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

[Prof David West]

I used to think that computer science / software engineering was abysmally ignorant of its own history, but I am coming to believe that "science" is just as ignorant. (Even worse, believing that science and math began with the Greeks.)

"Quantum woo," "interpretation doesn't matter, just shut up and calculate," etc. etc.

"Spooky action at a distance" — not Einstein critiquing quantum entanglement; no, it was the Cartesian's mocking Newton's theory of gravity. Newton did not disagree: he asserted that the inverse square law worked very nicely indeed — mathematically — but was at a loss to "explain how."  "Hypotheses non fingo, he said.

Similar "explanatory" problems existed for Coulumb's law and with the Biot-Savart law with regard electricity and magnetic fields.

Faraday "visualized" but could not mathematize (he could do algebra but not much else) fields and movement of copper wire through those fields to 'explain' Coulumb et. al. But, it was Maxwell that did the math for Faraday's conceptualization / explanation.

The tension between what the math can describe and what the math 'means' is not new.

What is new; the math has become so esoteric, so incestuous, that it "means" nothing. It is not even a description of 'the world' merely a description of itself.

"Physics Envy" is an epithet that I directed to Anthropology back when I was a grad student. I also have been claiming that computer science/software engineering has been fatally blinded by the same green monster. Actually, I have said that the problem generalized to "formalism," not just physics but physics is always held up as the exemplar of formalism.

I have seen articles about "Physics is Dead" for at least a decade. What they mean is that Physics is no longer 'science' because none of its leading-edge hypothesis are subject to falsification and hence cannot advance to the status of theory. If this is the case, maybe other, younger, sciences should rethink their envy and blind pursuit of abstract formalism.

davew
(The guy insanely jealous of Jon, Frank, Marcus, Glen, et. al. and their mathematical ability and knowledge.)


On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, at 1:26 PM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> 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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> 
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