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Being pedantic about the language, there is only one model, and effectively every physicist agrees on it. What they differ about is the interpretation of that

Being pedantic about the language, there is only one model, and effectively every physicist agrees on it. What they differ about is the interpretation of that model. The equations are the same, but differ in what the variables refer to in the real world. It's really a matter of solving the equation for X vs Y, saying which one is independent and which is dependent. The purpose is to take the fact that none of the variables correspond directly to anything we have any experience with. The best we can hope for is to isolate part of it and say "this much is like this thing we understand, but there's an additional thing that we'll treat as a correction". We can try to take the whole thing seriously, and just call it "a quantum thingy" which is not like anything else. This is sometimes called "shut up and calculate", but even that makes assumptions about what things are feasible to calculate and which are hard. That skews your understanding even if you're trying to let it speak for itself.

simpaticoder 2y ago
>there is only one model There is one set of observations, and many many models to describe them: Schrödinger equation formulation, matrix mechanics (Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan), path integral formulation (Feynman), phase space formulation, density matrix formulation, QFT or second quantization, variational formulation, pilot wave theory aka de Broglie-Bohm theory, Hamilton-Jacobi formulation, PT-symmetric quantum mechanics, Dirac equation formulation (well, not really independent, just for spin 1/2 particles). They all give the same results, and are therefore mathematically equivalent, but different models tend to be associated with different interpretations: Schrödinger Equation : Copenhagen, Bohmian Mechanics, Many-Worlds Matrix Mechanics : Copenhagen Path Integral : Many-Worlds, Stochastic Density Matrix: Ensemble, Decoherence-based Second Quantization : Many-Worlds Pilot Wave Theory : Bohmian Mechanics Consistent Histories : Decoherence-based Relational QM : Relational Interpretation Stochastic Models : Stochastic Interpretations, GRW (Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber) Collapse

simpaticoder 2y ago

>there is only one model There is one set of observations, and many many models to describe them: Schrödinger equation formulation, matrix mechanics (Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan), path integral formulation (Feynman), phase space formulation, density matrix formulation, QFT or second quantization, variational formulation, pilot wave theory aka de Broglie-Bohm theory, Hamilton-Jacobi formulation, PT-symmetric quantum mechanics, Dirac equation formulation (well, not really independent, just for spin 1/2 particles). They all give the same results, and are therefore mathematically equivalent, but different models tend to be associated with different interpretations: Schrödinger Equation : Copenhagen, Bohmian Mechanics, Many-Worlds Matrix Mechanics : Copenhagen Path Integral : Many-Worlds, Stochastic Density Matrix: Ensemble, Decoherence-based Second Quantization : Many-Worlds Pilot Wave Theory : Bohmian Mechanics Consistent Histories : Decoherence-based Relational QM : Relational Interpretation Stochastic Models : Stochastic Interpretations, GRW (Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber) Collapse