[SEQ RERUN] On Being Decoherent

MinibearRex

Today's post, On Being Decoherent was originally published on 27 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

When a sensor measures a particle whose amplitude distribution stretches over space - perhaps seeing if the particle is to the left or right of some dividing line - then the standard laws of quantum mechanics call for the sensor+particle system to evolve into a state of (particle left, sensor measures LEFT) + (particle right, sensor measures RIGHT). But when we humans look at the sensor, it only seems to say "LEFT" or "RIGHT", never a mixture like "LIGFT". This, of course, is because we ourselves are made of particles, and subject to the standard quantum laws that imply decoherence. Under standard quantum laws, the final state is (particle left, sensor measures LEFT, human sees "LEFT") + (particle right, sensor measures RIGHT, human sees "RIGHT").

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Where Experience Confuses Physicists, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, On Being Decoherent was originally published on 27 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

When a sensor measures a particle whose amplitude distribution stretches over space - perhaps seeing if the particle is to the left or right of some dividing line - then the standard laws of quantum mechanics call for the sensor+particle system to evolve into a state of (particle left, sensor measures LEFT) + (particle right, sensor measures RIGHT). But when we humans look at the sensor, it only seems to say "LEFT" or "RIGHT", never a mixture like "LIGFT". This, of course, is because we ourselves are made of particles, and subject to the standard quantum laws that imply decoherence. Under standard quantum laws, the final state is (particle left, sensor measures LEFT, human sees "LEFT") + (particle right, sensor measures RIGHT, human sees "RIGHT").

I'm tapping out.

Nobody seems to think EY's exposition is an issue, and you're the second person who's tried -- and I can't understand the motivation for this -- to explain the underlying QM to me in vague metaphors that neither reflect the underlying theory nor present a pedagogical simplification.

But it does reflect the underlying theory (though it does take special cases and simplifies), and it does present a pedagogical simplification (because it's a hell of a lot easier than solving huge quantum systems. Heck, it's not even a metaphor. A DAG is blank enough - has few enough intrinsic properties - to be an incomplete model instead of a metaphor.

Does anything other than a fully quantum description of a system using only an interacting-particle hamiltonian with no externally applied fields count as a non-vague non-metaphor?