If philosophical discussions are not allowed

[BWV]

why doesn't this apply discussions of the various interpretations of QM?

At their heart, these are ontological and epistemological arguments, i.e. philosophy

More evidence that physics is largely over? Would any scientist with the potential for discovering something interesting waste their time with scholastic arguments about multiple universes?

 

[symbolipoint]

Physics may be philosophy combined or associated with the study of Matter, Energy, and the interchange among them; but Philosophy is not Physics. Observe, you posted your comment in the Physics section of the forum.

 

[BWV]

True, but the site does not allow other discussions of the philosophy of science - Popper, Kuhn et al

And the philosophical discussions of QM interpretations happen here

 

[symbolipoint]

True, but the site does not allow other discussions of the philosophy of science - Popper, Kuhn et al

And the philosophical discussions of QM interpretations happen here

I don't know exactly because I do not pay attention to the Quantum Mechanics subforum.
(But I did see this topic in Quantum Physics subforum, this one time, as a new topic shown.)

This is the kind of topic or thread which a moderator or administrator usually will stop.

 

[BWV]

I don't know exactly because I do not pay attention to the Quantum Mechanics subforum.
(But I did see this topic in Quantum Physics subforum, this one time, as a new topic shown.)

This is the kind of topic or thread which a moderator or administrator usually will stop.

Probably so, but am honestly curious as these discussions take place all the time, witness

https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...tum-interpretation.966905/page-4#post-6139313

Which is a philosophical discussion about ontology and epistemology

I don't really care, just curious on the rationale

 

[symbolipoint]

I checked the referred topic you gave. It appears to be grappling with how to understand some characteristics of Quantum Physics, and seems to not become imbalanced with the philosophies applied. More suitable people than I should comment further.

 

[PeterDonis]

why doesn't this apply discussions of the various interpretations of QM?

The rule, as you can see on the PF Terms and Rules page, is:

Philosophical discussions are permitted only at the discretion of the mentors and may be deleted or closed without warning or appeal

"Philosophical discussions" is a broad term, but many threads on QM interpretations could be seen as falling within that category, yes. The subject of QM interpretations often gets brought up, and plenty of threads discussing it have been closed. But discussions of QM interpretations that reference appropriate sources--particularly papers, of which there have been some discussed recently, that propose possible ways to experimentally rule out certain interpretations, have been allowed. If you want to start a thread on that general topic and are unsure about whether it will be accepted, feel free to PM one of the Mentors and ask. Be sure to include links to any sources you want to reference.

the site does not allow other discussions of the philosophy of science - Popper, Kuhn et al

Generally not, because we have found that the signal to noise ratio of such discussions is unacceptably low. The thread on QM interpretations that you link to, if nothing else, is helping to clarify for the participants exactly what each of the interpretations is saying and where they point in different directions as regards what kinds of more fundamental theories to look for.

 

[Nugatory]

why doesn't this apply discussions of the various interpretations of QM?

That's a fair question, and one that's been much discussed (although most of the discussion has been in the mentors' private forums so you won't have seen it). There are several considerations that apply to interpretations of QM but not to more general philosophical discussions, and on balance these considerations have been enough to justify an exception:

• We have mentors who are competent and willing to moderate QM interpretation threads, but not more general philosophical debates. This is a significant consideration in a forum that depends on unpaid volunteers to keep things running smoothly.
• We have members who are interested in these issues and are also recognized experts in quantum mechanics. Thus, our interpretation threads are generally passionate debates between people who know what they're talking about and care about it a lot, whereas more general philosophical threads usually end up in a swamp of noisy ignorance.
• For many non-professionals, the interpretation questions are the most important. A non-professional will be studying QM for the same reasons that I as a native English speaker (native speakers of other languages can substitute their own cultural equivalents) study Shakespeare: it's an important part of our intellectual heritage. "Shut up and calculate" may be good advice for someone who has to deliver results, but it's no answer for someone who wants to know what QM is about. No other branch of physics has quite the same level of foundational questions that are of interest to non-specialists
• From the beginning, QM has attracted more pop-sci drivel than any other area of physics. It's impossible to respond to some of this stuff (consciousness causes collapse, the cat is dead and alive until we look at it, the particle is a wave, anything about MWI in the popular press, ...) without adopting some interpretational stance.

