On 1/2/2014 11:54 AM, LizR wrote:
On 3 January 2014 07:07, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com
<mailto:jasonre...@gmail.com>> wrote:
You can find out more and find out exactly where is is but to do that
you're
going to need to get your hands dirty and perform a experiment, then
the squared
wave function collapses from everywhere to one specific dot on a
photographic
plate. This is the measurement problem and the problem that the MWI
elegantly
solves that most other quantum interpretations do not; it's the only
reason I
think MWI is better than the competition.
There are other reasons to prefer it besides it's answer to the measurement
problem
without magical observers, including:
- Fewer assumptions
- Explains more (appearance of collapse, and arguably also the Born rule
(with
Gleason's theorem))
- Explains how quantum computers work
- Fully mathematical theory (no fuzziness, or loose definitions)
- No faster-than-light influences
- Explains universe at times before there was conscious life to observe it
- Preserves CPT symmetry, time reversibility, linearity
- Is realist on things other than our observations (here is "something
else" out
there, besides what is in our minds)
I would say the evidence for MWI isn't just strong, but overwhelming, given
the
evidence for QM is overwhelming and MWI is the only theory of QM consistent
with
other (overwhelmingly established theories such as special relativity).
I await Brent's response with interest.
Then I'll start by saying I don't reject MWI, I just have reservations about it, not so
much that it's wrong, but that it doesn't really solve the problems it claims to - which
implies criticism of the position that MWI has solved all the problems of interpreting
QM. A lot of the above claimed advantages knocking down straw men built on naive
interpretations of Bohr. Some are just assumptions, e.g that physics must be time
reversible and linear.
The basic problem of the Copenhagen interpretation was the Heisenberg cut. Bohr
essentially said it was our choice. Somewhere there had to be a classical, irreversible
result if the theory was actually to predict anything, BUT we could chose where to put it.
Where ever we put it, on the classical side probabilities were predicted with the Born rule.
MWI says we there are different orthogonal worlds corresponding to the different
experimental outcomes. This is just the Heisenberg cut in another form. MWI helps itself
to the CI view that the experimenter/instrument choice determines what variables will be
measured. Now decoherence theory has come along and tried to make this objective - not
dependent on what the experimenter had in mind. It is proposed that an instrument, by it's
interaction with the environment defines a "pointer basis" or "einselects" a basis in
which the system+instrument reduced density matrix will evolve to be approximately
diagonal. Notice that from a mathematical standpoint "reduced" means "doing an average
over a randomized environment" - so this isn't so deterministic as advertised - it's
statistical-mechanics deterministic. But the problem remains that finding the pointer
basis or even proving that there is one is an open problem which is the same (fuzzy)
problem as the CI problem of defining the Heisenberg cut. I think there's a solution, but
that's not the same as MWI has solved it.
The question of whether MWI derives the Born rule or not also seems unresolved. Gleason's
theorem and Everett's own arguments prove (I think) that if QM predicts probabilities they
must be proportional to the norms of projections of the Hilbert space state. But this
implies inherently continuous probabilities. It's not clear how this relates to the
existence of multiple worlds. Deutsch has given frequentist interpretation, i.e. the
number of worlds with a given outcome is proportional to the probability of that outcome.
But this implies and infinite number of worlds to realize an irrational probability
value. But if you don't take Deutsch's frequentist model, then "probability" is an extra
variable you tag onto branch worlds; which seems pretty much like collapsing the
wave-function.
Whether MWI has FTL influence seems like a muddled question to me. MWI happens in Hilbert
space, not spacetime. So it's not clear what is meant by entanglement traveling out along
lightcones. Is this a dynamic evolution that is derived from the SE? from QFT? The
examples seem to imply that there is no entanglement until there is a measurement, but
experiments like the Bucky Ball EPR show that decoherence doesn't require a measurement in
the usual sense.
Brent
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