"Against" Realism

RandallB

Now there is one that " I can't figure out what your point is at all."
Care to prove you exist so I'll know you are real & not something from an unreal reality.

Hurkyl

It would be interesting to see the study that determined that. But this is a digression...


You just don't seem to understand what the criticism is. Copenhagen has the exact same 100 years of empirical QM data supporting it too. And if the Bohm interpretation ever figures out how to work in the relativistic setting, then it will too.

The whole problem is that you present a piece of evidence which is predicted by the Copenhagen interpretation (and Bohm too, I think), and somehow conclude that it proves MWI is the only tenable interpretation.

And, in your lashing out at any criticism, you seem to have missed the fact that I actually like the MWI interpretation, and find it the most natural of the "popular" interpretations. (Though I think I will change my mind once we can consider the relational interpretation popular)


Pretty much every scientific theory permits a very large space of configurations that will never be realized by our observed world...


Are you sure you meant "self-evident"? I thought that, even to you, it is only evident because you find it a natural consequence of QM.


They already have. They just haven't made a "big" one.


This is an ad hominem fallacy. The argument stands or falls on its own merit. It doesn't matter if it originated from an existing speaker.

Chaos' lil bro Order

Tell me then, how does the quantum computer in our Universe communicate with all the other 'virtual quantum computers' in the other Universes? Also, where is this quantum computer you speak of? This is such an abstract idea that the quantum computer calculates some of the sub-problems in other dimensions that I'm not sure it warrants a response. I'm ignorant on this subject, but what experiments have been done to confirm your quote?

Careful

** quote Hurkyl
And, in your lashing out at any criticism, you seem to have missed the fact that I actually like the MWI interpretation, and find it the most natural of the "popular" interpretations. (Though I think I will change my mind once we can consider the relational interpretation popular)
**

I must congratulate you for the ability to decide upon these fundamental matters according to the latest fashion in town. Perhaps, we should organize miss elections about these issues in the same way as this is done on some other forum - that would constitute the ultimate downfall of science.

Careful

Hurkyl

Huh? I mean to say that I think RQM > MWI > Copenhagen > Bohm.

kvantti

Umm, sorry, I think this was my first message in this thread... I apologie if I have missed something (I don't follow these forums too often).

Yes, you can always say something like "all the different calculations are performed simultanously as a superposition of every possible calculation", but that isn't exactly a physical description of what is happening in a quantum computer... it is more or less a description of the mathematics.

OK, let's assume that the MWI is false (which it, ofcourse, might be). How would you explain the physical behaviour of a quantum computer?

kvantti

Through quantum interference. Different universes can interfere with each other if the quantum state of the system involved is coherent (as in a quantum computer).

IBM has the most advanced quantum computer nowadays with seven qubits. See this.

Oh and mathematically you can just say that "all the different calculations are in a superposition in the quantum computer during the calculation", if you don't want to think the MWI way.

Careful

But what is YOUR idea about quantum mechanics ?!! This entire discussion is about one's favorite color of spaghetti, while all the pasta tastes the same. It seems to be much more intelligent to place this question in the light of some problematic aspects of modern theoretical physics : (a) the problem of vacuum energy vis a vis the cosmological constant (b) the issue of realism (c) the problem of time (d) the validity of special relativity at all energy scales. Then, depending upon your answers on these (and other) issues you will find yourself confined to one of these religions, or you feel the logical need to dig deeper into QM itself. One question to start with for example is wheter one truely believes gravity to be necessary to even obtain a well defined theory of quantum electrodynamics.

Careful

NateTG

That's not a useful stipulation. MWI, Bohmian Mechanics, and the Plug and Chug interpretation all make identical predictions so the only way that MWI can be scientifically falsified is if all of the other interpretations also have the same problems.

Moreover, and this is something people love to ignore, physics does not and will never explain anything rather, physics is a collection of theories that make predictions. Statements like 'things fall because of gravity' are misleading - it would be better to say 'we call the tendency of things to fall gravity'.

As such, interpretations of quantum mechanics are (from a scientific point of view) really primarily interesting because they can lead to experimentally verifiable predictions. Otherwise, we might as well be discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The fact is that (assuming the physics is correct) the quantum computer will work regardless of whether you think of it as a bunch of intereacting 'worlds', a winding maze of particle paths, or a black box.

RandallB

What does that mean – something like a little bit pregnant but not really yet?

Plus even if they can come up with Q-C or other proof of MWI convincing to those that are not already convinced, that still only ‘proves’ one reality.

MWI is one thing but it doesn’t call for more than one reality!
The idea that one reality where say MWI is correct and BM is wrong;
and a second reality where say BM is right and there are no MW’s of MWI; ----- And Are both true ?????

IMO that is beyond an ‘ad hominem fallacy’ it just logically ridiculous.
What argument would not fall on its own merit trying to support such a thing with anything like rational logic?

AnssiH

Like I've said in about every post to this thread, we make certain assumptions about "what exists" in reality and about how they behave to come to explain how the reality works to our selves. The above questions, about where the "calculations" happen and so on, only make sense in so far that you want to talk about "calculations" (and the related entities and concepts that you imagine is performing these "calculations", in this case in multiple universes) and MWI makes sense only in so far that you make certain assumptions about such things as the reality of a photon and interference between universes.

In fact, if you take a look at the opening post here:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=130623
you'll notice how one can say the "calculations" happen or rather simply "exist" in static manner in spacetime just by insisting that spacetime really exists the way Einstein believed it to exist (Of course it will be difficult to explain why there seems to exist any "moments" at all, but that's a different discussion). One way to put it would be to say that the photon moves back and forth in time so that all its possible trajectories interfere, but this is wrong vocabulary because there is no motion in spacetime.

