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Lynch101
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- TL;DR Summary
- I'm hoping to gain a better understanding of the arguments for and against Demystifier's paper as well as the implications of certain, specific claims.
I recently read @Demystifier's paper entitled, Bohmian Mechanics for Instrumentalists and I found it quite interesting. There is a danger that I am guilty of a certain amount of confirmation bias, as I find that deterministic interpretations are more closely aligned to my own logical reasoning. In the interest of better understanding the paper itself, and opening that confirmation bias to challenge, I would love to get the thoughts and ideas of @Demystifier and others.
There are a number of ideas in the paper that I would ultimately like to discuss, including the point made about the creation and annihilation of particles, but I think the best place to start might be with what seems - based on my limited understanding - like a fairly critical point; namely, the idea that Bohmian Mechanics produces the same observational predictions as standard QM. It is also a statement I have heard previously in relation to deterministic interpretations of QM, that they do not give rise to the same predictions.
@Demystifier, in your Insight article, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Orthodox Quantum Mechanics, you mention
My reading of your insight article is that the conceptual error only applies to a latter attempt to simplify your original work, is that correct? If so, I take this to mean that, although not as 'elegant' as you would like it to be, BM can still be shown to make the same predictions as standard QM. Am I correct in that?
In the paper you mention
There are a number of ideas in the paper that I would ultimately like to discuss, including the point made about the creation and annihilation of particles, but I think the best place to start might be with what seems - based on my limited understanding - like a fairly critical point; namely, the idea that Bohmian Mechanics produces the same observational predictions as standard QM. It is also a statement I have heard previously in relation to deterministic interpretations of QM, that they do not give rise to the same predictions.
Bohmian Mechanics for Instrumentalists said:To make a measurable prediction, one must first specify how exactly the arrival time is measured [39], which requires a formulation of the problem in terms of a perceptible. When the problem is formulated in that way, BM makes the same measurable predictions as standard QM, despite the fact that there is no time operator in standard QM
@Demystifier, in your Insight article, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Orthodox Quantum Mechanics, you mention
I understand that the paper you are referring to there is not the same paper as per the title of this thread. I'm wondering if this conceptual error applies equally to the 'Bohmian Mechanics for Instrumentalists' paper?the last specialized paper on Bohmian mechanics I have written, a referee found a deep conceptual error that I was not able to fix.
My reading of your insight article is that the conceptual error only applies to a latter attempt to simplify your original work, is that correct? If so, I take this to mean that, although not as 'elegant' as you would like it to be, BM can still be shown to make the same predictions as standard QM. Am I correct in that?
In the paper you mention
but from my understanding, your paper seeks to address these 'wrong disproofs' - is that correct? Are you aware of any challenges to your subsequent paper?The general recipe for making such a false “measurable prediction” out of BM is to put too much emphasis on trajectories and ignore the perceptibles. A lot of wrong “disproofs of BM” of that kind are published in the literature