🚀 go-pugleaf

I write...
>|>Well, getting a cat into a pure state is quite an achievement! ;-)

johncobb@ut-emx.cc.utexas.edu (John W. Cobb) writes...
>I always thought that was the precise reason for Schrodinger constructing
>the Cat paradox. He showed that the usual notions about quantum measurement
>implied that is a bit absurd to talk about preparing something as macroscopic 
>as a cat into a specific quanutm state, i.e. an eigenvalue of the live/dead
>measurment. (Is there an annihilation operator for this? :} )

I think he showed that the usual notions about quatum measurement imply that
one must consider macroscopic systems in specific quantum states, which he
considered to be absurd.

>If you accept the definition that measurement occurs when the "irreversible
>act of amplification" (Is this a Bohr quote?) occurs then I would say that
>the wavefunction collapsed when the silicon detector INSIDE the box fired
>amplifying the decay event from a single particle to a stream of millions
>or billions of electrons cascading across the potential.

I have no problem with this so long as 'collapse' just means that a coherent
superposition becomes incoherent.

>I developed an intuition to explain this "curious world". The detector
>amplifies small events to create vastly different time asymptotic states
>(no current flow/current flow). So the detector is unstable and right at
>a bifurcation point. Thus its global behavior is determined by small
>perturbations. So very small perturbations can be measured by the
>effect they have on the measuring apparatus. This is "the irreversible
>act of amplification". It makes great sense when I 'fess up to my

But you are amplifying an event which can go either way with equal
probability. Something which 'seeds' this choice is called a hidden
variable. Look at it this way: You prepare the system in a state which
_rigorously_ has equal chances to go either way. How can the probability
change if you don't open the box? Who decides which way it will go?
Does the universe really have 'free will'?

Dave Ring
dwr2560@zeus.tamu.edu