23 ms·

Thanks for the great explanation. Serious question: Can I ask how you happen to know so much about this subject?

lisper 10y ago
Years of practice :-) Seriously though, I don't actually know much about QM, I only know the One Thing that makes the rest of QM easy to understand (kind of like knowing Lisp makes the rest of computer programming easy to understand). In case you want to know that One Thing, it's written up here: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf There's also a movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
- davesque 10y ago
  Cool, thanks for the info.
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    You may want to also look for an article by N. David Mermin "Is the moon there when nobody looks"
- jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
  Just be aware that while Dr. Garret is very smart (and very accomplished with software) he is not a physicist. When this talk first came out I asked a couple people who do know QFT in detail about it and they were quite dismissive.
  - lisper 10y ago
    It's true. I'm not a physicist. I have never claimed to be a physicist. The only contribution I have ever claimed is a pedagogical one. When I first wrote the paper 15 years ago I submitted it to Physics Today. It was rejected, not because it was wrong, but because the reviewers thought that it was nothing new, that everyone already knew this stuff. Since then the physics community has bifurcated rather neatly into two camps: the ones who agree with the PT reviewers, and the ones who think I'm a "category 5 loon" (that was Lubos Motl's term). Personally, I think the existence of people like Motl and your anonymous "dismissive" QFT experts -- and the fact that I can still stump card-carrying physicists with the EPRG paradox -- falsifies the hypothesis that "everyone already knows this stuff." I will also say, because I'm feeling rather annoying by all this, that in 15 years no one has ever pointed out any actual mistakes in the paper (except for a few typos).
    - jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
      I'm not qualified to adjudicate this, but I would point out that painting yourself as revealing a conspiracy doesn't do you any favors IMO. Edit: downvote me all you like, but at least be accurate. I'm referring to the title of the tech talk video linked several times in this thread: "The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know"
      - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
        There was no conspiracy mentioned. Just people disagreeing about a hard subject.
      - andrewflnr 10y ago
        There is no conspiracy described in GP, only human politics as usual.
      - lisper 10y ago
        You obviously didn't watch even the first minute of the talk because the very first thing I say is that the title is tongue-in-cheek and there is no conspiracy.
        jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
        I did, though it's been several years. Making an inflammatory statement, then denying it as a joke is a common mild double bind, one that's best avoided. I'm not speaking toward your intentions as I obviously don't know them. I'm just pointing out that particular rhetorical form isn't doing you any favors, again, IMO.
        lisper 10y ago
        I prefer to think of it as a marketing strategy. And I think it has actually been fairly effective. That video has had over a million views.
    - RangerScience 10y ago
- zeroer 10y ago
  I watched your video. Viewing measurement and entanglement as the same thing or closely related is ineresting, and the EPRG experiment is clever. I've never seen that before. Thanks for that! I need to think about it for a bit. But I think you give too short a shrift to Many-Worlds because it's not intuitive to you. Plenty of things about QM are not intuitive; I don't think that's sufficient reason to reject it.
  - lisper 10y ago
    I didn't reject it (at least I don't think I did -- it has been a while since I watched the video). I believe I said that both "many-worlds" and "zero-worlds" were equally legitimate -- only "one-world" (Copenhagen) is untenable. [UPDATE] Yes, my recollection is correct. Go watch it again starting at the 58 minute mark or a little earlier.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      During the end questions yes, but at timestamp 43:20: "But I personally find [Many-Worlds] takes a heavier toll on my intuition than I'm willing to concede."
      - lisper 10y ago
        OK, well, I think it's a little unfair to characterize that as a "rejection." But my thinking has evolved a bit in the past five years. The difference between zero-worlds and many-worlds is the difference between taking a personal point of view or a God's-eye-view. God can see the many-worlds, but I can't, so it makes more sense to me to assign a privileged status to this world, the one I live in. But then I have to make my peace with the fact that this world is not as it appears to be, and I do that by thinking of it as a (very high quality) simulation. But that just my personal approach. Reasonable people can (and do) disagree.
- questionr 10y ago
  didn't do the math, but sounds plausible though I know barely anything of quantum mechanics. just to confirm my interpretation, its saying that: - fundamentally the universe is governed by quantum mechanics - classical physics doesn't truly exist - the classical physics we see and intuit can be explained by entropy (information theory) of the quantum state - measurement and entanglement are the same in the sense that both imparts "information" into the system. this in effect acts as a "filter", an example of which is the double-slit experiment where the waves are "filtered" to particles when being measured - our conscious mind is a classical construct so its naturally difficult to intuit quantum laws is that mostly correct? also, how popular is this theory in the physics community?
  - lisper 10y ago
    > is that mostly correct? Mostly. > also, how popular is this theory in the physics community? Not very. The fashionable way to think about this stuff is something called "decoherence" which really amounts to the same thing but phrased in different terms.
    - questionr 10y ago
      Thanks! so if i were to do further research into this, I would use the keyword "decoherence"? also not being a physicist, could I naively think this would be a good candidate for the "theory of everything"?
      - lisper 10y ago
        > so if i were to do further research into this, I would use the keyword "decoherence"? Decoherence, relational quantum mechanics, quantum information theory, the Von Neuman measurement model -- all of these turn out to be the same thing. > also not being a physicist, could I naively think this would be a good candidate for the "theory of everything"? No, the "theory of everything" refers to the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. Completely different topic.
        10y ago
- davesque 10y ago
  Didn't realize it was you, Dr. Garret. Thanks a lot for taking the time to chat with us about this.
  - lisper 10y ago
    My pleasure :-)

