I Interesting Scientific American article (The end of QM?)

[wittgenstein]

TL;DR Summary

The end of QM? if it was not from Scientific American I would not have even read the article!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/...2JzvSNe6piKPZCGbhdpyZWcHeLO_2B-w5fPxFRKgfrGvY

I love quantum physics almost mystical and paradoxical nature. That seems to be ending. Especially with the advent of superdeterminism . I was always suspicious of QM's claim that if we cannot know something ( location and velocity ) it does not exist.

 

[wittgenstein]

I guess we will no longer have to understand how one can violate Law of excluded middle - Wikipedia

 

[Haborix]

Looking briefly through the original paper, it seems to be a variation on an old theme---the quantum zeno effect. You seem more focused on interpretational issues, while the paper is basically silent on those points.

EDIT: As to the Scientific American article... mere puffery.

 

[PeroK]

I was always suspicious of QM's claim that if we cannot know something ( location and velocity ) it does not exist.

I thought you came up with that one:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

 

[PeterDonis]

The actual paper is here:

https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.033512

 

[Nugatory]

... the advent of superdeterminism

What do you mean by that? I know what superdeterminism is, and I know what the advent of something is, but I am at a loss to understand what “the advent of superdeterminism“ is.

 

[wittgenstein]

It means that it is being considered seriously now.

 

[wittgenstein]

What do you mean by that? I know what superdeterminism is, and I know what the advent of something is, but I am at a loss to understand what “the advent of superdeterminism“ is.

" a coming into being or use the advent of spring the advent of pasteurization the advent of personal computers Advent | Definition of Advent by Merriam-Webster (merriam-webster.com)

 

[wittgenstein]

Computers have been around for a long time. But only in the past few decades have they rose to prominence.

 

[wittgenstein]

I guess i should rewrite my post as it was obviously not clear. I wrote, "I was always suspicious of QM's claim that if we cannot know something ( location and velocity ) it does not exist. " I did not mean that QM claims that the object does not exist. I was claiming that the object has no POSITION OR VELOCITY according to QM. The Scientific American article suggested that such knowledge is knowable. I was also expressing the idea that the law of excluded middle will no longer be violated. Something cannot be 2 different things or places simultaneously.

 

[wittgenstein]

That is, as it [the particle] moves from its starting point A to some endpoint B, it doesn’t take one definite path, but rather simultaneously takes every possible path connecting the two points.
Hawking the grand design.“According to Democritus, atoms had lost the qualities like color, taste, etc., they only occupied space, but geometrical assertions [distance, location, boundaries etc.] about atoms were admissible and required no further analysis. In modern physics, atoms lose this last property, they possesses geometrical qualities in no higher degree than color, taste etc."
Heisenberg “Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science”, trans F, C, Hayes (1952),

We cannot even suppose that the particle has a [particular] position and a velocity that are known to God but are hidden from us. Such "hidden variable" theories predict results that are not in agreement with observation.
Pg 107 The Universe in a nutshell. Hawking

I agree with Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Those claims by Hawking and Heisenberg are extraordinary. Now it looks like those claims of Hawking’s and Heisenberg’s do not have to be made anymore.

 

[wittgenstein]

I was hoping that someone could actually answer my question. Which boiled down is, do these recent developments remove the extraordinary nature of QM? Please, if you are going to claim that QM is not extraordinary, please explain how contradicting Law of excluded middle - Wikipedia is not extraordinary.

 

[PeterDonis]

do these recent developments remove the extraordinary nature of QM?

It depends on what you think the "extraordinary nature of QM" is. But as far as I can tell, these experiments are perfectly in line with what we already knew about QM--they don't invalidate any of the basic math or predictions of the theory--and they don't rule out any particular interpretation of QM. So I would say that, whatever you thought was extraordinary about QM before, that thing is still there now.

 

[DrChinese]

Which boiled down is, do these recent developments remove the extraordinary nature of QM?

Pop articles (the ones with catchy headlines) like this are a dime a dozen. The only people that think they represent anything "amazing" and new are those who know little about current research. Read their conclusion and you will see there is no mention of overturning any element of QM, much less a "core tenet". So your answer is: there are no recent developments that

Scientific American title: "New Views of Quantum Jumps Challenge Core Tenets of Physics"
Actual paper: "Quantum Zeno effect appears in stages."

