Talk:Measurement problem

Writing Confusion

GRW theory and objective-collapse theory are described separately in the article, but GRW theory is an example of objective-collapse theories along with the Penrose interpretation. This is written in a confusing way in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:500:4100:2FC0:F5E4:35BC:8941:3ED7 (talk) 05:07, 15 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you!

I just wanted to say a big Thank You! to all of you who wrote this article. I think the Interpretations section is a well written, lucid summary of the current state of this confusing topic. This engineer learned some things reading it. It describes the main interpretation families in a neutral way while acknowledging the points of disagreement, and doesn't get bogged down including a bunch of fringe theories. It is really hard to get consensus on articles about this stuff; we all have our favorite interpretations, and since the differences are often not mathematical as much as philosophical, the wording becomes crucial, and edit wars can break out over parsing sentences. This represents a lot of work. Kudos! --Chetvorno^TALK 18:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Superdeterminism

I'm not an expert but I saw a convincing posting by Sabine Hossenfelder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpkgPJo_z6Y that a potential solution to the measurement problem was to assume that Nature violates measurement independence (aka Superdeterminism ). So I was surprised that it isn't mentioned here. Should it be? ^{Talk to} SageGreenRider 21:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I saw that too. It did sound convincing, but I'm not a physicist either. I understand the idea goes back to John Bell in 1964; he acknowledged a "superdeterministic" correlation between the sources and detectors in Bell experiments could account for the violation of the Bell theorem, but he didn't think it likely. I think the idea was revived by Hossenfelder and her collaborator Palmer, her paper is Hossenfelder, Palmer (May 2020) Rethinking Superdeterminism, Frontiers of Physics . Recently there have been articles about it in scientific mags, Quanta, Feb 2017, New Scientist, May 2021, Sci. Am., March 2022 but I'm not sure how much support it has (yet). This paper says it "has little support in the physics or philosophy communities". We have an article on it: Superdeterminism.

My feeling is superdeterminism should not be mentioned in this article, unless it gets more popular. The "Interpretations" section only covers the major interpretations of quantum mechanics, the most well known proposed solutions to the measurement problem. If we mentioned superdeterminism, for WP:due weight we'd also have to mention a lot of similarly speculative interpretations: the ensemble interpretation, consistent histories, quantum logic, Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation, transactional interpretation, QBism, modal interpretations, etc. and the section would be a mess --Chetvorno^TALK 01:51, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I am a physicist. Superdeterminism is about as popular among physicists as flat Earth theory. It's hardly ever mentioned in the literature, and when it is, it is dismissed as a non-starter, as the quotes in Superdeterminism show. So no, we shouldn't mention it here before it becomes popular among physicists. Which will never happen. Tercer (talk) Tercer (talk) 12:10, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, it seems like one of those theories that catches attention in the popular science press, giving it the appearance of more support than it actually has. --Chetvorno^TALK 17:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

OK. BTW Sean Carroll (who favors many worlds interpretation) doesn't completely dismiss it in his book Something deeply Hidden Quote: "This [prearrangment] seems unpalatable... but some smart people are pursuing the idea." Carroll and Hossenfelder seem to have mutual respect; she wrote a nice blurb for Carroll's book The Big Picture. The Big Picture has a lot about the Laplace's Demon idea and it seems to me that Laplace's Demon idea is quite similar to superdeterminism, but what do I know. Let's see. If it does become popular, you owe me a beer, @tercer ;-) ^{Talk to} SageGreenRider 18:47, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Laplace's demon is just regular determinism, it has nothing to do with superdeterminism. Usually people who think superdeterminism is even slightly appealing haven't understood how insane it is. Forget a beer, I'll buy you a whole brewery if superdeterminism ever becomes anything other than a fringe idea. Tercer (talk) 20:29, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Edit war

An editor, Naeemshahzada, has been repeatedly inserting a sentence into the Interpretations section

"It has been recently proposed that biological cells solve the measurement problem being the smallest agents capable of processing quantum information within the framework of the holographic principle, entropic gravity, and emergent dimensionality."

against a consensus of SageGreenRider, Tercer and myself. He has readded it 4 times [1], [2], [3], [4] within about 3 days --Chetvorno^TALK 06:56, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The problem with this addition is that it is inadequately sourced. It is supported by only two WP:primary sources, research papers by the same author, Szymon Łukaszyk. WP requires secondary sources (WP:PSTS). After this was pointed out, Naeemshahzada added two additional sources, also research papers by the same author, neither of which mention anything about the measurement problem, the previous papers, or the subject of the sentence. Any relation of these papers to the topic is WP:SYNTHESIS. In addition this sentence gives WP:UNDUE WEIGHT to a speculative theory with no support in a section that is limited to the main interpretations of quantum mechanics that have stood the test of time.

