Re: Cyer-Letdown. (Spoilers)

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"L. Ross Raszewski" <lraszewski@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Mon, 15 May 2006 05:24:21 +0100, Agamemnon
<agamemnon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"The Stainless Steel Cat" <steelcat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in message news:C08D2593966860A61B@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <0oI9g.5362$cu4.1181@trndny09>,
"Sean Huxter" <sean.huxter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Not likely. The divergent point seems to have happened
sometime during the
last great War. I doubt Zeppelins made a huge comeback
after Jackie and Pete
got married,

They could have done.

From a quick look at Google, it seems that helium is
extracted from natural
gas. So if the North Sea was richer in gas than oil, and
Cybus produced a
cheap method of extracting the helium from that gas in
the late 70's, Britain would have the ideal
circumstances for increased airship (not Zeppelin)
production; cheap helium, expensive oil (since there was
less of
it) and an already booming airship industry: the
ubiquitous Airship Industries' Skyship 600 made it's
maiden flight in 1984 in our timeline,

The time lines diverged some time after 1982 when the Lion
Sleeps Tonight came out and before 2006 so the ratio of
known gas/oil in the North Sea before 1982 would have been
the same.


Even if we accept that the time lines had to "diverge"
(Which I don't), we still don't know when they diverved.
Had they diverged in 1960, the two universes might still
have been sufficiently similar in 1982 that 'The Lion
Sleeps Tonight' was still recorded.

No they wouldn't. Even if the performers had been born they
would never have met and never formed a band or even
recorded the same arrangement and mix if they had and
Mickey/Ricky would never have been conceived in any case.
If JFK had not been assassinated in 1963 nobody in the
world today who was conceived after November 22 1963 would
exist and that includes people living deep in the rain
forests in isolation from the rest of mankind.

It's an interesting question this.

Let us for a moment suppose that there are a non-infinite
number of universes- but that there is one for every possible
history of the universe
since the Big Bang. We know that at the quantum level the
universe is random- so every time a quantum interaction
occurs, the universe "splits"

There is nothing at all which is random on the quantum level.
Quantum theory follows a predefined set of mathematical laws
and is entirely deterministic. Even if you wait forever the
Pauli exclusion principle will never be violated and so on.

Of course there is. The probabilities are rigorously defined,
but the outcome of any individual observation inherently
cannot be predicted. That's

I think you'll find that it can.

No. There is no way to predict the outcome of any measurement.
That is the very basis of QM!

The outcome of any measurement can be predicted and an expectation
value can be calculated for each possible outcome.

If you fire an individual photon at a pair of perfect slits (in a
perfect system) each photon will interfere with itself and will
appear only at the peaks (but you don't know at which peak it will
actually turn up are at a particular point in time) and will never
appear at any of the troughs in the a diffraction pattern that is
predicted. If you repeat the experiment again and again you will
eventually build up the diffraction pattern from the results at
the detector.



simple diffraction pattern analogous to a sine wave, the height of
the wave
being the probability of a particular photon striking that point.
The "peaks" are thus for want of a better word diffuse. You seem to
think they are hard-edged areas. They aren't. A photon can appear
anywhere across the

I was trying to illustrate to you that in a perfect system you will
not find any photons where the probability for finding them is zero
and there is nothing that you can do to change that. Quantum theory
does not work randomly, it follows fixed mathematical rules. The
maths tells you what to expect and that's what you get. I was trying
to avoid having to write down all the maths and making this thread
inaccessible to most people, but I can see that my simplifications
are no substitute for the theory itself. I suggest that anyone that
wants to fully understand Quantum theory studies the theory on a
mathematical level and not on a popular science level before they
start talking about it.

You see, there you go again with the patronising stuff. And that
wouldn't be
so bad if you were correct. But sadly, you've argued yourself into a
corner
and can't accept that I fully understand what we are talking about,
and you
apparently have a very odd idea of QM.

What you think you understand is a popular Physics philosophical
viewpoint. That's all well an good but why don't you learn the
mathematics of the theory and understand it on that level and you
will find that the popular Physics paradoxes which challenge your
perception of reality don't actually exist in the mathematical
formulation.


Will you agree with me that the result of any observation in QM
cannot be predicted in advance? The probabilities of various results
can be calculated, but *not* the actual specific result? If you can
lower yourself
to accept that, then we're on the same hymn ***.

The expectation values of something such as energy can be calculated
precisely and so can the probability of obtaining each a value in an
experiment. When you conduct an experiment you will get one of these
values at the calculated frequency of occurrence, and no other values
in between. I see no problem with that.


