Re: Entanglement (was Podkletnov) revisited?

Thus spake rof@xxxxxxxxxxxx


You talk about a "relational setting", indicating that you consider
yourself to be adhering to Rovelli's relational interpretation of
quantum mechanics. But I explained to you before that this
interpretation is incoherent. Rovelli wants us to put "relative
to so-and-so" at the end of each assertion, and claims that this
is an interpretation of quantum mechanics. So he would have us say
things like "The cat is alive relative to Alice". But the question
is: Can a cat be alive relative to one real person and dead relative
to another real person? If the answer is yes, then the interpretation
is many worlds, and Rovelli is just pretending to have a different
interpretation. If the answer is no, then the cat is either
absolutely alive or absolutely dead and its being alive or
dead is not relative at all. The consequence of this
is that Rovelli's interpretation is nonsensical.

I don't agree with this. It may be that there really is some fundamental
difference between Rovelli's relational interpretation and mine, but it
seems to me that we should be saying is that the cat is definitely alive
or dead, but that what the observer can say about the situation is
indeed relative to the observer.

Mine was described by refs as being "essentially correct orthodox
interpretation, not new". There is something in that, but I don't
entirely agree, because I think my formulation is independent of a
background concept of space-time, and I think that is significant.

I have put a new version of the paper on gr-qc/0508077, incorporating
corrections following your remarks. At the moment I think we are still
in the same situation. I do not deny that there have been numerous
errors in the expression of my position, which clearly makes it
difficult to understand exactly what the position is. That is almost
inevitable in an area of such subtlety. You have helped me to trap a lot
of those errors, and indeed there may be more. I do not feel we have
reached a final assessment.


Regards

--
Charles Francis
substitute charles for NotI to email

.

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