SoberEnough

I think that venturing into the world of interpretation of QM is borderline crackpottery in general. My first quarter TAing for an undergrad CM course I was able to convince my class (many of them were the wiser) that Lagrangian mechanics implies that that inanimate matter are conscious as they have the capability to choose GLOBAL trajectories which minimize the action for a system when Newtonian mechanics seems to imply that trajectories are formed locally. Same physics, different formulation. It was a huge digression nearing the end of the quarter but the point was that it is difficult to "interpret" even classical mechanics as in actuality the formalization of classical mechanics is in some sense more complex than QM. There are legitimate anomalous things that occur in QM, such as the Stern-Gerlach experiment (which I think is pedagogically superior to multi-slit apparati for demonstrating weird characteristics in QM) but there are actually bizarre concepts in formal classical mechanics that get swept under the rug by pop sci. There is a divide between philosophy and science, there just is. They are non-overlapping magisteria and as such, it is likely to be in your best interest as a scientist not to encumber yourself with philosophical thoughts as you formulate theory. Einstein (despite what you have been told), did not give a damn about philosophy when formulating his theory of relativity (special or general). In fact, it was Einstein's philosophical objections to the non-deterministic aspects of QM that led him to posit for a long time that there MUST exist a local hidden variable theory that reformulated quantum mechanics with absolute outcomes. Bell put that to rest and we thank him for it. Whenever someone uses QM for the basis of ANY philosophical assertion, you know they are full of shit. This type of stuff just reminds us.

I still don't understand what this link is getting at. There are no representations given for these operators, they seem to be given ad hoc. Never even heard of "fractal binary" being used in this context. In quantum computing you need to find a way to remove decoherence and it is not as trivial as coming up with some clever way to compute numbers of qubits and the states of the wavefunction in a complex system. You get emergent properties, gates, etc. This isn't even the point, look at one of the first sentences on this page "Fractal Binary is about Normalizing Numbers as Physical Wave Sets." That makes no sense. You don't normalize numbers, you normalize wavefunctions to scale 1. Maybe the jargon he has is unknown to me but I still think this is crackpottery.

Maybe it is better to reach out to the person in general instead of confronting. My experience with people in abusive relationships is that the recipient of the violence isn't exactly a victim but more like a person comfortable with living in a cycle of abuse. I think it is a little audacious to have faith in them to heed sober advice when they are in that type of environment. This type of thing also has ways of getting yourself into some trouble. Befriend them and just be a positive influence.

Was this been resolved yet?

I tried electronic cigarettes when I attempted to quit smoking and absolutely hated them. I smoke Lucky Strikes so to me it was like trying to smoke a wet, filtered cigarette through a wine cork.

I've never heard and/or seen this before and it looks a little like crackpot numerology to me. There isn't a representation or even a description of these operators he is using.

I have just started reading Discipline and Punishment. I have a dreaded fascination with the merits of the penal system. I find myself identifying with Foucault's slow disillusionment with statism. As a reformed socialist the arguments are particularly pertinent. It is interesting to see the role of the state explored in this context. It tends to make more sense to hardcore leftists. Even to this day, I explain my own political ideology to leftists as a sort of reverse-Marxism where the role of society is to reduce the state through perpetual revolution with "anarchy" being analogous to the "communist" Utopia. Has anyone else read Foucault's works? Sorry, new to the forum. There might be lengthy discussions regarding this already.

Sidney Coleman was always the voice of reason: http://media.physics.harvard.edu/video/?id=SidneyColeman_QMIYF

Interpretations of quantum mechanics are not quantum mechanics. It is best to stay away from that stuff. It even motivated people like von Neumann and Wigner to say some absolutely insane shit.

