On 10 Dec 2012, at 17:25, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/10/2012 2:47 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Dec 2012, at 02:03, 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. I lean more
towards David Deutsch who says science is about finding good
explanations.
Omnes is very special. His many books gives the best account and
defense of the MWI, except that in the last paragraph, or chapter,
he insist that we have to be irrational, in fine, and select one
reality. This is really cosmo-solipsism, and makes QM indeed no
more rational at all.
What's not rational about it? I think 'rational' just means 'being
able to give coherent reasons'. There's a perfectly good coherent
reason for 'selecting' one reality - we experience one reality.
But there is no reason to extrapolate from this. We experience a flat
earth, we see the Sun turning around Earth, we feel the need of force
to keep the same speed, etc. Usually when we refer to experience we
are wrong (and from this some extrapolate wrongly that we cannot
mention experience in experiment ...).
Also, we do not experience a reality. We experience something
(consciousness, mainly) and we extrapolate reality from that, and from
theories already extrapolated.
Bruno
Brent
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