I am confident that all interpretations have their own answers about how the phenomena happen so to come to predict the exact same observable phenomena. So after all is said and done, many-worlds interpretation is just that, an "interpretation". At this stage we cannot pick and choose any QM interpretation to be the real deal.

Also if you have followed my posts in this thread you might have noticed how I've asserted that - quite likely - the reason why QM seems so damn odd to us is that we are trying to explain a behaviour of such entities that do not exist in such manner as we imagine them to exist. It is like explaining the behaviour of a rainbow after asserting it is an object which originates from a pot of gold, and only once one realizes how rainbow is rather the interference pattern on the surface of the observer, its behaviour starts to make sense.

Likewise, if you insist on the information between atoms to travel in the form of tiny billiard balls and on top of that imagine the motion of those billiard balls to exist in newtonian sense (only look at it from one inertial frame) you may be forced to assert that the photon exists in many worlds so to exhibit the behaviour we observe. We may have to question the nature of many things to come up with more accurate answers, like the nature of space, matter, light, motion(/time), energy... Maybe even discard these concepts to understand this system we call "reality" from a completely new angle.

(On a related note, have people formed opinions about this idea of discrepte, stepwise spacetime expansion causing quantum behaviour?
http://www.estfound.org/
Haven't had time to really look into it, does it show some obvious weaknesses right off the bat?)

So, just what NateTG is saying, physics really is quite literally a collection of theories or rather assumptions about what exists and how they behave. And like I said before, because of how our understanding works physically, we can only deal with reality by assuming there exists such and such entities and asserting they have such and such relationships between each others. Because this is the only thing we are capable of, it seems to us that reality really is like this, but little bit of philosophy can show that this is not exactly true; reality does not actually work with concepts. The mental model we have about reality in our head really is just an expression of the real thing, and it is not accurate or even "the metaphysically correct way" to express reality. (And any math you produce is also merely describing the behaviour of some "entity" you imagine to exist metaphysically in that sense)

And btw, MWI gaining ground as the "favourite way" to describe reality in some circles doesn't mean it is true, it just means it is one of the easiest ways to "imagine/visualize" QM phenomena in your mind. Think about how you try to visualize any black-box system when you are trying to back-engineer how its behaviour comes about, and you will realize how the assumptions with which you find it easiest to imagine the functions of the black box don't mean that is actually what happens inside. There are always many ways to produce some desired behaviour. Any system builder/programmer knows this very well.

And my comments about MWI becoming a religion are referring to how I find that MWI-people are continuously asserting theirs is "the only possible interpretation". Please understand that no one is saying it "cannot be true", but that it is not something that has been proven to be true in any sense. I am certainly happy to see many sensible people at this thread who still understand this, and I hope MWI won't become so standard that considering other options will be viewed as heretical or crackpot. It is important to be honest about it being just an interpretation unless you want to see everyone believe in it like a religion. And you don't want this to happen if you believe in scientific method, yes?

Chaos' lil bro Order

Are you talking about p-branes?

What defines two events in MWI anyways? I mean what is the smallest increment of information, whether it be spacial, temporal, or any other physical property you can think of, that must occur before the 'father' universe splits into two and the 'daughter' universe is birthed?

Hurkyl

Right -- but I was talking to someone who thinks spaghetti has to be purple, and thinks that my motivation for saying all pasta tastes the same is because I'm an idiot that doesn't like purple.

AnssiH

I believe the idea is rather, that all the possible universes exist "all the time" and interfere with each others. So the model is relying on certain ideas about how photons exist and how they interfere with other photons in other universes.

So, when someone is claiming this is the only way QM could work, I might just as well start asserting that when a rainbow seems to mimic the motion of the observer without delay, it can be explained in non-local terms only by assuming we are seeing a rainbow of a "different universe" every time we move.

Sure, this would make the phenomenon local, but in the case of rainbow we now know enough about how it exists to be able to see how its observed "motion" occurs in completely classical terms and within one universe, and yet there is a different rainbow visible for every observer, or rather that we should not assign identity to a rainbow; there is no rainbow at all without an observer. (This is a case of realism where something cannot exist without an observer, in completely classical sense)

Likewise with QM, the motion or the "apparent trajectory" of the photon really does depend on where it's going to be observed (one way or another), and to assume there really was a photon (with identity) in flight is already an assumption that is likely to be wrong to some extent, and will lead you to assert there must be multiple universes and we are merely observing photons from one.

So, what I'm saying is... dig deeper gentlemen.

Careful

Hehe, I noticed that, but you also said that you might choose for the relational colored one, once this color would gain more popularity. My point being that whatever interpretation you pick, you keep on being stuck with some embarrasing shortcomings of the formalism itself. For example, I have to think hard about Bell inequality violation and spin statistics in Barut self field (although I could put them in by hand), but there is absolutely no problem with realism, time, special relativity and vacuum energy (tell that to some QG people - all their deep problems vanish in thin air).

Cheers,

Careful

Hurkyl

I prefer RQM over MWI now -- but if I was asked to choose between the popular interpretations I'd have to pick MWI since AFAIK, RQM isn't one of them yet.


Embarassing shortcomings are in the eye of the beholder.

Careful

This is exactly the miss-election attitude I was referring to in the beginning, I remember asking you what YOUR view towards QM is. Embarrasing shortcomings are not in the eyes of who percieves them, but in those minds which do not wish to adress them even when it is well known that the latter issues are definetely problematic. String theory does adress the vacuum problem by making a supersymmetric ansatz : at that moment, you can say whether you find such mechanism using exotic particles credible or not (I certainly don't). Anyway, if you do not believe some detailed matter content to be responsible for the cancellation of the vacuum energy, then the most direct step would be to question the phenomenon (in either the renormalization procedures) at its very roots.

Careful