RE: virus: MEME UPDATE: To Censor Or Not?
Schneider John (JSCHNEID@hanoverdirect.com)
Mon, 16 Dec 1996 04:10:28 -0500
David pape wrote:
> >Obvious sources of nondetermination:
> > Quantum mechanics. [Granted, magnifying it to macroscopic
> >level is difficult. But not impossible--cf. Schrodinger's Cat.]
>
> Excellent point sir! I'm a real beginner in QM... almost totally
> hammered by even the simplest parts of the maths. I'd very much
> like to know what you think about the "universe cannot have per-
> fect knowledge about how it works" proposal in my last posting.
> Because... well, QM is very very accurate, but not totally so...
> are there any physicists around who think that the reason you get
> such bizarre effects as measurement collapsing the Schroedinger
> equation is because... erm... we're at a level of detail where...
> erm... maths can't take us any further? Where, due to the limited
> ability of teh universe to compute its own nature, we're starting
> to get odd results? I know this sounds like a shitty cop-out, but
> I'm interested in the idea of humanity's search for truth reaching
> an asymptotic gap from the Truth...
I think one can write down some pretty spectacular theories, which
are deterministic, exact, and nonlocal, but out of which will fall
the result that we are unable to make measurements in defiance of
Heisnberg's uncertainty principle. I believe Bohm, Aharanov, and
perhaps others have worked on such theories.
(Although, my own expertise in actually making calculations goes
only as far as doing very 'undergraduate textbook' type stuff...)
Your suggestion sounds like it would relate well with Godel's
incompleteness theorems, which I regret that I've never studied
from a technical viewpoint before, so can't do anything more than
mention it.
- JPSchneider
- jschneid@hanoverdirect.com