Reply To: What are the most pressing problems? and how to solve them?

Home Forums 2015 International Workshop on Quantum Foundations Panel Discussion What are the most pressing problems? and how to solve them? Reply To: What are the most pressing problems? and how to solve them?

#2250
Mark Stuckey
Participant

We’d be interested in how you classify RBW per your taxonomy, Dieter. Along those lines, Silberstein and I will try to explain the principle of superposition per RBW, as an example of your 3b (hidden variable, psi-epistemic) classification. [Sorry, we’re not sure how to do this for a general 3b case.]

In our view, the fundamental ontological entity is a 4-dimensional spacetimesource element that corresponds to a particular experimental configuration from beginning (emission event) to end (detection event). The game of physics is then to find the probability amplitude for the 4D distribution of spacetimesource elements. Naturally, the path integral is our choice for computing this probability amplitude and, obviously, there is no superposition of possible outcomes in this God’s eye (4D) view because the outcome is know. But, we could collect all possible outcomes with their amplitudes and write them collectively as a superposition state (called the wave function). This would be the natural way to think about an experiment as 3D time-evolved beings, since we don’t know which outcome will obtain in any given trial of the experiment. Further, the amplitudes might be time dependent, given that we might not know when exactly they will occur. Of course, one uses the SE for obtaining this wave function and it can be derived as a ‘time foliation’ of the path integral.

Does this adequately explain the principle of superposition as it is understood in our particular 3b case? Or, have we missed your point?

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