There's a good paper by Schlosshauer and Camilleri that discusses the historical debate over the Heisenberg cut and how the question has mostly been answered by the idea of decoherence. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1609v1.pdf I say 'mostly' because pushing the Heisenberg cut all the way to include conscious observers, as in Everett's interpretation of QM, is still a little controversial because we lack a good theory of consciousness. Brent Meeker On 7/26/2013 6:17 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
Quite a discussion going on here:
"to quote the physicist J.S. Bell:
"It would seem that the theory is exclusively concerned about “results of measurement,” and has nothing to say about anything else. What exactly qualifies some physical systems to play the role of “measurer”? Was the wavefunction of the world waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer, for some better qualified system … *** with a Ph.D.? **** If the theory is to apply to anything but highly idealized laboratory operations, are we not obliged to admit that more or less “measurement-like” processes are going on more or less all the time, more or less everywhere. (“Against ‘Measurement’ “)"
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/return-of-the-stingy-oddsmak...
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3349 / Virus Database: 3209/6521 - Release Date: 07/25/13