For a long time, I believed the same things. I don't because it's become overly-complicated, and there are simpler, more elegant, explanations. Why the "attitude"? Because scientists, like anyone else, are EXTREMELY resistant to having their beliefs challenged. Science operates along the same lines as any other belief system. It has to - we're only human, after all. Just look at all the resistance to discarding the physically impossible "baby shaking syndrome" as just one example. We have proven that it's bio-mechanicaly impossible, that the only test ever done was so ridiculous (and worse, basically disproved the theory), and yet people accept it as real based on nothing more than faith. Faith in a concept developed by a doctor because of his experiencing dizziness after a roller-coater ride, with NO other proof.
Please keep in mind -1/3 of all our knowledge is wrong. The problem is we don't know which 1/3 (and even that may be optimistic). So to go around and think that ideas shouldn't be kicked - hard - when they become overly complicated and start sounding more like excuses... well, life is too short for that.
QM doesn't explain "spooky action at a distance", and the many-worlds hypothesis, while attractive at first, totally fails because, in a regime where everything is possible, the concept of probability makes no sense, since it's always 1 - and we know from observation that that's not the case, and to actually do so would require massive violations of the known laws of conservation, not to mention bringing with it its' own version of the Fermi Paradox - if everything happens in at least one multiverse, then at least one of them has developed the way to travel through space and time and should have already conquered every one of them. That we even exist says that the multiverse is a lie - and QM requires at least some version of the multiverse.
Am I happy about it? No - because it also makes the question of free will a lot harder. I would like to believe in free will, but in an universe where the future and the past are so intertwined as they seem to be, it's looking a lot less likely, since even emergent behaviour can be fully explained by deterministic systems, and that kind of sucks. But just because it sucks doesn't mean I'm going to reject it and go back to believing in "the cult of QM".
If the multiverse does exist, it's not because of QM. There are no "infinite branches."
That's the beauty of it - concepts that we *know* to be true in respect to mass and energy (conservation of mass, energy, the laws of motion and inertia) all continue to work with time.
It also explains why so many things appear to be pairs.
"For every forward-in-time there's an opposite and equal backward-in-time." To someone moving forward at the macro scale, it looks normal. The flashlight, for example emits a photon, which travels forward in time until it can interact with something, then travels backward in time. To the outside observer, it looks like the flashlight emitted 2 photons, not emitting one and absorbing one.
Let's move this on to something bigger - the Sun. The same principle - the sun would, to an observer moving along the timeline, indead be losing mass, and if you look back on the timeline, it is indeed more massive at the start.
They travel until they interact with something else, same as always. There's no need for a "quantum foam" where particles magically appear and disappear - they just seem to because we can't see their entire history - only a cross-section defined by "NOW".
This explains the "spooky action at a distance" problem of QM - it's the same particle, just that my "copy" looks different because it interacted with me, and yours with you. We separate, I observe mine, it now interacts with me, and retraces its path - which includes going back to the time when it originated, then forward again to you, but now it's been affected by my observation. So your view of the particle is affected by my having viewed it "first." If, on the other hand you had viewed YOURS "first", my particle would be similarly affected when I finally get around to observing it.
As for "wavicles" - think of it. Why should a particle vibrate? If it oscillates in one direction, shouldn't it continue in that direction, instead of snapping back - without interacting with anything else!!!! That violates everything we know about how particles act at macro scale. If instead we posit that the universe has a fixed minimum graininess (space is "quantized", as is time - which makes more sense than an infinitely-variable scale because it makes it so much easier to generate interference phonomena) we can do away with a few problems - including the whole "how does a particle 'know' to interact with another" and why does it happen in discrete amounts?)
We no longer need "waves" or vibrations as a store of energy.
So, on to the two-slit experiment, where observation of individual photons prevents them from interfering...
In the classical 2-slit experiment, there are sufficient photons involved that you can pretty much guarantee that they will interact with each other. Because both space and time are "quantized", and because two particles can never occupy the same "space:, they will interact - it's only because both space and time are quantized that we see an interference pattern, and not a broad band.
However, when we reduce the incidence to less than one photon at a time in the apparatus, there can be no "interference" unless the photon tries to take the same path back in time after interacting with the detector. Sure enough, the photon moving forward in time does interact with itself moving back in time, and we end up seeing the classical interference pattern being built up, same as if there were many photons. No need for "wavicles".
