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May 2024
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42 Reads
Physics in Perspective
I describe aspects of my life in physics: the name I publish under, great physicists I have known, how I got into quantum foundations, what role I’ve played in it. My form is autobiographical, but my personal experience may illustrate what it was like being a physicist over the past sixty years. I offer some offbeat ways of thinking about some orthodox physics.
November 2022
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26 Reads
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1 Citation
Physics Today
June 2022
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23 Reads
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18 Citations
Physics Today
The idea that the collapse of a quantum state is a physical process stems from a misunderstanding of probability and the role it plays in quantum mechanics.
October 2021
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13 Reads
Journal of Low Temperature Physics
July 2021
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11 Reads
Physics Today
May 2019
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32 Reads
Journal of Statistical Physics
January 2019
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2 Reads
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3 Citations
Physics Today
November 2018
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161 Reads
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75 Citations
We still lack any consensus about what one is actually talking about as one uses quantum mechanics. There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so well. Because it has no practical consequences for how we each use quantum mechanics to deal with physical problems, this cognitive dissonance has managed to coexist with the quantum theory from the very beginning. The absence of conceptual clarity for almost a century suggests that the problem might lie in some implicit misconceptions about the nature of scientic explanation that are deeply held by virtually all physicists, but are rarely explicitly acknowledged. I describe here such unvoiced but widely shared assumptions. Rejecting them claries and unies a range of obscure remarks about quantum mechanics made almost from the beginning by some of the giants of physics, many of whom are held to be in deep disagreement. This new view of physics requires physicists to think about science in an unfamiliar way. My primary purpose is to explain the new perspective and urge that it be taken seriously. My secondary aims are to explain why this perspective diers signicantly from what Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli had been saying from the very beginning, and why it is not solipsism, as some have maintained. To emphasize that this is a general view of science, and not just of quantum mechanics, I apply it to a long-standing puzzle in classical physics: the apparent inability of physics to give any meaning to \Now" | the present moment.
September 2018
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142 Reads
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34 Citations
Foundations of Physics
We review the famous no-hidden-variables theorem in von Neumann’s 1932 book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics (Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, Springer, Berlin, 1932). We describe the notorious gap in von Neumann’s argument, pointed out by Hermann (Abhandlungen der Fries’schen Schule 6:75–152, 1935) and, more famously, by Bell (Rev Modern Phys 38:447–452, 1966). We disagree with recent papers claiming that Hermann and Bell failed to understand what von Neumann was actually doing.
May 2018
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9 Reads
We review the famous no-hidden-variables theorem in John von Neumann's 1932 book on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics. We describe the notorious gap in von Neumann's argument, pointed out by Grete Hermann in 1935 and, more famously, by John Bell in 1966. We disagree with recent papers claiming that Hermann and Bell failed to understand what von Neumann was actually doing.
... That is, instead of being updated by propositions in the simple past ("a measurement of was made, and the value α was obtained"), we argue that quantum states are theoretically updated to ensure the validity of propositions in the first conditional ("if a measurement is made ofÂ, the result will be found to be α") [24]. This approach aligns with multiple perspectives on quantum mechanics [25][26][27][28][29]. By this account, we argue Lüders' rule should translate into underlyingstate models as conditional probability, because considerations about interactions with measuring apparatuses are automatically removed. ...
June 2022
Physics Today
... Weinberg hopes to keep the scientist out of the laws of nature, but our chronic failure to agree on the meaning of quantum mechanics demonstrates the futility of his hope." [95] B16. The Dubious Attraction of Black Boxes How theoretical chemistry went down the road;the dialogue with numbers. ...
January 2019
Physics Today
... "There is a gap between the abstract terms in which the theory is couched and the phenomena the theory enables each of us to account for so well. Because it has no practical consequences for how we each use quantum mechanics to deal with physical problems, this cognitive dissonance has managed to coexist with the quantum theory from the very beginning" [1]. The discrepancy about the correct approach to the theory appeared very early, two extremes corresponding to the creators of 'wave mechanics' (de Broglie, Schrödinger) and those of 'quantum mechanics' (Heisenberg, Bohr, Pauli). ...
November 2018
... We will have much to discuss about this seemingly harmless mathematical step employing the built-in linear additivity of integrals. I will demonstrate in Section 1.4 that, far from being harmless, it is, in fact, an unjustified assumption that harbors a profound mistake of assuming the very thesis of the theorem to be proven, just as von Neumann's theorem did [9,25,31,33,34]. It assumes, without proof, that linear additivity of integrals leading to (23) can be meaningfully applied, not only to the eigenvalues of commuting observables but also to the eigenvalues of non-commuting observables that cannot be measured simultaneously. ...
Reference:
Bell's Theorem Begs the Question
September 2018
Foundations of Physics
... Notably, the active optical switch contributes to increased photon losses and curtails the maximum range of the quantum channel. Developing an optical sensing switch with minimal risk and noise while preserving qubit states emerges as a pivotal concern [16]. ...
January 2013
Physical Review Letters
... Note that such (wrong) picture (system-Cathy plus extra, entangled) is often lifted to the very essence of Qbism, see especially e.g. (Mermin, 2017). While we are very impressed by the Qbist analysis, because of the above reasoning, we cannot accept the supposed optimality of Erwin's betting in the discussed case. ...
November 2017
... QBism [81][82][83] conveys better the veritable sense of QM. Its adherents [84], in contrast to its critic [85], realize the subjective entity of the observation probability. Their statement that "probabilities are assigned to an event by an agent and are particular to that agent" [81] reflects correctly the essence of Born's interpretation. ...
March 2015
American Journal of Physics
... He also says, "Quantum mechanics has proved that the moon only exists when people look at it." (56,57) Christopher Fuchs, a proponent of Q-Bism (Bayesian interpretation of quantum math) embraces solipsism. Q-Bism asserts that the physical world does not exist. ...
December 2012
Physics Today
... 10. According to Mermin (2012), "Quantum theory is the most useful and powerful theory physicists have ever devised. Yet today, nearly 90 years after its formulation, disagreement about the meaning of the theory is stronger than ever. ...
July 2012
Physics Today
... The conceptual structure of this theory of information draws heavily upon the ideas of quantum Bayesianism (or QBism) developed by Caves, Fuchs, Schack, and Mermin [53,[85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94]. The main difference is that an observer is treated not as a black box but as a subsystem like any other. ...
Reference:
Subsystems and time in quantum mechanics
September 2014
Physics Today