You also need to be a big lad and accept that your assertions that
quantum measurements are not random is simply wrong. Go measure the
polarity of some
photons, and try to predict the sequence of results you'll get in
advance. You can't. That's fundamentally built into QM. Do you
understand Bell's Theorem?

It's obvious from what you have said above that you don't. See the
theorem below.


http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html

So you are saying that I cannot predict the results. The fact is that
Quantum theory can and does predict the results which are observed
experimentally but Bell's Inequality gets it wrong. Now you could
claim that Quantum theory is violating Bell's Inequality but that
assumes that Bell's Inequality is based on more solid foundations
than QT, which it is not. It is Quantum theory which is based on the
more solid foundations, because its QT which is giving you the right
results. So what we need to question is the assumptions on which
Bell's Inequality was based rather than those of QT. For over 2500
years now it has been know that logic theory has had serious flaws in
its formulation.


The original discussion was weather Rose would have been conceived
in the parallel universe even if Mickey was called Ricky. The
answer is no. All of the possible quantum outcomes would lead to the
expectation value of Rose being born to be zero.

There's no way to make that statement with any certainty. You are it
seems stuck with the idea of "branching" universes. But there is no
reason that a
universe with a *different history* may not end up in a similar
state to our
own. There is also no way to calculate the probability of it, since
it would
take incalculable amounts of mathematics to do so.

There is every reason why a universe with a different past (I take it
that's what you mean by history) will never end up looking like out
own. You seem to think that there is a parallel universe for every
conceivable outcome including ones which defy the principles of
simple cause and effect. The fact is that there are only parallel
universes for every probable outcome. Probable is not the same as
conceivable.

As for the mathematics, I know that the more complicated the system
is the less probable it is for say all the molecules of air in a room
jumping up to the ceiling. The mathematics is in my favour. It's
called entropy.

If you believe that the NAZIs can win WW2 and Rose, Micky/Ricky, Pete
and Jackie are still born and BMW models that look like ours exist
then it is up to you to prove it is physically possible.


But let's take a simple example pertaining to this situation. The
first thing we can see is that Mickey != Ricky, they are only
vaguely similar. They seem to have the same ancestors and the same
DNA, but other than that they are quite different. They seem to have
lived quite different lives. So
in fact the probability of Ricky comes down to the probability of his
parents' conception of him resulting in the same DNA combination,
even if those parents had sex at a different time and under different
circumstances
to Mickey's parents. That's a low probability, but it's higher than
zero. There's a very tiny chance that a couple could have two
identical babies from two different pregnancies. "Nearly zero" is
not zero.

The system we are dealing with is far too complicated for all
conceivable events to be possible. When the complexity passes a
certain point you will get zero probability for something occurring
and you just have to accpet it. It no longer can be regarded as a
matter of you waiting long enough for it to occur but a matter of it
will never happen at all.


The point is, with a sufficient number of universes (and we are
talking incomprhensibly vast numbers here), every unlikelihood will
occur. It's much

And every event with zero probability will not. Its already been
proven that there is zero probability of travelling backwards in time
as far as Quantum theory is concerned since all the terms cancel out.

like the probability of all the molecules in a box of gas
spontaneously ending up in the same corner. Tiny, but if you leave
it for googolplexes of
years, it'll happen in the end.

I can think of external influences and process such a atomic decay and
chemical reactions that will ensure that it will never happen without
the intervention of a God. Its not simply a matter of calculating the
trajectories of all the gas molecules which are placed in the top
half of the box and seeing how they diffuse, and then running it in
reverse. The situation where the system can even start to run in
reverse and give the desired result may be never destined to occur.


Rose's parents would not have fucked at the right time and the DNA
could never have combined in the right way and the baby evolved to
be Rose. Rose is only Rose because she was born when she was under
the circumstance she was born in.

You're confusing "unlikely" with "impossible" again.

You are confusing improbable with unlikely. Likelihood presupposes
that something is possible to begin with.



I told myself yesterday to abandon this thread, and yet here I am again,
trying to ignore your sad pomposity and discuss the issue rationally. Which
is difficult, frankly, considering your attitude.

I just typed a long answer and have just erased it since we seem to be stuck
on one issue and without addressing it none of the rest of the conversation
has any worth. Here's a statement-

In a quantum measurement, the wave function deterministically describes the
values one may measure, but it is *fundamentally* impossible to predict
which one of these values you will *actually* measure, and as such quantum
measurements are truly random.

Do you agree or disagree? It can be answered with a yes or no.

BTW, the link you gave is an explanation of Bell's Theorem and as such
agrees with it, so I have no idea what point you're making there.

Ian

--
www.jaxtrawstudios.com
science fiction comics with shagging in


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