How do deterministic Bohmian/Pilot Wave Theories Handle These?

[Demystifier]

So the cause must be an EXTERNAL one, and I must assume that is a "field fluctuation" (or whatever terminology you want to use) and that fluctuation - a result of non-local influences - is the CAUSE determining what happens and when it happens.

Am I getting a little closer yet?

Since my paper is close to finishing, I can tell you that the sentence above is not so far from the Bohmian picture. More will become clear soon, when I upload the paper on arXiv.
For now, let me only tell you two things:
1. In BM, everything is determined by the initial conditions, but the initial conditions themselves are essentially random.
2. To have nonlocality and relativity at the same time, the concept of an "initial" condition should be radically revised. A part of it can be in the past, while another part of it can be in the future. [See http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0811.1905 .] Consequently, the initial condition may appear as something that occurs randomly during the evolution of the universe.

 

[QMessiah]

1. In BM, everything is determined by the initial conditions, but the initial conditions themselves are essentially random.
2. To have nonlocality and relativity at the same time, the concept of an "initial" condition should be radically revised. A part of it can be in the past, while another part of it can be in the future.

So Bohmian Mechanics require:

1. TRUE indeterminism/randomness at the fundamental level?
2. 10 000x The speed of light which inreturns means: a block universe/eternalism?


This is less realist than positivism =\

 

[Dmitry67]

Man, what are you talking about? All that "mixtures" you refer to are nothing but quantum superpositions. They have nothing to do with virtual particles.

Let me explain my point

Why I started to talk about mixtures? Becuae particles can be added, substracted, multiplied, divided by sqrt(2) et cetera. They are more like mathematical notions, not like tiny colored billiard balls with labels 'e', 'gamma', 'u', 'd' printed on them, as bohmians imagine :)

So the claim that 'virtual particles is just a mathematical method' looks as minimum very artifical, because the same particle arithmetics is valid for the real particles too. This thread had shown that the line between 'real' and 'virtual' is very fuzzy and you started to change your mind after my questions

If you still don't agree with me, please
1. provide a rule to tell if particle is real or not. How can we tell something which just appear in a 'mathematical method' from a real thing.
2. So, is photon (non-virtual one) real or not? are its 'ingrediants' (bosons) real or not?

 

[Dmitry67]

So Bohmian Mechanics require:

1. TRUE indeterminism/randomness at the fundamental level?
2. 10 000x The speed of light which inreturns means: a block universe/eternalism?

This is less realist than positivism =\

Yes, Bohmian mechanics:

TOE equations: 1 page
Initial conditions: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 pages :)

 

[Demystifier]

Becuae particles can be added, substracted, multiplied, divided by sqrt(2) et cetera.

No, they cannot. Instead, these are quantum states in the physical Hilbert space (wave functions) that can be added, substracted, etc ...

They are more like mathematical notions, not like tiny colored billiard balls with labels 'e', 'gamma', 'u', 'd' printed on them, as bohmians imagine :)

No, Bohmians do not imagine this. According to Bohmians, particles only have trajectories. All other properties are properties of the wave functions, not of particles. Particles do not have any labels printed on them.

So the claim that 'virtual particles is just a mathematical method' looks as minimum very artifical, because the same particle arithmetics is valid for the real particles too.

No it isn't. The superposition principle is valid for physical states only. Not for virtual particles.

1. provide a rule to tell if particle is real or not. How can we tell something which just appear in a 'mathematical method' from a real thing.
2. So, is photon (non-virtual one) real or not? are its 'ingrediants' (bosons) real or not?

1. The particle is real if its motion is guided by the wave function that represents a state in the physical Hilbert space. Is that precise enough?
2. From 1. it follows that the particle guided by the photon wave function (which is a superposition of other boson wave functions) is real. But strictly speaking, it does not make sense to say that this particle is "photon" or that this particle is "some other boson". All we can say is that it is a pointlike object moving in spacetime.

Is it clearer now?

 

[Demystifier]

Yes, Bohmian mechanics:

TOE equations: 1 page
Initial conditions: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 pages :)

And how many initial conditions is needed to specify a wave function in the MWI? I will tell you: An infinite number of pages.

Can you tell me just one thing: Do you really want to understand BI better, or do you just want to provoke people who disagree with you? I will not answer any of your further questions until you answer this one.

