Who Can Apply the Operator on a Wave Function to Measure an Observable?

[Careful]

I think that there are some indications that a proof could be possible. The Kochen-Specker theorem shows that QM is not simply a "classical statistical theory". The Bell theorem rules out a certain class of "local hidden variable theories".

In the end you are right: once one has proved that a certain class of "simple" theories has been ruled out, more complicated theories are not forbidden but become unreasonable due to Ockhams razor. The question is what is the border line between "simple" and "too complicated" theories.

Yes, that is a deep debate. For example, a resolution to the measurement problem will complicate QM seriously too. So, it might very well be that a deeper spitting in QM actually opens the door again for nonlocal realist theories. The theorems you mention are peanuts, I could write in 2 months a paper destroying each of those theorems to pieces. Arguing in this way really makes no sense, it expresses more the limited imagination of the beholder than the impossibility of the construction. Take my word for it.

 

[arkajad]

The theorems you mention are peanuts, I could write in 2 months a paper destroying each of those theorems to pieces.

I do not think that the theorems will be destroyed this way. They will survive, I am sure. But they may become quoted less often :).

 

[Careful]

I do not think that the theorems will be destroyed this way. They will survive, I am sure. But they may become quoted less often :).

Well, I was speaking about scientifically destroying them, not about some sociological phenomenon where some load of dopes would still cite these things to dress up as intellectuals I would never ever use a no-go theorem in any discussion because I understand the distinction between a mathematical theorem and physics by which I certainly do not mean to imply that these no-go theorems are not important. On the contrary, they stretch our imagination and liberate us from prejudices !

 

[arkajad]

On the contrary, they stretch our imagination and liberate us from prejudices !

When we see that some door is closed, what we do? Some people give up, some try to use brute force, some other look for a backyard door or for a hole in the fence. Lovoisier was not a mathematician, he was a chemist, nevertheless he is famous not only for his achievements in chemistry but also for his no-go theorem. He argued against the existence of meteorites with a convincing argument: "stones can not fall from the sky, simply because there are no stones in the sky". And, in a sense, he was undoubtedly right. No one questions that.

 

[Careful]

When we see that some door is closed, what we do? Some people give up, some try to use brute force, some other look for a backyard door or for a hole in the fence. Lovoisier was not a mathematician, he was a chemist, nevertheless he is famous not only for his achievements in chemistry but also for his no-go theorem. He argued against the existence of meteorites with a convincing argument: "stones can not fall from the sky, simply because there are no stones in the sky". And, in a sense, he was undoubtedly right. No one questions that.

Well, in the puzzle you are interested in, I think you need to liberate yourself entirely from a classical point of view. I understand this feeling very well, you feel there is sh*t in QM but you don't know where precisely. Quantum theory seems so accurately constructed that most people are almost convinced that there is no room for improvement. Likewise, I had a (local) realist period between 2005-2008; that's why I know that all these no-go theorems are a pile of garbage because I did manage to surpass them each. What I did not find was an all embracing theory which had the same explanatory power than QM has. So I resigned my attempt and started to do the opposite: I took quantum theory really seriously. THAT has been the most fruitful excercise of my life since there is indeed sh*t and I found out precisely where (and it is nothing people have ever imagined before).

 

[tom.stoer]

... I could write in 2 months a paper destroying each of those theorems to pieces. ... Take my word for it.

I am looking forward to you paper - 28.01.2011 on arxiv!

 

[Careful]

I am looking forward to you paper - 28.01.2011 on arxiv!

Ohw, I am not going to publish those things (Kochen Specker and Bell) for very good reasons. People simply are not interested in it! They will only listen when you are smarter than Einstein and manage to come up with an alternative QFT like theory, which reduces to the old one where the latter has been tested. So that is what I am actually working on. You have no idea how many dishonest people I have met in my life: a typical discussion goes as follows. They claim A : you cannot do that (say demolish Kochen Specker), one month later I would go back to them and show a toy theory which does precisely that. Hmmm would they say, but with this theory, can you violate the Bell inequalities. No, I would say because it was not designed in this way. But then it is worth nothing, they would argue. But ok, i just showed you that A is wrong ! You can bet these same people would repeat A against other students the next day.

Such things are the utmost examples of stupidity; of course, going back to naive realism is not fruitful - but one should have to CORRECT objections against those ideas and not some false pretensions.

