urgent, need for >> an Interpretation of what it meant? >> > > The observation described above, and shown in the pictures. The need for > interpretation comes from the fact that the objects (electrons or photons, > for example) involved are assumed to be far too small to be influenced by > both slits in the experiment (the fact that they form localised dots on the > screen also indicates that they are very small). Yet all these small > objects manage to build up a global interference pattern involving the > presence of both slits (a pattern that vanishes if one slit is covered). > > This doesn't at first seem paradoxical, because a similar phenomenon > occurs when a wave in water passes through two gaps of the right size, for > example. In this case there is a medium present at each point through which > the waves are travelling, so the influence has something to transmit it, > and the resulting effect is easily explanied. > > So one's first guess is likely to be that the photons or electron in the > 2-slit experiment are just be interfering with each other in a similar > manner ... which wouldn't be paradoxical , of course ... except for the > additional fact that the intensity of the source can be turned down until > only one particle is passing through the apparatus at any given time - yet > even in this case, the interference pattern still appears (eventually). > > This situation appears in need of "urgent" explanation because the > apparent smallness of the particles in relation to the size of the > equipment suggests that a single electron or photon can't possibly "know" > about (be influenced by) a slit which it doesn't pass through, and which > is, relatively speaking, a large distance away. Assuming a photon passes > through the left hand slit, say, there is no known physical mechanism > available to tell it about the existence of the right hand slit. Yet it > will hit the screen in a position that is (statistically) determined by > what looks like interference between waves passing through both slits. > Hence the paradox. > I'd agree that's a component but why is that on its own a more urgent problem than the action at a distance problems with Newton's force when gravity? Or all those contradictions that accumulated in the late 19th century, that people felt were pretty incomprehensible and shocking, yet no one at any time started talking about the need for an 'interpretation' that made it all feel explained at any price? How come everyone was willing to leave all those problems wide open for up to hundreds of years, until not just an interpretation and explanation but scientific next generation theory, complete with all the traits science the way they knew and loved were explicit and visible. They had worse problems than this electron? On there own terms, as the knowledge they had, that was important to them, that was being upended by the contradictions that they faced. Was it worse for them, or where they just willing to live with it, because they knew they just had not accumulated enough knowledge yet to begin to answer the questions? The Interpretation Movement, was pretty unprecedented in that sense. That an explanation,....a way to make sense of....was raised over everything else, including whether and what extent that explanation inherited any of the traits most fundamental, most unique, to science and science only. MWI hasn't got one. Not one. Or name one, and explain why it's fundamental to science, and unique to science and only science. There are some parts you didn't mention unless I missed it.....like the way that pattern goes away when we try to look at see which slit the electron goes through. And the way the same pattern shows up even if electrons are fired one at a time. Even if the interval is a year or a million years. But the part that matters is, why was any of this urgent to answer so urgently that nothing mattered except some way, any way, that it might be explicable? Why? It never was before in science. Gaping holes, that threatened to upend the whole fabric of science have been knocking around from the start, and known and recognized for what they are. Yet left clean, presumably - given left clean they did eventually come to be beautifully solved in ways that exploded our situation across the board. How come that happened only when the problem was left clean? What happens, historically when an 'explanation' sticks where a gap used to be? When that explanation has none of the traits most core in science, like major predictions, a mathematics...a way to translate theory+math to forms allowing specific calculations and problem solving tools? I think what happens, has always been that once something like that sticks into a scientific gap, science becomes strangley autistic or blind to that gap. And it never changes, and nothing ever happens again on that space.
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