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Epistemology of Wave Function Collapse in Quantum Physics [pdf]
- trurl42 13y agoA note: This is not about standard quantum theory, but about GRW theories. Basically it's an ad-hoc modification of quantum theory, in which you postulate that the wave function collapses at random with some probability. As long as you say the probability is low enough, the theory is not really experimentally verifiable. (Currently there is no experimental evidence for GRW type theories.)
- pekk 13y agoThere is no experimental evidence that the collapse is caused by magical consciousness, either, but that doesn't stop people from perpetually claiming exactly that.
- ajcarpy2005 13y agoThere are hypotheses that say that the collapse of a quantum wave is involved in producing some sort of intelligence and in some cases consciousness. But I'm not aware of any that say that intelligence is involved in producing or guiding the collapse. See Orch-OR theory by Penrose and Hameroff.
- maaku 13y agoThere are also much more sane theories that involve no collapse at all (many-worlds).
- trurl42 13y agoVery true, there is a lot of nonsense going on in the fundamentals of quantum theory. But I find that GRW (or Bohmian mechanics if you're into that) doesn't add much of interest to the debate either.
- Steuard 13y agoFor arXiv.org links, please link to the abstract page rather than directly to the PDF: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0827 http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0827 Also, it's often good practice not to link to a specific version (the "v1" in the original link here), since papers are often updated with corrections or additional references. (That's sometimes desired, of course, but it's not the usual case.)
- user_235711 13y agoThanks for the tips. I will definitely use them next time I post an arXiv link.