For convenience, I gathered a few comments of mine into a blog post.

  • self@awful.systemsM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    If you really want to cite someone he admires, you could note that Eliezer Yudkowsky uses 1 as a probability when trying (and failing) to explain quantum mechanics, because he writes probability amplitudes of absolute value 1.

    I’m glad I’ve never pissed off a career physicist, cause this is concise, targeted destruction

      • self@awful.systemsM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        fuck yes. I can tell already this’ll need more brain than I can give it during work, but from the first few paragraphs this seems like absolutely my kind of shit

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        despite phase shifts being the main cause of the described effects.

        what are the other ones?

        (when i’m thinking about splitter with pi/2 phase shift, i’m thinking about coupled line coupler or its waveguide analogue, but i come from microwave land on this one. maybe this works in fibers?)

        • titotal@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          what are the other ones?

          I guess the rest of the experimental setup that recombines the photon amplitiudes. Like if you put 5 extra beam splitters in the bottom path, there wouldn’t be full destructive interference.

          when i’m thinking about splitter with pi/4 phase shift, i’m thinking about coupled line coupler or its waveguide analogue, but i come from microwave land on this one. maybe this works in fibers?

          I’m not sure how you’d actually build a symmetric beam splitter: wikipedia said you’d need to induce a particular extra phase shift on both transmission and reflection. (I’m fully theoretical physics so I’m not too familiar).