AI and cognitive psychology rant (getting more and more OT - tell me if I should shut up)

[Richard Wesley]

In article <87d6cio0v5.fsf at pobox.com>, jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) 
wrote:

> Stephen Horne <steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk> writes:
> 
> > On 26 Oct 2003 20:56:09 +0000, jjl at pobox.com (John J. Lee) wrote:
> > 
> > >> Yes, but why can we see the affects of superposition at the
> > >> microscopic scale but not at the macroscopic. That is what strikes me
> > >> as odd - if parallel universes work as an explanation, then why do
> > >> they work differently at the two scales. In particular, why can we not
> > >
> > >They don't.
> > 
> > Are you claiming that in schroedingers experiment that the dead and
> > live cats interact in some way that can be measured outside the box
> > without collapsing the waveform?
> 
> Well, in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) there *is* no
> wavefunction collapse: everything just evolves deterministically
> according to the Schrodinger equation.  But of course, since cats are
> big lumps of matter, one wouldn't expect to be able to measure
> interference effects using cats.

For an interesting discussion of the shortcomings of MWI (not to mention 
CI) have a look at 
<http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_toc.html>.

> > I was also under the impression that the largest 'particle' to be
> > successfully superposed in an experiment was a buckyball (or something
> > like that - at least a 'large' molecule of some kind or another) and
> > the timescale for that superposition was tiny.

You all might also be interested in Objective Reduction theories.  Some 
of them suggest that the brain itself is a fairly large object in 
superposition.  See <http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/quantum/>

Enjoy.

-- 

- rmgw

<http://www.electricfish.com/>

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Richard Wesley                                  Electric Fish, Inc.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
                                             - Isaac Azimov, _Foundation_