A very interesting post, I never read Franz's text.
First on a technical level:
"Nor does the wave function represent a physical process connecting outcome-indicating events. There are several reasons why this notion, too, is absurd, among them the fact that the wave function of a system with N degrees of freedom would “exist” or “propagate” in an N-dimensional space. (Even the wave function of a system made up of just two particles “propagates” in a 6-dimensional space, rather than between the respective positions of the particles in 3-dimensional space.)"
This reaches absurd levels in QFT where the wave function is a function over the infinite-dimensional space of classical fields, but for technical reasons the classical fields can't be functions but distributions and arcane technicalities of Lesbesgue theory, equivalent to physicists' renormalization, are needed to render the measure on this infinite dimensional space well defined.
How one can think a complex function over a space of Schwarz tensor/spinor distributions coupled with a pathological Lesbesgue measure are real I don't know.
Now more general:
I love your quantum physics writing, but you are right in the last part. When you realise how quantum theory redefines the scope of physics it does sort of return you back to the living world and puts physics in a secondary place. It's a bit sad that this isn't realised and that instead:
"All of this appears to exceed the comprehension of most of today’s public-facing physicists. What is worse, the incompetent pronouncements of these popular figures on philosophical matters are lapped up like manna from heaven by the public, which apparently can’t be disabused of the superstition that theoretical physics holds the key to ultimate metaphysical truth — a superstition these physicists do little to discourage"
In addition increasingly their pop science books include almost a "self help" section about the author's advice for living in a materialist world. The cynical part of me wonders if some of these media physicists are sort of making a self-help industry where they dispense the "truths of materialism" or similar. I think years from now it will be interesting to sociologists of science as to why people fought against our most successful physical theory for so long when the rough (and even fine) contours of its implications were known from the beginning.
Anyway I am thinking and thinking about your writings on and off and I hope you don't mind if I came back with some observations and comments in a few months.
Thanks, Darran. What you say about a materialistically oriented self-help industry makes me think of what seems to be its counterpart (though it’s more of a confluence) — the “spiritually” oriented, New-Agey self-help industry, which Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker dissect (somewhat tangentially) in their book Conspirituality and (more directly) in numerous episodes of their eponymous podcast. It’s a confluence in that the former seems to elevate materialism into some kind of religion, while the latter helps itself to a great deal of materialistic neurophilosophy.
Aug 17, 2023·edited Aug 17, 2023Liked by Ulrich Mohrhoff
What you had to say about QM, important as it was, you said it loud and clear twenty years ago. But then there is a certain economy of words and joining of dots standpoint, that no artífice can do without, and only a handful of people are given the privilege by either Nature or Time. I think of Kepler without Brahe, of Russell without Frege. We can only thank you for coming this far.
As for what is regularly practiced in the talking departments and editorial boards, paraphrasing von Neumann’s unfortunate dictum: “whatever can be said, it ought to be said”. This makes perfect sense in a world without limits. Sadly, that’s not the world we live in.
Just a side note, I presume you meant to say “objects” here: “and as subjects that exist in it”.
Yes, “object” agrees with Husserl who wrote about “the paradox of human subjectivity: being a subject for the world and at the same time being an object in the world.” I’ve made the change in the online text. I was thinking of David Carr’s book “The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition,” in which he speaks of two forms of self-consciousness: the transcendental subject (needed to construct the known world) and the subject associated with a body in the known world.
I don’t agree with your statement that what I now have to say about quantum mechanics is much the same as what I said 20 years ago. In fact, my understanding of quantum mechanics began to change drastically when I encountered Qbism [https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/qbism] at the 2014 Bergefest in Singapore [https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/berge-and-me]. At first I was appalled by Rüdiger Schack’s presentation of Qbism and shocked to learn that David Mermin was on board with it. It conjured up in my mind the nonsense perpetrated by von Neumann, London and Bauer, Wigner, Stapp and others about consciousness as a wavefunction-collapsing agent. The Qbists’ misrepresentation of Bohr’s views then made me look more closely at Bohr’s writings and the rest is, as they say, history.
