On Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at 6:10:52 AM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Sep 24, 2024 at 2:52 PM Alan Grayson <agrays...@gmail.com> wrote: *>> Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation couldn't explain exactly, or even approximately, what a "measurement" is, * *> Seriously; this is nonsense. Hardly anything can be explained "exactly".* *True but if you can't explain measurement even approximately, and Copenhagen can't, then for them the word is just a meaningless sequence of ASCII characters. By contrast Many Worlds gives an objective clearly defined meaning to the concept, X is measured (a.k.a. observed) by Y if and only if X and Y have become quantum entangled. * > this critique is way overblown IMO. When we measure an observable, name any observable, don't we know what we're measuring? *According to Copenhagen a measurement can collapse the wave function, that's a pretty impressive power but can a dog perform a measurement? Can a cockroach, can an amoeba, can a rock? When you observe an electron you collapse the wave function of the electron, but if I observe you do I collapse your wave function? Copenhagen has no answer to any of these questions. * *You go off on ridiculous tangents. I was just informing you that the measurement problem is the collapse of the wf. It isn't that we don't know what a measurement is. It's just an action to discover the value of some observable. Next time you see a cockroach make a measurement, be sure to inform the List. AG * *> Maybe the electrons, all of them, and possibly everything else, wase entangled long ago, in the early universe when everything was in close proximity? AG* *All the electrons in the observable universe probably were entangled long ago, Many Worlds certainly thinks so, that's why it claims that the entire universe could be described by one gigantic universal wave function that, depending on circumstances, can often be simplified to such an enormous degree you can actually use it to make calculations. Billions of years ago all the electrons in the observable universe became entangled because they were jammed up close together and because Quantum Entanglement is a thing, but Quantum Disentanglement is also a thing. Today it's possible to isolate a small group of electrons (or atoms or even large molecules) for a very short time from you and from your experimental equipment and the rest of the universe; that's what happens when you perform the two slit experiment and see an interference pattern. But that can only happen if you are NOT entangled with the electrons, and that can only happen if you do NOT have which-way information. * *>> Everybody believes the observable universe is finite. * *> Now suddenly you appeal to "belief".* *Don't be silly. I can observe the observable universe by definition, and if I can observe something then it must be finite. * *Sure, what you can observe, can't be infinite. But there's no guarantee that observations necessarily implyt what's being observed isn't part of something infinite. AG* *I challenge you to find somebody who claims the observable universe is not observable, or claims that they can observe infinity. * *You seem to be getting desperate. Obviously, one can't observe infinity. Neither can one know whether what is being observed is part of something infinite. AG * > *I appeal to the fact that the visible universe is expanding and I can turn the clock back, to ANY time in the past, and put a finite sphere around it!* *Do you believe the observable universe is the only part of the universe that exists? * *No. I don't see why you bring this up. There's likely a huge unobservable part, but I think it's finite, created during Inflation -- because if you run the clock backward, the receding galaxies, now out of view, will come back into view. I don't claim I can prove it. I suspect that Guth assumed what existed when Inflation began, was all that existed. AG* *If you do then you must also believe that Earth is the center of the universe, or at least very very close to it, because space is flat at the largest scale, or at least very very close to flat. * *If the curvature is close to flat, or even flat, then there's more out there than what we can observe. But how you conclude that I might think the Earth is at the center if it isn't flat or close to flat, is baffling. AG* *> You seem to have an inclination to put me down.* *If you treat me politely then I will treat you the same way. * *> I think* *Think or believe? * *Please stop this crap. AG * *> the unobservable part came into existence during Inflation, a finite process, so it is also finite and the whole bubble is finite. I don't claim I can prove it. AG* *As I said before, even if inflation never happened there would still be galaxies expanding away from us faster than the speed of light,* *That doesn't necessarily imply an infinite universe. I'd like to know how you've reached this conclusion. Is it based on the assumption of expansion or new physics? AG * *and it's an observational fact that galaxies are not just moving at high speed away from us, they are ACCELERATING away. And with or without inflation it would still be true that light travels at a finite speed, and the Big Bang happened a finite number of years ago, so that alone severely limits what we are able to see, or will ever be able to see. * *Sometime, hopefully, you will deal with my main point; my claim that IF the universe is infinite in spatial extent, there was no BB. In such case, the universe was uncreated and eternal. AG* John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> ymp -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/76d30b40-9a08-4ebb-ad6a-2033f5671a31n%40googlegroups.com.
