Copenhagen or Everett?

[TurboRotary]

Which interpretation do you subscribe to?

[J.C.MacSwell]

Which interpretation do you subscribe to?

 

Many Worlds? I went with other.

[ajb]

It is not something I have thought much about. Everett to me seems a "waste of space", the number of so called parallel universes would be huge. The Copenhagen interpretation relies on the obsever to much, it is difficult to think about quantum mechanics of the whole universe in this way.

 

So I really don't know what one to vote for, both have pros and cons. Yet again maybe the answer is something else....

 

 

I will vote for the Copenhagen interpretaion. I think it is the most useful when dealing with most quantum systems in which you can define a classical observer.

[Martin]

I went with other.

 

I did too. I do not think there is a final "correct" interpretation, so far, that one can point to and say "that is the right one."

 

Many worlds interpretation, AFAIK, is way out of style. People used to take it seriously some decades ago. I rarely encounter anyone who takes it seriously nowadays.

 

Fashions of QM interpretation change. I think in the 1990s there was an interpretations called CONSISTENT HISTORIES that a lot of people subscribed to. I will see if I can get a link. Yeah, here is Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consistent_histories

and I have an article from the 1990s by Roland Omnes about this that is probably an authoritative exponsition, maybe someone can supply a link to an online version. (Reviews of Modern Physics April 1992). the Omnes article is called Consistent Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

 

Just because Consistent Histories might currently be most widely accepted (not sure about that) wouldnt mean, to me, that it is necessarily the most interesting interpretation being considered. The most interesting recent discussion I have seen is of an interpretation called RQM (Relational Quantum Mechanics). It resolves or avoids several of the paradoxes (or confusions) surrounding traditional Copenhagen.

There was an article just this year, about that, I will get the link.

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604064

this is a short, easy-to-read paper by Rovelli, called "RELATIONAL EPR"

It has some concrete examples of how RQM deals with the EPR paradox.

AFAIK the earliest RQM paper was http://arxiv.org/quant-ph/9609002

 

I think many people probably still subscribe to the Consistent Histories way of understanding QM.

But I dont get the impression that the last word has been spoken on the subject.

[CPL.Luke]

is it just me or is the wavicle model all the interpretation that one needs?

 

personnally I'm content with knowing that the wavicle expands as a wave between obserations and then collapses afterwords at the next observation. Also if the wavicle didn't collapse charge conservation would be violated, so that would explain why the wavicle collapses.

[5614]

I did too. I do not think there is a final "correct" interpretation, so far, that one can point to and say "that is the right one."

Maybe.

 

I voted Copenhagen because I don't think there's currently anything better.

 

Whilst I didn't think this when I voted, I don't think I would have gone for "other". It is voting for something, we don't know what, which might be discovered somewhere, sometime, by someone, maybe.

 

Maybe something "new and better" will be discovered/developed, but until then Copenhagen seemed a fairly "safe bet" as it were.

[swansont]

Copenhagen, as far as you can go with philosophy describing science. It might tell you how to look at a problem, but debates about "what is the true nature of QM" (much like the "nature of time" debates) are always going to come up short of real answers. Seems to me it's more a way of getting used to the ideas that differ from what everyday macroscopic experiences tell us.

[ed84c]

Transactional interpretation thankyou very much.

[ed84c]

http:// http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_interpretation

 

For those wondering.

 

 

*sigh* its been a while since i last did anything in php.

[Perturbation]

Copenhagen is too reliant on the observer, and some aspects are just plain wrong in my opinion. Everett seems pretty superfluous. So neither.

[Severian]

Copenhagen is too reliant on the observer, and some aspects are just plain wrong in my opinion.

 

Such as?

 

Personally I think it is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one since it isn't testable. I don't really have an opinion other than that.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Such as?

 

Personally I think it is a philosophical question rather than a scientific one since it isn't testable. I don't really have an opinion other than that.

 

I agree 100% but have to ask. Is this your opinion of any Big Bang Models as well? (since it is essentially not testable)

 

Sorry if that is off topic.

[SmallIsPower]

Why doesn't it suprise me that the many world's hypothesis has ZERO votes here?

 

Maybe it's because people who subscribe to it here, end up getting thrown into the Pseudoscience Ghetto?

[TurboRotary]

I have a big problem with the Many Worlds Intrepretation.. It seems that alot of authors of QM books are subscribing to this though.

[CPL.Luke]

the people on the pseudoscience forum are welcome to come back here as long as they don't try to disprove einstein (it gets tiresome after the first fifteen threads of convuluted examples)

[bascule]

I'd say... something similar to the Bohm interpretation. What I'd really like to see is a Universe-as-CA sort of interpretation where the specific nature of wavefunction collapse is dependent upon the state of the system as a whole (which is, as I understand it, the supposition the Bohm interpretation makes)

[ajb]

This paper might be of interest

 

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0607124

 

 

 

 

The "Unromantic Pictures" of Quantum Theory

Authors: Roderich Tumulka

Comments: 37 pages LaTeX, no figures; written for special volume of J. Phys. A in honor of G.C. Ghirardi

 

I am concerned with two views of quantum mechanics that John S. Bell called ``unromantic'': spontaneous wave function collapse and Bohmian mechanics. I discuss some of their merits and report about recent progress concerning extensions to quantum field theory and relativity. In the last section, I speculate about an extension of Bohmian mechanics to quantum gravity.

[Severian]

I agree 100% but have to ask. Is this your opinion of any Big Bang Models as well? (since it is essentially not testable)

 

Big bang models are testable since they lead to different events after the big bang (like big bang nuecleosynthesis). If you are refering to the existance of an actual signularity, then I agree that this is not testable, so is not a scientific idea.

[YT2095]

Many Worlds gets my vote, I felt sorry for it!

[Ragib]

I voted for Many Worlds, although both have their merits. And to those who say these interpretations can not be tested, we don't know that yet. With further knowledge in the field we may learn more. There are already numerous proposed tests, although controversial and will only reveal the correct interpretation to the one person conducting the test, such as Quantum Suicide, look it up on wikipedia.