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From: kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Blimey, Rimey! (Actually wave equations and many worlds)
Message-ID: <501@hounx.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jan-86 18:36:18 EST
Article-I.D.: hounx.501
Posted: Mon Jan 13 18:36:18 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jan-86 06:10:30 EST
References: <117@ucbmiro.ARPA> <2629@umcp-cs.UUCP>, <11396@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 22

Perhaps my level of understanding is a bit naive, but don't
the wave equations encode our state of knowldege (uncertainty)
about the state of affairs prior to measurement?  Also, don't
we have the basic problem that measurement involves interacting
with the thing being measured, thereby perturbing it from its
state prior to measurement?  When the probability wave collapses
(e.g. by peeking inside the box to peer at Schroedinger's cat),
aren't we simply experiencing a quantum jump in our state of
knowledge (a discrete reduction in uncertainty)?  Isn't our
state of knowledge merely the cumulative result of bits of
information coming in through the sensory channels linking our
knowldege reservoirs to the location of measurement events?

If this view is sound, then the wave equation is not so much
a description of what's "out there" as it is a description of
"what we know" about that which is "out there."

				-- Barry Kort
				...ihnp4!houxm!hounx!kort

	A door opens.  You are entering another dementia.
	The dementia of the mind.