Collapse

[Alan Sondheim]

Collapse


When the wave-function collapses as a result of measurement, a quantum
state results, for example cat-lives | cat-dies. What was entangled sud-
denly takes itself elsewhere, to a value in the everyday world, a value
that affects us, an effect. Knowledge unmoving, but knowledge given across
solar systems, galaxies! What happens if an alien intelligence measures a
pale - look, the experiment's hijacked! But we don't know this, we're
doing, what, measuring away here, but we're the second? Meanwhile else-
where, an observer watches... nothing... Disappointment! The experiment
has failed! He makes a phone-call; it takes hours! What then? Perhaps the
alien is just... barely conscious... on the order of a gastropod... a
paramecium... Something just nudges the apparatus, perhaps not even paying
attention... Perhaps it sends a signal back to us! Yes, well-done! A
signal hijacked from the other observer! Wait, it gets worse! It's not
conscious at all, just a pebble! Something falls, but since it's almost
gravity-free, a level has become loose, perhaps the rockets... It slides
slightly, what then? The button is pushed, we get a signal, the elsewhere
observer gets nothing, we don't know we've gotten a signal, we've gotten
nothing, we think we've gotten nothing, we think the other observer gets
the other state, a different state - wait a minute, there's no response...
We're on earth, a sunny day, we're waiting here, or circling the earth,
replete with waves, acoustic, electromagnetic, the space-station shudders,
the sun shortly disappears behind the earth atmosphere, just for a minute
or two, a please twilight, my mind goes back to a walk in an Appalachian
forest, somewhere in Virginia, we're holding hands, now she's so far away,
elsewhere with her measuring, waiting, nothing is happening, did he forget
me? I'm on the station, memory collapses, wait, I'll measure now, the
first, just as I'm supposed to! A clean value, if yes here, no there, and
if no there, yes here! But I hear nothing! Still, the situation seems
clear enough, isn't it? A cliff, collapse, is produced, big entropy
change, memories disperse, I'm focused now, waiting for her response!
Nothing ever comes, the alien, slug, paramecium, lever, shuffles along,
walks away, flies out, shifts, it doesn't matter. Has the world split? Of
course not! It's the same old world! Think of the economy of multiple
universes! But then in quantum cosmology, value's elsewhere, hardly
calculated, split, split, and no split, it can go on forever...

Analog has moved to digital value, but where? Why? From whom? At what
cost? Just how exact? Perhaps there's an error, perhaps there's a leak, a
short-circuit, an alien...


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