These are the only edits User:Naeemshahzada has made; this seems to be a WP:single use account whose goal is to insert Szymon Łukaszyk's work into Wikipedia. It seems likely that User:Naeemshahzada is Mr. Łukaszyk and he is using Wikipedia to promote his papers and his career, without the disclosure of WP:COI that Wikipedia requires.--Chetvorno^TALK 17:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I've opened (yet another) SPI: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Guswen. Tercer (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The first two sources, in addition to being primary, were below the standard we should adhere to. One was an item in conference proceedings, which in physics typically means no meaningful peer review, and the second was a book chapter in a collection published by a company on Beall's List. The other two were in MDPI journals, which again means that we can't expect any meaningful degree of peer review to have been applied. XOR'easter (talk) 15:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

You submit that Institute of Physics and MDPI lack credibility, while at the same time unpublished, non-peer-reviewed preprints are commonly used on Wikipedia to debase and discredit valid scientific research, even if they are plainly false.

For example, this non-peer-reviewed preprint is an attempt to discredit assembly theory which has been experimentally confirmed through tandem mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance, infrared spectroscopy, etc. The authors of this preprint claim, for example, (p.9), that an "object with a low assembly index (...) necessarily displays low entropy. In the opposite direction, an object with a high assembly index will (...) necessarily display high entropy". This is untrue (!). For example, two binary strings $C=[01010101]$ and $D=[00010111]$ have the same lengths $N=8$, Hamming weights $N_{1}=N/2=4$, and therefore the same Shannon entropies $H(C)=H(D)=\log _{2}(2)=1$ bit, but different assembly indices!

$a(C)=3$, while $a(D)=6$.

When does a fringe idea stop becoming a fringe idea? When it becomes more popular (User:Tercer), gets more support (User:Chetvorno), in particular from physical authorities (User:SageGreenRider)?

Will a flat Earth theory stop being a fringe idea when it becomes popular among physicists, as User:Tercer proposes?

And what does it mean that the main interpretations of quantum mechanics have stood the test of time? No consensus on any particular interpretation has been reached so far.

Perhaps life is an explanation of the measurement problem, then?

I am convinced it is.

Guswen (talk) 16:55, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

There are several important differences between MDPI journals versus arXiv. Journals published by the first two organizations claim to be peer-reviewed, when in fact they are not. (I have seen multiple articles in their journals that do not even appear to have been properly copyedited!) arXiv, however, has never claimed to be other than what it is: a publishing clearinghouse for non-peer-reviewed preprints, many of which subsequently are published in journals having a more rigorous review process (which becomes noted in the articles' publishing history). A second important difference is in their funding sources. MDPI journal article processing charges are generally paid for by the authors, whereas arXiv is funded by Cornell University Library, the Simons Foundation, and various member institutions. MDPI journals are hence considered to be predatory, and many academic institutions and scientific bodies actively discourage their members from publishing in those venues. Indeed, publication in such journals is often considered in a negative light in regards to academic promotion, etc. Crackpots, of course, couldn't care less. Publication in arXiv carries no negative stigma, provided that one has a decent publication history in properly peer-reviewed journals.

And no, although it happens, Wikipedia discourages use of arXiv as a source. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 12:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I disagree.

G Perelman, for example, provided the solution to the Riemann hypothesis in a never-published preprint.

Here is a list containing examples of wikipedia relevant articles that rely on non-peer-reviewed preprints for relevant parts of the entry: -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_hypothesis -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic.

If we apply your logic, User:Chetvorno, User:XOR'easter, and User:Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog, Wikipedia will not have many of its most relevant articles, or they will be incomplete.

Guswen (talk) 13:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

You misunderstood what I wrote. First of all, Perelman did not publish in a predatory journal, but on arXiv, and his arXiv article was extensively reviewed over a several year period. Second, I did not say that citation of arXiv should be forbidden. I merely pointed out that such citations are discouraged. Sometimes there is no choice, but we editors have to use our best judgement, and ultimately the contributions have to meet consensus. Prokaryotic Caspase Homolog (talk) 15:14, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

That makes perfect sense to me: had Grigori Perelman published his proof of Poincaré conjecture in a predatory journal, this proof would be invalid. Guswen (talk) 21:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

XOR'easter thanks, I should have caught that. --Chetvorno^TALK 17:04, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

References