Isn't `wavefunction collapse' just a lazy shorthand for `the system we're interested in interacts with the observer, who is so huge and complex that decoherence occurs and thus the observer never sees the superposition'? Sincerely, Adam P. Goucher
All of the interpretations say that, as far as I'm aware. Copenhagen says that the wave function "collapses" randomly when it's observed. The collapse postulate, in my opinion, is clearly wrong. If it actually behaved that way, 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. - The only phenomenon in all of physics that is non-local in spacetime and propagates an influence faster than light.
(http://lesswrong.com/lw/q6/collapse_postulates/)
-- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~mike http://reperiendi.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun