On 2/21/2020 10:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 4:50 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Yes, Zurek is hard to follow since he seems to use unusal
terminology sometimes. Attached is a good discussion of his
method by Schlosshauer and Fine which I find useful
Yes, Zurek is sometimes quite opaque, and I found the
Schlosshauer-Fine discussion of Zurek's additional, hidden,
assumptions useful. In their conclusions, they state: "We cannot
derive probabilities from a theory that does not already contain some
probabilistic concept; at some stage, we need to 'put probabilities in
to get probabilities out'."
This is perhaps my basic worry with Zurek, as with other attempts to
derive the Born rule from the SWE. Zurek simply assumes that
probabilities are relevant, and necessarily a property of the quantum
state -- the amplitudes are then an obvious place for these
probabilities to reside. Everything else then follows. But this is not
a derivation without additional assumptions: where did the probability
notion creep in? If you take the SWE straight, the amplitudes
(coefficients) just go along for the ride and have no influence at all
on the final state after measurement.
I have always found this a worrying aspect of Everett.
But isn't that just a matter of it's proponents overselling it. If you
say, well it's a probabilistic theory, then that the Born rule is the
way to get a probability is fairly compelling.
Brent
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