Talk:Interpretations of quantum mechanics

Table entry for time-symetric theories

The table entry for time-symmetric theories now cites two (Since I added Costa de Beauregard's one). But Costa de Beauregard's theory was an ignorance interpretation - that is, the wave-function is not regarded as real, but merely as describing the state of our (incomplete) knowledge. The problem is that the table rows are sometimes individual theories and sometimes classes or groups of similar theories. The group of time-symetric theories should probably be split into two lines, one with wave-function real as "yes"/green (as now), and a new one with it "no"/pink. And likewise for the universal wave-function column at the end. My editing skills are not up to that, however. I hope someone else can split the line in two, please. Huw Price's 1996 book "Times Arrow and Archimedes point" (OUP) can serve as a source for this if need be - but his talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK4Dq8Wwsd8 is much clearer, in my view. The video, but not the book, calls Costa de Beauregard's interpretation the "Paris Interpretation". Nimrod54 (talk) 00:52, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

From what I recall of my last reading of work by Huw Price, I would be very hesitant to accept anything he wrote as a reliable source for Wikipedia. I think at least some other reliable source would be needed. A source, to be reliable, needs more than that it has been published and quoted by others. For reliability, a source should preferably be in accord with other reliable sources on the question of interest. Circular? Yes, but reliability is hard to prove. Reasonable literature survey is the only way I know.Chjoaygame (talk) 03:35, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

undid faulty edit; reasons

I undid a couple of faulty edits of which this was the second.

The reasons are that the edit was to the wrong article, in the wrong place if it had been suitable for this article, that it is fringe material, original research, that it violates the rule against self-promotion with conflict of interest, and that in editorial format it is very defective.

Dear IP 172.6.65.122 editor, it is good that you make some comment here on your talk page. But you need to know that Wikipedia does not seek to be a newspaper telling of the latest research. The other article you refer to, Firewall (physics), should probably also be deleted because of lack of reliable sourcing by Wikipedia criteria, but at present I do not have time to pursue that matter.

Wikipedia has rules against original research and against self-promotion, both of which your edit seeks to violate. The proper thing for you to do is wait until your research has found its way, or not, into what Wikipedia editors regard as reliable sources. Further, this is at present a content matter, and there is no "upper administrator" who can intervene directly on that at this stage. Anyone who let his student refer to Wikipedia as a research source would be making a big mistake, and that will probably never change. The other complaints that you make on your talk page indicate that you have a lot to learn about the Wikipedia process.

I could go on with more reasons why I undid your edit, but I think the above should be enough for the present.Chjoaygame (talk) 04:00, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

I have offered to send the reearch to editing parties as long as I can verify that you are not a party that is on a US government watchlist, as this is military funded research. I give you the same offer. I am not a ikipedia author, I am a reseacher, soldier, and scientist. It seems philosophically wrong to reject informational articles based on formatting or procedural issues and not with the logic or math of the theorem itself. Please provide an actual scientific argument for rejection instead of a social media taunt.Derenek (talk) 13:59, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

inappropriate entry; reasons

I undid an inappropriate entry for the following reasons.

The article is about mainstream widely considered interpretations. The entry was not about one of those, and was consequently off-topic.

The entry did not have support in Wikipedia-reliable sources.

Wikipedia editors are not judges of merit of new research. It is not the duty of Wikipedia editors to find support for inadequately supported entries of new research. The criterion of fitness for a Wikipedia entry is that the work should have been considered sound by a concordance of reliable sources. Editors need some knowledge and experience, and perhaps some consensus, to be able to identify reliable sources.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:00, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Once again I extend the offer to send you the research provided you are not on the US government watchlist. This is not research that should be posted as a public link on wikiedia, however it is important new research which has a significant effect on the understanding of quantum theory.Derenek (talk) 14:05, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear User:Derenek, I am sorry to need to tell you that you are acting on a great misunderstanding of the Wikipedia editing process. There are two kinds of issue: content, and conduct. You need to attend to both. The material you wish to post is inappropriate as to content. And your rapid undo of my undo, accompanied by your rapid undo of an edit on a related page, jointly tend in the direction of a conduct issue because repeated undos are forbidden. You have perhaps not yet actually violated in this, but you are close to it.

You seem to have ignored the reasons I wrote just above. Please read them carefully, to learn why your edits are inappropriate.Chjoaygame (talk) 14:33, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Like I said, I am not a wikipedia author. I apologize if you took offense, I'm not an expert in using social media like wikipedia to disseminate knowledge. I just hope that somebody interested in understanding science read the paper prior to people deciding to erase it off the cuff.Derenek (talk) 14:47, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for this reply. No offence felt. In words slightly different from those I wrote above, Wikipedia is not the place for very new research.Chjoaygame (talk) 20:57, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Interpretations and 'reality'

In the introduction to the section "Tabular comparison", I've changed the sentence:

"No experimental evidence exists that distinguishes among these interpretations. To that extent, the physical theory stands, and is consistent with itself and with reality." to

"No empirical evidence exists that distinguishes among these interpretations. To that extent, the physical theory stands, and is consistent within itself and with observation and experiment."

