[ExI] The Quantum Zeno effect

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Wed Dec 15 16:15:34 UTC 2010


On Dec 14, 2010, at 1:02 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:

>> I always understood that quantum measurement hangs upon some specific and crucial quantum event; thus, choices made by large ensembles of atoms don't count. That is, if you conducted the S's cat experiment using a macroscopic randomizer like a series of spinning coins, it wouldn't prove a thing. 

John K Clark wrote:

> I think that's true

After thinking about that response for a while I've come to the conclusion that John K Clark is full of shit and that a spinning coin would work just fine for the Schrodinger Cat Experiment. There must be a universe that is identical with our own in every way EXCEPT that a puff of wind moving at .025 mph hits the coin at a 172 degree angle rather than a 178 degree angle as it does in our universe; this change is tiny by everyday human standards but is enormously larger, astronomically larger really, than the sort of quantum changes Heisenberg was talking about. So in one universe the coin ends up heads and the cat lives and in another the coin ends up tails and the cat dies. 

Many Worlds makes no distinction between a quantum event and a non quantum event, if you use a radioactive atom the difference in universes is that in one the atom decays and the cat dies and in the other the atom doesn't decay and the cat lives; if you use a coin the difference in universes is that in one a micro-puff of air moves at a 172 degree angle and the cat dies and in the other universe a micro-puff of air moves at a 178 degree angle and the cat lives.

 John K Clark

  


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20101215/0184d7a7/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list