Interesting Links for 01-08-2025

[andrewducker]

1. The real reason why modern media is making us dumber

(tags:media funny aliens comic )

2. Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality

(tags:quantum polls viaPatrickHadfield )

3. A cozy farming game set in The Shire? That's not a license to print money at all!

(tags:games farming lotr )

4. Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20,000 homes come on the market

(tags:housing economics )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

Thank you! The list of interpretations is just funny. Every interpretation still relies on Newton's analysis, not on algebra.

[calimac]

2) The footnote - "In practice, it would be extremely hard to isolate the quantum state of a cat-sized object from that of its noisy environment; its state would have been resolved as alive or dead before measurement" - makes nonsense of the entire dilemma.

[redbird]

Making nonsense of the illustration/thought experiment doesn't answer the underlying problem. It might be a point in favor of the "I don't care, the measurements are useful" approach.

[calimac]

But the problem that you are referring to, while a problem, is not a dilemma. I'm referring to the dilemma.

[andrewducker]

To quote from elsewhere "Fundamentally, the Schrödinger's cat experiment asks how long quantum superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse."

Schroedinger was pointing out how silly some of the consequences of a simple approach to quantum physics could be. He didn't expect it to be an actual experiment or to be taken as seriously as some people have.

[calimac]

He was pointing it out. He was pointing out the dilemma caused by imagining* a situation in which you force the superpositions of the quantum world into existing in the ordinary macro world.

But the footnote collapses this dilemma by saying it wouldn't work that way. You wouldn't be able to set the experiment up in the first place.

*Of course it wasn't an actual experiment. We're not going to kill a cat! But it was an actual thought experiment.

[threemeninaboat]

4) There are homes for sale in my neighborhood, which is rare. Most of these homes are now occupied by the 4th generation; as they are large enough to hold 4 generations of a family in each home.