Skip to content
The methodOpen data
Back to the collection

A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics

Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, Anton Zeilinger

2013 · arXiv

PhysicsScience & researchMathematics
Read the paper
HN score
0
Mentions
6
Readers
6
Months
6
What’s in a score?

From the abstract

Foundational investigations in quantum mechanics, both experimental and theoretical, gave birth to the field of quantum information science. Nevertheless, the foundations of quantum mechanics themselves remain hotly debated in the scientific community, and no consensus on essential questions has been reached. Here, we present the results of a poll carried out among 33 participants of a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics. The participants completed a questionnaire containing 16 multiple-choice questions probing opinions on quantum-foundational issues. Participants included physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians. We describe our findings, identify commonly held views, and determine strong, medium, and weak correlations between the answers. Our study provides a unique snapshot of current views in the field of quantum foundations, as well as an analysis of the relationships between these views.

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

6 selected excerpts · 6 total mentions

jiggawatts
Neutral mention · rule
Unfortunately, like all such descriptions, this one misses the mark also. I've never heard a good explanation for what a photon "is", or any particle for that matter. That's because physicists don't know either. No, seriously. Ask a randomly selected set of physicists about any core concept in Quantum Mechanics and you'll discover that their answers diverge wildly. Ref: https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069 Basic things like: "Are the photons quantised or is it just the photon interaction with atomic orbitals that's quantised?" I've personally asked this question and had working physicists confidently state that either the former or latter is true, and the other is false. (PS:…
Read the full comment
Compare this to biologists, chemists, or engineers. They all 100% agree on all core concepts. So do astronomers, and physicists studying classical mechanics and relativity. It's only quantum mechanics that's so fragmented.) Ask any working QM researcher to clearly show how "a single photon" interacts with an electron in an orbital and they will without a doubt draw you a cartoon diagram. Never in the history of theoretical physics has anyone, ever, anywhere made a numerical visualisation of this. This is because both the QM mental model and the mathematical theory applies only to ensembles in potential wells. This is a very narrow scope of applicability that was explicitly called out in the QM papers back in the early 1900s, but is now glossed over. People assume that what applies to a special case is the hard rule that applies to all things. It doesn't. There are no photons in free space. There are no little hard particles of light. You can't have a point with a wavelength. You can't have a single pure frequency with a finite duration. This is all gibberish, it's just a simplification to make the maths tractable when done with pencil and paper for special cases! The output of this simplified model is a 0-dimensional scalar. It can't do output much else, such a simulation of a full 3D interaction of any type. Trying to work backwards from such an oversimplified model in order to explain the deep nature of reality is futile. This is like pointing at the bandwidth measurement in Windows Task Manager and saying "we can understand how the Internet works by watching this number go up and down".
Original comment What is a photon? (2017)
abeppu
Neutral mention · rule
> Among the physicists who do care about the different QM interpretations, it is my understanding that most would go with the Everett (AKA "Many Worlds) Interpretation these days. In a small poll at a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics in 2011, the Copenhagen interpretation was the most popular. This could differ from your definition of "these days" I suppose. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069.pdf Update: a 2016 survey by different authors found similar popularity for the Copenhagen interpretation.
Original comment Quantum observers with knowledge of quantum mechanics break reality
lisper
Neutral mention · rule
Anyone who defends the Copenhagen interpretation. To be more precise, anyone who thinks that the "measurement problem" is still an unresolved problem, or anyone who defends the concept of "wave function collapse" as having any scientific or pedagogical merit whatsoever, except as a historical example of how science can go badly wrong. Richard Feynman would be the poster child for this point of view were he alive today. Freeman Dyson defended it to me the last time I spoke to him, but that was 20 years ago so maybe he's come around. According to a poll taken in 2013 [1] Copenhagen was the most popular interpretation among physicists. Sean Carroll apparently thinks Copenhagen is tenable [2] along with many of his commenters. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069 [2] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most...
Original comment The Scientific Case for P≠NP
e2e8
Neutral mention · rule
Here is a paper about a poll of physicists. http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069 Question 12: What is your favorite interpretation of quantum mechanics? Top Three: Copenhagen: 42% Information-based/information-theoretical: 24% Everett (many worlds and/or many minds): 18%
Original comment Quantum effects in relatively large systems
mathgenius
Neutral mention · rule
I think this is a well observed phenomenon [1],[2]. At least in the theoretical quantum group I am in: there is very little agreement about the interpretation of quantum theory. (Maybe the experimentalists don't care as much.) [1] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most... [2] http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069
Original comment Interpretations of quantum theory: A map of madness
millstone
Neutral mention · rule
Many Worlds is a far, far more popular interpretation than Bohm[1]. The strong objection to Many Worlds is not that macroscopic objects cannot be in superposition. There are many objections [2], but the principal one is the difficulty of deriving the Born Rule. This is a deep objection. The Born rule predicts of the result of quantum measurements in QM, and it's not clear how to get those results out of MWI. The Born Rule in MWI is inserted ad-hoc afterwards, or arises via some weird "world-counting" formalism that doesn't naturally connect to probabilities. So MWI has more the flavor of a visualization, not a theory that aims at making predictions. When you say "collapse…
Read the full comment
is wrong," it depends on what is being collapsed. Sure, inserting some special "wavefunction collapse dynamics" separate from ordinary evolution is a pretty rough approach. But when the wavefunction is understood as encoding probabilities, then it's not something physical, and its collapse is no more mysterious than the probability of the Giants winning the World Series "collapsing" to 100% once the final game was played. [1]: http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069 [2]: http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/physfaq/topics/manyworlds has some [3]: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9703089
Original comment Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong This Whole Time?

Keep following the thread.

More in Physics

More from the same topics.

1994arXiv

On proof and progress in mathematics

William P. Thurston

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.

Mathematics
29 mentions21 months
9HN score