Another Post re: Sal Cordova

I really wasn't going to write about Sal Cordova's latest misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. Even though it's a long article, there didn't seem to be enough there to give me anything of substance to write about. But thanks to Blake Stacey's comment on my last post on Sal Cordova showing me that Tyler DiPietro had written a bit about the new post, I had enough to go on.

Remember this equation from before? It was never explained what any of this means. In Sal's recent article, we get something almost a little like mathematical information about the equation.

Sal writes,

That conceptual merging of all quantum systems is represented by the quantum system of the universe, or (for lack of a better term), the Universal Wave Function. Taking the Schrodinger equation and generalizing it for the entire universe, we have the universal wave function as derived by Barrow and Tipler: [picture] where the indexed Psi’s are the individual quantum systems, and the O’s are the “observations."

There is zero probability that Sal didn't just copy that out of a book. Why else would he capitalize "Universal Wave Function"? Does he know what a wave function is? Does he know what "observation" means? I sure don't, not in this context anyway.

Let's analyze this equation for a bit. Why would you multiply a wave function with this "observation"? Why sum them up? In fact, every time we see an index i we see a k, yet i and k are summed separately. Why? The product is over n, yet n only appears in the "observation." Why? What are these indices supposed to mean? What does any of this mean? Perhaps Sal should understand that math doesn't just pop out of nowhere like a child's birthday magic show: it needs to be derived. And preferably explained.

Sal then cites a respectable, peer-reviewed geocities page when he says, "Jenny Nielsen explains this beautifully in A Report on 'The Delayed Choice Experiment'.” Wait, did I say "cites"? I meant "reproduces the entire article."

For physically actualized systems, it appears then a measurement is essential for the system to be actualized.

I can only infer from this that Sal thinks before humans were around measuring everything, nothing in the universe is "actualized." When we're not looking, everything ceases to be.

For example, we see measurements defining the boundary conditions of a quantum system such as illustrated by the Nobel Prize winning experiment known as Stern Gerlach.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment has nothing to do with measurement, and everything to do with demonstrating spin. Well, I guess it does trivially have to do with measurement, as one needs to measure something to get any information from the experiment. However, I can assure you, the Stern-Gerlach experiment would run the same way whether someone was watching or not. The point of the experiment is that there is an intrinsic angular momentum to the electron and that it is quantized.

[John Barrow and Frank Tipler's book Anthropic Cosmological Principle] was hailed by the prestigious scientific journal Nature. However, in 1996, when Tipler came forward and said the “Ultimate Observer” was to be identified with the Judeo-Christian God, Tipler’s ideas were immediately ridiculed and his pay was cut.

In fact, I've found the review in question. But my university's online subscription to Nature only goes back to 01-01-87, and this article was published on 08-14-86. So close. I'll have to go to the library and track it down later.

In a comment on Tyler's article, Blake Stacey writes about a different review of Tipler.

Actually, a review of Tipler's Physics of Immortality, published in Nature, called that book "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline". It's funny Cordova doesn't mention that review, isn't it?

So, another day, another butchering of quantum mechanics. Expect another soon enough.