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arXiv:quant-ph/9801057quant-ph

What is quantum mechanics trying to tell us?

N. David Mermin

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Abstract

I explore whether it is possible to make sense of the quantum mechanical description of physical reality by taking the proper subject of physics to be correlation and only correlation, and by separating the problem of understanding the nature of quantum mechanics from the hard problem of understanding the nature of objective probability in individual systems, and the even harder problem of understanding the nature of conscious awareness. The resulting perspective on quantum mechanics is supported by some elementary but insufficiently emphasized theorems. Whether or not it is adequate as a new Weltanschauung, this point of view toward quantum mechanics provides a different perspective from which to teach the subject or explain its peculiar character to people in other fields.

arXiv comments
37 pages, no figures. This is the published version of the lecture notes that expand on my earlier ``Ithaca interpretation of quantum mechanics'', quant-ph/9609013. ``Wootters' theorem'' has become the SSC theorem, an earlier citation has been added, and a joke about Talmudic scholarship has been dropped at the request of a referee
Journal reference
American Journal of Physics 66, 753-767 (1998)
DOI
doi:10.1119/1.18955
Subjects
quant-phQuantum Physics

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    • 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…

      mikhailfrancoView on HNParent context

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