Why have so many physicists shrugged off the paradoxes of quantum mechanics?

The existence of such a proof would provide a genuine scientific basis for not continuing to address the problem.

Without that proof, the problem remains open.

Rule 1 says that except during a measurement, the wave evolves smoothly and deterministically, exploring every possibility.

Rule 2 says that during a measurement of position, the wave collapses around the position where it's seen, with a probability proportional to the square of the height of the wave, before the collapse.

It is only Rule 2 that mentions probabilities at all.

And, Rule 1 and Rule 2 are in catastrophic tension with each other.

Rule 1 says that there are always all possible outcomes. Rule 2 says there is only 1 outcome and it's picked out with some probability rule.

It's pretty contradictory - is there one outcome or all outcomes?

> youtube.com/watch?v=Zri9gS1w5ok Perimeter’s Lee Smolin will argue that the problems that have bedeviled quantum physics since its inception are unsolved and unsolvable for the simple reason that the theory is incomplete.

"Proof by contradiction" is a proof that the opposite is true, and is constructed so that if the thing you try to disprove would be true, you could create a paradox/contradiction.

I’d say that’s the gist of it, that we cannot “just ignore” the uncertainty because it’s too small, because if you do that then your model and the real world are indeed different. Also, at the end of it all what does “too small” mean? “Too small” compared to what? To a galaxy? To a super-nova? To a planet? To a cat? To the things we try to “discover” at CERN? To things smaller than them? To say nothing of the fact that comparing a number to physical stuff will eventually bring you head on against Zeno’s paradox, one way or the other.

I agree though that using the “too small” trick does generally allow us to do great things, like send stuff to the confines of the solar system or to build nuclear bombs, i.e. it allows us to be efficient, but that does not mean that by being efficient our models are also identical representations of what reality really is, so to speak.

What I’m saying is that maybe the “mathematization” of the physical world is a leaking abstraction, and that maybe we’d be better off by saying “we’ll never really know what the world is made up of”. But the problem is that they haven’t awarded science Nobel prizes to people saying “there’s really no way for us to learn how the Universe really works”, at least not that I know of, at best you’re seen as a mysticist when saying that, at worst as a know-nothing or a cynic.