 

[Dmitry67]

1
No it isn't. The superposition principle is valid for physical states only. Not for virtual particles.

2. The particle is real if its motion is guided by the wave function that represents a state in the physical Hilbert space. Is that precise enough?

1. So what happens when electrons exchange virtual photons in QFT?
Virtual photons are the mixtures of other bosons!
based on your claim, virtual particles can not be superposition, so we can not talk about virtual photons.

2. Your definition not only requires one to accept BM,
but even if we accept BM, it is based on the 'motion', which is, in BM, is unobservable

 

[Dmitry67]

And how many initial conditions is needed to specify a wave function in the MWI? I will tell you: An infinite number of pages.

Wow, this is basics of MWI
In MWI you can start from a very simple initial conditions (for example, an empty space - a sort of vacuum before the inflation in the big bang) and get our current world as a result!

This is also true in CI: in CI because of randomness, in MWI each branch appear to be random, but the whole superset is not.

 

[Demystifier]

First answer my question in #96!

 

[JustinLevy]

Concerning virtual particles, I am not saying that you do not need to take into account their mathematical contribution to measurable quantities. Of course you do. But I am saying that you can obtain the same result on measurable quantities by applying a different calculation method (a non-perturbative method) in which the concept of a virtual particle does not even make sense.

No. You are missing an important point about 'virtual particles' here.
As I tried to explain, there is no black and white distinction.

Is a photon ever a real particle to you?
They are from quantization of the electromagnetic field. But strictly speaking anything we refer to as a photon in experiment is from perturbation theory. You could claim no "photons" exist, they are all just 'artifacts' of perturbation theory and that the full theory only has the full fields.

Again, do you consider a photon emitted from the sun and absorbed by our eye are real or virtual? Let's make it simpler. A photon is emitted during de-excitation of an atom and is absorbed by another atom. Was this photon real or not?

As I tried to explain earlier, the only consistent way we currently have to define a particle as "real" is off at infinity. With finite times there is a full continuum, with some definitions being appropriate extensions given particular applications, but ultimately there is no black and white distinction between real and virtual particles.

Your proposed definition doesn't resolve any of these issues.

There is no such thing as a sum of fluctuations. There is only a sum of quantum states, represented e.g. by wave functions. In non-local realistic theories such as the Bohmian interpretation such wave functions are real and evolve deterministically, so they automatically contain the stuff you call "deterministic off-shell fluctuations".

No. As a realism theory, you are requiring the "fluctuation" to have a definite (although unknown) value. Saying it is a definite superposition of values is no different (it is just a change of basis). You will not get the correct answer.

Also, if you are saying the vacuum is "really" in a definite state containing off-shell values, then one could measure the component of vacuum in such states ... ie. one could measure the vacuum to be in a state that violates lorentz symmetry, etc. That is incorrect. It's not that the vacuum expectation (ie. averaging over many measurements) has lorentz symmetry, but that every measurement will not violate special relativity.

1. In BM, everything is determined by the initial conditions, but the initial conditions themselves are essentially random.

Again, here by random, because you want a realism theory, you have to mean unknown but definite value. This is different than truly random.

Consider spin of an electron.
If you measure the electron to be in the spin up state (S_z=+1/2), then subsequently measure S_y, half the time you will get (S_y=-1/2) and the other half you will get (S_y=+1/2). Quantum mechanics says this is truly random. It was NOT in a definite, but unknown state until you measured it.
You instead are claiming it is.

So for quantum mechanics it is random. But for your BM interpretation, your "essentially random" is really only unknown initial conditions. Multiple interactions will have correlations that would differ from true randomness. They are not equivalent.

2. To have nonlocality and relativity at the same time, the concept of an "initial" condition should be radically revised. A part of it can be in the past, while another part of it can be in the future.

I must be frank here. I feel this is teetering on Metaphysics/philosophy and not actually physics. This proposes much additional structure that doesn't even sound testible.

Let me make a historical analogy. Consider Lorentz and his aether theory. He found that it had an interesting symmetry that forbid detecting the ether. He found this before Einstein even published his paper in 1905. The troubling thing is that even after people came to understand relativity and the powerful understanding that came with it, Lorentz wouldn't give up on the ether. To him, this was just a mathematical trick: Rods really did shrink and clocks ran slow becaue their internal interactions were different when they were moving with respect to the aether.

The two theories both predicted the same results for experiment. So one could claim that we merely have two different / valid interpretations of the same physics. However in Lorentz theory, the Lorentz symmetry is just a mystical conspiracy of the math and several ad-hoc conjectures. In Special Relativity, the lorentz symmetry is fundamental and those same conjectures can be derived.

