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Shut-up-and-calculate is even simpler.Dmitry67 said:1. It is minimalistic interpretation, it does not require additional assumptions (except may be a weak form of born rule)
2. It is deterministic
3. It is realistic
4. It allows our Universe to start from very simple or null initial conditions at t=0
5. It is compatible with Max Tegmarks MUH
6. It's weirdness is beautiful
Dmitry67 said:Yes, but it is not an interpretation. Those who claim that they use only 'Shut up and calculate' are not fair enough - they are using the interpretational things (Born rule for example) to map the number they get into what they observe. When they get 0.5498585 as a result they can say only 'I get 0.549885 after my calculations'. When they say 'I get 0.549885 and hence I expect blah blah blah they DO use interpretation, they just don't admit it.
Is there somewhere a detailed description of each interpretation to learn "officially" or at least sufficiently professionally?humanino said:There are many interpretations on the market.
I tend to agree.Demystifier said:I usually do not use the word "stupid" on this forum, but this time I cannot resist. What other word to use for a poll in which string theory, M-theory and LQG are proclaimed - interpretations of QM?
What are emitters and absorbers? Does this interpretation say that there are objects not defined by wave functions? Is Schrodinger equation violated at the places where emitters and absorbers are present?ikkyu said:I Like Transactional Interpretation.
- It explains the whole process of "wave function collapse". Wave function does not magically disappeared after it is collapsed. It canceled out as the transaction is completed.
- Wave function is physically "real" wave.
- It's time symmetric.
- Observer has no special role in collapse of wavefunction. Emitter and Absorber(Observer) of wave function are the same
Demystifier said:What are emitters and absorbers? Does this interpretation say that there are objects not defined by wave functions? Is Schrodinger equation violated at the places where emitters and absorbers are present?
Can you write down equations that govern the behavior of this particle? Is it the classical equation of motion? Also the question that I have already asked but you didn't answer: Is Schrodinger equation violated at the positions of charged particles? Finally, what about particles without charge?ikkyu said:Emitter and Absober are exactly the charged particle that radiate the wave. E.g., electron emits/absorbs a photon during transition to another energy state.
Good point, but I'm afraid that the problem with the transactional interpretation could be even much worse than the problem with CI.Dmitry67 said:That theory has the same problem as CI.
Observer, or emitter, or absorber are not well defined and magic
PTM19 said:1
MWI on the other hand is an abomination - the most extreme violation of Ockham's Razor one can imagine and
2
I can't see how it solves anything as there still has to be some kind of a "collapse."
3
Something has to determine which possibility happens to each observer since there is at least one special observer - the one in which my conscious resides - and this special observer is only experiencing one possibility and not the other so there has to be a "collapse" to determine which one it is.
Dmitry67 said:1 No, it is minimalistic. It had been discussed many times. MWI does not introduce additional postulated hence it is minimalistic
2 Quantum Decoherence
3 How do you know that your consiousness resides in only one branch?
humanino said:There are many interpretations on the market. They all are interesting and have their own good features. The reason I chose "shut up and calculate" is not that I do not care about interpretations. It is because I consider most important first to be able to calculate on its own, 6 and a half days a week, while not closing one's eye on alternative interpretations on the basis of philosophical prejudice, but only do it on spare time. The vast majority of working physicists is not working on foundations, and they mostly "shut up and calculate". As far as I can tell, I have seen too often, on this very forum, people arguing about such interpretation while not being able to calculate, and I think it is vain.
PTM19 said:1. It postulates existence of immense/infinite number of additional unobservable universes whose number is constantly growing and which are being created out of nothing.
3. Experience, there is always only one possible outcome available to my consciousness.
Dmitry67 said:1. It does not postulate the existence of such universes! This is a very common misconception.
2. So, how does it deny the MWI view? As branches loses an ability to communicate after very short period of time, both "you" in 2 branches are claiming that "there is always only one possible outcome available to my consciousness"
Dmitry67 said:1. No, it DOES matter. MWI has *less* axioms then CI because it does not have collapse. Youre right, it creates more "stuff", but exactly the same argument you can use against GR in comparison with a sphere of fixed stars, because GR "postulates"
It postulates existence of immense/infinite number of additional unobservable universes whose number is constantly growing and which are being created out of nothing (c) PMT19
This is exactly what GR predicts (if universe is open) - an infinite number of unobservable Hubble voulmes, and more and more expension!
This is a pure psycological thing: it is very easy to accept the SPACIAL infinity (the existence of infinite number of worlds far away from our) but difficult to accept the same infinity of worlds which are in the same place spacialy but which do not communicate.
2. This is circular. You assume the collapse saying "My consciousness is confined to one branch only making this branch special to me". I don't assume it.
So, there are 2 branches. MWI predicts that both copies are equally conscious, share the same memory and are not aware of each other because of the decoherence. So each copy will say: "Only MY branch is real! But the choice of a branch was RANDOM" This is exactly what MWI predicts and this is exactly what happens. There is no indetermminism at all.
Fredrik said:1. The difference between ensemble/copenhagen* and the MWI is that the former assumes that QM doesn't tell us what actually happens, while the MWI assumes that QM does tell us what actually happens. That makes it the minimal realist interpretation, because it doesn't contain additional axioms which serve no other purpose than to get rid of the many worlds (like the version of Copenhagen that asserts that there's a mysterious physical process called "wavefunction collapse" that replaces a superposition with an eigenstate).
Fredrik said:2. (I recently questioned the assertion that the MWI requires no additional axioms here, but due to too many distractions I haven't really thought it through yet, so I'm still not sure about this).
3. Decoherence isn't a problem for the MWI. Quite the opposite. It just singles out the worlds in which a system's environment can contain stable records of the state of the system. A memory about a result of a measurement in a physicist's brain is such a stable record, so only the worlds that are singled out by decoherence theory can contain conscious observers.
*) See this thread for a discussion about those terms.
4. By the way, I also think the claim that the number of worlds is growing is incorrect.
5. The claim that they're being "created out of nothing" is definitely incorrect.
PTM19 said:5. We have one universe before measurement and 2 after if it's not created out of nothing then where did the energy and matter come from for one extra universe?
Dmitry67 said:PTM19, before I reply, do you accept the Quantum Decoherence or not?
If you do, do you see it as answer to the Measurement problem or not?
(My answer depends on your position)
Dmitry67 said:Check the MWI FAQ
Common objections and misconceptions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation#Common_objections_and_misconceptions
for example:
Conservation of energy is grossly violated if at every instant near-infinite amounts of new matter are generated to create the new universes.
MWI response: Conservation of energy is not violated since the energy of each branch has to be weighted by its probability, according to the standard formula for the conservation of energy in quantum theory. This results in the total energy of the multiverse being conserved.