This is a very nice essay attacking the Copenhagen interpretation, and other objective collapse models. But I think that the way it is written seems to imply that if I don’t believe in objective collapse, that the only alternative is to believe the equally insane idea that I live in a world that is constantly locally branching into millions of alternative worlds, only one of which is, even in principle, observable to me.
There are many alternatives. I think Qubism is a mix of a genuine solution, and a kind of a slight-of-hand that hides the problem. Maybe future iterations of it will be better.
Personally I think “negative probability” is an option worthy of more exploration. Quantum physics can be viewed as a classical probability theory that admittes some negative (quasi-)probabilities. Many of the problems of negative probability are dealt with by the limited measurement precision (the theory states that their is a negative probability of some specific position/momentum combination, but you cannot measure both, so no observable outcome occurs with negative frequency). A reasonable interpretation of negative quasi-probability, I think, would constitute a solution.
At the very least, the negative probability issue lets us frame the problem like this: does normal (classical) probability theory make you want to accept a branching worlds view of the universe? Does adding negative quasiprobabilities change your answer?
Wigner sorted out how to do everything the wavefunction does with negative quais-probability in the 1930s.
This is a very nice essay attacking the Copenhagen interpretation, and other objective collapse models. But I think that the way it is written seems to imply that if I don’t believe in objective collapse, that the only alternative is to believe the equally insane idea that I live in a world that is constantly locally branching into millions of alternative worlds, only one of which is, even in principle, observable to me.
There are many alternatives. I think Qubism is a mix of a genuine solution, and a kind of a slight-of-hand that hides the problem. Maybe future iterations of it will be better.
Personally I think “negative probability” is an option worthy of more exploration. Quantum physics can be viewed as a classical probability theory that admittes some negative (quasi-)probabilities. Many of the problems of negative probability are dealt with by the limited measurement precision (the theory states that their is a negative probability of some specific position/momentum combination, but you cannot measure both, so no observable outcome occurs with negative frequency). A reasonable interpretation of negative quasi-probability, I think, would constitute a solution.
At the very least, the negative probability issue lets us frame the problem like this: does normal (classical) probability theory make you want to accept a branching worlds view of the universe? Does adding negative quasiprobabilities change your answer?
Wigner sorted out how to do everything the wavefunction does with negative quais-probability in the 1930s.