Minimalist ensemble interpretation

[xboy]

im a bit confused about which interpretation is experimentally favored,wave function collapse or the 'minimalist ensemble interpretation (ala L.E Ballentine' (as Doc Al wrote somewhere)?All the older literature talks about 'reduction of wave packet' but reading Ballentine has left me confused.

 

[dextercioby]

All possible experiments and their outcomes should find proper explanation within each framework. I like Ballentine's view though. It's highly devious why everyone should accept the "collapse" without posing legitimacy questions to himself and to the "collapse" adepts.

 

[vanesch]

im a bit confused about which interpretation is experimentally favored,wave function collapse or the 'minimalist ensemble interpretation (ala L.E Ballentine' (as Doc Al wrote somewhere)?

BY DEFINITION, different interpretations are observationally indistinguishable, so there cannot be any "experimentally favored" interpretation. One has to judge interpretations differently, and in fact, according to one's way of judging interpretations, one favors one or another more.

 

[xboy]

thanks people.
i'm having some problem understanding what the ensemble interpretation says about an individual system before it is measured.It seems to take a realist stand - is that correct?

 

[dextercioby]

thanks people.
i'm having some problem understanding what the ensemble interpretation says about an individual system before it is measured.It seems to take a realist stand - is that correct?

Yes, Einstein was an adept of the realist viewpoint. Abd Ballentine took his ideas further and even wrote a treatise on QM based on this view.