Mindscape 59 | Adam Becker on the Curious History of Quantum Mechanics

Blog post with show notes and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Patreon: / seanmcarroll
There are many mysteries surrounding quantum mechanics. To me, the biggest mysteries are why physicists haven't yet agreed on a complete understanding of the theory, and even more why they mostly seem content not to try. This puzzling attitude has historical roots that go back to the Bohr-Einstein debates. Adam Becker, in his book What Is Real?, looks at this history, and discusses how physicists have shied away from the foundations of quantum mechanics in the subsequent years. We discuss why this has been the case, and talk about some of the stubborn iconoclasts who insisted on thinking about it anyway.
Adam Becker received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He is currently a science writer and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at UC Berkeley. His book What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics comes out in paperback on Sept. 3, 2019.

[@jeremikossak9553]

New background graphics, bravo!

[@erichodge567]

It was 4 o'clock in the morning, and I needed to get to sleep, so I promised myself I would just listen to five minutes of this talk. Well, you know what happened...I'm writing this appreciation at 6am. This was a beautiful example of a science talk from which laypersons can derive benefit. Also, this talk shows how important it is that popular expositions of physics be given by persons with deep knowledge of the subject. Anyway, thank you so much for this program.

[@youtou252]

Can you do a podcast with Einstein he seems like a very smart guy

[@HackAcadmey]

Yeaaa, Everyone keeps talking about it but maybe we gotta wait till he comes out with a book or something to bring him for podcast. He seems busy otherwise.

[@AdamAlbilya1]

He's dead

[@AdamAlbilya1]

And alive.

[@mrloop1530]

He already had him on

[@mrloop1530]

And didn't.

[@johnwebb220]

Great chat With Adam Sean, and an extremely interesting book Adam. Having a timeline for this very subject really helps! Thanks.

[@r-pupz7032]

Awesome discussion, thank you both :)

[@rollingrock3480]

Uh oh, somebody finally offered Dr. Caroll *real money* for an ad! That's okay Dr. Carroll, I love you anyway!

[@pbseethu]

Greatly enjoyed the conversation!

[@Mentat1231]

Thank you so much for posting this. I just bought the book, but this was a really nice precursor. I've read similar things from Tim Maudlin, and actually got the book on Maudlin's recommendation. Great stuff.

[@bryandraughn9830]

I can't help but think about sneaking up on a cloud chamber, and seeing exactly where the particles were before I was looking at them.

[@mbaske7114]

QM in a nutshell: - "Baby, we'll always have Copenhagen." - "WHICH Copenhagen?"

[@DrPommels]

I don't care about your Copenhagen......

[@chrisrecord5625]

"The one you love so much" "Awwh, Baby"

[@calvinmadison6065]

Good phrase

[@dominikheiderer9161]

Thanks for sharing your post!

[@zippoboyshaneshank8954]

Who would have thought that Niels Bohr and William S. Burroughs would have something in common ( Naked Lunch was famously printed in the wrong order, but also so incomprehensible that it didn't matter. )

[@mountainhobo]

Fantastic discussion, thank you.

[@mrloop1530]

Although it's not a discussion.

[@mountainhobo]

@@mrloop1530 Ah, there is always one that has nothing to contribute except a pointless nit pick.

[@ariamula9497]

Brilliant podcast, I'm not remotely well versed in science but I understood this perfectly. One thin: you and Adam talk about the Red Scare; in the UK we call it the 'McCarthy witch-hunt' which I think more correctly describes it. Love your work sean and adam keep it up. Nobody should be afraid to discover the foundations of quantum mechanics.

[@ThePinkus]

Afaik, Everett was one of the people developing or working on the MAD (mutually assured destruction) deterrence concept. Correct me if I am wrong. Now, a surrealistic parallel... let's consider rational decision theory (e.g. D. Wallace) applied to betting on alternatives... and developing a valid MAD deterrence, i.e. making sure that everybody's best bet is always NOT starting that war. Mmm, such a curious coincidence.

[@davidwilkinson2038]

Always do physics bases podcasts that’s my favorite thing to hear Sean talk about

[@El_Los_er]

Love the new logo! Oh Yeah!

[@ashburnian]

I recently read Adam's book and it was quite fascinating.

