Further Implications of the Transition
Higher-order variations, entanglement, spin, and the ‘measurement problem’
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, IX.”
Category: Ruminations
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.9.
A Pause to Take Stock
A pause to catch our breath and revisit why we went down the current pathway and how we got to where we are.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.9.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.5
‘Post-amble’ to the Previous Post
The Danger of AI Gate-keeping
I fed the original text of Part VIII into an AI assistant and asked it for an evaluation, not letting it know I was the author (so as to avoid the obsequiously fawning super-agreement that they often produce), just that I was an “interested reader” looking to “get a sense” of what the post is all about.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.5”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.
The Transition |M⟩ → |Q⟩
The transition from (classical) Mechanics to Quantics.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VIII.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VII.
The Classical Lagrangian Basis of Quantum Mechanics
Some explorations of the classical mechanics Lagrangian basis for quantum theory, as preparation for the next post.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VII.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VI.
The Coyote Has (Almost) Landed – ‘The Fenchurch Problem’
Here we will examine and interpret in detail the Level 1 primitive ontology and epistemological stance of the de Broglie-Bohm theory. We might disagree a bit with the conventional view…
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, VI.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, V.
‘The Duckmole Problem’
Quantum theory has been plagued since its formulation by a conception known as ‘wave-particle duality’, a throwback to two distinct and incommensurable concepts from classical physics, forced together into an uneasy shotgun marriage. It was natural for the founders of quantum theory to try to understand and make sense of the new physics in terms of what they were familiar with. But 100 years later, perhaps we can dispense with such unhelpful constructs and seek to develop a nomenclature that moves beyond such dualities and treats quantum entities on their own terms. This may help dispel some of the contortions necessary to accommodate concepts that are not only outmoded but counterproductive. Luckily, some progress has been made on this front.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, V.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, IV.
For Whom the Bell (Theorem) Tolls
Bell’s Theorem excludes a certain class of theories from being viable, and experiments have shown it to be correct, so we’d better pay attention to what the Universe says about its own behaviour. No matter how beautiful you think your theory is, nor how much you love it, it’s always the Universe that gets the final say.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, IV.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, III.
An Option for the ‘Ground’ State
In previous posts we have encountered the three main equivalent re-formulations of classical (i.e., Newtonian) mechanics—Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and Hamilton-Jacobi—as well as their quantum mechanical counterparts, Feynman path integrals, Heisenberg’s operator mechanics, and Schrödinger’s wave mechanics, respectively. (A few more are possible, cf. Styer et al. 2002, but these are the main ones of relevance here). We are now ready to think about what the final step ‘down’ might be to the quantum side of the bottom level of the ladder of abstraction, the quantum equivalent of the ‘ground’ from which classical mechanics arose.
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, III.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, II.
Coming Back Down Towards the ‘Ground’
The main contention of the previous post can be summed up succinctly as: the Schrödinger equation is to quantum mechanics what the Hamilton-Jacobi equation is to classical mechanics. This is because it was – in a sense – ‘derived’ (really inferred) from it, via the optical-mechanical analogy between idealised particle paths and idealised geometrical light rays, first pointed out by William Rowan Hamilton in the early 1830s (and see, e.g., Masoliver and Ros 2010 for a detailed mathematical exposition). The main postulate of Schrödinger’s wave mechanics was that the action $S$ from Hamilton-Jacobi mechanics becomes the phase of the complex wavefunction $\psi\sim e^{iS/\hbar}$. This meant that we therefore found ourselves three levels of abstraction away from, and ‘floating’ above (so to speak), the ‘ground’ that classical mechanics was founded upon, namely Newtonian mechanics in 3D space. This post now begins the process of thinking about how to come down again to seek a more solid footing, if indeed there is even one to find…
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, II.”
Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, I.
‘The Coyote Problem’
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
— Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (1967, p.129).
Six decades later, Feynman’s claim arguably still stands (and remember, he won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics, including inventing those squiggly diagrams that everyone uses now; so, if he doesn’t understand it…). Despite a century of unprecedented empirical success, the interpretation of quantum mechanics still remains very contested. In general, it seems undertaking any attempt to try to actually make sense of it is “considered barely respectable at all, if not actively disparaged” (Carroll 2019, p.4). Multiple interpretations coexist—Copenhagen, Bohmian, Many Worlds, Objective Collapse, Quantum Bayesian and so forth, at least a dozen or so—each with committed proponents and unresolved difficulties. No consensus view has emerged. Quantum theory has taken on an almost mystical reputation, much of which is, frankly, arrant nonsense (Bricmont 2017).
Continue reading “Reverse-Engineering Quantum Mechanics, I.”
Of things NATO, 2: The Second Allied Foresight Conference, and beyond
While the process of researching and writing the paper described in the previous post was going on, I was also in contact with another part of the strategic foresight branch at ACT who were beginning to co-organise the second allied foresight conference, thus fulfilling SACT General Lavigne’s wish from the 2024 Helsinki conference for these conferences to become a “tradition”. While that first conference in Helsinki was held in a hotel, which had certain security implications associated with it given the proximity of that city to a fairly staunch NATO adversary, the second one was being planned to be held at NATO Defense College in Rome, which is located inside a military base. Thus, security was going to be both more and less of an issue this time around.