Now, let's extend this to observing the detector after a single particle at a time has passed through the slit, but before it interacts with the detector. In classical QM, we say that observation affects the result, but we don't say why. "It just does." That's a sorry excuse.
Putting an observer into the equation means that the paths are not the same forward and backward. The observer adds a "forward" direction bias - so the photon, in order to return, has to take a different path through space/time, so it never gets a chance to interfere with itself, and we end up wit
The same predictions are borne out by having the same particle travel backward in time. Which is simpler? The theory that doesn't require "vibrations", "superpositions of states", and "strings". AND, unlike QM, it also explains instantaneous entanglement. So, which theory is better? The one that explains more of the facts with fewer inventions.
There's no such thing as "waves." Interference patterns are generated when either different particles, or the same particle, with a different time/space mass, whack into each other. Since the underlying space is discrete, not continuous, it results in bands, rather than a broad scatter.
When you add an external observer, it no longer is a 2-body problem, and the particle moving forward in time, and its partner moving back, no longer take the same space/time path, and as such, no longer interact - so you get a simple spot on the detector, and not an interference pattern.
Note that to an observer moving only forward in time, it still appears that 2 particles were emitted.
So, back to experiment. Particles traveling in both directions, in both space and time, explain all the results, and don't cause problems with the voodoo associated with quantum entanglement - they don't require the universe to somehow transmit an effect instantaneously across a distance. QM does. QM fails on that basis alone.
It also explains why so many things happen in pairs - it's the same particle, going forward in time, interacting with something, then returning to its' start point. The flashlight emits one photon, which travels forward through the slit to the detector, then back. On the way, it meets itself, and because it DID interact with the detector, it's path back is slightly shifted, always by a discrete amount since the underlying universe is discrete, not continuous (a continuous universe would either not allow for particles to interact or would produce non-quantum-like results), so the interaction will produce bands (remember, it met itself on the way out as well, so you don't just get a big center spot and a bunch of weak bands, though it will still peak at the center).
There's no need for particles to "vibrate" (which brings up another question - if they vibrate in one direction, then the other, why? Why should they violate the laws of inertia and motion by suddenly reversing direction w/o interacting with something else?)
Much better to say that when a particle acquires energy, it can move faster and further wrt the space/timeline (in other words, able to go further forward/backward in time - the two are equivalent, and in the end the sum of all interactions will always even out).
Why does it return? Conservation of time is the same as conservation of matter or energy. You roll uphill, you're going to eventually roll back downhill. Time is just another hill.
What a bogus excuse. "Oh, maybe it happens, but we're going to make it a special case where the universe conspires to prevent any real exchange of information until the 2 parties compare notes." Forget God, you've got the Universal Accountant.
Keep on building those epicycles.
Every observation can be easier explained, including entanglement, every 2-slit experiment result, as well as the "probability sphere" of the electron around the nucleus and half-lives of elements, as well as the apparent exchange of information faster than C, without requiring any such thing as "superposition of states" (which violates a few laws of conservation, btw), or a quantum foam (same problem) by simply positing that at small scales time can go in either, or both, directions. It also gets rid of "wavicles" and other nonsense - they're simply not needed, since everything then has a simpler explanation.
Occam's Razor is dead in the QM community. People don't want to give up their cherished superstitions, even those cloaked in "science". Film at 11.
(and no, Schrodingers cat is not science in any shape matter or form - it assumes that which it then claims to "prove").
The "collapse the waveform pseudo-science b***s***" here is simply translating the simultaneous probabilistic states into a single actual one. The reason this is relevant is in quantum mechanics there are real, measurable effects that occur as a result of the probabilistic waveform that differ from the effects of the collapsed state -- once you know whether the cat is alive or dead, in other words, you have a fundamentally different system than before it was observed.
This line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. You have a first condition, and a second, later condition, and because the two differ, you assume, with no proof, that this "proves" all the following:
1. that there are such things as probablistic wavorms
2. that there is such a thing as a superposition of states
3. that observing the system causes the collapse of these alleged staes
Now, down to brass tacks.
Prove any of this. Can't be done. Every experiment that claims to do so can also have the same result if, at small scales, time can flow in both directions. The best part is that, unlike your cat thought experiment, some of the 2-slit experiments give this result. So if you're going to foe someone over an argument that you can't even prove, keep to your pseudo-scienty-religion. I'll apply the principle of parsimony, and take the simplest explanation that explains the real observations in the real world.
