🚀 go-pugleaf

A few terse responses here...

djo@pbhyc.UUCP (Dan'l Oakes) writes:
> Reasons:  (1)  It's incredibly arrogant to simply assume that our mathematical
> model *is* adequate in the present state of knowledge.

Though it does provide excellent predictions of the experimental results.

> (2)  [and I expect to
> be flamed to the stars for this] If we accept indeterminacy, the validity of
> scientific method as a whole is called into question.  Scientific method is
> based on the absolute repeatability of experiments under essentially identical
> conditions.  The admission of indeterminacy is tantamount to admission that
> experiments, even under absolutely identical conditions -- in itself an
> impossibility -- are not repeatable, but only statistically similar.

A very good point...  But if you run two *series* of experiments, and
compare the statistical properties of the two sets of results, those
properties are "the same" (i.e., within the statistical variation
expected -- I don't know the details, but there is a huge body of
statistical theory that makes all this quite well-defined).

> The only
> way to recreate determinacy in QM is through the admission of a "hidden
> variable," something which determines the "indeterminate" regardless of our
> state of knowledge.

True, but since hidden variables imply the Bell inequality, and (so
far) the Bell inequality has been *disproved experimentally*, it would
not seem to be a fruitful avenue of theoretical development, to say
the least.  "Let us start developing our theory by assuming something
that experiment has disproved..."  (Though you can get out of this
bind with FTL info transfer, but no one seems to like that choice.)

> Or that QM is simply inadequate.  You've thrown that possibility out the
> window unexamined.

Except that QM is fantastic at explaining what we see.  This makes
physicists less than willing reject it, particularly when the reason
for rejecting it is a philosophical distaste of certain aspects of the
theory.

> To say that the mathematics is "inadequate" is not equal to saying that
> it "fails to correspond to reality."  Newtonian physics corresponds to
> reality, within its limits.  When applied to relativistic speeds, masses,
> etc., however, Newtonian physics becomes inadequate.
> 
> I suggest that something similar is taking place here:  that QM corresponds
> to reality, within its limits; but that, just as the level of interpretation
> and observation once showed Newtonian physics inadequate, so now QM is proving
> inadequate under certain conditions.

Newtonian mechanics was shown to be inadequate by the Michelson-Morely
experiment (leading to relativity), and by the "ultraviolet
catastrophy" (Newtonian theory predicted completely impossible
features of the blackbody radiation) (leading to QM).  Both of these
are failures of the theory to predict observed phenomena.  What
experiment do you know of in which QM fails to predict what is
observed?

Stop turning philosophical prejudices into physical principles!

Dale
-- 
Dale Worley		Cullinet Software
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