[@ThePinkus]

Starting from the talk about epistemic interpretations at about the end of the podcast... I think my position on the interpretation of QM could be described as epistemic, but my conclusion from that starting point is that QM indicates (vindicates) realism. A realism that is based on determination, but not determinism (determinism = determination is fundamental, i.e. that uncertainty can be infinitely removed), but emergent determination and thus emergent realism, in this very same sense. I made a little exercise recently on Zwirn's arXiv:1912.11636 "Is QBism a possible solution to the conceptual problems of QM?": I put a "y" next to things I seem to agree with in the abstract, and these are the premises of QBism. I got a full column of y's, six of them. Then I disagree with the first deduction they make. That's perplexing, I thought, I need to figure this out. I think one source of the deviation is in the formulation of what we set out to do. Fuchs explicitly quotes Jaynes (who I have read) when he says that the formulation of QM mixes the subjective and the objective to the point that we are confusing them, thus to make sense of this mixture we have to separate them. These are not the exact words, the word that is exactly used, though, is "separate", and this, I realized, is misleading, and in my opinion is what plagues QBsim. I agree with Jaynes' observation, but let me phrase it differently. The theory, QM, is epistemic, it represents our knowledge (this is the trivial sense in which it is epistemic) and that it is a representation of our knowledge is a fundamental characteristic of the formulation (the strong sense in which it is epistemic, contrast with the objective non-probabilistic formulation of classical physics, which is epistemic in the trivial but not in the strong sense). The program is to recognize the objective content of the epistemic theory (more specifically how the subjective and epistemic perspectives encode the objective content). This conforms naturally with the expectation that knowledge is knowledge about something, i.e. it has a content. This formulation do not ask for a separation. Asking for a separation misleadingly shapes the possible answers (thanks to Bas Van Fraassen for pointing out that questions are defined by the allowed answers). The program is apparently constrained by this requirement, that the theory is either separable in terms that are either subjective of objective, or that the theory is already formulated by separable terms. This legitimates the presumption that once a term is recognized as subjective then obviously it is not objective. And this leads QBsim astray, into the notion of a knowledge which is self referential and essentially incapable, by this criterion, to evince its content. Because it is answering to the wrong question, the point is not that this term is not objective because it is subjective, the question to answer is how the subjective(s) encodes its objective content. They don't need to be separable, the very notion of knowledge does not separates from its content. Notice though, that this same critic is partially applicable to those non-epistemic interpretations that assume that terms of QM are immediately objective (contrast to an objective content mediated by the epistemic formulation). The recognition is the opposite of that of QBsim, but it is still plagued by the assumptions that the terms of the formulation of QM separate in either objective or subjective. Many of these interpretations are plagued by the measurement problem (referred to the projection rule) for this very reason. If You want to know where this formulation of the program leads me, my interpretation could perhaps be synthesized into just two points: 1. decoherence is the emergence of classical logic within quantum logic (logic refers to the probability logic over the sentences describing observations, results, for QM it is defined by QM algebra via Born's rule, for classical logic You can think of the set-theoretic model of probabilities) 2. classical logic is the analytical form of the ignorance interpretation of probabilities (which is tautologically the "indication" of the determination) This leads immediately to "measurement is decoherence and objective, observation is conditionalization and subjective". The measurement problem is avoided in that projection is reduced to epistemic conditionalization. As mentioned at the beginning, this "indicates" emergent realism, in the sense that the ignorance interpretation, implied by the emergence of classical logic, "indicates" objective determination, as the emergent objective content of the epistemic theory. Interestingly, this confutes the Copenhagen Interpretation, when it claims that we have a constitutive need to describe our observations classically (a sort of neo-Kantian statement) at the very same moment it demonstrates that that perspective is practically correct, but not for the philosophical claim (or excuse) that we need to reason that way, but because classical is the reality we live in (then of course our brain works accordingly). Notice that here I am calling reality only the emergent determination, not the fundamental mechanics. In this sense, we can say that classical physis (that which appears) is the physis of quantum mechanics. And in a sense this is a hidden variable theory, but in the sense that QM is the hidden variable theory of classical physis. Another consequence is from the observation that decoherence happens inside entanglement, it is, so to say, the insider view on entanglement. The implication is the revolution of the stance assumed by the orthodox formulation: there is no possibility of observing QM from the outside, observation is only possible if the observer is described by QM and co-decohered with the observed system. But again, the structure is still such that the orthodox stance is valid as a simplified practice, and this, that it works in practice to observe a quantum system "from the outside", makes sense of the historical fact that we got to the orthodox formulation (and similarly for CI above) first. And decoherence, again because of its identification with entanglement, connects to the notion of the multiverse, which appears as an analytical narration of the logic and workings of the fundamental mechanics. The distinction I would make respect to many Everettian interpretations (that often don't seem to come through the mediation of decoherence, and only eventually employ it), is that the narration of the multiverse needs to be done with modal logic: the existential "is" needs to be qualified according to its modus essendi. This not to do some metaphysical narration, but to reflect the connection that the multiverse has to the part of the theory that comprehends our physical experience. "Actuality" can only be attributed to ourselves, our experience (arguably part of ourselves), and the "indicated" realism, but not beyond that. These, the approach and the modality, avoid the probability problem of the multiverse. There is a lot more to figure out about decoherence, starting from its connections to relativity and thermodynamics. Thus, I think this interpretation has heuristic potential. Oh, and yes, there is the whole application of decoherence in quantum computation and similar fields, which can give a lot of insight into how decoherence works. Well, I begun saying that starting from an epistemic interpretation similar to QBsim, but avoiding the assumption of separability, one could figure out that there is a lot of content in the knowledge we formalize into QM, I hope I gave You a sense of it. And frankly, that QM had a meager content would not be credible.

