I list several strong requirements for what I would consider a sensible interpretation of quantum mechanics and I discuss two simple theorems. One, as far as I know, is new; the other was only noted a few years ago. Both have important implications for such a sensible interpretation. My talk will not clear everything up; indeed, you may conclude that it has not cleared anything up. But I hope it will provide a different perspective from which to view some old and vexing puzzles (or, if you believe nothing needs to be cleared up, some ancient verities.)
Metadata: arXiv. Abstracts retain their original authors’ rights.
In the conversation
Original HN comments, with labels from simple text rules. A label describes the whole comment and may miss context or irony. Read the discussion to make up your own mind. About the labels
Another Ph.D. physicist here. Any popularization of quantum mechanics (or quantum gravity in this case) can quickly degenerate into potentially foolish, or even harmful, metaphysical speculation. Physicists are in the business of finding the best set of mathematical rules that describe "If the conditions A exist, then B happens [with a certain probability]." The frustrating part is that about 100 years ago, quantum mechanics provided a set of rules that didn't have an easy intuitive interpretation (i.e. that quantum mechanics is not both a "real and local" theory.) Yet it is wildly successful for what it does, and the mathematics is crystal clear. (By the way, regular…
Read the full comment
non-relativistic quantum mechanics can be interpreted as having "no reality", no fancy quantum loop gravity needed; see e.g.https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013 - more precisely, only correlations exist.)
Taken to its metaphysical conclusion, though, "there is no objective reality" can lead to harm. So, I guess morality is all a matter of perspective? That can be used to justify anything. We do seem to have an emergent reality (at least the one I am experiencing at the moment) that is held in common - just because the underlying mathematics is hard to interpret doesn't justify "anything goes", or my crazy belief is just as good as your crazy belief.
So although it is fun to think about, don't take "there is no objective reality" too seriously - you still have to go to work, you still have to pay your taxes.
> inflating small fragments
HN comments don't lend themselves well to long-form writing. But in this case it wasn't really necessary to go past that one small fragment to see that Motl had not in fact paid attention to the details because he's attacking a straw man.
> Your interpretation
No, not mine. Nicolas Cerf and Chris Adami's 9http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9605002v2.pdf). And W.H. Zurek's (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072). And David Mermin's (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013). And Hugh Everett's (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-everett/#3, though I do put a slightly different spin on it -- no pun intended.) Arguably even John von Neuman's, and there…
Read the full comment
is some evidence that Heisenberg actually understood the connection between measurement and entanglement as well.
To be clear: I am not claiming to have discovered anything new. My only contribution is a pedagogical one: a reductio-ad-absurdum argument showing how Copenhagen, if it were true, would lead to faster-than-light communication.
> You are the climate sceptic here you are the creationist
Another characteristic of creationists is that they, like you, adamantly refuse to actually look at the evidence presented to them.
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 "Ithaca Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", otherwise known as the "Zero Worlds" hypothesis (to contrast to the more famous "Many Worlds"), because it is entirely relational:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9801057
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013
Mik
My paper is based on this one:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9605002v2.pdf
I don't know if that exact paper was ever published, but an earlier version was formally published here:
C. H. Adami and N. J. Cerf, “Information Theory of Quantum Entanglement and Measurement,” Physica D 120 (1998) 62-81.
But this paper turns out to be a rehash of an older result (Zurek, 1991)
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0306072
which in turn is more or less a rehash of an even older result (1955) by von Neuman:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.7649v1.pdf (See the references for the original source.)
And there is some evidence that even Bohr and Heisenberg actually understood this.
Basically, the…
Read the full comment
physics community bifurcates among those who deny this is true (e.g. Lubos Motl) and those among whom it is considered common knowledge. Indeed, when I submitted my paper to Physics Today back in 2000 it was rejected on the grounds that it was nothing new.
The hard part of QM is not understanding it. The hard part is accepting that it is true. Because people really want to believe that the reason that we can make reproducible measurements is that these measurements are a faithful reflection of a underlying metaphysical reality that is actually "out there" in some sense. But that turns out not to be the case. As David Mermin so eloquently puts it (http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013) we are in fact made of "correlations without correlata."
> it's a fuck-ton
Or zero. (But it's definitely not one.) Personally I find the zero-worlds view to be the most intuitively satisfying:
http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf (Or the movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc)
David Mermin's Ithaca interpretation is essentially the same thing:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9609013
The slogan is that "we are correlations without correlata".
In response to Jaffe and Quinn [math.HO/9307227], the author discusses forms of progress in mathematics that are not captured by formal proofs of theorems, especially in his own work in the theory of foliations and geometrization of 3-manifolds and dynamical systems.
Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have been developing and refining large language models (LLMs) that exhibit remarkable capabilities across a variety of domains and tasks, challenging our understanding of learning and cognition.