News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003). Parent comment

Re:Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003) by gizmo686 on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:29PM (#16507272)
QM is a mathematical model. Many worlds is an intuition to understand that model. There is a pedagogical question on if many worlds is a useful mental model to have. There is also a philosophical question of if many worlds better captures the essence of the model relative to Copenhagen.

We can also flip it around. Why should we think of QM in terms of the Copenhagen when it makes to testable predictions.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003) by millstone on Friday March 02, 2018 @11:31PM (#16507883)
Wouldn't you consider the Born rule to be a testable prediction (though in an admittedly weak sense of simply being postulated)?

If the Born rule were found to be violated, it would invalidate Copenhagen but not MWI, which IMO means Copenhagen is more falsifiable.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Lost Causes of Theoretical Physics (2003) by naasking on Saturday March 03, 2018 @11:16AM (#16509906)
> If the Born rule were found to be violated, it would invalidate Copenhagen but not MWI, which IMO means Copenhagen is more falsifiable.

All quantum mechanical interpretations depend upon the Born rule. A violation of the Born rule would rule them all out, except perhaps Bohmian mechanics which allows the possibility of non-equilibrium states, but we have no idea if those can be created.

[ Parent | on HN ]