On Mon, Feb 1, 2021 at 4:10 PM smitra <[email protected]> wrote: > The core disagreement with Bruce is the following. He wrote: > > "However, I have not made any appeal to Copenhagen or any other > particular interpretation. I am simply pointing to a physical result > that must be explainable by whatever interpretation or theory you > adopt."
> While you can do this, you then cannot draw the conclusion that the MWI > is wrong. For that you must analyze the situation according to the MWI, > and if there are problems see if these are due to a formalism that > simplifies things too much that can be repaired or if the problem is > fundamentally unrepairable. Only in the latter case can you draw the > conclusion that the MWI must necessarily be wrong. > You are saying that only if MWI can be shown to be internally inconsistent can it be claimed that it is wrong. This is not true. If one can demonstrate that MWI does not give results that correspond to the physical reality, then one can conclude that MWI is inadequate as a physical theory. So I have adopted a neutral position on the truth or falsity of MWI and shown that it does not give an adequate account of the irreversibility of most quantum interactions. Not that any other quantum theory necessarily does either, but it does show a weakness in the theories that can only be remedied by the addition of a genuine stochastic element into those theories -- something that will recognize the reality of the transition from a pure state to an improper mixture, which is what the entanglement interactions do. MWI insists that only the view of the whole universe makes sense. But that does not capture the physical fact that the process is irreversible in principle, so MWI is inadequate to the task of explaining the physics. In fact, this necessary irreversibility of quantum interactions is a strong reason for preferring genuinely stochastic theories, such as the relativistic GRW theory. > Previously, you were also dismissive of "quantum non-equilibrium" in the > context of Bohm theory. If Bohm theory is true, then this is a > possibility, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. You can't dismiss it > out of hand and then analyze a problem and then conclude that Bohm > theory must be false, as that would be a straw man argument. > I do not think I ever claimed that Bohm's theory is false. Quantum equilibrium or non-equilibrium is a concept that has relevance only to Bohm's theory, and the reliability of that concept can be analysed independently. If quantum non-equilibrium is found to occur, then that has consequences for Bohm, but if the concept is found to be irrelevant to the physics, then it has no consequences for Bohm. It is perfectly possible to simply add the Born rule to Bohmian mechanics as an additional postulate, as it is added in conventional Copenhagen interpretations, for instance. If one does not insist on trying to derive the Born rule from Bohmian mechanics, then the question of quantum equilibrium becomes otiose. Bruce -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLRBsm%3DUa6OFz2QCa8E7KcbrD%3DA%3D%3D1%2BbXYmr8eRk9XK%3DtQ%40mail.gmail.com.
