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Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
11–20 of 132 posts
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#12They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#13> Bohr postulated a distinction between the quantum world and the world of everyday objects. A “classical” object is an object of everyday experience. It has, for example, a definite position and momentum, whether observed or not. A “quantum” object, such as an electron, has a different status; it’s an abstraction. Some properties, such as electrical charge, belong to the electron abstraction intrinsically, but other…
can we measure that imprecision of momentum/position relation even though small?
One of my homework assignments in a quantum mechanics class was to calculate the uncertainty of a cheetah that was running at 65 mph (and given its weight).
You can in theory but the numbers get so small that they're clearly unmeasurable.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#14They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
you could say that about any paradox. it other words, it isn't a helpful position because it doesn't give any insight. why even have the word paradox? plus, our intuition is just as much a part of reality as your "reality".
Your definition of reality here is unrelated to the OP's point. Quantum mechanics will work the way it does regardless of what your intuition on how it should work thinks.
Also the emergence of an apparently paradox is a great heuristic that raises the question of whether our intuition and understanding is wrong or correct.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#15They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
No, there is not. The Everett aka many-worlds interpretation demonstrates that you can explain the observed effects of measurement without invoking "collapse" of the wave function, and without reference to anything outside of QM.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#16They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
Yes it is. Measurement is entanglement between the observed system and the observing system. Wave function collapse is an illusion caused by the two systems no longer being separable. They have entered a mixed state. It looks like information is lost in the observed system only because you are ignoring the observer.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
No, there is not. The Everett aka many-worlds interpretation demonstrates that you can explain the observed effects of measurement without invoking "collapse" of the wave function, and without reference to anything outside of QM.
To further build on what you're saying, by bringing in the concept of a measure-er we have already entered the domain of philosophy, because the special class "measure-er" belongs to the Copenhagen interpretation and the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a philosophical issue by virtue of the fact that it will never be decided experimentally.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#18They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
you could say that about any paradox. it other words, it isn't a helpful position because it doesn't give any insight. why even have the word paradox? plus, our intuition is just as much a part of reality as your "reality".
A paradox is essentially a logical contradiction. As far as we know such contradictions don't occur in nature. Paradoxes indicate that there is a flaw in either our theory or our understanding of our theory.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#19They aren't paradoxes of quantum mechanics. They are a paradox between how we intuitively expect the world to work and reality. Our intuition is wrong.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
There is only one system. There are no outsiders. These are dichotomies of convenience.
Re: Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes there are. Even without invoking any philosophical issues, quantum mechanics admits it's not self-contained. It takes measurement - the act of an outsider interacting with a system, which collapses the wavefunction, as a postulate. Measurement is not described by quantum mechanics.
No, there is not. The Everett aka many-worlds interpretation demonstrates that you can explain the observed effects of measurement without invoking "collapse" of the wave function, and without reference to anything outside of QM.
Requiring the existence of something that is fundamentally impossible to detect, is a poor resolution to the problem.
If there are many worlds, how is it decided which one we are in?
MWI is scientifically equivalent to collapse, it's just imagined as a branching instead of a selection among alternatives.