Which universe are we in? (tossing tennis balls into spinning props)

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At 03:21 PM 7/14/02 +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:
>Eric Cordian wrote:
>> Still, Nature abhors overcomplexification, and plain old quantum
mechanics
>> works just fine for predicting the results of experiments.
>
>Oh yeah? So predict when this radioactive isotope will decay, if you
please.

You mean "this particular *atom* will decay".

And while QM can't help you with a particular atom, it also doesn't say
that its impossible that knowledge of internal states of the atom
wouldn't help you predict its fragmentation.

Think about tossing tennis balls through spinning propellers.  You might
think you could
only characterize the translucent prop-disk by a certain probability
that the ball would get through
vs. get shredded.  ("Propeller mechanics")

But if you could see the phase of the prop as it spun, you could time
your tosses and predict which would get shredded.  But without that
high-speed strobe, you just think there's a disk where there's really a
spinning blade.