Page has recently argued that the Born rule does not suffice for computing all probabilities in quantum cosmology. He further asserts that the Born rule's failure gives rise to the cosmological measure problem. Here I contend that Page's result stems from his use of an overly restrictive definition of the Born rule. In particular, I demonstrate that all of the probabilities he wishes to compute follow from the Born rule when generalized measurements are permitted. I also register two comments on Page's theoretical setting, relating respectively to Hilbert space dimensionality and permutation symmetry. These considerations lead me to conclude that the claimed insufficiency of the Born rule is by no means specific to the cosmological context.
Page has recently argued that the Born rule does not suffice for computing all probabilities in quantum cosmology. He further asserts that the Born rule's failure gives rise to the cosmological measure problem. Here I contend that Page's result stems from his use of an overly restrictive definition of the Born rule. In particular, I demonstrate that all of the probabilities he wishes to compute follow from the Born rule when generalized measurements are permitted. I also register two comments on Page's theoretical setting, relating respectively to Hilbert space dimensionality and permutation symmetry. These considerations lead me to conclude that the claimed insufficiency of the Born rule is by no means specific to the cosmological context.
Considerable effort has been devoted to deriving the Born rule [i.e., that ${\ensuremath{\mid}\ensuremath{\psi}(x)\ensuremath{\mid}}^{2}dx$ is the probability of finding a system, described by $\ensuremath{\psi}$, between
x and
x+dx] in quantum mechanics. Here we show that the Born rule is not solely quantum mechanical; rather, it arises naturally in the Hilbert-space formulation of classical mechanics as well. These results provide insights into the nature of the Born rule, and impact on its understanding in the framework of quantum mechanics.