[@hakeemenzo7940]

that makes sense in a lot of way thank you for your version of your own understand which enable me 2 understand

[@ThePinkus]

@@hakeemenzo7940 I'm glad it was interesting to You, thank You for Your time and appreciation.

[@ThePinkus]

@Heisenberg-SchrodingerEmc2 I have come to terms with my dissatisfaction at giving You just a laconic answer, after having spent the weekend demonstrating to myself that any brief sketch of the things I’d like to write regarding decoherence and entanglement hits the 10 pages before reaching its conclusion. Thus… Their relation is that decoherence is a specific property of entanglement. This can be seen by its traditional derivation as the effect on the reduced state for a system S coupled with the environment E. Two points: i) the reduction implies we move from the pure formulation for the combined state SE to the statistical operator state for S; ii) the entanglement caused by the coupling with the environment shows itself in the reduced state as the tendency toward a limit which is a diagonal form of the statistical operator respect to a basis selected by the interaction itself. Which is what we call decoherence. The transition for S is thus from pure to mixture (answering Wigner’s problem). Decoherence is an essential and necessary property for quantum logic and entanglement specifically: it is the effect of the globalization of consistent “correlations”. Decoherence is crucial to the physical interpretation of QM: it is the objective, dynamical, approximate (which is a pro, not a con) emergence of classical logic within quantum logic. This is how QM “feeds” us, from its abstract core, the subjective and epistemic probabilities that match our physical experience (Heisenberg’s notion that probabilities are properly meaningful only on our side of the “divide”, meaning epistemic and subjective and interpreted probabilities), which ultimately leads to the legitimacy and necessity of the conditionalization rule (aka projection), this resulting in the solution of the measurement problem. As hinted, it also clarifies Wigner’s treatment of Wigner’s friend scenario, who indeed discussed point i) and ii) above (but not his conjecture for the motivation of this formalism, his conjecture is invalidated by decoherence, of course), extending his formalism to the more general notion of “unobserved measurements” (which incidentally should be kept in mind, together with b) below, when reviewing the Frauchiger-Renner theorem(s), their argument and its meaning). By framing the nature of decoherence between its S-focused formulation and its more abstract consideration within entanglement, we deduce: a) decoherence analytically implies the legitimacy of the multiverse narration of quantum logic, specifying its form (this is not the usual Everett-styled presentation, which of course predates decoherence, but an actual implication, though the intended meaning of “multiverse” is set not simply analytically but also by the physical semantic of QM that conforms with decoherence, i.e. by the decoherence interpretation of QM); b) QM (under its decoherence interpretation) implies that observations are meaningful only from within QM and a decoherence scope: the observer must be part of QM (not outside of it as in the traditional pragmatical formulation) and co-decohered with the observed system. Of course the considerations made have shifted more and more toward the significance of decoherence for the interpretation, thus take the last part with the necessary caution. But I think that the immediate answer to Your question is established and not contended. It should also provide the framework to assess Your question in another post on the relative importance of decoherence and entanglement. I think that it is more a question of what one wants to emphasize rather than an intrinsic ordering, even more so considering how tightly they are connected. Thanks for Your interest, best regards.

[@aaronburela432]

Would love to have video one day! Great pod carroll

[@leonenriquez5031]

Nice new presentation screen!

[@miramarensis]

Brilliant, brilliant!

[@nemesis4785]

I enjoy your podcasts very much, Sean. But, why are there no gaps between the letters CAP in the MINDSCAPE graphic ? Hmm ? This requires an explanation. Lol.

[@zarboov88]

Bohm DeBrogli for the win! ;-)

[@carlosj3491]

This an awesome episode, I hope one day be enough important in my filed to be your guest.

[@RooBot]

Beautifully done, as always.

