cousin_it comments on Scott Aaronson on Born Probabilities - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Wei_Dai 02 October 2009 06:40AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (7)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: cousin_it 02 October 2009 02:05:53PM 0 points [-]

So, this

There, the probability of ending up in any branch depends only on the final amplitude of that branch, not on the order in which branching occurred.

combined with this

Note that in quantum mechanics, the evolution of a wavefunction always preserves its 2-norm

implies the Born rule?

Comment author: JGWeissman 02 October 2009 06:58:10PM 1 point [-]

The conclusion also needs that what happens in one branch can't renormalize the probability of another branch.

Comment author: SilasBarta 02 October 2009 02:40:35PM *  0 points [-]

And further, if the wavefunction didn't need to preserve the 2-norm, then presumably there would be no computational advantage to probability being split by absolute value of amplitude instead of squared absolute value?

(By the way, how come they don't just say "product of wave function with complex conjugate" instead of "square of absolute value of wavefunction", since the magnitudes are the same?)

Comment author: [deleted] 21 October 2009 05:53:16PM 0 points [-]

Because "square of absolute value of wavefunction" is shorter and clearer than "product of wave function with complex conjugate", I'm guessing.

(Counting by words, syllables or letters gives that result; I also tried counting morae and ended up with the same count for both.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 October 2009 06:20:32PM 0 points [-]

True. But wouldn't your meaning be clear if you used the shorter term "wavefunction conjugate product"? Then again, maybe not.