Roger, I wish to clarify what I believe our positions to be. Your position is that Richard Feynman claims that no one understands quantum mechanics and that you believe him. I am claiming that misunderstanding photons has its origins in demanding that photons be greek waves or particles and that this perspective is reminiscent of the classical problems of compass and straight-edge geometry.
you write: "...and that led to philosophers proclaiming that everything is uncertain. But there are no bad faith actors there, it's just typical science journalism, trolling for the juiciest clickbait." Our discussion arose in the context of 'quantum woo', advocates and discontents. From my perspective, it is an instance of bad faith when 'philosophers' claim that *the uncertainty of everything* is justified by Heisenberg. Additionally, it is an instance of bad faith when 'journalists' unfaithfully invoke Heisenberg so as to produce clickbait. I gather from your comment that with more discussion you perhaps may agree, to some extent? In one sense, I interpret Bethe as speaking about the lack of uncertainty associated with macroscopic events as a rebuttal to the flights of fancy, the 'quantum woo' espoused by first-year physics students. However, further analysis of my interpretation perhaps cannot be certain. In another sense, and intended with less cheek, I interpret Bethe as highlighting the fact that the point metaphor diverges for the very small. Heisenberg uncertainty is a claim about how well we can approximate an object of inquiry with a particle, ie. treat the object as a dynamical Euclidean point. We can treat a pea or the moon accurately in this way, but we cannot treat an electron accurately in this way. you write: 1) "I especially liked the derivation of the uncertainty principle through the limitations on representing a free particle with a Fourier series" 2) "He then goes on to say that the thing which _is_ completely uncertain is the orbit of the electron in an atom." Bethe speaks to your first point by saying that "this is the best we can do with bell-shaped curves". In doing so, he is referring to a toolset and it is only within the scope of a given toolset that the meaning of uncertainty is defined. Crudely, I interpret the work done by the mixed efforts of topos theorists and theoretical physicists to be an effort to flesh out better matching objects, objects which are more like electrons than Euclid's points are to being like electrons[⏁]. Speaking to your second point, my hope is that as such a program continues, we will one day have a metaphor for quantum things that we find as satisfactory as points are for macroscopic things[⏄]. I suggest that my arrogance in this matter is not the claim that someone understands quantum mechanics in some universally acceptable way. My arrogant assertion is that forcing a known-to-be incongruous model is the wellspring of a perceived paradox and an unjustly disproportionate production of 'quantum woo'. Jon [⏁] It is here that I think we may be seeing a kind of reversal. The 'softer' sciences have had to deal with difficult to describe phenomena for their entire history, dealing with the fact that their objects of inquiry are complex and not simply described by points. Maybe what we are seeing in the efforts to revisit the logical foundations of physical theory can be interpreted as *soft science envy*. [⏄] Charles Dodgson once wrote, "How is a raven like a writing desk"? Sometimes I feel that mathematicians love riddles. One will state the axioms for a group and another will go off running to find an example of some object which satisfies those axioms. In QM it seems to me that phenomena is measured and relationships between these measurements are stated. Now we go off running to find objects which answer the riddle. -- Sent from: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
