--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost...@...> wrote: > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > [snip] > > > > The interest of many of the early quantum theorists in > > > mysticism isn't at all surprising. > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > But luckily there are many new ways of interpreting it > > without any of that mystic weirdness: > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics > > > > I took a quick peep. Which ones are light on mystic weirdness?
All except the mystic ones. All the rest only seem weird (but not mystical) because we have evolved to perceive a macro-Newtonian reality. Quantum stuff just *seems* weird. There's a big difference between the multiverse and, say, Hagelins ideas which involve untestable consiousness/god involvement. The mysticism is introduced in the usual way god is always introduced to explain these things. > The "many worlds"? That's as if to say "the cat in the > proverbial quantum mechanical box is BOTH dead AND alive > at the same time", no? No. The many worlds does away with the idea of things being both dead and alive (or electrons in more than one place) by both (or all) states being present on a kind of 'line of sight' slice through all possible realities. The measurement problem that started the whole mystic physics thing is, according to the theory, due to electrons being present in all possible universes, rather than just ours. They are interfering with themselves rather than our consciousness or experiments interfering with *them*. Clever eh? > Is that any better than "it's neither one nor t'other till > we stick our nose in the box"? Does the one *explanation* > dispel our metaphysical fog any better than the other? You bet. Either we live in a world where we (or god or consciousness) somehow create the reality we perceive in a literal sense or we don't. The multiverse idea (amongst most others) puts us firmly in the latter. And it's provable, apparently. Quantum computers are the key, getting the bits that make up reality tell us what they are doing when we aren't looking. The trick is to get a bunch of atoms and stop them interfering with each other to make a stupendously powerful 'use once and discard' computer. All way beyond my meagre ken of course but undeniably fascinating. They have actually built a quantum computer, not very powerful but by any accounts a major achievement. Some Nobel prizes heading their way soon I should think. Anyway if anyone wants a good read and some new mindblowing ways to think about the world try the book: http://tinyurl.com/yz9avmc I'm sure you'll enjoy the philosophical discussions. I've struggled through it twice and it still makes my head hurt. > You might say that in the one case the state of the cat > "dwells in the field of all (unmanifest) possibilities". In > the other, the state of the cat "dwells in the field of all > (manifest) possibilities"? A difference that makes not such > a big difference? It's a huge difference if the cat is actually real in all manifest possibilities.
