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Andrew M

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I would have thought that one sense was enough. How many senses are you requiring? ;-) No, the relative ordering of events necessarily follows from th...
April 14, 2019 at 12:15
I agree. But that interpretation of RQM would only be a semantic difference from MWI, not a substantial one. My understanding is that RQM is a more ab...
April 13, 2019 at 09:29
The truth of a statement depends on its reference in the world. For example, when it is noon in London, the statement "It is noon" will be true for Lo...
April 13, 2019 at 08:45
So what Carroll means is that fields are fundamental and particles (and everyday things generally) emerge from the interaction of those underlying fie...
April 13, 2019 at 08:34
My reading of RQM (and Rovelli) is that RQM doesn't accept the existence of more than one Alice (or, at least, need not). Per RQM, all that is known t...
April 11, 2019 at 01:56
QFT provides a physical mechanism (mathematically specified) for what is observed that is predictive and testable. It's been extremely successful and ...
April 11, 2019 at 01:09
:up: There isn't a contradiction. Do you accept the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity? If so, then you already accept that a correct ac...
April 08, 2019 at 06:20
Objects and objective reality remain, but counterfactual definiteness, an assumption from classical mechanics, is rejected. In other words, there is n...
April 07, 2019 at 12:05
No, the classical sense (with absolute state) can be rejected altogether. On a relational model such as Rovelli's RQM, particles, atoms and molecules ...
April 06, 2019 at 11:42
That's like saying that what we call "apples" aren't actually apples, that's just the word we use. So it's really a semantic issue. If one understands...
April 05, 2019 at 04:56
That's one framing of the issue, sure. But, more impartially, what is at issue is the solution to the measurement problem. That is, what does it mean ...
April 04, 2019 at 07:46
I don't think physics provides any reason to doubt that the elementary particles (as described in the Standard Model) exist and have measurable physic...
April 04, 2019 at 06:54
Yes. The Schrödinger equation doesn't make a micro/macro distinction or specify a collapse of the wave function. Which is what gives rise to the measu...
April 03, 2019 at 23:18
If so, then it would seem that the same principle should apply to an electron. One would be measuring the effect of the electron (on a measurement dev...
April 03, 2019 at 14:14
The physical properties of a photon are able to be measured in the same way as for any other particle. If you want to know a photon's position or spee...
April 03, 2019 at 07:02
It's worth noting that superpositions have been created for objects with up to trillions of atoms (as in the case of the piezoelectric "tuning fork")....
April 03, 2019 at 01:10
Here's the DailyNous link for those quotes. The assumption of reality, as defined in Bell test experiments, is simply that there is a definite value f...
April 03, 2019 at 01:01
There is no implication of non-physical properties. In QM, light quanta (photons) have physical properties. And QM is consistent with special relativi...
April 03, 2019 at 00:30
Yes, that's a good way to put it. Agreed. A human observer and an artifact will interact differently with their environment based on their physical ch...
April 01, 2019 at 02:36
:up: I think you're mixing the issue of how the result at the detectors is calculated (by summing path amplitudes) with the question of what physicall...
March 30, 2019 at 07:32
Yes. This seems to align with Wittgenstein's private language argument. Our language develops via interactions with other people and things in the wor...
March 29, 2019 at 02:52
Right! I think we're in agreement. Yes, the term observer has two uses, so we should always pay attention to the context to avoid equivocation. If an ...
March 29, 2019 at 02:28
For RQM, the path travelled is only counterfactually indefinite for the observer outside the interferometer. It says nothing about what the full-silve...
March 29, 2019 at 02:23
The problem is that the above doesn't really make sense on a single-world interpretation, at least in my view. What I'm interested in is whether there...
March 27, 2019 at 01:36
Yes, it alludes to the self-referential problems associated with predicting what oneself is going to do in the future. Fortunately, you can usually ju...
March 27, 2019 at 00:04
What human beings and table lamps have in common is that they are substantial and have form. What RQM says is that that form is relative to the observ...
March 26, 2019 at 23:05
Simply substitute system for observer if that helps. That is how Rovelli is using the term.
March 25, 2019 at 04:48
Thanks! My own reading of RQM for a while was as a relational semantics abstracting over a Many Worlds dynamics. But as boundless also suggested, I th...
March 25, 2019 at 04:46
Yes, it seems she is simply talking about a logical consequence there. If the cafe closes then no-one can eat there. But her characterizing a logical ...
March 25, 2019 at 04:35
Thanks for the links! I had a quick skim. I find Rovelli's approach more natural than either of those. Bitbol's approach seems overly metaphysical and...
March 22, 2019 at 21:25
Obective collapse theories (such as GRW and Penrose's) are physically different theories to standard QM. I don't know what specific explanations they ...
March 22, 2019 at 20:41
Yes, another great discussion! I also liked Wallace's explanation of the wave function at 11:25. So here's the setup and exchange between Valentini an...
March 21, 2019 at 15:07
They would predict that Wigner would not see interference for sufficiently complex friend systems. So the options are to either accept the experiment'...
March 21, 2019 at 12:25
Nice find with the PF article and I fully agree with it. I was going to mention the Andromeda paradox and the idea of potentiality in relation to it i...
March 20, 2019 at 12:23
Thanks - that would be my reading as well. As I see it, the decompositions that are of interest are those that are robust to interactions with the env...
March 19, 2019 at 07:17
By reverse, I just mean that the measurement process can be undone by applying appropriate (inverse) unitary transformations. It seems to me that a me...
March 19, 2019 at 04:47
Thanks boundless - they're excellent videos and well worth watching for anyone with an interest in the philosophical aspects of QM. Fun quote from Rov...
March 18, 2019 at 08:30
As I'm guessing you're well aware, Rovelli's main observation exactly describes the Wigner's friend scenario that this thread is about. But it's worth...
March 16, 2019 at 21:18
It's illustrated in the article's image of the experiment (Figure 2 in the paper). Bob's friend's measurement occurs in the gray box (with a record th...
March 16, 2019 at 06:28
But note that they're not actually identical since they each have a different memory of what they measured. What Bob can do is reverse Alice's polarit...
March 16, 2019 at 05:10
Maybe so, but the end goal is to have rigorously defined theories that can be experimentally distinguished. Part of that task is identifying the assum...
March 15, 2019 at 07:52
The main postulate of MWI is that the universe is represented by a unitarily evolving quantum state interpreted realistically. It provides empirical p...
March 15, 2019 at 04:25
It takes a theory to beat a theory. Freedom of choice refers to an experimenter being able to choose what experiment to perform. All mainstream interp...
March 14, 2019 at 11:01
Good to to see the experiment done. But as you might expect, the main interpretations already have standard answers for this. For example, Many Worlds...
March 14, 2019 at 06:53
The formula for adding velocities in relativistic physics is u = \frac{v + u'}{1+\frac{vu'}{c^2}} It is described here. Like any other formula in phys...
March 09, 2019 at 20:41
Yes. OK, think of the reference frame as an implicit aspect of the velocity that must be factored in to any calculation. The train is travelling at 20...
March 07, 2019 at 07:15
The difference occurs because the velocities are being added from different inertial reference frames. Suppose I am standing on a train platform and t...
March 06, 2019 at 02:55
I don't think we've discussed this before. But note that it wasn't a minor detail, it was his main point. It doesn't make sense to talk about the weig...
March 06, 2019 at 02:39
Aristotle did not say that properties were separable from substance, he expressly denied it. He was an immanent realist about universals and rejected ...
March 04, 2019 at 23:28