I *have* kept an open mind. While I first thought that the QM version made sense, since then it's become painfully obvious that it's a messy excuse for how the world works, especially when every claim it makes can be explained much easier if we allow for the finest-grained particles of this universe to travel both back and forward in time.
For one thing, it both explains AND solves the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Can QM do either? No - it only describes, without an underlying explanation as to why except "that's the way it is."
Take for example the question of where an electron orbits the nucleus. QM says we can't say where, only give a probability.
Here's a "bad" analogy, but it's a start. Picture you at home. During the course of the day, you go from room to room, doing things. Sometimes, you leave. Now, someone whose best observational resolution is 1 day will, when asked, only be able to say that they can give a probability as to whether you're in a particular room or not, or even that you may have "ceased to exist" (the equivalent of popping in and out of the so-called quantum foam - another dumb invention, which can also be better explained by particles simply moving back and forth a bit in time).
Since mathematically there's no real difference between space and time, why should we be surprised? Especially since the 2-slit experiments (the ones where the observer affects the outcome even if they only observe after the particle has passed thru the slit) are much better proof of the apparent reversal of causality that time travel of individual particles would cause, than any sort of "dual nature" of particles (which still doesn't really explain the results except with LOTS of hand-waving).
I read about it decades ago, and while I was impressed at the time, I've since come to realize that he was wrong. Do you have a problem with that? Is it somehow possible that his thought experiment was based on wrong assumptions, and as such, led to wrong conclusions?
Or are you going to insist that, like the Pope, science is now a religion and can never be wrong?
Nonsense - time travel is traveling from point A to point B in time, same as traveling in space is traveling from city A to city B, or room A to room B.
We do it every day - and the difference in elapsed time between the ground and the space shuttle has been documented, with atomic clocks running slower on the shuttle in orbit.
Just because something is staring you right in the nose (your passage through time from one instant to the next) is not an excuse to ignore it. Doing so led to our current stupidity, and our insistence on constructing an overly-complicated model of the universe to explain things like the two-slit experiment and spooky action at a distance, when if time is like every other dimension, it all "just works." Even quantum entanglement now becomes simply another aspect of the conservation of matter and energy - no violation of information passing faster than C between two points, or alternatively, particles somehow not being "really" entangled for a finite period of time.
The simpler explanation that fits all the facts should always be preferred, don't you think?
No, what I'm saying is that it was just a thought experiment, there was never any cat, and if you did it in real life, the cat doesn't "split into a superposition of states" - it either lives or dies. Schrodinger f***ed up.
Nice try dodging the point - but I'm not going to let it go that easily. Are you seriously prepared to continue arguing that just because something is too small for us to measure, that it doesn't exist?
That's baby-peek-a-boo reasoning - cover your eyes, and the world disappears.
And no, nowhere did I say the universe is what I make of it - that's YOUR argument. That because you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. Maybe in some future, we'll find a way to measure it - but if we insist it doesn't exist, we'll never find it, and continue looking in the wrong places and making the wrong deductions.
Time is the same as any other dimension - there's no reason to believe that at a small enough scale, it can go in both directions, which explains things like spooky action at a distance through simple conservation, rather than some crap about "quantum entanglement" - which brings up the question, if C is the speed limit, how is quantum entanglement possible without violating it? Oh, wiat - it must reach back in time at exactly the same speed. What a complicated s***house we've built. Nope - to the extent that other explanations, explanations that back up our understanding of everything else (after all, have you ever seen an example that violates any of the laws of conservation of energy or mass).
First,it was Djkstra who said "so bad it's not even wrong."
Second, the variant of the two-slit experiment, where the path of the photon is only observed after it has passed through the slit changes whether it generates an interference pattern or not, has two interpretations - the classical one, and the one that involves time actually working just fine in both directions at a small enough scale.
It's only the insistence of people that they must continue to build more and more convoluted "'splanations" (sort of like the pre-Copernian gang with their epicycles and cycles within cycles and all that crap) who deny the clear evidence of their eyes, that time does, at the most basic scales, go in either direction as required.