[@itsRAWRtime007]

Really taught me couple of new facts about QM

[@ThePinkus]

Yep, the cat in Schödinger's article was there to say "look this implies this and this is obviously crazy". But there is a widespread misconception, that that article was about the cat, and it wasn't! It's an amazing and profound article about "The present situation in QM" (according to J.D. Trimmer translation into English), 16 pages long, where he makes an analysis of entanglement, motivated also by the EPR paper. It is rigorous and rich of insights. What is not rigorous are the few lines he spends to describe the "quite ridiculous case" (his words, not mine) of the cat, and it's not rigorous because he probably wasn't thinking that it deserved to be anything other than ridiculous. Apparently, that was the whole point in his intention! He meant it as a side note, it was not the main argument for him. Probably he wasn't expecting much of that point. It was Einstein that replied expressing enthusiasm for that scenario, realizing that it was indeed quite a test for interpretations, and much the better that it relates to our everyday experience what people claim that QM says. I can imagine Einstein thinking "maybe we can put some wisdom in these heads, now! Surely they would see..." and nope! But, anyway, there is so often a projection of the later interest about the cat on the original article, and it's a bit unfair to the content of the article and more than a bit apocryphal to say that the article was about the cat. I guess "the article in which Schrödinger also happened to talk about some cat" is a more correct description.

[@jasonc0065]

Bohmian Lives Matter Schroedinger Cats Call 911

[@JasonAStillman]

So good...so good.

[@robertglass1698]

Everettian all the way. Not that it is the exact description of reality, but that it is the direction that the totality of quantum mechanics pushes us. Reality is surely more than just many worlds.... but everything we know about how understanding works should be telling us that we should be looking in that direction.

[@PavlosPapageorgiou]

I don't understand why the Measurement Problem has been treated as philosophical. Couldn't you set up an experimental version of Schrodinger's cat where small objects superimpose, and slightly larger or warmer objects behave statistically, and you can vary the conditions of the experiment to investigate when each rule applies? In other words force the theory to have an answer for "what's a measurement".

[@billnorris5318]

A riveting show! I'm unable to believe the Copenhagen interpretation and BARELY able to accept many worlds.. This didn't help, but I really enjoyed it.

[@jppagetoo]

Agreed. It's obvious that QM is still not settled. I have a hard time with both Copenhagen and Many Worlds. Both require me to suspend the "proof" side of my thinking (I have a math degree). But John Bell showed I have to let go of "something". So just like you, this didn't change my mind, but it sure was fun to hear it all laid as a personal human story.

[@vampyricon7026]

A couple suggestions: Content-wise, can you invite a Ψ-epistemic/QBic proponent on the pod? I'm really trying to understand it but I just can't. (PS, Sean B Carroll ;) ) Formatting: Is it possible to place the ads somewhere less intrusive? Glad to see likership is going up though!

[@Fritzybedeek]

Dr. Roger Penrose and Dr. Lee Smolin seem to agree that QM is provisional a best. They have even actually out right said that "it is just wrong". I wonder if you could get Dr. Smolin as a guest?

[@MS-gr2nv]

Yeah, NO , Yeah....they love that saying.... Sean Rules!

[@anirudhadhote]

Hi Sir, I have a simple question. Inside a factory at the end of the shift a supervisor and his co-worker are counting the produced objects, the objects are approximately the size of a tennis ball. It is their daily routine,the worker counts the objects as he takes it from the production lot and puts it inside a bag. The role of the supervisor is to keep watch so that there is no mistake while counting. One fine day, before starting the counting process, the supervisor looks at the lot and writes down some random three digit number as quantity of the produced items, in short he assumes that the actual quantity would probably match with that number. Now the question is what are the chances of that actual quantity matching exactly with that random number?

[@schmetterling4477]

That depends on how well the man can guesstimate. :-)

[@ulenrich]

Every person does quantum mechanical mesurements daily and knows exactly the location, the energies and the velocities of the quantum particles when sitting in the sun. Astronomers additionally will suggest how long the distance was from redshift.

[@ThePinkus]

1:23:27 "...and one way of changing that is to do an experiment..." and the other is if the interpretational foundations of QM had heuristic valence (e.g. arguably Einstein's ideas on relativity led him to general relativity, which then made experimental predictions). And the most striking heuristic valence they could possibly have would be emergent geometrodynamics (after QFT failed for so long), and perhaps, but probably related, quantum thermodynamics.

[@Hythloday71]

Is there a notable distinction between quantum 'formulations' and 'interpretations' ? I'd come to the opinion yes, wave mech, matrix mech, path integral = formulations ?

[@brandonberisford]

I think the formulations is more about different ways to DO quantum mechanics and the interpretations I'd different ways to understand quantum mechanics.

[@ThePinkus]

From my personal history in studying the interpretations of QM I could recall quantum logic (as in formal logic, not as in quantum computer gates, though there is a link) and modal interpretations (e.g. Bas van Fraassen), but I think these are among those that has been less influential "at the end of the day" (I do use them, though!). Adam Becker sates that those discussed here are of course those that had more impact, so that explains the lack of mention. But no talking about decoherence, which I think is the essential ingredient for the interpretation of QM (as I wrote in the other comments). It seems to me that decoherence is not yet recognized for what it does in QM which is relevant at the fundamental level for the interpretation.