Continue reading “Of things NATO, 2: The Second Allied Foresight Conference, and beyond”
The New Abnormal podcast episode
After the Future Force Talk podcast episode, I did an interview on The New Abnormal podcast hosted by Sean Pillot de Chenecey. It was recorded a couple of weeks before a presentation I was to give at a NATO conference in Rome last October. I will describe the lead-up to that presentation, and the paper it was based upon, in a subsequent post.
Future Force Talk podcast episode
I recently did a podcast interview on the Future Force Talk podcast, which is hosted by the Hungarian Defence Ministry’s Defence Innovation Research Institute (in Hungarian: Védelmi Innovációs Kutató Intézet, which has the wonderful acronym VIKI). The podcast host is Dr Gergely Németh, the Director of VIKI, who was formerly the Branch Head of the Strategic Foresight Branch at NATO’s Allied Command Transformation.
Two recent activities – a podcast and a presentation
I see that it has been quite a while since I posted here. This is mainly because for the past year or so, and most especially the last six months, I have been immersed up to my eyelobes [sic] in the International Relations literature working on a thematic paper on the future of the rules-based international order. I’ll delay any further discussion about this until the paper is published and then reflect on what that was like. But you can probably guess from the previous blog entry who this was for…
Continue reading “Two recent activities – a podcast and a presentation”
Exponential Minds Podcast interview
Nikolas Badminton of the Exponential Minds Podcast and I had a chat a couple of months ago. That interview is now live.
We had a pretty fun conversation. It did meander just a teeny little bit, but it does manage to mention quite a few things as a result: something of the history of my use of the Futures Cone; the levels at which foresight can be implemented; Big History and how I’ve used it to frame the coming civilisational energy transition (i.e., away from fossil fuels); as well as mention of David Christian‘s new book which continues on from Origin Story (which I was reading in manuscript at the time). Of course, there are also some aliens mentioned in there, as is Hoag’s Object. There’s also a little bit on this blog’s current scanning retrospective and the concept of futures intelligence. So, all in all, regular readers won’t find too much that is unfamiliar in the interview, but it might be fun to hear it spoken of. Nikolas did a pretty good job of paring it all back from the very long chat we had! 😉
What I am smiting my forehead over, though, is that I forgot to mention Cal Newport’s 2019 book Digital Minimalism, during the segment where we were talking about using technology with careful intention. My bad! Also, Newport’s podcast, whose name I couldn’t quite remember, is Deep Questions, and it just keeps getting better and better as Cal hits his stride with it. It’s definitely re-ignited my interest in intentional approaches to productivity. Might end up doing a series of posts on that, one of these years…
Anyway, I do hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much I did recording it! Thanks Nikolas!
- The Interview:
- at Exponential Minds
on YouTube
‘Dark Clouds in the Crystal Ball’
How DEVO – like Cassandra – saw the future, tried to warn us, and was widely ignored
The title for this post comes from a song lyric by the avant-garde music group DEVO, namely, from the opening song ‘Time Out for Fun’ from their fifth studio album, Oh No! It’s DEVO. By the time that album was released in late 1982, DEVO as a band had spent the better part of a decade promoting the thesis of ‘de-evolution’ – the idea that humanity, rather than progressing, was actually regressing, and was in point of fact not evolving but really de-evolving (which was the origin of their name) to a more primitive state of mindlessly conformist automatons. Continue reading “‘Dark Clouds in the Crystal Ball’”
And that’s a wrap! The End of the Swinburne MSF.
Today was the last class ever of the Swinburne MSF (2001 — 2018) — something that has been coming for a long time (announcement of closure was back in May 2016).
There is a KudoBoard where people have posted their memories of the MSF.
Q: What now?
A: Trust emergence…
Is ‘Hoag’s Object’ an ‘engineered’ galaxy?
The question asked in the title of this post is one I have been pondering for the most part of a decade now, ever since I saw the image, shown in Figure 1, of the galaxy PGC54559 (popularly known as Hoag’s Object) in 2010, following several months of thinking about what Kardashev Type III civilisations might look like.
Continue reading “Is ‘Hoag’s Object’ an ‘engineered’ galaxy?”
Celebrating the Master of Strategic Foresight
Last year I noted that the Master of Strategic Foresight (MSF) — with which I’ve been involved since its inception at Swinburne in 2001 and into which I’ve taught for almost as long (through guest lectures firstly, then as a formal member of teaching staff from 2003) — was being shut down, and was to be taught out over the next year or so. My fellow foresight conspirator for much of that time, Peter Hayward (aka “Captain Foresight”), retired at the end of last year, but not before we were able to celebrate the fact that the MSF had existed at all. That was what we chose to call the “MSF Wake”. Continue reading “Celebrating the Master of Strategic Foresight”