What the #$*! Do We Know!? Part 7
We continue our critical analysis of Cramer’s "Transactional Interpretation" of quantum mechanics. This interpretation is, for instance, being propagated in connection with "Remote Viewing and Consciousness Entanglement"!
3. Differences between the Transactional and the Copenhagen Interpretations
In this section I want to focus on the differences between the transactional interpretation and the Copenhagen interpretation. I have decided to do this with a question and answer format, asking an interpretation question implicit in the quantum mechanics formalism and then providing answers from the points of view of both the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) and the transactional interpretation (TI). The answers given are based on my understanding of both interpretations, and there is perhaps room for other views of how the CI might answer the questions posed. Where there was this sort of disagreement during the discussion session of this Conference, I will try to indicate this.
"An Overview of the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", was an invited paper presented at The 1987 Symposium on Relativistic Quantum Theory and Interpretation, Loyola University, New Orleans, May, 1987. From the web page "Jesuit Identity":
The Jesuit educational network is one of the largest systems in American higher education, with more than 200,000 students currently enrolled in the 28 U.S. Jesuit universities. Worldwide, Jesuit universities and colleges have graduated more than 1,000,000 students.
And what about Jesuits? An excerpt from the web page THE COUNTER REFORMATION
They came to be perhaps the most effective agents in the combat with heresy. Loyola himself felt that the Reformation was the result of ignorance and corruption on the part of the Catholic clergy. He had no very detailed knowledge of the works of the reformers; he forbade his followers to read the writings of heretics, and followed this counsel himself. His own attitude toward heretics was without bitterness; he hoped rather that they might be won back by persuasion. This was the position adopted by his followers, who generally refused to enter the service of the Inquisition, although they tended to be in favor of depriving heretics of civil rights and of banishing them if they could not reconvert them.
Let’s get back to "transactional interpretation" - Cramer continues:
Q1: Does the wave described by the state vector have physical reality?
CI: The state vector does not describe a real physical wave moving through space, but rather a mathematical representation of the knowledge of an observer.
TI: To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space (as opposed to momentum space or other parameter spaces), the formalism is describing real physical waves moving through space which are the first steps in the formation of transactions. The completed transaction describes the exchanged particle.
Discussion: It was pointed out in the Conference discussion that for some quantum mechanical systems (e.g. an ensemble of particles with spin) there is no known formalism capable of representing the system in position space. Therefore, it was argued, it is inappropriate to discuss “waves physically present in space'’. This is a very relevant observation, for the interpretation of a formalism cannot and should not go where the formalism itself does not venture. The TI, when applied to a formalism representing waves in position space, can interpret them as physically present in space. When applied to momentum space formalisms, etc, the issue of physical presence is moot, since it is not clear that “physical presence'’ in an arbitrary parameter space is a meaningful concept.
Now, listen "To the extent that the formalism contains state vectors represented in position space…". What is the meaning of that sentence? Since publishing of John von Neuman’s opus "Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik" in 1932 the formalism of quantum mechanics is based on Hilbert space, with understanding that position variables are just one of infinitely many commuting systems of observables. Moreover, even in position representations the "waves" (for particles without spin) propagate in 3 times N (N - the number of particles) dimensional space. They are not real physical waves moving through space as Cramer seems to imply. Cramer notices that "this is a very relevant observation", but he stops short of drawing the only reasonable conclusion, namely that his "transactional interpretation" fails to deal with all those case when the standard interpretation, extended by von Neumann and Dirac, works without any problems whatsoever.
To be continued ….
