Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
In last week's post on entropy and information, I started off complaining about the most common definition of entropy as disorder or disorganization. One of the nice things about blogging is you often learn something in the subsequent discussion. My chief complaint about the disorder definition was that it's value-laden. I asked: disordered according to … Continue reading Reconciling the disorder definition of entropy
I've long struggled with the concept of entropy. Part of the reason is the way it's often described in popular science accounts, which typically seem subjective and value laden. The most common way of describing it is the amount of disorder in a system. But disorder according to who? A room that appears messy and … Continue reading Entropy, information, and causality
I've posted a lot over the years on interpretations of quantum mechanics. My writing has tended to focus on comparing the big three: Copenhagen, pilot-wave, and many-worlds. But there are a lot of others. One that has been gaining converts among physicists and others is Carlo Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics (RQM) interpretation. This is an … Continue reading Carlo Rovelli’s Helgoland
In the scientific realism vs instrumentalism debate, realism is the position that the elements of a scientific theory represent reality. So when general relativity talks about space warping, space really is warping. Instrumentalism, or anti-realism, is the stance that scientific theories are just prediction mechanisms, with no guarantee that they represent reality. Under instrumentalism, general … Continue reading Structural realism, a way to be a scientific realist?
Scott Aaronson posted an interesting piece this week coming out about his favorite interpretation of quantum mechanics. I think the most relevant part is this snippet. (Although the full piece has a lot of nuance well worth reading.) I don’t mean to say that the interpretations are all interchangeable, or equally good or bad. If … Continue reading An instrumentalist Everettian
This post is about an aspect of the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I've given brief primers of the interpretation in earlier posts (see here or here), in case you need one. Sean Carroll, as he does periodically, did an AMA on his podcast. He got a number of questions on the Everett interpretation, … Continue reading The nature of splitting worlds in the Everett interpretation
Those of you who've known me a while may remember that I dislike accepting philosophical labels. For example, although the labels "materialist" or "physicalist" are more or less accurate descriptions of what I think, they often seem to imply an ideological rigidity I'm not comfortable with. My attitude toward these labels somewhat resonates with Neil … Continue reading Scientific theories and prescriptive vs descriptive instrumentalism
Lately, I've been trying to gain a better understanding of quantum decoherence. This is the process of a quantum system in superposition interacting with the environment and, as a result, appearing to lose its quantum nature, notably by having interference between the elements of its superposition become undetectable. Decoherence is often used synonymously with the … Continue reading Mea culpa on quantum decoherence
Quantum physics has been on my mind again lately, somewhat triggered by a recent conversation with Wyrd Smythe on his blog. I've always known quantum nonlocality has nuances, but stuff I read this week revealed some wrinkles I wasn't aware of. (Well, I was aware of them, but wasn't aware they pertained to nonlocality.) A … Continue reading The nature of quantum nonlocality
The main difference between a quantum computer and a classical one is the qubit. Qubits are like classical bits, in that they hold binary values of either 1 or 0, on or off, true or false, etc. However, qubits, being quantum objects, can be in a superposition of both states at once. The physical manifestation … Continue reading Thoughts about quantum computing and the wave function
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