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

[Roger Critchlow]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:26 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> 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.
>
> Yes, I believe Richard Feynman as I understand him, and I think he makes
his point quite clearly in the lecture.  And I believe Hans Bethe in his
1999 lectures identified the exact same part of quantum mechanics which is
not and can not be "understood" in the usual sense of physicists explaining
things.

I haven't seen any indication that you understand what I am saying, what
Feynman was saying, or what Bethe was saying.

I don't think your analogy to post-Euclidean geometry has any bearing.
The geometers simply changed the postulates, turned the logic crank, and
kept on reasoning about geometries in the same way.  New geometries for a
new age, but categorically geometries just like the old one.  The
physicists first discovered that their existing categories of explanations
were mutating into each other, and then watched the objects of their study
disappear into wave functions. Wave functions could be manipulated to
predict what nature would do, but they couldn't be disassembled to show
what nature is doing.

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?
>
> It would be bad faith if the journalist or philosopher understood quantum
mechanics and deliberately misrepresented it.  Misunderstandings are much
more common than villains.  Bethe did not accuse anyone of bad faith.


> 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[⏄].
>
>
If we imagine a theory which transcends quantum mechanics as it is
currently formulated, then we can imagine some features of quantum
mechanics might turn out to be artefacts of the methods we used?  Sure, I
can't and won't argue with that proposition.

As long as we're talking about quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation,
wave functions, basis sets for describing harmonic motion, then Bethe is
saying that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a consequence of
fourier analysis, which is a neat argument that I should have learned
decades ago.

We can talk about what Bethe says, or I can talk about what Bethe says and
you can talk about what you imagine the future will say about what Bethe
says, it's up to you.

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'.


"forcing a known-to-be incongruous model" is exactly what Schrödinger did,
if you remember Bethe's story about the ski holiday where all Sommerfeld's
students were laughing at de Broglie's paper, and the result was quantum
mechanics.  I guess the invention of quantum mechanics must be a necessary
condition for "quantum woo".

-- rec --
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200714/a2063b0c/attachment.html>