X-Message-Number: 8592 From: Andre Robatino <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #8587 - #8589 Date: Sat, 13 Sep 97 19:39:24 EDT > Message #8589 > Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 21:26:45 -0700 (PDT) > From: John K Clark <> > Subject: Digital Shakespeare > <snip> > Can you think of any measurable quality that's directly correlated with a > unique quantum wave function? I can't. It contains no energy and isn't even a > probability, it's the square root of a probability, a calculating device. _Any_ state directly corresponds to a specific set of outcomes for some complete set of measurements. The statement that the state is |psi> has the observable consequence that it guarantees that when performing any of the corresponding measurements, one will get the corresponding value. Other input states may have a nonzero probability of yielding the same values for each of the same set of measurements (and if this happens, then the output state is |psi>), but no other input state _guarantees_ it. The statement 1) if one starts from state |psi>, one is guaranteed to get value m_i for any measurement M_i in a particular complete set of measurements {M_i} is just as meaningful as 2) if one starts from state |psi>, then the probability of finding the particle in volume dV near the point x is |psi(x)|^2 dV since both are verified the same way - statistically, by creating the state |psi> a large number of times and doing the appropriate experiments on it. In fact, the first statement is slightly more meaningful, since it could be falsified with a single counterexample, while falsifying the second would require a large number of trials and one gets into philosophical issues about the meaning of probability. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8592