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So you interpret QM as just math, with no physical meaning or interpretation, that's fine. "Shut up and calculate", is old hat. My point is similar but not qu

So you interpret QM as just math, with no physical meaning or interpretation, that's fine. "Shut up and calculate", is old hat. My point is similar but not quite so prohibitive. It isn't about cats, rather it is about shedding your large scale ontologies when you work at much smaller scale. At these scales we have observation and evolution according wave equations, that is the ontology. In between there is nothing to conceive of or there are superpositions and non-locality. There is no comforting continuous existence across time and you need to accept that just as in classical physics you accepted the opposite, perhaps unknowingly. Do you not think your intuition about ontology may fail you when scales change 9 orders of magnitude?

nh23423fefe 1y ago
Reality obviously reduces to QM in certain regimes. I'm quibbling with > Why does a cat being both alive and dead sound like nonsense? Alive and dead are coarse grained macrostates and these are never observed in superposition. Just like we don't observe asteroids in superpositions either. You could make some argument around decoherence to explain the absence while maintaining the possibility I guess. The absence of observation is why it sounds like nonsense. Cats aren't things that are alive and dead (sounds like category error to me), even though electrons (excitations of electron field, something something strings or loop or whatever) might be things that exist in superpositions over position space or momentum space and you can calculate observables from wavefunctions. That doesn't say anything about what is "happening" IMO. I'm not saying macroscopic observations rule out microscopic ontologies.
- d4rkn0d3z 1y ago
  I don't think there is anything interesting that we disagree on. I'm just not finding the ontology that I must accept/adopt to do quantum mechanics objectionable despite that it shows little respect for my scale-laden experiences. I find that superpositions, non-local couplings, etc. Do not mix well with coarse grained macrostates, or any sort of experience I have had at scale. This is probably because the entirety of my experience is rationalization after the fact of reality, constructed in my brain for the purpose of maximizing gene replication. But I am trained to deal with paradigm change -- incomensurability, ontology, and epistemology are part and parcel of that endeavour. In QM, I don't even get the comfort of assuming there is an objective reality filled with entities that enjoy continuous existence in time.
  - nh23423fefe 1y ago
    Agree. I was a little curt saying "weird". Probably the most persuasive point you make is about non-local couplings. I think that's the strongest evidence for me that macroscopic observations don't bind the microscopic ontology. I probably buy the "everything is relational/consistent histories" story the most. > There is no comforting continuous existence across time I think I agree. Using differential equations to model everything makes us think that the entities are really there and being pushed around by laws. But that's the map trying to sneak into the territory imo.

nh23423fefe 1y ago

Reality obviously reduces to QM in certain regimes. I'm quibbling with > Why does a cat being both alive and dead sound like nonsense? Alive and dead are coarse grained macrostates and these are never observed in superposition. Just like we don't observe asteroids in superpositions either. You could make some argument around decoherence to explain the absence while maintaining the possibility I guess. The absence of observation is why it sounds like nonsense. Cats aren't things that are alive and dead (sounds like category error to me), even though electrons (excitations of electron field, something something strings or loop or whatever) might be things that exist in superpositions over position space or momentum space and you can calculate observables from wavefunctions. That doesn't say anything about what is "happening" IMO. I'm not saying macroscopic observations rule out microscopic ontologies.

d4rkn0d3z 1y ago
I don't think there is anything interesting that we disagree on. I'm just not finding the ontology that I must accept/adopt to do quantum mechanics objectionable despite that it shows little respect for my scale-laden experiences. I find that superpositions, non-local couplings, etc. Do not mix well with coarse grained macrostates, or any sort of experience I have had at scale. This is probably because the entirety of my experience is rationalization after the fact of reality, constructed in my brain for the purpose of maximizing gene replication. But I am trained to deal with paradigm change -- incomensurability, ontology, and epistemology are part and parcel of that endeavour. In QM, I don't even get the comfort of assuming there is an objective reality filled with entities that enjoy continuous existence in time.
- nh23423fefe 1y ago
  Agree. I was a little curt saying "weird". Probably the most persuasive point you make is about non-local couplings. I think that's the strongest evidence for me that macroscopic observations don't bind the microscopic ontology. I probably buy the "everything is relational/consistent histories" story the most. > There is no comforting continuous existence across time I think I agree. Using differential equations to model everything makes us think that the entities are really there and being pushed around by laws. But that's the map trying to sneak into the territory imo.