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Re: [OM] New additions to the Living History Farm

Subject: Re: [OM] New additions to the Living History Farm
From: Mike Gordon via olympus <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2020 23:11:24 +0000 (UTC)
Cc: usher99@xxxxxxx
Entangled Moose writes:

<<<More a philosophical problem that a science problem, no?

Seems to be both a science AND philosophical problem.  QM has proven extremely 
robust in predicting experimental results and if there were convincing evidence 
that 
objective results are observer dependent, that would have profound 
implications.  There is no clear upper limit to the size of objects that can 
undergo entanglement: 

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/45/22413


Even if not directly applicable, quantum effects can be very imp't for 
macroscopic beings--witness use of the these effects by enzymes,  navigation by 
flutterbys and probably birds--magneto-reception is very likely based on the 
production of quantum entangled radical pairs that interact differently with 
the earth's magnetic field.

I suppose if QM is a final theory with nothing deeper, we may never know how it 
works.  If one is an anti-realist  like Niels Bohr all this doesn't matter.  He 
is the source for the "Copenhagen
interpretation" which can be summarized as "shut up and calculate."   There are 
no paradoxes when QM viewed like that as wave functions are not real but an 
artificial construction like a hieroglyph that are useful in predicting results 
but have no do not mirror reality.  Einstein and other realists have a problem 
as there is no explanation for how wave functions collapse and nonlocality. 
Hidden variables have been debunked by elegant experiments showing violation of 
Bell's inequality. It just seems very unsatisfactory not have  a deeper 
explanation for the workings of QM. Most physicists working on this have 
previously ended up in departments of mathematics or philosophy.  There is no  
conspiracy against this line of inquiry but no mentor would let their  student 
head down a likely dead end.  There seems to be more work on this now and 
perhaps the physicist is alive today that will slay John Wheeler's "Great 
Smokey Dragon." 
(tail is wave fxn before collapse, head is after, with large smokey middle)

As Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion albeit a very persistent one," 
or better yet from the  american science fiction writer Philip K Dick, "Reality 
is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away,"  Mike
-- 
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