On 11/4/2015 5:17 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 5/11/2015 11:03 am, Russell Standish wrote:
On Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 03:15:51PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
This scarcely counts as a derivation of any useful physics at all,
much less of quantum mechanics that relates to observational
results.
It is a derivation of quantum mechanics, from simple assumptions about
what it means to observe stuff. That quantum mechanics needs
a correspondence principle to make contact with classical measuring
apparatuses goes beyond what I was attempting to do.
But, without this contact with experiment, it is not a derivation of
quantum mechanics. You have merely developed a formalism -- a
formalism that could be applied to almost anything. For example, you
could apply this to the 24 runners in the Melbourne Cup. Each horse
has some probability of winning -- the race is an observer moment with
a set of possibilities consistent with what is known at that point in
time .... etc, etc, etc. So your formalism would apply to this, as
well as to most other things that we experience. There is nothing in
the formalism to distinguish quantum events from anything else, so it
is not quantum mechanics.
Scott Aaronson describes how QM could have been invented by armchair
philosophizing about extending probability theory to negative values.
He then says the fact that nobody did this is the best argument he knows
for the importance of experimental science.
Brent
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