Nah. They try to defend “value indefiniteness,” a position which is largely indefensible but has become very popular in academia despite having been all but ruled out, and should go the way of the aether. A physical theory needs observables with well-defined conditions under which they obtain well-defined properties or else it is not possible to make a single empirical prediction with the theory.
If you claim particles do not obtain definite values for their observables at all, this is the Everettian interpretation, the “Many Worlds” interpretation. But this trivially doesn’t work because, again, if particles never obtain definite values at all, then you cannot make a single empirical predictions with it. The theory has no connection to empirical reality. See Tim Maudlin’s paper “Can the World be Only Wavefunction?”
Indeed, whenever we have a statistical distribution, we presuppose that there exists an underlying real state of the system, but we are just ignorant of it. In order to derive the Born rule distribution, then Everettian mechanics must, at some point, admit to there being definite values to the observables. But to do that would be equivalent to a “collapse” approach, which they want to avoid, so they try to use arguments involving decision theory and such, but, as Adrian Kent showed in his paper “One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, probability, and scientific confirmation,” these explanations are always circular, as well as the paper “Epistemic Separability and Everettian Branches: A Critique of Sebens and Carroll” by R. Dawid and S. Friederich.
Indeed, Everettians also love to claim that their view is “local,” but if their viewpoint really is mathematically consistent with quantum mechanics, then, at some point, it must reproduce Born rule probabilities, meaning it must reproduce violations of Bell inequalities, and so it cannot be local, as shown in Aurélien Drezet’s paper "An Elementary Proof That Everett’s Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation". They often get around this by just redefining locality to be in terms of linearity or no-signaling, but any interpretation can be local if we just change the meaning of locality.
Of course, there are also “collapse” interpretations. The collapse, obviously, cannot just occur “when you look at it,” or else you end up devolving into crackpot solipsism, as per the “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment in Wigner’s “Remarks on the Mind Body Problem.” The “collapse” must occur before then, and it also must be an invariant collapse, or else the minds of other observers would depend upon how you personally look at them, and their own minds would not have independent existence. “Collapse” thus can only be a consistent view of physical reality if the collapse both occurs under well-defined conditions and is invariant.
But these are pretty much ruled out by John Bell’s paper “Against ‘Measurement’” which points out that the “collapse” approach cannot constitute a physical interpretation of quantum mechanics because orthodox quantum mechanics does not tell you when this “collapse” should occur, under what well-defined conditions, and so it does not give you an unambiguous ontology.
If this “collapse” really occurs, it is a non-reversible process, yet all unitary evolution operators are reversible. That means if I build a measuring device, and you give a complete physical description of the measuring device in terms of quantum mechanics, then an interaction with that measuring device would be described via unitary operators, and thus would be reversible, and so orthodox quantum mechanics would predict that an interaction with the measuring device is reversible, whereas a “collapse” approach would not.
This would in principle lead to different empirical predictions, as we would have something interact with a measuring device and then attempt to reverse the interaction, and the predictions between a “collapse” theory and orthodox quantum mechanics would deviate from one another. Theories like GRW and the Diosi-Penrose model are thus separate theories, not interpretations of the same theory. A physical collapse model can only be consistent if you believe orthodox quantum mechanics is simply wrong.
The “measurement problem” within orthodox quantum mechanics stems from the assumption of value indefiniteness. Nobody has proved it is possible to make quantum mechanics consistent with value indefiniteness without running into the measurement problem, and it is my position that it is not logically possible to do so. The measurement problem is a proof-by-contradiction that value indefiniteness is just an untenable position, an outdated position that has largely been ruled out but people still cling to their outdated ways due to preconceptions.
In MinutePhysics’ video, he does not defend any of the absurdities of the worldview he is proposing. He just attacks the alternative because it would have to not be spatiotemporal and calls that “crazy.” That’s not an argument, that’s an appeal to incredulity. There is no law of logic that says nature must necessarily be interpreted as spatiotemporal. If my two options are (1) believe the empirical evidence that demonstrates reality is spatiotemporal, or (2) adopt an entirely incoherent position that descends into irreconcilable contradictions in order to delude myself into believing it is spatiotemporal, then I am going to pick #1 every time, and saying it is “crazy” is a bit of an absurdity.
Indeed what is even more ridiculous about MinutePhysics’ and 3blue1brown’s dismissal of such a view as “crazy” is that it was also the view of John Bell, the guy who developed the theorem. Apparently, John Bell was “crazy,” yet, it was Bell who had the deep insight into the theory in order to develop this theorem in the first place, and so clearly he understood it better than a couple of YouTubers.
