I think Jacob Barandes has shown how to solve the measurement problem in
one-world.
arXiv:2402.16935
New Prospects for a Causally Local Formulation of Quantum Theory
Authors: Jacob A. Barandes
Abstract: It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal
locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory.
In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on
criteria that "should be viewed with the utmost suspicion." Remarkably,
by stepping outside the wave-function paradigm, one can reformulate
quantum theory in terms of old-fashioned configuration spaces together
with 'unistochastic' laws. These unistochastic laws take the form of
directed conditional probabilities, which turn out to provide a
hospitable foundation for encoding microphysical causal relationships.
This unistochastic reformulation provides quantum theory with a simpler
and more transparent axiomatic foundation, plausibly resolves the
measurement problem, and deflates various exotic claims about
superposition, interference, and entanglement. Making use of this
reformulation, this paper introduces a new principle of causal locality
that is intended to improve on Bell's criteria, and shows directly that
systems that remain at spacelike separation cannot exert causal
influences on each other, according to that new principle. These results
therefore lead to a general hidden-variables interpretation of quantum
theory that is arguably compatible with causal locality.
Comments: 15 pages, 2 figures
Brent
On 3/11/2025 3:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 2:11 PM Russell Standish
<li...@hpcoders.com.au> wrote:
On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 12:29:57PM +1100, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>
> It does not prevent a probabilistic interpretation, but it does
not give one
> either. You have assumed statistical physics, which introduces a
large dose of
> probability theory. That does not come from the deterministic
theory -- you
> have to introduce it from elsewhere.
>
> So with quantum mechanics. The wave function, being
deterministic, does not
> have a probabilistic interpretation until you introduce one from
elsewhere.
I'm well aware of that. I guess you're disputing the "MWI is nothing
but the Schroedinger equation" statement that John Clark sometimes
makes.
Yes. At least JC is consistent with this, as are people like Carroll,
Deutsch and Wallace. I find it harder to deal with people, like
Quentin, who are basically dishonest; who claim to be working with
Everettian quantum mechanics, but continually introduce ideas from
elsewhere -- ideas that have no basis in unitary quantum mechanics.
As soon as you have self-location indeterminancy (or first person
indeterminancy, I think we called it here), probabilities march right
on in. And as soon as you have computationalism (and I would argue
functionalism), self-location indeterminancy marches right on in. That
was the point of Bruno Marchal's Universal Dovetailer Argument.
But that has never made any realistic connection with either quantum
mechanics or with observational results.
So the question is how would you do the MWI _without_
probabilities. David Deutsch is working on a possible solution to
that, although I'm a little sceptical he can make it work.
I think your scepticism is not misplaced. Deutsch has a tendency to go
off the rails on occasion.
Bruce
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