The ontology of quantum mechanics

[chickenfeet]

This amused me as one of the odder pieces of mathematical formalism I've ever seen.



It's Penrose's interpretation of the U state of the Schrödinger's cat experiment using the "many worlds" ontological interpretation of the state vector |Ψ>.

Penrose The Road to Reality p807.

Comments

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I think that is wonderful!

[lnr]

I love the little chap's facial expression.

Well, that and the fact it was immediately obvious what it was about, even if I don't actually understand the maths.

Some day I'm really going to have to get over my fear of maths and actually learn the stuff I nominally have a degree in, aren't I?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I tried to plough through Penrose and got as far as chapter 17 with steadily increasing incomprehension. I'm now just dipping into chapters that are of special interest and accepting that most of the actual mathematics is beyond me. I have a degree in maths too, though I was always much stronger in probabilty theory than mathematical physics. However it was a long time ago and statistician's disease has taken its toll.