Which is physics? I hope most would agree here that the existence of an aether which cannot be experimentally verified, and which to cast equations in the term of interactions with, requires demoting seemingly fundamental symmetries to mere 'coincidences', and worse yet do not provide new predictions are at best metaphysics.

The lesson:
Good physics does not come from mangling theories to insist on a priori beliefs based on intuition.


Your theories do the same. You destroy locality, but in such a contrived manner that it cannot be measured. Lorentz symmetry is now emergent, yet probing deeper at any level will not give details on this 'emergence'. And now you are laying ground to allow anything to be explained away by saying it deals with "initial" conditions in the future. Things will become even more convoluted if you actually manage to derive the lamb shift and the magnetic moment of the electron (it would be hard to take your "new QFT" seriously without at least showing how such calculations could be done in principle and showing the correct results should follow ... for relativistic quantum mechanics gets the wrong result, it took field theory to get the rest, so such calculations really demonstrate that final step from non-relativistic quantum -> relativistic quantum -> quantum field theory).


Any such theories are not seem by the mainstream as attempts to resolve 'foundational issues of quantum mechanics', but hiding behind the excuse of foundational issues to try to wedge in antiquated a priori intuition back into a theory.

They serve as examples of not what additional interpretations are compatible, but what must be sacrificed in order to force particular unnecessary requirements into a theory. These sacrifices are too big. It prevents any possibility of making new predictions/advances, so the theories are dead ends. Just as Lorentz ether theory serves only as historical example, so too do these ideas. No new predictions have come from it.

 

[Dmitry67]

Can you tell me just one thing: Do you really want to understand BI better, or do you just want to provoke people who disagree with you? I will not answer any of your further questions until you answer this one.

Frankly, I am here, in this thread because I am puzzled (and I try to understand the reasons) why people can prefer such interpretation. So I am trying to understand BM better - but ont the psycological, not mathematical level.

There are theories which can look strange, weird, contre-intuitive but they are BEAUTIFUL. Thru these theories I feel the reflection of God. I see the beauty.

Correct me if I am wrong, but BI is just a sequence of ad-hoc attempts to catch up with an understanding of reality. Even these artificial attempts might be successful, they created more and more artificial things making it less and less beautiful.

Bohmians had made their theory relativistic by the ugly price of adding a preferred frame. Now as I said to ilja - it is not possible to define a common preferred frame in the curved space, for example, a common frame for the inner and outer part of the black hole. I had had confirmed it, because in his GLET there is no such thing as collapse.

But I am sure that BM will be able to accommodate the black holes by making more and more artificial assumtions. But what is a whole point? Pure/MWI (and even CI) QM is able to work on the edge of the semi-classical approach to gravity (Hawking, Unruh) while BM is in denial of both effects because these effects are inconsistent with BM.

You can say that both effects are not confirmed experimentally. I agree, but at least they are predicted. What is a prediciton power of BM except that it had recently accommodated SR and is trying to tackle some GR things?

Finally, the single histrory deterministic theory suffers from the laplace determinism, so me writing this post is pre-coded in the initial conditions during the big bang. I see such determinism as a loss, not as a victory.

Could you explain, what aspects of BM are so attractive for you?

P.S.
I ahd noticed an interesting thing, looks like our discussion about BM and Virtual particles are the same. Without these 'particles' added to wavefunctions these wavefunctions are not real enough for you, and it leads to some strange classification of what is real and what is not.

 

[Demystifier]

Could you explain, what aspects of BM are so attractive for you?

No, I could not. I have tried many times to explain that to you, but you still ask me the same question. So there is no point in trying to do that again. In the following, I will only point to some of your misconceptions.

 

[Demystifier]

1. So what happens when electrons exchange virtual photons in QFT?

As I already said many times, electrons do not exchange virtual photons.

 

[QMessiah]

Demystifier: I dno about Dmitry67 and doubt he really cares or knows too much about QM.

I've always gone with STFU and calculate.

As for interpretations:

Copenhagen = insanity and definitely wrong
Many Worlds = uncertain, all I know is that it can't arrive at Born's Rule and therefore can't be considered coherent yet.

I've always felt Bohmian sounded reasonable, however never dwelled deeper into it.

