/x/ fag here, can you nerds explain why quantum mechanics isn't spoopy?

Thank you for explaining this somewhat, I'm not OP but I was just wondering the other day. Now somebody go tell Alan Moore before he writes another book.

csicop.org/si/show/quantum_quackery

It's literally just linear algebra

It's spoopy, just not in the sense that brainlet popsci or outright pseuds think it is. The key to understanding the spoopiness of quantum mechanics is to understand Bell's inequalities and how QM violates them.

It's literally just Fourier Analysis.

try reading a textbook
try committing suicide

>Thinking the math used to describe a theory explains the theory

Nature doesn't give a shit about Fourier series, complex numbers, or Hilbert space. These are all tools for calculating shit, nobody knows wtf is actually happening. QM is certified spoopy.

>mathematics are just tools
That's where you're wrong, kiddo.
arxiv.org/pdf/0704.0646.pdf

What's his argument? Skimming it looks like he's just kind of asserting it.

Even if the Universe is fundamentally mathematical, I think it's exceedingly egocentric for humans to think we are anywhere close to (or even capable of comprehending) the depth of the real structure, and not just skimming the surface using crude approximations.

>I think it's exceedingly egocentric for humans to think we are anywhere close
Not an argument until you can show what specifically current mathematics isn't doing right.

What do you mean "even if"? The universe IS purely mathematical. Everything can be measured, quantified, explained etc. You're right in the sense that we're nowhere near figuring it out, but alot of our models mathematically add up. There's a reason string theory hasn't just been forgotten and we move on to something else. The models make sense. The models add up. We don't have all the pieces, but at the same time we've got a general picture.

Also more fundamental doesn't necessarily mean less tractable to discernment and/or prediction.
We know a lot more about the fundamental force of electromagnetism than we do about the weather on our own planet for example.

I mean, I can't, because it's a self-contained axiomatic system.

Just because something is mathematically correct doesn't mean it corresponds to the real world...

Ok, suppose hypothetically there are aspects of the Universe that don't have structure. How would measure them? They contain no predictions by the very fact that they have no structure. so they're essentially invisible.

Then you end up with confirmation bias over and over since the only things you can ever 'see' are those few aspects of the Universe that can be tested and predicted.

No reason a priori to believe it's all like that.

If it can be observed, it can be described (and thanks to the robustness of mathematics, it can be done in math).

If it can't be observed there's no point in pondering it.

OK, well don't claim we aren't anywhere close to to understanding reality if you don't have any specific problems you can point to. The claim we're being "arrogant" is something you could apply to literally any hypothetical organism's level of understanding about the universe i.e. it doesn't really say anything at all.

I agree. But this contradicts your statement
>The universe IS purely mathematical.

Then that would mean there could be aspects of the Universe not worth pondering.

You're conflating what could be and what's useful.

Found the CERN shill. Sorry your government projects are pointless.

>suppose hypothetically there are aspects of the Universe that don't have structure
Read the paper, he addresses that argument:
>This viewpoint, corresponding to the "epistemic" version of universal structural realism in the philosophical terminology of [14,22], would make Karl Popper turn in his grave, since additional bells and whistles that make the universe non-mathematical by definition have no observable effects whatsoever.

Hypothetically something like that already exists. In a sense it sounds like you're talking about dark matter. Basically even if we can't quantify that one thing, we can still infer. We *know* dark matter exists because of the amount of mass that is supposedly in a system that doesn't equal the total amount of gravity. So we added a variable 'dark matter' to fill out the rest of the equation. This is a very basic explanation, but my point is we have a pretty good idea about certain things in the universe. So we can infer other things based on other observations.

Well, that's because I'm a different person. But I do agree with an implication of that statement, namely that everything in the universe CAN be described by mathematics.

If it cannot be observed than it might as well not exist. For all intents and purposes, something that has no observable effect is not part of our universe, anymore than any unobservable fantasy creature I could claim exists but just cannot be observed.

Can you prove an object incapable of being observed and incapable of interacting with anything else in reality could even have the possibility of existing in the first place? That sounds like a roundabout way of just referring to nothing.

Well then I agree with him.

But if he's arguing that they 'don't exist' because we can't observe it, then that still means mathematics is prescriptive and not descriptive of the universe.

It works because there isn't a scenario where we could describe anything with out it, it's not like a property of our universe or anything.

You can't, which is the point.

I'm trying to emphasize that the reasoning is backwards for thinking our universe is evidently mathematical.

> We observe that our universe has mathematical structure

Yet

> Anything that doesn't have mathematical structure can't be observed

??

Quantum mechanics can be weird unless you consider information as a physical variable.

Particle 1 cannot gain information from particle 2 without particle 2 gaining an equal amount of information from particle 1. A particle can share either it's momentum (quantum entanglement) or it's position (particle scattering) but not both simultaneously. If you could know both the position and momentum of a particle, you can create paradoxes. However physical laws do not exist because something paradoxical could happen; they exist naturally and always stem from something more fundamental. This means that there must be some other reason why Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle holds. My best guess is that there is some kind of informational conservation law (which is not the conservation of information because information always increases).

>if he's arguing that they 'don't exist' because we can't observe it
Why else would "something" be incapable of any sort of observation or interaction with the physical world aside from the reason of "it" not existing in the first place? I'm not convinced this is even a possibility.

Ok, if that's you're definition for 'not existing', then I agree.

I personally don't consider something being unobservable as necessarily non-existing, just that I can't observe it, and will therefore never know the truth.

I don't lose sleep over it though.

I never said it couldn't interact. There could be random interactions with no pattern, but we can't make theories about them.

