New answers tagged quantum-physics
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
Quantum mechanics is a theory that describes the behavior of nature at the scale of atoms and particles. You describe "macro events" as socio-political manifestations. Interractions between ...
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
As currently written, the OP is not conceptually consistent. It starts well, with "Events in the world can be described on the macro scale or the micro scale." Evidently true.
Almost ...
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
An attempt to answer your title question “How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?“ is the mechanism of decoherence.
On the level of microphysics quantum mechanics rests on ...
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
I wait for a Geiger counter to count 100 events, then I go for breakfast. Now I have moved a quantum event into a macroscopic scale. Because I went for breakfast 10 seconds later, I bumped into a ...
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
It depends on the nature of the events. Some physical systems are very susceptible to microscopic changes and others are not. Take a Geiger counter connected to the launch console of the US nuclear ...
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How does quantum mechanics affect the probability of macro events?
To my eye, it looks like multiple questions are being asked at once, so I'm going to try to pick them out and answer them:
Is quantum mechanics deterministic, or probabilistically random? You'll read ...
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Would a nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics be more parsimonious?
Serious philosophers of science have generally considered "parsimony" to be only a suggestive criterion, as it is too vague a term to actually use to justify any conclusion. Karl Popper, ...
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Would a nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics be more parsimonious?
There is a controversy that is commonly described as being about the interpretation of quantum theory.
These different interpretations are actually different accounts of what is happening in reality ...
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Would a nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics be more parsimonious?
In qm "a definite world" and "realism" are old concepts no matter how you make the interpretation. Bohmian mechanics replaces the "undecided position" of particles by ...
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Would a nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics be more parsimonious?
Quantum mechanics (QM), as long as speaking about undisturbed
elementary particles, deals with a world of possibilities. Reality
originates when we force the microworld by an experiment to create a
...
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Is time not perceivable without motion or change?
If you are talking about physical versus psychological time, the relation between time, motion, and change comes up again and again. In modern physics, of course, we have v = x/t which rewritten is t =...
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Is time not perceivable without motion or change?
The concept of change presupposes the concept of time because change
is defined by comparing the state at two different points in time.
Because you ponder whether the relation of time and change is a
...
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Is time not perceivable without motion or change?
Your question doesn't have a meaningful answer, because it pre-supposes something that is physically impossible. In effect, what you are asking is what would be the implications for time if we ignore ...
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Does Quantum Entanglement Disprove the Principle of Locality?
It doesn't violate locality as entanglement happens because the eyes of YHVH sees it. This is the source of entanglement.
The notions of particles changing at a distance is a misguided notion in ...
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Does quantum mechanics break the principle of local causality?
This question is about the interpretation of quantum theory (QT). The most popular interpretation at the moment is Everett's Many Worlds model and this will be used here.
According to QT a particle is ...
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Does Quantum Entanglement Disprove the Principle of Locality?
The top answer here simply defines locality to mean not allowing super luminal signaling. But that is not the traditional definition of locality. The fact that there is a joint wave function that ...
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Does quantum mechanics break the principle of local causality?
It certainly seems that way. Entanglement experiments show that interactions in one place can affect interactions in another without there being sufficient time for a cause to propagate from one to ...
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What kind of philosophy of the foundations of physics can there be?
Hmmm. I am not a logician, and just the abstract of that link appears to be in a foreign language to me!
However, I think I can answer your question anyway.
There were two different things that ...
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What kind of philosophy of the foundations of physics can there be?
I have looked at your citation, and think that the topos approach may have merit. I would like to answer your more general question in your second bullet point about the philosophical foundation of ...
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Does quantum mechanics mean that we are far behind in understanding the physical universe?
So, what do you think understanding is? In science, it generally means having models of the world that make correct predictions.
The photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and the ultraviolet-...
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How does Quantum Mechanics affect the modern account of free will and determinism?
The question of free will is not "could it have been otherwise?' It is "could I have had an effect on the outcome?" Could I have chosen an ice cream and thereby affect the outcome? The ...
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Does quantum mechanics mean that we are far behind in understanding the physical universe?
Just to add one further aspect to the answer of @MarcoOcram. My answer refers only to your title question:
Since about one hundred years quantum mechanics teaches us the hard lesson to dismiss the ...
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Does quantum mechanics mean that we are far behind in understanding the physical universe?
There seem to me to be several misconceptions in your question. Quantum mechanics isn't a replacement for Newtonian- the two are different models of reality, with different realms of applicability. ...
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Does knowledge of the scientific context aid consideration of philosophical questions?
It is not so much that "knowledge of the scientific context aids consideration of philosophical questions" but more to the point, the knowledge of the scientific context is necessary to make ...
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Does knowledge of the scientific context aid consideration of philosophical questions?
Sure- if you want to make sense of any kind of issue it is important to know something about it. However, if you are asking whether it makes sense to summarise the science in an area before posing a ...
