2 ms·

By "collapse theory" I presume you mean the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? That actually gives the guy more credibility: it suggests he learne

by pfedor 16y ago

By "collapse theory" I presume you mean the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? That actually gives the guy more credibility: it suggests he learned physics at a physics department of some university, as opposed to, say, from popular literature or random blogs. The page you linked says: "the many-worlds interpretations wins outright given the current state of evidence". This sentence does not make sense. The MWI, just like the Copenhagen interpretation and all other interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, are just this: interpretations. They don't disagree about the expected outcome of any imaginable measurement. They can't be tested experimentally. Choosing one interpretation or the other is a philosophical choice, not a scientific conclusion. "Evidence" in favor of one interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is of the same kind as "evidence" of the existence (or non-existence) of God, i.e., some people feel very strongly one way or another and will argue with you to death about it, not to mention create web pages which authoritatively state their opinions on the subject, but the disagreement cannot really be resolved by arguments or by empiric observations. Physicists are aware of this and that's why most of them choose the simplest thing and talk about the collapse of the wave function.

Jach 16y ago
I'm not going to go into the arguments about it, I've given you the link so you can read them all yourself. Though I will quote two big things (edited for note: assertions, not arguments for them; arguments are at the link above) against collapse postulates in general, since you probably didn't read them and perhaps you have a response why it doesn't matter: "If collapse actually worked the way its adherents say it does, it would be the only non-linear evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-unitary evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-differentiable (in fact, discontinuous) phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics, the only phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics that is non-local in the configuration space, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates CPT symmetry, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates Liouville's Theorem (has a many-to-one mapping from initial conditions to outcomes), the only phenomenon in all of physics that is acausal / non-deterministic / inherently random, and the only phenomenon in all of physics that is non-local in spacetime and propagates an influence faster than light." Second, now paraphrasing, is that many-worlds, aka macroscopic decoherence (QM applied universally), is a strictly simpler theory and Occam's Razor alone rules out collapse as it's an added detail not needed. Lastly, this is just my own opinion, but just because you learned from a set of standard textbooks or from a physics department at some place, doesn't necessarily mean you learned correctly. Truth isn't what the university teaches, even though there's a lot of overlapping. (I have learned there are apparently still some people teaching that we are evolved from chimps.)

by pfedor 16y ago

Jach 16y ago

I'm not going to go into the arguments about it, I've given you the link so you can read them all yourself. Though I will quote two big things (edited for note: assertions, not arguments for them; arguments are at the link above) against collapse postulates in general, since you probably didn't read them and perhaps you have a response why it doesn't matter: "If collapse actually worked the way its adherents say it does, it would be the only non-linear evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-unitary evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-differentiable (in fact, discontinuous) phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics, the only phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics that is non-local in the configuration space, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates CPT symmetry, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates Liouville's Theorem (has a many-to-one mapping from initial conditions to outcomes), the only phenomenon in all of physics that is acausal / non-deterministic / inherently random, and the only phenomenon in all of physics that is non-local in spacetime and propagates an influence faster than light." Second, now paraphrasing, is that many-worlds, aka macroscopic decoherence (QM applied universally), is a strictly simpler theory and Occam's Razor alone rules out collapse as it's an added detail not needed. Lastly, this is just my own opinion, but just because you learned from a set of standard textbooks or from a physics department at some place, doesn't necessarily mean you learned correctly. Truth isn't what the university teaches, even though there's a lot of overlapping. (I have learned there are apparently still some people teaching that we are evolved from chimps.)