First you have to explain whg Dracula scrapes then licks

Anything that interacts with the physical world is by definition observable.

Yeah, I retract what I said before about 'observable'. Replace every instance of me saying that with 'verifiable-testable theories'.

From the point of view of a theory there are similar.

jej

In fact, the very nature of making verifiable-testable theories forces a structured mathematical description by hand.

You have to assume it's true to make any progress. If there are aspects of universe that are random, then maybe shit like Maxwell's equations stopped working for a day somewhere in the universe happen (an extreme example, but literally anything could be possible in this hypothetical).

There is literally no way to ever account for or even build theories out of stuff like that happening. Which is why science only focuses on that which has structure.

>If there are aspects of universe that are random, then maybe shit like Maxwell's equations stopped working for a day somewhere in the universe happen (an extreme example, but literally anything could be possible in this hypothetical).
There are actually things you can expect to see if the apparent order of our universe is just a random fluctuation.
blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/12/29/richard-feynman-on-boltzmann-brains/#.WppIDndMHIU
>One possible explanation is the following. Look again at our box of mixed white and black molecules. Now it is possible, if we wait long enough, by sheer, grossly improbable, but possible, accident, that the distribution of molecules gets to be mostly white on one side and mostly black on the other. After that, as time goes on and accidents continue, they get more mixed up again.
>We would like to argue that this is not the case. Suppose we do not look at the whole box at once, but only at a piece of the box. Then, at a certain moment, suppose we discover a certain amount of order. In this little piece, white and black are separate. What should we deduce about the condition in places where we have not yet looked? If we really believe that the order arose from complete disorder by a fluctuation, we must surely take the most likely fluctuation which could produce it, and the most likely condition is not that the rest of it has also become disentangled! Therefore, from the hypothesis that the world is a fluctuation, all of the predictions are that if we look at a part of the world we have never seen before, we will find it mixed up, and not like the piece we just looked at. If our order were due to a fluctuation, we would not expect order anywhere but where we have just noticed it.

it's really neither a wave nor a particle. you're referring to the "wave function collapse" which is an idea that arises from playing with the schrodinger equation. I found neat a youtube video with nice visuals a few months ago. Try it out.

youtube.com/watch?v=p7bzE1E5PMY

That's fair. But to claim that there's some sort of true depth that doesn't manifest itself at all is a little silly. What even makes it part of the universe, then?

It's a different matter if you think it simply cannot be detected at the moment, but that implies it CAN be detected, and thus if/when it is it will allow for some mathematical description via the means of detection.

You can describe random processes though. If Maxwell's equations do not describe the process anymore, then we can try to characterize the probability distribution of the error from what we would expect(which in the worst case would be something really ugly), estimate the rate of occurrence, whether certain variables effect it, etc.

I was speaking in hypotheticals, I'm agnostic towards any conclusion.

And no, who's to say that if Maxwell's equations turned off somewhere tomorrow for no discernible reason, that there even exists a mathematical description? You're still assuming there is structure underneath of a scenario where I just was what IF there isn't any?

Again, this is also literally impossible to account for. When collecting data for a theory they'd just be called outliers and anomalies. Perhaps we just call what happens most often 'reality'.

>You can describe random processes though. If Maxwell's equations do not describe the process anymore, then we can try to characterize the probability distribution of the error from what we would expect(which in the worst case would be something really ugly), estimate the rate of occurrence, whether certain variables effect it, etc.

I'm talking about a more fundamental sort of randomness. QM has probabilities, but preserves information and has a predictable structure (a.k.a can be described by mathematics)

How do you make progress if the shape of your probability density function itself is random?

>How do you make progress if the shape of your probability density function itself is random?
Considering we're reconstructing a pdf from sampling events I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here.

lol no
there is no objective collapse

The formalism behind QM is one of the simplest, most powerful and most modern in physics, using advanced mathematical tools, AND QM is probably one of the easiest part of physics to get accurate measurements and do large-scale experience.

Take a classical mechanics experience. You need to measure how fast a ball falls from a distance. You measure it with an instrument that is, at best, precise up to 1cm.

In QM, you're much, much more precise since you can get measurements up to 10 digits after the comma.

Physics is imposing a mathematical model on reality, nothing more or less.

Where did I use the word "collapse"?
I was very careful to avoid it.
There are different interpretations.
Just curious. Are you a Bohmian or a ManyWorldser?

Maybe you meant to reference Or maybe your reply should have gone to the "alternate branch(es)" where I DID say "collapse".

The double slit experiment happens because the process of recording it disturbed the result, kinda like pushing a marathon runner just before the finish line

So long as there is (even in theory) a way to tell which slit an electron or photon went through, there's no interference pattern. When you can't tell, there IS an interference pattern.

Really weird. Put polarizers over the slits; one at 0 degrees and the other at 90 degrees. You could tell where the photon came from by measuring its polarization as it hit the screen. Even if you don't measure (but could), no interference pattern. Now place a polarizer at 45 degrees just in front of the screen. Only some photons make it through but now they're all polarized at 45 degrees. The "which slit" information has been "erased". The interference pattern returns.

Whether the photons "interfered with themselves" (weak illumination. Only one photon in flight at a time) was determined as soon as the passed the slits. But we can "retroactively" change that before they hit the detector.

>Physics is imposing a mathematical model on reality, nothing more or less.

I completely agree. That's what I thought I implied by saying nature doesn't care about the math we use to describe it.

Math perfectly describes all of Newtonian physics
non-Newtonian physics math probably does we don't know but sci posters will act like its 50/50 when its really 99.9.../0.0...1