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Originally Posted by DysonSphere  Decoherence is subject to what I think are some fatal criticisms. The decoherence interpretation tries to neutralize the strangeness of QM by suggesting that quantum systems lose information as it interacts with its environment causing the appearance of a wave-function collapse.
The problem is that you cannot "lose" information to the environment because the universe as a whole has no environment. This is to put it rather simply but to say that the decoherence interpretation is not subject to criticism is simply untrue.
The problem with the many worlds hypothesis (and all interpretations of QM) is that is it unfalsifiable. The theory supposes that there are an infinite number of parallel universes, which completely undermines the principle of parsimony.
The observer seems to be play a crucial role in QM because measuring a quantum system appears to decide its properties. But of course that is exactly what is trying to be refuted by the many worlds hypothesis and decoherence.
Consciousness re-encountered. |
My understanding is that what you've said is now days considered incorrect or irrelevent.
My understanding is that the main criticism of decoherence had to do with the basis problem, assignment of probabilities and some indefiniteness issues. If I'm reading the papers I cited correctly, POV's removes the basis problem and assignment of probabilities, and functionalism removes concerns of macroscopic indefiniteness.
According to my reading of the papers I cited, the claim that Everett's many-worlds interpretation undermines the principle of parsimony appears totally wrong and just the opposite when compared to it's competitors. It's the combining of the elegent "bare quantum formalism" with the mess that is the "quantum algorithm" that creates the measurement problem and all these other interpretations.
I will have to go back to these papers to see if the issue of falsifiability is even brought up but Max Tegmark, on his web site, said this was not the case and gave examples or reasons why not. Here is one of his papers which brings up the falsifiability issue:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/...707.2593v1.pdf
Consciousness UnEncountered
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