timtyler comments on Ask an experimental physicist - Less Wrong

35 Post author: RolfAndreassen 08 June 2012 11:43PM

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Comment author: timtyler 09 June 2012 01:29:52AM *  1 point [-]

Please tell us what you make of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Darwinism

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 09 June 2012 02:13:35AM 4 points [-]

Well, it's theory, which is not my strong suit; these are just first impressions on casual perusal. It is not obvious nonsense. It is not completely clear to me what is the advantage over plain Copenhagen-style collapse. It makes no mention of even special relativity - it uses the Schrodinger rather than Dirac equation; but usually extending to Dirac is not very difficult. The approach of letting phases have significance appeals to me on the intuitive level that finds elegance in theories; having this unphysical variable hanging about has always annoyed me. In Theorem 3 it is shown that only the pointer states can maintain a perfect correlation, which is all very well, but why assume perfect correlation? If it's one-minus-epsilon, then presumably nobody would notice for sufficiently small epsilon. Overall, it's interesting but not obviously revolutionary. But really, you want a theorist for this sort of thing.

Comment author: timtyler 09 June 2012 11:09:10AM *  0 points [-]