paul_n. comments on Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical? - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 April 2008 07:06AM

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Comment author: paul_n. 15 April 2008 02:24:06PM 2 points [-]

Mitchell, the essence of indistinguishability is NOT "that if you were to get the two particles and move them around so that they occupied the other position, that would count as the same configuration, quantum mechanically." Bob doesn't care about a version of indistinguishability that restricts the relevant properties to those important for QM. QM-indistinguishability is not indistinguishability. So if that's the notion of indistinguishability at play here, then Bob could accept that QM can determine that two electrons are QM-indistinguishable while still objecting to the in-principle possibility of determining indistinguishability simpliciter.

But if the sense of indistinguishability in which the electrons are supposed to be indistinguishable is the simpliciter sense, then I still don't see how QM responds to the underlying structure argument above.