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The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

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Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#11

Post by thinkmcfly »

LightMachine wrote: post #9
dilap wrote: post #6

This feels like a cop out. Like sure, you can just do the math and get results and not worry about it. But what's the motivation here? When you get down to it, he seems to believe many-worlds is true, BUT holds the philosophical position that you shouldn't, like, care. Because there's no practical benefit to caring; because it doesn't help you with the calculations. But, hey, I still care! What the real nature of rea…

And it is absurd to say it has no direct practical implications. We still don't know all of physics, and part of the reason is precisely because we're stuck in the wrong mindset regarding how nature works. Only a better insight on the true nature of the universe can give us the correct mathematical models.

Can you explain what the direct and practical implications are? I don't know if I buy what the link says about this, but I do know that no one has ever found utility by being frustrated about many worlds

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#12

Post by green_on_black »

_0w8t wrote: post #4
akomtu wrote: post #2

What does it have to do with zen?

One of Zen ideas is that thinking hides the true nature of the world since it is based on models and interpretations. So not doing interpretations is a step towards enlightenment.

"true nature" -- I'd say that this idea of a "true" nature (even existing) is quite arrogant.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#14

Post by dilap »

blamestross wrote: post #8
dilap wrote: post #6

This feels like a cop out. Like sure, you can just do the math and get results and not worry about it. But what's the motivation here? When you get down to it, he seems to believe many-worlds is true, BUT holds the philosophical position that you shouldn't, like, care. Because there's no practical benefit to caring; because it doesn't help you with the calculations. But, hey, I still care! What the real nature of rea…

> Plus, it can certainly have psychological implications, dramatically impacting how we feel about the things that have happened to us and life in general. Other than offering amusement by recreationally asking how many parallel universes can dance on the head of a pin, how should it affect anything? It is no mercy to know there are kinder universes out there, for with them come those more cruel. You are already a mo…

Well, do you think there is a truth, understandable by humans, about the nature of the universe?

If you think there is, what better guide than our best theories of physics so far?

So of course what the nature of the universe is doesn't really affect anything, on a physical level, but our sense of what happens after we're gone does in fact change our behaviors. E.g. Most people contemplate with more horror the possibility of all humanity being wiped out than their own isolated death, even though from the individual perspective it is the same.

Somehow things that cannot possibly matter to us physically still matter to us intellectually.

> It is no mercy to know there are kinder universes out there, for with them come those more cruel.

Well, that's debatable. For example, if you're finding this universe to be particularly cruel, perhaps it is a solace to think it's just one of the universes you must endure, and in some other universe you're having a much easier time.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#15

Post by _0w8t »

The article misses that we do not know how classical world that we perceive arises. Ultimately according to QM the whole universe is just single wave function with no probabilities. But this contradicts our experience of the classical world including that we measure probabilities.

So we need to explain that to avoid various very ad-hock notions of classical measurement device and similar routes.

There are attempts to explain the classical world using a notion of decoherence, but that have problems with little progress in the last, say, 20 years to address them.

Then there are ideas based on Everett works that perhaps it is a conscious itself that perceives the classical world and the real world is the wave function. But then such ideas do not explain the exact numerical probabilities.

The interesting resent suggestion was that the probabilities were not really physical but rather represent the lack of information in Bayesian sense.

In past that was used to construct various hidden variable theories, but the new take is that the classical notion that the state of a system can be fully described by its properties at some moment in time is wrong. One also needs to know some information about future to fully describe evolution of the system. This is very speculative, but at least it is fully compatible with relativity and explains probabilities. They simply represent lack of knowledge of boundary conditions in the future.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#16

Post by dools »

What I don't get is why people are more concerned with how Qauntum Mechanics works than they are with the way in which, for example, electro magenetic waves travel in a vacuum. Like we can "physically" understand how sound travels, and we can "visualise" that as a "mechanism" right? But we have no similar way of "physicalising" the way in which light travels, but no-one seems to have any trouble accepting that. Quantum states seem to be no different: they're just a way things work, that we don't have a good "macro physical" analogy for.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#17

Post by FeepingCreature »

_0w8t wrote: post #15

The article misses that we do not know how classical world that we perceive arises. Ultimately according to QM the whole universe is just single wave function with no probabilities. But this contradicts our experience of the classical world including that we measure probabilities. So we need to explain that to avoid various very ad-hock notions of classical measurement device and similar routes. There are attempts to…

In the single wavefunction, beings who perceive classical reality arise from mere wavefunction mathematics. How does this not answer the question?

Once you can locate yourself in a system, the system is adequate as a physical theory of your phenomenological state.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#18

Post by sampo »

dools wrote: post #16

What I don't get is why people are more concerned with how Qauntum Mechanics works than they are with the way in which, for example, electro magenetic waves travel in a vacuum. Like we can "physically" understand how sound travels, and we can "visualise" that as a "mechanism" right? But we have no similar way of "physicalising" the way in which light travels, but no-one seems to have any trouble accepting that. Quant…

Quantum mechanics has wave function collapse, which is both essential in applying the theory to explain any physical situation, and at the same time not described by the theory. Other than "and then it collapses".

Classical theories don't have this problem.

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#19

Post by FeepingCreature »

gizmo686 wrote: post #7
jetrink wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essay doesn't agree. > You shouldn’t confuse the Zen Anti-Interpretation with “Shut Up And Calculate.” The latter phrase, mistakenly attributed to Feynman but really due to David Mermin, is something one might say at the beginning of the path, when one is as a baby.

Finish the paragraph: > but after years of study and effort you’ve returned to the situation of the baby, who just sees the thing for what it is.

I think his view is less "shut up and calculate" and more "to calculate is to know."

Re: The Zen anti-interpretation of quantum mechanics (2021)

#20

Post by krastanov »

dools wrote: post #16

What I don't get is why people are more concerned with how Qauntum Mechanics works than they are with the way in which, for example, electro magenetic waves travel in a vacuum. Like we can "physically" understand how sound travels, and we can "visualise" that as a "mechanism" right? But we have no similar way of "physicalising" the way in which light travels, but no-one seems to have any trouble accepting that. Quant…

For many people the statement "electromagnetic fields exist as a (fundamental) building block of Nature" is just as reasonable as "atoms exist as a (fundamental) building block of Nature". The word "fundamental" is not particularly important, I am keeping it for historical reasons. You are perfectly comfortable with the existence of atoms (given your comments about understanding sound waves), presumably because you know of experiments that have demonstrated their existence. We have experiments that have demonstrated the existence of EM waves. So the questions is, what in your personal aesthetic tastes is making atoms more palatable?

The question of interpreting quantum mechanics is quite different. We do not have a popular mathematical framework that clearly explains why we perceive a classical world while being "inside" of a quantum wavefunction. There is plenty of vagueness and oversimplification in that last statement, but the difference is "we have an abstraction that explains mostly-perfectly EM waves and we do not care about whether people are comfortable with the abstraction" vs "we do not even have a mathematical abstraction explaining why we perceive a classical world inside of a quantum universe".

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