does the deck "change"? poker's version of schrodinger's cat

[mikech]

i'm aware that this is my 1600th post, at which point i become a "pooh-bah," but despite that significance i'm making the post in a low-traffic forum and on a topic that few ppl will likely find interesting. anyway.

in this thread fwf lamented over folding AA on the flop after he saw that the turn and river came ace-ace, and that he "would have" made quads against another player who flopped a set. i posted the following in his thread:


"hey philosophy major, scenarios like this are actually something i've been thinking about lately. on one hand, i feel that the universe would've reacted differently if you'd called or gone all-in, that there's some kind of quantum-physical indeterminacy even to a shuffled deck and you wouldn't (necessarily) have made quads, but the other side of the argument is that the deck was already established, so your action could not have affected it. what's your serious opinion on this?"


someone said that was the dumbest [censored] they'd ever read, and fwf even thought i was joking and defended me:


"in mike's defense he's just making fun of me because i talk about chaos theory a lot. he doesn't actually think the deck changes."


but no, i wasn't joking:


"schrodinger's cat yo. the cat is either alive or dead, it's like the established deck, but until the box is opened and we make the observation, the cat is both alive AND dead according to quantum physics. no?"


so, am i a loon? i have an admittedly shallow understanding of quantum physics and its philosophical implications, i hope that there are others more knowledgeable who will participate in this thread and share some insights. i honestly have been thinking about this quite a bit lately, since i've been playing live poker full-time for the past several months and situations similar to fwf's often occur where there is "results remorse."

[Magic_Man]

I'm no quantum physicist, and most of my understanding comes from books like "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters," "The Elegant Universe," and other books for non-physicists. However, a lot of people try to take quantum indeterminacy to the macro level and come up with these strange scenarios. My understanding is that once you get to this scale, the probability of such an event happening is effectively zero. For example, take electron tunneling. Quantum physics actually allows small particles to travel through a barrier, and in theory, these physics could be extended to the macro scale. There is a non-zero probability that you will walk through a wall in your house...but even if you walked into that wall all day and never rested, you could probably do it for as long as the current age of the universe and STILL have a negligible chance of walking through it. The quantum uncertainties really just don't extend to the macro scale. There is an interesting little segment in "The Elegant Universe" where the author pretends that Planck's constant is much larger, and strange things like this become commonplace.

A more interesting "shuffled deck" scenario that IS real is the "seat effect." Often a player will change seats and then lament a huge run of luck that befalls the next player to take their seat. Or possibly the new seat-taker will continue to receive cold cards, and the seat-changer will comment on how glad he is to have left. But once you change seats, everything changes. The way you throw your cards into the muck causes them to land in different locations in the discards. Even if every player mucked their cards exactly the same way, differences in play will mean that cards will enter the muck in a different order, and all future hands will be forever changed. I think that this is as close to the "butterfly effect" that we can realistically get in a game of cards.

~M^2

[FoxwoodsFiend]

I know practically nothing about quantum physics beyond a "physics for poets" class I took, but I'm inclined to think that this is just another example where people conflate epistemic issues with metaphysical issues.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
I know practically nothing about quantum physics beyond a "physics for poets" class I took, but I'm inclined to think that this is just another example where people conflate epistemic issues with metaphysical issues.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you read this book for that class? I read this during freshman year, it was really good.

[evank15]

[ QUOTE ]
However, a lot of people try to take quantum indeterminacy to the macro level and come up with these strange scenarios. My understanding is that once you get to this scale, the probability of such an event happening is [/b]effectively zero.[/b]

[/ QUOTE ]

And yet, still non-zero.

There's no "trying" to take things to macro scales. They already are.

[gumpzilla]

This is pretty much bunk, in my opinion. The uncertainty that people talk about with quantum mechanics really only applies at the microscopic level; by the time you get to macroscopic objects, the length of time over which they behave quantum mechanically (in terms of being probabilistic, exhibiting interference, things of that nature) gets to be pretty much zero. This is why the everyday world functions as you'd expect, and quantum mechanics is so weird.

[valenzuela]

The reason why the guy shouldnt feel remorse its because he was bound to make that desition and there was no way he could have acted in another way.

You are a total lunatic, just do the following. Put a deck listed on a certain way, leave the room come back and I guarantee you that the deck will remain the same.

[valenzuela]

Btw quantum physics isnt neccesarrilly correct.

[Magic_Man]

[ QUOTE ]
Btw quantum physics isnt neccesarrilly correct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not necessarily, but it is possibly the most-verified theory in all of physics. It makes stunningly accurate predictions that have been checked time and time again.

[Skidoo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Btw quantum physics isnt neccesarrilly correct.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not necessarily, but it is possibly the most-verified theory in all of physics. It makes stunningly accurate predictions that have been checked time and time again.

[/ QUOTE ]

They said the same thing about physics in the 1890s.