Re: On Russell's Derivation of Quantum Mechanics

From: Russell Standish <lists.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:30:46 +1000

Hi Youness,

Thanks for this, it is very impressive. You have gone into this in far
more depth than the referees of the "Why Occams Razor" paper. I will
respond to this soon, but rather than shoot from the hip, I'll take
some time to respond thoughtfully.

As for not proclaiming scientific revolutions, I sort of do that in
http://www.hpcoders.com.au/docs/revolution.pdf , which I wrote for the
centenary of Planck's revolutionary paper ushering in quantum
mechanics. It is basically an op ed where I noticed the similarities
between my approach, Bruno's and Roy Frieden's approaches, and
concluded that a scientific revolution was indeed in the
offing. Unfortunately, that article didn't get much airtime, which I
suspect says more about inherent media biases than anything else.

Nevertheless, if the argument I presented stands up, it is very
important, so it requires rigorous scrutiny. Extraordinary claims
requires extraordinary evidence, as the late AC Clarke would
say. Thank you for getting the ball rolling on this.

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 08:13:01AM -0700, Youness Ayaita wrote:
>
> I have elaborated a comprehensive analysis of Russell's derivation of
> quantum mechanics; the article can be found online on my homepage:
>
> http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~yayaita/Russell_Derivation_QM.pdf
>
> An extract:
>
> 1. Point of Departure
>
> In his article "Why Occam's Razor" and in appendix D of his book
> "Theory of Nothing", Russell presents a derivation of the postulates
> that underly quantum mechanics based on the theory of the Everything
> ensemble. In usual treatments of quantum mechanics that can be found
> in various textbooks, these postulates aren't justified on any deeper
> level. Though, there have been considerable efforts (mostly linked to
> the "Everett interpretation", also called "many-worlds" or "relative
> state interpretation") to explain the apparent validity of the
> postulates describing the collapse of the wavefunction starting from
> the no-collapse postulates. Recent contributions have been published
> by Wallace and Zurek. But Russell goes even much further: He also
> derives the core of quantum mechanics, its no-collapse postulates,
> using the theory of the Everything ensemble and a few assumptions.
>
> If Russell is right, then his derivation is a great and to date
> unrivalled highlight of our efforts for justifying the theory of the
> Everything ensemble. Aspects of the structure of our world are
> explained by reason alone without referring to experiments---this
> could be the first great achievement of what I call "rationalist
> physics". His work induces Russell to be enthusiastic: referring to
> Feynman's famous statement that "nobody understands quantum
> mechanics'', Russell writes in chapter 7 of his book: "I can now say
> that I understand quantum mechanics.'' and he summarizes "Quantum
> mechanics is simply a theory of observation!''
>
> The significance of Russell's claim cannot be overrated. And I do hope
> that he is right. Nonetheless, I elaborate a thorough criticism of his
> derivation. If Russell can disprove my objections (and I hope he
> will), my criticism will contribute to a clarification of several
> issues. If my criticism holds, then it is up to all of us to improve
> Russell's approach or to suggest completely new ideas. So, I invite
> all of you to participate actively in the discussion that will follow.
>
> I will outline Russell's derivation step by step. My presentation
> sticks closely to appendix D of Russell's book. I slightly changed
> notations in order to avoid confusions.
>
> ----
> Regards, Youness Ayaita
>
-- 
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Received on Sun Apr 20 2008 - 19:30:48 PDT

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