User talk:Linas

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Danko Georgiev (talk | contribs) at 06:15, 5 January 2006 (→‎"Afshar experiment deletion"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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"Was this reviewed?"

On Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) you wrote:

... much of the burden of revieweing edits could be improved with better tools. For example, I would love to know if one of my trusted collegues has already reviewed the same edit I'm reviewing. This would greatly reduce my review burden, and allow me to monitor many, many, many more articles. linas 23:35, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Fantastic idea. Do you know whether there is some ongoing discussion on such things? (Feel free to reply here; I'm watching this page.) — Nowhither 18:36, 31 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect there is, but I know not where. I have noticed that the wikimedia software made an attempt at implementing something like this, but it was either a hack or mis-designed or incomplete. You can see this on newer wikimedia sites, for example [1]. If you look at edit histories, you'll see red exclamation marks denoting unreviewed pages. But you'll also notice that any sockpuppet can reset them, ... so it really doesn't work correctly. So it seems someone thought about it, but I don't know what the status is, or where its going, or who is doing it. You'll have to look up the wikimedia folks.
Anyway, what I really want is actually fancier than what I wrote at the village pump, but I thought I'd keep it simple. I'd happily engage in a conversation with the wikimedia developers if you can locate them. linas 04:01, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify: This site runs the latest version of the wikimedia software, but the review system is turned off because it hurts performance. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:23, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, yes, it could be written as a fancy SQL query, and that would make the lights dim. Is this MySQL or Postgres? I'm guessing there are ways to make this more efficient, by using status bits of various kinds, requiring table redesigns. No matter, I didn't like the way the red exclamation marks worked anyway; they weren't really useful. linas 14:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The WikiMedia sites are using MySQL. I was wrong by the way: the feature that you described is called "RC patrol", it's described on m:Help:Patrolled edit, and it seems that it was turned off because anybody could mark an edit as patrolled (as you already noticed, see also this mail and replies). I was confusing it with the m:Article validation feature, which is a more elaborate scheme that is disabled for performance reasons. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:05, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, thanks for the links, I'll have to prowl around there a bit. My other bit of patrol paranoia is that it is easy to review only the most recent change; thus a "bad edit" could be hidden in the history and overlooked. Thus, I'd prefer to see *all* changes since I last looked. linas 04:01, 2 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]


ON WATER AND MATHEMATICS

Dear linas, if you have time please read my post in the Afshar's talk page before someone has deleted it. Now if you have reconsidered your attitude towards my work, you may contact me by e-mail. Actually I can explain you now with water experiments only, what is not and what is relevant in QM. I have stopped our discussion because of your e-mail where you said you have no time to read my postings, because I am obviouly ignorant in math, etc. This usually is considered as non-rational discussion, where you apply judgement about one own personality, but not judge his arguments. Well, I was also busy, because I had to start a Ph.D reserahc in Japan. I will be glad for some rational collaboration. I think everything about complementarity can be said only when speaking of water waves only. Danko

"Afshar experiment deletion"

Dear Linas, I am amazed to see that you have proposed the deletion of the experiment Wiki page! You have not even responded to my last e-mail yet, and this is what you do instead?! I appeal to your sense of fairness and leave it at that... Prof. Afshar 20:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you look more carefully, you will notice that I did not propose deletion, and that in fact I argued that the article should be kept. Also, I have responded to everything that you have written to me, and in fact, I took silence on your part as tacit admission. Perhaps you should repost your other comments here, if you beleive I have not replied. linas 20:38, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sorry, my mistake on the Vote issue! Here's the e-mail I sent you which was not replied to:

Dear Linas,

Finally I have a little time to respond to your e-mail!

I took a look at the your changes to the Wiki article and I am surprised by your charachterization: "the controversy has been mostly ignored within the mainstream academic physics community." How did you come to that conclusion? Frankly this statment is contradicted by the very fact the article exists and the long list of academic critics whom are included in it! I have never seen such a statement made in any other Wiki article, so please kindly elaborate on that, so I can reply on the specific issue that you have in mind.

As for your other comments I have inserted my response in Capital letters into your original e-mail below.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards. Shahriar S. Afshar

Letter

Original Message-----

From: linas [2] Sent: Wed 12/7/2005 4:03 PM To: Afshar, Shahriar S. Subject: Re: FW: Wikipedia article

On Tue, Dec 06, 2005 at 09:43:40PM -0500, Afshar, Shahriar S. was heard to remark: > L--Here's the paper. Regards. --S

Thank you for the preprint. I read it as carefully as I could bear. It appears to be in order. I have only two comments, one direct, and one having only indirect bearing on this paper, but perhaps central to the phenomenon being studied.

