I included a more lengthy quote in my original post. It's in his insight article "Misconceptions About Virtual Particles." Here's the quote I originally included: "That virtual particles transmit the fundamental forces proves the ”existence” of virtual particles in the eyes of their...
No, there is no disagreement around whether virtual particles mediate the forces. This is part of the theory--forces are mediated by the off-shell propagators. The original poster acknowledged this when he said "That virtual particles transmit the fundamental forces.." So this is not under...
Hello, I appreciate your disambiguation of the issue of stability from that of virtual quanta. However, I have to point out that your argument against the ontological reality of virtual quanta doesn't work. You say:
"That virtual particles transmit the fundamental forces proves the ”existence”...
FYI, my recent paper with John Cramer (founder of TI) explains how the Born Rule emerges naturally from radiative processes when both emission and absorption are taken into account. It has just been accepted in IJQF. Final preprint version here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501 (The paper also...
One can indeed derive the Born Rule as a natural consequence of the direct-action picture of fields (in which both the emission of a quantum and the absorption of that quantum are required for what counts as 'measurement'). This is shown explicitly here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501
In a...
Just an update that the Born Rule has now been explicitly derived in the relativistic transactional interpretation for radiative processes. See my paper with John Cramer: https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.04501
Comments welcome.
Measurement occurs whenever there is absorber response--but that is missing in the stanrdard theory. You need the direct-action theory (transactional picture) to be able to define measurement in physical terms. See: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.09367
The idea that measurement is subjective is not a necessary inference or conclusion, but arises from the inability to define measurement in the standard theory. This is remedied in the transactional picture, in which the 'measurement transition' is well-defined, as discussed here...
To disentangle the issues around 'measurement' and 'observation', see:
https://transactionalinterpretation.org/2016/12/10/observation-is-measurement-but-measurement-is-not-necessarily-observation/
No, this does not rule out TI. It rules out certain kinds of hidden variables models. TI does not have any hidden variables.
So if anything, this strengthens the case for TI.
There are good reasons to be concerned about the unitary-only MWI approach. If one looks deeply into the foundations of MWI, one finds circularity and arguably worse logical fallacies. See, e.g, https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.4126 and https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.04845
The idea that there is a 'wavefunction of the universe' can be questioned. It's a consequence of presupposing unitary-only evolution, and nobody can say for sure that this holds, even though Hugh Everett made it popular.
On the other hand, if there is genuine physical collapse, as in the...
As far as 'well understood', the standard theory uses an ad hoc free field to 'explain' loss of energy by a radiating charge. I'm not sure that counts as 'well understood,' even if has become somewhat of a dogma. TI does better, as Wheeler himself noted in 2003.
Also, most physicists subscribe...
Thanks--I should clarify that actually I don't deny that consciousness has anything to do with collapse. What I do deny is the standard appeal to an ill-defined 'external conscious observer'. Absorber response triggers the measurement transition, as described in my 2nd law paper. Now, whether...
Well no, the emission event is identified as such by the emitter, which drops down to a lower energy state as a result of the emission. I.e., the emitter loses energy, while the absorber gains it, and that's what distinguishes emission from absorption. The emitter and absorber change in opposite...