The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics

An entry in Ars Mathematica has alerted me to John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [see also Wikipedia]. It feels exactly right.

The trouble with quantum mechanics has always been that it makes accurate predictions but doesn’t make sense. People make a virtue of this. It shows how far above our heads the whole theory is. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, says the Lord”.

This is self-indulgent obscurantism and it leads to such New Age loopiness as The Dancing Wu Li Masters (in which, among other delights, every chapter is called Chapter One).

The transactional interpretation is solidly and sensibly based on mathematics – specifically, on a bit of mathematics that has mostly been ignored because it’s embarrassing.

How we learn

Now that I’m beginning to get the ghost of an inkling of what BJJ is all about (and so I should, since I got awarded my third stripe on Wednesday: thank you Luciano, I’ll try to deserve it), I think I can understand the learning process a little better.

Our class is fairly standard. Our instructor shows us a move – armbar from side control, or whatever. He breaks it up into the individual stages, the grips, the shifts of weight, and then he puts it back together again. Then we pair off and practise.

By then we’ve already completely forgotten how it’s meant to go. It was obvious when we watched it. It was so obvious that we were bored with being shown and impatient with the one guy in the class who wanted to see it just one more time. And now – our minds and bodies are blank. We have to call the instructor over and get him to show us on our own bodies what to do.

The same comes when you try to learn any physical activity and the reason is always the same. They can teach your mind, but it’s your body that has to learn.

Injuries

“Why don’t you blog more about BJJ?”, a commenter asked. The answer is that I don’t think I know anything about it yet. But then I thought that not knowing anything about BJJ is where we all start. So I’m preparing a deep and meaningful posting about the learning experience.

But meaningfulness takes time, and meanwhile, Forlogos’ stiff neck made me think of injuries. He got his latest one from riding the subway doing neck stretches in public, “Look, I’m this really fit guy who works hard on maintaining his body even on trains, look at this stre— Aaaaaaargghhhhhh!”.

At least I got my BJJ injuries from BJJ!

Cyprian’s Last Theorem

I’ve been writing up my work to make it more accessible to general readers – mathematically literate but not specialists. This has expanded it from 5 pages to more than 30, has clarified and corrected some arguments, and has also led to more discoveries. In particular, the theorem now seems proved for all square-free n, and (if a particular continued-fraction argument can be made rigorous) for all n<10^76 – this is only a finite number but it’s not small.

I’m going to give the draft to some friends to read, and if it survives their scrutiny then I’ll see about posting it here, either as a single PDF or as a series of blog articles like the excellent Fermat’s Last Theorem series.