Focus: What’s Wrong with Quantum Mechanics?

David Lindley

Published Sep 23, 2005• 1 citation

Abstract

In 1935 Einstein and his co-authors claimed to show that quantum mechanics led to logical contradictions. The objections exposed the theory’s strangest predictions.

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What’s Wrong with Quantum Mechanics?

David Lindley

In 1935 Einstein and his co-authors claimed to show that quantum mechanics led to logical contradictions. The objections exposed the theory’s strangest predictions.

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Introduction

Daniel F. Styer

Capsule history of quantum mechanics Starting in the seventeenth century, and continuing to the present day, physicists developed a body of ideas that describe much about the world around us: the motion of a cannonball, the orbit of a planet, the working of an engine, the crack of a baseball bat. This body of ideas is called classical mechanics . In 1905, Albert Einstein realized that these ideas didn't apply to objects moving at high speeds (that is, at speeds near the speed of light) and he developed an alternative body of ideas called relativistic mechanics . Classical mechanics is wrong in principle, but it is a good approximation to relativistic mechanics when applied to objects moving at low speeds. At about the same time, several experiments led physicists to realize that the classical ideas also didn't apply to very small objects, such as atoms. Over the period 1900–1927 a number of physicists (Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, de Broglie, Schrödinger, and others) developed an alternative quantum mechanics . Classical mechanics is wrong in principle, but it is a good approximation to quantum mechanics when applied to large objects. What is the nature of quantum mechanics? I'm not going to spend any time on the history of quantum mechanics, which is convoluted and fascinating. Instead, I will focus on the ideas developed at the end. What sort of ideas required twenty-eight years of development from this stellar group of scientists? Einstein's theory of relativity is often (and correctly) described as strange and counterintuitive.

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Quantum Theory without Observers—Part One

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Since its inception some 70 years ago and despite its extraordinary predictive successes, quantum mechanics has been plagued by conceptual difficulties. Plainly put, the basic problem is this: It is not at all clear what quantum mechanics is about. What, in fact, does quantum mechanics describe?

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Local Realism Versus Volumes of Quantum Nonsense

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Local realism must predict empirical Bell violations in a reasonable way to become a compelling causal explanation of reality. According to the paper at the link given below, it can now do that. On the other hand, theory, despite its wonderful statistical predictions, must transcend its infamous paradoxes to become a compelling causal explanation of anything. Unfortunately, paradoxes reduce to contradictions, and thus to nonsense. Take quantum superposition. Is this the simultaneous existence of mutually exclusive states or not? If it is, then we have a contradiction, and all further claims from theory fail to have meaningful interpretations. If superposition is something other than that contradiction, then what -- exactly -- is superposition? And let's take physical while we are at it. Defending theory as a causal explanation of reality requires that reality is not exclusively reality! Whoops. What -- exactly -- is so difficult about simply admitting when we have no sensible causal explanation for certain phenomena like Bell violations in EPR(B) experiments? In psychology, we know the answer to such questions. Our beliefs are evidence resistant. We thus predict that the rational threat from local realism to widespread beliefs -- its implication that reality might be mostly explained without appeal to antilocal mysticism -- will continue to be buried under reams of empirical observations stitched together by nonsense insinuations that that paradoxes are assets rather than contradictions. In any case, the paper below arguably formulates a theory of local realism that constitutes a causally valid description of reality. No nonsense required. Or, it could just be wrong. But it is waiting to be tested. Indeed, even existing data could bear on the empirical question if the theory is sound enough. See ** http://vixra.org/abs/1704.0078 ** Local Realism Explains Bell Violations (author Andrew P. Yake) - for a demonstration that all empirical evidence taken to support theory over local realism plausibly does the reverse. The article comprises 8 pages, 4 figures, 6 equations, 32 references, a graph of testable predictions, and two paragraphs that purport to expose how the Bell inequality misrepresents the local realistic predictions for the EPR experiment. Thoughtful feedback appreciated (apyake@gmail.com).

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