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Guys, to both the parent and grandparent, please do not throw out word like that haphazardly. Even if you know what Bohmian mechanics or vacuum virtual particle

Guys, to both the parent and grandparent, please do not throw out word like that haphazardly. Even if you know what Bohmian mechanics or vacuum virtual particles actually means, you are just spreading rumors at this point, unless you try to define those terms. About virtual particles: First of all, the virtual particle picture is a useful picture to build intuition, the math behind it is not as simple as the picture implies. Second, no, just pushing on the virtual particles is not a magical way to save conservation of momentum - where does that momentum go after those virtual particles re-annihilate for instance? About Bohmian mechanics: How do you even reach that conclusion? This is a really wild claim, that can not be taken seriously without any argument. Bohmian mechanics already has philosophical problems (stemming from computation theory, c.f. some of Aaronson's writing) even if mathematically it is equivalent to QM in the case of a single particle. But look at how ugly its generalization to multiple particles looks like (I do concede, ugliness is not the best guide, but it is something to consider when searching for a good description of nature).

wyager 10y ago
> I do concede, ugliness is not the best guide, but it is something to consider when searching for a good description of nature Ugliness is a proxy for complexity, and we should assign a lower prior probability to more complex theories. We should be (somewhat) more skeptical of theories that don't tickle our mathematical aesthetics.
obi1kenobi 10y ago
The point was not to precisely define an alternative hypothesis. The point was to illustrate that the click-baity "physics is broken" view taken by the article is not warranted, and that there is very little consideration of the less-extreme alternatives.
madaxe_again 10y ago
Read the paper - that was the hypothesis presented by the folks at NASA, not me. As to whether I understand pilot wave qm - I wrote a masters reaearch project on it on it, I studied physics. As to ugliness, you think schrodinger is beautiful?!
- krastanov 10y ago
  > As to whether I understand pilot wave qm - I wrote a masters reaearch project on it on it, I studied physics. As I said, you might understand the topic, but here you just dropped a fancy term and a very big claim, without explaining the first or giving an argument for the second. My point was not to claim you do not know what you are talking about, rather that you are not helping us understand what you are talking about.

wyager 10y ago

> I do concede, ugliness is not the best guide, but it is something to consider when searching for a good description of nature Ugliness is a proxy for complexity, and we should assign a lower prior probability to more complex theories. We should be (somewhat) more skeptical of theories that don't tickle our mathematical aesthetics.

obi1kenobi 10y ago

The point was not to precisely define an alternative hypothesis. The point was to illustrate that the click-baity "physics is broken" view taken by the article is not warranted, and that there is very little consideration of the less-extreme alternatives.

madaxe_again 10y ago

Read the paper - that was the hypothesis presented by the folks at NASA, not me. As to whether I understand pilot wave qm - I wrote a masters reaearch project on it on it, I studied physics. As to ugliness, you think schrodinger is beautiful?!

krastanov 10y ago
> As to whether I understand pilot wave qm - I wrote a masters reaearch project on it on it, I studied physics. As I said, you might understand the topic, but here you just dropped a fancy term and a very big claim, without explaining the first or giving an argument for the second. My point was not to claim you do not know what you are talking about, rather that you are not helping us understand what you are talking about.