mitchell porter said:
I don't know if I understand you correctly. You seem to be saying: we must believe in certain things - determinism, particles, waves - unless we can actually disprove them. OK, the meaning of that seems clear.
I mostly agree with this characterization, but I would use the words "we should have an interpretation" instead of "we must believe in certain things".
mitchell porter said:
But what's unclear, is whether you also want us to have a detailed mechanistic explanation of quantum phenomena in terms of these axiomatic beliefs.
I think it provides motivation that may lead us to a detailed mechanistic explanation.
mitchell porter said:
Consider Bohmian mechanics.
It does not fit with what we observe.
mitchell porter said:
Some of your axioms seem potentially harmless - I am thinking of existence of particles and waves - though it's the details which are all-important. But other axioms cause well-known problems. How are you going to explain quantum phenomena deterministically? How are you going to deal with Bell's theorem while insisting on local determinism?
If the non-locality is locally prepared between particles and you can not use it to pass signals faster than light then those basic things we know go a long ways to describing how it works.
mitchell porter said:
It is precisely because the restoration of classical physical paradigms has been so difficult, that the positivism of the Copenhagen interpretation has instead had lasting power. What is observed is definitely real; quantum mechanics tells us how to predict it; as for what goes on between observations, that's metaphysics...
I can understand the desire for more, but the merit of this position is, that it really tells us what we do know and what we don't know. So I prefer to make that my starting point.
I think that is a fine interpretation for some, but for others like myself, I want an interpretation that explains what is actually happening.
mitchell porter said:
You're not giving us any new equations. Nor have you given us any new "picture" of quantum phenomena.
Yes, I agree, I am not really giving any new equations or any new "picture" of quantum phenomena. When I say waves are real, particles are real, waves originate from particles, and non-local entanglement is locally prepared, I am just stating the obvious observations from a realist perspective. It is like the fable "The Emperor has no clothes" where the naïve child states the obvious.
mitchell porter said:
You're just proposing certain things as axiomatic, unless they can definitely be proven wrong.
With strong evidence I am always ready to accept that the realist view is wrong, but I don't see strong evidence. Instead I see a lot of handwaving or strawman arguments whenever it is said that the universe does not follow classical logic.
mitchell porter said:
Well, we have had many decades of people trying to explain quantum mechanics from various starting points. Are you saying that your starting point definitely works, probably works, might work? Or just that we can, should, must make those particular assumptions?
Here is a two part argument that I believe supports my view:
PART 1:
Consider the HBT (Hanbury Brown and Twiss) effect. In this phenomena, photons from independent incoherent light sources measured by two close together detectors are found to have a much higher level of coincidence (photons appear to bunch) than you would expect if you were to treat the photons like classical bullets. As you move the detectors apart the photon bunching effect goes away. This talk from Alain Aspect does a good job explaining this phenomena:
This experiment can be explained using classical and quantum mechanical math.
In the classical solution, you treat the light as waves instead of particles. An equation can be constructed involving waves that show the correlated intensities between the two detectors depend on the distance between the detectors and this equation can be used to correctly model the HBT phenomena.
A higher level classical explanation is if the detectors are thought of as taking snapshot photos of random intensity patterns (
see this part of the video), as you move the detectors closer together the photon intensity patterns will become more and more similar and if you could actually move them on top of each other they would be the same.
n the quantum mechanical solution you treat the photons as coherent sources, even though they are not, and you consider all paths the two independent photons can take and the interference between paths is what accounts for the photon bunching phenomena. There is no non-local entanglement involved in this solution because there is no local preparation of the two independent photon sources.
In the HBT experiment both the quantum mechanical and classical approach rely on wave interference and the quantum mechanical solution does not involve non-local entanglement.
Conclusion
When an experiment does not involve local particle considerations such as non-local entanglement through local preparation, the classical and quantum approaches are similar if not the same (see part 2 argument).
PART 2:
The closest thing we have to a universal equation is the principle of least action. This video by Sabine describes it well:
Sabine uses an example of light refracting as a motivation for this principle and says "its seems like the light needs to know something about the future" (in order to know which direction to go).
Sabine explains the use of the least action principle in classical physics:
"The action is the integral over the kinetic energy minus potential energy. But there is also an action that gives you electrodynamics. And there is an action that gives you general relativity."
Sabine explains the equations using least action give the same result as the Euler-Lagrange equations:
"And yes, the principle of least action really uses an integral into the future. How do we explain that? Well it turns out that there is another way to express the principle of least action. One can mathematically show that the path which minimizes the action is that path which fulfills a set of differential equations which are called the Euler-Lagrange Equations. For example, the Euler Lagrange Equations of the rock example just give you Newton's second law. The Euler Lagrange Equations for electrodynamics are Maxwell's equations, the Euler Lagrange Equations for General Relativity are Einstein's field equations."
So all of our classical forces (i.e. gravity and electromagnetism) that we directly observe, that involve particles, that involve waves coming from those particles, can be formulated using the principle of least action.
Furthermore the equation of least action is used at the heart of our best quantum mechanical theory QFT and is often called the Feynman path integral.
Sabine in reference to applying the Feynman path integral: "But to do the calculation you don't need to know what happens in the future, because the particle goes to all points anyway. Except, hmm, it doesn't. In reality it goes to only one point. So maybe the reason we need the measurement postulate is that we don't take this dependence on the future which we have in the path integral seriously enough"
I agree, let's take this dependence on the future more seriously. How does this happen in the real universe, the one where we observe particles and waves coming from those particles?
In the book "QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter" Richard Feynman discussing how light seems to move: "So light doesn’t really travel only in a straight line; it “smells” the neighboring paths around it"
So what seems more likely:
That the equation of least action allows a particle to determine its path by magically sniffing out its future?
Or the simpler explanation, that a particle does actually sniff out its path in the sense that it acts on the combined wave amplitudes received from all the particle waves in the universe and acts in such a way to minimize amplitude and adhere to the principles of least action.
Conclusion: Our best equations for both quantum mechanics and gravity share the equation of least action which acts as if the waves from particles are real.