Looking for a concept
- From: Kwok Man Hui <kmhui@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 10:51:45 +0000 (UTC)
Since there are people here interested in the interpretation of
measurement in quantum mechanics, I have a question to ask about them.
The concept of observer, which is quite absolute/independent in quantum
mechanics setting. Carlo Rovelli has tried to introduce a kind of
"Releational Quantum Mechanics" to deal with this kind of issue.
Authors: Carlo Rovelli Comments: Substantially revised version. LaTeX
file Journal-ref: Int. J. of Theor. Phys. 35 (1996) 1637
I suggest that the common unease with taking quantum mechanics as a
fundamental description of nature (the "measurement problem") could
derive from the use of an incorrect notion, as the unease with the
Lorentz transformations before Einstein derived from the notion of
observer-independent time. I suggest that this incorrect notion is the
notion of observer-independent state of a system (or
observer-independent values of physical quantities). I reformulate the
problem of the "interpretation of quantum mechanics" as the problem of
deriving the formalism from a few simple physical postulates. I consider
a reformulation of quantum mechanics in terms of information theory. All
systems are assumed to be equivalent, there is no observer-observed
distinction, and the theory describes only the information that systems
have about each other; nevertheless, the theory is complete.
Frankly, I strongly disagreed that there is no observer-observed
distinction. The obvious reason I disagree with this view is that we all
know that the measurement process is irreversible. So the flow of
information should be directional, but his formulation does not address
to anything like this because he assumes all systems are equivalent.
However, I incline to buy one of his old statements that "Observable
should be relative to observable, or observables build upon
observables."
We need to deal with this observer or measurement problem. The reason is
when we want to have a sound quantum theory of gravity about the early
universe, one must deal with the presupposition of the observer concept
embedded in any quantum theory. It doesn't sound right to base on our
current inept mathematics to presuppose an observer apriori to the
existence of the Universe. I hope people see that an anthropic worldview
is gone unchecked when people forming any current form of quantum theory
of the early universe. Now, let me make it clear here that I am not pro
or against any creationalist point of view of the universe. This is
beyond the scope/search of this topic.
In my own words, I incline to believe that the "measurement problem"
must deal with information flowing from one system to another system, it
must be directional globally but might be undirectional locally, like
the CPT theorem in quantum field theory. In order to circumvent this
problem, one might want to introduce a new quantization concept in which
it can derive the old quantum theory by some mechanism, imignatively a
powerful and heavy machinery of "de-categorization" like
shrinking/contracting flow of information between layers of networks.
Anyone knows anything like this or knows anyone thinking in this
direction?
Charles Hui
.
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