Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
The maths is very abstract but given that QE is able to produce theoretical values that are accurate to within 10 parts in a billion of the experimental (actual) values brings up the age old question. Is mathermatics discovered or invented?
Regards
Steven
|
Hang-on Steven, doesn't QED outcomes rely upon the renormalization process? If so, there are a handful of numbers which need to be fed into the equations by hand in order to make the post-dictions (in contrast to a prediction) work; numbers which are derived AFTER the experiment has already produced an outcome, correct???
If it does include recookingthebooksation then my blurb below may be relevant, if not, please disregarded the rest of this post.
That mathematical process entirely bypasses the point I'm trying to show...the reason why we have different outcomes from identical [experimental] setups, is because we are missing a vital piece of the puzzle; what determines one outcome over the next. By taking values from the final boundary condition - that is, AFTER the experiment has ocured - and then plugging the numbers in, bypasses the region where a possible hidden variable could occur. That's not good science, that's science heresy!
Aharanov writes:
"Two identical particles with identical environments can subsequently exhibit different properties under identical measurements. These subsequent identical measurements provide fundamentally new information about the system which could not in principle be obtained from the initial conditions. Time-Symmetry in Quantum Mechanics suggests that two 'identical’ particles are not really identical, but there is no way to find their differences based only on information coming from the past, one must also know the future. We also show how the second generalization involving ‘destiny’ is consistent with free will...
...The concept of free will is mainly that the past may define the future, yet after this future effect takes place – i.e. after it becomes past – then it cannot be changed: we are free from the past, but, in this picture, we are not necessarily free from the future. Therefore, not knowing the future is a crucial requirement for the existence of free will. In other words, the destiny vector cannot be used to inform us in the present of the result of our future free choices."
Buy using inputs from the final boundary condition (final states of the event), we are effectively cutting future influence out of the loop and essentially factoring-in a numerical correction/s to realign the mismatch between the history vector and the destiny vector, therefore missing the process which displays the differences between two identical experiments, what I feel creates one reality instead of another reality which was also possible, in effect 'cooking the books'!
Therefore attaining a "10 parts in a billion of the experimental (actual) values" is not that spectacular at all. What that process is showing is that the equation/s are correct, it's not showing any power in predicting anything, or even showing that we have a handle on the quantum world...it's actually fooling ourselves.
"But no matter how clever the word, it is what I call a dippy process! Having to resort to such hocus pocus has prevented us from proving that the theory of quantum electrodynamics is mathematically self consistent. ... I suspect that renormalization is not mathematically legitimate."
- Richard Feynman -