And the "advent of superdeterminism"? First, there is no theory or interpretation called "superdeterminism". There is only an idea for that, and so far there is no meaningful paper attempting to explain it and how it would describe the quantum world. NONE*. Maybe you will write that paper! In the meantime, I would love to see a few names of authors who are advocates of superdeterminism. I'd be amazed if you could find 3.

------------------------------

*Hopefully no one will mention 't Hooft's writings on the matter, which do NOT advance an interpretation at all. You cannot falsify an idea that has no specifics, and he has not advanced an related interpretation of QM. I could just as easily say that quantum particles are made of turtles ("it's turtles all the way down").

 

[atyy]

*Hopefully no one will mention 't Hooft's writings on the matter, which do NOT advance an interpretation at all.

Unfortunately, you did. Must be superdeterminism. Or retrocausation.

 

[PeroK]

I was hoping that someone could actually answer my question. Which boiled down is, do these recent developments remove the extraordinary nature of QM? Please, if you are going to claim that QM is not extraordinary, please explain how contradicting Law of excluded middle - Wikipedia is not extraordinary.

The extraordinariness did not start with QM as a theory; it started with experiments that revealed the unexpected nature of reality. Compton did not propose a theory that light may scatter like a massless particle and change its wavelength depending on the scattering angle. He did an experiment and discovered that is how light behaves. You can't make that go away. Whatever theory you propose to adopt must predict all the "weirdness" and "extraordinariness" of QM. Because QM is designed to predict all the "weirdness" and "extraordinariness" of nature.

QM is based on a core mathematical formalism. There is no contradiction between QM and standard mathematics or any element of logic - including the law of excluded middle.

Saying it does reveals that you understand neither QM nor logic.

When a popular science jounalist says something like "QM defies logic", what they mean is that "nature does not work as I expected it to".

Superdeterminism is, essentially, a fancy word for a capricious God controlling the universe. Personally, I think it's total bunkum. But, perhaps serious scientists of a more religious persuasion can see something in it.

In general, your views on QM are coloured entirely by taking popular science jounalism at face value. Taking shock headlines and extraordinary soundbites as the current progress of research. Going by the popular press, the basis of all science gets overturned and rewritten every few months.

 

[Nugatory]

It means that it is being considered seriously now.

Huh? By whom? You have misunderstood something you’ve read.

 

[vanhees71]

Glancing over the SA article I only draw the conclusion that also SA seems to get into the realm of popular-science journals I don't trust anymore. Ninov's results are all understood within standard QT as far as I know, and that there are no instantaneous quantum jumps is already clear from just looking at the fundamental equations of QT: The time evolution is a differential equation in $t$. So how can there be "jumps"? There are rapid transitions but no jumps, and the quantum Zeno effect is also not very surprising and, afaik, also observed in experiments several times before. SA seems now also try to sell their stuff by making unjustified claims about the "weirdness" of QT. Quantum esoterics sells, and that seems to be what's behind the article.

BTW the scientific article linked in the SA particle is Open Access:

https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.033512

I've still to read the article carefully, but from the Abstract there's no indication of any implication of an "end of QM". It's just another of the many amazing experiments that can time-resolve more and more precisely the dynamics of quantum states.

 

[PeterDonis]

SA seems to get into the realm of popular-science journals I don't trust anymore

I've held that opinion for some time now. It's very unfortunate; years ago SA was very different.

 

[vanhees71]

The German version, "Spektrum der Wissenschaft", is still pretty good.

 

[mgeorge001]

The Scientific America article was interesting. I think one must exercise some patience, with the significance of results as those reported. Unfortunately, "high level" physics always generates a lot of smoke and mirrors when the savvy researchers or journalists put spins on the stuff to "sell it" to their supporters and fans. It takes time and patience to let the superficial nonsense dissipate a little. Still: Interesting!

 

[vanhees71]

Of course, it's interesting. I only find it very unfortunate (to say it nicely), if I need to read the original article to understand what they really talk about. The original article is a fascinating experimental result on the quantum Zeno effect but fully compatible with quantum mechanics with no indication whatsoever for having found QM being wrong.