Nah. They try to defend “value indefiniteness,” a position which is largely indefensible but has become very popular in academia despite having been all but ruled out, and should go the way of the aether. A physical theory needs observables with well-defined conditions under which they obtain well-defined properties or else it is not possible to make a single empirical prediction with the theory.
If you claim particles do not obtain definite values for their observables at all, this is the Everettian interpretation, the “Many Worlds” interpretation. But this trivially doesn’t work because, again, if particles never obtain definite values at all, then you cannot make a single empirical predictions with it. The theory has no connection to empirical reality. See Tim Maudlin’s paper “Can the World be Only Wavefunction?”
Indeed, whenever we have a statistical distribution, we presuppose that there exists an underlying real state of the system, but we are just ignorant of it. In order to derive the Born rule distribution, then Everettian mechanics must, at some point, admit to there being definite values to the observables. But to do that would be equivalent to a “collapse” approach, which they want to avoid, so they try to use arguments involving decision theory and such, but, as Adrian Kent showed in his paper “One world versus many: the inadequacy of Everettian accounts of evolution, probability, and scientific confirmation,” these explanations are always circular, as well as the paper “Epistemic Separability and Everettian Branches: A Critique of Sebens and Carroll” by R. Dawid and S. Friederich.
Indeed, Everettians also love to claim that their view is “local,” but if their viewpoint really is mathematically consistent with quantum mechanics, then, at some point, it must reproduce Born rule probabilities, meaning it must reproduce violations of Bell inequalities, and so it cannot be local, as shown in Aurélien Drezet’s paper "An Elementary Proof That Everett’s Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation". They often get around this by just redefining locality to be in terms of linearity or no-signaling, but any interpretation can be local if we just change the meaning of locality.
Of course, there are also “collapse” interpretations. The collapse, obviously, cannot just occur “when you look at it,” or else you end up devolving into crackpot solipsism, as per the “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment in Wigner’s “Remarks on the Mind Body Problem.” The “collapse” must occur before then, and it also must be an invariant collapse, or else the minds of other observers would depend upon how you personally look at them, and their own minds would not have independent existence. “Collapse” thus can only be a consistent view of physical reality if the collapse both occurs under well-defined conditions and is invariant.
But these are pretty much ruled out by John Bell’s paper “Against ‘Measurement’” which points out that the “collapse” approach cannot constitute a physical interpretation of quantum mechanics because orthodox quantum mechanics does not tell you when this “collapse” should occur, under what well-defined conditions, and so it does not give you an unambiguous ontology.
If this “collapse” really occurs, it is a non-reversible process, yet all unitary evolution operators are reversible. That means if I build a measuring device, and you give a complete physical description of the measuring device in terms of quantum mechanics, then an interaction with that measuring device would be described via unitary operators, and thus would be reversible, and so orthodox quantum mechanics would predict that an interaction with the measuring device is reversible, whereas a “collapse” approach would not.
This would in principle lead to different empirical predictions, as we would have something interact with a measuring device and then attempt to reverse the interaction, and the predictions between a “collapse” theory and orthodox quantum mechanics would deviate from one another. Theories like GRW and the Diosi-Penrose model are thus separate theories, not interpretations of the same theory. A physical collapse model can only be consistent if you believe orthodox quantum mechanics is simply wrong.
The “measurement problem” within orthodox quantum mechanics stems from the assumption of value indefiniteness. Nobody has proved it is possible to make quantum mechanics consistent with value indefiniteness without running into the measurement problem, and it is my position that it is not logically possible to do so. The measurement problem is a proof-by-contradiction that value indefiniteness is just an untenable position, an outdated position that has largely been ruled out but people still cling to their outdated ways due to preconceptions.
In MinutePhysics’ video, he does not defend any of the absurdities of the worldview he is proposing. He just attacks the alternative because it would have to not be spatiotemporal and calls that “crazy.” That’s not an argument, that’s an appeal to incredulity. There is no law of logic that says nature must necessarily be interpreted as spatiotemporal. If my two options are (1) believe the empirical evidence that demonstrates reality is spatiotemporal, or (2) adopt an entirely incoherent position that descends into irreconcilable contradictions in order to delude myself into believing it is spatiotemporal, then I am going to pick #1 every time, and saying it is “crazy” is a bit of an absurdity.
Indeed what is even more ridiculous about MinutePhysics’ and 3blue1brown’s dismissal of such a view as “crazy” is that it was also the view of John Bell, the guy who developed the theorem. Apparently, John Bell was “crazy,” yet, it was Bell who had the deep insight into the theory in order to develop this theorem in the first place, and so clearly he understood it better than a couple of YouTubers.