colossal typo
Paul Werbos
Do physicists believe in objective reality or not? The exchanges here are somewhat discouraging to me, because the true story is very well documented and I have given solid citations on the issue before this. On the other hand, Colin Morrison has shown enough insight that I may add some new details here today.People have quoted a book by d'Espagnat, to deduce that objective reality is no longer a mainstream option in physics. Frankly, the comments did not encourage me to see what his recent writings may be, but I certainly remember a very important canonical survey book from d'Espagnat on Bell's Theorem experiments and what they tell us. I remember reading large parts of it in about 1975, in the Harvard Coop bookstore, and being very impressed that he had the integrity and ability to report much of the truth about the very first Bell experiment, by Richard Holt at Harvard, which actually disagreed BOTH with quantum mechanics AND with the assumptions Einstein had used in analyzing the EPR experiment (the original idea for this experiment).Espagnat has a long resume, but no real scientist would tell us we should automatically defer to a claim about physics based on a quotation from one person long ago. (Hey, Newton had a nice resume, and people have quoted him on odd things). I did say, in my previous posts, that many mainstream versions of quantum field theory do perpetuate the old idea that objective reality
If we have to have an idiotic war of resumes and egos, let's start with scholar.google.com. I am a bit surprised that d'Espagnat's top citation seems to be 38. That is lower than I would have expected, so maybe someone can find a more positive indicator? But for David Deutsch (search on Deutsch author, with word "quantum"), he gets over 5000 citations for his top paper. (I get 4700, but that's for the Chinese version of mathematics underlying neural networks.) More important, Deutsch was not just an anthology writer, but the creator of a whole new branch of empirical quantum physics:He is the guy who developed the version of quantum computing which animates almost all the work in the West today. HE DEVELOPED it by paying serious attention to the respected but obscure theory of Everett and Wheeler,who showed that quantum field theory is 100% consistent with the idea of objective reality, if we assume that the cosmos or "multiverse" we live in has infinite dimensions. That concept of objective reality, and David Deutsch's work on it, is certainly as mainstream as one can get. Quantum computing in the paradigm of David Deutsch is a highly empirical and real branch of physics, far more consistent with science as defined by Kuhn and Bacon than is speculative stuff like superstring theory, let alone... some of what we have seen here.Once again, I highly recommend David Deutsch's book The Fabric of Reality for a highly credible version of objective reality in well-validated mainstream physics today.========So why does Kashyap pooh-pooh that? I don't know. There is a lot of destructive factionalism in all branches of science these days (and all branches of religion as well). Some would perhaps pooh-pooh Deutsch's version of quantum field theory, and pretend it does not even exist. (I have certainly seem computer scientists behave that way, pretending ignorance of algorithms they don't own.) But perhaps in Kashyap's case, it was just a matter of context, leading him to interpret "objective reality" with EINSTEIN'S version of objective reality, in which we assume the cosmos is finite-dimensional, maybe just 3+1-D curved Minkowski space.Certainly the concept of objective reality in 3+1 dimensions is far more controversial and marginal in mainstream physics today than is the concept of multiverse reality.So then, I can imagine a True Believer (Vedantist or Marxist, whatever) asking: "So which do YOU believe? You must believe SOMETHING. If not, you are a confessed ignorant wimp, beneath the attention of all real people."Sorry. I believe in Sanity or Zhengqi much more than I believe in any specific theories or ontologies about the cosmos or the absolute. Part of Sanity is being honest to oneself about one's many areas of ignorance. In first person science, as in third person science, the folks who feel obligated to pick an opinion the way they pick dress-up clothing to appeal to their vanity simple WEAKEN themselves, their ability to learn, and their credibility in the eyes of those who have attained a moderate degree of sanity.I do adhere to the GENERAL notion of objective reality, for reasons I should not review again here. (e.g. at www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf, an IFNA journal paper which only halfway made it to google scholar.) I do not believe that physicists have a duty to PICK the TRUE theory as we know it today. Rather, the first duty of physics is to LEARN BASIC THINGS WHICH IT DOES NOT YET KNOW. That requires a multipronged approach. The the area of quantum technology, I would advocate greater use and gtetsing of a specific MULTIVERSE theory, MQED, compared with KQED (Deutsch's version of QED). That work would simply ASSUME multiverse realism, and not waste time on various fantasy alternatives popular among philosophers or even abstract alternatives popular among mathematicians.On the other hand, on a parallel prong, I am also interested ,in work on three levels of possible deeper theory, aimed at theories which "approximate" MQED or which MQED could be seen as an approximation of. And yes, for the deepest of these, I have IDEAS for how to construct a credible PDE model fulfilling Einsteinian realism. Like 'tHooft, I recognize that no such specific theory exists as yet on earth. I am ever so sad that 'tHooft shares the goal, but imposes restrictions on himself and others which make it logically impossible to attain the goal. I view him as someone like the person who wants to drive to a far place in his/her car, but is just too fussy to replace an old spark plug without which the journey is impossible. And is so fussy he would not even let anyone else make the attempt. (Google typed "fuzzy", not fussy. OK, it is right. And it knows I type "fuzzy" more often than I type "fussy.")But... I have thought about that experiment which Holt told me about, which d'Espagnat mentioned, which is a mystery to this day. Just this week, I have seen some leads which POSSIBLY, just possibly, might have some explanation. With a very noisy thermal partially coherent source of entangled photons (a mercury vapor lamp) AND calcite type polarizers... DO calcite polarizers (and similar beamsplitters) transform n-occupancy photon states differently from polaroid or sunglasses type polarizers, either with or without allowance for the time symmetry of all such passive objects? I don't know, but it would be really neat if explanation could be found not only for the "best" experiments but for all of them. Even neater if anyone else on earth would be willing and able to learn that humble simple KQED/MQED math. Seriously. Having just one 70-year-old retiree on the task is not a good situation, especially when I have other responsibilities.If just one of you -- say Colin-- can really catch up with such things, it would be exciting and important.Happy New Year..Paul
Vasavada, Kashyap V
Dear Paul,
Happy New Year! Sorry to see that my attitude on objective reality may have offended you. If the experiments you propose prove that QED is wrong or at least needs some improvement, I will surely read it with interest and perhaps even change my mind! But as of today I believe what I wrote to Colin and Serge. This is that QM, QFT and relativity are mostly right. I believe, even when people have found correct theory of Quantum Gravity, solved all the problems with dark matter, dark energy and black holes, most of these theories will remain approximately right, needing minor corrections. This may very well be like the fact that Einstein did not trash Newton’s theory of gravitation. NASA uses it still every day in space flights with excellent results.
Of course the debate about interpretation of QM has been going on for some 90 years. There are some thirty interpretations! If I have to choose one, I will choose Copenhagen. At this point I positively dislike many worlds or many minds interpretation. I know Deutsch is lot smarter and much more well-known than me, but that does not make any difference. I doubt if success in making quantum computers has anything to do with what interpretation you believe in.
My disbelief in MWI is that it is very arbitrary. Suppose a professor asks his graduate student to do a quantum experiment next day. If the student gets up early, goes to the lab and does the experiment then the universe splits! If he sleeps late and does not go to the lab, universe does not split! If the branches are already made in heavens or human mind and he/she merely chooses the branch, that is metaphysics worse than any religious metaphysics I have heard of! Multiuniverses coming from cosmological models may be ok. At least there arbitrary actions of humans do not have power to split universes! You can never verify existence of the other universes and this increases arbitrariness of metaphysical assumptions without solving any problems.
I have some reservations about Bohm and associates’ objective world interpretation. It may be that they have to rewrite QM with non linearities which are not observed and they may have still conflict with relativity. In opinion surveys amongst physicists his interpretation gets zero votes! Any way this may be clarified in future.
Currently I like Copenhagen interpretation. I think experiments of Bell type prove that particles do not have any properties before they are measured. That says to me that non real interpretation is best. The experiment of 1975 you are quoting is very old. Since then, several dozens of Bell type experiments have been performed (some this year) where QM has been proved to be winner. One other reason in my mind is that this strangely coincides with Vedantic philosophy of MAYA (illusion). So our whole world houses , walls, and people, everything we see is illusion! Real world is fuzzy unreal at the quantum scale! Also Vedanta talks about subjective world.
Cheers!
Best Regards.
Kashyap
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Paul Werbos
Dear Paul,
Happy New Year! Sorry to see that my attitude on objective reality may have offended you. If the experiments you propose prove that QED is wrong or at least needs some improvement, I will surely read it with interest and perhaps even change my mind!
But as of today I believe what I wrote to Colin and Serge. This is that QM, QFT and relativity are mostly right.
I believe, even when people have found correct theory of Quantum Gravity, solved all the problems with dark matter, dark energy and black holes, most of these theories will remain approximately right, needing minor corrections.
Of course the debate about interpretation of QM has been going on for some 90 years.
There are some thirty interpretations! If I have to choose one, I will choose Copenhagen. At this point I positively dislike many worlds or many minds interpretation.
My disbelief in MWI is that it is very arbitrary. Suppose a professor asks his graduate student to do a quantum experiment next day. If the student gets up early, goes to the lab and does the experiment then the universe splits! If he sleeps late and does not go to the lab, universe does not split!
! You can never verify existence of the other universes and this increases arbitrariness of metaphysical assumptions without solving any problems.
I have some reservations about Bohm and associates’ objective world interpretation.
on. I think experiments of Bell type prove that particles do not have any properties before they are measured. That says to me that non real interpretation is best. The experiment of 1975 you are quoting is very old. Since then, several dozens of Bell type experiments have been performed (some this year) where QM has been proved to be winner.
One other reason in my mind is that this strangely coincides with Vedantic philosophy of MAYA (illusion). So our whole world houses , walls, and people, everything we see is illusion! Real world is fuzzy unreal at the quantum scale! Also Vedanta talks about subjective world.
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