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Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

blogs.scientificamerican.com

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#11
post #4

Also, 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.

FYI, this belies the distinction between mixed states and pure states. A mixed state can be classical and yield the same posterior distribution of observations as a pure quantum state.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#12
post #4

Also, 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.

No, it isn’t 100% of either. It’s just not meaningful to use those words in this context. The only thing we know is that the cat will be alive or dead to certain probabilities when the box is opened. We use the wave function to calculate those probabilities, but any statements about the cat’s actual reality before we open the box is pure metaphysic.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#13
post #5

What's a monism? Is it a monoid in the category of endofunctors?

In the context of the article, it appears to be a new name for universal wavefunction, but not in the many worlds sense. FTA: "According to quantum monism, the fundamental layer of reality is not made of particles or strings but the universe itself—understood not as the sum of things making it up but rather as a single, entangled quantum state." Not clear on how this is distinct from de Broglie–Bohm theory, Time-symmetric theories, Consciousness causes collapse, Many-minds interpretation, or Consistent histories. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/ appears to be by the same author.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#14
post #4

Also, 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.

Scientific American hasn’t been a science magazine for years. At best it’s a “science communication” magazine, at worst it’s a mix of incompetence and agendas, even if they are often agendas I agree with. It’s not worth the read anymore, and far better alternatives exist.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#15
post #4

Also, 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.

Scientific American hasn’t been a science magazine for years. At best it’s a “science communication” magazine, at worst it’s a mix of incompetence and agendas, even if they are often agendas I agree with. It’s not worth the read anymore, and far better alternatives exist.

> far better alternatives

Are you referring to New Scientist?

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#16
I'm really sensing that the pendulum is swinging fast toward experiment and verification and away from theorizing and interpretation. Dark energy, dark matter and Hawking radiation/Unruh effect are among the testable problems facing theoreticians these days. While I personally share the author's preference for a single unified universe to a multiverse, it seems like proving it true or false might not apply.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#17

>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 Poin…

No, spatial dimensions have a very specific meaning. The universe has 3 big special dimensions and 1 temporal dimension (and perhaps 8 or additional "small" dimensions.)

Here monism means another thing, I'm not sure what, I'm not sure that it even mean anything at all. The important thing is if it is possible or not to find any experiment that can refute the existence of monism. (It's easier to be a little less technical and ask for and experiment that confirms the existence of monism.) If no experiment can confirm of refute it, then it is outside the realm of physics and can't do anything to save it.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientific American hasn’t been a science magazine for years. At best it’s a “science communication” magazine, at worst it’s a mix of incompetence and agendas, even if they are often agendas I agree with. It’s not worth the read anymore, and far better alternatives exist.

> far better alternatives Are you referring to New Scientist ?

I was thinking of American Scientist and Physics World. I’m not really familiar with New Scientist, sorry!

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#19
post #9

Hossenfelder'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…

> 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.

That and maybe also human cognitive ability limits.

Re: Quantum Monism Could Save the Soul of Physics

#20
post #19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That and maybe also human cognitive ability limits.

Wisdom lies in paradox as the Taoist say.

Language is a gross reduction of reality and has a hard time expresssing non-local concepts. Our inability to philosophically explain QM and classical physics in a consistant way is a good example of that.

My guess is that there are concepts which require the ability to express perspectives of reality we arent able to grok because they requira a non-local (no now, no me, no it) interpretation. Language cant express non local phenomena from the perspective of non-local and so language cant express “truth” but humans can experience it.

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