In my semi-retirement — as a physicist-turned-futurist — I have a couple of options to pursue in terms of fundamental projects. As a futurist, the most natural fundamental project — here in The Anthropocene — is to try to work out how to help save the world. As a physicist, the most natural fundamental project is to try to understand the foundations of quantum mechanics. I leave it as an exercise for the reader which of those has the greater chance of success … 😁
- Part I – ‘The Coyote Problem’
- 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, Many Worlds, Bohmian, 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).
- Part II – Coming Back Down Towards the ‘Ground’
- The main contention of the previous post can be summed up as: the Schrödinger equation is to quantum mechanics what the Hamilton-Jacobi equation is to classical mechanics. 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…
The Voroscope 