Quantum Mechanics has been measured ...

[vlaiv]

... and it looks like it has collapsed

 

[Gfamily]

On 15/11/2024 at 23:23, vlaiv said:

... and it looks like it has collapsed

 

I've not watched the video, but I've looked up references to the author and he seems to focus on the way that 'interpretations' fail rather than the equations of QM failing.

But as I've not watched the video I can say no more than that. 

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Gfamily said:

I've not watched the video, but I've looked up references to the author and he seems to focus on the way that 'interpretations' fail rather than the equations of QM failing.

But as I've not watched the video I can say no more than that. 

You really should watch the video. I think he is really onto something exceptional.

I can try to briefly summarize what the video is about, but not sure how accurate my interpretation will be.

Author started off by trying to find easy method to introduce QM concepts to students. His approach was to use stochastic processes as basis and then as he developed the story he found this remarkable property of certain types of stochastic processes - indivisible stochastic processes.

There is mathematical mapping between them and Hilbert space. In another words - QM can be represented as indivisible stochastic process.

Here indivisible simply means that in most of processes we think about - we can stop in between start and finish state and calculate intermediate result - we can do this infinitely many times.

For example - in classical mechanics - if we have position and momentum of the particle - we can calculate its trajectory for any time T in future - there is this "smoothness" of time. Similarly in QM we have time evolution operator.

Indivisible stochastic processes don't have this property of smoothness. However, when transition is made to Hilbert space representation of QM - we "force" this smoothness, but as a consequence we get this weird results and phenomena. One being measurement problem that is not yet solved.

In domain of indivisible stochastic processes there is no measurement problem per se. Mathematics of it handles everything nicely.

"Drawback" would be that we are sort of transported back to classical mechanics just a bit prior to development of QM but instead of trying to describe laws of nature as continuous processes - or divisible ones, we should really describe laws of nature as indivisible stochastic processes - we still have uncertainty and randomness but effects like superposition, entanglement and measurement problem go away as being only consequence of trying to force what is indivisible process as being divisible.

[globular]

I spent most of my career working with stochastic models and a fair chunk of it trying to keep everything divisible.

I wish I’d questioned that now - it sounds like indivisible is where the fun lies.

 

[Ouroboros]

Mmmmm. It sounds very interesting. I was OK until about half way through when my brain started to fry.   I’m hearing the words but can’t comprehend just how his new approach works in practice.

Do I understand him to be saying that all those somewhat bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics that we know and love  like  superposition, entanglement etc aren’t real is any sense - just an illusion arising from the use of the wavefunction to describe how systems behave?   Take those out of the equation as it were and apply his indivisible stochastic processes and, rather boringly, the results just drop out? 

[globular]

Calculating results in indivisible stochastic processes is not easy. Not yet anyway. Mapping into Hilbert space and using wave functions is still likely to be a good way of calculating stuff - just not a good way of picturing what is actually going on.

Personally I’m more intrigued by indivisible stochastic processes that don’t map to a Hilbert space. Exploring those might lead to very new ideas…

 

Edited November 17 by globular
Typo

[vlaiv]

31 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Mmmmm. It sounds very interesting. I was OK until about half way through when my brain started to fry.   I’m hearing the words but can’t comprehend just how his new approach works in practice.

Do I understand him to be saying that all those somewhat bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics that we know and love  like  superposition, entanglement etc aren’t real is any sense - just an illusion arising from the use of the wavefunction to describe how systems behave?   Take those out of the equation as it were and apply his indivisible stochastic processes and, rather boringly, the results just drop out? 

I'm not sure if this approach brings any advancements in the way we practice it in terms of calculations, yet.

It is after all analogous to Hilbert spaces in mathematical sense - so both will produce exactly the same results. I don't know if it is any easier to calculate those results with this method.

What I have gather from video that I believe is important:

- we now have foundation to start thinking differently about things in QM. For long time we had one postulate / axiom of QM that we could not explain or make sense of - measurement postulate that was clearly defying "smoothness" of process. Now we can have clear understanding where this comes from and we must abandon the idea that laws of nature must be divisible.

- indivisible stochastic processes are area of mathematics where a lot of research can be done as it is unexplored. This could lead to new and optimized calculation techniques and new physical insights.

- we no longer have a big problem to bring together GM with QM. There is a lot of work to be done there to try make them compatible in the sense of indivisible processes - but maybe it will be much easier then trying to figure out quantum gravity?

- we no longer need to try to interpret QM with wave function being element of reality. No need for many worlds interpretation and such.

[Ouroboros]

OK. Kind of.  I couldn’t help but wonder as I listened to him talking whether Jacob Barandes’ approach wasn’t simply replacing the ‘yes, but what is the physical interpretation of the wave function?’ with yet another ‘yes, but what is the physical interpretation of  the indivisible stochastic approach?’. 

Edited November 17 by Ouroboros

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

OK. Kind of.  I couldn’t help but wonder as I listened to him talking whether Jacob Barandes’ approach wasn’t simply replacing the ‘yes, but what is the physical interpretation of the wave function?’ with yet another ‘yes, but what is the physical interpretation of  the indivisible stochastic approach?’. 

I'm sure it does do exactly that. You can't escape questions like that - which ever way you go.

I'm not happy about the idea of going back to particles being point like objects with attached properties, but if this approaches allows us to move forward in our understanding - if only to open up new questions. I'm all for it.

To me it seemed that we were way too much time in this weird place where no one can explain measurement problem - and it looked like no one is really trying to do so, and that worried me. It turns out that it could not be explained because it was based on faulty assumptions - finding out that. I believe is breakthrough in itself.

[Zermelo]

I managed to get through the video in three sittings. It's long, but well structured and not that technical - you can listen to it without the video, because it's just talking heads and no equations. It even includes a brief history of QM.

The actual content would be well beyond my capabilities, but I'm interested in how this has been received in the community(ies). This was the first that I've heard of it, and I would have expected it to pop up in at least one of my feeds if it had gained any traction yet. The paper on arXiv is from September last year. Has it been published in a peer-reviewed journal?
 

[vlaiv]

1 minute ago, Zermelo said:

, but I'm interested in how this has been received in the community(ies).

Me too.

I would certainly expect some level of push back, but I suspect that math is sound and I guess that is what matters.

[Stickey]

On 17/11/2024 at 22:36, vlaiv said:

I'm sure it does do exactly that. You can't escape questions like that - which ever way you go.

I'm not happy about the idea of going back to particles being point like objects with attached properties, but if this approaches allows us to move forward in our understanding - if only to open up new questions. I'm all for it.

To me it seemed that we were way too much time in this weird place where no one can explain measurement problem - and it looked like no one is really trying to do so, and that worried me. It turns out that it could not be explained because it was based on faulty assumptions - finding out that. I believe is breakthrough in itself.

 

[Stickey]

To me it seemed that we were way too much time in this weird place where no one can explain measurement problem - and it looked like no one is really trying to do so, and that worried me. It turns out that it could not be explained because it was based on faulty assumptions - finding out that. I believe is breakthrough in itself.

I know what you mean. Both models seen to be robust in their respective domains, but because of that,  no-one seems to want to stress test the underlying assumptions of either model. 

For a heck of a long time, everyone thought Newton's mechanics explained everything, despite the known problems with Mercury's orbit. It took a "diverse thinker" like Einstein to find an answer