What I find so troublesome is that I can really understand only a tiny fraction of original scientific papers (even of physics that is not related to my own topic of expertise) and thus for me the real merit of popular-science articles/journals is to get a trustworthy report on interesting scientific results and not some bold claims which are just made to sell the journal and distorting the meaning of the research originally reported.

 

[mgeorge001]

Of course, it's interesting. I only find it very unfortunate (to say it nicely), if I need to read the original article to understand what they really talk about. The original article is a fascinating experimental result on the quantum Zeno effect but fully compatible with quantum mechanics with no indication whatsoever for having found QM being wrong.

What I find so troublesome is that I can really understand only a tiny fraction of original scientific papers (even of physics that is not related to my own topic of expertise) and thus for me the real merit of popular-science articles/journals is to get a trustworthy report on interesting scientific results and not some bold claims which are just made to sell the journal and distorting the meaning of the research originally reported.

It is largely up to editors and peer reviewers, plus the researchers themselves to keep the reporting trustworthy. That makes the whole process dependent on people, most of whom have a variety of private agendas to push. Plus, once a "style" or "program" dominates, it often takes years before something worthwhile emerges from the bs.

 

[vanhees71]

I don't know, whether SA is "peer reviewed". It's not a scientific journal, but a popular-science journal!

 

[wittgenstein]

QM says that before measurement the superposition is both a particle and a wave. QM also says ( see Hawking's quotes that I gave previously ) that the particle is nowhere and everywhere. That to me is a violation of the law of the excluded middle. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/ was invented so that this violation of the law of the excluded middle would not extend the quantum weirdness into our macro world via ex contradictione quodlibet . To me this is not a solution, to me it is like saying that OK there are square circles at the quantum level but who cares that does not effect out everyday world. The fact that the law of the excluded middle has been violated period is shocking enough to me.

 

[weirdoguy]

QM says that before measurement the superposition is both a particle and a wave. QM also says (...) that the particle is nowhere and everywhere.

No and no. For reference see any QM textbook.

 

[wittgenstein]

So what is it? A particle or a wave?

 

[wittgenstein]

Or is it neither?
"If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. "
Oppenheimer

 

[PeroK]

QM says that before measurement the superposition is both a particle and a wave.

This is simply wrong.

QM also says ( see Hawking's quotes that I gave previously ) that the particle is nowhere and everywhere.

This is simply wrong.

That to me is a violation of the law of the excluded middle.

Even if the above were true, there is nothing necessarily illogical about it. Logic is only violated if your QM definitions of particle, wave and position are not compatible with what QM says about them.

To me this is not a solution, to me it is like saying that OK there are square circles at the quantum level but who cares that does not effect out everyday world.

It's not like that at all.

The fact that the law of the excluded middle has been violated period is shocking enough to me.

This is not a fact, so there is nothing to be shocked about.

 

[weirdoguy]

Quantum particle which is neither classical particle nor classical wave. Wave-particle duality is an outdated concept - use search button for other discussions of this issue, since its been beaten to death here.

 

[wittgenstein]

Are you talking about probability waves? That does not reconcile anything.

 

[wittgenstein]

So all the quotes from Nobel Prize winning physicists about how QM violates logic and how no one can conceptualize it are the result of being uneducated?

 

[PeroK]

So all the quotes from Nobel Prize winning physicists about how QM violates logic and how no one can conceptualize it are the result of being uneducated?

No, there are three problems here.

1) Your sources are all popular science, where things are exaggerated and often presented in order to shock. QM, as an academic subject that you will find in any university textbook, is a very different subject. To take one example. I have two textbooks on QM. "Wave-particle duality" has only one reference, as a historical footnote, and is not referenced at all in the second book (Modern QM by JJ Sakurai).

So, for example, when you open a debate on wave-particle duality, you are explicity debating QM on a popular science level; not QM as an academic subject. As an academic subject, there is no "wave-particle duality".

