torsdag 20 juni 2024

Steven Weinberg Ends Unhappy with Quantum Mechanics

               Whatever the final laws of nature may be, there is no reason to suppose that they are designed to make physicists happy. 

Nobel Laureate in Physics Steven Weinberg (1933-2021) was a leading authority of modern physics. At the end of his career he speaks out his disappointment with quantum mechanics as the essence of modern physics: 

  • I am not as happy about quantum mechanics and not as dismissive of its critics, as I used to be.
  • It is a bad sign in particular that those physicists who are happy about quantum mechanics, who do see nothing wrong with it, do not agree with each other what it means. 
  • The problem has specifically to do with the act of measurement. There are two approaches that attempt to deal with this problem, the "instrumentalist" and "realist", and I do not find either of them satisfactory.  
  • Maybe it is just the way we express the theory that is bad, and that the theory itself is right. I don't know. I have not found what that may be.
The fact, acknowledged by everybody including Weinberg, that "nobody understands quantum mechanics" in the words  of Richard Feynman, is balanced by the text book message that "computations according to the rules of quantum mechanics always agree with experiments". In other words, quantum mechanics is a form of perfect practical know-how or "voodoo science". If a quantum mechanical computation does not agree with experiments, the computation is altered until perfect agreement. Is this what theoretical physics is about?

What would have made Weinberg happy, is a new quantum theory without probability and measurement problem as a new realist theory about what is. This is what RealQM offers. If you are unhappy with text book quantum mechanics, this can make you more happy, if you only give it a try. If you are happy with text book quantum mechanics, Weinberg would tell you that maybe you are fooling yourself?  

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