Yes, I would like copy of the paper. Please send it to doug at alum dot mit dot edu. Thanks!
> And killing the rat afterwards does not undo it.
Yes, sorry; it's been a long long time since I've thought about this sort of stuff in any detail. This is what I should have written:
Train a rat to perform measurements on an observable with two possible outcomes and have it press lever A for outcome A and lever B for outcome B. Put the rat into a sealed box to perform the measurement. A dial on the outside of box will read either A or B once the rat has performed the experiment and recorded the result.
You can now come up with a complex observable on the whole system, i.e., the original observable being measured by the rat, plus the rat, and the box, that will give two different results on different occasions if the rat did not collapse the wave, but will always give you the same result if the rat did collapse the wave.
The problem with this complex observable is that for it to work, you must consider every molecule in the rat, every molecule of air it interacts with, etc., etc., etc. Miss a single molecule and the results are randomized.
Are we ever going to be up to this task? Not any time soon! But it could be child's play for the aforementioned evil alien overlords.
One complication, I can imagine, is that for this to work, you'd need to have a perfect model of the rat's biology and cognition in order for you to come up with the right observable. In the face of not yet being sure how collapse works, this might be very difficult. But then again, I'm sure that evil alien overlords are up the task.
David Albert talks about doing these sorts of experiments on p. 88 of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, and it was this that I was thinking of. Only Albert's examples don't have a trained rat, but rather other, simpler measuring equipment for which we are trying to determine whether or not it causes collapse.
As for Deutsch three experiments, it looks like Experiment 3 has two huge advantages over my trained rat system: (1) Since it's all contained inside a quantum computer, it seems a lot more feasible without the help of aliens. (2) If I understand correctly, the reversal stages means that you end up with a very simple observable, rather than the unfeasibly complex observable that you would need for my trained rat system.
As for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, I don't understand #1 at the moment. And #2 seems to me so obvious as to go without saying. But it doesn't seem to prove anything that we didn't already know. Of course an uncollapsed wave can compute more than a collapsed wave!
Yes, I would like copy of the paper. Please send it to doug at alum dot mit dot edu. Thanks!
> And killing the rat afterwards does not undo it.
Yes, sorry; it's been a long long time since I've thought about this sort of stuff in any detail. This is what I should have written:
Train a rat to perform measurements on an observable with two possible outcomes and have it press lever A for outcome A and lever B for outcome B. Put the rat into a sealed box to perform the measurement. A dial on the outside of box will read either A or B once the rat has performed the experiment and recorded the result.
You can now come up with a complex observable on the whole system, i.e., the original observable being measured by the rat, plus the rat, and the box, that will give two different results on different occasions if the rat did not collapse the wave, but will always give you the same result if the rat did collapse the wave.
The problem with this complex observable is that for it to work, you must consider every molecule in the rat, every molecule of air it interacts with, etc., etc., etc. Miss a single molecule and the results are randomized.
Are we ever going to be up to this task? Not any time soon! But it could be child's play for the aforementioned evil alien overlords.
One complication, I can imagine, is that for this to work, you'd need to have a perfect model of the rat's biology and cognition in order for you to come up with the right observable. In the face of not yet being sure how collapse works, this might be very difficult. But then again, I'm sure that evil alien overlords are up the task.
David Albert talks about doing these sorts of experiments on p. 88 of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, and it was this that I was thinking of. Only Albert's examples don't have a trained rat, but rather other, simpler measuring equipment for which we are trying to determine whether or not it causes collapse.
As for Deutsch three experiments, it looks like Experiment 3 has two huge advantages over my trained rat system: (1) Since it's all contained inside a quantum computer, it seems a lot more feasible without the help of aliens. (2) If I understand correctly, the reversal stages means that you end up with a very simple observable, rather than the unfeasibly complex observable that you would need for my trained rat system.
As for Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, I don't understand #1 at the moment. And #2 seems to me so obvious as to go without saying. But it doesn't seem to prove anything that we didn't already know. Of course an uncollapsed wave can compute more than a collapsed wave!