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Does knowledge of the scientific context aid consideration of philosophical questions?
Yes but not always. Science provides the glimpse of the actual nature of macro and micro phenomena and helps philosophy in understanding what reality actually is.For example- On the scale of quantum ...
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How does Quantum Mechanics affect the modern account of free will and determinism?
Your question is impossible to answer decisively because there are so many conflicting interpretations of what free will means, and so many conflicting theories associated with each interpretation. ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
I have pondered this, but I'm no scientist. This might be related to the question: "where does the universe end on either macro or micro scale?". But at any scale, any physical phenomenon ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
Perhaps you might be reading too much into the meaning of the word probabilistic when you ask why does the world have to be probabilistic instead of chaotic. There is a sense in which you can't escape ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
The “law of large numbers is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
Reality comes first, models after
The Law Of Large Numbers does not dictate anything. As with any other model of reality, it simply fits observations of reality. The Law Of Large Numbers was chosen to ...
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Does the law of large numbers explain why quantum mechanics leads to statistical regularities?
For any model of quantum mechanics proposed to explain the behavior of exceedingly small physical systems to be judged potentially correct, it must smoothly cross over into the predictive realm of ...
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How does Quantum Mechanics affect the modern account of free will and determinism?
The question depends on what kind of stuff the universe is made of. Is it material, mental, or a combination of both? Some forms of panpsychism propose the latter. Bell's Theorem suggests a possible ...
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Does Bell’s theorem assume realism? If so, what kind of realism, philosophically?
It's late, so I am tired and apt to make mistakes, but I think that even if the measurement devices are affecting the results of experiments (and by the way, they do), the difficulty with trying to ...
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Why are nonlocal deterministic theories considered less plausible than indeterminism?
Physics is undetermined, as explained in this answer: Deterministic or stochastic universe?
Math and logic are also undetermined, as explained in this answer: Is the Münchhausen trilemma really ...
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Why are nonlocal deterministic theories considered less plausible than indeterminism?
Relativity unifies space and time, and in the process also a lot of other seemingly separate concepts: energy and momentum, electricity and magnetism, and so on. Quantum mechanics unifies classical ...
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Why are nonlocal deterministic theories considered less plausible than indeterminism?
My instinct is always to remind myself that QM is just a model. It's one that has been phenomenally successful in allowing calculations that agree precisely with experimental results, but it's still ...
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Why are nonlocal deterministic theories considered less plausible than indeterminism?
I take it nonlocal deterministic means nonlocal hidden variables theories.
There is a lot of history on nonlocal hidden variables that I can only jesture at:
For many decades von Neumann had an ...
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Accepted
How do we know that the superposition of states in quantum mechanics is a real phenomenon? Does this have philosophical significance?
The embarrassing truth for physics is that the ontology of quantum theory remains unclear. I might have some objections to your suggestion that electrons might 'disappear' between measurements- ...
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The Copenhagen Interpretation: From Quantum Mechanics to Ethics?
Interesting speculation. QM seems to require an observer of the process you describe. Do ethics require conscious apprehension by an observer? I have no idea. But the requirement for consciousness in ...
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How do we know that the superposition of states in quantum mechanics is a real phenomenon? Does this have philosophical significance?
The principle of superposition of quantum states says: If a particle is prepared to be in the superposition state
alpha |lambda> + beta |mu>
with complex numbers alpha, beta satisfying |alpha|^2 ...
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How do we know that the superposition of states in quantum mechanics is a real phenomenon? Does this have philosophical significance?
If it is in fact the case that your alternative theory is equivalent in terms of empirical observations and predictions to the superposition theory, then it is not actually an alternative at all, but ...
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Do acausal quantum events come in between two classical events?
The way I see it, there is no such thing as a classical determinist world juxtaposed with a quantic non-determinist world. That would be a schizophrenic universe.
The world is coherent. It's one world,...
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Do acausal quantum events come in between two classical events?
No, and here is why.
To begin with, the classical and quantum realms are separated by a vast difference in distance scales. the distance scale for the quantum world is ~smaller than an atom and for ...
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Can Mathematics Fully Describe the Universe?
No it cannot not. The reson for this is that mathematics is not the most fundamental science. What was mentioned even in Euclid? Yes, systems! Theory of systems is the most fundamental science.
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Can Mathematics Fully Describe the Universe?
Max Tegmark says that the Universe is Mathematics. I happen to agree with his insanity, at least in part.
There is mathematics, and then there is Mathematics. The mathematics we humans know about are ...
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Can Mathematics Fully Describe the Universe?
To the extent that we can model these physical phenomena as mathematical constructs. There is no theoritical limit to it, althought there is a practical one: the interrelations of these phenomena ...
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Can Mathematics Fully Describe the Universe?
I see many answers full of certainties, with quotes from Godel's theorem and other sentences that seem to demonstrate that mathematics is a representation of reality and as such cannot explain all of ...
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