Re: Source Code for OS?

[Doppler Dog <doppler_dog@my-deja.knickers.com>]

olcott <olcott@qwest.net> writes:

> 
> I don't know much about this subject. I do know
> a little about Schrodinger's cat... Perhaps this
> whole QM thing is malarkey? Einstein rejected it!
> That's is the essential shortcoming with all knowledge
> that is derived empirically... There can not possibly
> exist any distinguishing difference between reality
> and a perfect illusion...
> 

<delurk>

Sorry to interrupt, but I'd like to clear this myth for the record.
It's not true that Einstein rejected QM, quite the contrary.  His work
on the photoelectric confirmed that classical physics was bankrupt
and that a quantum view of energy was required to explain experimental
results.  Einstein was a pioneer of QM.

What he did initially reject, however, was ONE interpretation of QM,
which is that uncertainty is "built in" to nature, that probability is
the only means of determining the results of an experiment.  He slowly
came to change his mind in his later years, though.

It appears clear today that probability is central to nature, that it
is not possible to fully describe describe the state of a particle (or
wave) - there is always an uncertainty involved, and that is a
fundamental characteristic of nature.  "God" does play dice after all,
it appears.

Some people may have trouble accepting this, but quantum theory is the
most successful theory in the history of science.  The scientific
american wrote recently that a large majority of our economy (2/3 or
somesuch) is based on technology built on quantum theory.  It's real,
definitely NOT malarkey.

Almost everything you see that has developed in the last 70 years
is based one way or another on the success of quantum theory.  It's
hard to argue against success.  

</delurk>

-- 
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