[Buddha-l] Re: Views of Information & Knowledge

[Bernie Simon]

On Sep 14, 2006, at 2:00 PM, Barnaby Thieme  wrote:

> I don't know what you've been reading, but there is significantly more 
> to
> the interpretation than that. The most widely-cited implication of the
> interpretation (drawn by Bohr and Heisenberg themselves) is that it is
> meaningless to ascribe some properties to quantum phenomena in the 
> absence
> of measurement. This view has been corroborated by John Archibald 
> Wheeler's
> oft-replicated delayed choice experiments.

What you're talking about are usually referred to as hidden variables. 
All interpretations of quantum mechanics that are taken seriously don't 
have hidden variables. This is not a distinguishing feature of the 
Copenhagen Interpretation. Quantum entanglement means you either have 
to give up hidden variables or local causation and physicists would 
rather give up the former.

> Yes, not unlike Nagarjuna's doctrine of the Two Truths. Precisely what 
> I
> find interesting about the Copenhagen interpration of QM is that it 
> suggests
> the seeming-paradoxes of quantum mechanics arise when we try to ask 
> what
> quantum events are like "in themselves", prior to measurement. This is 
> what
> latter-day Tibetan exegetes of Madhyamaka such as Tsong Khapa have 
> called
> "ultimate analysis". As the Madhyamakas would predict, trying to 
> describe
> what quantum events are like in themselves leads to contradiction.

Quantum mechanics is a set of mathematical models of reality. 
Mathematics does not have paradoxes or contradictions like ordinary 
language does. The paradoxes of quantum mechanics are counter-intuitive 
results of the theory and not true paradoxes. The chief problem of 
quantum mechanics is that the terms of the models, the matrices and 
operators, do not have a simple realistic interpretation.

> How interesting. Strange that Wikipedia reports:
>
> "According to a poll at a Quantum Mechanics workshop in 1997, the 
> Copenhagen
> interpretation is the most widely-accepted specific interpretation of
> quantum mechanics, followed by the Many-worlds interpretation."

Wikipedia is not always a reliable source. My view is based on my 
knowledge of the field. I have a degree in physics and work at the 
Space Telescope. Most physicists don't have an interpretation of 
quantum mechanics any more than they have a consistent philosophy of 
science. But almost all scientists are realists and view the 
mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics as describing a real state 
of affairs, not just a method for deriving the results of measurements, 
as it is in the Copenhagen interpretation.

> I'm not saying that Nagarjuna was performing particle physics, but the
> similarities here are rather obvious.

Only if you do violence to the two theories.

----
Bernie Simon / Jinpa Zangpo
weird but harmless