🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <92346.083019MRG3@psuvm.psu.edu>, <MRG3@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

|> The relative state formulation, as given by Everett, is not complete. There
|> is a  lot of work being done in this area (particularly Gell-Mann and Hartle).
|> One of the problems which was recognized early on was the so called
|> Basis Problem:  what determines the appropriateness of a particular
|> set of states to be an "apparatus" basis?  If the answer is subjective
|> ("this set of states corresponds to different appartus pointer states
|> because I said so", or "any *classical* system can be an apparatus")
|> then the interpretation is no more satisfying than Copenhagen mysticism,
|> and leaves at least as many questions unanswered.
|> 
|> Partial solutions have been formed in terms
|> a way of identyfying systems as  "approximately classical", via
|> the effective decoherence in quantum open systems.
|> This idea had one of its earliest solid formulations in
|> Zurek's "Environment Induced Superselection" (superselsction in this case
|> was a poor choice of temionology).  Gell-Mann and Hartle are currently
|> spending considerable efforts on their program of
|> aproximate classicality through coarse graining.

	I read Zurek's article in Physics Today last year, and at the time 
it seemed to make sense to me.  Since this fact could be considered a strike 
against his work (I'm a rather dim-witted experimentalist, after all), 
could someone tell me how seriously this approach is taken by people who 
are in the know about such things?

-- 
Steve Schaffner        sschaff@unixhub.slac.stanford.edu
	The opinions expressed may be mine, and may not be those of SLAC, 
Stanford University, or the DOE.