- #246
gentzen
Science Advisor
Gold Member
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Sad to hear. Your current discussions with A. Neumaier helped me to see more clearly how the thermal interpretations resolves paradoxes I had thought about long before I heard about the thermal interpretation.vanhees71 said:I give up. I don't understand the logic behind the idea of the "thermal interpretation". I guess you can live with it.
My impression with respect to this "please give me an operational definition" request and A. Neumaier's reply "what sort of operational definition would you find satisfactory" is that it is similar to requests for operational definitions of the center of gravity of the sun, the moon, or the Earth in Newton's theory. If you apply it with respect to point particles, then those centers of gravity are the things that the theory talks about, and to which its predictions apply. But you cannot directly observe the center of gravity of the earth. You could instead observe the moon and how it orbits the earth, to indirectly observe it. But even there, you don't directly observe its center of gravity (which would give you the most accurate information), but only an approximation to it that includes a certain fundamental uncertainty. But A. Neumaier still has to insist that "the state of the system" determines those centers of gravity, because that is what the theory talks about.