[FRIAM] invoking quantum woo (was Book publishing advice needed)

[Jon Zingale]

Roger,

I wish to clarify what I believe our positions to be. Your position is
that Richard Feynman claims that no one understands quantum mechanics
and that you believe him. I am claiming that misunderstanding photons
has its origins in demanding that photons be greek waves or particles
and that this perspective is reminiscent of the classical problems of
compass and straight-edge geometry.

you write:
"...and that led to philosophers proclaiming that everything is
uncertain. But there are no bad faith actors there, it's just typical
science journalism, trolling for the juiciest clickbait."

Our discussion arose in the context of 'quantum woo', advocates and
discontents. From my perspective, it is an instance of bad faith
when 'philosophers' claim that *the uncertainty of everything* is
justified by Heisenberg. Additionally, it is an instance of bad faith
when 'journalists' unfaithfully invoke Heisenberg so as to produce
clickbait. I gather from your comment that with more discussion you
perhaps may agree, to some extent?

In one sense, I interpret Bethe as speaking about the lack of
uncertainty associated with macroscopic events as a rebuttal to the
flights of fancy, the 'quantum woo' espoused by first-year physics
students. However, further analysis of my interpretation perhaps cannot
be certain. In another sense, and intended with less cheek, I interpret
Bethe as highlighting the fact that the point metaphor diverges for the
very small. Heisenberg uncertainty is a claim about how well we can
approximate an object of inquiry with a particle, ie. treat the object
as a dynamical Euclidean point. We can treat a pea or the moon
accurately in this way, but we cannot treat an electron accurately in
this way.

you write:
1) "I especially liked the derivation of the uncertainty principle
through the limitations on representing a free particle with a Fourier
series"

2) "He then goes on to say that the thing which _is_ completely
uncertain is the orbit of the electron in an atom."

Bethe speaks to your first point by saying that "this is the best we can
do with bell-shaped curves". In doing so, he is referring to a toolset
and it is only within the scope of a given toolset that the meaning of
uncertainty is defined. Crudely, I interpret the work done by the mixed
efforts of topos theorists and theoretical physicists to be an effort to
flesh out better matching objects, objects which are more like electrons
than Euclid's points are to being like electrons[⏁]. Speaking to your
second point, my hope is that as such a program continues, we will one
day have a metaphor for quantum things that we find as satisfactory as
points are for macroscopic things[⏄].

I suggest that my arrogance in this matter is not the claim that someone
understands quantum mechanics in some universally acceptable way. My
arrogant assertion is that forcing a known-to-be incongruous model is
the wellspring of a perceived paradox and an unjustly disproportionate
production of 'quantum woo'.

Jon

[⏁] It is here that I think we may be seeing a kind of reversal. The
'softer' sciences have had to deal with difficult to describe phenomena
for their entire history, dealing with the fact that their objects of
inquiry are complex and not simply described by points. Maybe what we
are seeing in the efforts to revisit the logical foundations of physical
theory can be interpreted as *soft science envy*.

[⏄] Charles Dodgson once wrote, "How is a raven like a writing desk"?
Sometimes I feel that mathematicians love riddles. One will state the
axioms for a group and another will go off running to find an example
of some object which satisfies those axioms. In QM it seems to me that
phenomena is measured and relationships between these measurements are
stated. Now we go off running to find objects which answer the riddle.



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