Friday, May 27, 2016

The quantum state can be interpreted statistically, again


Now there are two papers


The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically



http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328


(It was discussed here the consecuences of this "no-go theorem")


And this one (two of the authors are the same as the previous paper):


The quantum state can be interpreted statistically


http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.6554


I would like to note this: titles give only poor information about the content, and they seem even maliciously chosen, but the mere existence of the two papers is funny anyway..


The question is : Which is more general!?


From the paper: "Recently, a no-go theorem was proven [21] showing that a $\psi$-epistemic interpretation is impossible. A key assumption of the argument in [21] is preparation independence situations where quantum theory assigns independent product states are presumed to be completely describable by independently combining the two purportedly deeper descriptions for each system. Here, we will show via explicit constructions that without this assumption, $\psi$-epistemic models can be constructed with all quantum predictions retained"


About being general


As I understand the second one just seems more general (because of "less assumptions"), but by no means Newton's dynamics is more general than Einsein's relativity because "it lacks of c=constant assumption". It's weird anyway, because it would mean that if " wavefunction is a real physical object" (a funny phrase from www.nature.com article) would depend on assumptions!, then what kind of realism depend on assumptions?



Perhaps a point to discuss (assuming the theorem is well proven) is whether those assumptions have sense, if they come from experiments, or if they are just limiting the scope (toy model), or if those are random assumtions that have no source.




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