Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
blogs.scientificamerican.com
Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
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Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#2I'd be more comfortable if it said "Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics". Writing "Quantum Monism" makes too many assumptions about where the Monism is. What if the Monism is a layer down from the quantum layer? Or 10 layers down? Or a million?
It's also possible that "down" is the wrong word. Or perhaps there are constituent parts to the Monism. Indeed, what is really meant? If the monads are like Church functions in the Lambda calculus, and if they therefore struggle with the problem of incomparability, and they are linked to some comparison function, it is possible they trace an ellipsis in a space created by their interaction of their comparability. So then it would be more like, "steps going around", rather than "layers down".
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#3Hossenfelder's actual argument about beauty has definitely gotten lost somewhere along the way. According to [0], she ends her book with
> The next breakthrough in physics will occur in this century. It will be beautiful.
She's objecting to a very narrow interpretation of "beauty" driving physics, not elegance in general, a distinction this article's author seems unable to see.
Anyone who publicly makes an argument dependent on a distinction between ideas that aren't distinct in the mainstream is going to have an uphill battle at best.
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#4Also, I'm annoyed that a science magazine would be careless in its wording:
"it is infamous for its weirdness such as Schrödinger’s cat existing in a limbo of being half dead and half alive."
The cat is 100% alive and also 100% dead. However, it has 100% chance of resolving to just one state once you look at it.
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#5What's a monism? Is it a monoid in the category of endofunctors?
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#6What's a monism? Is it a monoid in the category of endofunctors?
A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idealism", it's "consciousness".
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#7What's a monism? Is it a monoid in the category of endofunctors?
A monism, in this context, is a metaphysics with one fundamental substance. In "physicalism" or "materialism", that stuff is "matter". In "panpsychism" or "idealism", it's "consciousness".
Is it not all information regardless? What makes matter different from consciousness? sounds like different terms for the same fundamental thing: stuff that exists.
The matter term comes from the fact the stuff is just stuff that exists
The consciousness term comes from the fact that we can see stuff that exists
But these are both just observational terms of 'stuff that exists', and it seems that anything existing at all is at the core of the issue (as opposed to what exists, in reference to the 'fundamental substance').
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#8Also, I'm annoyed that a science magazine would be careless in its wording: "it is infamous for its weirdness such as Schrödinger’s cat existing in a limbo of being half dead and half alive." The cat is 100% alive and also 100% dead. However, it has 100% chance of resolving to just one state once you look at it.
Darn near 100% of attempts to describe quantum mechanics with English sentences end up far from their target.
To paraphrase the protagonist of A Serious Man: "No one understands the cat. The math... the math is what's important."
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#9Hossenfelder's actual argument about beauty has definitely gotten lost somewhere along the way. According to [0], she ends her book with > The next breakthrough in physics will occur in this century. It will be beautiful. She's objecting to a very narrow interpretation of "beauty" driving physics, not elegance in general, a distinction this article's author seems unable to see. Anyone who publicly makes an argument d…
Good read.
>If your standards are low enough, yes. But I don’t think we should compromise on this idea of post-empirical physics. I think that’s appalling, really appalling… If there was any bit of experimental evidence that was decisive and in favor of the theory, you wouldn’t be hearing these arguments. You wouldn’t. Nobody would care. It’s just a fallback. It’s giving up and declaring victory. I don’t like that at all.
I wonder if we're starting to hit up against some sort of limitation or local maxima that is blocking our search to the global maxima.
Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics
#10>As it stands, quantum monism should be considered as a key concept in modern physics: It explains why “beauty,” understood as structure, correlation and symmetry among apparently independent realms of nature, isn’t an "ill-conceived aesthetic ideal” but a consequence of nature descending from a single quantum state.
They can call it monism...but it sounds like they are just describing the spatial dimensions.
0D Point (quantum/singularity/Planck unit), then 1D line, 2D square, 3D cube...as a direct consequence of nature/math it’s got structure, correlation, and symmetry (aka their definition of beauty). Is there any physicist who doesn’t think dimensions are a key concept of physics?