Richard Feynman:
We always have had a great deal of difficulty in understanding the world view that quantum mechanics represents. At least I do, because I’m an old enough man that I haven’t got to the point that this stuff is obvious to me. Okay, I still get nervous with it … you know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there’s no real problem. It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.
Whenever I read this, I think, “poor quantum theory.” It seems that many of us have a problem with quantum theory, but quantum theory, it has no problem with us!
As I said in the other posting, I see QIP as the big antidote. Lingering doubts about the quantum rules will just fade away as you prove more and more theorems about them.
Sure, if we could actually build non-toy quantum computers, that should convince everybody. But we can’t, at least not yet. So what do you do instead?
I see a great affinity between physical empiricism and mathematical Platonism. Even you don’t know that a mathematical object exists as physics, you can pretend, in the spirit of the book Flatland. That is the way that mathematicians do things. Otherwise a talk on the sphere-packing problem in 24 dimensions would be a lunatic session.
If the mathematical structure that you would like to apply to physics is counterintuitive, like curved spacetime or quantum information, then you have two choices. You can philosophize about interpretations until the cows home; or you can get used to it using mathematical Platonism. As you invest in the latter, the philosophy becomes more and more of an afterthought.
After all, if you had to pick a pure mathematician based on area of research with whom to discuss quantum information, what area would you choose? (Not a mathematical physicist; that’s cheating.) I’d pick operator algebras. Or, what is the real difference in experience between you and Bob Laughlin? I would say it’s that you solved more math problems in quantum information.
I admit that the history of relativity partly contradicts my thesis. Poincare had a full Platonic grasp of Lorentz transformation, but he still didn’t believe special relativity. I am surprised that he didn’t! On the other hand, Minkowski fits my model well. For a few years, he understood relativity better than Einstein did.
Spoken like a true mathematician!
A physicist might say “lingering doubts about the quantum rules will fade away as you” build bigger and bigger quantum computers!
On a personal side, I only have troubles with quantum theory, these days, when I think about quantum gravity and the incompleteness of quantum field theory. 😉
Another quote …
“This statistical interpretation is now universally accepted as the best possible interpretation for quantum mechanics, even though many people are unhappy with it. People had got used to the determinism of the last century, where the present determines the future completely, and they now have to get used to a different situation in which the present only gives one information of a statistical nature about the future. A good many people find this unpleasant; Einstein has always objected to it. The way he expressed it was: ‘The good God does not play with dice’. Schroedinger also did not like the statistical interpretation and tried for many years to find an interpretation involving determinism for his waves. But it was not successful as a general method. I must say that I also do not like indeterminism. I have to accept it because it is certainly the best that we can do with our present knowledge. One can always hope that there will be future developments which will lead to a drastically different theory from the present quantum mechanics and for which there may be a partial return of determinism. However, so long as one keeps to the present formalism, one has to have this indeterminism”.
– P.A.M. Dirac, “The Development Of Quantum Mechanics” – “Conferenza Tenuta il 14 Aprile 1972, in Roma, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”,
1974, 11 pages.
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