Subject: Re: Neo-Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics?
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:19:14 +0300
From: Dimi Chakalov <[email protected]>
To: "Muijnck, W.M. de" <[email protected]>


On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 09:40:06 +0200, "Muijnck, W.M. de" wrote:

>
> Dear Sir,
>
> In an empiricist interpretation of the quantum mechanical
> formalism
``collapse'' is just a transition from one preparation
> procedure to another.

I hope you would agree that the outcome from an observation produces a fact: something is being recorded, and in some reference frame we obtain an *event* relevant to particular preparation procedure.

A relativistic description requires two conditions. Example:

1. If you look at the Sun, you will see/observe a state of the Sun, which has been real 8 min prior to the instant of your observation, as recorded by your wristwatch.

2. At the *very same instant* of your observation, the Sun does possess a real state 'out there', which will/could be available to you for observation/recording after 8 min.

I am not aware of any interpretation of QM, which could fulfill these two requirements en bloc. The crux of the matter is that in the instant of observation you have two time intervals of *finite* duration (8 min, in the example above), which refer to a real physical system 'out there'.

The problem is known since Erwin Schrödinger's "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik",

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Corbett.html#2

On the other hand, everything we observe as a *fact* is in full compliance with special relativity theory: facts can be observed post factum only. Please also see Wolfgang Pauli and John Bell at

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/faq.html#Pauli

> I never considered a relativistic description of such processes.

It seems to me that your article "Towards a Neo-Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", quant-ph/0307235, does not describe facts. And you are not alone,

http://members.aon.at/chakalov/Mermin.html#note

Yours faithfully,

D. Chakalov
http://members.aon.at/chakalov
--
Dead matter makes quantum jumps; the living-and-quantum matter is smarter.