 

[tom.stoer]

Perhaps it would help not to promise to be able to destroy the pillars of QM within a few weeks. But of course I would be very interested ...

 

[Careful]

Perhaps it would help not to promise to be able to destroy the pillars of QM within a few weeks. But of course I would be very interested ...

I only made this promise once and it was 5 years ago, and yes I was wrong. But what is more devastating, the enthusiasm of a clearly very intelligent and well read person who makes an exaggerated claim and kicks holy houses or the unimaginative sarcasm of a pedantic person who argues by the wrong means ? Think about that! Over the years of course, one gets wiser and calmer. But the difference between the pedantic person and the kicker is that the latter actually learns something. So yeh, I definately prefer that

 

[arkajad]

So I resigned my attempt and started to do the opposite: I took quantum theory really seriously.

I would like to see how you deal with the problem of "time of arrival" and track formation if you take QM seriously. How you avoid what you call "classical concepts", like "measurement", "environment", "time", "result, "Planck constant", "Hilbert space", "reference frame". Can you? I am willing to convert myself.

 

[tom.stoer]

I don't think that it makes sense to stay here for a future discussion. The thread started rather interesting but in the meantime it's main characterictics is adopting the wrong tone.
Bye.
Tom

 

[Careful]

I would like to see how you deal with the problem of "time of arrival" and track formation if you take QM seriously. How you avoid what you call "classical concepts", like "measurement", "environment", "time", "result, "Planck constant", "Hilbert space", "reference frame". Can you? I am willing to convert myself.

Well, Tom is right in asfar that we should not speak about what may lie in the future: I don't think however that the tone of the discussion got bad. Concepts I would definitely generalize are the notions of Hilbert space and time. I would dismiss ideas about environment. Of course, keepers are Planck constant and reference frame (but you have to be careful what you mean with that). Measurement is the most challenging and it requires a theory of awareness.

Anyhow, to end with a philosophical note: you told me there are three possibilities to walk through the wall (a) give up (b) brute force and (c) look for holes. Well I think you missed the most important one: the royal door which we are completely blind for! (a) is not an option, in case of (b) you might think that knocking your head against the brick wall is going to break it, no way! In the third case, you think like a clever thief, but the wall maker has forseen that you might think the foundations are not that strong and you look for holes, or that you might look for 'soft' bricks. However, if you find the royal door, it means that you have looked beyond the bricks and the paste and have seen patterns which nobody spotted before you. That is the key: there is very little wrong with quantum mechanics, otherwise we would have spotted it already. Likewise, we know something is wrong with QFT and/or gravity, otherwise we would have solved that problem also too. Also, it is very probable that some *physical* idea behind QFT is wrong, otherwise the smart people doing axiomatic QFT would have constructed the foundations long time ago. So, what is *physically* wrong?? It must be something extremely subtle which changes the entire theory. That is the royal door.

 

[unusualname]

You are right Careful, it is this http://jbg.f2s.com/quantum2.txt

Go on, ban me physics forum mods, after posting the "solution" to QM whilst allowing deluded people hundreds of posts examining possible classical loopholes in QM experiments.

This is a good test for you no? Is the universe a random automata? It's consistent with all known experimental results.

 

[Careful]

You are right Careful, it is this http://jbg.f2s.com/quantum2.txt

Go on, ban me physics forum mods, after posting the "solution" to QM whilst allowing deluded people hundreds of posts examining possible classical loopholes in QM experiments.

This is a good test for you no? Is the universe a random automata? It's consistent with all known experimental results.

I am not going to look at this, but let me tell you the following:
(a) in order to comprehend this problem if full depth, you have to think intensly for many years, you definately need a PhD degree to even start with and you have to be mathematically gifted.
(b) You need ocassionally make phone calls with connections you have in academia, I regularly speak for more than an hour with reputable researchers in my field: my phone bill is huge.
(c) You always need to be crystal clear about your own program: this is not done by posting a sheet of one A4 paper in a doc file. First of all, you will need to explain what you think is wrong, then you need to make the postulates of your theory and third you need to make a few independent consistency checks! At least five of them: for example, if you claim to have a new Quantum theory, you need to show that somehow you can get free QFT out and that at least some renormalized terms of the usual Dyson expansion in interacting theories are recovered. Moreover, you might like to investigate corrections to some well known experiments and make a novel prediction.
(d) You have to hand it in for peer review. No way you can get around that: actually, it would be wise to first offer it for peer review BEFORE you hand it into the Arxiv or some forum.

