The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics · HackerPapers discussions

The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — mentioned by GlibMonkeyDeath

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 13:26:22 GMT

Another Ph.D. physicist here. Any popularization of quantum mechanics (or quantum gravity in this case) can quickly degenerate into potentially foolish, or even harmful, metaphysical speculation. Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]." The frustrating part is that about 100 years ago, quantum mechanics provided a set of rules that didn't have an easy intuitive interpretation (i.e. that quantum mechanics is not both a "real and local" theory.) Yet it is wildly successful…

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The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — mentioned by lisper

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 17:22:30 GMT

> inflating small fragments HN comments don't lend themselves well to long-form writing. But in this case it wasn't really necessary to go past that one small fragment to see that Motl had not in fact paid attention to the details because he's attacking a straw man. > Your interpretation No, not mine. Nicolas Cerf and Chris Adami's 9http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9605002v2.pdf). And W.H. Zurek's (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072). And David Mermin's (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013). And Hugh Everett's (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-everett/#3, though I do put a slightly…

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The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — mentioned by lisper

Wed, 21 Oct 2015 22:45:29 GMT

My paper is based on this one: http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9605002v2.pdf I don't know if that exact paper was ever published, but an earlier version was formally published here: C. H. Adami and N. J. Cerf, “Information Theory of Quantum Entanglement and Measurement,” Physica D 120 (1998) 62-81. But this paper turns out to be a rehash of an older result (Zurek, 1991) http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072 which in turn is more or less a rehash of an even older result (1955) by von Neuman: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.7649v1.pdf (See the references for the original source.) And there is some…

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The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — mentioned by lisper

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 07:08:40 GMT

> it's a fuck-ton Or zero. (But it's definitely not one.) Personally I find the zero-worlds view to be the most intuitively satisfying: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf (Or the movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc) David Mermin's Ithaca interpretation is essentially the same thing: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 The slogan is that "we are correlations without correlata".

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The Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics — mentioned by mikhailfranco

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:25:34 GMT

Yes, that is where it all started, but there is ongoing development of the relational view. For example, in this essay Julian Barbour derives an expression for time in terms of positions: http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Barbour_The_Nature_... And here is David Mermin's "Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", otherwise known as the "Zero Worlds" hypothesis (to contrast to the more famous "Many Worlds"), because it is entirely relational: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9801057 http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 Mik

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