Re: quantum theory does need an interpretation

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue Aug 8 03:05:42 2000

Gary S. Bekkum wrote

>I think that it is incorrect to make such sweeping assumptions linking
>the mind to the quantum world as is often done in popular books. I am
>not saying that I believe that the mind is a purely classical phenomena
>either. I am only pointing out the many incompatible variations on the
>"quantum mind" theme demonstrate that it is premature to join perception
>to quantum theory.
>
>Regarding your last point, there is a paper at the Los Alamos pre-print
>archive, available in Adobe PDF format for the Adobe Reader (available
>free at Adobe.com) that explains this in detail:
>
>http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/0003146
>
>click on other formats, then select "create PDF"
>
>Does Quantum Nonlocality Exist? Bell's Theorem and the
>Many-Worlds Interpretation
>
>Authors: Frank J. Tipler
>Comments: 7 pages in plain TeX, no figures
>
> "Quantum nonlocality may be an artifact of the assumption that
>observers obey the laws of classical
> mechanics, while observed systems obey quantum mechanics. I show
>that, at least in the case of
> Bell's Theorem, locality is restored if observed and observer are
>both assumed to obey quantum
> mechanics, as in the Many-Worlds Interpretation. Using the MWI, I
>shall show that the apparently
> "non-local" expectation value for the product of the spins of two
>widely separated particles --- the
> "quantum" part of Bell's Theorem --- is really due to a series of
>three purely local measurements.
> Thus, experiments confirming "nonlocality" are actually confirming
>the MWI."

Thank you for refering us to this nice paper. (I communicate also the
reference to the everything list where people could be interested).
Note that the idea that MWI restore locality is as old as Everett. In
particular Everett makes that point clear in his big paper on the
Universal Wave Function, when he looks at the EPR phenomenon from the
multiverse point of view.
But with Tipler's paper it is Bell's work itself which is under
scrutiny with some clarity and rigor. That paper gives me the feeling
that MWI restore also completely the classical use of counterfactual
propositions. BTW it would be nice to see explicitely what happens with
the
Kochen and Specker theorem in the MWI. In my opinion this shows that the
MWI can be seen as a realist, local and determinist hidden variable
interpretation of QM, where the hidden variables correspond to the
relative
universe where we momentarily belongs. It is so unfortunate that Everett
meet Bohr and not Einstein :-( ... (I mean in our branch!).

Bruno
Received on Tue Aug 08 2000 - 03:05:42 PDT

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