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The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

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Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#101

Post by apo »

... I have spelled out many times very clearly what theoretical physicists should do differently. It’s just that they don’t like my answer. They should stop trying to solve problems that don’t exist. That a theory isn’t pretty is not a problem. Focus on mathematically well-defined problems, that’s what I am saying. And, for heaven’s sake, stop rewarding scientists for working on what is popular with their colleagues.

It seems that some examples might be useful here.

Which specific groups are trying to solve problems that don't exist?

What are some mathematically well-defined problems that aren't getting enough attention?

As for rewarding scientists for working on what's popular, that's a science-wide problem that stems from the way that science is funded and decades of inbreeding. Still, examples of how to break physics out of its funk on this score would also be useful.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#102

Post by kgwgk »

tbabb wrote: post #98
kgwgk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But by accident of history, John Bell was too shy to publish in a major journal, and no one even read his result for four years. Why do you say that his 1964 paper (I assume) was not read by anyone for four years ?

He published in a tiny journal that was only in print for a handful of years, which was read by very few people. Bell himself said that no one contacted him or even mentioned it to him until four years after its publish date, and that researcher only came across it by pure happenstance. The whole story is detailed in Becker's book; it's fascinating.

Thanks for the reference.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#103

Post by FakeComments »

kgwgk wrote: post #85
FakeComments wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing "obviously wrong" about the standard Copenhagen interpretation. Copenhagen interpretation showed up when they were faced with a choice between preserving locality or determinancy. They chose wrong — we know now QM is non-local, and that the underlying justification for the Copenhagen model is an extraneous philosophical proposition. But much like an extra dependency in a software project, no one wa…

> we know now QM is non-local, and that the underlying justification for the Copenhagen model is an extraneous philosophical proposition. What underlying justification are you talking about and what do you understand by "the Copenhagen model" precisely? At least in the Einstein vs Bohr debates the one denying that QM could be a complete theory because of its non-locality was Einstein, I think.

From Wiki:

> Einstein's refusal to accept the revolution as complete reflected his desire to see developed a model for the underlying causes from which these apparent random statistical methods resulted. He did not reject the idea that positions in space-time could never be completely known but did not want to allow the uncertainty principle to necessitate a seemingly random, non-deterministic mechanism by which the laws of physics operated.

The underlying assumption for Copenhagen was to try to preserve locality by assuming non-determinism. However, there’s no saving locality — and non-locality is enough to leave determinism — so there’s no reason for the non-deterministic axiom.

I think I also meant “definite” instead of “deterministic”, but it works out the same.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#104

Post by rthomas6 »

tylermw wrote: post #3

Love this comment left on the post by Peter Shor (of Shor's algorithm--the algorithm that kicked off the quantum computing frenzy). I assume it's him and not an imposter. "It's not just that scientists don't want to move their butts, although that's undoubtedly part of it. It's also that they can't. In today's university funding system, you need grants (well, maybe you don't truly need them once you have tenure, but…

I wonder if some rich people could start a form of charity where they just pay a few incredibly brilliant people a good salary to go do whatever research they want for the rest of their lives. Sort of like patronage. Just bypass the whole grant funding cycle and work on whatever you want, because you're a genius and want to study things other people don't like or understand.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#105

Post by a_crc »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #83
a_crc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting idea. Do you have any thoughts on the fact that the structure of the cosmic microwave background radiation is exactly what we would expect it to be if the universe had expanded from a tiny state to its current state? I'm unwilling to assume it "just randomly looks like that" given that a random distribution on a universal scale seems highly unlikely to show the large scale structures notable in…

I'm in no way endorsing this individual's proposal, but the argument you're using here is not as strong as you'd expect. A recurring trend in the past several decades has been that a contradiction in prediction is often simply massaged back into that prediction, at times quite arbitrarily. Then that previously contradictory observation can be used as 'evidence' for the newly retrofitted prediction. Of course that's a…

I'm not a physicist, so maybe I'm misunderstanding the article you linked, but it seems to support my 1st post.