If your saying that the universe is fundamnetally indeterministic and past and future exist (eternalism) I have a hard time swallowing that as a realist interpretation.
Am I missinterpreting your statements or is this what Bohmian mechanics claim?

 

[Dmitry67]

BTW there are some good news.

So, relativistic BM is indistinguishable (experimentally) from other iterpretations of QM.
But, BM predicts that there is a preferred frame.
The situation changes in curved space, check here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_post-Newtonian_formalism

There are special parameters:

The meaning of these is that α1 , α2 and α3 measure the extent of preferred frame effects

And these values of these parameters are experimentally verifiable.

 

[ueit]

1. There are no postulates.
If you still want something, then I can give it in a negative form: you don't need to make any extra assumptions (collapses, particles) to explain the reality. Just pure QM.

So, give me the postulates that define what you name "pure QM".

2. Check my previous post: classical reality is explained ia QD, and a choice of basic depends on the observer

What do you mean by "observer" (I want a definition of "observer" only in terms of the postulates of "pure QM")

3. Do other interpretation give a definition for what "human" is? :) it is an interesting question, but shouldn't it be a part, say, of a biology rather then QM?

Yes, in BM you could define a human based on a certain particle distribution (a human is, after all a collection of molecules of a certain type).

Observer does not play any special role in MWI. Nor the "measurement devices". They are treated the same as all other systems - microscopic or macroscopic. There is no boundary between QM and classical world. World is quantum on all scales, and our classical view is just an illusion.

Well, then define what a "system" is using only the postulates of "pure QM"

 

[Demystifier]

Again, do you consider a photon emitted from the sun and absorbed by our eye are real or virtual? Let's make it simpler. A photon is emitted during de-excitation of an atom and is absorbed by another atom. Was this photon real or not?

It is real.

As I tried to explain earlier, the only consistent way we currently have to define a particle as "real" is off at infinity.

I disagree. The unitary evolution of the physical state can be calculated for any time. This state is physical (and hence "real") at any time.

Again, here by random, because you want a realism theory, you have to mean unknown but definite value. This is different than truly random.

I did not mean truly random. I meant effectively random, because we do not know how "God" chooses initial conditions.

I must be frank here. I feel this is teetering on Metaphysics/philosophy and not actually physics. This proposes much additional structure that doesn't even sound testible.

I don't know any physical theory that does not contain something untestable. For example, can you measure the wave function of standard QM?

Things will become even more convoluted if you actually manage to derive the lamb shift and the magnetic moment of the electron (it would be hard to take your "new QFT" seriously without at least showing how such calculations could be done in principle and showing the correct results should follow ... for relativistic quantum mechanics gets the wrong result, it took field theory to get the rest, so such calculations really demonstrate that final step from non-relativistic quantum -> relativistic quantum -> quantum field theory).

In few days, I will upload a paper on arXiv showing how BI can be made consistent with QFT.

 

[Demystifier]

If your saying that the universe is fundamnetally indeterministic and past and future exist (eternalism) I have a hard time swallowing that as a realist interpretation.
Am I missinterpreting your statements or is this what Bohmian mechanics claim?

Good news:
BM is not fundamentally indeterministic. It only appears indeterministic because we do not know the actual initial conditions.

Bad news:
Yes, I am saying that past and future exist (eternalism). If it is hard to swallow, maybe this can help:
http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Nikolic_FQXi_time.pdf

 

[DrChinese]

Since my paper is close to finishing, I can tell you that the sentence above is not so far from the Bohmian picture. More will become clear soon, when I upload the paper on arXiv.
For now, let me only tell you two things:
1. In BM, everything is determined by the initial conditions, but the initial conditions themselves are essentially random.
2. To have nonlocality and relativity at the same time, the concept of an "initial" condition should be radically revised. A part of it can be in the past, while another part of it can be in the future. [See http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0811.1905 .] Consequently, the initial condition may appear as something that occurs randomly during the evolution of the universe.

Thanks. Still following along, please don't mind my questions. This is very interesting, and I am glad you are tackling some difficult issues in your work.

 

[Count Iblis]

Many Worlds = uncertain, all I know is that it can't arrive at Born's Rule and therefore can't be considered coherent yet.

In the MWI, you can replace Born's rule by the weaker rule that says that if the wavefunction is an eigenstate of an observable, then measuring that observable will yield the corresponding eigenvalue.

 

[Demystifier]

Thanks. Still following along, please don't mind my questions. This is very interesting, and I am glad you are tackling some difficult issues in your work.

