Quantum Mechanics is messin wif my memory... PROVEN!

dogjones

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dogjones
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Oct 3, 2005
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Or not...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/aug/26/entropy-time-arrow-quantum-mechanics

When you observe any system, according to Maccone, you enter into a "quantum entanglement" with it. That is, you and the system are entangled and cannot properly be described separately.

The entanglement, Maccone says, is between your memory and the system. When you disentangle, "the disentangling operation will erase this entanglement, namely the observer's memory". His paper derives this conclusion mathematically.
Click to expand...

Paper here.

Thoughts? The quote above seems a little simplistic.
 
Entanglement does not apply to macroscopic, objects. Interactions at the microscopic level erase (disentangle?) prior entanglements.
 
It's probably true that in the process of observing something and recording it in your memory, entropy increases slightly, just as it does with all life and metabolic processes. But the thing you're observing could be anything.

For example, suppose there's a macroscopic system for which the entropy has somehow decreased by a large amount. You observe it. Is that observation supposed to instantly increase the total entropy by more than that large amount? That's clearly nonsense - the observation does nothing if the system has already decohered.

Besides, even if this were correct it wouldn't solve the arrow of time problem. The entropy of the universe is increasing, and increased by a huge amount over the last 13.7 billion years. Why? Or a better question, why did it start so low? That question has nothing to do with observation.
 
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