Friday 18 September 2015

More quantum madness

Yet another episode in the quantum madness game

This time the claim is the rather somewhat ludicrous claim that a microbe before it's position is measured is in two places at once.

This really is such  gibberish that it is hardly worth bothering with. But at the heart of it lies a misunderstanding of the nature of quantum superposition

The claim is that a quantum superposition is real so that particles really can be in two places at once until measured in which case the 'position wavfunction' collapses into one of the two positions.

Of course the more pragmatic point of view would see quantum superposition as a superposition of possibilities with a given probability of the object being in one position after measurement.

The latter interpretation is much more sensible and still consistent with the formalism of quantum mechanics. I really do despair why such a view isn't propagated more widely.

I don't understand the need to see quantum mechanics as something mysterious or weird has taken hold on so many people.

One can only sympathise with David Hume when he says regarding the tendency of rationalist philosophers to overstate their case

"Though the chain of arguments which conduct us to it were ever so logical, there must arise a strong suspicion …that it has carried us quite beyond the reach of our faculties when it leads us to conclusions, so extraordinary, and so remote from common life and experience, We are got into fairy land.  (An Enquiry Concerning Human Undestanding VII ) .










No comments:

Post a Comment