A Paradox: Do LHV Theories Need the HUP?

[ttn]

It's not necessarily bad, and I don't mean to make it sound that way. But I am trying to identify the essential things that make me want to say "oQM could be a local theory" (I am not sure it is, mind you) and also say "BM is a non-local theory".

Not to be rude, but it seems an awful lot like "the essential thing" that makes you want to say these two things is just that lots of other people have said them. This despite the fact that they are, in fact, inconsistent with each other, as has been clarified in recent posts here.

OQM and Bohm are on equal footing in terms of locality, and the latter is a better theory on other grounds. Anybody who denies either of those things is either just confused or operating on the mindless inertia of stale history. Forget about what is popular and look at the facts.

 

[DrChinese]

Forget about what is popular and look at the facts.

The "facts", in this case, are far from clear. You of all people should know that. As to what is popular, that is a lot different from what is commonly accepted within science. It is popular opinion that the big bang is "just a theory" but science has come a lot further than that. You talk a big story but the "fact" is that you have no more new predictive medicine to prescribe than I do. Chill... there is plenty for us all to learn.

You must realize that I want to find a common ground and have worked hard to find that point. Either of us could find references to support any position about locality we care to push. I am interested in learning what makes the position of Bohmian Mechanics so interesting to you. Even if I don't change my fundamental position, I feel I have gained from the interchange. I hope you have too.

Now that I have all that feelgood stuff off my chest... would you care to give me a reference or two that will tell me a little more about BM? I have read some of Bohm's latter material, but he really didn't seem to talk about it too much. I have some of his "holographic paradigm" essays, and some other material on the relationship of causality and chance, but none of this went very far into this theory.

 

[ttn]

Now that I have all that feelgood stuff off my chest... would you care to give me a reference or two that will tell me a little more about BM? I have read some of Bohm's latter material, but he really didn't seem to talk about it too much. I have some of his "holographic paradigm" essays, and some other material on the relationship of causality and chance, but none of this went very far into this theory.

Read Shelly Goldstein's article at

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm

"The Undivided Universe" (by Bohm and Hiley) is pretty good. Peter Holland's book "The Quantum Theory of Motion" is also nice. And check out Jim Cushing's "Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Quantum Hegemony" for a historical perspective. And Bohm's 1952 papers are quite readable and clear. And you can never go wrong by reading Bell's articles, many of which discuss Bohm's theory (of which he was a huge fan).


On the touchy feely side, I assure you I'm perfectly calm about all this. But you have an annoying tendency to briefly get something, and then suddenly retreat to your old standard positions, even after they have been shown clearly to involve contradictions. And this isn't about who can cite what paper, as you keep suggesting. It's about what's true. I'm operating under the assumption that you actually understand QM and how it works, so that you can actually grasp for yourself the fact that OQM violates Bell Locality (for example). If you're just accepting that on faith from some authority, then I can understand why you would later retreat to a more comfortable position. But it seemed like you knew what you were talking about well enough to see for yourself that it is actually a fact. But then, why would you turn around and start talking again about your desire to believe that OQM is local and Bohm is nonlocal? If that just isn't true (and it isn't) and if you saw that for yourself, how could you still desire this? It makes it look like, after all, you aren't interested in finding the truth. Well, I hope I'm wrong. Check out some of the Bohm references and see what you think.