paper-machine comments on [SEQ RERUN] On Being Decoherent - Less Wrong

3 Post author: MinibearRex 18 April 2012 05:06AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 19 April 2012 10:36:00PM *  2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 21 April 2012 05:11:57AM 0 points [-]

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?