Talk:Quantum Darwinism

Applicability

did he say you could apply this to anything? What about a history model? Jared Diamond makes an attempt at it in Guns, Germs and Steel.

If by "this" you mean Quantum Darwinism, the topic of this article, then no, it cannot be applied to every observable phenomenon. This is a specific theory relating to the "collapse" of superimposed quantum states into a classical state during observation by one or more instruments. There is currently no evidence that macroscopic superimposed quantum states exist and are significant in real-world events such as human decisions at the roots of historical events. David spector (talk) 00:48, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Does this theory have anything to say about the emergence of our macroscopic universe and microscopic atoms and molecules, in the first few seconds after the Big Bang? Does it have any relevance or shed any light on inflation theory? 2601:441:4400:1740:7CBB:F534:DB2F:42BC (talk) 21:48, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge

I`ve never heard of that. It certainly isn`t original research, but i know this mostly as quantum evolution. Besides the term "Darwinism" itself is rather used in political contexts, other than that one usually speaks merely of evolution. 193.170.48.34 20:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

The fact that you have not heard of something is relevant to the extent that you are an experienced, published, and knowledgeable researcher or theoretician. This cannot be determined easily from your comment, 193.170.48.34.

Readers and editors may find Quantum Darwinism as a Darwinian process and its referenced articles helpful in evaluating this article. David spector (talk) 01:00, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

OR tag removed

as it was clearly not appropriate. Archelon 21:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

explaining

"Quantum Darwinism is a theory explaining the emergence of the classical world from the quantum world as due to a process of Darwinian selection." <-- I do not understand what the theory is "explaining". What predictions are made by the theory; does it in any way tell us something about the physical world that we do not otherwise know? There should be a non-circular definition of "pointer states" right at the start. --JWSchmidt (talk) 03:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. This sounds very circular and doesn't include any attempt to present a means to test the validity of this theory (or perhaps hypothesis?). Statements like "a preferred basis into which a quantum system will decohere is the pointer basis underlying predictable classical states" and "successive interactions between pointer states and their environment reveal them to evolve" don't provide any kind of specificity to distinguish them from pseudoscientific hand-waving. (I'm not saying it is pseudoscience, but one avoids that label by laying out specific, testable situations and then demonstrating the results, even if only theoretical for now.)

Can we get some concrete examples (in something approaching layman's terms) of what is being suggested here? (I'm particularly skeptical of the selection mechanism, which appears to be more like the anthropic principle — it is what it is because that's what we observe in the macro world — than any clear Darwinian environmental process.) Specific citations of what "Zurek and his collaborators have shown" would seem to be required. Even if testability is a challenge within the observable universe, a more comprehensive (and comprehensible) description is essential. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I've only skimmed this article, and I'm no expert, but it lit the "tautology alert" light in my brain. It just seems to be a wordy description of collapse and doesn't seem to say anything much about the measurement problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.9.11.102 (talk) 00:33, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

For me it starts the "belief-reality confusion" alarm bell ringing loudly. The article reminds me too much of Paul Davies and God and the New Physics, now this time instead using the humans (other animals??) as the final cause, "the collapse-inducers of the wave-form". I think much of the confusions around quantum mechanics arises from desperate tries to keep an idiosyncratically local image of free will. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 14:04, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Darwinian Evolution

The original text was confused. Heredity is the same concept as replication. As yet, I don’t know how the orginal following text can be corrected to make it conform to the principles of Darwinian Evolution.

Darwinian Evolution is based on the following 3 properties:

1 Selection

2 Random variation

3 Replication

e.g. see http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/replicators/index.html

Kevin aylward (talk) 14:34, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Critique?

Few (if any) theories have ever been proposed in quantum mechanics that haven't garnered some measure of criticism from peers of the theorist. Yet I see no section here devoted to "criticism". Is Quantum Darwinism the exception? Is this therory really universally accepted by essentially all contemporary physicists? Do they really reagard the measurement problem as having been solved? Are there no flaws, or even possible alternate interpretations of Zurek's mathematical derivations? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", it seems like Quantum Darwinism would have made more of a public splash than it seems to have done.

If the answer isn't "yes", then this article dearly needs a section delineating major critiques of this theory, identifying the critics, and linking to critical articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 20:16, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

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