Mitchell_Porter comments on The things we know that we know ain't so - Less Wrong

16 Post author: PhilGoetz 11 January 2010 09:59PM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 14 January 2010 04:49:15AM 1 point [-]

Very very few physicists have ever believed anything like that. Those who do are likely either New Agers, parapsychologists, or people whose private philosophical ruminations have landed them in an odd place.

Almost universally on this site, I see the presumption that the wavefunction exists. People should understand that for a significant fraction of physicists, wavefunctions are just like probability functions - they are regarded as calculational devices only.

Comment author: wnoise 15 January 2010 09:53:17PM 0 points [-]

I agree that that view is common (I am a grad student in quantum computation). But quantum mechanics admits nothing else besides the wave-function (or density operator). If there is anything "real", it pretty much has be the wave-function.