Recent content by malreux

Responding as if you'd asked 'what's the measurement problem?' Hi, a lot of comments generated by your question are circling the 'measurement problem' territory. Although the linked preprint is old (2007), I think it's an excellent introduction / summary of the whole territory. Please note...

PS The links i gave above are to preprints. I'm aware of Forum rules re eligible journals, but I'm not aware if any rules apply to preprints. Mods - some guidance?

Bit easier on the eye This is possibly my fave book of all time. However, David Wallace also provides the following self-contained, easier-to-read and more to-the-point (for a newcomer to the debates) papers: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8888/ A good place to start, albeit Wallace...

That certainly explains why Everettian's have been so busy trying to formulate some kind of derivation of the Born Rule, all these years. On the other hand, regarding interpretations of QM and relativity, so far as I know, whilst relativistic MWI's and Everett-style interpretations are extant...

Not sure if this is exactly what your looking for - but an interesting foundational stat mech discussion re "crucial distinction between two kingdoms of Hamiltonian/Lagrangian mechanics" with lessons drawn from Brownian motion: http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.0571

[1] There's a type of structural realism - to which I do not subscribe - called epistemic structural realism. Some proponents of which take it that even looking at blood cells under a microscope is somehow 'theory-laden'. Whatever you think of that view (I think its crazy), you correctly infer...

Good question! I settled for the latter, but the distinction is vague, as stated. Does it mean that e.g. Lev Vaidman would plump for the former and e.g. Hilary Greaves would plump for the latter? Personally, I think the only important distinction between MWI proponents is between those who...

Although one can debate the categories you offer as options, I think this poll is a great thing and should def become an official annual event for phys forum. People offer similar things at foundational conferences. However, like everybody else, I imagine my own 'interpretation' of QM...

Thank you for your thorough reply. I feel (hopefully falsely!) that this line of debate doesn't particularly interest you, however. I won't bore you with scholastic debates regarding the distinction between observation and interpretation. I'll simply reiterate my view that an answer to the...

I should add that some recent collapse theories do actually make potentially testable predictions, i.e. e.g. if collapse time ≥ decoherence time

[1] Your definitely on to something there. However, recalling Einstein's dictum that 'observables' are defined by a theory,* and glancing at the defunct position of say, positivism, one can safely draw the inference that the observable / non-observable distinction is, at best, irrelevant to a...

On this philosophy-of-science point: can this distinction really be maintained? For example, modificatory interpretations of QM actually introduce novel formal devices, and so might be better seen as different theories (different, for example, to unitary quantum mechanics). Even no-collapse...

[1] This doesn't appear to mean anything! Anything MWI has to offer is less crazy and more in keeping with the history of science than the idea that the Potential affects the Actual. On the other hand, every interpretation of QM that doesn't require us to modify the formalism or take an...

Consider the following theory of fossils - we are not entitled to view fossils as evidence for dinosaurs, but rather we have available a certain well-known formalism that we can use to model found-fossils and also make predictions about fossils yet to be discovered. Of course, even creationists...

Modern treatments of quantum measurement use much more sophisticated tools. For an introduction to this area see wiki's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POVM