Today’s post, The Quantum Arena was originally published on 15 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Instead of a system state being associated with a single point in a classical configuration space, the instantaneous real state of a quantum system is a complex amplitude distribution over a quantum configuration space. What creates the illusion of “individual particles”, like an electron caught in a trap, is a plaid distribution—one that happens to factor into the product of two parts. It is the whole distribution that evolves when a quantum system evolves. Individual configurations don’t have physics; amplitude distributions have physics. Quantum entanglement is the general case; quantum independence is the special case.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Classical Configuration Spaces, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.
[SEQ RERUN] The Quantum Arena
Today’s post, The Quantum Arena was originally published on 15 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we’ll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky’s old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Classical Configuration Spaces, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day’s sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.