4 ms·

Sufficiently few that it is beginning to be said by a small number of physicists that it is a point of embarrassment that the Measurement Problem is about as un

• bawolff 7y ago
  The nytimes article you linked has the quote: > But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected? Or does the wave function have no direct connection with reality at all, merely characterizing our personal ignorance about what we will eventually measure in our experiments? Isn't this really just asking about scientific realism? Couldnt you say the same thing about any scientific concept? Instead of "what is the wave function", why not "what is an atom". I suspect the main difference is that earlier physical theories had a direct analogy to real life events. We could tell a story about the billard ball model of atoms and we can imagine that in our heads. I have no idea how to imagine a superposition of states. Without the ability to analogize it, i suspect humans intuitively assume its wrong. But lack of imagination hardly seems like a logical reason to reject something. On the other hand, the question of how/when/why (non-metaphysically) a superposition collapses into a single state, seem much more scientific, and that part of the measurement problem seems like a worthy target of scientific investigation. Disclaimer: iana physicist nor really know anything beyond basics about quatum mechanics.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]