Jesse

That's not Bohm's view--Bohm had a nonlocal hidden variables interpretation of QM, where each particle has a precise value of position and momentum at any given time, but the particle's motion is guided by a "pilot wave" which behaves in a nonlocal way (the behavior of the wave at one point in spacetime can be affected by events outside that point's past light cone). This would correspond to choice a) above, not c).

Were you thinking of Bohr, maybe?

Blueskyboris

First, there is no proof of any field of science. There is what the
evidence supports among many alternatives. Some have little
evidence to support them. The problem of quantum mechanics is
not one of theory per se, but what things mean.

I am not going to sail away with you on an epistemological adventure.

The example I prefer is radioactive decay. In a pound of uranium-238,
half of the atoms will decay in 4.5 billion years. As far as the
evidence indicates, there is no physical cause that makes one atom
decay and another not. Hence the decay is RANDOM. Perhaps you
have a better explanation.

I do not make assumptions in the arena of science. Sure, "randomness" is a possible explanation, but it is not the only one. Simply because people have not discovered why uranium-238 decays as it does, does not prove randomness as fundamental feature of the universe. The cause of this phenomena is effectively open for inquiry.

I prefer A., because all laws and their effects to date are predictable. Therefore, I infer from this data that subatomic systems are also, most-likely, predictable.

Interpretation is just that, interpretation. I can argue all night long that God created the universe, but in the end, if i have not convinced enough people by good argument and demonstration, I am only interpreting the universe around me and talking past my audience.

Jesse

Do you understand that the violation of Bell's theorem in the EPR experiment proves that the only way for A to be true in that experiment is if the entangled particles coordinate their spin values faster-than-light (or if a measurement of a particle's spin value in the present can determine the spin values they were created with in the past)?

Blueskyboris

Jesse,

Do you understand that the violation of Bell's theorem in the EPR experiment proves that the only way for A to be true in that experiment is if the entangled particles coordinate their spin values faster-than-light (or if a measurement of a particle's spin value in the present can determine the spin values they were created with in the past)?

I never was happy with the assertion that the speed of light can not be broken. I've always considered it a law of this era, and not necessarily a law of all time.

Answerer

Like I always said:

No evidence = No talk....................

:thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs:

Tetlepanquetzatzin

What do you make of the fact that there are no simultaneous eigenstates of both position and momentum? Or the x- and z-components of angular momentum?
There are interpretations of QM according to which the world is deterministic (e.g. Bohm's and Everett's) or where the QM formalism is interpreted epistemologically, rather than ontologically, so that the question is left undecided or meaningless (e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation and the new informational interpretation).

To develop a satisfactory interpretation is no small feat, though, especially if it is constrained a priori to be consistent with determinism. Can you outline your interpretation?

Blueskyboris

Answerer:

Like I always said:

No evidence = No talk....................

No talk = no movement foward. No hypothesis = useless, unorganized information.

Do you really have three thumbs? Or should I interpret your three "smiley thumbs up" as you giving me the thumbs up for three seconds? Or maybe for three nights and three days?

Tetlepanquetzatzin:

There are interpretations of QM according to which the world is deterministic (e.g. Bohm's and Everett's) or where the QM formalism is interpreted epistemologically, rather than ontologically, so that the question is left undecided or meaningless (e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation and the new informational interpretation).

Thanks for already making the point that these are just interpretations, and not proved theorems, like Pythagoras', Aristotle's, or Heisenberg's.

My point of departure, as I have already made clear, is that of determinism, that of cause and effect.

Tetlepanquetzatzin

You're welcome.

The interpretations of quantum mechanics are indeed just interpretations. And the rabbit that guarded the cave in The Holy Grail was just a rabbit.
That is just a point of departure and not an interpretation of QM. We expect of an informed and sophisticated interpretation of QM that it lets us understand the measurement process, the lack of simultaneous eigenstates of non-commuting observables, the EPR-correlations, etc.

Tracy P. Hamilton

You are correct about Bohm.

What I said originally is more like the collapse idea of Bohr.

Tracy P. Hamilton

Here would have been a place to mention that alternative, you know.
I certainly don't assume things are fundamentally random either - that is the
best explanation of the facts.

Knowing why the decay probability per unit time is the value it is
is knowing why it decays (since it is based on a mechanism). It
is just not a deterministic explanation. People have gone looking
for them.

All science is open for inquiry. It doesn't mean that certain
theories are not well supported.

Does "predictable" mean tells you everything you want to know, that you
feel should be knowable, based on intuition from macroscopic
theories that were of no help at all in understanding atomic behavior?
Yet that is "likely" to ultimately be right. I am not buying it.


Interpretations need to explain facts. Classical theory does no good at all.