2) You are misinterpeting statements about the unexpected nature of experimental results as violations of logic. QM is actually based on linear algebra and functional analysis. There can be no violation of logic there. It's only when you interpret QM as applying to the universe we inhabit that your claim of illogicality emerges. As previously pointed out, this is simply that QM does not meet your preconceived notion of how nature must behave.

3) You can, if you wish, learn QM. But, you can't explode it though a few minutes of crude thinking. If QM couldn't stand up to five minutes scutiny how could it have survived as a major component of modern physics for 90 years?

 

[wittgenstein]

Are you claiming that those physicists did not write as I quoted them? I gave Heisnberg's quote source. I can give the primary sources for the others.

 

[wittgenstein]

Please give me an actual argument beyond telling me that I do not know anything about QM.

 

[PeroK]

Please give me an actual argument beyond telling me that I do not know anything about QM.

An argument about what?

 

[weirdoguy]

Are you claiming that those physicists did not write as I quoted them?

They did not write those thing in their textbooks nor peer-reviewed papers. Pop-sci sources are not bases for scientific discussion.

 

[wittgenstein]

Actually that was from Heisnberg's book and alo hawkings. So they lied in their books.

 

[wittgenstein]

I should have said "debate" rather then "argument". I am weird I guess. I ask questions because having my entire world view shattered is not a problem. It is actually the most exciting thing I can imagine.

 

[weirdoguy]

Actually that was from Heisnberg's book and alo hawkings.

I said textbooks, not pop-sci books.

 

[mgeorge001]

Are you claiming that those physicists did not write as I quoted them? I gave Heisnberg's quote source. I can give the primary sources for the others.

I was only commenting on the Scientific American article. I thought it was interesting. As far as the accuracy of quotes of physicists, I did not check into that. Thanks for the mention of the article. I enjoyed reading it.

 

[PeroK]

Actually that was from Heisnberg's book and alo hawkings. So they lied in their books.

It depends what you mean by a lie. Let's take a non-QM example. Here on PF, we do not use the concept of relativistic mass:

https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/what-is-relativistic-mass-and-why-it-is-not-used-much/

In academia the concept is (almost) obsolete.

Now, I challenge you to find a popular science source that does not emphasise relativistic mass as an important tenet of modern physics.

Why the discrepancy? Why does a concept that disappeared from academic textbooks over 50 years ago still persist as a pillar of modern physics in popular science? I have no idea.

Wave-particle duality is the same.

And: the universe started from a single point of infinite density. Popular version of the big bang theory. Nonsense.

I'm sure there are others. Basically, there is a set of things that popular science writers are obliged to promote. But, if you study the subject at university, you'll find the actual theory is very different.

Ultimately, QM (and Relativity) can be laid out as purely mathematical frameworks - with all the logical watertightness of any mathematics, and all the rules of logic intact.

It's only when you suggest these frameworks apply to our universe that the fun starts - and people claim that Relativity and QM are self-contradictory or defy logic. But, these people are using logic in the everyday sense.

In answer to all your questions, I would say: forget nature and our universe. Present QM as a branch of functional analysis. It's pure mathematics, all nice and logical.

 

[EPR]

So all the quotes from Nobel Prize winning physicists about how QM violates logic and how no one can conceptualize it are the result of being uneducated?

Violates what logic? It must be a preconceived something about how the world works.

I find no breach of logic in my minimalist, no-assumption, personal experience of something that appears like a universe.

 

[DrChinese]

So what is it? A particle or a wave?

As you must have read a hundred times by now, quantum objects do not have classical properties such as position and momentum. They can exhibit elements of these at times, and do not exhibit them at other times. So calling them a particle or a wave is just a convenience. Experiments can make a quantum objects appear as a particle, a wave, or any combination in between. There certainly is no excluded middle.

So you can twist definitions, meanings, etc but that does not in any way change the ability of QM to make accurate statistical predictions. And yes, QM can appear strange, bizarre, counterintuitive or whatever... or not. How it affects your sensibilities obviously has no impact on its scientific quality or value.