THANKS FOR THE APPROVAL! BEAR IN MIND THIS PAPER HAD BEEN IN THE WORKS FOR 2.5 YEARS AND CRITICALLY REVIEWD BY A DOZEN EXPERTS ON A CONFIDENTIAL BASIS.


First, it seems to me that both the old and the new versions of your experiment could be carried out with classical waves. For example, a high-school/college physics ripple tank could be set up, with slits, lens, etc. and it seems that exactly the same experimental results would be recorded.


IT IS TRUE THAT THIS EXPERIMENT CAN BE SETUP USING RIPPLE TANKS (IT NEEDS A VERY LARGE TANK BUT IT CAN BE DONE), HOWEVER I DISAGREE THAT "exactly the same experimental results would be recorded". HERE'S WHY: IN THE RIPPLE TANK VERSION, THE WAVES ARE REAL AND BOTH BEAMS CARRY ENERGY AND MOEMENTUM, SO AT THE IMAGE PLANE BOTH DETECTROS WOULD GO OFF (BOTH FLOATS WOULD BOB SIMULTANEOUSLY). IN CONTRAST WHILE THE QM DESCRIPTION OF WAVEFUNCTIONS ARE IDENTICAL TO REAL WAVES, ONLY ONE OF THE DETECTORS WOULD GO OFF AT THE IMAGE PLANE. THIS IS DUE TO THE QUANTIZED NATURE OF QUANTUM OBSERVABLES (WE NEVER OBSERVE THE WAVEFUNCTION, DIRECTLY, ONLY ITS ABSOLUTE SQUARED VALUE.) THIS IS THE MYSTERY OF THE SO-CALLED COLLAPSE OF THE WAVEFUNCTION AHICH MAKES QM UNIQUE, AND ONTOLOGICALLY DIFFERENT FROM CLASSICAL MECHANICS.


Another alternative would be sound waves. Ultrasound in the range of 10KHz or 20KHz would allow a table-top sized demonstration (lower frequencies would require a very large setup, but would allow one to maybe physically walk around the setup, using one's own ears as detectors).

YES YOU CAN DO IT THIS WAY. BUT AS I SAID ABOVE, BOTH LISTENERS AT THE IMAGE PLANE WOULD HEAR THE SOUND IN THE "IMAGES."

Since I presume the outcome of such an experimet would be in complete agreement with optical experiment, I then am lead to ask what any of this has to do with quantum mechanics. There may be something there, but I cannot yet put my finger on it.


YES THERE IS SOMETHING TO IT: QUANTIZATION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC (OR OTHER) FILEDS!


The direct remark is that there is a slight mis-statement in the conclusion, if I read it correctly. You state: 

 "...the current theory of measurement in which a measurement
  always leads to a change of the quantum state of the detector."

This seems to ignore the "famous" "Renninger negative-result experiment", in which case a wave-function collapse is provoked even in the absence of a traditional measurement having been made.

Of all of the various quantum paradoxes, I've always found the Renninger experiment to be particularly vexing and intriguing. It seems to me that mabe you've introduced a bit of that phenomenon into your setup.

--linas


NO! IN THE RENNINGER EXPERIMENT, THE DETECTOR IS PLACED IN THE REGION OF SPACE WHERE THE AMPLITUDE OF THE WAVEFUNCTION IS NON-ZERO. WHEN IT FAILS TO DETECT THE PARTICLE THERE, THIS NULL RESULT CHANGES THE WAVEFUCNTION BY REDISTRIBUTING THE AMPLITUDES TO CONSERVE THE NORM, AND CERTAINLY CAUSES A SCATTERING OF THE WAVEFUNCTION. HOWEVER, MY DETCTORS (WIRES) ARE PLACED AT THE NULLS OF THE WAVEFUNCTION, WHICH BY "NOT REGISTERING" VERIFY THE NULLS (ZERO AMPLITDUES) WITHIN THE WAVEFUNCTION. THIS HAS THE CRUCIAL BENEFIT OF LEAVING THE UNITARY EVOLUTION OF THE WAVEFUNCTION INTACT, AND NO REDISTRIBUTION OF AMPLITUDES TAKES PLACE.

I HOPE THE ABOVE IS CLEAR ENOUGH!

S.S. Afshar Afshar 21:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reply

Not sure what to say. My point was that your experiment appears to be a combination of a classical wave experiment (the realization as a ripple tank) in combination with the usual quantum measurement weirdness of wave-function collapse. I already find that thinking about a photon hitting a photographic plate is quite puzzling, never mind where the photon came from. I find the Mott problem quite astounding. By thinking about your experiment, I gain no physical insight into these previous two examples, or others that I think about. It doesn't resolve any issues that I have with quantum measurement.

Also: I did not mean to imply that your wires are like the Renninger experiment. I meant to imply something very different: it was in response to the statement 

 "...the current theory of measurement in which a measurement
  always leads to a change of the quantum state of the detector."

