In whose face? Isn't this consistent with Rovelli's relational interpretation?
It is a figure of speech. I was using the plural form of the word “you”, so that would be in everyone’s faces. You know who you are, so I won’t point any fingers.
I did not claim our reality is Rovellian. I asked whether the absence of local realism is consistent with the relational interpretation. It may be consistent with both relational and Copenhagen interpretations, after all.
Yes, I believe one argument against the Rovelli Interpretation is that you could never know the state of something without observing it. There is no way to know if a particle begins acting like a wave function again when you are not observing it. It would be equivalent to saying a unicorn and some fairies dropped in momentarily every time you looked away and no one was any wiser. It seems to add an unnecessary element to the situation. No one has ever observed a particle to begin acting more like a wave function. Observation makes the wave function collapse, so it seems as though it can only be a one way street where thing’s only happen the other way around. This transition would have to always have no after effect or influence on the particle. It makes it seem highly unlikely.
Most of the higher up positions in physics are filled with people that work on String Theory using the Many Worlds Interpretation, because it seemed more reasonable to adopt a more classical view where particles didn’t actually behave as though they were in multiple states at once. It gave them a more classical perspective on the idea, even though the Copenhagen Interpretation was shoved down all of their throats. They didn’t take well to it, so there is a generational gap there in our understanding of quantum mechanics. That was the top theory they where all working on.
So you prefer the Copenhagen Interpretation, OK. The different interpretations are just a way to visualize what is going on.
I'm not sure this is an objection with any consequence. While it seems intuitively odd for a QM entity not to have definite properties in between interactions, it does not matter, since the only instances at which definite properties have consequence is in interactions.
That may be true. I have always been the kind of person that absolutely has to know the reason why. My mother use to get on to me and make fun of me for asking, why, too much. I never changed my ways on that, because I discovered that once you fully realize the reason why something is the way it is it can give you a big advantage over everyone else. You can then build on that idea to be able to achieve something greater, because without that insight you literally have no tools to work with to achieve anything in that regard.
I recently read Rovelli's book (autographed copy!). His approach is interesting in that he tries to follow Heisenberg, who was inspired by Einstein's approach of throwing out all preconceptions and just starting from the observations and developing an approach that accounts for them. To do that, one thing he throws out is the notion that QM entities have defined values of properties that exist in a continuous manner in between interactions.
I have to admit that I had to look it up after you mentioned it, but it made me remember that it was an inspiration for me as well. I haven’t read his book, but I have read people that have mentioned about his ideas. They tried to dispute them. I ended up taking a different stance on the whole idea altogether.
My understanding of that is that it is nothing magical but simply that all longer paths interfere with one another destructively. In other words, it is a consequence of the wave nature of light.
You should watch it when you get the chance. It’s one of her better piece of works. She has a really dogmatic view on physics and it can make some of her videos really difficult to watch.
I may do that. I rather like Sabine.
