Is Bohmian Mechanics the Wrong Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?

[joegibs]

http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/05/measure-for-measure-debaters-love-to.html?m=1
According to lubos, bohmian mechanics is certainly wrong because "its basic classical object – the guiding wave – is in principle unobservable because a change of it should in principle impact things at a distance but it never does". Apparently this is because it is non local. Is this the same for all non local interpretations? Are all non local interpretations wrong?

Here is the video he is talking about
skip to 41:30 when Rudinger Shack is asked about bohmian mechanics

 

[DrChinese]

http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/05/measure-for-measure-debaters-love-to.html?m=1
According to lubos, bohmian mechanics is certainly wrong because "its basic classical object – the guiding wave – is in principle unobservable because a change of it should in principle impact things at a distance but it never does". Apparently this is because it is non local. Is this the same for all non local interpretations? Are all non local interpretations wrong?

At this time, there is no fully convincing way to exclude Bohmian Mechanics. There are results that exclude certain classes of nonlocal interpretations, but Bohmian Mechanics is not a member of those classes.

 

[dextercioby]

You don't need to ask Luboš, Bohmian Mechanics has its adversaries right here and a great defender, the Croatian physicist Hrvoje Nikolic. I would say there's not enough evidence to accept this theory as the right interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, nor refute it as the wrong one.

 

[joegibs]

You don't need to ask Luboš, Bohmian Mechanics has its adversaries right here and a great defender, the Croatian physicist Hrvoje Nikolic. I would say there's not enough evidence to accept this theory as the right interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, nor refute it as the wrong one.

Hopefully he makes an appearance on this forum

 

[jtbell]

Hopefully he makes an appearance on this forum

Paging @Demystifier ...

 

[ShayanJ]

Let's page @A. Neumaier too. There will be blood!

 

[A. Neumaier]

The heart of the critique by Lubos Motl is towards the end of the first half of his blog entry (currently about at a quarter of the total page content):

in quantum field theory, the number of particles is variable – they may be pair-created and pair-annihilated – so it's clearly impossible that there exist specific classical positions of N particles. The number N isn't even well-defined. Moreover, two particles could never exactly hit each other and annihilate – the probability in classical physics for an exact hit is zero (which is still true even if there is some extra pilot wave affecting the classical particles' motion). Bohmists also fail to explain what happens with the "objectively real" pilot waves when the particle is measured or absorbed and how the initial state of the pilot wave is prepared. Their theory always inevitable contradicts the Lorentz invariance, prohibits one from choosing situation-dependent i.e. Hamiltonian-dependent bases that are relevant for different observations in different systems, and it just doesn't work at all. The Bohmian mechanics is just a sleight-of-hand meant to convince sloppy people that one doesn't need to abandon the pillars of classical physics – even though they have been clearly falsified.

 

[Demystifier]

I have nothing new to say which I haven't already said a 1000 times.
I liked posts on this thread with which I agree.

 

[vanhees71]

Imho, the only good thing of Bohmian Mechanics (BM) is that it is superfluous. There's nothing observable different from minimally interpreted QT, and the extension of BM to relativistic QT (i.e., FAPP local microcausal relativistic QFTs underlying the Standard Model) at least problematic. I think, it's safe to simply ignore it ;-).

 

[Nugatory]

There will be blood!

Not if I can lock the thread before the carnage gets out of hand... Mouseclick... Mouseclick... Sigh of relief- the world is saved!

If the question is whether Bohmian mechanics is wrong, it's hard to improve on DrChinese's answer above. Whether you like Bohmian mechanics, or consider it likely to be right... That's a different discussion, not one amenable to proof and resolution.