- #1
Micheth
- 79
- 2
Hi, those who have responded to any of my previous posts may remember me as one with little mathematical background beyond college calculus, and only a layman's understanding of physics, though I have read a *lot* of layman-oriented material.
But I do have a very strong sense that the universe - large & small-scale, ought to be logical and consistent (as biased and unfounded as that sense may be). Nevertheless it seems that that ought to be the default position because it's hard for to imagine that a universe that isn't logical could even exist.
Enough of that, let me get to the actual question.
One finds numerous quotes from well-educated quantum physicists and the like to the effect that "the quantum world is just so strange and nobody can really understand it". Because of experimental results that have been obtained: Double-slit experiment, EPR experiments and such.
But what puzzles me in reading through the course of how modern physics has gotten to this point, is that it seems (perhaps due to my own misunderstanding), that there has been a "strain" of physicists that have been perhaps a little too eager to jump on the bandwagon of "quantum weirdness" as opposed to demanding more logical explanations.
This thread could get very long, so let me just take one example, EPR. I understand that experiments on Bell's inequality have shown, statistically, that Einstein's being spooked out about action-at-a-distance seems to be wrong.
Yet, much much before those experiments were ever conducted (~1970s?), there were very strong proponents of the instantaneous connection between entangled particles, as opposed to the hidden variable view of Einstein. Ok, I don't deny that they have been given strong support by those experiments, but my puzzlement is from a slightly different angle. If we use the default position that all interaction should be logical, and the idea of "particles having no interaction between them nevertheless being able to interact" is illogical on the face of it, why is it that any physicist at all argued for the action-at-a-distance interpretation? Why would anyone jump to that conclusion, I guess is what I am asking. Prior to Bell's insight, hidden variables ought to have been a no-brainer, i would think, and any other explanation simply considered to be fringe science, even magic.
Or was there some other clear reason for holding that view, that Einstein et al. refused to consider (prior to Bell).
(Incidentally, even in our post-Bell world, all other things being equal, what I would even then tend to conclude is that there is still not spooky action going on, but rather that, for example, maybe there is some underlying, sub-Planck structure to the spatial fabric that allows entangled particles to intercommunicate at some speed that is not instantaneous but merely so many powers greater than luminal speed that it merely appears to be instantaneous -- a structure that we haven't yet been able to discover, but which would make much more logical sense than spooky action. Pure conjecture, to be sure! But not illogical or "weird" :-) )
But I do have a very strong sense that the universe - large & small-scale, ought to be logical and consistent (as biased and unfounded as that sense may be). Nevertheless it seems that that ought to be the default position because it's hard for to imagine that a universe that isn't logical could even exist.
Enough of that, let me get to the actual question.
One finds numerous quotes from well-educated quantum physicists and the like to the effect that "the quantum world is just so strange and nobody can really understand it". Because of experimental results that have been obtained: Double-slit experiment, EPR experiments and such.
But what puzzles me in reading through the course of how modern physics has gotten to this point, is that it seems (perhaps due to my own misunderstanding), that there has been a "strain" of physicists that have been perhaps a little too eager to jump on the bandwagon of "quantum weirdness" as opposed to demanding more logical explanations.
This thread could get very long, so let me just take one example, EPR. I understand that experiments on Bell's inequality have shown, statistically, that Einstein's being spooked out about action-at-a-distance seems to be wrong.
Yet, much much before those experiments were ever conducted (~1970s?), there were very strong proponents of the instantaneous connection between entangled particles, as opposed to the hidden variable view of Einstein. Ok, I don't deny that they have been given strong support by those experiments, but my puzzlement is from a slightly different angle. If we use the default position that all interaction should be logical, and the idea of "particles having no interaction between them nevertheless being able to interact" is illogical on the face of it, why is it that any physicist at all argued for the action-at-a-distance interpretation? Why would anyone jump to that conclusion, I guess is what I am asking. Prior to Bell's insight, hidden variables ought to have been a no-brainer, i would think, and any other explanation simply considered to be fringe science, even magic.
Or was there some other clear reason for holding that view, that Einstein et al. refused to consider (prior to Bell).
(Incidentally, even in our post-Bell world, all other things being equal, what I would even then tend to conclude is that there is still not spooky action going on, but rather that, for example, maybe there is some underlying, sub-Planck structure to the spatial fabric that allows entangled particles to intercommunicate at some speed that is not instantaneous but merely so many powers greater than luminal speed that it merely appears to be instantaneous -- a structure that we haven't yet been able to discover, but which would make much more logical sense than spooky action. Pure conjecture, to be sure! But not illogical or "weird" :-) )