army1987 comments on Ask an experimental physicist - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: [deleted] 10 June 2012 08:45:24PM 1 point [-]

The windmill you are fighting has nothing to do with the orthodox formulation of QM, which is perfectly compatible with decoherence.

What is the orthodox formulation of QM? Link?

Comment author: [deleted] 11 June 2012 05:44:53PM *  1 point [-]

I wouldn't call it “orthodox”, but see this:

In addition to these formal axioms one needs a rudimentary interpretation relating the formal part to experiments. The following minimal interpretation seems to be universally accepted.

MI. Upon measuring at times t_l (l=1,...,n) a vector X of observables with commuting components, for a large collection of independent identical (particular) systems closed for times t<t_l, all in the same state rho_0 = lim_{t to t_l from below} rho(t) (one calls such systems identically prepared), the measurement results are statistically consistent with independent realizations of a random vector X with measure as defined in axiom A5.

Note that MI is no longer a formal statement since it neither defines what 'measuring' is, nor what 'measurement results' are and what 'statistically consistent' or 'independent identical system' means. Thus MI has no mathematical meaning - it is not an axiom, but already part of the interpretation of formal quantum mechanics.

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The lack of precision in statement MI is on purpose, since it allows the statement to be agreeable to everyone in its vagueness; different philosophical schools can easily fill it with their own understanding of the terms in a way consistent with the remainder.

[...]

MI is what every interpretation I know of assumes (and has to assume) at least implicitly in order to make contact with experiments. Indeed, all interpretations I know of assume much more, but they differ a lot in what they assume beyond MI.

Everything beyond MI seems to be controversial. In particular, already what constitutes a measurement of X is controversial. (E.g., reading a pointer, different readers may get marginally different results. What is the true pointer reading?)