Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction to the Cambridge University Press Edition
- Introduction to the Original ArXiv.org Posting
- Disclaimers
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Letters to David Baker
- 2 Letters to Howard Baker
- 3 Letters to Howard Barnum
- 4 Letters to Paul Benioff
- 5 Letters to Charlie Bennett
- 6 Letters to Herb Bernstein
- 7 Letters to Doug Bilodeau
- 8 Letters to Gilles Brassard
- 9 Letters to Jeffrey Bub
- 10 Letters to Carlton Caves
- 11 Letters to Greg Comer
- 12 Letters to Charles Enz
- 13 Letters to Henry Folse
- 14 Letters to Bob Griffiths
- 15 Letters to Adrian Kent
- 16 Letters to Rolf Landauer
- 17 Letters to Hideo Mabuchi
- 18 Letters to David Mermin
- 19 Letters to David Meyer
- 20 Letters to Jeff Nicholson
- 21 Letters to Michael Nielsen
- 22 Letters to Asher Peres
- 23 Diary of a Carefully Worded Paper: More Letters to Asher Peres
- 24 Letters to John Preskill
- 25 Letters to Joseph Renes
- 26 Letters to Mary Beth Ruskai
- 27 Letters to Rüdiger Schack
- 28 Letters to Robert Schumann
- 29 Letters to Abner Shimony
- 30 Letters to Jon Waskan
- 31 Letters to Bill Wootters
- 32 Letters to Anton Zeilinger
- 33 Other Letters
- Postpartum
- Index of Names
11 - Letters to Greg Comer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Introduction to the Cambridge University Press Edition
- Introduction to the Original ArXiv.org Posting
- Disclaimers
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Letters to David Baker
- 2 Letters to Howard Baker
- 3 Letters to Howard Barnum
- 4 Letters to Paul Benioff
- 5 Letters to Charlie Bennett
- 6 Letters to Herb Bernstein
- 7 Letters to Doug Bilodeau
- 8 Letters to Gilles Brassard
- 9 Letters to Jeffrey Bub
- 10 Letters to Carlton Caves
- 11 Letters to Greg Comer
- 12 Letters to Charles Enz
- 13 Letters to Henry Folse
- 14 Letters to Bob Griffiths
- 15 Letters to Adrian Kent
- 16 Letters to Rolf Landauer
- 17 Letters to Hideo Mabuchi
- 18 Letters to David Mermin
- 19 Letters to David Meyer
- 20 Letters to Jeff Nicholson
- 21 Letters to Michael Nielsen
- 22 Letters to Asher Peres
- 23 Diary of a Carefully Worded Paper: More Letters to Asher Peres
- 24 Letters to John Preskill
- 25 Letters to Joseph Renes
- 26 Letters to Mary Beth Ruskai
- 27 Letters to Rüdiger Schack
- 28 Letters to Robert Schumann
- 29 Letters to Abner Shimony
- 30 Letters to Jon Waskan
- 31 Letters to Bill Wootters
- 32 Letters to Anton Zeilinger
- 33 Other Letters
- Postpartum
- Index of Names
Summary
The ghost of my father sat in front of me
sprinkling salt into its beer.
The floor, wooden and sole soaked slick
I could just push my feet and rub my fingers.
“Give me more life,” I whispered.
I wanted to touch the flakes of rust
on the cooler, mingled with sweat.
Bottle caps everywhere; it didn't understand
the boredom.
My only sound was that of a screen door.
“My son will be a professor of physics in three years.”
14 February 1995, “Turtle Wax”
Let me wax just a little. A few quotes by Wolfgang Pauli on quantum mechanical randomness and objective reality. (Taken from the English translation of a paper titled “Matter.”)
“Like an ultimate fact without any cause, the individual outcome of a measurement is, however, in general not comprehended by laws. This must necessarily be the case …”
“In the new pattern of thought we do not assume any longer the detached observer, occurring in the idealizations of this classical type of theory, but an observer who by his indeterminable effects creates a new situation, theoretically described as a new state of the observed system. In this way every observation is a singling out of a particular factual result, here and now, from the theoretical possibilities, thereby making obvious the discontinuous aspect of the physical phenomena.”
“Nevertheless, there remains still in the new kind of theory an objective reality, inasmuch as these theories deny any possibility for the observer to influence the results of a measurement, once the experimental arrangement is chosen.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Coming of Age With Quantum InformationNotes on a Paulian Idea, pp. 150 - 189Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011