My reason for doing so is that - as the table makes clear - different interpretations of QM present, in effect, different pictures of reality. There is thus no single, generally accepted concept of reality that QM could be consistent with. For example, there is surely a fact of the matter as to whether or not our universe is deterministic, but different interpretations give different opinions about this reality. Peter Ells (talk) 19:17, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Tabular Comparison

Does anyone who is active on this page know the history of how the tabular comparison was made? I am interested in clarifying this table and sourcing it. As of now it contains no true citations. My interest in the table is for the purpose of pedagogy - it is of great importance that the table be sourced and accurate as possible. I am willing to do the research, but are very aware that someone must have already done much work on this and we don't need to reinvent the wheel - but we would like to verify and source it! I am new to wiki and am still learning the proper etiquette - please be patient and help me approach the issue of making changes according to the rules of Wiki. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qmskcc (talk • contribs) 03:55, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I put some of the entries in. Good sources are difficult, as it is debatable whether some of these interpretations make any sense and they are not even mentioned in textbooks. Roger (talk) 16:58, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Part of the reason for sources being hard to find is probably that the very categories of the table are dubious. You may consider re-examining them.Chjoaygame (talk) 17:46, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I agree with each of your points. I am going to go ahead and get started on the project, and I will post proposed changes before making any if I make discoveries that would justify such changes. I'm working with some physicists at UC Berkeley to find the sources and will also interview some of the experts to see what they think of this table. In some cases, it will be possible just to ask the living interpreters represented here what they think of their column/if it is correct or even meaningful etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qmskcc (talk • contribs) 20:21, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

You can sign your posts yourself by use of four tildes. A good thing to do.

The table lists the ensemble interpretation as due to Max Born. The use of the term 'ensemble' is variegated and I think Born was a Copenhagenist. It would be good to be very very careful to define 'ensemble interpretation'; it isn't successfully done in the article. Personally I think the 'many worlds interpretation' is sheer drivel, a testament to far out loss of contact with reality! You have set yourself a hard task.Chjoaygame (talk) 00:24, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Instead of grumbling, perhaps I should try to make some positive contribution. Here is a try. Dirac makes a relevant point in a way that may be helpful for analyzing the 'ensemble' dispute. Perhaps the following might be seen as labouring the obvious, but in this area, even the obvious seems disputable.

On page 15 of the first edition, Dirac writes "The solution of Maxwell's equations that forms the wave picture of the phenomenon represents one of the photons and not the whole assembly of photons. ... One must not try to establish any connexion between the absolute intensity of the waves and the total number of particles, which is in sharp distinction to the older ideas of the relations between waves and particles." In the second edition, and, in the very same words in the third, and again in the fourth, edition, Dirac writes on page 9: "What they did not clearly realize, however, was that the wave function gives information about the probability of one photon being in a particular place and not the probable number of photons in that place."

The term ensemble has diverse usages. Some probabilists express the probability of an adventure of a single photon by talking of a fictive abstract ensemble of its possible adventures. The probability is measured by counting elements of that ensemble. In practice, one repeats the one-photon experiment many times, and counts the several various outcomes, to derive an empirical estimate of the probability. Many photon adventures are involved, but they occur and are observed one by one. Born could be said to be an ensemble man because he thinks in terms of this form of expression. Evidently in the just foregoing, Dirac uses the word 'assembly' to refer to a single concrete adventure in which many photons occur and are observed simultaneously. One would say that Born's 'ensemble' is not Dirac's just foregoing 'assembly'. What meant by 'ensemble' is not the same everywhere.Chjoaygame (talk) 00:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Gunter Ludwig translates Born's second, more definitive, 1926 paper thus: "... relationship with the probability so that in an assembly of identical, uncoupled, atoms the states occur with a definite frequency." Here Born is considering many atoms simultaneously co-existent close to one another, but still sufficiently far separate from one another to be "uncoupled". This is a single concrete occasion in which many atoms occur but are somehow imagined to be counted one by one to measure the probability. Another translation of the same source is "... related to the probability that in a collection of equal, uncoupled atoms, a state should occur with a certain frequency [multiplicity?]."

Born and Einstein, in many letters, debated the meaning of the wave function. There the word 'ensemble' is used many times. For example, in a commentary in translation, Born writes "Einstein admits that one can regard the 'probabilistic' quantum theory as final if one assumes that the ψ-function relates to the ensemble and not to an individual case. This has always been my assumption as well, and I consider the frequent repetition of an experiment as a realization of the ensemble."

I think the possibility of confusion about the word 'ensemble' is evident in this. Howsoever, I think most would say that Born is not an ensemble man, that, on the contrary, he is a Copenhagen man.

Not easy to classify different authors' views on the notion of an 'ensemble'.Chjoaygame (talk) 03:50, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Branching space-time theories

I note that the only source for this section is a paper hosted on a pre-print archive that doesn't appear, from my searches, to have been accepted for publication by any journal. Is this adequate sourcing for a section of a scientific article? 86.24.88.241 (talk) 07:58, 21 September 2015 (UTC)