mgoretsky comments on Configurations and Amplitude - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2008 07:41AM

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Comment author: mgoretsky 12 March 2012 03:35:34AM *  0 points [-]

Eliezer, regarding the Fig.1 experiment above you're saying "The half-silvered mirror obeys the same rule every time." "This same result occurs—the same amplitudes stored in the same configurations—every time you run the program (every time you do the experiment)." OK, mathematical result is the same. However, physical results at detectors 1 & 2 are not the same: click at either of them is not predictable. There is symmetry in math vs asymmetry of physical result for any individual photon. Is there any "quantum explanation" for such physical dissimilarity?

Comment author: arundelo 12 March 2012 03:52:03PM *  0 points [-]

Well, from the perspective of everyday life—way, way, way above the quantum level and a lot more complicated—the magical measuring tool is that we send some photons toward the half-silvered mirror, one at a time, and count up how many photons arrive at Detector 1 versus Detector 2 over a few thousand trials. The ratio of these values is the ratio of the squared moduli of the amplitudes.

The ratio of "photon at detector 1" and "photon at detector 2" (averaged over enough trials) is 1.

If none of that made sense, don't worry. It will be cleared up in future posts.

Edit: This was actually written as a response to one of these comments.

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