Can Quantum Weirdness Be Logically Predicted?

[jason1990]

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[jason1990 I struggle with the way you put it, if by [3] you basically mean relativity then I think that's the same as Metric's point and I agree - the point remains that its currently arbitary as to whether we should abandon relativity or realism - this is not skepticism in the normal sense. The question is whether to be skeptical about realism or relativity or to suspend judgement in the abscense of any means of telling the difference]

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Aha. I think I misunderstood you. Roughly, [3] means the existence of a "speed limit". I thought you were suggesting that [2] holds, that [3] holds (with some speed limit possibly greater than that proposed by relativity), and that [1] might fail, but the failure occurs only outside the realm of speeds and distances in which we are currently able to perform experiments.

[David Steele]

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What I would like to know however is if the strange things about particles that our experiments show, is a logical consequence of anything that makes common sense.

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One scientist, I forget who, said something like "Particles are not things". The idea that with the very small, properties are not exactly meaurable and have other odd behaviors, has always struck me as sensible.

If quarks were simply small billiard balls, no progress at all would have really been made.

So in one sense it seems very logical that something like
QM follows as compared to classical physics.

This is a far cry from showing that the actual details of QM follow logically ( which others may prove in the rest of the thread GL!).

D.

[prosellis]

Free will exists at the level of human experience; Patterns of thought in the brain creating the sensation of free will. Quantum Mechanics is a red herring.

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Not in total disagreement, but:
Isn't experience necessary in Quantum Mechanics? Schrodinger's Cat suggests that the act of observation collapses the wave function of a particle or system and therefore defines both the state and coordinates of that thing. My flaw may be in equating observation with experience, but I see them as one in the same in many cases. Without experiencing specific systems through observation they retain their wave function and exist without specific dimension.
I'm not sure that this means that QM is in any way indicative of human free will, but it does account for the necessity of observers to exist.

On a side note:
I know that string theory does not subscribe to the classic wave-particle duality theory, does anyone know how string theorists circumvent this?

[MaxWeiss]

Do you all have any suggestions for introductory books on the subject? I'm not averse to the math, but if you have a layman's guide, that'd be just as well for me.

[Metric]

Volume III of the Feynman Lectures on Physics is a good introduction to quantum ideas with enough math to give you a foothold on things, but not enough to swamp you. As an additional advantage, the lectures can be had on tape/CD, so you can listen to Feynman actually giving the lecture while you're e.g. in the car.

One downside -- he does not discuss Bell's inequalities in these lectures, which are rather profound. However, you should be able to hunt down an intro to this specific topic online without too much trouble.

[Piers]

People keep looking for magic here where there isn’t any.

Would it be clear if I said that the sensation of free will is a biological feature of the human mind?

The position of observers in Quantum mechanics is a consequence of the type of theory Quantum Mechanics is, not of the underlying physics.

Its very easy to get confused about what bits of Quantum Mechanics is inherited from the underlying physics and what bits are just part of the ‘artificial’ structure needed to ‘hold’ the theory.

But here’s a clue, anything about randomness and probably is part of the human constructed mounting not the real thing.

QM and free will might as well compare apples and the French Revolution.

Or at least that’s the way it seems to me.

[Metric]

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On a side note:
I know that string theory does not subscribe to the classic wave-particle duality theory, does anyone know how string theorists circumvent this?

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Wave/particle duality is emphasized only to get a single point across -- a system's state vector is typically in a superposition of eigenstates of a particular observable. In the case of a particle satisfying the Schroedinger equation, this superposition looks like (has the functional form of) a wave. Superstring theory is a quantum theory, though, so it inherits this same type of "duality," though the observables do not include position operators of a pointlike particle. This is not something fundamentally new -- in quantum field theory one already stops dealing with simple position operators and starts dealing with observables of fields.

[Max Raker]

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People keep looking for magic here where there isn’t any.

Would it be clear if I said that the sensation of free will is a biological feature of the human mind?

The position of observers in Quantum mechanics is a consequence of the type of theory Quantum Mechanics is, not of the underlying physics.

Its very easy to get confused about what bits of Quantum Mechanics is inherited from the underlying physics and what bits are just part of the ‘artificial’ structure needed to ‘hold’ the theory.

But here’s a clue, anything about randomness and probably is part of the human constructed mounting not the real thing.

QM and free will might as well compare apples and the French Revolution.

Or at least that’s the way it seems to me.

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I disagree with this. The position of observers in QM is 100% the result of the universe and not a by product of the way QM is constructed. And there is a 0% chance that quantum mechanics is "wrong", meaning that the worst that can happen to QM is what happened to Newtonian mechanics, ie it becomes a limiting case of a more encompassing theory.

Also, Bells experiments really told us nothing new. Bohr and Heisenberg knew the results some 30 years or so before it became experimentally possible to test.

[madnak]

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I disagree with this. The position of observers in QM is 100% the result of the universe and not a by product of the way QM is constructed. And there is a 0% chance that quantum mechanics is "wrong", meaning that the worst that can happen to QM is what happened to Newtonian mechanics, ie it becomes a limiting case of a more encompassing theory.

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Which makes it wrong. I don't think "close enough, given the proper circumstances" really counts in physics.

[Piers]

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I disagree with this. The position of observers in QM is 100% the result of the universe and not a by product of the way QM is constructed.

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Guess we disagree.

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And there is a 0% chance that quantum mechanics is "wrong", meaning that the worst that can happen to QM is what happened to Newtonian mechanics, ie it becomes a limiting case of a more encompassing theory.

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You contradict yourself.

Your really keen on these 100%, 0% estimates.