Graduate Tumulka on Bohmian QED

[Demystifier]

Ok, is there is any other interpretation for which you have high expectations?

About the thermal interpretation, in your opinion, does it have some weaknesses?

 

[A. Neumaier]

Ok, is there is any other interpretation for which you have high expectations?

The shut-up-and-calculate interpretation! It says that anything goes as long as it respects the formalism and is suggestive to the audience. The difficulty there is to make the 'suggestive' watertight. The attempt to do so led me to the thermal interpretation.

About the thermal interpretation, in your opinion, does it have some weaknesses?

I leave the answer to this question to those who have a less biased view than me. In any case, your attempt to shoot it down 5 years ago didn't convince me of having substance.

 

[Demystifier]

The shut-up-and-calculate interpretation! It says that anything goes as long as it respects the formalism and is suggestive to the audience. The difficulty there is to make the 'suggestive' watertight. The attempt to do so led me to the thermal interpretation.

I see. My instrumental Bohmian mechanics can be seen in a similar way, as an attempt to reformulate the shut-up-and-calculate interpretation to a form that makes it more suggestive to the audience. The result, at least, is suggestive to me, just as the thermal interpretation is suggestive to you.

 

[haushofer]

It may be interesting but it is a big problem, because there is no third option. You either have relativity or Galilean relativity. If you cannot make your theory relativistic, then you have to go back to Galilean relativity, and explain all the experiments that confirm relativity. Not sure if the last one is even possible.

Is that really the only way? To use Bell's words, aren't we lacking imagination?

But I see your point.

 

[martinbn]

Is that really the only way? To use Bell's words, aren't we lacking imagination?

But I see your point.

What other way could there be? No Einsteinian relativity and no Galilean relativity? Then it would be more difficult. You need to reconcile a few centuries of physics with it.

 

[Demystifier]

What other way could there be? No Einsteinian relativity and no Galilean relativity? Then it would be more difficult. You need to reconcile a few centuries of physics with it.

Aristotelian?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0375960197001011

Let me explain in my own words. Galilean relativity says that 3-position is relative, 3-velocity is relative, but 3-acceleration is absolute. Aristotelian relativity says that 3-position is relative, but 3-velocity and 3-acceleration are absolute. Einstein-nonrelativistic Bohmian mechanics (ENBM) obeys Aristotelian relativity. Nevertheless, the classical limit of it obeys Galilean relativity. Einstein-nonrelativistic quantum mechanics (ENQM) in its standard form also obeys Galilean relativity. But ENQM has the measurement problem, so it seems that it is incomplete. ENBM is a possible completion of ENQM, according to ENBM Aristotelian relativity is fundamental while Galilean relativity is emergent, valid only at the statistical level.

How to generalize all this to Einstein-relativistic theories? The idea is that Einsteinian relativity is emergent in a similar way as Galilean relativity. How could that be? I have given some ideas in that direction in https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.05986 .

 

[gentzen]

The shut-up-and-calculate interpretation! It says that anything goes as long as it respects the formalism and is suggestive to the audience. The difficulty there is to make the 'suggestive' watertight. The attempt to do so led me to the thermal interpretation.

I really like this, because this was also the feeling I got from reading your 2019 book. When I had the challenge to describe the thermal interpretation to an outsider "in very few words," I decided to go with that feeling for the non-probability part:

Because of my interest in probability, I reviewed Arnold Neumaier's thermal interpretation.
(https://physicsoverflow.org/41990/f...-the-thermal-interpretation?show=43307#a43307)
As an interpretation of probability, it is an operative objective (model based) interpretation, which fixes both the better and lesser known issues of frequentism. As an interpretation of quantum mechanics, I would say it is a Copenhagen-like interpretation, which uses a better interpretation of probability, and pays more attention to details of preparation and measurement (i.e. less idealized) than usual.

(I am sufficiently deep into probability that I don't need to fall-back to feelings for that part.)

About the thermal interpretation, in your opinion, does it have some weaknesses?

I leave the answer to this question to those who have a less biased view than me. In any case, your attempt to shoot it down 5 years ago didn't convince me of having substance.

Everybody has a biased view, but maybe less biased than yours. Of course, Demystifier was interested in your answer, not in any objectively true or somehow less biased answer. Why did Demystifier try to shoot it down 5 years ago? What has your relation to Demystifier to do with QFT, and where are both your blind spots in that area?

Bohmian mechanics doesn't need QFT to get space back into QM. The thermal interpretation doesn't have obvious problems with QFT like Bohmian mechanics, but you hope to get spacetime and ontology from QFT. Now suddenly your requirements on QFT become much higher than it actually can satisfy in its current state. And this hope is also a significant departure from "shut-up-and-calculate" or "Copenhagen-like" interpretations.

For such interpretations, QM is a framework just like ordinary differential equations are a framework. You don't need to go to partial differential equations to get space and ontology into ordinary differential equations. OK, now after I have written this, I do see that the ontic character of time for ODEs can indeed be a problem, if you insist that only spacetime should have that ontic character. And that going to PDEs indeed helps with that issue.

 

[Morbert]

As an interpretation of quantum mechanics, I would say it is a Copenhagen-like interpretation, which uses a better interpretation of probability, and pays more attention to details of preparation and measurement (i.e. less idealized) than usual.

iirc the Thermal interpretation is more ambitious than Copenhagen-like interpretations. It attempts to recover the probabilistic character of quantum experiments from deterministic beables via something like the BBGK hierarchy (though I have never followed through in learning how).

 

[gentzen]

iirc the Thermal interpretation is more ambitious than Copenhagen-like interpretations.

How do you interpret "A Reinterpretation of the Tradition"? The tradition of BM or MWI? Certainly not! It means a reinterpretation of the orthodoxy.

Now what is the orthodoxy? Is it "shut up and calculate", Copenhagen, von Neumann QM, or ...? But von Neumann just tried to explain what Born and Heisenberg meant. The problem is that people misinterpreted Heisenberg and von Neumann in different ways. If I would try to "better explain" the thermal interpretation than A. Neumaier himself, I would probably suffer a similar fate like von Neumann or worse.

So I just tried to expain my own feeling instead. And I invite everybody to describe and explain their own feelings they got from reading A. Neumaier's papers and books.

 

[PeterDonis]

what is the orthodoxy?

There isn't one as far as QM interpretation is concerned. That's why QM interpretation is still an issue a century after QM as a mathematical model was developed.