Decius comments on [SEQ RERUN] Tolerate Tolerance - Less Wrong
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Yep. It wouldn't impact entanglement experiments, however, and wouldn't impact wave physics characteristics, but rather the particle physics characteristics of the experiment.
The two-slit experiment depends upon the assumption that photons (wave or particle) are above the Planck threshold - if they're beneath it, they wouldn't have sufficient energy to reliably induce a reaction in the screen behind the plate, meaning a strict wave interpretation could be valid (the intermittent reactions could be the product of sufficient energy build-up in the receiving electrons, rather than photons intermittently striking different parts of the screen). In regard to wave characteristics of photons, statistically this would be nearly identical to particle emissions - we should expect "blips" in a distribution roughly equal to the distribution we should expect from particle emissions. I say nearly identical because I assume some underlying mechanism by which electrons lose energy over time, meaning the least-heavily radiated areas to lose energy at a rate rapid enough to prevent valence shell shifting and hence fewer blips.
...which might be evidence for my theory, actually, since we do indeed see fewer reactions than we might expect in the least-radiated portions of the screen, per that open problem/unexplained phenomenon whose name I can't recall that Eliezer goes on about a bit in one of the sequences. (The observed reactions are the square of the probability, rather than the probability itself, of a particle hitting a given section of the screen. I'm mangling terminology, I know.) Laziness is now competing with curiosity on whether I go and actually pull out one of my mathematics textbooks. If I were in therapy for crackpottery this would set me back months.
(Note: Having looking up the experiment to try to get the proper name for the screen behind the plate (without any success), it appears I was mistaken in my initial claim - the -original- intended purpose of the experiment, demonstrating wave characteristics of light, remains intact. It's merely wave-particle duality, a later adaptation of the experiment, which loses evidence. Retracting that comment as invalid.)
Also, keep in mind that the only was an experiment can fail is if it provides no new information; the only way to render an experiment invalid or less useful is to show that you don't know as much more as you thought you did.
But I thought you were referring to the modification of the two-slit experiment where electrons were the wave being measured, not photons.
And an experiment can't fail to provide new information, because you thought it would provide information and then it didn't, which means it has something to teach you about experiment design. Unless you're proposing that an experiment that goes exactly as expected is a waste of time?
That said I think what Wilde means by 'invalid' is that a strong conclusion that resulted from the experiment is invalid in light of the fact that an entirely different model is consistent with the evidence.
An experiment that fails would be "I was trying to measure the speed of neutrinos, but I measured lab errors instead.", or "I tried to titrate a solution, but used an excess of phenolphthalein accidentally."