Abstract not found

This document is the first installment of three in the Cerro Grande Fire Series. The Cerro Grande Fire left many in the Los Alamos community acutely aware of the importance of backing up the hard drive. I could think of no better instrument for the process than LANL itself. This is a collection of letters written to various friends and colleagues

Several errors in Stapp’s interpretation of quantum mechanics and its application to mental causation (Henry P. Stapp, “Quantum theory and the role of mind in nature,” e-Print quant-ph/0103043, to appear in Foundations of Physics) are pointed out. An interpretation of (standard) QM that avoids these errors is presented.

In 1927 Heisenberg discovered that the "more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa". Four years later

In 1927, Heisenberg discovered that the “more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa. ” Four years later Gödel showed that a finitely specified, consistent formal system which is large enough

June 2000, "Greece" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Carl's Preply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 07 September 2000, "Critical Letters and Reply" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 13 November 2000, "Bush vs. Bohr" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 01 February 2001, "An Ed/Ellen Jaynesian" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 01 February 2001, "My Jaynes" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 26 February 2001, "Death of a Salesman" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 11 Letters to Greg Comer 136 14 February 1995, "Turtle Wax" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 04 March 1995, "Saturday Slush" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 07 March 1995, "Please, Please No More!" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 27 January 1996, "Philo" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 xi February 1996, "The Mont-Royal Sweats" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 27 February 1996, "Kant Cola" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 06 March 1996, "Rub Me" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 26 March 1996, "Savagery" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 27 March 1996, "Strange Comment" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 01 April 1996, "Puppy Scoops" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 04 May 1996, "You May Enjoy" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 19 July 1996, "Old Moods" . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

This document is the first installment of three in the Cerro Grande Fire Series. The Cerro Grande Fire left many in the Los Alamos community acutely aware of the importance of backing up the hard drive. I could think of no better instrument for the process than LANL itself. This is a collection of letters written to various friends and colleagues

This article presents a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics. It extends the meaning of “measurement ” to include all property-indicating facts. Intrinsically space is undifferentiated: there are no points on which a world of locally instantiated physical properties could be built. Instead reality is built on facts, in the sense that the properties of things are extrinsic, or supervenient on the facts. The actual extent to which the world is spatially and temporally differentiated (that is, the extent to which spatio-temporal relations and distinctions are warranted by the facts) is necessarily limited. Notwithstanding that the state vector does nothing but assign probabilities, quantum mechanics affords a complete understanding of the actual world. If there is anything that is incomplete, it is the actual world, but its incompleteness exists only in relation to a conceptual framework that is more detailed than the actual world. Two deep-seated misconceptions are responsible for the interpretational difficulties associated with quantum mechanics: the notion that the spatial and temporal aspects of the world are adequately represented by sets with the cardinality of the real numbers, and the notion of an instantaneous state that evolves in time. The latter is an unwarranted (in fact, incoherent) projection of our apparent “motion in time ” into the world of physics. Equally unwarranted, at bottom, is the use of causal concepts. Therer nevertheless exists a “classical ” domain in which language suggestive of nomological necessity may be used. Quantum mechanics not only is strictly consistent with the existence of this domain but also presupposes it in several ways. I.

It is widely accepted that a Born probability of 1 is sufficient for the existence of a corresponding element of reality. Recently Vaidman has extended this idea to the ABL probabilities of the time-symmetrized version of quantum mechanics originated by Aharonov, Bergmann, and Lebowitz. Several authors have objected to Vaidman’s time-symmetrized elements of reality without casting doubt on the widely accepted sufficiency condition for ‘ordinary ’ elements of reality. In this paper I show that while the proper truth condition for a quantum counterfactual is an ABL probability of 1, neither a Born probability of 1 nor an ABL probability of 1 is sufficient for the existence of an element of reality. The reason this is so is that the contingent properties of quantum-mechanical systems are extrinsic. To obtain this result, I need to discuss objective probabilities, retroactive causality, and the objectivity or otherwise of the psychological arrow of time. One consequence of the extrinsic nature of quantummechanical properties is that quantum mechanics presupposes property-defining actual events (or states of affairs) and therefore cannot be called upon to account for their occurrence (existence). Neither these events nor the correlations between them are capable of explanation, the former because they are causal primaries, the latter because they are fundamental: there are no underlying causal processes. Causal connections are something we project onto the statistical correlations, and this works only to the extent that statistical variations can be ignored. There are nevertheless important conclusions to be drawn from the quantum-mechanical correlations, such as the spatial nonseparability of the world. 1.

The logical structure of quantum mechanics is investigated. After some remarks on formal systems and interpretations, it is shown that Bohr’s complementarity can be seen as an undecidable proposition. The flowing of the time prevents the birth of contradictions in nature, because it poses a cut between two different, but complementary aspects of the reality. PACS-03.65.Bz Foundations, theory of measurement, miscellaneous theories PACS-02.10.By Logic and foundations