So if we sent 1 photon at a time at the slits and try to detect which slit they go through it would collapse the wave function whether or not a person checks the hard drive of results to compare against the background pattern? — TiredThinker
even the friend of Wigner's friend who observes a person looking at Schrödingers cat, can always say that it is him or her that causes collapse, no matter what the guy observing the cat directly, or the guy that observes this guy feels or thinks. Only in a theory with non-local hidden variables, the situation can be interpreted as a real, physical collapse, independent of observers. So let's hope they are discovered. — Cryptic
Any physics experts here? — TiredThinker
One does not get an answer to the question, What is the state after collision? but only to the question, How probable is a given effect of the collision? From the standpoint of our quantum mechanics, there is no quantity which causally fixes the effect of a collision in an individual event.
If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success
God does not play dice.
The more I ponder about the physical part of Schroedinger's theory, the more disgusting it appears to me.
there are some people who dispute the idea of "wavefunction collapse" at all — the affirmation of strife
assigns an objective existence to a mathematical entity (the wavefunction), which is absurd — Cartuna
What's left is assigning a physical reality of what the wavefunction describes. — Cartuna
Do you know of any theory in physics or other sufficiently mathematized science that doesn't do exactly that? — SophistiCat
So... MWI then? — SophistiCat
My point is that the the MWI is caused by the wavefunction being seen as a mathematical entity. — Cartuna
If it was decided back then to start a search for a deeper theory, which de Broglie proposed more or less (by means of physical pilot waves), who knows what the theory would have looked like these days? — Cartuna
That's not right. The wavefunction is a mathematical entity. MWI came from taking that entity as a literal description of the universe. — Kenosha Kid
It would look like Bohmian mechanics. — Kenosha Kid
That's exactly what I mean. But it is no literal description. — Cartuna
Yes. Like. — Cartuna
That's just a fundamental belief. For all we know it's spot on. (I don't believe so either, but I don't claim to know things that haven't yet been determined.) — Kenosha Kid
How can a particle be at several places at the same time and how can it be pure chance (whatever that means without a deterministic substrate) that determines? — Cartuna
The fundamental belief here being that a particle cannot be in more than one place. Remove the belief and the question vanishes. All that remains is to falsify or verify that belief. — Kenosha Kid
MWI doesn't say it's pure chance. — Kenosha Kid
A partìcle can be in all places it likes. But not at the same time. Call it a fundamental belief. — Cartuna
But it still assigns probabilities to branching points. — Cartuna
I did, because it is. You're not making an argument here, you're just reasserting outdated beliefs. There's nothing more here than someone insisting that evolution is untrue because God made everything. — Kenosha Kid
It assigns branch widths according to the Born rule. — Kenosha Kid
Why should I make an argument? I just belief it. Juat like you belief your stuff about the wavefunction. I don't see where God and evolution enter here. — Cartuna
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