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I poorly phrased my comment. You don't have to give up locality it you just accept that we as observers get entangled with what we observe and the wave functio

I poorly phrased my comment. You don't have to give up locality it you just accept that we as observers get entangled with what we observe and the wave function doesn't really collapse. This is compatible with bell inequality and with locality. See Everett or many-worls interpretation

bowsamic 3y ago
There are interpretations of quantum mechanics covering all possible situations, but we don't have a way of choosing between them. You are suggesting religion, not science, not even philosophy.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  I don't think that's fair. The Everett interpretation is just taking the Schrödinger equations and not adding anything else to it. The "interpretation" part is just about explaining how to make sense of what _we_ see and how to make that compatible with the Schrödinger equation. There is nothing mystic about it, quite the contrary I posit, the rejection of it requires the introduction of something anti-scientific, namely that we humans are somehow special and detached from the physical world
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    > The Everett interpretation is just taking the Schrödinger equations and not adding anything else to it. That's literally what people claim Copenhagen to be Everett's interpretation requires positing a universal wavefunction and some kind of branching mechanism It's not some basic, straightforward interpretation of QM without any additional postulates, and even if it was, that would not be evidence for it to be true over others
    - ithkuil 3y ago
      no, copenhagen interpretation is wave function + born rule. the "branching mechanism" is not part of the fundamental mechanism of the everett interpretation. The "branching" is an emergent phenomenon similar to what happens when you mix to liquids of two different colors. At "some point" the the fluids intermix in such a way that you no longer distinguish them and finding the right boundary when that exactly happen may seem a bit "fuzzy", but the physics of what's going on is perfectly clear to anybody; the two substances are still there, but just mixed up in way that is completely intractable to reverse in practice.
      - bowsamic 3y ago
        It still posits that we are in one of (probably) infinite universes corresponding to each possible outcome (unless you are getting confused with the "Consistent histories" interpretation). That is a part of the fundamental mechanism of the Everett interpretation, it's literally why it's called the Many World Interpretation. Just because you can make a physical analogy for that branching doesn't mean it isn't an extra element in your ontology
        ithkuil 3y ago
        yeah, I'd argue though that it's not adding those universes. They're there all along. Branching is an epiphenomenon of there being information processing machines that are embedded in the real universe, and those machines interpret their interactions with the surrounding as if they were only part of a subset of that universe, and upon reasoning about that they call the real universe the "multi-verse"
        bowsamic 3y ago
        Okay but once again that is an extra postulate that is not really much less crazy than postulating the Born rule
        ithkuil 3y ago
        well, whether the postulate is crazy or not is a matter of perspective. Postulating that nature just does the Born rule is postulating an additional thing that nature does. Postulating that hey perhaps we ain't that special and perhaps we should just think through the consequences of our own brains being embedded in the very nature we're trying to describe. On one hand, it feels like we're adding a lot by buying into the Everrettian model, because it does require us to think and throw away some intuition about ourselves. But OTOH, it actually requires adding much much less to what nature actually does.
        kgwgk 3y ago
    - ithkuil 3y ago
      > [..] and even if it was, that would not be evidence for it to be true over others sure, it's not possible to distinguish it from some of the others. This thread started with comparing it to some theories that instead invoked non-local effects, which would violate general relativity, so there's that.
      - bowsamic 3y ago
        It's pointless to speak about violating general relativity because we don't have a quantum theory of gravity yet
        ithkuil 3y ago
        I don't agree with your absolutism here. Not knowing things doesn't mean everything is on equal footing. All I'm saying in this thread is that, when comparing possible theories, the ones that do not violate general relativity while explaining other observations IMO deserve not to be dismissed just because people cannot wrap their heads around non-physical consequences of the theory.
        bowsamic 3y ago
        Okay but also if they do violate GR that doesn't really tell us much either, since we expect QM to not obey the rules of GR

bowsamic 3y ago

There are interpretations of quantum mechanics covering all possible situations, but we don't have a way of choosing between them. You are suggesting religion, not science, not even philosophy.

ithkuil 3y ago
I don't think that's fair. The Everett interpretation is just taking the Schrödinger equations and not adding anything else to it. The "interpretation" part is just about explaining how to make sense of what _we_ see and how to make that compatible with the Schrödinger equation. There is nothing mystic about it, quite the contrary I posit, the rejection of it requires the introduction of something anti-scientific, namely that we humans are somehow special and detached from the physical world
- bowsamic 3y ago
  > The Everett interpretation is just taking the Schrödinger equations and not adding anything else to it. That's literally what people claim Copenhagen to be Everett's interpretation requires positing a universal wavefunction and some kind of branching mechanism It's not some basic, straightforward interpretation of QM without any additional postulates, and even if it was, that would not be evidence for it to be true over others
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    no, copenhagen interpretation is wave function + born rule. the "branching mechanism" is not part of the fundamental mechanism of the everett interpretation. The "branching" is an emergent phenomenon similar to what happens when you mix to liquids of two different colors. At "some point" the the fluids intermix in such a way that you no longer distinguish them and finding the right boundary when that exactly happen may seem a bit "fuzzy", but the physics of what's going on is perfectly clear to anybody; the two substances are still there, but just mixed up in way that is completely intractable to reverse in practice.
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      It still posits that we are in one of (probably) infinite universes corresponding to each possible outcome (unless you are getting confused with the "Consistent histories" interpretation). That is a part of the fundamental mechanism of the Everett interpretation, it's literally why it's called the Many World Interpretation. Just because you can make a physical analogy for that branching doesn't mean it isn't an extra element in your ontology
      - ithkuil 3y ago
        yeah, I'd argue though that it's not adding those universes. They're there all along. Branching is an epiphenomenon of there being information processing machines that are embedded in the real universe, and those machines interpret their interactions with the surrounding as if they were only part of a subset of that universe, and upon reasoning about that they call the real universe the "multi-verse"
        bowsamic 3y ago
        Okay but once again that is an extra postulate that is not really much less crazy than postulating the Born rule
        ithkuil 3y ago
        well, whether the postulate is crazy or not is a matter of perspective. Postulating that nature just does the Born rule is postulating an additional thing that nature does. Postulating that hey perhaps we ain't that special and perhaps we should just think through the consequences of our own brains being embedded in the very nature we're trying to describe. On one hand, it feels like we're adding a lot by buying into the Everrettian model, because it does require us to think and throw away some intuition about ourselves. But OTOH, it actually requires adding much much less to what nature actually does.
        kgwgk 3y ago
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    > [..] and even if it was, that would not be evidence for it to be true over others sure, it's not possible to distinguish it from some of the others. This thread started with comparing it to some theories that instead invoked non-local effects, which would violate general relativity, so there's that.
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      It's pointless to speak about violating general relativity because we don't have a quantum theory of gravity yet
      - ithkuil 3y ago
        I don't agree with your absolutism here. Not knowing things doesn't mean everything is on equal footing. All I'm saying in this thread is that, when comparing possible theories, the ones that do not violate general relativity while explaining other observations IMO deserve not to be dismissed just because people cannot wrap their heads around non-physical consequences of the theory.
        bowsamic 3y ago
        Okay but also if they do violate GR that doesn't really tell us much either, since we expect QM to not obey the rules of GR