wavefunction collapse

4 posts

From the Heisenberg cut to the Copenhagen interpretation

14 min read
Culture Scicomm Science classical mechanics cloud chamber Copenhagen interpretation Erwin Schrodinger Heisenberg cut Jim Baggott John Bell John von Neumann many-worlds interpretation matrix mechanics Niels Bohr Quantum mechanics quantum superposition Schrödinger's cat uncertainty principle wave mechanics wavefunction wavefunction collapse Werner Heisenberg Wolfgang Pauli

The following post was motivated by this exchange (on X.com), which prompted me to write out my understanding of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and the part the Heisenberg cut play…

Dispelling Maxwell's demon

12 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science arrow of time Charles Bennett decoherence Dennis Gabor entropy information theory James Clerk Maxwell Léon Brillouin Leo Szilard Maxwell's demon no-cloning theorem quantum entanglement quantum information Quantum mechanics Rolf Landauer Schrödinger's cat second law of thermodynamics unitarity wavefunction collapse

Maxwell’s demon is one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of physics, a puzzle first posed in the 1860s that continues to shape scientific debates to this day. I’ve struggled to mak…

What on earth is a wavefunction?

10 min read
Scicomm classical mechanics coherence decoherence delocalisation Newton's second law quantum information Quantum mechanics quantum superposition Schrödinger equation uncertainty principle wavefunction wavefunction collapse zero-point motion

If you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread outward in gentle circles. We all know this sight, and it feels natural to call them waves. Now imagine being told that everything — from an electron t…

A latent monadology: An extended revisitation of the mind-body problem

10 min read
Uncategorized computational theory of mind conjugate variables connectionism Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics dispositional attribution emergence Gottfried Leibniz human brain network multiplicity partial differentiation rationalism reverse-engineering Roger Penrose The Monadology Walter Pitts Warren McCulloch wavefunction collapse

In an earlier post, I'd spoken about a certain class of mind-body interfacing problems (the way I'd identified it): evolution being a continuous process, can psychological changes effected in…