6 ms·

You can reject Bohmians as being emotionally attached to their ideas, but you can also reject non-Bohmians for the same reason. Many (most?) who grasp quantum

by stolio 12y ago

You can reject Bohmians as being emotionally attached to their ideas, but you can also reject non-Bohmians for the same reason. Many (most?) who grasp quantum mechanics on any level feel they've climbed an important intellectual mountain and don't want to find out they discarded their intuition for no good reason.

stared 12y ago
Emotional attachment it one thing. But pilot wave stuff does not explain anything, adds complexity and makes problem for more complicated systems that "a single particle in spatial representation". I do know professional physicist who prefer Bohmian interpretation (but most I know are in some version of Many Worlds or Quantum Bayesianism). The thing is whether a choice is made for purity or because of adherence to classical physics. BTW: If you want to get some data: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most-embarrassing-graph-in-modern-physics/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most...
- stolio 12y ago
  I'm well aware of the adoption rates of Bohmian Mechanics. What I object to is dismissing it as being the product of emotions and not differing ideas about the universe. On that graph 42% went to the Copenhagen Interpretation whose fans are just as emotional as Bohm's. Feel free to reject BM on technical merit, really, I couldn't care less. As an aside, the graph is a little funky since Bohmian Mechanics is not an interpretation of QM but a reformulation of it.
  - stared 12y ago
    I would guess that for Copenhagen interpretation its mostly experimentalists. While its coarse grained (i.e. is problematic at timescales of the "measurement") it does not add extra stuff. Plus, let us take a very simple system: one particle in a two-level system. Does Bohmian make it simpler for you? > Bohmian Mechanics is not an interpretation of QM but a reformulation of it. Could you explain the difference?
    - physcs1823 12y ago
      Different "interpretations" of QM are in a large part just philosophy at this point. Individual physicists might find one interpretation more appealing, but it doesn't actually have much, if any, impact on their work. A reformulation of a physical theory is a new mathematical approach. It might be motivated by a particular interpretation, but since existing approaches are all confirmed by experiment, it won't actually offer different predictions. However, it might be substantially easier to calculate a particular quantity in one formulation. Or, it might naturally imply a way to extend QM that will ultimately produce different predictions than the original formulations. (At some scale that we haven't yet probed.) Feynman's path integral formulation[1] is a pretty notable example of this. I've never looked at the Bohmian thingy, but the fact that I've heard more about it on reddit/HN than from physicists is not an encouraging sign... 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation
    - stolio 12y ago
      We're well above my pay grade here but this is how I look at it. A different system of mechanics is a different system of math, basically. One system of mechanics can have many interpretations but those interpretations may not be experimentally different from each other because they fundamentally calculate things in the same way. Bohmian Mechanics (correct me if I'm wrong) isn't just a different window-dressing on QM, it's built differently, that's why it can't make all the predictions of QM. At the end of the day I don't really have a side in all of this, but I think Bohmian mechanics is at least interesting for what it is.

by stolio 12y ago

stared 12y ago

Emotional attachment it one thing. But pilot wave stuff does not explain anything, adds complexity and makes problem for more complicated systems that "a single particle in spatial representation". I do know professional physicist who prefer Bohmian interpretation (but most I know are in some version of Many Worlds or Quantum Bayesianism). The thing is whether a choice is made for purity or because of adherence to classical physics. BTW: If you want to get some data: http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most-embarrassing-graph-in-modern-physics/ http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/01/17/the-most...

stolio 12y ago
I'm well aware of the adoption rates of Bohmian Mechanics. What I object to is dismissing it as being the product of emotions and not differing ideas about the universe. On that graph 42% went to the Copenhagen Interpretation whose fans are just as emotional as Bohm's. Feel free to reject BM on technical merit, really, I couldn't care less. As an aside, the graph is a little funky since Bohmian Mechanics is not an interpretation of QM but a reformulation of it.
- stared 12y ago
  I would guess that for Copenhagen interpretation its mostly experimentalists. While its coarse grained (i.e. is problematic at timescales of the "measurement") it does not add extra stuff. Plus, let us take a very simple system: one particle in a two-level system. Does Bohmian make it simpler for you? > Bohmian Mechanics is not an interpretation of QM but a reformulation of it. Could you explain the difference?
  - physcs1823 12y ago
    Different "interpretations" of QM are in a large part just philosophy at this point. Individual physicists might find one interpretation more appealing, but it doesn't actually have much, if any, impact on their work. A reformulation of a physical theory is a new mathematical approach. It might be motivated by a particular interpretation, but since existing approaches are all confirmed by experiment, it won't actually offer different predictions. However, it might be substantially easier to calculate a particular quantity in one formulation. Or, it might naturally imply a way to extend QM that will ultimately produce different predictions than the original formulations. (At some scale that we haven't yet probed.) Feynman's path integral formulation[1] is a pretty notable example of this. I've never looked at the Bohmian thingy, but the fact that I've heard more about it on reddit/HN than from physicists is not an encouraging sign... 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation
  - stolio 12y ago
    We're well above my pay grade here but this is how I look at it. A different system of mechanics is a different system of math, basically. One system of mechanics can have many interpretations but those interpretations may not be experimentally different from each other because they fundamentally calculate things in the same way. Bohmian Mechanics (correct me if I'm wrong) isn't just a different window-dressing on QM, it's built differently, that's why it can't make all the predictions of QM. At the end of the day I don't really have a side in all of this, but I think Bohmian mechanics is at least interesting for what it is.