Re: Everett

Hara Ra (harara@shamanics.com)
Sun, 03 Aug 1997 18:14:06 -0700

John K Clark wrote:

> Now suppose that after traveling for one year after their encounter with the
> slits and one second before they hit the film you suddenly decide to hold up
> a polarizer set to 45 degrees. This erases from the universe all information
> on what photon went through what slit and so you see an interference pattern
> and it's clear that each photon went through BOTH slits a year ago.
>
> Backward causality? Splitting universes? Observer defined reality? I don't
> know, I do know that something very weird is going on. Bohr said "anybody
> who is not shocked by Quantum Mechanics does not understand it" another
> fellow said " I think it's safe to say nobody understands Quantum Mechanics"
> the fellow's name was Richard Feynman.

The problems begin when we apply our macro way of thinking to these
teeeny little thingys. In QM, even the notion that something goes from
"here" to "there" is suspect. The real confusion begins not with the
wave functions but in our habits of visualizing them as waves at all. If
one adheres to the notion that a wave function is strictly a means of
calculating probabilities of events, this confusion vanishes. Like the
confusion that "soul" brings to the information models of mind, most of
the interpretations, from the Copenhagen Observer to Everett's many
worlds appear to be unprovable, and per our friend Ockham, not needed
either, save for our monkey brains which see thru monkey eyes.
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| Hara Ra <harara@shamanics.com> |
| Box 8334 Santa Cruz, CA 95061 |
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