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shminux comments on How accurate is the quantum physics sequence? - Less Wrong Discussion

45 Post author: ciphergoth 17 April 2012 06:54AM

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Comment author: shminux 19 April 2012 07:56:10PM 2 points [-]

And, subordinate to those three, the point that Occam's Razor applies to code not RAM (so to speak). Worth mentioning since I think that's the part that went over shminux's head.

You are right, it did the first time I tried to honestly estimate the complexity of QM (I wish someone else bother to do it numerically, as well). However, even when removing the necessary boundary conditions and grid storage (they take up lots of RAM), one still ends up with the code that evolves the Schroediger equation (complicated) and applies the Born postulate (trivial) for any interpretation.

Comment author: kremlin 02 September 2013 06:49:57PM 1 point [-]

But collapse interpretations require additional non-local algorithms, which to me seem to be, by necessity, incredibly complicated

Comment author: shminux 02 September 2013 07:46:48PM -1 points [-]

But collapse interpretations require additional non-local algorithms

Not for computations, they do not. If you try to write a code simulating a QM system, end up writing unitary evolution on top of the elliptic time-independent SE (H psi = E psi) to describe the initial state. If you want to calculate probabilities, such as the pattern on the screen from the double-slit experiment, you apply the Born rule. And computational complexity is the only thing thing that matters for Occam's razor.