Different Variants of Different Interpretations

[Varon]

Before I joined this forum. I thought there are only one intepretation and naturaly one variant.. but I learned now there are different variants to each of different interpretation. Let me mention what I learned so far these past weeks mentioning only the major variants by mostly Nobel Laurettes (subject to your additions and objections or comment)

COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION

Variant 1: Bohr's - wave function is just knowledge of observer and observed and interactive

Variant 2: Heisenberg's - "subjective" interpretation combined with the Aristotelian notion of "potentia". He considers a particle to be "potentially present" over all regions of which the wave function psi (r) is nonzero, in some "intermediate kind of reality"

Variant 3: Schroedinger's - wave function describes some kind of physical presence

Varient 4: Einstein - wave function doesn't describe a particle.. but statistical ensemble of them

Varient 5: von Neumann - everything is quantum.. there is no division between classical and quantum object and the cut or collapse is movable

what else?

MANY WORLDS INTERPRETATION

Variant 1: Everett original idea - State are real relative to other real states

Variant 2: Dewitt - branches split after measurement

Variant 3: Everette original idea + decoherence which separate the branches

Variant 4: Albert and Louwer Many Minds - Only minds split

Variant 5: Lockwood Many minds - All minds split but all are part of one big Mind

what else?

but there are many variants to explanations of derivations of probability in Many Worlds

subvariant 1: Lev Vaidman "The probability of an outcome of a quantum experiment is proportional to the total measure of existence of all worlds with that outcome."

subvarient 2: Deutsch and Wallace "extracts Everett's artifical postulate of measure naturally from the quantum rules"

subvariant 3: Julian Barbour's "Hilbert space as containing a vast collection of snapshots rather than lines corresponding to histories"

subvariant 4: Gell-Mann and Hartle's: "Weak decoherence creates slightly different world lines that continue to interact. Strong decoherence creates steadily divergent world lines."

what else?

OBJECTIVE COLLAPSE INTERPRETATION

variant 1: GRW - collapse occurs objectively and randomly and automatically without observers intervention

variant 2: GRW with Flash (Relativistic)

variant 3: Roger Penrose GRW with gravity collapse - Collapse is caused by gravity
superposition

STATISTICAL INTERPRETATIONS

variant 1: Ballentine's - particle has well-behave positions at all times

variant 2: anti-Ballentine's - particle doesn't have well-behave positions at all times

variant 3: Pragmatists/Instrumentalists - We don't know if particle has or hasn't well-
behave positions at all times.. only care about the wave function as possibly describing an ensemble, not an individual particle

DE BROGLIE-BOHM INTERPRETATIONS

I'm just starting to study the Bohmians, What are the possible variants?

Please also mention the different variants of other interpretations I haven't mentioned.

 

[Varon]

Oh, here's the variants of the Bohmians tentative as I remembered it many years back

BOHMIAN MECHANICS

variant 1: Old bohm - plain de Broglie/Bohmian Mechanics
variant 2: New bohm - Implicate and Explicate Order

I'm not sure how these Implicate and Explicate Order is connected to the plain de Broglie/Bohmiam Mechanics. Anyone can enlighten us (Demystifier? others)?

 

[strangerep]

STATISTICAL INTERPRETATIONS

variant 1: Ballentine's - particle has well-behave positions at all times

If by "well-behave" you mean "deterministic", then no, Ballentine doesn't say that. It's more like the last part of your variant 3: we care about the statistics of an ensemble, not an individual particle.

 

[Demystifier]

The number of variations is larger than the number of their proponents.

 

[Varon]

The number of variations is larger than the number of their proponents.

Since you are a Bohmian specialist. How is Bohmian Implicate Order related to Bohmiam mechanics? Which did he discover first?

 

[Demystifier]

Since you are a Bohmian specialist. How is Bohmian Implicate Order related to Bohmiam mechanics? Which did he discover first?

I'm not a specialist for the implicate order, but I can say the following. He discovered Bohmian mechanics first, and implicate order is a philosophical generalization of some of the concrete properties of Bohmian mechanics.

 

[Fredrik]

Einstein's ensemble interpretation isn't a variant of Copenhagen. It's a statistical interpretation.

If you continue to read about interpretations (not the best way to spend your time, but probably not the worst either), you will see that most of these "interpretations" don't have proper definitions. They are often nothing more than a collection of loosely stated remarks about what the author thinks reality is really like. It's still hard to say which ones are well-defined enough to qualify as interpretations, because there's no standard definition of what an interpretation is supposed to be.

 

[Demystifier]

Einstein's ensemble interpretation isn't a variant of Copenhagen. It's a statistical interpretation.

But I think I remember that once (perhaps two years ago) you said that the Ballentine statistical interpretation is a variant of the Copenhagen interpretation. Do you remember it?

 

[Fredrik]

But I think I remember that once (perhaps two years ago) you said that the Ballentine statistical interpretation is a variant of the Copenhagen interpretation. Do you remember it?

Yes, I've said that several times. I'm not sure what to think, so I'm flip-flopping. I might say it again next week. A lot of people are insisting that the CI includes the assumption that a wavefunction describes all the properties of an individual system. If we take that to be part of the definition, then the statistical interpretations definitely do not satisfy the definition of the CI.

The other side of the story is that the assumption that (according to most people) defines the CI also introduces "the measurement problem", which probably makes the whole thing inconsistent. So I'm reluctant to consider it a valid assumption at all. If it's not a valid assumption, then does it really make sense to define the CI this way? If we just drop it from the definition, then CI=SI.

 

[Demystifier]

Yes, I've said that several times. I'm not sure what to think, so I'm flip-flopping. I might say it again next week.

Fair enough!
Being consistent is difficult, but being honnest is even more difficult.