If you'll reread it you'll see that I mentioned nothing about a Big Bang, but rather that the CMB provides evidence that the Universe expanded from a smaller state to its current state, which is larger than its starting state.

From the linked wiki: "Differences in the temperature of the cosmic background are smoothed by cosmic inflation, but they still exist. The theory [Cosmic Inflation evidenced by the Horizon Problem] predicts a spectrum for the anisotropies in the microwave background which is mostly consistent with observations from WMAP and COBE."

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#106

Post by FakeComments »

selestify wrote: post #76
FakeComments wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing "obviously wrong" about the standard Copenhagen interpretation. Copenhagen interpretation showed up when they were faced with a choice between preserving locality or determinancy. They chose wrong — we know now QM is non-local, and that the underlying justification for the Copenhagen model is an extraneous philosophical proposition. But much like an extra dependency in a software project, no one wa…

Copenhagen does not require nonlocality

No, but if you have non-locality, then you don’t need the non-definiteness of Copenhagen, and could do with something like a Bohm or MW interpretation.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#107

Post by tbabb »

kgwgk wrote: post #99
tbabb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure that paper knows it, but it is essentially showing that many worlds is correct-- that the wavefunction never collapses: > the implications on conditional probabilities hold for other measurements throughout the entire spacetime, present and past . [emphasis theirs] And the math in the paper which supports that statement works by keeping all the superpositions around and allowing us to project to them at…

The author says: "Note: in this work, we will not make any reference to why this (apparent) collapse occurs. Not only is this a much harder issue, it is simply not relevant to discussion we will present." Also: "It is important to note that arriving at our conclusions did not require introducing new physics. We only relied on elementary quantum mechanics: not on novel ‘backwards time’ concepts, nor on any particular…

That language is why I think the authors aren't aware that they are advocating many worlds.

Also, this is a fantastic example of the "don't ask questions" attitude I think is so shameful. If they had bothered to take the small step of asking, they'd have come to a clear, evidence-based refutation of Copenhagen! There are regions of spacetime after the measurement, where the wavefunction is not collapsed, which the authors explicitly point to. That's in direct contradiction to the premise of Copenhagen.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#108

Post by __jal »

rthomas6 wrote: post #104
tylermw wrote: post #3

Love this comment left on the post by Peter Shor (of Shor's algorithm--the algorithm that kicked off the quantum computing frenzy). I assume it's him and not an imposter. "It's not just that scientists don't want to move their butts, although that's undoubtedly part of it. It's also that they can't. In today's university funding system, you need grants (well, maybe you don't truly need them once you have tenure, but…

I wonder if some rich people could start a form of charity where they just pay a few incredibly brilliant people a good salary to go do whatever research they want for the rest of their lives. Sort of like patronage. Just bypass the whole grant funding cycle and work on whatever you want, because you're a genius and want to study things other people don't like or understand.

A different approach to attempting something similar (in a wider range):

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/podcasts/07172018/tyler-cowe...

No idea how Cowen's thing will turn out, and I'm not sure the idea scales well, but I really like the concept.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#109

Post by fokov »

syncsynchalt wrote: post #84
gbumakefan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you can’t just go hide in your attic. Everyone is more risk averse than ever as the cost of housing, healthcare, and education relentlessly increase faster than wages.

Human productivity is at its highest point in human history, so one can't help but wonder why we must all work harder than our ancestors to exist.

Because they realized they were in this together, unionized, not just demanded but fought for more rights and a better life balance. Since the baby-boomers more women entered the work force and used their "extra" income to buy things. That lead to inflation of those assets - especially housing. Now people continue to push down labor rights so they make even less than before.

I'm with you though, I find this to be extremely frustrating.

Re: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

#110

Post by yters »

tylermw wrote: post #3

Love this comment left on the post by Peter Shor (of Shor's algorithm--the algorithm that kicked off the quantum computing frenzy). I assume it's him and not an imposter. "It's not just that scientists don't want to move their butts, although that's undoubtedly part of it. It's also that they can't. In today's university funding system, you need grants (well, maybe you don't truly need them once you have tenure, but…

This is what I'm doing:

https://www.am-nat.org/site/law-of-information-non-growth/

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