In the Reninger experiment, a measurement is made without a change of state of the detector. linas 21:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


  • Dear Linas,
"photon hitting a photographic plate is quite puzzling". This is the quantization issue. You may find Willis Lamb's semiclassical electrodynamics interesting in this regard. He treats the electromagnetic field as a classical (ripple tank) field, and assumes that the detector is made up of quantized matter. But this treatment would not work for a pair of downconverted photons, so it cannot be the ultimate explanation.
"I gain no physical insight into these previous two examples" My experiment aims to show the inadequacy of Complementarity and its predictions, and does so simply by showing both which-way information and interference for the same particles in the same experimental setup. It does not solve any problem, rather it highlights that a famous assumption is in fact wrong! This sadly adds to our problems rather than reduce them! But that is the nature of scientific research. Alas, one cannot make nature bend to one's whims!
On the issue of the article, I suggest that you remove "and the controversy has been mostly ignored within the mainstream academic physics community." This is factually incorrect, as evidenced from the numerous academic talks I have given throughout the world. The part about the refereed journals can stay until the paper gets published in one.
Regards. Afshar 00:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Sockpuppetry

Dear Linas, Can you please move the comments under the votes for the deletion of the Afshar experiment page to the discussion page? It seems highly irregular.Afshar 22:30, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Dear Linas, You can't call anyone who supports my work a sockpuppet! User:Physicsmonkis certainly not a sockpuppet either, he is the Boston colleague I mentioned in my e-mail. I asked him to set up an account as you had suggested. He told me about the recent events with Monroe requesting a deletion and then you reinstating Monroe's attempt which I mistakenly understood as your own view. Sorry if I got confused on your vote! At any rate, User:Physicsmonk told me that for some reason he could not post his vote on the Wiki deletion page, which is what I did for him by copying and pasting his response to User:Hmonroe into the vote page. As you can see, I have not voted on the deletion issue myself as I deem that not to be ethical. I hope this clarifies the situation. BTW/ I have posted the e-mail I sent you a few days agao but was left unanswered in your talk page. Afshar 21:15, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Linas, DO NOT THREATEN ME! The IP you mentioned belongs to the colleague User:Physicsmonk with whom I worked and used his computer last year before I had set up my own Wiki account. After my recent discussions with you I asked him to obtain an account as well, which is exactly what he has done. He retracted the anonymous vote after he realized I had posted his vote for him (see below for the reason). Please stop these unsubstantiated remarks. Frankly, I am starting to think that Hunter Monroe is in fact your sockpuppet?! Afshar 23:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop. I find it wholly remarkable that you and your freinds seem to all be quite active on this issue today, and seem to have this strange need to use each-others accounts from which each of you are unable to make various edits in various ways, thus necessitating the use of each-others accounts to actually perform these edits that the others could not perform. I find these explanations to be throughly confusing, even if in fact they are correct. Again, please stop, and please tell all of your freinds to stop as well. linas 23:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

re Afshar Exper, you wrote "(revert removal of deletion notice; this process needs to run to its normal conclusion in 5 days" I agree with your action to stick to the rules. GangofOne 10:21, 21 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

I am a newcomer. Thanks for the help and the compliment, calling me a real mathematician. I hope I am. I have a Ph.D. in pure mathematics (set-theoretic and measure-theoretic foundations of probability theory) and a Ph.D. in statistics with a specialty in order statistics and empirical processes, and have been a roving academic since then...sigh... Sorry to admit ignorance, but how do I join the mathematics project? I tried but did not succeed. As an undergrad, I had studied special and general relativity and a bit of quantum mechanics; lately, I have been reading a lot about quantum theory, along with the various string theories and M theory, but I am just an amateur in those fields; I certainly do not really understand it well; also, I am interested in quantum computing. Anyway, thanks again MathStatWoman 18:19, 23 December 2005 (UTC).[reply]

Ah, well, welcome again. Actually, we have many PhD's here, and I'll say at least one "famous" professor working anonymously. The "real mathematicians" mostly get along, but there is occasional friction between these and well-meaning but ill-informed general population, with occasional outright hostility in Wikipedia:WikiProject Pseudoscience and some topics such as Category:Quantum measurement. You might have noticed some of the controversy spilling up above. So I breath a sigh of relief when someone credentialled gets active.
To "join", you merely go to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics page and participate in any discussions that interest you. You might also be interested in Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. Participation is made easier by "watching" a page. Click on the tab "watch" on the upper right-hand side. The page will then appear on your "watchlist" whenever it changes. Besides watching the articles that one has an interest in, its not uncommon for people to watch each-others talk pages, so that conversatins such as this can move forward.
You can also "formally" join by adding your name to Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Participants, but that doesn't do anything other than to formally log your interest. (similarly, Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Participants). linas 18:41, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Lp space

I "slapped" the too-technical tag on the discussion page of Lp space becasue the article is too technical. I don't want to spend a lot of time writing a description of what that means, since there is already a formal Wikipedia policy proposal that describes it far better than I could ever hope to. Please see Making technical articles accessible for what it means and suggestions for improving the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Metacomet (talk • contribs)

crank?