I think it is fun to explain some of those elements to people because it piques their interest and makes them think. I always hope it will open people's minds to the vast amount of research that has been done in the past 50+ years. Many folks are quite unaware of the incredible amount of progress that was made long ago that holds up today. The quantum discoveries of the 1920's are mostly alive and well today. These ideas are well represented in many popular books, including ones written by famous physicists. I am not aware of anyone "lying" as you say. Rather there are things at the quantum level that operate quite differently than one might initially guess. That's true in a lot of scientific areas.

 

[Nugatory]

Are you claiming that those physicists did not write as I quoted them? I gave Heisnberg's quote source. I can give the primary sources for the others.

One must be careful about the context in quoting anyone. Some of the more common pitfalls when quoting quantum physicists are:
1) Picking up a quote from the decades before the modern form of the theory was understood and formalized. Statements from that period will reflect the incomplete understanding of the era.
2) Physicists use natural language descriptions instead of math when trying to explain physics to non-mathematical audiences. Because these are natural language descriptions they are subject to the limited accuracy and precision of natural language descriptions - they can never be an adequate substitute for the real thing.

You have been fairly consistently suckered by #2

 

[vanhees71]

Are you claiming that those physicists did not write as I quoted them? I gave Heisnberg's quote source. I can give the primary sources for the others.

The problem is that popular-science writing is among the most difficult tasks for a scientist. Particularly in theoretical physics you cannot use the only adequate language to talk about it, which is math, including quite some advanced methods (calculus, linear algebra, functional analysis). Even the best popularizers cannot give a fully correct account of the subject, because they cannot use the adequate tools to express it right.

That said, there's another category of popular-science writing physicists, who like to promote some personal world view and try to apply the results of their research to realms of the human experience, where they simply don't apply. Heisenberg and (to less extent) also Bohr were among those scientists. Particularly Heisenberg had a strong philosophical opinion about the meaning of quantum mechanics, and this never does good in popular-science writing. Even his scientific papers, if not checked by his more down-to-earth collaborators (most importantly Pauli) are hard to understand and partially even wrong.

If you want to study QM by reading the original papers (not a good strategy to learn the subject for yourself properly), then rather stick to the "no-nonsense people" like Born, Jordan, Pauli, Dirac, Schrödinger, and Sommerfeld than to consult Heisenberg or Bohr.

 

[H_A_Landman]

please explain how contradicting Law of excluded middle - Wikipedia is not extraordinary.

Classical logic is not the only possible logic. It has many undesirable properties, such as being explosive (one contradiction destroys the whole system). For a general overview of other possibilities, see Graham Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic, 2nd Ed.

Consider a monotonic database of facts (i.e. you can add new facts, but never delete old ones) that starts empty. You also have a set of axioms and allowable proof methods. You are allowed to add facts if either (1) you learn them externally (from some outside source) or (2) you can prove them using the existing facts, axioms, and methods. A fact is TRUE if it is in the database. A fact is FALSE if its negation is in the database. It is quite clear that these are not the only two possibilities. A fact is NEITHER if it is neither TRUE nor FALSE; in an empty database, all facts are NEITHER. A fact can also be BOTH, i.e. contradictory. So there are 4 logic values, and the NEITHER value violates the law of the excluded middle. It is the excluded middle. Yet this is a perfectly sensible logic system.

Note that any logic system which is paraconsistent (doesn't explode on 1 contradiction) cannot be an extension of classical logic and contain it as a subset, because the subset would still explode. It instead must give up at least one part of classical logic. In the above, we have given up both Excluded Middle and Non-contradiction (including proof by contradiction).

Another example: Discursive logic models a room full of people with different beliefs. A statement is TRUE if at least one person consistently believes it. So "Trump was a good president" and "Trump was a bad president" can both be TRUE if there are different people who consistently believe one or the other. However "Trump was a good president & Trump was a bad president" cannot be consistently believed by anyone. Thus in this system we have given up conjunction: "A" being true and "B" being true does NOT imply that "A & B" is true. So you can have "A" and "~A" both be TRUE, and still not be able to construct the contradiction "A & ~A" and explode.

At any rate, the Law of the Excluded Middle is missing from many paraconsistent logics, and can not at all be assumed to be universally true or applicable. In particular, there is no reason to assume that it must apply to quantum logics, which we already know have many non-intuitive properties (like negative probabilities).