I like your constructive questions very much. They help me to sharpen my own understanding of it as well.

 

[isabelle]

Demystifier, it is interesting to have someone on this forum who (based on my quick reads of some of your papers) is an expert on the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics.

As an undergrad I read Holland's "Quantum Theory of Motion", and besides introducing me to advanced classical mechanics, I also found the idea to be appealing at the time. When I studied Bell's theorem and Aspect's experiments a few months later my enthusiasm for BI waned, and when I learned QFT I formed my personal interpretation around quantum fields, rather then particles.
When you do publish your results on Bohmian field theory I will read them, and perhaps they will rekindle my interest.

Anyway, now my research mostly involves statistical field theory and my outlook towards physical theories is that they are only models of reality. It's like Euler said: we can never know the true nature of things, but sometimes a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice to explain many phenomena. This position differs from logical positivism, or CI, which says we cannot know the true nature of things and so any attempt to do so is a waste of time. Anyway, from this point of view Bohmian mechanics replaces a linear theory that is exactly integrable in some important cases with a highly nonlinear theory that seems to be intractable. If all of our models are merely "fictive hypothesis" then it does not make sense to replace a tractable model with an intractable one which gives the same results. In stat mech the goal is not to write down a theory that purports to describe the way things are, but to write down a theory that can in some sense be solved but still captures some interesting physics.

Anyway, good luck to you on your Bohmian QFT.

 

[Demystifier]

and when I learned QFT I formed my personal interpretation around quantum fields, rather then particles.

But all measurable predictions of QFT eventually reduce to predictions on particles, don't they? For example, fermionic fields are not even observables. Fermionic particles, on the other hand, are observables. Thus, it should not seem unreasonable to assume that QFT is actually a theory of particles.

Anyway, from this point of view Bohmian mechanics replaces a linear theory that is exactly integrable in some important cases with a highly nonlinear theory that seems to be intractable. If all of our models are merely "fictive hypothesis" then it does not make sense to replace a tractable model with an intractable one which gives the same results.

Sometimes it is even simpler to solve things with the Bohmian approach:
Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 5190 - 5193 (1999)
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v82/i26/p5190_1

 

[Ilja]

There are theories which can look strange, weird, contre-intuitive but they are BEAUTIFUL. Thru these theories I feel the reflection of God. I see the beauty.

Correct me if I am wrong, but BI is just a sequence of ad-hoc attempts to catch up with an understanding of reality.

I certainly disagree. The guiding equation is a very beautiful one, it is part of Hamilton-Jacobi theory, which is a very beautiful classical theory, and which appears in the classical limit if we use pilot wave theory.

And it gives also, independently, the continuity equation.

These are two independent beautiful justifications for one and the same equation. That's not something one can made up, that's a sufficiently strong hint that the guiding equation is correct.

Bohmians had made their theory relativistic by the ugly price of adding a preferred frame. Now as I said to ilja - it is not possible to define a common preferred frame in the curved space, for example, a common frame for the inner and outer part of the black hole. I had had confirmed it, because in his GLET there is no such thing as collapse.

But I am sure that BM will be able to accommodate the black holes by making more and more artificial assumtions.

What do you mean with "accomodating black holes"? In GLET there is such a thing as a gravitational collapse, it simply stops immediately before horizon formation. The result will, from observational point of view, not differ from GR black holes.

And the price is ugly for you. I have postulated the existence of a preferred frame for completely different reason before even learning pilot wave theory. And my ether model of the SM (http://ilja-schmelzer.de/clm" ) gives all
observed particles of the SM and allows to compute the SM gauge action. I can wait now
until some competing theory presents something comparable.

But what is a whole point? Pure/MWI (and even CI) QM is able to work on the edge of the semi-classical approach to gravity (Hawking, Unruh) while BM is in denial of both effects because these effects are inconsistent with BM.

I don't see why semiclassical gravity is in any way inconsistent with BM.

You can say that both effects are not confirmed experimentally. I agree, but at least they are predicted. What is a prediciton power of BM except that it had recently accommodated SR and is trying to tackle some GR things?

The predictive power of pilot wave theory is that of QM. These are identical. That's sufficiently large predictive power.

Finally, the single histrory deterministic theory suffers from the laplace determinism, so me writing this post is pre-coded in the initial conditions during the big bang. I see such determinism as a loss, not as a victory.