 

[DarMM]

Just to add to @Nugatory :

1. The interpretation of QM is actually discussed in physics textbooks. Weinberg, Auletta et al, Basdevant, Griffiths, Landau & Lifshitz, etc devote chapters or sections of chapters to it.
2. The issue motivates many actual results in Quantum Mechanics: Bell's theorem, Kochen Specker theorem, PBR theorem, SIC-POVM results, early quantum computing was significantly motivated by attempting to demonstrate the Many-Worlds viewpoint. Similarly many of the reconstructions of QM such as Hardy's and Cabello's. These have been very useful in Quantum Information theory.
3. It is possible to explain purely technically the issues with some interpretations, e.g. attempting to derive the Born rule in Many Worlds. As time goes on there have been further no-go results restricting or eliminating different interpretations.
4. It's a natural question to a person learning QM, i.e. "What actually is a superposition?" I think that's one of the main reasons it should be allowed. The questions that lead to interpretations are exactly like "What does the Stress-Energy tensor measure?" in Relativity, they're completely natural questions that would occur to a student. It's simply that in QM there is no agreed upon answer.

The only issue I think is when people continue to argue for their favorite interpretation beyond no-go results. Discussions about how interpretations have had to react and change to no-go results, how their current form is very different to their initial naive form, the various no-go results themselves and what you can learn about the QM formalism by thinking of it in various ways are worthwhile. Any thread that's gone south in my experience has always been simply from somebody axe-grinding about how their favorite interpretation is the "obvious" solution or how another is "obviously" incorrect/inconsistent etc.

 

[haushofer]

I never understand how exactly people distangle ontology and interpretation from physics. Imo it's a false dichotomy. Is the interpretation that the sun is the centre of the solar system also "ontology, not physics", considering a geocentric epicyclemodel can reproduce the heliocentric results?

Doesn't that degrade physics to mere bookkeeping?

 

[A. Neumaier]

The issue motivates many actual results in Quantum Mechanics: Bell's theorem, Kochen Specker theorem,

These are not results about quantum mechanics but about possible deterministic alternatives

 

[DarMM]

These are not results about quantum mechanics but about possible deterministic alternatives

Bell's theorem and Kochen-Specker aren't exclusively about deterministic theories. Kochen-Specher also includes measurement contextuality, see Leifer's paper here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1409.1570.

Bell's theorem doesn't just focus on deterministic alternatives, but Jarrett completeness see here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0351

Even more generally due to Landau and Tsirelson it's about the lack of a common sample space for QM observables. I think the fact that QM can't be embedded in a local Kolmogorov theory is an (interesting) property of QM. The fact that QM lacks a local completion of a certain form is a result "about QM" I would have thought.

Regardless it's an important result in the subject of QM and hence as student will encounter it and wonder about its meaning, exactly what you identify as the object of its focus doesn't affect this.

 

[DarMM]

Also I think if I argue the meaning of "About QM" I'll just be confirming @BWV 's OP!

 

[Demystifier]

I never understand how exactly people distangle ontology and interpretation from physics. Imo it's a false dichotomy. Is the interpretation that the sun is the centre of the solar system also "ontology, not physics", considering a geocentric epicyclemodel can reproduce the heliocentric results?

Doesn't that degrade physics to mere bookkeeping?

I perfectly agree with you. For that matter, see also https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/against-interpretation-comments.965294/

 

[Demystifier]

why doesn't this apply discussions of the various interpretations of QM?
At their heart, these are ontological and epistemological arguments, i.e. philosophy

I think the unofficial unwritten rule is this:
Allowed: good science, bad science, good philosophy of science.
Disallowed: bad philosophy of science.

 

[atyy]

I never understand how exactly people distangle ontology and interpretation from physics. Imo it's a false dichotomy. Is the interpretation that the sun is the centre of the solar system also "ontology, not physics", considering a geocentric epicyclemodel can reproduce the heliocentric results?

Doesn't that degrade physics to mere bookkeeping?

Ontology is a method of bookkeeping.

 

[Nugatory]

I think that we've answered the original question, and the thread is in some danger of sliding into the sort of philosophical discussion that we are not going to allow, so it is now closed. As with all thread closures, you can ask by PM that it be reopened if you want to make an additional on-topic contribution.