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Bohm's pilot wave theory is interesting to me not because it is so intuitive or tasteful or something, but because it works without sacrificing realism, and thu
by twtw 8y ago
Bohm's pilot wave theory is interesting to me not because it is so intuitive or tasteful or something, but because it works without sacrificing realism, and thus demonstrates that the Cophenhagen interpretation (neither local nor real) claims strictly more about the nature of the universe than is required by the evidence we have. Nonlocality is established by experiment, non-realism is not. In my experience, this tends to be underappreciated (or I'm misunderstanding - please teach me if so).
I personally favor epistemological interpretations, in which the wave function models our knowledge, and the universe operates via an as-yet-unknown dynamics. Wave function collapse on measurement isn't weird anymore if the wave function represents your knowledge of the system. Thinking about it this way makes "shut up and calculate" work nicely in my head.
- eggie 8y ago> but because it works without sacrificing realism, and thus demonstrates that the Cophenhagen interpretation (neither local nor real) claims strictly more about the nature of the universe than is required by the evidence we have Nicely put! > Wave function collapse on measurement isn't weird anymore if the wave function represents your knowledge of the system. To me it is intuitive if you consider that the wave function of the small entity is interacting with the much larger (and more specific) wave function of the observing apparatus. I never understood the mystical aspect with which this was treated in the typical explanations of the Copenhagen interpretation. And I would also appreciate the guidance of someone with a better understanding of the physical theories, if my stated perspective is confused.
- Gravityloss 8y agoYeah it's also why Schrödinger's cat isn't a real problem. Most misunderstood thing.
- naasking 8y ago> I personally favor epistemological interpretations, in which the wave function models our knowledge These have been largely ruled out via no-go theorems [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBR_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBR_theorem
- acjohnson55 8y agoCould you explain this further? The Wikipedia article doesn't go into much depth, especially w.r.t. de Broglie-Bohm interpretation.
- naasking 8y agoIt has no effect on Bohmian mechanics because it posits a real wave function. PBR rules out most "psi-epistemic" models where the wave function represents only our ignorance of the system, and not some fundamental, real property of the system.
- effie 8y agoProponents of epistemic approach do not think so. > their result does not rule out any position that is seriously held by any researchers in quantum foundations. http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-interpreted-statistically/ http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i...
- dTal 8y ago>I personally favor epistemological interpretations, in which the wave function models our knowledge, and the universe operates via an as-yet-unknown dynamics. Would this not be a 'hidden variable theory' of the type that is ruled out by Bell's theorem?
- twtw 8y agoNo, I don't think it would. I don't imply any locality restrictions on the dynamics - they can be arbitrarily strange.