Yasunori Nomura

“What kind of a perverse world is this? What creator would conjure up such a thing? The more we are told to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, the more we have to look. Since the Magician will never allow us to sneak a peek backstage, however, all we can do is content ourselves with ‘conspiracy theories’. Such conspiracy theories about quantum mechanics are more typically referred to as interpretations.”

In “Quantum Physics, Mini Black Holes, and the Multiverse: Debunking Common Misconceptions in Theoretical Physics” by Yasunori Nomura, John Terning, Bill Poirier

This book was a nice counter punch and complement to Smolin’s Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution. How many misconceptions can we detect in our science?

While the deterministic unitary evolution of isolated quantum systems is well-understood, according to the Born rule which is used to make all predictions, measurement is apparently non-deterministic and irreversible. This singles out measurement as being somehow special. This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, because obviously, the people doing the measurement are made out of quantum systems too. It is not known how to resolve the problem and put measurement on the same footing as everything else in the universe, where it belongs. This is called the measurement problem. The Measurement Problem does not render measurement impossible, but rather sets an absolute limit on accuracy of measurement, based on the physical properties of what we are trying to observe. No more, no less. That's fascinating, but it is not a "closely guarded secret"!

I absolutely agree that Physics has to face philosophical issues, and that "Shut up and Calculate" is perhaps the most dangerous thing Feynman ever said. Of course there are philosophical implications to our work. take, for example, Mixing angles in particle physics, whether involved in Neutrino oscillations or in the existence of the Z boson as a superposition of the W and unobserved B. To what extent are these mathematical descriptions, to what extent do they correspond to a physical behaviour?

Smolin outlines how our current theoretical model of universal expansion is deeply in trouble, in a way that is both mathematical and philosophical; it becomes impossible to test. This is a job for Philosophy AND Science, but it cannot be achieved if one party is coming to the table derisive or indeed entirely ignorant of what the other does.

The Realists take on it is that in many interpretations (*) of QM, we describe physical systems as behaving in "coherent superpositions" of states (e.g. the cat being both alive and dead) which evolve coherently under physical operations (i.e. the cat stays both alive and dead even as other physical things happen to it over time), until we do a "measurement" (check the state of the cat) which destroys the coherence and "collapses" the system (forces it at that point into being alive or dead).
The "measurement problem" exemplified by Poirier’s quote above is to say: wait a minute, what's so special about this "measurement" versus any other kind of interaction? We claim everything's coherent as we interact the physical system with other physical systems, but that's really all we're doing when we make a measurement: interacting the physical system with, say, a box with a needle on it that we call a "detector", but it still follows the same laws of physics as everything else. So why the collapse? This is a genuine issue with talking about measurement-induced collapse (although it works fine practically, so many physicists are happy to do so anyway). Addressing this has been one motivation for interpretations such as many-worlds which don't talk about "collapse", although I'd say all interpretations are rather weird and unsatisfying in one way or another.

I think there is lots of good and insightful work done around interpretations of QM (look up, say, Rob Spekkens), and I think it's fair to describe it as containing a healthy dose of philosophy, even as it's done by people who also know the physics very well. Whether that's the kind of thing the article is talking about is much less clear, and I don't think it does a good job of either explaining what the issues are or what philosophy has to offer.

Smolin states in his latest: “So I have no better answer than to face the blank notebook. We do have role models. Einstein did it. Bohr did it. De Broglie, Schrödinger, and Heisenberg did it, as did Bohm and Bell. They each found a path from that blank page to a foundational discovery that enlarged our understanding of how nature works. Start by writing down what you are confident we know for sure. Ask yourself which of the fundamental principles of the present canon must survive the coming revolution. That’s the first page. Then turn again to a blank page and start thinking.” The outer reaches of any science is philosophical. Theoretical physicists are doing philosophy, though they are vastly better trained in their branch than most philosophers are in whatever their specialty is. I thought that since Russell, no philosophy was ignorant of higher mathematics. Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion and his work on causation and on the problem of induction, as well as Plato's Parmenides, or even a careful review of the paradoxes of Zeno (some of which are not so well known) cannot help but inform the theoretical physicist. Einstein did some of his best thinking by visualizing strange hypotheticals, then working out rigorously what they meant. Flexible thinking is the key, and philosophy, if done correctly, can inspire that.

And besides all that lofty stuff, every scientific theory is under-determined. Why prefer one over another? Only the philosophy of science can address a "meta-question" like this one. Strawman argument alert. Hawking was not saying philosophers should abandon metaphysics or leave it to the physicists. He was saying metaphysics can no longer operate in a rarefied bubble as though Science is a gadfly and they needn't pay attention to it. By ignoring the lessons science had learned philosophers risk turning into theologists.

Just look at the contributions to thinking about consciousness and Free Will that Dennett has made by informing himself about Neuroscience and Evolution. Why aren't more metaphysicians engaging with the equivalent in Physics? is it because the math is hard? Well then wise up or if the kitchen is too hot for you, get out of it and do something else. Continuing to do metaphysics while ignorant about physics is dangerously close to being akin to Intelligent Design in Biology which ignores everything that doesn't fit with their preconceived notions and distorts the science they do note.
We just need an approach from left field when it comes to the measurement problem. Is it hokum science? Imagine this story:Scientist applies for funding:

Q: Can I have money to fund my research into populations of ruby throated hummingbirds in the Americas?
A: No, sorry, we cannot prioritise that as we have more pressing issues (climate change).

Scientist goes away for a good think..... tries again.....
Q: Can I have money to fund my research into how climate change is having an impact on populations of ruby throated hummingbirds in the Americas?
A: Yes, of course, we really need to illustrate just how terrible climate change is. here's the dosh.
Rinse and repeat.

But what I'm missing is that the scientist above isn't a weasel at all; he's just a normal person with a living to make. It's not his fault that he has to work within this climate (pardon the pun), and the work he will end up doing is not necessarily of no worth. It's just that this mechanism drives a trend. You can even go to The Economist, they published several articles (e.g. "Trouble at the Lab", many more), a long time ago. This article concentrates on only one concrete example that it explores like a tabloid, not exactly a thorough basis.

Whenever there are discussions on Hacker News (Y Combinator forum) or in reddit's /r/science - a very heavily moderated science community very different from the mainstream reddit forums - scientists from all fields, not just psychology! - come out with example after example of problems in how science is conducted these days. Too much relies on an almost priest status. All you have to do is use the magic word "science", especially non-scientists who don't have even the trace of a clue like to do that (you can tell an actual scientist by how much more nuanced and un-excited they write, and by "actual" I don't mean "by self-reported job title").

I'd say scientists have some very rational reasons to be nervous about more observation (I don’t know how Stringers make a living...). One being the the threat of funding being pulled; an ever increasing likelihood in the growing political climate. The other being vested interests and the moron brigade latching onto any mistakes or fraudulent data and using it to discredit people, areas of study and perhaps even entire fields.

Loved Bill Poirier (QM), and John Terning's (Particle Physics; his derivation of the Special Relativity Lorentz Transformations was pretty interesting because he didn't use any kind of higher math) math annexes in the book. It automatically put the book on another level for me.

NB (*): An "interpretation" being a sort of description about what's "really going on" as opposed to what equations to use to predict the data - everyone agrees what the mathematics are and that they work, but not how we should think about the underlying behaviour. Of course, some interpretations would say that it's meaningless to do the latter.… (mehr)