These guidelines are mandatory, the path of true discovery is lonely and hard, very hard, even for the gifted people.

 

[unusualname]

I have probably thought about this more years than you.

And I may have been a better mathematican than you also, but that's not important.

The simplicity of the postulates is deceiving, annihilation and creation is occurring in a probablilstic mayhem here.

Argue scientifically, not ad hominem.

 

[arkajad]

Measurement is the most challenging and it requires a theory of awareness.

I second that.

 

[Careful]

I have probably thought about this more years than you.

And I may have been a better mathematican than you also, but that's not important.

The simplicity of the postulates is deceiving, annihilation and creation is occurring in a probablilstic mayhem here.

Argue scientifically, not ad hominem.

I did argue scientifically ! I see nothing in this one sheet which satisfies any of the criteria I mentioned; you do not comprehend that we live in a scientific community which has installed these quality guidelines in order not to waste any time with things which are not valuable at all. I briefly looked at it and your formulae absolutely make no sense whatsoever. For example, you have missed the entirely trivial fact that the demand of Poincare invariance requires infinite dimensional spaces and not finite dimensional ones. There are zillions of such things I could say about your proposal but you would highly likely not understand them. My guess is that you don't even have a bachelor degree in physics or a related field and this is not meant in a pejorative way. Although Einstein had no PhD, he still had his contacts in academia and I am sorry, in the modern times this is not even sufficient anymore.

 

[Careful]

I second that.

Good, my consciousness just registered that

 

[unusualname]

I did argue scientifically ! I see nothing in this one sheet which satisfies any of the criteria I mentioned; you do not comprehend that we live in a scientific community which has installed these quality guidelines in order not to waste any time with things which are not valuable at all. I briefly looked at it and your formulae absolutely make no sense whatsoever. For example, you have missed the entirely trivial fact that the demand of Poincare invariance requires infinite dimensional spaces and not finite dimensional ones. There are zillions of such things I could say about your proposal but you would highly likely not understand them. My guess is that you don't even have a bachelor degree in physics or a related field and this is not meant in a pejorative way. Although Einstein had no PhD, he still had his contacts in academia and I am sorry, in the modern times this is not even sufficient anymore.

Poincare invariance? What are you you talking about? I won a half share of the University of London award for mathematics in my graduation year, so I think I can ferret out irrelevant nonsense like that.

Do you understand QFT? Do you understand its probabilistic nature? Do you understand the Feynman path integral approach which sums over ALL (ridiculous) possibilities?

 

[Careful]

Poincare invariance? What are you you talking about? I won a half share of the University of London award for mathematics in my graduation year, so I think I can ferret out irrelevant nonsense like that.

Do you understand QFT? Do you understand its probabilistic nature? Do you understand the Feynman path integral approach which sums over ALL (ridiculous) possibilities?

Well, all I can say then is that the comittee probably was asleep when they granted you that award. The quality of what you write is so low that I can hardly imagine what you say is even 1% of the truth (unless you suffered a complete mental breakdown or so). And why do you think Poincare invariance is not important? It is a fundamental property of relativistic theories and within quantum theory, you do need a (Hilbert) space carrying it's representation. It is irrelevant whether you work here in the path integral formulation or not.

Really, take my advise and visit a shrink or so: talk about your passion and desire to solve a puzzle which you do not even properly comprehend. Focus on other things in life and enjoy it, but give up on things which you cannot possibly reach.

 

[unusualname]

Well, all I can say then is that the comittee probably was asleep when they granted you that award. The quality of what you write is so low that I can hardly imagine what you say is even 1% of the truth (unless you suffered a complete mental breakdown or so). And why do you think Poincare invariance is not important? It is a fundamental property of relativistic theories and within quantum theory, you do need a (Hilbert) space carrying it's representation. It is irrelevant whether you work here in the path integral formulation or not.

Really, take my advise and visit a shrink or so: talk about your passion and desire to solve a puzzle which you do not even properly comprehend. Focus on other things in life and enjoy it, but give up on things which you cannot possibly reach.

Poincare invariance is less relevant here than Poincare recurrence is to statistical physics (which is about zero relevance). I'll probably have to construct a CUDA simulation of 10^9 states or so to convince you, but the theory is sound. All QFT falls out of the evolution law + randomness if you think about for even a short time.