[@marvinmauldin4361]

Everybody talks about Schrödinger's cat, but what about Heisenberg's dog? We know what it weighs and how fast it's going, but not exactly where it is.

[@rainerherrmann7025]

What I do not understand is why the Statistical sometimes called Ensemble interpretation never gets mentioned and seriously discussed. In his later years Einsteins mentioned it favorably (different to the Pilot wave theory). Einstein said it solves many QM problems, including the famous measurement problem and gives very intuitive representation for superposition like Schrödingers cat. It was fully developed by Ballentine in the 1970s. Hence it is not a "newish" interpretation, yet it is not even mentioned in Adams book nor in such a discussion about the history of QM or quantum foundation. When it comes to Quantum Foundation the discussion centers always on Copenhagen, Bohm, Everett and QBISM.

[@timjohnson3913]

It’s not mentioned bc Bell proved these statistical local hidden variables wrong.

[@rainerherrmann7025]

@@timjohnson3913 Hidden Variable and the statistical interpretation of QM are different beasts. It is true that Einstein (and Popper) tried to complement this interpretation, which gives no causal explanation, with hidden variables and failed. However, the statistical interpretation makes no assumptions about hidden variables. It interprets the probability of the Born rule as relative frequencies. The wave function accordingly does not describe what a single electron or photon will do nor the outcome of a single experiment but what can be expected if the experiment is reproduced many times. It does not gives an ontological interpretation nor a causal explanation for Bell type experiments. No cat is ever dead and alive at the same moment, nor splits in different worlds. If you repeat the experiment many times some cats will survive and some not according to the Ensemble interpretation.

[@timjohnson3913]

@@rainerherrmann7025 Any KZbin videos you can recommend about this interpretation? Just looking for a good summary as I’ve never heard of it and don’t see how it solves the measurement problem based on what you’ve said.

[@rainerherrmann7025]

@@timjohnson3913 I think this interpretation does not have a measurement problem. As I said this interpretation does not try to describe where a specific photon or electron is but only what will happen to an ensemble. Accordingly it does not make strange claims what happened before the occurrence of a single measurement. My original complaint was that there is so little discussion about this interpretation. I can not find anything worthwhile on KZbin, but of course you can google and find information and of course critic on the web itself

[@timjohnson3913]

@@rainerherrmann7025 Can you tell me (and preferably share a link) where Einstein was talking favorably of this interpretation?

[@moshecallen]

I am very much in the camp that QM is a very successful mathematical tool for empirical prediction. To me, that IS what is physically going on. Any other interpretation becomes a matter of convenience so long as it is consistent.

[@moshecallen]

If we can do better is to me an open question in the sense physicists don't agree. I think I know the Copenhagen interpretation is not entirely correct but I can't claim to know what is.

[@schmetterling4477]

There are no interpretations in quantum field theory. In non-relativistic theory Copenhagen is obvious, you probably just don't know why. Most people don't. They stop thinking when von Neumann throws a Hilbert space at their head and it starts hurting. :-)

[@ThePinkus]

Let's quote a Dothraki meme: "It is known!" We laugh at it! But it always had a dark side to it. And then You realize that "It is known that Bohr settled the EPR argument!" is part of the history of physics... Another example, "It is known You can't talk of things You don't observe in QM!" An un-observed measurement is represented by the statistical operator given by the eigenspace projectors of the measured observable "statistically summed" i.e. weighted according to Born's rule, in function of the pre-measurement state. Why do we have un-observed measurements and why they have this form? Because the statistics change if there is that un-observed measurement, and if it happens and we don't describe it in the formalism, our predictions will be experimentally wrong, with that form they are experimentally correct. So, we are totally using QM to talk about something we are not observing here. It seems to me that not recognizing this example is tipping off that there is a reticence, probably coming from CI. Incidentally, have You noticed that the form used to describe un-observed measurements is the idealized decohered state from the original, pre-mesurement, one? It's not accidental, measurement is decoherence. Then observation can be conditionalization.

[@colinmaclaurin407]

On action at a distance (57min): Carroll "Isaac Newton would have been perfectly happy with it"; Becker: "Newton would have been fine with it". But this is dubious. e.g. the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "It certainly seems that Newton was uncomfortable with the very idea of action at a distance."

[@QED_]

@Colin MacLaurin: Yes and no. Newton wouldn't have accepted it without explanation. But with explanation . . . he'd have loved it. That seems a fair conclusion to me . . .

[@neptunethemystic]

Amazing chat! Love the new look... But Sean you are really bad at pretending you know nothing about Quantum mechanics 😁

[@vlex756]

Thought is an electrochemical phenomenon -- by simply thinking about something can you collapse a wave function? If you choose not to think about something is there a Universe where you did think about it?

