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This article is about a new theorem that was uploaded to the preprint server earlier this week[1], and the article quotes several quantum theorists who describe
by robinhouston 15y ago
This article is about a new theorem that was uploaded to the preprint server earlier this week[1], and the article quotes several quantum theorists who describe this new result as important (or even ‘seismic’). On what basis do you think it’s been around for decades?
1. http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328 http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328
- Jach 15y agoThe actual formal theorem is new and great, but the general battle of asserting the wave function's existence vs. non-existence (whatever either are supposed to mean) vs. saying "I don't know tell me more about the wavefunction and its experimental predictions working/failing" has been around for quite some time. Here's a nice write-up of the ridiculousness of someone definitively saying "I don't know why this works and therefore it doesn't exist!" http://lesswrong.com/lw/q5/quantum_nonrealism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/q5/quantum_nonrealism/
- Dn_Ab 15y agoI believe mindstab is talking about debates as to whether a quantum wavefunction posses any objective reality. That is an old argument. For example Everett's Many World Interpretation from the 1950's posits a real universal wave function. It is also deterministic. The one this paper purports to disprove are the ones which say wave functions are not real but a probability distribution representing your lack of knowledge of the total system state and collapse from measurement is not so different from choosing to condition on the probability distribution. I am sympathetic with the view of quantum mechanics as a bayesian complex probability theory and so will wait till more knowledgeable people critic the paper.