…and meditations on experts.
This is why I have no problem challenging the conventional wisdom in space policy and technology. Sometimes the experts can be completely wrong, in a groupthink sort of way.
5 thoughts on “Some Thoughts On Schroedinger’s Cat”
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That whole account seems awfully self-serving, bordering on the sanctimonious. But that sort of thing seems to be standard groupthink among the so-called “open source” leadership.
ESR has never been known for a lack of ego and/or the habit of hiding his light under a bushel. But I think Raoul Ortega is really reaching by trying to tar and feather “the so-called ‘open source’ leadership” with ESR’s excesses; might as well try to equate all open source with RMS (the cathode to ESR’s anode, or vice versa). I prefer to look to people such as Guido van Rossum, the creator of the most excellent Python programming language, for what open source can really do and how it can fit into lots of development models.
Well, as someone who (1) knows fuck all about quantum mechanics, and (2) who knows a number of first-rank physicists, I call bullshit on this tale (although I completely agree with Rand’s point that any schmo can and should challenge “accepted scientific wisdom,” which I put in quotes because it’s nearly an oxymoron.)
In the first place, the “mystery” of the cat — indeed of the entire “quantum measurement” question — is only deeply fascinating to obsessives, mystics and philosophers. Normal physicists don’t give a damn, because its solution has zero practical importance. It cannot, by definition, change anything measureable. You might as well ask the old silly question of whether a tree falling in the forest makes a noise when no one observes it, and devolve into a sophomoric discussion of the precise definition of “noise” and “observe” et sequens. Or for that matter, entertain solipsism as a theory of everything. These are the kinds of angels on the head of a pin discussions one has in college, after six to eight beers.
Secondly, the bit about being treated with threatened contempt by serious physicists is just bullshit. Either young Eric was talking to grad students and third-raters, or he reports dishonestly. Real physicists are quite aware of the “quantum measurement” problem, but, vide supra, they don’t normally consider it interesting. I can see they might react with annoyance if Eric makes a pest of himself, but it would be more like how a constitutional lawyer reacts to someone who insists that the income tax is unconstitutional and wants to debate each word of the various SCOTUS decisions on the matter. After a while, you just get tired of such monomania.
The conclusion is false, too. Clearly, from his obsessive nature, Eric would have made a terrible physicist, and contrariwise made a good programmer and open-source apostle. Programmers very often do have this curious ADD obsession with dotting the i’s, and get exasperated with scientists who don’t much care because it doesn’t matter. Good thing he never talked to the biologists, who are even more used to accepting gray areas in their work. Poor young Eric’s head would have exploded. Feh.
In general ag reement with Carl about ESR’s conclusions. For a reasonably sane view of quantum mechanics (and a bunch of very witty and enjoyable writing to boot), see Nobel laureate (in physics, 1998) Robert Laughlin’s A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down. He performs the smackdown on the Copenhagen Interpretation far better than anybody else has to date (at least, of which I’m aware).
Okay, so somebody brings me a Schroedinger box, tells me there’s a cat inside it, and asks me what state it’s in.
I say, “Georgia.”
And he tells me, “You have to understand the math.”
And I close the door in his face.