[@beefcurtainz69]

Can you measure the present? How much time is present? Lest say in seconds...... is the present zero seconds? Is it a couple nano seconds? Because we can easily measure the time before and after the “present” but how much time passes between the past and future? Or is the present ongoing and infinite?

[@ZappyOh]

"Present" is a point in time ... and points have no size.

[@beefcurtainz69]

Ole Sauffaus ah ok. Thanks. That’s interesting to think about.

[@origins7298]

When we speak about the universe or about temporal aspects of the universe we are speaking about relationships. Anything that we talked about is always a system of relationships. A system of interactions There is no present moment but rather a complex network of interactions. Speaking about the present moment is just a linguistic device and we know that language often times is very fuzzy when it comes to talking about reality

[@leonenriquez5031]

You should grab a copy of Carlo Rovelli's Order of Time. He tackles that problem from many different angles. Definitely worth a read.

[@marvinmauldin4361]

How about the time it takes a photon to traverse a Planck distance? Maybe from the point of view of the photon, which does not experience the passage of time.

[@justincase963]

Exactly!

[@christinley5213]

Glad you finaly did this ...you. Are one of my fav physicist! I think you can help clear the ...quantum fog..;) go get em!!!!

[@TheOriginalRaster]

Excellent! If I had my own Podcast that was created in order to spread a message intended to eventually get to Sean Carroll, then in that podcast I pitch: An alternative that Sean has not mentioned: Any person who is not a professional physicist does not have to pick a favorite interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. A person can simply live their lives and never select a theory. Consider the Universe from the point of view of someone who is not a professional physicist... It is likely not healthy to start thinking "each of us, our bodies, cause the Universe to split into two copies 500 times per second." Think about it... It is far better to never go in that direction. This is not a point about what is right. It's not about picking one of the theories on the assumption that some day a theory can be proven, and wanting to have picked the correct theory. If you are not a professional physicist then take it easy on your brain and avoid deliberately going down the rabbit hole of theories which sound absolutely insane. I'm not saying the theory is wrong, I'm saying do not burden your brain with freaking insane sounding theories unless you have to. Now you've heard the most sensible thing. Do not pick a favorite quantum theory. Avoid the thing and live your life. You're going to find out that life is short and you need to spend your time making the most of your life, enjoying your opportunity to have a great life. Cheers!

[@crookedhead3075]

I know I, myself, am excited. For what else am I subscribed but to hear about qm? Nothing, my friend, nothing.

[@jyreHeffron]

lee smolin is never mentioned

[@Mentat1231]

I have to say, in my untutored lay opinion, it's not just crazy to deny "things" as Becket put it (viz, deny Realism); it actually undercuts the one good/empirical/scientific reason we have for believing in QM at all: it predicts the actual results of actual experiments in actual laboratories with actual scientists (to say nothing of "I think (about non-realism) therefore I am"). But I think this also cuts equally hard against Everett. If experiments didn't have the results they had, with the frequency of results matching the predictions of QM... we would have no good reason (no empirical evidence) to believe QM is true at all. It would still be beautiful and compelling, but the reason to believe in it is that the experiments *had the results it predicted*... no?

[@bruceneeley1724]

Seriously, have a surrealist artist on your show

[@lohphat]

Can’t entanglement be explaind by if the time and reference frames of the two particles were of the particles and not by humans, time and distance are zero from the particles’ point of view? E.g. a photon leaves its source and is absorbed immediately from its perspective since time (and distance) don’t exist. So from the two entangled particles’ perspective, there are no distance or delay between them. Distance is a emergent construct dependent upon perspective.

[@scottmiller4295]

or holographic principle can easily account for "spooky" entanglement. or single particle theory can pull it off since the particle knows what its state was when it was observed when its "twin" is observed on the far flung opposite end of the universe hurtling away at faster than light speeds. yea something going on there.

[@mrloop1530]

No. Reference frames are not about distances. Though time isn't absolute, distance is.

[@lohphat]

@@mrloop1530 But from the perspective of a photon all distances are zero.

[@vlex756]

If you're thinking is in line with the Copenhagen School then do you also believe that a tree falling in the woods makes no sound if there is no one around to hear it?

[@mateid6695]

The sound does not exist until your brain creates the sensation of sound, but the sound waves do exist in your absence. So there is no sound when nobody is around.

[@vlex756]

@@lepidoptera9337 Quiet, bug.

[@unstoppable-ar3292]

We need y'all face . Make it happen. Much love to you and your guest

[@vlex756]

Why the focus on measurement? Why not just say interaction. Interaction doesn't require a human being to be in the process of taking a measurement. A photon interacting with another photon in the expanse between galaxies would still cause a collapse? No?