It's akin to Einstein's biggest mistake - saying that there's no such thing as "spooky action at a distance" - which also can be explained by either the Copenhagen gang OR by time working in both directions. Of the two, Occam's Razor makes it clear that time should be treated no differently than space (after all, we even call it space-time), as it provides the simplest explanation for everything from particle decay half-lives to particle entanglement (it just becomes another aspect of the laws of conservation of matter and energy).
But keep on rejecting the simpler, more obvious explanation, and build up those epicycles.
Having good references from previous jobs that you've been at for 5+ years in no way means that you can actually do the work. It could just be that you're a very good slacker who can bullshit their way out of doing work.
... which makes them management material...:-p
For every Dilbert, there's two Wallys.
What I can't help wondering is how soon some start-up will offer to help you literally "game the system?"
The smallest amount of time that can be measured is a Planck unit
So? Just because it's the smallest we can measure doesn't mean that it's the smallest there is. Or are you going to claim that amoebas only sprang into existence when Anthony van Leeuwenhoek invented the microsocope?
And with regards to energy and mass, there may not be any limitation as to how small each unit can be.
And you base this extraordinary claim on what evidence? The universe is grainy - the question is how far below the Planck constant that graininess act at.. and that includes not just mass and energy, but time as well, which neatly gets rid of the stupidity of "wavicles" and "wave functions."
That doesn't change the fact that you, and many others in this thread, made a statement that was clearly false to anyone who gives it a seconds thought... and this brings up the question of how many other things people "assume" because they can't apply everyday observations to overcome their built-in biases.
It's this lack of rigor that perpetuates silly thinking such as "it's impossible for 2 particles to be moving towards each other faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum" - something that anyone with a couple of mirrors can demonstrate is not true.
I have a cat. I think the above is stupid even for a thought experiment.
Depends on the cat, I guess. But yes, it's a stupid experiment that led to a wrong interpretation of the real world. It ignores the fact that the cat is an observer, as well as assuming that time can only go in one direction (and that last one has been in doubt for 50 years or so).
It's not just the OLF. Quebec has always been the most corrupt province in Canada (and usually the western world as well, which takes some doing). It's a blemish on both the RoC and Quebecers that it seems to perpetuate itself, no matter which set of crooks is in power.
The problem won't resolve itself internally, any more than Syria will.
That presupposes that there is a "wave form" or even "probability" at the smallest scales. Macro "probabilities" can be completely described by a universe with a fine-grained-enough discrete "unit", without requiring probabilities, or wave functions - they *do* require that at a fine-enough level, even time is also a discrete unit, that's all.
It also makes a much cleaner description than the messy one that we've been building upon for the last century - and it also gives the same results at the quantum level. What we have is a failure to imagine, to question, and to look for a simpler explanation.
For example, the results of observation in the 2-slit diffraction experiments, where a photon appears to interfere with itself, and the results are different when there's an observer, are better explained w/o resorting to such foolishness as "dual particle/wave nature of photons", but it's going to take at least generation before people are ready to even think of giving up their current theories.
In Science, proving a theory is a practical tool upon which you can build other theories. It is by necessity very specific and rigorous. If I do this and that in this manner, under these conditions you will see these results.
Science is by nature VERY sloppy, since we don't start with all the answers, so we build upon what we think we know. And sometimes, we're wrong. The problem is that rigor doesn't necessarily separate out the good from the bad, since our observations are by their very nature, tainted by our preconceptions.
For example,
Until time travel is possible, your example is useless speculation because there can never be any observed results
Look at the wrong assumptions built into that statement. Time travel is very definitely possible - or are you stuck in one moment in time?
I dismiss it because we now have some evidence that it took us down the wrong road.
BTW, science IS about being right or wrong - when you build a castle on a flawed hypothesis and aren't ready to question it and toss it on the trash-bin when it's wanting, that's not science, that's religion.
Seal him in a box long enough, and he's definitely dead. Same as it's the correct answer to the Schrodinger's cat experiment. No outside observer is needed to "collapse the wave function" pseudo-science b***s***. Just the passage of time yields the answer. Anyone who believes that the cat is both dead and alive until someone else looks in is welcome to seal themselves in a box and "live forever."
Worked really well for the pharaohs, didn't it? And people buried in mines for months.
If there's one thing we are sure about, it's that about 1/3 of all our knowledge is wrong. Including the hard sciences. Vast chunks of QM are probably part of that 1/3.
