Does QM disprove realism and materialism?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I don't know about the 'end of materialism', it seems to me that we're discovering - yet again - that the material world is not what we thought it was; although this time we don't have intuitive visualisations of what it is or how it behaves. When we dig down this deep, we discover that the semantics we use at higher levels of emergence are no longer useful, or become ambiguous.

 

[Halbhh]

Yes, it's an interesting model - it also rather reminded me of the classical description of the propagation of electromagnetic waves with their mutually supportive orthogonal fields...

Copenhagen interpretations seem to be losing popularity because of the ad-hoc nature of wavefunction collapse which has no formal justification, and the measurement problem. It's becoming increasingly accepted that a measurement or observation is just a particular case of quantum systems interacting.

If one drops the collapse of the wavefunction and simply accepts its unitary evolution according to the Schrödinger equation (and that observers are quantum systems too), the apparent randomness goes away and the universe has a fully deterministic description. One can even derive the Born rule that describes the probability of a particular observational outcome.

The evolution of the wave equation is deterministic, but it only describes a probability of course, and that's where the interesting question about whether there are hidden local variables comes in, ala ERP, still that very same question, and the Bell Test experiments are about this, and they have been making that derterministic view of hiden local variables, aka determinism, less and less likely. See post #38 above for a link worth reading on this, but many good articles are available if you'd like more.

 

[Halbhh]

Yes, it's an interesting model - it also rather reminded me of the classical description of the propagation of electromagnetic waves with their mutually supportive orthogonal fields...

Copenhagen interpretations seem to be losing popularity because of the ad-hoc nature of wavefunction collapse which has no formal justification, and the measurement problem. It's becoming increasingly accepted that a measurement or observation is just a particular case of quantum systems interacting.

If one drops the collapse of the wavefunction and simply accepts its unitary evolution according to the Schrödinger equation (and that observers are quantum systems too), the apparent randomness goes away and the universe has a fully deterministic description. One can even derive the Born rule that describes the probability of a particular observational outcome.

Here, this background article could help also, and it has plenty of embedded links to follow up on various aspects:
Bell test experiments - Wikipedia

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The evolution of the wave equation is deterministic, but it only describes a probability of course, and that's where the interesting question about whether there are hidden local variables comes in, ala ERP, still that very same question, and the Bell Test experiments are about this, and they have been making that derterministic view of hiden local variables, aka determinism, less and less likely.

You can have hidden variables if you drop locality, e.g. Bohmian pilot wave theory. But you don't need them if you allow that, rather than the superposition collapsing on interaction, the interacting system and, by decoherence, the environment, join the superposition, e.g. as in Everettian QM (although I suppose you could say the superposition itself is the hidden variables).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Here, this background article could help also, and it has plenty of embedded links to follow up on various aspects:
Bell test experiments - Wikipedia

Thanks, I'm familiar with EPR, Aspect, Bell, etc.

 

[Halbhh]

You can have hidden variables if you drop locality, e.g. Bohmian pilot wave theory. But you don't need them if you allow that, rather than the superposition collapsing on interaction, the interacting system and, by decoherence, the environment, join the superposition, e.g. as in Everettian QM (although I suppose you could say the superposition itself is the hidden variables).

See posts #22 and #32 re Bohmian. Is there even another possible way to test Bohmian mechanics except for such a fortuitous analog (i.e., after all, doesn't Bohmian simply give identical predictions to Copenhagen)? As I wrote in #32, Bohmian seems very much still possible. The previous results (the first link in post #22) were so suggestive. But....jury's definitely out, and in QM sometimes those juries don't come in. If they could replicate a double slit result though, that would be an encouraging result for the Bohmian idea, which let's face it would be exciting to imagine as real, cause just like Einstein we all feel better to think "God doesn't play dice".

 

[DennisTate]

Wow!!!!!!!

This video makes me quite happy that I can limit my belief in Multiverse Theory by the prophecy of Ezekiel 37

G-d..... only makes as many versions of us as is needed to lead all of us to Salvation..... G-d is not going to set in motion all possible universes based on all possible choices being made!

Multiverse Theory and multiple Ezekiel 37 type events.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

See posts #22 and #32 re Bohmian. Is there even another possible way to test Bohmian mechanics except for such a fortuitous analog (i.e., after all, doesn't Bohmian simply give identical predictions to Copenhagen)?

As I understand it, all QM interpretations conform to the QM formalism, although most include ad-hoc additions. I don't think any are thought to be directly testable yet, but there are in-principle falsifications; e.g. Everettian QM is falsifiable - by demonstrating some ad-hoc addition, e.g. wavefunction collapse - which would itself support Copenhagen versions.

As I wrote in #32, Bohmian seems very much still possible. The previous results (the first link in post #22) were so suggestive. But....jury's definitely out, and in QM sometimes those juries don't come in. If they could replicate a double slit result though, that would be an encouraging result for the Bohmian idea, which let's face it would be exciting to imagine as real, cause just like Einstein we all feel better to think "God doesn't play dice".

We all have our cognitive biases