[@vlex756]

@@lepidoptera9337 Thanks Proffessor Pauli.

[@chrisrecord5625]

"Nobel prizes are not that important anyway" (18.00) Please go on. I don't even know why they hand them out. Phish

[@origins7298]

I think he's saying that the Nobel Prize is often influenced by political and cultural factors that therefore don't make it as representative of the most important scientific achievements For example clearly Einstein's biggest contribution was his theory of general relativity But he didn't win a Nobel Prize for general relativity. Largely because it was controversial at the time and the Nobel Prize committee wanted to steer clear of controversy and didn't want to upset some of its members. This is at least how I have read the history of it So I think he's saying that Nobel prizes aren't always the best way to gauge what the important scientific insights are of any historical time I don't think he's trying to say that it's not a prestigious award or that it's not a very nice accomplishment.

[@dannywest8843]

@@origins7298 It's the grammy/oscar of science.

[@chrisrecord5625]

@@origins7298 Well, that's why I offered the line, "Please go on" since his throwaway comment was so unexpected and seemed to cover all Nobel awards. Your explanation has some merit but more for a few areas rather than others perhaps. For me, for the sciences, generally, and physics, specifically, I believe Caltechs' 29 Nobel Laureates were likely involved in highly significant scientific achievements, although some could argue that another achievement might be more important at the time of the award, or later. That is inevitable but one "disputed" historical example does not taint all Nobels for me. Frances Arnold, at Caltech, was awarded one recently. making her now a member of an elite group of women laureates in science but I would become more than agitated if someone said she won because of her gender. My conclusion, his comment was unfortunate, at best.

[@aaroncurtis8545]

Quantum mechanics asks us to give up realism; but pilot wave theory asks us to give up Empiricism.

[@QED_]

@Aaron Curtis: QM and pilot wave theory are not different things. Pilot wave theory is an interpretation of QM. It's the Copenhagen interpretation of QM that differs from the pilot wave interpretation of QM. It's the Copenhagen interpretation that asks us to give up realism. And pilot wave QM only asks us to give up radical positivism and instrumentalism -- which are not the same as empiricism.

[@dimitrispapadimitriou5622]

@@QED_ No, QM and PWT are two different theories ( e.g. Bohmian mechanics has additional math). Pilot wave theories give the same predictions as QM , but they need a preferred reference frame and are in tension with relativity.

[@monsieurmitosis]

1:06:52 LMAO

[@wtfjyoung91]

lmao

[@arldoran]

"Do you still believe in Kopenhagen Interpretation?" is the QM version of "Do you still believe in God?"

[@ChaplainDaveSparks]

Can't I just ignore quantum mechanics (QM) and just be a Newtonian? It sure seems simpler ... 😃 Seriously, I didn't know QM was this old. Up through at least high school, I can't recall even *HEARING* of QM. My education mainly consists of engineering and theology, and between them, why do we need QM? Newtonian physics seems to explain things _"adequately"_ within at least a couple orders of (inverse) magnitude, right? _"Close enough for government work."_ Beyond Newton, things seem to diverge in classically theological paths: pre-destination vs. free will, only on a particle level, right? Newtonian physics says that things are predictable (pre-destined) if you only know the initial conditions, with _"sufficient accuracy",_ right? And _QM?_ Free will, only for _particles!_ Newton handed down laws, but particles still have free will to violate/bend them within certain limits. You have probably heard the classic story of a physicist, a mathematician (biological, binary, heterosexual males, for the purposes of this story), and a _pretty woman_ (or gender of your choice) who died and went to some version of an afterlife. When they arrived, they were told the rules: the woman would be on one side of a large-ish room and the three educated professionals, one at a time, on the opposite side. Their goal was to kiss her, but within one rule: they could only approach her by advancing exactly one half of the remaining distance. The physicist and the mathematician immediately gave up, realizing that in approaching their goal _asymptotically,_ they would never reach it (her). But our intrepid engineer set off towards his goal. The physicist and the mathematician tried to dissuade him from his impossible quest: _"We can prove you'll never get there..."_ The engineer? _"Yeah, but I'll get _*_CLOSE ENOUGH!"_*

[@schmetterling4477]

You can do a lot of stupid things. Some people get drunk to do them, too. ;-)

[@globaldigitaldirectsubsidi4493]

Lesson: never talk about politics.

[@fouss14]

Lawrence Krauss soon hopefully? Love this podcast, thank you for what you do.

[@QED_]

@Nicholas Fouss: Krauss is a jerk. As this author confirms in his book . . .

[@volaireoh883]

Embedded ads 😔

[@dannywest8843]

Free...

[@volaireoh883]

@@dannywest8843 nothings free.