The outside observer by definition can make no such statement. Here's a clue - they're outside. So if your $RANDOM_JACKASS looks in, then they're no longer outside. And since you have a gun, you're in a position to prevent information leaking outside the system, so it's still closed.
Besides, the question was to prove it to the original author's satisfaction - NO outside interference is envisioned, and adding your extra observer is not part of the question as asked.
Irrelevant - the statement was that it was impossible to prove a negative - not that it's impossible to prove every negative.
I swear, people really need to learn (1) how to read, and (2) how to think logically - the quality of so-called trolls sucks.
And yes, it is possible to prove one way or another whether there will never be a lion in my fridge - but the proof requires a LOT of time... literally a lifetime. What next - a "proof by bad car analogy?"
Nonsense. This is the sort of stupidity that gets people into trouble with so-called logic. The same stupidity that insists that if time travel were possible, you can't go back in time and shoot your grandparents because it would "create a paradox", not realizing that the universe doesn't "care" about paradoxes - 'it is what it is."
Sure - I looked. Just like there was no dead cat in Schroedingers' box when I looked (then again, there was no live cat either - he was just messing with everyone's head... prove otherwise:-)
Slashdot Mirror
For a long time, I believed the same things. I don't because it's become overly-complicated, and there are simpler, more elegant, explanations. Why the "attitude"? Because scientists, like anyone else, are EXTREMELY resistant to having their beliefs challenged. Science operates along the same lines as any other belief system. It has to - we're only human, after all. Just look at all the resistance to discarding the physically impossible "baby shaking syndrome" as just one example. We have proven that it's bio-mechanicaly impossible, that the only test ever done was so ridiculous (and worse, basically disproved the theory), and yet people accept it as real based on nothing more than faith. Faith in a concept developed by a doctor because of his experiencing dizziness after a roller-coater ride, with NO other proof.
Please keep in mind -1/3 of all our knowledge is wrong. The problem is we don't know which 1/3 (and even that may be optimistic). So to go around and think that ideas shouldn't be kicked - hard - when they become overly complicated and start sounding more like excuses ... well, life is too short for that.
QM doesn't explain "spooky action at a distance", and the many-worlds hypothesis, while attractive at first, totally fails because, in a regime where everything is possible, the concept of probability makes no sense, since it's always 1 - and we know from observation that that's not the case, and to actually do so would require massive violations of the known laws of conservation, not to mention bringing with it its' own version of the Fermi Paradox - if everything happens in at least one multiverse, then at least one of them has developed the way to travel through space and time and should have already conquered every one of them. That we even exist says that the multiverse is a lie - and QM requires at least some version of the multiverse.
Am I happy about it? No - because it also makes the question of free will a lot harder. I would like to believe in free will, but in an universe where the future and the past are so intertwined as they seem to be, it's looking a lot less likely, since even emergent behaviour can be fully explained by deterministic systems, and that kind of sucks. But just because it sucks doesn't mean I'm going to reject it and go back to believing in "the cult of QM".
If the multiverse does exist, it's not because of QM. There are no "infinite branches."
That's the beauty of it - concepts that we *know* to be true in respect to mass and energy (conservation of mass, energy, the laws of motion and inertia) all continue to work with time.
It also explains why so many things appear to be pairs.
"For every forward-in-time there's an opposite and equal backward-in-time." To someone moving forward at the macro scale, it looks normal. The flashlight, for example emits a photon, which travels forward in time until it can interact with something, then travels backward in time. To the outside observer, it looks like the flashlight emitted 2 photons, not emitting one and absorbing one.
Let's move this on to something bigger - the Sun. The same principle - the sun would, to an observer moving along the timeline, indead be losing mass, and if you look back on the timeline, it is indeed more massive at the start.
They travel until they interact with something else, same as always. There's no need for a "quantum foam" where particles magically appear and disappear - they just seem to because we can't see their entire history - only a cross-section defined by "NOW".
This explains the "spooky action at a distance" problem of QM - it's the same particle, just that my "copy" looks different because it interacted with me, and yours with you. We separate, I observe mine, it now interacts with me, and retraces its path - which includes going back to the time when it originated, then forward again to you, but now it's been affected by my observation. So your view of the particle is affected by my having viewed it "first." If, on the other hand you had viewed YOURS "first", my particle would be similarly affected when I finally get around to observing it.
