Talk:Objective-collapse theory

GRW does not violate conservation of energy. This is the whole point behind multiplying the wave function by a Gaussian instead of a delta function. One of the reasons GRW has many of the problems it does--the "tails problem," for example--is precisely because these issues fall out of the necessary tweaks in order to make GRW consistent with conservation of energy.

If nobody objects in the next few days, I'm going to get rid of that unattributed, uncited sentence saying that GRW "appears" to violate conservation of energy.

SK

This posting appears to make self-serving and erroneous claims as to the nature of the Copenhagen interpretation. The idea of collapse being a part of the Copenhagen interpretation is not strictly correct. The notion of collapse presupposes that the probabilities in QM can be attributed to a physical mechanism of interference whereas this is no such process explicitly there in QM, or the Copenhagen interpretation.

One aspect of the Copenhagen interpretation is that it is meaningless to speak of the quantum process in terms of a classical mechanism (particle or wave). The wave function is a Hilbert space representation that one operates on to obtain expectation values for probabilities. Once a measurement is made, that representation needs to be discarded and another formulated. In that sense, there is no object that "collapses" or "interferes" to produce observations.

The fact that one needs to discard one's probability calculation does not mean that there is actually some wave process that literally needs to "collapse", neither does it mean that there is some wave mechanism operating in space and time that generates those probabilities in the first place.

The notions of collapse, or many worlds, are pseudo-scientific inventions because they are a-priori formulated as being fundamentally unfalsifiable. In this case, the interpretations allow people to attribute the mathematical forms in QM to some spooky "wave function" processes that are supposed to play-out in otherwise classical space-time. The lack of any explicit connection to the mathematical structure of QM means that these "interpretations" are indistinguishable from arbitrary make-believe.

203.211.110.54 (talk) 02:41, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not certain that the Many Worlds interpretation can be seen as unfalsifiable. Certainly there are technical limitations, but this is not the same as unfalsifiable. As to "invention", the Many Worlds interpretation takes the data at face value. This isn't an invention, if it could be called anything, it might be called naive...to interpret the data in a more literal sense which is sometimes a mistake. Is your claim of a priori reasoning based on the assumption that the theory is unfalsifiable, or is there some other critera you are using to call it a priori? JJRittenhouse (talk) 14:17, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

Where is bohmian mechanics
Can't Bohmian mechanics be considered an objective collapse theory? 88.159.72.240 (talk) 17:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so. 1Z (talk) 02:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, Bohmian mechanics doesn't reject hidden variables. 88.159.72.240 (talk) 14:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)