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Quantum Mechanics

Roger Penrose: people misinterpret what Dirac said about the "cat both dead and alive"

 


 

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from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXgqik6HXc0 "consciousness is not a computation"

 

Roger Penrose: in an interview stated that he agrees with “three of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century” – Einstein, Schrödinger, Dirac – that quantum mechanics is not a complete view. He said that Dirac, who did not like to be quoted as he was cautious and avoided offering his opinions, nevertheless, if you dig for it in his testimonies, says that quantum mechanics is “a provisional theory” and requires modification.

We need something that explains the collapse of the wave-function, he said. QM needs to be modified with gravity, that is, “quantum mechanics as applied to gravitational theory.” But Penrose says, you can’t just quantize gravity, you need to be even-handed, and also let gravity modify QM.

Penrose says the “evolution of the Schrödinger equation”, that is, the logical extension of it, would lead to the cat being alive and dead at the same time, but Schrödinger “is more or less saying that this is an absurdity,” in other words, Schrödinger is saying, no, you can’t have the cat both dead and alive and this just shows that “the equation” is incomplete. He meant the dead-alive cat to represent the ridiculous.

People today say that Schrödinger’s equation shows you can have a cat both dead and alive at the same time, but they don’t understand -- Schrödinger himself said this is an absurdity and cannot happen and if the equation seems to point to a alive-dead cat, then this means that the equation needs some work.

 

 

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