Hi, I’m the kind of guy I think this article was meant to target—I did not have an understanding of QM, but did start with enough base knowledge to follow the article without tripping over language or math in it.
I must say that I fried my brain trying to decipher what you’re trying to say. From one paragraph to the next, there’s a constant feeling a big hidden mental leap has been made. All of a sudden, one is left lost between notions that were introduced, but never explained.
For example. In Figure 3, from prior knowledge, I would suppose if you counted individual photons, they’d ALL end up in detectors 1 and 2 (none would be absorbed by obstacle) - this goes to explain what in fact happens when we think a particle “knows” where it’s going to end up. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
It should also be equally possible to explain the logic behind the quantum eraser—my intuition tells me that for some reason the information that “evades” us would, given better understanding, simply be a configuration that was not possible, and it should be clear what the link between the hidden information and the way configurations work is.
For example. In Figure 3, from prior knowledge, I would suppose if you counted individual photons, they’d ALL end up in detectors 1 and 2 (none would be absorbed by obstacle) - this goes to explain what in fact happens when we think a particle “knows” where it’s going to end up. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
You are. If you were to put a detector 3 there instead of an absorber, it would go off half the time, and detectors 1 and 2 would each go off a quarter of the time.
Are you implying that the presence of a detector instead of an obstacle changes what the other detectors detect, or not?
The text is unclear here:
Detector 1 goes off half the time and Detector 2 goes off half the time.
Does “half the time” mean “half the time that any detector goes off”, or “half the time you shoot a photon”? I would expect that, with the obstacle in place, half the time you shoot a photon no detector would go off, because the first mirror would deflect it into an obstacle. Seeing no detector go off is distinct and observable, so I don’t see any way it could be eliminated as a possibility like the other case described here where two possible timelines that lead to the same world interfere and cancel out. So I would assume Eliezer means “half the time that any detector goes off”. If so, I’d like to see the text updated to be more clear about this.
It means “half the time that any detector goes off”, assuming that the block is a bog-standard lump of wood and not a magical construct like the measurement tool.
Hi, I’m the kind of guy I think this article was meant to target—I did not have an understanding of QM, but did start with enough base knowledge to follow the article without tripping over language or math in it.
I must say that I fried my brain trying to decipher what you’re trying to say. From one paragraph to the next, there’s a constant feeling a big hidden mental leap has been made. All of a sudden, one is left lost between notions that were introduced, but never explained.
For example. In Figure 3, from prior knowledge, I would suppose if you counted individual photons, they’d ALL end up in detectors 1 and 2 (none would be absorbed by obstacle) - this goes to explain what in fact happens when we think a particle “knows” where it’s going to end up. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
It should also be equally possible to explain the logic behind the quantum eraser—my intuition tells me that for some reason the information that “evades” us would, given better understanding, simply be a configuration that was not possible, and it should be clear what the link between the hidden information and the way configurations work is.
You are. If you were to put a detector 3 there instead of an absorber, it would go off half the time, and detectors 1 and 2 would each go off a quarter of the time.
Are you implying that the presence of a detector instead of an obstacle changes what the other detectors detect, or not?
The text is unclear here:
Does “half the time” mean “half the time that any detector goes off”, or “half the time you shoot a photon”? I would expect that, with the obstacle in place, half the time you shoot a photon no detector would go off, because the first mirror would deflect it into an obstacle. Seeing no detector go off is distinct and observable, so I don’t see any way it could be eliminated as a possibility like the other case described here where two possible timelines that lead to the same world interfere and cancel out. So I would assume Eliezer means “half the time that any detector goes off”. If so, I’d like to see the text updated to be more clear about this.
It means “half the time that any detector goes off”, assuming that the block is a bog-standard lump of wood and not a magical construct like the measurement tool.