The introduction of quantum mechanical methods for solving physics problems is probably the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the mathematical sciences.
It has brought fundamental progress to a practical halt for an entire century, with no end in sight. It is now also visibly hindering the progress of technologies.
The content-free nature of math means ANY physics problem can be solved by ANY means. So QM ‘finality’ and ‘spookiness’ are superstitions, not science.
@chemoelectric What I find annoying is the popular press opinion that "Einstein was wrong!" about QM - it's worse when his Nobel is not mentioned. Einstein was right all along.
@Dianora Einstein got the Nobel for the invention of the notion of the photon!
(Side note: I do not believe it proven discrete photons exist. The Bell experiment, for instance, can be modeled with continuous EM—Kracklauer did so in 2004. But I do believe discrete photons exist, though certainly not as dimensionless points.)
@Dianora I found an extremely simple derivation of the "quantum correlation" of the Bell experiment, using no quantum mechanics. Just probability theory. It is, of course, merely the ordinary correlation coefficient.
So of course I am banned from Physics Forums. That's how physics works.
@Dianora There is no need for pilot wave theory. Particles behave fully classically. The probabilities are simply those of the experimental arrangement.
I have written many simulations that show this is so for the Bell experiment.
But I have also discovered simple arguments that show there CANNOT be such a thing as "quantum" behavior distinct from classical. You can, for example, easily re-craft the Bell test as a COMPLETELY EQUIVALENT experiment ABOUT COOKIE BOXES.
@Dianora This is what Einstein meant, that the behavior had to be classical. But he made the mistake of thinking that, because quantum mechanics looked like statistical mechanics, the solutions had to be statistical mechanical. The Bell test is actually far too simple for statistical mechanics.
@Dianora My argument is as follows: All "quantum" problems, once stated, are word problems in mathematics. So what quantum physicists are claiming is literally that there exist word problems that can be solved correctly by no method other than the "quantum mechanics" of Pauli, Dirac, etc. Furthermore, the 2022 Nobel Prize was awarded to Clauser for arriving at a different, incorrect answer to such a word problem by using other methods...
@Dianora My interpretation is the simplest: there is simply NO SUCH THING as "quantum" physics. There is only physics, some of which has mistakenly been walled off from full inquiry with the label "quantum". The label means: "You are forbidden to use any methods but Quantum Mechanics®".
Any word problem can be converted to an infinite number of logically equivalent word problems about different subject matter. So do these magical properties of "quantum" problems carry over to equivalent problems about frogs or cookie boxes?
All mathematical methods, applied to the same problem, must arrive at the same result. So Clauser must simply have done his math incorrectly. Which he did.
@Dianora Nobel prizes are now even reported in Science magazine as being destructive. Yet no one can bring themselves to call for their abolition.
Do you remember those guys who obviously had a screw loose (literally) and yet had that rag Nature rush publishing a paper for them (which I read) so they could get a Nobel Prize for discovering FTL? No one showered them with opprobrium for seeking a Nobel Prize instead of seeking insight into the nature of things.
@Dianora They gave Clauser this prize even though the noteworthy physicist E.T. Jaynes already debunked Clauser's work in the 1980s. But Jaynes had to publish at a maximum entropy methods conference. The physics community has its ears plugged.
@chemoelectric It's the old "publish or perish" syndrome at work today with less money for research being available we will continue to see shoddy research. In the so-called "soft sciences" we are seeing an epidemic of faked research. retractionwatch.com is busy.
@Dianora Fake research is common in biomed, as is often reported in Science. But I think a lot of physics research might be fake, too. I suspect the experiments flying atomic clocks around the world have been faked, for instance.
(In any case they are not EVEN REMOTELY a test of the Twin Paradox, which requires INERTIAL motion, not merely motion that "feels inertial to the passengers".)
@Dianora Things are very bad. Magazines advertize themselves by what? Their "Impact Factor". IOW by their value in advancing a citation-churner's career.
@jhavok You think you are being clever but if you had even done the slightest investigation you would see that I have solved for the correlation coefficient of THE TWO-CHANNEL BELL TEST EXPERIMENT without quantum mechanics again and again and again, and simulated it as a classical model again and again and again.
This is the very experiment that supposedly ‘proved’ ‘quantum’ physics unique.
You are going to be clever now and say my stuff is wrong. Because you are so clever.
Reaching a conclusion at odds with the solution from QM, when using a different method, and then publishing this result rather than searching for one’s error (or the error in QM), proves merely that the physicist is incompetent.
So Clauser got a Nobel Prize for proving himself incompetent at physics.
That is where we stand, on account of the introduction of quantum mechanics a century ago. We give people Nobel Prizes specifically for demonstrating that they are incompetent at physics.
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