Re:IAmA theoretical physicist. Ask me anything (via reddit)
by Jach on Friday June 04, 2010 @12:31PM
(#1404767)
I'm not going to go into the arguments about it, I've given you the link so you can read them all yourself. Though I will quote two big things (edited for note: assertions, not arguments for them; arguments are at the link above) against collapse postulates in general, since you probably didn't read them and perhaps you have a response why it doesn't matter:
"If collapse actually worked the way its adherents say it does, it would be the only non-linear evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-unitary evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-differentiable (in fact, discontinuous) phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics, the only phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics that is non-local in the configuration space, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates CPT symmetry, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates Liouville's Theorem (has a many-to-one mapping from initial conditions to outcomes), the only phenomenon in all of physics that is acausal / non-deterministic / inherently random, and the only phenomenon in all of physics that is non-local in spacetime and propagates an influence faster than light."
Second, now paraphrasing, is that many-worlds, aka macroscopic decoherence (QM applied universally), is a strictly simpler theory and Occam's Razor alone rules out collapse as it's an added detail not needed.
Lastly, this is just my own opinion, but just because you learned from a set of standard textbooks or from a physics department at some place, doesn't necessarily mean you learned correctly. Truth isn't what the university teaches, even though there's a lot of overlapping. (I have learned there are apparently still some people teaching that we are evolved from chimps.)
"If collapse actually worked the way its adherents say it does, it would be the only non-linear evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-unitary evolution in all of quantum mechanics, the only non-differentiable (in fact, discontinuous) phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics, the only phenomenon in all of quantum mechanics that is non-local in the configuration space, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates CPT symmetry, the only phenomenon in all of physics that violates Liouville's Theorem (has a many-to-one mapping from initial conditions to outcomes), the only phenomenon in all of physics that is acausal / non-deterministic / inherently random, and the only phenomenon in all of physics that is non-local in spacetime and propagates an influence faster than light."
Second, now paraphrasing, is that many-worlds, aka macroscopic decoherence (QM applied universally), is a strictly simpler theory and Occam's Razor alone rules out collapse as it's an added detail not needed.
Lastly, this is just my own opinion, but just because you learned from a set of standard textbooks or from a physics department at some place, doesn't necessarily mean you learned correctly. Truth isn't what the university teaches, even though there's a lot of overlapping. (I have learned there are apparently still some people teaching that we are evolved from chimps.)