On 10 Dec 2012, at 07:32, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/9/2012 5:03 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 6:51 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 12/9/2012 4:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 5:40 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 12/9/2012 12:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
And without a doubt the most popular interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics among working physicists is SUAC (Shut Up And Calculate),
That's not an interpretation at all.
Well for a more philosophical statement of it see Omnes. His view
is that once you can explain the diagonalization of the the
density matrix (either by eigenselection, dechoherence, or just
assumed per Bohr) then you have predicted probabilities. QM is a
probabilistic theory - so predicting probabilities is all you can
ask of it.
Is science just about its applications or about understanding the
world? I would argue that science would not progress so far as it
has if we thought finding the equation was the be all and end all
of science. The "shut up and calculate" mindset can be translated
as "don't ask embarrassing questions", it is the antithesis of
scientific thinking.
Student in the 1500s: Does the earth move about the sun, or do the
planets merely appear to move as if earth moved about the sun?
Professor in the 1500s: We have all the formulas for predicting
planetary motion, so shut up and calculate!
Fortunately, Copernicus wasn't satisfied with that answer.
So what's your objection to Omnes? That the world just can't be
probabilistic? So instead there must be infinitely many
inaccessible worlds - which happen to mimic a probabilistic world.
It is fine if QM is a probabilistic theory. Where I disagree with
him is in his belief that we can never go beyond that in our
understanding of it. I am not sure how accurate this statement is,
since it is a secondary source, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Omn%C3%A8s
says: "We will never, Omnès believes, find a common sense
interpretation of quantum law itself." To me, it almost seems as
if he says it is not worth trying to find an answer.
Suppose he'd said in 1400CE, "We will never find a common sense
interpretation of the sphericity of the Earth." He'd have been
right; we didn't, instead we changed 'common sense'.
I lean more towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding
good explanations.
But why isn't "It's a probabilistic world and it obeys the Born
rule." a good explanation. I'm all for finding a better
explanation, i.e. a deterministic one. But simply postulating an
ensemble of worlds to make the probabilities "deterministic" in
arbitrary way doesn't strike me as any improvement.
It is, as it explains interference, without adding something not well
defined (apparatus, observer) not obeying QM (like with the collapse
needed to get one physical reality).
Bruno
Brent
"As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say,
men on the opposite side of the earth where the sun rises
when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite
ours, that is on no ground credible. Even if some unknown
landmass is there, and not just ocean, "there was only one
pair of original ancestors, and it is inconceivable that
such distant regions should have been peopled by Adam's
descendants."
--- St. Augustine
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