🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <22592@galaxy.ucr.edu>, baez@ucrmath.ucr.edu (john baez) writes:
> 
> That may be how philosophy works - pitting argument against argument -
> but it's not how physics works; there one pits model against model.
> Just saying "quantum collapse as a physical local process" won't stack
> up against a well-developed formalism that people have successfully
> used for decades.  You need to lay out a precise model of quantum
> collapse as a physical local process and show how one can calculate
> all sorts of things with it.  I.e., you have to match the competition.
> OR you have to get ahold of an experiment that shows the existing formalism
> makes wrong predictions.  

But my formalism makes the same predictions of quantum mechanics with
the exception of tests of Bell's inequality. It is just as important in
science to be clear about what you do not know as is to be clear about
what you do know. We have no idea how the wave function changes when
an observation is made. There is no scientific justification for saying
the change occurs instantaneously throughout space.

The issue I am addressing is the priority that one should give to the
experiment that will decide between these two positions. When you
say, as Daryl, did that there is no hint of a problem in the predictions of
quantum mechanics you are implying that there is a low priority to
doing the experiment properly. You expect to find novel results when you
do accelerator experiments. You do not expect to find them when you
test Bell's inequality. I think there is a compelling scientific argument
that your expectations about Bell's inequality are wrong and the priority
of this experiment should be much higher. 

> That's how the game goes: revolutions in physics do not come easily.

Boy you can say that again. Bell's result is over 25 years old. Tests of
Bell's inequality are almost table top experiments. Maybe it
would cost a few million to do it properly. I cannot believe it would
cost much more. In the mean time billions are spent on particle accelerators
with results that are far less significant in both theoretical and
practical terms.

Paul Budnik