Seeing this is my first legitimate post on FDR and I actually come from this field maybe I can try to take some time to explain what "relativity" in the sense of Einstein is. I'll try to be succinct and avoid a tl;dr situation. Back in the days, there was Newtonian mechanics. Newton told us how to get the position of a particle given the nature of the forces imparted on it and a mathematical method called calculus. "Mechanics" in this context meant that the path of a particle was completely determined from initial conditions as time was viewed as an almost unique "parameterization" of the states of a system. The notion of determinism is still true in relativistic dynamics, this is how we differentiate classical from quantum mechanics. The only qualms that exist between the relativistic (in the sense of Einstein) and traditional dynamics is the statement that "time is viewed as an almost unique paramaterization" of the state of a system. The "principle of relativity" predates Newton, in fact, Newton makes considerations of it in his mechanics. Galileo is credited with first realizing that the laws of physics are invariant in frames where we consider relative distances. If you have two observers observing a rock fall, the one which is 3 meters away from the original uses the same laws to predict dynamics. The results of either experimenter are equivalent by the addition of some number. Einstein's notion of relativity was not that of what is actually moving but whether or not the laws of physics are invariant in certain conditions. Historically speaking, Michelson and Morley produced an experiment at the turn of the century that implied (although the implication wasn't clear to scientists at that time) that the speed of light was invariant with respect to your choice of inertial frame. An inertial frame is any choice of origin for an experimenter moving with constant velocity (when bodies experiment we need to generalize these notions, but I digress). Non-relativistically (in the sense of Galileo) speaking, if you are moving at 5 miles per hour and you throw a baseball at 1 mile per hour (you got a weak arm) relative to yourself, to an observer stationary with respect to the 5 mph frame the ball travels at 6 mph. This is a one-dimensional case, but it is easy to imagine. This is just a property of vectors. The 'stationary' ball in the 5 mph frame is in fact already moving at 5 mph relative to your static position, to impart additional velocity makes it travel faster. What Einstein wanted to know is if light behaved in this same way, as the propagation of waves in this time period were impinged on the existence of media that were subject to (Galilean) relativistic properties. Einstein made the very correct assumption that light could propagate through vacuum and that the speed of light must therefore (in vacuum) be invariant in all inertial frames on the basis of the Michelson-Morley experiment. If you work with this assumption, validated by experiment, the effects of time dilation are trivial to demonstrate. The attached picture illustrates the following situation: In FRAME 1, you are moving at speed v with a 'light clock' of height h which flashes a particle of light at t1=0 where it hits a mirror and is reflected back into a detector which produces an audible beep. You measure the time difference to be as illustrated. In FRAME 2 you are stationary with respect to FRAME 1, the time difference has to be determined by using Pythagorean theorem. Notice that the hypotenuse of the triangle MUST be (ct2 )/2 as this is the actual magnitude of distance sweeped by the photon. With some minor algebra you get that t2 and t1 in fact not equal, but different by a scaling factor (called the Lorentz factor). The question of where relativity is important is in fact determined by the Lorentz factor and if people want I can go into the details of that, and some other superfluous detail I didn't regard here (things that motivate the adoption of Minkowski space for dynamics). The point is this: you don't have to cry about the philosophical notions of relativity. If it is indeed true that the speed of light is invariant in all inertial frames we measure (we have countless experiments to corroborate this fact), then time-dilation occurs. What's more, electromagnetism implies special relativity through its inherent Lorentz invariance. You can sit around pontificating about your own greatness (not that I am saying that is what OP is doing, peopledo this) but the predictions made by SR are being constantly verified. We have computers in space right now that are demonstrating it within fractions of seconds as we speak. I'm trying not to introduce too much jargon, but someone mentioned a hypothetical "4th dimension." It is important to note that the only people I know of that take that shit seriously are string theorists and they are far from the realm of falsifiability at the present time. Strictly speaking, physicists and mathematicians know the divide between the addition of a dimension to complete Minkowski space as a model for special relativity and physical reality. One adopts Minkowski space to avoid arguing about this crap.

Well, I'm new to Baltimore. Just moved here from Santa Barbara, CA after finishin' my BS. Been a libertarian since my first week in a college atmosphere; maybe I am a natural contrarian or somethin' but the feel good statist worship made me nauseous almost instantaneously. I have been a fan of Stef's arguments on YouTube for a while. It is refreshing to see reductionist arguments in social issues. Might be some field bias. How y'all doing?!