On 7/26/2013 7:23 AM, Bernie Cosell wrote:
On 26 Jul 2013 at 6:17, Henry Baker wrote:
Quite a discussion going on here: By "here" I guess you mean in the NYTimes.. Thanks for the pointer.. I've always wondered this same thing. I don't understand QM, really, but I've wondered things like if the "first observer" collapses the wave, can you tell if you're a 'second observer" or not and you only *think* you collapsed the wave...
You won't learn anything useful from the NYT discussion (Callendar's essay is good, but it's short and assumes a lot of background). The best current ideas are decoherence and Everett's many worlds. Read Schlosshauer's review papers: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0804.1609v1.pdf or for more depth http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0312059.pdf Brent Meeker
"to quote the physicist J.S. Bell:
... 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.? And if you're not earth-centric, perhaps the wave function for the whole universed was collapsed by a being a zillion light-years away a billion years ago...
Thanks for the ptr!! /bernie\