(2018-09-23, 09:37 AM)Max_B Wrote: They were both wrong, Superpositions are allowed in QM. But rather than alive 'and' dead, the cat is alive 'or' dead, because QM determines the probabilities (and some other things) when the wave functions are added.
So in a superposition, the particle doesn't become anything specifically so nothing happens and the cat is still alive. Excuse my linear logic but I still can't see what everybody else seems to see!
(2018-09-23, 09:42 AM)Brian Wrote: So in a superposition, the particle doesn't become anything specifically so nothing happens and the cat is still alive. Excuse my linear logic but I still can't see what everybody else seems to see!
What is it you think you see?
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
(2018-09-23, 09:20 AM)Brian Wrote: But in order for an illustration to be useful, it has to make sense as if it were a real event. If it were real, the position that doesn't break the vial doesn't prevent the vial from being broken so the cat dies. Also, I believe you are wrong about Schrödinger's motive. My understanding is that he was trying to show how untenable the Copenhagen Interpretation was, something that Einstein later congratulated him for, after all, a cat cannot be both dead and alive!
(2018-09-22, 10:39 PM)Max_B Wrote: The authors don't seem to accept this for the assumptions they make in their experiment, they see the 2 systems as somehow isolated, and that the systems are not affected by each of the 4 measurements made by each of the 4 observers. But in Copenhagen, the systems initial states *are* changed for each of the other observers, after one of them makes an observation/measurement.
This blogger, Lubos Motl, seems to be making essentially the same criticism - that when the first of the two observers outside the boxes makes his observation, it affects the systems inside the boxes, and the authors are not allowing for that. He presents it as a crass, obvious error: https://motls.blogspot.com/2018/09/frauc...stent.html
Motl seems to be something of an outcast in the physics community, and to call his blogging style abrasive would be a severe understatement, but I'm not sure his intelligence is in question. But it does seem odd, if the error is so obvious, that the paper has ended up being published after two years' debate about the preprint.
(2018-09-23, 03:15 PM)Chris Wrote: But it does seem odd, if the error is so obvious, that the paper has ended up being published after two years' debate about the preprint.
I don't think it's that odd. There are all sorts of scientific papers getting published with weird stuff in them that I disagree with, but I do notice it particularly around QM. I think I'm reaching the paranoid suspicion that the high visibility given to "QM is broken" hyped papers, is to deflect the general public from being able to understand QM by burying the pearls within an enormous pile of crap, which is really is nothing more than anti-quantum stuff.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
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(This post was last modified: 2018-09-23, 03:52 PM by Max_B.)