 

[Careful]

Poincare invariance is less relevant here than Poincare recurrence is to statistical physics (which is about zero relevance). I'll probably have to construct a CUDA simulation of 10^9 states or so to convince you, but the theory is sound. All QFT falls out of the evolution law + randomness if you think about for even a short time.

Well you can say whatever you want but
(a) there was no evolution law written down in your ''paper''.
(b) no simulations were presented whatsoever.
(c) It is just impossible to recover Poincare invariance from a finite lattice formulation unless your lattice is dynamical itself. 't Hooft has written some nice papers about the breaking of rotation invariance on lattices and so on (in the context of cellular automata).
(d) In order to talk about even just a correspondence with QFT, you would have to define what a particle is. Now, I can imagine that you can simulate such thing like an ordinary classical Klein Gordon equation on a lattice, but no way you are dealing with the problem of an arbitrary number of particles (and no way you solve the measurement problem in this approach).
(e) the dynamics of QFT is defined on an infinite dimensional space (mandatory by Poincare invariance), no way that you manage to get something like that out from a finite simulation + some noise.

So, go home, learn some proper physics, and do your job or follow my advise and look for a good shrink.

 

[unusualname]

Well you can say whatever you want but
(a) there was no evolution law written down in your ''paper''.
(b) no simulations were presented whatsoever.
(c) It is just impossible to recover Poincare invariance from a finite lattice formulation unless your lattice is dynamical itself. 't Hooft has written some nice papers about the breaking of rotation invariance on lattices and so on (in the context of cellular automata).
(d) In order to talk about even just a correspondence with QFT, you would have to define what a particle is. Now, I can imagine that you can simulate such thing like an ordinary classical Klein Gordon equation on a lattice, but no way you are dealing with the problem of an arbitrary number of particles (and no way you solve the measurement problem in this approach).
(e) the dynamics of QFT is defined on an infinite dimensional space (mandatory by Poincare invariance), no way that you manage to get something like that out from a finite simulation + some noise.

So, go home, learn some proper physics, and do your job or follow my advise and look for a good shrink.

If you were sure of your arguments you wouldn't resort to ad hominem.

The debates between people like yourself go on here for years and years, and finally presented with a conclusion you resist, it is understandable but disappointing.

The measurement problem is dealt with by invoking human attributes and otherwise is restricted to stable macroscopic remnants in the universe - ooh - that's controversial.

 

[Careful]

If you were sure of your arguments you wouldn't resort to ad hominem.

The debates between people like yourself go on here for years and years, and finally presented with a conclusion you resist, it is understandable but disappointing.

The measurement problem is dealt with by invoking human attributes and otherwise is restricted to stable macroscopic remnants in the universe - ooh - that's controversial.

I am sure of my arguments because I tried some far less naive ideas myself! And no, I don't go ad hominem, you have no idea how sad it is to see someone claiming to have solved the deepest problem in nature and comes up with a lousy A4 sheet full of rubbish. You know, I do have a cousin who suffers severly from bipolar and who has been in a manic phase for such a long time that psychiatrists feared for his life even (you can die of exhaustion here you know). Well, we did not meet for like 15 years and 3 years ago he wrote me a letter with two sheets of paper containing elementary formulae which he thought might be of use for my work. A week later, I called him and politely thanked him for sharing his thoughts with me - we did not speak about it any further.

And no, I am not 'a standard physicsforums-member' as most people who ''know'' me can testify: I have an unusual patience with unconventional ideas and always try to reason with the person. But if I see a case like you, I have to say what I said, for your own good (even if you don't take my word for it).

 

[unusualname]

It wan't simple when I conceived it, It was argued out over a week with Lubos Motl. I had orginally conceived of a holographic "projection" to retrieve local causality but the model reduced to its seemingly bare simplicity after realising Motl (and others) had the wong understanding of "non-locality" which is only manifest as local causality in nature.

I can't apologise for the the beautiful simplicity of the universe, Wolfram and others had similar models but I assume the reluctance to embrace fundamental randomness and a non-local evolution law kept everyone from making the obvious discovery:

Nature is non-local, non-real (in Einstein's sense) and non-deterministic! who'd have ever thought it!

 

[Careful]

It wan't simple when I conceived it, It was argued out over a week with Lubos Motl. I had orginally conceived of a holographic "projection" to retrieve local causality but the model reduced to its seemingly bare simplicity after realising Motl (and others) had the wong understanding of "non-locality" which is only manifest as local causality in nature.