[@bernardusmuller1109]

@@volaireoh883 Exactly and now you're paying with a few seconds of your time instead of money.

[@volaireoh883]

Fair enough.. I apologise 🤔

[@leonenriquez5031]

18:21 Really? Is that the hole point of physics? Hmm, what if nature is not "precise, beautiful and exact"? Shouldn't physics follow Realism wherever it takes it? Like... non-deterministic descriptions of non-deterministic behaviors of nature... 33:25 I know it's a joke, but I guess that's the hole problem: it's an interpretation. To think (or joke) there is a "right one" signals (usually) that someone believes (in this case, more Carroll than Becker) that a right interpretation would tell us what physical nature "is". But QM doesn't behave like something that "is". Maybe that's why Becker has an anti-preferred-interpretation of QM, not because interpretation is bad or inescapable, but because he understands interpretation tries to freeze in language something that doesn't seem to want be frozen. Maybe he just wants historical objectivity. IDK. 59:44 Case in point. Becker makes the general argument: all interpretations are fallible. Carroll makes the particular argument: these interpretations were fallible because of philosophical negligence. It's not wrong, but misses the point. 1:15:05 That sounds actually like an interesting idea, but both dismiss it and laugh it away saying "I hear people saying that" and not taking it seriously (when serious thinkers, like Carlo Rovelli, are considering it). "Giving up on Realism" doesn't mean throwing Science and objectivity overboard. Obviously. It means redefining Realism, in such a way that we base Reality on QM and not on our language-constructed world of "things". It's ironic that Carroll thinks himself a radical thinker by betting on many-worlds but laughs away the radical notion that base reality might not be as solid as the things that appear to us as macro-physical bodies. 1:20:09 Locality is something Carroll doesn't want to give up, so he swallows the heavy ontology of many-worlds so there is determinism at least in each world of the practically infinite worlds. But if locality emerges from QM, in a quantum theory of gravity, then you don't need branching universes (without discarding the possibility of other universes existing). A relativistic QM approach could account for a classical physics locality emerging from a quantum non-local physics. 1:24:54 Yeah, Becker! Important distinction: it's one thing to hold one or more epistemic interpretations of QM and another to say QM should be purely experimental (i.e. the second one is Carroll's boogieman, which he usually confuses with the first). 1:29:00 Boo, Becker! Let's see those epistemic interpretations in more detail! ;)

[@pansepot1490]

Leon Enriquez, see if you can get Carroll to invite you on the podcast so you can discuss those points. 😁

[@leonenriquez5031]

@@pansepot1490 LOL, not holding my breath.

[@leonenriquez5031]

@@mark_huisjes Check-spelling police? wtf Imagine if I went around discarding the ideas in every book, that made a syntactic or grammatical mistake. I would be completely empty in the head. (BTW, it's a comment, not a book... no editor checking my grammar)/

[@scottmiller4295]

because we see symmetries in nature? and systems tend to be in balance when they working? if string theory ends up being correct then even quantum world prefers symmetry or particles would not function. it is also interesting to point out that some of the most complete and correct mathematical expressions are very elegant if you talking these established theories.

[@leonenriquez5031]

@@scottmiller4295 I don't understand what you are responding to.

[@JohnBaker821]

Oh man... We have commercials now. Can you put them at beginning so I can skip them? :)

[@jeremikossak9553]

Be smarter, man

[@zero132132]

There's probably some contractual obligation not to put them all at the beginning for exactly that reason.

[@masonherlihy717]

Elon Musk!! C’mon Sean sign him up!

[@billhowes5871]

I've always had an interest in auto mechanics. I want to be very broad in my education so, I enrolled in this course. ($450.00) nonreturnable. It's called "Quantum Mechanics". I wonder if it teaches how to put spark plugs in my car. I hope so. $450.00 is a lot to spend for nothing. Well, let's have a look-see, shall we? -Bill "Future Car Mechanic" Howes.

[@davidbreed6708]

In my opinion Alan Becker comes across as a rather sloppy thinker, trading more in popular dogma than in carefully examining arguments. I learned nothing about QM let alone about what Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, et. al. thought and why each one thought that way.

[@trucid2]

I'm really disappointed at the offhand dismissal of superdeterminism and calling it a 'cosmic conspiracy'. You're engaging in the very behavior that you criticize in this talk.

[@danielskipperrasmussen161]

First

[@kajsborv281]

Congrats man !

[@dickg9129]

I am very disappointed that Sean has embedded advertising into his podcast. I'm paying for KZbin premium and yet the advertising is unavoidable.

[@jedmoser]

Come on Sean at least put out video if you're going to have ads

[@laxr5rs]

It's hard to listen to this guy. He sounds arrogant, whether or not he means it.