Quantum effects

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bnjtokyo
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Quantum effects

Postby bnjtokyo » Sun Mar 12, 2017 9:34 pm

Read in the NYTimes:
"Terry Sullivan, the executive director of the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the pace of appointments [said] 'The federal government is quantum times larger than the largest American corporation. It puts Exxon Mobil in the shade. It is a reflection of naïveté about how big the U.S. government is.'”

I quess Mr Sullivan doesn't know that a "quantum" is defined as "the smallest discrete quantity of some physical property that a system can possess"

So a "quantum increase" would be just a tiny bit larger and the result of multiplying a large number (the largest American corporation) by a tiny fraction of itself (its quantum) will be a number much smaller than the original large number.

I guess the quotation reflects a certain naivete about meaning of the words he uses.

Perry Lassiter
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Re: Quantum effects

Postby Perry Lassiter » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:52 pm

I agree, especially in the usage in your quote. But I believe I have heard the expression "quantum shift" in the sense of a radical paradym change comparable to that in physics when quantum mechanics came into play. Results and their implications still roil scientists today with the wierdest consequences immaginabke!
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Slava
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Re: Quantum effects

Postby Slava » Tue Nov 21, 2017 9:48 am

We also have the concept of a quantum leap forward.

There are several meanings accepted for this word, so both great and small are correct.
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