Double slit experiment violates triangle inequality?

[Cruikshank]

Hi bhobba,
I've gotten that impression from some books, but others disagree, notably The Age of Entanglement, which quotes someone at the Solvay Conference in 1927 as saying, "It was alarming to see that in 1927 Bohr and Einstein were already talking past each other." Einstein presents what seems to me to be a straightforward proof, and Bohr's response is basically, "I don't see what is bothering you, I don't get what you are driving at." I wish I still had the book in front of me or I'd quote it exactly.

 

[Maui]

QM is a theory written by human beings for human beings, and as such it should be comprehensible to human beings. I'm willing to admit I have blind spots, but I studied physics at MIT, I'm not an idiot, I've been a physics instructor for 19 years and a damned good one by all accounts, and it's not just me. Yes, I didn't learn how, I missed something that all the other students got. But I know pedagogy. I construct many different explanations every day to help students understand. Either every single instructor and author of quantum mechanics is atrociously incompetent, or there is something wrong with the theory. I vote the latter.

You could be wrong in assuming the observations do not affect(or even bring forward) the observed. That's all.

 

[bhobba]

I've gotten that impression from some books, but others disagree, notably The Age of Entanglement, which quotes someone at the Solvay Conference in 1927 as saying, "It was alarming to see that in 1927 Bohr and Einstein were already talking past each other." Einstein presents what seems to me to be a straightforward proof, and Bohr's response is basically, "I don't see what is bothering you, I don't get what you are driving at." I wish I still had the book in front of me or I'd quote it exactly.

For sure they did not agree and that led them to talk past each other (I have that book as well) but both certainly understood each others position quite well. Einstein for example always kept a copy of Dirac's book on QM referring to it as that perfect book or something like that. Einstein favored the Ensemble interpretation and Bohr of course Copenhagen. He thought like the Ensemble interpretation of statistical physics it implied a deeper reality was really at work and hence QM incomplete. Bohr thought QM was fundamental and nature really was like that at rock bottom. Not much has changed really over the years - each view has its adherents. I have discussed it on this forum and others and you certainly get the view each side is talking past the other - its because they have entirely different pre-conceived ideas about nature - not because they dodn't intellectually understand others position - they just don't agree with it.

I personally adhere to the Ensemble interpretation like Einstein but modified to include decoherence which IMHO solves all the major issues - but of course not everyone agrees - like I say - nothing has changed really.

Thanks
Bill

 

[kith]

Sorry, I don't have much time. So just a few brief comments.

Whatever you call it, it is relevant, and it is moving FTL.

Well, you don't get problems with relativity unless you can transmit signals FTL.

As for why we should demand a "classical" model, consider this: I have no beef with relativity at all, special or general.

In my opinion, one aspect why QM is perceived as weirder than relativity is because relativity talks about the background of our universe, while QM talks about the contents of our universe, possibly including ourselves. Also indeterminism may be much harder to swallow than a strange form of determinism (GR).

My objection to Copenhagen takes two possible forms: first, it seems to make visualization impossible, intuition impossible, and extrapolation impossible. Every single case of a problem I have seen that gets translated to the real world always has a different ad hoc interpretation with different rules about what questions are allowed to be asked, in nothing like a standard form. In short, it doesn't let me do *science.*

I don't think this is generally true. I work at a physics department, where a lot of science is done (also intuitively) and almost nobody worries about interpretations. What I would say is true that it is difficult to get a intuitive understand of QM by reading textbooks.

 

[The_Duck]

I want a model where a particle has a precise location and trajectory; I will accept as weird and contorted a spacetime as necessary to accomplish this, but there have to BE space and time.

The de-Broglie Bohm interpretation accomplishes exactly this, without needing to mess with spacetime. You may find this a more intuitive picture than the standard account.