As for "wavicles" - think of it. Why should a particle vibrate? If it oscillates in one direction, shouldn't it continue in that direction, instead of snapping back - without interacting with anything else!!!! That violates everything we know about how particles act at macro scale. If instead we posit that the universe has a fixed minimum graininess (space is "quantized", as is time - which makes more sense than an infinitely-variable scale because it makes it so much easier to generate interference phonomena) we can do away with a few problems - including the whole "how does a particle 'know' to interact with another" and why does it happen in discrete amounts?)
We no longer need "waves" or vibrations as a store of energy.
So, on to the two-slit experiment, where observation of individual photons prevents them from interfering ...
In the classical 2-slit experiment, there are sufficient photons involved that you can pretty much guarantee that they will interact with each other. Because both space and time are "quantized", and because two particles can never occupy the same "space:, they will interact - it's only because both space and time are quantized that we see an interference pattern, and not a broad band.
However, when we reduce the incidence to less than one photon at a time in the apparatus, there can be no "interference" unless the photon tries to take the same path back in time after interacting with the detector. Sure enough, the photon moving forward in time does interact with itself moving back in time, and we end up seeing the classical interference pattern being built up, same as if there were many photons. No need for "wavicles".
Now, let's extend this to observing the detector after a single particle at a time has passed through the slit, but before it interacts with the detector. In classical QM, we say that observation affects the result, but we don't say why. "It just does." That's a sorry excuse.
Putting an observer into the equation means that the paths are not the same forward and backward. The observer adds a "forward" direction bias - so the photon, in order to return, has to take a different path through space/time, so it never gets a chance to interfere with itself, and we end up wit
There's no such thing as "waves." Interference patterns are generated when either different particles, or the same particle, with a different time/space mass, whack into each other. Since the underlying space is discrete, not continuous, it results in bands, rather than a broad scatter.
When you add an external observer, it no longer is a 2-body problem, and the particle moving forward in time, and its partner moving back, no longer take the same space/time path, and as such, no longer interact - so you get a simple spot on the detector, and not an interference pattern.
Note that to an observer moving only forward in time, it still appears that 2 particles were emitted.
So, back to experiment. Particles traveling in both directions, in both space and time, explain all the results, and don't cause problems with the voodoo associated with quantum entanglement - they don't require the universe to somehow transmit an effect instantaneously across a distance. QM does. QM fails on that basis alone.
It also explains why so many things happen in pairs - it's the same particle, going forward in time, interacting with something, then returning to its' start point. The flashlight emits one photon, which travels forward through the slit to the detector, then back. On the way, it meets itself, and because it DID interact with the detector, it's path back is slightly shifted, always by a discrete amount since the underlying universe is discrete, not continuous (a continuous universe would either not allow for particles to interact or would produce non-quantum-like results), so the interaction will produce bands (remember, it met itself on the way out as well, so you don't just get a big center spot and a bunch of weak bands, though it will still peak at the center).
There's no need for particles to "vibrate" (which brings up another question - if they vibrate in one direction, then the other, why? Why should they violate the laws of inertia and motion by suddenly reversing direction w/o interacting with something else?)
Much better to say that when a particle acquires energy, it can move faster and further wrt the space/timeline (in other words, able to go further forward/backward in time - the two are equivalent, and in the end the sum of all interactions will always even out).
Why does it return? Conservation of time is the same as conservation of matter or energy. You roll uphill, you're going to eventually roll back downhill. Time is just another hill.
What a bogus excuse. "Oh, maybe it happens, but we're going to make it a special case where the universe conspires to prevent any real exchange of information until the 2 parties compare notes." Forget God, you've got the Universal Accountant.
Keep on building those epicycles.
Every observation can be easier explained, including entanglement, every 2-slit experiment result, as well as the "probability sphere" of the electron around the nucleus and half-lives of elements, as well as the apparent exchange of information faster than C, without requiring any such thing as "superposition of states" (which violates a few laws of conservation, btw), or a quantum foam (same problem) by simply positing that at small scales time can go in either, or both, directions. It also gets rid of "wavicles" and other nonsense - they're simply not needed, since everything then has a simpler explanation.
Occam's Razor is dead in the QM community. People don't want to give up their cherished superstitions, even those cloaked in "science". Film at 11.
(and no, Schrodingers cat is not science in any shape matter or form - it assumes that which it then claims to "prove").
