Q: Exploring Metaphysics and Quantum Mechanics

[ArjenDijksman]

And I don't see why you are so gung-ho on these experiments. They are not QM experiments. They are classical experiments that HAPPENED to reproduce some aspect of QM observation. What's the big deal?

Hmmm... gung-ho? I merely appreciate those experiments as a physicist because they retrieve some QM results which were regarded impossible to obtain with ordinary macroscopic experiments. They complement our understanding of wave particle duality. What's wrong with mentioning them in a thread about scientifically-acceptable interpretations of QM?

Try using these experiments that you are such a fan of and produce something similar to the coherence gap observed in the Delft/Stony Brook SQUID experiments!

These are NOT QM experiments. Period. You have no ability to construct a Hamiltonian that is identical to a QM Hamiltonian. The starting point is all wrong, and one is only deceiving oneself to think that one can test "interpretations" of QM using these experiments.

I think we misunderstand each other. There is a century old history in quantum mechanics with endless discussions, hundreds of thousands of publications, leading us on a path that made us think in terms in which quantum behavior appears counter-intuitive. And here we have an ordinary physics experiment, which any low-budget lab can reproduce and investigate (you only need a frequency generator, a loud speaker, and a vessel of silicon oil), that challenges the counter-intuitive aspect of quantum behavior. This experiment is still in its infancy. There are only a handful of publications on this experiment, each of which points towards new similarities with QM. Are you inferring that with those few publications, we can have a definite opinion about its applicability to QM?

 

[apeiron]

And I don't see why you are so gung-ho on these experiments. They are not QM experiments. They are classical experiments that HAPPENED to reproduce some aspect of QM observation. What's the big deal?

The argument would seem to be that an interpretation that makes sense in the classical analogue ought to then lend strength to an equivalent interpretation in QM - given nothing better coming along.

Given two intepretations - say decoherence and MWI - I would prefer the one that has the logic shared with some "obvious" classical system over the truly weird one.

Of course, some direct experimental test would be better. But having an accurate classical analogue is not nothing.

 

[ZapperZ]

Hmmm... gung-ho? I merely appreciate those experiments as a physicist because they retrieve some QM results which were regarded impossible to obtain with ordinary macroscopic experiments. They complement our understanding of wave particle duality. What's wrong with mentioning them in a thread about scientifically-acceptable interpretations of QM?


I think we misunderstand each other. There is a century old history in quantum mechanics with endless discussions, hundreds of thousands of publications, leading us on a path that made us think in terms in which quantum behavior appears counter-intuitive. And here we have an ordinary physics experiment, which any low-budget lab can reproduce and investigate (you only need a frequency generator, a loud speaker, and a vessel of silicon oil), that challenges the counter-intuitive aspect of quantum behavior. This experiment is still in its infancy. There are only a handful of publications on this experiment, each of which points towards new similarities with QM. Are you inferring that with those few publications, we can have a definite opinion about its applicability to QM?

The argument would seem to be that an interpretation that makes sense in the classical analogue ought to then lend strength to an equivalent interpretation in QM - given nothing better coming along.

Given two intepretations - say decoherence and MWI - I would prefer the one that has the logic shared with some "obvious" classical system over the truly weird one.

Of course, some direct experimental test would be better. But having an accurate classical analogue is not nothing.

Again, as I've illustrated in my previous post on when something that was a "philosophy" migrates into physics and becomes testable, the only convincing way to settle such an issue is via a very clever methodology of measuring, but on the very same system, not on an "analogous" system that exhibit only SOME of the same effect. One cannot solve the issue of superconductivity by simply studying superfludity, even though a very strong argument can be made that they share many of the same physics. The EPR paradox argument was not solved using an "analogous experiment". It was solved by using the actual, same experiment!

It is a major shortcoming to make a comparison between something when the starting point is all wrong. If you are comfortable in "testing" out some of the interpretation of QM using a classical, non-QM, wrong-Hamiltonian phenomenon, then that's something you have to deal with. I'm surprised we don't just stick to ripple tank. After all, that can "reproduce" QM results too, with so much less cost and so more accessible to grade school students!

Zz.

 

[ArjenDijksman]

Again, as I've illustrated in my previous post on when something that was a "philosophy" migrates into physics and becomes testable, the only convincing way to settle such an issue is via a very clever methodology of measuring, but on the very same system, not on an "analogous" system that exhibit only SOME of the same effect.

I agree. Testing analogous systems only helps us to distinguish between general principles that are valid in both systems, and specific ones applicable only to one particular system.

Or as Fritz Zwicky stated it in New Methods of Thought and Procedure (1967):

It helps us to achieve broad vistas and to derive solutions of specific problems more easily by starting from more general ones. What is most important, however, is that bold generalization enormously stimulates the imagination and often yields unexpected results.​

This work has not yet fully been achieved for Quantum Mechanics.

 

[ZapperZ]

I agree. Testing analogous systems only helps us to distinguish between general principles that are valid in both systems, and specific ones applicable only to one particular system.

Or as Fritz Zwicky stated it in New Methods of Thought and Procedure (1967):

It helps us to achieve broad vistas and to derive solutions of specific problems more easily by starting from more general ones. What is most important, however, is that bold generalization enormously stimulates the imagination and often yields unexpected results.​

This work has not yet fully been achieved for Quantum Mechanics.

The problem here is that the "generalization" of the two experiments you cited has nothing to do with QM (ref: the Hamiltonian).

If the Hamiltonian of the two system are similar, then I can be persuaded that there's some merit to such study. Again, this is done in condensed matter all the time, where insights into the mathematics used in, say, elementary particles, are actually similar to those used in various condensed matter system. It isn't a coincidence that Peter Higgs got many of his inspiration in arriving at the so-called Higgs mechanism from various broken symmetry principles already established in condensed matter.

So it is not as if I'm not aware of the usefulness of looking at analogous systems. I just don't see these as being the same and how you could do what you wish to accomplish with them.

Zz.

 

[ArjenDijksman]

The problem here is that the "generalization" of the two experiments you cited has nothing to do with QM (ref: the Hamiltonian).

If the Hamiltonian of the two system are similar, then I can be persuaded that there's some merit to such study. Again, this is done in condensed matter all the time, where insights into the mathematics used in, say, elementary particles, are actually similar to those used in various condensed matter system. It isn't a coincidence that Peter Higgs got many of his inspiration in arriving at the so-called Higgs mechanism from various broken symmetry principles already established in condensed matter.

So it is not as if I'm not aware of the usefulness of looking at analogous systems. I just don't see these as being the same and how you could do what you wish to accomplish with them.

I didn't say that the Hamiltonian can be generalized to the wave + droplet experiment. The generalization with QM seems essentially phenomenological: there are similarities, they apply further than what seemed possible 10 years ago, but it's not yet clear to which extent they apply. There's too little theoretical study on it (unlike for your example of condensed matter physics). However your claim that these experiments have nothing to do with QM sounds to me unconvincing, let alone for the way it is presented in the peer-reviewed papers.

All in all, I think that any scientist who's discussing, advocating or rejecting Bohmian pilot wave interpretations with respect to other interpretations, should know how "real-life" pilot waves behave. That's how I see the way QM interpretation can benefit from the droplet-wave experiments. The same when you use condensed matter analogies for particle physics: you need to know how condensed matter electrons, excitons or plasmons behave in order to draw conclusions for high energy particle physics.

Kind regards,

Arjen