Too much to reply individually to here right now, but you raise a lot of very interesting points. Thanks a bunch for posting the articles, I definitely feel humbled after reading about an apparently valid deterministic alternative theory to the Copenhagen interpretation. According to everything I had read, the Copenhagen interpretation, along with the multiple universes interpretation, seemed to be by far the most dominant theory. Felt like a real fool until I read "The old, deterministic alternative is not mentioned in most textbooks; most people in the field haven’t heard of it."
Interestingly, this part makes the article read like a PR piece on Expelled:
"Sheldon Goldstein, a professor of mathematics, physics and philosophy at Rutgers University and a supporter of pilot-wave theory, blames the 'preposterous' neglect of the theory on 'decades of indoctrination.' At this stage, Goldstein and several others noted, researchers risk their careers by questioning quantum orthodoxy."
It certainly seems very pro-pilot wave, but it fails to mention this: "[De Broglie] presented the pilot wave theory at the 1927 Solvay Conference.[7] However, Wolfgang Pauli raised an objection to it at the conference, saying that it did not deal properly with the case of inelastic scattering. De Broglie was not able to find a response to this objection, and he and Born abandoned the pilot-wave approach." - I would love to find out how the newer de Broglie–Bohm theory deals with this problem.
quoting Wikipedia
Just a couple more spontaneous thoughts on the pilot wave theory article:
- I don't understand how pilot wave theory explains the fact that the act of measuring changes the patterns in the double slit experiment.
- Another thing my puny mind wasn't prepared to understand: particles are said to consist of a guiding pilot wave and a concrete particle itself which always takes one specific path. Only the guiding wave can go through both slits at the same time, so how is the question which specific path a particle actually takes resolved?
- The article doesn't say whether pilot wave theory deals with essential chance we believe to be witnessing in radioactive decay.
Necrometer wrote:You can definitely justify punishment/corrections for a harm-causing agent who lacks "true" agency. The social functions of prevention and rehabilitation and the illusion of justice still apply, don't they? Even if we are all fundamentally just cogs in the physical machine, it doesn't mean we won't try and maintain social order.
I'd argue that all of these thoughts have to at least assume that the universe is not deterministic to make some sort of sense as we understand it.
Even if we accept punishment as a way of exerting a positive influence on social order (a futile thought IMHO and one that would not give me any solace if I had to live in a deterministic universe), determinism and the idea of justice as punishment for a real free decision somebody made are incompatible. A punishment would simply not be just if at the same time we assumed that the punishable act was not an essentially free one. Again, doesn't prove anything at all, just saying that such a position (accepting both at th esame time) is inconsistent. I'm old school enough to think of those kinds of positions as highly problematic, but I'm also aware that many systems have some kind of inconsistency in them.
Necrometer wrote: I interpret the apparent probability function as the tool we use while we are stumped about what's actually going on... it isn't reality. nothing in science describes reality with total precision and accuracy. best way to think about science: all models are wrong; good models are useful
math is the only mode of thought capable of operating with the firm perfection that so many people incorrectly think undergirds science
As far as I understand it the underlying mathematics of quantum physics seem to work ridiculously well, question is which interpretation of them is more true. Does this question even make sense if we equate "true" with "describes the universe better"? Fucking hell I'd so love to live for a couple more hundred years...
for now
