HalFinney comments on The Quantum Arena - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 April 2008 07:00PM

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Comment author: HalFinney 16 April 2008 03:34:08AM 0 points [-]

I have a question on locality. If we consider multiple particles, then the Laplacian is the sum of Laplacian operators corresponding to each particle. This means that the wave function evolution as a whole depends on the local environment around every particle in the configuration. Seemingly this would allow changes in the neighborhood of particle 1 to affect the evolution of particle 2. Yet we know this does not happen, or at least, there are limits to the range of effects which can occur, because of relativity. I don't know how this locality constraint is effectively enforced, in a multi-particle configuration space, or in fact in what sense QM is local when we consider multiple particles.