I don't care about determinism. Some stochastic variants (Nelson) have some beautiful aspects, they give the Bohmian quantum potential in a quite natural way.

Could you explain, what aspects of BM are so attractive for you?

First of all, it has a preferred frame. (This is, of course, my personal position, I understand that you don't share it).

I have not cared much in the past about foundations, shut up and calculate was fine for me, so I'm not a dogmatic. But once we have found some realistic interpretation in the sense used by EPR and Bell, there is no reason to give up this notion of realism, thus, the only viable (for me) competitors are realistic ones. Relativistic symmetry I have rejected earlier for different independent reasons.

Realistic collapse theories are obviously made up and ugly. But pilot wave theory has, with the guiding equation, a remarkable and beautiful completion of quantum theory.

 

[Ilja]

BTW there are some good news.

So, relativistic BM is indistinguishable (experimentally) from other iterpretations of QM.
But, BM predicts that there is a preferred frame.
The situation changes in curved space, check here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_post-Newtonian_formalism

There are special parameters:

And these values of these parameters are experimentally verifiable.

The situation doesn't change. These parameters measure some possible effects of a preferred frame. For a theory where the preferred frame is hidden, they have the same values as for GR.

 

[Ilja]

Good news:
BM is not fundamentally indeterministic. It only appears indeterministic because we do not know the actual initial conditions.

Bad news:
Yes, I am saying that past and future exist (eternalism). If it is hard to swallow, maybe this can help:
http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Nikolic_FQXi_time.pdf

But you should not take this as the common opinion of all pilot wave supporters. Pilot wave theory is a theory which is compatible with presentism (only presence exists).

 

[Dmitry67]

Ilja, well, our understanding of beauty is quite different. I have to admit, I am shocked by the fact that preffered frame for you is a beauty - not an uglyness.

But anyway... talking about your GLET,
did you see this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parameterized_post-Newtonian_formalism

Looks like it does not take a long time to check if your GLET is compatible with an experimental data...

 

[Dmitry67]

The situation doesn't change. These parameters measure some possible effects of a preferred frame. For a theory where the preferred frame is hidden, they have the same values as for GR.

But they are not hidden in GLET, because, as I understand, GLET gives different predictions then SR
For example, in SR if I jump ito BH I am torn apart by the tidal forces, but there is no surface
In your theiry you hit the surface

 

[Ilja]

So Bohmian Mechanics require:

1. TRUE indeterminism/randomness at the fundamental level?
2. 10 000x The speed of light which inreturns means: a block universe/eternalism?


This is less realist than positivism =\

Pilot wave theory certainly does not require that. It is deterministic itself. A block universe is not necessary too. A simple preferred frame does the job.

There are independent arguments in favour of a preferred frame, for example my model of the standard model particles http://ilja.schmelzer.ce/clm" .

 

[Ilja]

There are ways to turn discussions of foundational issues into experimental tests (such as Bell's inequalities). Speaking of which, I thought that some papers by the nobel laureate Tony Leggett combined with experiments, ruled out nonlocal-realism as well.

Not non-local realism (these tests are irrelevant for the non-local realistic pilot wave theories as well as other theories with preferred frame), but a particular extravagant version of non-local realism. I'm not sure anybody has seriously proposed a theory of the type rejected by Leggett.

You may be able to hobble together a theory equivalent to quantum mechanics in that it predicts the same values for all experiments, but to do so you would have to abandon much of what we learned about the deepest symmetries of physics. To cling onto one a priori expectation you have, you'd end up replacing real physics with adhoc results. Sure, Lorentz Ether Theory predicts the same results as Special Relativy for electrodynamics .. but do all those ad-hoc statements really amount to a better, or even useful, theory ... can you even call it an "interpretation" of a theory if you replace all the beauty and guts with something else to fit your a priori expectation? There is a reason LET and the Bohm interpretation haven't led to new predictions and advancement of physics. In my opinion they are a waste of time.

The reason is a simple one: Much more people working in other directions, and a de facto taboo on ether theory.

But what is comparable in the domain of explanation of the properties of the standard model of particle physics with my model http://ilja-schmelzer.de/clm" ? Can anybody else compute the fermionic content, the SM gauge group and its action of fermions from simple first principles applied to a simple model? I can.

By the way, my generalization of the Lorentz ether to gravity is comparable even in beauty with GR. In particular, it has a useful application for two beautiful constructions which have been independently invented to simplify GR: harmonic coordinates and the ADM decomposition.