Hello,

I noticed that you'd made a series of edits which refer to stochastic electrodynamics as a "crank" theory. Please read some of the literature before continuing in that vein. Puthoff, Rueda, Haisch, de la Pena, etc are not cranks (or if they are, then they are the kind of cranks that get published in Phys Rev D ;) I would not claim it is a proven theory, but at a minimum it is an extremely interesting hypothesis that merits further study. I look forward to collaborating with you on that and related articles after you've digested the math in the relevant papers and can make a more substantive contribution. ObsidianOrder 07:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I digested the article and it was very clearly cranky. The appearance of Hal Puthoff's name does not help, as he already has a bad reputation. I'll look at the lit, but I doubt I'll change my mind. WP has an NPOV policy, and to present stuff like this as if it were real science is untruthful. linas 17:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Physics organization

Dear Linas, thanks for your invitation. I have indeed contributed approximately 600 articles about physics, most of them are rather specialized, and right now I don't see how a particular team of five people can improve these things significantly. You may try to edit the articles listed in "my contributions". At any rate, I wish you a good luck. All the best, LM --Lumidek 13:43, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Removal AfD tag from Afshar experiment

Dear Linas, please remove the AfD tag from the experiment page. Who is supposed to close the voting process? It's already been 9 days, way over the usual voting time. Why?! -- Afshar 14:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators close the voting. There is usual a bit of a backlog. At the moment, the backlog is about 6 days, which is more severe than average (see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Old for some statistics). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:28, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Casimir effect

I award you this barnstar for your tireless editing in math and physics, and for the high-quality content you add to many, many related articles, especially lately to Casimir effect. Viva fisica! Karol

You really turned Casimir effect into something nice to read. Thanks for that. A little barnstar to show my appreciation. I'm sure countless other people appreciate it, also. Karol 08:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Why thank you very much! If I may, I'll display this on my page! linas 18:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV tag on Afshar experiment article

Dear Linas, please take a look at the following form the discussion page for Afshar experiment. I await you response. Regards, and Happy New Year! --Afshar 04:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've added an NPOV tag after noticing that the first paragraph states "Prof. Afshar plays an active role in editing this article.". --HappyCamper 22:52, 31 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with the NPOV tag. I have offered to voice my views in the talk page and ask a neutral editor to edit the main article accordingly after we discuss it here. To start with, I take issue with the following subjective statement in the introduction: "the controversy has been mostly ignored within the mainstream academic physics community". This is in fact incorrect, and evidence to the contrary can be found by a simple search in the Google under "afshar experiment". Rarely has an experiment in quantum mechanics produced such tumult in academia as this experiment. I asked Linas to explain his reasoning to include the above statement (other than his own personal misgivings of the experiment) but have not received a response. There are other major problems with the article including the Overview, and the Theory section. But, I will hold on for now to see the kind of action Linas or other editors would take on the issue I have raised above. Looking forward to hearing from all interested Wikipedians. --Prof. Afshar 04:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'll look.

Second Temporal Dimension

May I ask for look at Second Temporal Dimension? Looks somewhat strange to me (see talk page), but I don't know zilch about usage of the term in string theory. --Pjacobi 22:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My gut instinct is to AfD the thing. I don't know much about string theory, but I note the article was created by an undergrad, who presumably knows even less. I vaguely remember hearing 't Hooft using the words "AdS/CFT correspondence" and "two time dimensions" in the same lecture, but without details, I don't know what to do about it. linas 17:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've asked User:Lumidek. If he is not interested to bring this article in shape, I'll put it on AfD. --Pjacobi 18:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vandal tags

Thank you for reverting vandalism on Wikipedia!

Be sure to put warning tags on the vandal's user talk page (such as {{subst:test}}, {{subst:test2}}, {{subst:test3}}, {{subst:test4}}). Add each of these tags on the vandal's talk page, in sequential order, after each instance of vandalism. Adding warnings to the talk page assists administrators in determining whether or not the user should be blocked. If the user continues to vandalize pages after you add the {{subst:test4}} tag, request administrator assistance at Request for Intervention. Again, thank you for helping to make Wikipedia better. -Mysekurity(have you seen this?) 23:22, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#Certification gang

what do you think of this? -- Zondor 16:18, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I like it. I clarified there. linas 18:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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