Years of practice :-) Seriously though, I don't actually know much about QM, I only know the One Thing that makes the rest of QM easy to understand (kind of like knowing Lisp makes the rest of computer programming easy to understand). In case you want to know that One Thing, it's written up here: http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf There's also a movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc

davesque 10y ago
Cool, thanks for the info.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  You may want to also look for an article by N. David Mermin "Is the moon there when nobody looks"
jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
Just be aware that while Dr. Garret is very smart (and very accomplished with software) he is not a physicist. When this talk first came out I asked a couple people who do know QFT in detail about it and they were quite dismissive.
- lisper 10y ago
  It's true. I'm not a physicist. I have never claimed to be a physicist. The only contribution I have ever claimed is a pedagogical one. When I first wrote the paper 15 years ago I submitted it to Physics Today. It was rejected, not because it was wrong, but because the reviewers thought that it was nothing new, that everyone already knew this stuff. Since then the physics community has bifurcated rather neatly into two camps: the ones who agree with the PT reviewers, and the ones who think I'm a "category 5 loon" (that was Lubos Motl's term). Personally, I think the existence of people like Motl and your anonymous "dismissive" QFT experts -- and the fact that I can still stump card-carrying physicists with the EPRG paradox -- falsifies the hypothesis that "everyone already knows this stuff." I will also say, because I'm feeling rather annoying by all this, that in 15 years no one has ever pointed out any actual mistakes in the paper (except for a few typos).
  - jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
    I'm not qualified to adjudicate this, but I would point out that painting yourself as revealing a conspiracy doesn't do you any favors IMO. Edit: downvote me all you like, but at least be accurate. I'm referring to the title of the tech talk video linked several times in this thread: "The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know"
    - bjelkeman-again 10y ago
      There was no conspiracy mentioned. Just people disagreeing about a hard subject.
    - andrewflnr 10y ago
      There is no conspiracy described in GP, only human politics as usual.
    - lisper 10y ago
      You obviously didn't watch even the first minute of the talk because the very first thing I say is that the title is tongue-in-cheek and there is no conspiracy.
      - jasonwatkinspdx 10y ago
        I did, though it's been several years. Making an inflammatory statement, then denying it as a joke is a common mild double bind, one that's best avoided. I'm not speaking toward your intentions as I obviously don't know them. I'm just pointing out that particular rhetorical form isn't doing you any favors, again, IMO.
        lisper 10y ago
        I prefer to think of it as a marketing strategy. And I think it has actually been fairly effective. That video has had over a million views.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
zeroer 10y ago
I watched your video. Viewing measurement and entanglement as the same thing or closely related is ineresting, and the EPRG experiment is clever. I've never seen that before. Thanks for that! I need to think about it for a bit. But I think you give too short a shrift to Many-Worlds because it's not intuitive to you. Plenty of things about QM are not intuitive; I don't think that's sufficient reason to reject it.
- lisper 10y ago
  I didn't reject it (at least I don't think I did -- it has been a while since I watched the video). I believe I said that both "many-worlds" and "zero-worlds" were equally legitimate -- only "one-world" (Copenhagen) is untenable. [UPDATE] Yes, my recollection is correct. Go watch it again starting at the 58 minute mark or a little earlier.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    During the end questions yes, but at timestamp 43:20: "But I personally find [Many-Worlds] takes a heavier toll on my intuition than I'm willing to concede."
    - lisper 10y ago
      OK, well, I think it's a little unfair to characterize that as a "rejection." But my thinking has evolved a bit in the past five years. The difference between zero-worlds and many-worlds is the difference between taking a personal point of view or a God's-eye-view. God can see the many-worlds, but I can't, so it makes more sense to me to assign a privileged status to this world, the one I live in. But then I have to make my peace with the fact that this world is not as it appears to be, and I do that by thinking of it as a (very high quality) simulation. But that just my personal approach. Reasonable people can (and do) disagree.
questionr 10y ago
didn't do the math, but sounds plausible though I know barely anything of quantum mechanics. just to confirm my interpretation, its saying that: - fundamentally the universe is governed by quantum mechanics - classical physics doesn't truly exist - the classical physics we see and intuit can be explained by entropy (information theory) of the quantum state - measurement and entanglement are the same in the sense that both imparts "information" into the system. this in effect acts as a "filter", an example of which is the double-slit experiment where the waves are "filtered" to particles when being measured - our conscious mind is a classical construct so its naturally difficult to intuit quantum laws is that mostly correct? also, how popular is this theory in the physics community?
- lisper 10y ago
  > is that mostly correct? Mostly. > also, how popular is this theory in the physics community? Not very. The fashionable way to think about this stuff is something called "decoherence" which really amounts to the same thing but phrased in different terms.
  - questionr 10y ago
    Thanks! so if i were to do further research into this, I would use the keyword "decoherence"? also not being a physicist, could I naively think this would be a good candidate for the "theory of everything"?
    - lisper 10y ago
      > so if i were to do further research into this, I would use the keyword "decoherence"? Decoherence, relational quantum mechanics, quantum information theory, the Von Neuman measurement model -- all of these turn out to be the same thing. > also not being a physicist, could I naively think this would be a good candidate for the "theory of everything"? No, the "theory of everything" refers to the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. Completely different topic.
      - 10y ago
davesque 10y ago
Didn't realize it was you, Dr. Garret. Thanks a lot for taking the time to chat with us about this.
- lisper 10y ago
  My pleasure :-)