Starship Asterisk*

Quantum mechanics at its heart is the study of the building blocks of the universe – what they are and how they work together to form reality as we are able to interpret it. Its ideas were first developed almost a century ago with such notables as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr developing theories and debating ideas such as whether particles exist at certain places at certain times, or whether they move around constantly with a probability of being someplace at a given moment. The second idea famously led Bohr to conclude that if that were the case than the universe is indeterminate and at its base probabilistic. Refusing to believe such a possibility could be true, Einstein responded with perhaps his most famous quote that "God does not play dice with the universe." Now, nearly a century later, modern physicists are still just as divided. In the survey, just 42 percent of respondents agreed with Bohrs' assertions – the rest were divided among several other theories. Also likely surprising to those outside the physics community, a full 64 percent of those who bothered to respond to the survey said they believe Einstein's view of the universe "is wrong." Another idea that appears to still vex the modern physicist is whether quantum objects have the same physical properties as they do when measured. Just over half thought so. Also there is the ongoing argument about the probability of a true quantum computer coming to pass, and if it ever does, when that might happen. The largest number, 42 percent said they believe it will happen 10 to 25 years from now, 30 percent said it would come after that, while just 9 percent said they thought it might happen before then. Based on the results of the survey, it appears Richard Feynman was right when he once responded to a reporter's question about how well quantum mechanics is understood by saying that "anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy."

Random, but not by Accident
The most common experiment used to say that QM is real, and specifically probability waves and wave-particle duality... is the young's two slit experiment. Where you fire particles at two very thin slits and they act like waves and you get interference between the particles/waves from the two slits.
That's all well and good, a bit weird but ok.
But now if you send 1 particle at a time (it's been done with buckyballs which are really rather big (60 carbon atoms) you find that you get an interference patternscienceforums

Here, we present the results of a poll carried out among 33 participants of a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics.

owlice wrote:I took exactly one physics class in college; it was required for my major. What good is a poll about quantum mechanics that asks random people who may have no background in the field to answer it?

rstevenson wrote:

owlice wrote:I took exactly one physics class in college; it was required for my major. What good is a poll about quantum mechanics that asks random people who may have no background in the field to answer it?

I would hope they're collating the responses they get from this publically available survey separately from those of known physicists.

Rob

ritwik wrote:(Phys.org) A trio of physicists has uploaded a paper to the preprint server arXiv describing the results of a survey passed out to attendees at a physics conference held in 2011:Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality. The purpose of the survey was to find out how much agreement or disagreement there is in the physics community regarding the most fundamental ideas of quantum mechanics – surprisingly, the results showed that there is still very little consensus among physicists regarding some of its most basic principles.

owlice wrote:I took exactly one physics class in college; it was required for my major. What good is a poll about quantum mechanics that asks random people who may have no background in the field to answer it?

Chris Peterson wrote: The poll was useless, and demonstrates nothing of value. How quantum mechanics maps to "reality" may or may not even be a valid, answerable question. The fact is, the models utilized by quantum mechanics are useful: they are descriptive and predictive of nature, which is what we ask good theories to be. How they describe "reality" is a philosophical question, not a scientific one, and I'd expect a roomful of scientists to offer up a wide spread of opinions on philosophy.

As for those parts of physics that remain poorly described, because of a lack of theory or a lack of observational evidence, well... again, why should we expect any sort of consensus? Indeed, consensus in that case might be an indicator of intellectual failure. When we don't know something, it's good that the experts remain open to many possibilities!

well..views are widespread about basic principles&ideas not philosophical

Moonlady wrote:I go with the answer: we have to wait and see!

me - not physicists - took two classes in college one was electronics and other mechanics...I was more confused afterwards, asking questions lead to
faces saying me, whaaaaaaat? you dont know that? Which demotivated me alot. Asking question meant, I was stupid, smart students dont ask questions
because they already know.
I took chemistry classes and that was much better, not asking and inquiring was bad in that department, so till today physics is a mystery to me.
But there is still hope, maybe the books I got about physics will help me now.

Is there a physics book which you would recommend?

ritwik wrote:

owlice wrote:I took exactly one physics class in college; it was required for my major. What good is a poll about quantum mechanics that asks random people who may have no background in the field to answer it?

edited !! now random people can take a stroll ..

owlice wrote:

ritwik wrote:

owlice wrote:I took exactly one physics class in college; it was required for my major. What good is a poll about quantum mechanics that asks random people who may have no background in the field to answer it?

edited !! now random people can take a stroll ..

What do you mean, they can "take a stroll"? I can still take the poll. How is this information useful? I'm failing to see why you think anything I'd have to say on quantum mechanics says anything about the state of physics and whether there is consensus in the field.

ritwik wrote:so if many people are in favor of competing "hidden determinism:" then it will give more weightage to the view of minority of physicist thinking that way

ritwik wrote:*** Cuckoo video ***

Wigner designed the experiment to illustrate his belief that consciousness is necessary to the quantum mechanical measurement process. If a material device is substituted for the conscious friend, the linearity of the wave function implies that the state of the system is in a linear sum of possible states. It is simply a larger indeterminate system.
However, a conscious observer (according to his reasoning) must be in either one state or the other, hence conscious observations are different, hence consciousness is not material. Wigner discusses this scenario in "Remarks on the mind-body question", one in his collection of essays, Symmetries and Reflections, 1967. The idea has become known as the consciousness causes collapse interpretation

The binding problem is one of a number of terms at the interface between neuroscience and philosophy which suffer from being used in several different ways, often in a context that does not explicitly indicate which way the term is being used. Of the many possible usages, two common versions may be useful anchor points. Firstly, there is the practical issue of how brains segregate elements in complex patterns of data. This can be illustrated by the question "When I see a blue square and a yellow circle, what neural mechanisms ensure that the sensing of blue is coupled to that of a square shape and that of yellow is coupled to that of a circle?" Secondly, there is the more fundamental problem of "how the unity of conscious perception is brought about by the distributed activities of the central nervous system."[1] The first question is a difficult but conventional question within physical science that could equally be applied to a mechanical computer or any complex system with an input and output. The second question is metaphysical in the sense that the "unity of conscious perception" may be an idea outside physical science that requires a metaphysical or ontological underpinning, of the sort on which physics is generally agnostic. Thus "unity" in this sense has no physical meaning, but it does have a crucial meaning in subjective experience.
These two meanings of "binding problem" can be found in a well-defined form, chiefly in the neuroscience and philosophy literature respectively. However, there are also many instances where the two issues are conflated in ways that are difficult to be sure about. Perhaps the clearest exposition of the second meaning comes in William James's Principles of Psychology[2] where he refers to it as the combination problem.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?... It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?

Chris Peterson wrote:

ritwik wrote:*** Cuckoo video ***

Thanks for that video. It's always nice to be reminded that otherwise respectable scientists (Amit Goswami) can go completely off the deep end into crackpot pseudoscience. This guy is part of the Institute of Noetic "Sciences", and contributed to What the Bleep Do We Know, perhaps the stupidest movie ever made (it makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like high literature).

ritwik wrote:how does this appeal to you CP ?

Beyond wrote:
I liked Plan 9 from outer space. It was funny.

Ann wrote:

Beyond wrote:
I liked Plan 9 from outer space. It was funny.

I never saw Plan 9 From Outer Space, but I watched Star Trek and thought it was funny. Science fiction is often funny. It's when you start thinking that science fiction is reality that you're in trouble.

(You're also in trouble when you think that everything in the universe must make sense to us humans, and to our everyday understanding of "common sense". How can a hydrogen atom or the expansion of the universe "make sense" to us?)

Ann