I can't apologise for the the beautiful simplicity of the universe, Wolfram and others had similar models but I assume the reluctance to embrace fundamental randomness and a non-local evolution law kept everyone from making the obvious discovery:

Nature is non-local, non-real (in Einstein's sense) and non-deterministic! who'd have ever thought it!

Knowing Lubos' way of dealing with unconventional ideas, he would have dismissed it after one single look at your paper. You use expensive words here, but they don't mean anything, you don't make a coherent sentence! For example, you conceived a ''holographic projection'' to retrieve local causality. What the ****? Local causality simply means that the state of a field at a point is determined by the initial value on any local spacelike slice of the past lightcone. How can you retrieve something that local from a non-local thing like a holographic projection?! And no, nature is appearantly not locally causal and no-one has ever succeed to show a model which recuperates all quantum predictions in this way. The rest doesn't make any sense except for the last line. I think any researcher in quantum gravity would agree on those three statements. So, if the last line were your revolutionary discovery: welcome, you share this opinion with thousands of people.

 

[unusualname]

Knowing Lubos' way of dealing with unconventional ideas, he would have dismissed it after one single look at your paper. You use expensive words here, but they don't mean anything, you don't make a coherent sentence! For example, you conceived a ''holographic projection'' to retrieve local causality. What the ****? Local causality simply means that the state of a field at a point is determined by the initial value on any local spacelike slice of the past lightcone. How can you retrieve something that local from a non-local thing like a holographic projection?! And no, nature is appearantly not locally causal and no-one has ever succeed to show a model which recuperates all quantum predictions in this way. The rest doesn't make any sense except for the last line. I think any researcher in quantum gravity would agree on those three statements. So, if the last line were your revolutionary discovery: welcome, you share this opinion with thousands of people.

Jesus, until I actually produce the exact form of the evolution Matrix M I guess I'm going to have to put up with this.

M is unitary, it's huge, it's probably a bit more complex than the current Standard Model would suggest, especially since gravity is so much weaker than everything else.

At worst you'll get a toy universe containing some basic particles with this model, with all the probablistic creation and annihilation described in QFT. Any reasonably foresighted person can see that the real universe is not beyond construction.

 

[Careful]

Jesus, until I actually produce the exact form of the evolution Matrix M I guess I'm going to have to put up with this.

M is unitary, it's huge, it's probably a bit more complex than the current Standard Model would suggest, especially since gravity is so much weaker than everything else.

At worst you'll get a toy universe containing some basic particles with this model, with all the probablistic creation and annihilation described in QFT. Any reasonably foresighted person can see that the real universe is not beyond construction.

Sure, we are all dumb and do not understand your brilliant work which is written by little invisible green men on one sheet of A4. Neither are my comments probably valid that your language is incoherent. Since there is no way of talking to you, since you actually do not show any real work and do not properly react to the many counterarguments I have given so far to you, do the decent thing and work out the ''details'' of your theory. Then, you will have surpassed Garret Lisi in one stroke of genius

 

[unusualname]

I really don't want to make a fuss. I had a simple honest argument with Motl about the interpretation of the delayed choice quantum eraser and refused to submit to orthodoxy in analysing it.

I came to my conclusions after several days of intense thought, my stumbling along the way is documented in a thread on his blog.

However, once coming to the conclusions, I had no doubt in their correctness and superiority to copenhagen + decoherence. I am not currently in academia so do not have arXiv submission access, however any reasonable person can see my conclusions are important and I really think they have at least the beginnings of an idea which should help us evolve beyond the 1930s philosophy of QM.

 

[Careful]

I really don't want to make a fuss. I had a simple honest argument with Motl about the interpretation of the delayed choice quantum eraser and refused to submit to orthodoxy in analysing it.

I came to my conclusions after several days of intense thought, my stumbling along the way is documented in a thread on his blog.

However, once coming to the conclusions, I had no doubt in their correctness and superiority to copenhagen + decoherence. I am not currently in academia so do not have arXiv submission access, however any reasonable person can see my conclusions are important and I really think they have at least the beginnings of an idea which should help us evolve beyond the 1930s philosophy of QM.

I give up, your idea of what a reasonable person is supposed to be goes beyond the pale for my taste. As I thought, you did not discuss with Lubos your A4 sheet, try it!