I What Makes Ontology Easy for Kids but Challenging for Quantum Physicists?

[AlexCaledin]

- that's all right - but the point is, whenever I react, I observe my brain reacting; so I seem participating somehow in the quantum dice throwing process which seems to be beyond scientific investigation.

 

[Fra]

- that's all right - but the point is, whenever I react, I observe my brain reacting; so I seem participating somehow in the quantum dice throwing process which seems to be beyond scientific investigation.

Perhaps I don't get your point in relation to the context here, but if you are suggesting that at some point the "scientific method" as we usually think of if, seems to fail to get a grip of certain questions. Then I share this is a observation. My point is that essential parts of the process, will not allow itself to be cleanly captured by an inside observer, obeying the scientific ideals we know from labframe domains.

As far as neuroscience goes, it would be problematic for a researcher to perform unbiased scientific experiments on yourself. Ie. on your own brain. But we can do experiments on other peoples brains in a scientific way, as usual.

This raises a bunch of philosophical questions on rational inference (which the scientific method is supposed to be an example of) and what about the limits of rationality and how progress is still made? It's in this limit I think in terms of random walks and evolution. But this is the "hypothesis generation" part of science. It's an important part, but also the part that Popper tried to play down.

/Fredrik

 

[AlexCaledin]

- suppose our world is a computer simulation; then all the physics is the very basic level which is only available for our science; but this observable physical reality is of course controlled by the high level software, by means of quantum Choice, maintaining the Born rule in order to keep that basic reality natural. Then, the only fundamental scientific starting point is that the whole observable spacetime reality is somehow chosen as the outcome of the universe state reduction - that's why we can use the QM. We can't tell (scientifically!) whether we are participating in the Choice or just having free will illusion...

 

[Fra]

I pressed the wrong button, too tired. I meant to reply to the post, not prett like button

We can't tell (scientifically!) whether we are participating in the Choice or just having free will illusion...

As I see it: From the point of the "agent", this does not matter, and is not a question the agent would ask concerning itself. Ie. it's not an intrisic question as I see it, and thus not relevant to the agent.

/Fredrik

 

[physika]

This helps FORM the reality for all other humans.

Then, no humans, no reality.

 

[Fra]

Then, no humans, no reality.

This of course isn't at all the meaning of what i tried to say.

First of all, it was not my choice to bring "humans" into discussion, I responded to a question about HUMANS.

It's easy to misunderstand because interactions takes place at multiple layers. Human interactions together created human society. How social rules can in fact be analysed from human interactions work. This is the "level" of my response. Ie. without humans, there would be no relations that make up human society.

If we are (which was the prior topic) talking about physics, the correct statement would be that without agent observers (which to be clear is nothing but matter, or the constitutients of matter) there would be no place for the percept of reality, and no relata for the relations that constitude physical reality.

The better statement would probably be this: No physical matter -> no physical agents -> no interaction -> no relations, and no physical reality.

All the notes on observers or agents, is just an abstraction of choice that has the purpose of structuring and understnading, the hierarchy of matter and interactions. It has NOTHING to do with humans. I mentioned this already. That said, as long as we can handle the parallell levels of abstractions without getting confused, I am fine with also using the same abstractions for human interactions and social laws. But let's not confuse them!

/Fredrik

 

[physika]

Human interactions together created human society. How social rules can in fact be analysed from human interactions work. This is the "level" of my response. Ie. without humans, there would be no relations that make up human society.

ahh you wish to talk about sociology,

 

[Fra]

No

 

[AlexCaledin]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

 

[Fra]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

First I am not teaching, but other than that - absolutely not!

Most of the interpretation and foundational discussions is not concnerning mature scientific knowledge and does not belong in such a class. It would probably confuse and mislead 99.9% of students anyway.

When one learns about QM first the first time, I think one should start with textbookx f would prefer to stick to facts and consensus. The best facts are the historical developements in science. And on top of that perhaps some minimal interpretation.

Those who are interested in the rest, will find their own way.

/Fredrik

 

[gentzen]

- may I ask - suppose you are teaching QM to the practical users to make them able to understand chemical or semiconductors phenomena - will you teach them such things as agent interpretation?