A very interesting post, I never read Franz's text.
First on a technical level:
"Nor does the wave function represent a physical process connecting outcome-indicating events. There are several reasons why this notion, too, is absurd, among them the fact that the wave function of a system with N degrees of freedom would “exist” or “propagate” in an N-dimensional space. (Even the wave function of a system made up of just two particles “propagates” in a 6-dimensional space, rather than between the respective positions of the particles in 3-dimensional space.)"
This reaches absurd levels in QFT where the wave function is a function over the infinite-dimensional space of classical fields, but for technical reasons the classical fields can't be functions but distributions and arcane technicalities of Lesbesgue theory, equivalent to physicists' renormalization, are needed to render the measure on this infinite dimensional space well defined.
How one can think a complex function over a space of Schwarz tensor/spinor distributions coupled with a pathological Lesbesgue measure are real I don't know.
Now more general:
I love your quantum physics writing, but you are right in the last part. When you realise how quantum theory redefines the scope of physics it does sort of return you back to the living world and puts physics in a secondary place. It's a bit sad that this isn't realised and that instead:
"All of this appears to exceed the comprehension of most of today’s public-facing physicists. What is worse, the incompetent pronouncements of these popular figures on philosophical matters are lapped up like manna from heaven by the public, which apparently can’t be disabused of the superstition that theoretical physics holds the key to ultimate metaphysical truth — a superstition these physicists do little to discourage"
In addition increasingly their pop science books include almost a "self help" section about the author's advice for living in a materialist world. The cynical part of me wonders if some of these media physicists are sort of making a self-help industry where they dispense the "truths of materialism" or similar. I think years from now it will be interesting to sociologists of science as to why people fought against our most successful physical theory for so long when the rough (and even fine) contours of its implications were known from the beginning.
Anyway I am thinking and thinking about your writings on and off and I hope you don't mind if I came back with some observations and comments in a few months.
Thanks once again.
Thanks, Darran. What you say about a materialistically oriented self-help industry makes me think of what seems to be its counterpart (though it’s more of a confluence) — the “spiritually” oriented, New-Agey self-help industry, which Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker dissect (somewhat tangentially) in their book Conspirituality and (more directly) in numerous episodes of their eponymous podcast. It’s a confluence in that the former seems to elevate materialism into some kind of religion, while the latter helps itself to a great deal of materialistic neurophilosophy.
What you had to say about QM, important as it was, you said it loud and clear twenty years ago. But then there is a certain economy of words and joining of dots standpoint, that no artífice can do without, and only a handful of people are given the privilege by either Nature or Time. I think of Kepler without Brahe, of Russell without Frege. We can only thank you for coming this far.
As for what is regularly practiced in the talking departments and editorial boards, paraphrasing von Neumann’s unfortunate dictum: “whatever can be said, it ought to be said”. This makes perfect sense in a world without limits. Sadly, that’s not the world we live in.
Just a side note, I presume you meant to say “objects” here: “and as subjects that exist in it”.
Thanks, Adrian.
Yes, “object” agrees with Husserl who wrote about “the paradox of human subjectivity: being a subject for the world and at the same time being an object in the world.” I’ve made the change in the online text. I was thinking of David Carr’s book “The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition,” in which he speaks of two forms of self-consciousness: the transcendental subject (needed to construct the known world) and the subject associated with a body in the known world.
I don’t agree with your statement that what I now have to say about quantum mechanics is much the same as what I said 20 years ago. In fact, my understanding of quantum mechanics began to change drastically when I encountered Qbism [https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/qbism] at the 2014 Bergefest in Singapore [https://aurocafe.substack.com/p/berge-and-me]. At first I was appalled by Rüdiger Schack’s presentation of Qbism and shocked to learn that David Mermin was on board with it. It conjured up in my mind the nonsense perpetrated by von Neumann, London and Bauer, Wigner, Stapp and others about consciousness as a wavefunction-collapsing agent. The Qbists’ misrepresentation of Bohr’s views then made me look more closely at Bohr’s writings and the rest is, as they say, history.