This line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. You have a first condition, and a second, later condition, and because the two differ, you assume, with no proof, that this "proves" all the following:
1. that there are such things as probablistic wavorms
2. that there is such a thing as a superposition of states
3. that observing the system causes the collapse of these alleged staes
Now, down to brass tacks.
Prove any of this. Can't be done. Every experiment that claims to do so can also have the same result if, at small scales, time can flow in both directions. The best part is that, unlike your cat thought experiment, some of the 2-slit experiments give this result. So if you're going to foe someone over an argument that you can't even prove, keep to your pseudo-scienty-religion. I'll apply the principle of parsimony, and take the simplest explanation that explains the real observations in the real world.
The Pope would have loved you at Galileo's trial.
For one thing, it both explains AND solves the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Can QM do either? No - it only describes, without an underlying explanation as to why except "that's the way it is."
Take for example the question of where an electron orbits the nucleus. QM says we can't say where, only give a probability.
Here's a "bad" analogy, but it's a start. Picture you at home. During the course of the day, you go from room to room, doing things. Sometimes, you leave. Now, someone whose best observational resolution is 1 day will, when asked, only be able to say that they can give a probability as to whether you're in a particular room or not, or even that you may have "ceased to exist" (the equivalent of popping in and out of the so-called quantum foam - another dumb invention, which can also be better explained by particles simply moving back and forth a bit in time).
Since mathematically there's no real difference between space and time, why should we be surprised? Especially since the 2-slit experiments (the ones where the observer affects the outcome even if they only observe after the particle has passed thru the slit) are much better proof of the apparent reversal of causality that time travel of individual particles would cause, than any sort of "dual nature" of particles (which still doesn't really explain the results except with LOTS of hand-waving).
Or are you going to insist that, like the Pope, science is now a religion and can never be wrong?
Nonsense - time travel is traveling from point A to point B in time, same as traveling in space is traveling from city A to city B, or room A to room B.
We do it every day - and the difference in elapsed time between the ground and the space shuttle has been documented, with atomic clocks running slower on the shuttle in orbit.
Just because something is staring you right in the nose (your passage through time from one instant to the next) is not an excuse to ignore it. Doing so led to our current stupidity, and our insistence on constructing an overly-complicated model of the universe to explain things like the two-slit experiment and spooky action at a distance, when if time is like every other dimension, it all "just works." Even quantum entanglement now becomes simply another aspect of the conservation of matter and energy - no violation of information passing faster than C between two points, or alternatively, particles somehow not being "really" entangled for a finite period of time.
The simpler explanation that fits all the facts should always be preferred, don't you think?
No, what I'm saying is that it was just a thought experiment, there was never any cat, and if you did it in real life, the cat doesn't "split into a superposition of states" - it either lives or dies. Schrodinger f***ed up.
That's baby-peek-a-boo reasoning - cover your eyes, and the world disappears.
And no, nowhere did I say the universe is what I make of it - that's YOUR argument. That because you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. Maybe in some future, we'll find a way to measure it - but if we insist it doesn't exist, we'll never find it, and continue looking in the wrong places and making the wrong deductions.
Time is the same as any other dimension - there's no reason to believe that at a small enough scale, it can go in both directions, which explains things like spooky action at a distance through simple conservation, rather than some crap about "quantum entanglement" - which brings up the question, if C is the speed limit, how is quantum entanglement possible without violating it? Oh, wiat - it must reach back in time at exactly the same speed. What a complicated s***house we've built. Nope - to the extent that other explanations, explanations that back up our understanding of everything else (after all, have you ever seen an example that violates any of the laws of conservation of energy or mass).
First ,it was Djkstra who said "so bad it's not even wrong."
Second, the variant of the two-slit experiment, where the path of the photon is only observed after it has passed through the slit changes whether it generates an interference pattern or not, has two interpretations - the classical one, and the one that involves time actually working just fine in both directions at a small enough scale.
It's only the insistence of people that they must continue to build more and more convoluted "'splanations" (sort of like the pre-Copernian gang with their epicycles and cycles within cycles and all that crap) who deny the clear evidence of their eyes, that time does, at the most basic scales, go in either direction as required.
It's akin to Einstein's biggest mistake - saying that there's no such thing as "spooky action at a distance" - which also can be explained by either the Copenhagen gang OR by time working in both directions. Of the two, Occam's Razor makes it clear that time should be treated no differently than space (after all, we even call it space-time), as it provides the simplest explanation for everything from particle decay half-lives to particle entanglement (it just becomes another aspect of the laws of conservation of matter and energy).