QM without statistical physics is not enough to understand semiconductor phenomena: if you don't properly understand the chemical potential $\mu$ and what it "means," then your understanding of how a semiconductor diode or transistor works will remain incomplete. The grand canonical ensemble might not be strictly necessary for a sufficient understanding of the chemical potential, but at least canonical ensembles will occur in many calculations in a typical solid state physics textbook. And if you want to describe such ensembles on the quantum level, then it would really help if the density matrix (or the statistical operator) had already been introduced while teaching QM, and if that introduction had included a more intuitive understanding than just those "church of the larger Hilbert space" images and those "secondary citizen two types of uncertainty" dismissals.

Therefore I believe that teaching at least elements of A. Neumaier's thermal interpretation early (basically around the time where you need to marry statistical physics and QM, and motivate the density matrix) could be useful for practical users in the domain of semiconductors phenomena.

 

[Demystifier]

Most of the interpretation and foundational discussions is not concnerning mature scientific knowledge and does not belong in such a class. It would probably confuse and mislead 99.9% of students anyway.

But at some point most students ask themselves such interpretation and foundational questions. Since old textbooks usually say nothing about those, they usually assume that the problem is them, not the textbooks, so at some point they usually stop asking such questions. So I think it doesn't hurt if textbooks at least mention (which modern textbooks often do) that such questions are asked even by (some of the) experts and that there are no yet generally agreed answers.

 

[Fra]

they usually assume that the problem is them, not the textbooks, so at some point they usually stop asking such questions.

This is true, and it's a pity. But those that are stubborn enough to keep asking the questions in a deeper way until answered seem rare anyway, while many seem happy to stop asking without much frustration.

So I think it doesn't heart if textbooks at least mention (which modern texbooks often do) that such questions are asked even by (some of the) experts and that there are no yet generally agreed answers.

Yes, many of these things should be mentioned as part of the history and open questions. Stuff like bohmian mechanics, bell etc is part of the historical development and is part of the textbooks i know of. This is good.

But no matter how confident I am about the agent perspective, I realize that it's formally a speculative idea, and something a minority of physicists will resonate with. But perhaps those sections of textbooks could be updated, this I agree with totally. But care has to be take to not give some speculations too much room or influence. I am thinking about string theory for example. I can't help thinking what progress that could have been made if some resourcers would have been put elsewhere.

/Fredrik

 

[Demystifier]

But care has to be take to not give some speculations too much room or influence. I am thinking about string theory for example. I can't help thinking what progress that could have been made if some resourcers would have been put elsewhere.

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

 

[Fra]

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

True. What i had in mind was that those people doing teaching and induce a strong bias and selection among the students as some start asking questions - off books. Any thinking perpendicular to strings may be discouraged, and any ideas in line with strings is encouraged.

I have seen myself. Ask foundational questions, and get the flat advise to study string theory. Now that is solid bias. If the leaders of the department are string theoriest, you can only guess what happens, no matter what's in books.

/Fredrik

 

[martinbn]

Yes, but particle physics and QFT textbooks usually don't mention strings much. Whatever the reason for popularity of string theory is (which indeed would be an interesting topic to discuss), it's not the textbooks.

May be it is the textbook and that they don't mention it. It makes you want to see what it is.

 

[Demystifier]

May be it is the textbook and that they don't mention it. It makes you want to see what it is.

My impression is that string theory is popular because it is full of deep far reaching conjectures nobody really understanding what exactly do they mean. It's just a challenge to try to understand it.

 

[EPR]

My impression is that string theory is popular because it is full of deep far reaching conjectures nobody really understanding what exactly do they mean. It's just a challenge to try to understand it.

Kaku, co-founder of String Theory:

“The mind of god, we believe, is cosmic music. The music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.”

 

[Fra]

My impression is that string theory is popular because it appears the only major research field that comes with promises to unify all forces in a way that is not a patchwork. This is not a bad reason and there are some interesting outcomes from string theory, especially the dualities, so it's not all that bad, but as Demystifiers says, they are accidental discoveries that there seems too lack a conceptual grip on. Anyway, the question is how come there are not so many other options with similarly high ambition in public light? String theory in it's foundations does not settle with many of foundational problems of QM. They remain. I think it would really help, to step back to some foundational questions. Who knows, perhaps even string theory may benefit from this?

/Fredrik