Fantastic- now this is a GREAT oil thread.
Heisenberg's principle- yep, I believe that one is correct and fitting. As I remember, you can only know the position and speed of a particle to a sum of 1, so if you are 50% certain of its speed, you only have a 50% certainty of knowing where it is (at the exact same time). No problem- the act of measuring the particle causes a change in that particle's speed and / or position. Fine and well. But the principle has become the basis to build upon until the things that result are simply not useful or representative. I'll come back to that one in a second though.
I did not say that quantum mechanics does not work, just that I do not believe it exists. Yeah, that one needs a little fleshing out: I believe many of the facets are correct but again, the overall concept is basically flawed, especially because it will not scale. Certainly there is a problem with relativity and Q.M.; both may be but one MUST be incorrect. I call Q.M. incorrect and will go with relativity. Eventually the T.O.E. will be found that is correct but for now I consider Q.M. an interesting and occasionally useful.... parlor trick. I agree physics really is a series of laws that must be obeyed or nothing makes any sense (and I reject that choice), it is just that we do not yet understand all of the rules and have some that we think we understand incorrect. Besides all that, I was never all that big a fan of Bohr's thought process as I understand it- I am much more of a Fermi guy. Hey, for what it is worth, I absolutely and totally reject both Big Al's and the Presbyterian's concept of determinism. :-)
The three choices: I got it second hand and as it was explained to me, given a trio of items (the proverbial shell game), you choose one. If that is not the right choice, one of the other choices is removed, thereby leaving two, the one you originally chose and the one remaining that you did not. At this point, a ridiculous number theory comes along and somehow suggests the course of action that will result in the greatest chance of picking the right item is to change your choice. I can not find anything that logically says that that has any validity.
You misunderstood or I did not well explain what I meant by the deck of cards, uncertainty and how this ties in with my rejection of Q.M. Take a standard shoe of six full decks of cards. At first, the odds of drawing any particular card are equal but as cards are drawn and choices are reduced, the chances of drawing either a specific card, or a card within an 'envelope' (say, a face card) change. So far chaos theory and real life agree perfectly. Say we draw 100 cards and have 312 remaining. We use probability to predict the next card that will be drawn but do not actually draw the card. Now this is where things go terribly, terrible wrong: we now move on to predict what card number 102 will be, based on the previous 101 cards that are known. But, we really do not know what card 101 IS, only what it is probable to be. But we continue down this path until we get to the last card, which of course is now known to us by process of elimination and probability. The problem with this is that we really never did know what card 101 (and later) was. The second we actually look at card 101 everything further falls apart. It is not that the science of probability is wrong, simply that it does not apply here.
The example that stands out for me is Zeno's paradox using the arrow and target vs. time example. It is not fundamentally incorrect, in fact is the basis of limits as they apply to calculus, it is just that it does not apply to the arrow and reality. Mental masturbation.
About Big Al being wrong: entirely possible but I am just not willing to accept that without something better than Q.M. as the reason. He was not wrong, he simply did not find the entire set of 'rules'. I have a much easier time believing Hawkin was, and is, incorrect. I especially do not care for his need to engage his theories with the concept of God. I have no personal opinions or beliefs in that regard and am not concerned either way but I do not care for his desire to explain the universe's need or lack thereof of a superior being, I simply think it has no place in science. To make a bad joke, it is not his field :-) But actually we agree 100% on the last of Einstein's work and failure, it is just that I do not take it that he was wrong, merely that he did not find the 'right' before he died. I cannot quote it exactly but Edison once said something to the effect: 'I have not failed, I have merely found 50,000 ways that do not work.' And while I am not a big fan of his either (preferring Tesla's opinion that 'a little theory would have gone a long way in Edison's lab'), I really do like that line.
I was associated with a gentleman named Einstein from New Jersey about a dozen years ago and just had to ask if he was related. The answer was yes, they are cousins (once removed IIRC). I asked how that was working out for him and he replied- poorly. All his life people were disappointed in him because they expected he could levitate rocks (or the intellectual equal); such was the case with me too before we were too far into the project.... and I truly felt sorry for the guy 'cause he was in an impossible position given that name.
We're boring most everybody and we are dangerously close to being offtopic but an immensely enjoyable conversation. By the way, there is a physicist (teaching, Ph.D) around here now and again. Nice guy and pretty clever.... :-) Rides a C-14 and has altered the engine to act bigger than it really is- sort of like a space- time compression if you know what I mean.
Brian
Brian,
That is not the HUP (Heiseberg Uncertainty Principle) at all. HUP says you cannot know two things simultaneously beyond a certain amount of...you know...uncertainty.
The more precisely you know the position, the greater the uncertainty in momentum. And vice versa, of course. Position and momentum are "a conjugate pair". Yes, that is a pretty good straight line for the dummy...have at it, PH man...
There are other pairs. The product of the two uncertainties is always at least a certain amount. Exact value? Rather tiny, so the HUP is not relevant to large things like ZG1400s, or fried eggs, or visible dust specks. The PRODUCT. So if you do know the position "exactly", say with an electron microscope still screen shot, you cannot have any way of knowing the value of the momentum at all.
Not everybody likes the Copenhagen Interpretation. It is maybe the least-far-fetched-seeming explanation, but some things are beyond the realm of the observable, and we are left with a collection of hypotheses like the Copenhagen, thus named since it is where Neils Bohr, its originator, lived.
Dang quantum mechanics!!
Oh, and the card thing is legit too, if you put the parts of the story back in that you left out.
The one you pick has a 1/3 chance of being "the right one". Of course, since all of the cards have equal chance AT THAT POINT.
The presenter then tells you they are going to throw out one that is NOT "the right one." That means that there is a 1/2 chance that each of the two you did not pick is "the right one." 1/2 chance because they NEVER tell you that YOUR CARD is not "the right one." This is the key...
Thus the advice about switching.
See, the choice you made was when there were three that might have been "the right one." BUT the presenter gave you new information, namely that one of the ones you did not pick was not "the right one." That new information changes the odds.
BTW, I know a couple of PhD physicists who DO NOT GET THAT, so you could say it is "subtle."
That is what physicists say when folks don't get it, especially themselves.
Number theory is my specialty, so...
Your remark about "estimating" which card is going to be next in the deck. If it is a "fair" deck, i.e. truly random, aren't all the cards exactly equal chance of appearing next? If you are thinking of poker, or especially 21, we are interested in the odds of any one of a particular set of cards appearing, right? The probability calculations are valuable here. Hence the ability of casinos to win so much money. They play the odds.
Oh, and Big Al was wrong. Which is incredibly ironic, since he sort of started the whole QM thing.
The standard reply to your quote:
“Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”
--- S. Hawking
Einstein famously spent the last (appx.) 30 years of his life trying to come up with a better explanation than QM. He HATED the statistical stuff...wanted strict cause-and-effect rules for everything. He could not find a better explanation. Nobody else has, either.
Using dino OR Mobil 1 OR real synth OR ANYTHING.
Just had to get back to the oil thread topics at the end there...
saxman says: "The cool thing about science is that it's true whether you believe it or not."
