On 1/2/2014 7:37 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Jan 2, 2014 at 8:35 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com
<mailto:lizj...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On 3 January 2014 14:31, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
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.
I thought linearit was probabilities adding up to one, which isn't a radical
assumption???
I think you might be thinking of unitary vs. non-unitary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarity_(physics)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarity_%28physics%29>
Time reversibility is an observed phenomenon in (almost) all particle
interactions,
so surely not an assumption at all?
I agree, things like CPT symmetry, determinism, etc. aren't just assumptions, but
underlie every other known physical law that is known.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry
The *CPT theorem* says that CPT symmetry holds for all physical phenomena, or more
precisely, that any Lorentz invariant
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_invariant> local quantum field theory
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory> with a Hermitian
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-adjoint_operator>Hamiltonian
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_%28quantum_mechanics%29> must have CPT symmetry.
Collapse of the wave function would be the only phenomenon in quantum mechanics that is
non-unitary, non-linear, non-differentiable, and discontinuous. It would also be the
only principle in physics that non-local, non-causal, non-deterministic, and violates
special relativity.
I can understand that Brent's ambivalence toward MWI, it may not be the final answer,
but I think it is a good step in that direction. However, I am surprised that anyone
well-versed in the known physics of today, could consider collapse as anything but a
wild, unsupported, and almost-certainly-false conjecture.
That's what I mean by attacking a straw man. Fuchs and Peres et al, including Bohr only
considered 'collapse of the wave function' as a change in one's information. Bohr said QM
is not about reality, it's about what we can say about reality. Only later did people try
to invent real collapse theories, e.g. Penrose, and while I don't consider any of them
likely I wouldn't say they are almost certainly false.
There is so much well-established physics that must be given up; for apparently no other
reason than the ontological prejudice some harbor for the idea that the universe is no
bigger than we previously thought.
That's as good a prejudice as every thing must be determined from the beginning.
Brent
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