But keep on rejecting the simpler, more obvious explanation, and build up those epicycles.
What I can't help wondering is how soon some start-up will offer to help you literally "game the system?"
So? Just because it's the smallest we can measure doesn't mean that it's the smallest there is. Or are you going to claim that amoebas only sprang into existence when Anthony van Leeuwenhoek invented the microsocope?
And you base this extraordinary claim on what evidence? The universe is grainy - the question is how far below the Planck constant that graininess act at .. and that includes not just mass and energy, but time as well, which neatly gets rid of the stupidity of "wavicles" and "wave functions."
That doesn't change the fact that you, and many others in this thread, made a statement that was clearly false to anyone who gives it a seconds thought ... and this brings up the question of how many other things people "assume" because they can't apply everyday observations to overcome their built-in biases.
It's this lack of rigor that perpetuates silly thinking such as "it's impossible for 2 particles to be moving towards each other faster than the speed of light in a vaccuum" - something that anyone with a couple of mirrors can demonstrate is not true.
Depends on the cat, I guess. But yes, it's a stupid experiment that led to a wrong interpretation of the real world. It ignores the fact that the cat is an observer, as well as assuming that time can only go in one direction (and that last one has been in doubt for 50 years or so).
It's not just the OLF. Quebec has always been the most corrupt province in Canada (and usually the western world as well, which takes some doing). It's a blemish on both the RoC and Quebecers that it seems to perpetuate itself, no matter which set of crooks is in power.
The problem won't resolve itself internally, any more than Syria will.
It also makes a much cleaner description than the messy one that we've been building upon for the last century - and it also gives the same results at the quantum level. What we have is a failure to imagine, to question, and to look for a simpler explanation.
For example, the results of observation in the 2-slit diffraction experiments, where a photon appears to interfere with itself, and the results are different when there's an observer, are better explained w/o resorting to such foolishness as "dual particle/wave nature of photons", but it's going to take at least generation before people are ready to even think of giving up their current theories.
Science is by nature VERY sloppy, since we don't start with all the answers, so we build upon what we think we know. And sometimes, we're wrong. The problem is that rigor doesn't necessarily separate out the good from the bad, since our observations are by their very nature, tainted by our preconceptions.
For example,
Look at the wrong assumptions built into that statement. Time travel is very definitely possible - or are you stuck in one moment in time?
I dismiss it because we now have some evidence that it took us down the wrong road.
BTW, science IS about being right or wrong - when you build a castle on a flawed hypothesis and aren't ready to question it and toss it on the trash-bin when it's wanting, that's not science, that's religion.
For once, someone who isn't afraid to dump old idioms.
Just one quibble. When you say:
Considered by many as the best sci-fi short story every written - and it's got time travel with a few twists.
Seal him in a box long enough, and he's definitely dead. Same as it's the correct answer to the Schrodinger's cat experiment. No outside observer is needed to "collapse the wave function" pseudo-science b***s***. Just the passage of time yields the answer. Anyone who believes that the cat is both dead and alive until someone else looks in is welcome to seal themselves in a box and "live forever."
Worked really well for the pharaohs, didn't it? And people buried in mines for months.
If there's one thing we are sure about, it's that about 1/3 of all our knowledge is wrong. Including the hard sciences. Vast chunks of QM are probably part of that 1/3.
Besides, the question was to prove it to the original author's satisfaction - NO outside interference is envisioned, and adding your extra observer is not part of the question as asked.
I swear, people really need to learn (1) how to read, and (2) how to think logically - the quality of so-called trolls sucks.
And yes, it is possible to prove one way or another whether there will never be a lion in my fridge - but the proof requires a LOT of time ... literally a lifetime. What next - a "proof by bad car analogy?"
Nonsense. This is the sort of stupidity that gets people into trouble with so-called logic. The same stupidity that insists that if time travel were possible, you can't go back in time and shoot your grandparents because it would "create a paradox", not realizing that the universe doesn't "care" about paradoxes - 'it is what it is."
Sure - I looked. Just like there was no dead cat in Schroedingers' box when I looked (then again, there was no live cat either - he was just messing with everyone's head ... prove otherwise :-)