Nice try, but I don’t think most eminent physicists would agree with you. Just to name a few:
Niels Bohr: "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."
Eugene Wigner: “It will remain remarkable that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of consciousness is an ultimate reality.”
John Wheeler: “human consciousness shapes not only the present but the past as well.”
Martin Reese (Astronomer Royal): “The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.”
Penrose: “Somehow, our consciousness is the reason the universe is here.”
Stephen Hawking: “In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. Even the universe as a whole has no single past or history.”
I’ll spare you, but I have many more quotes like this from prominent physicists.
Does quantum physics say nothing is real? — Darkneos
No.Does quantum physics say nothing is real?
:clap: :party:Drastically different physical principles apply to sandwiches and surfboards than apply to subatomic particles. The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. Different metaphysical regimes apply at different scales. That's the thing about metaphysics - there's not just one appropriate view of reality. The philosophical lesson of QM is that what works at human scale doesn't work at all at nano-scale. — T Clark
Though on the off side...does it really say that? From what I've been told there are so many interpretations of QM that you can pretty much just have it say whatever you want. — Darkneos
But the general answer I get from those who know this stuff is NO. It doesn't say anything like that. When I get into the philosophy about it I get stuff like "well that depends what you mean by reality", after that I pretty much tune it out. — Darkneos
If you search for "real" in your Schaum's Outline of Quantum Mechanics you will find nothing, save mentions of the real number system. "reality" is in the domain of speculation by both experts and quantum mysticists. — jgill
“our scale” and which physical processes? — Deus
Randomness produced at the quantum level = randomness and classically defined phenomena on the macro level. And vice versa — Deus
On the other hand, among those physicists who are aquatinted with philosophical accounts of realism and anti-realism, most consider themselves philosophical realists. — Joshs
How do you know? I from all the links I've gathered there seems to be something to there being no objective reality based on what that guy on Quora is saying. — Darkneos
The links seem to say different. — Darkneos
The danger with QM is that people get the physics and metaphysics all wrapped around each other. Drastically different physical principles apply to sandwiches and surfboards than apply to subatomic particles. The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. Different metaphysical regimes apply at different scales. That's the thing about metaphysics - there's not just one appropriate view of reality. The philosophical lesson of QM is that what works at human scale doesn't work at all at nano-scale. — T Clark
The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. — T Clark
The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. Different metaphysical regimes apply at different scales. That's the thing about metaphysics - there's not just one appropriate view of reality. The philosophical lesson of QM is that what works at human scale doesn't work at all at nano-scale — T Clark
There are ways of accommodating within a a single metaphysics the situation in physics that the world appears to work differently at different scales. — Joshs
As I said, it's not a physics question, it's a metaphysics one. The failure to recognize the difference between everyday or scientific reality and metaphysics is the biggest failure of most posters on the forum. — T Clark
There are ways of accommodating within a a single metaphysics the situation in physics that the world appears to work differently at different scales. For instance, one can argue, as the followers of Quine do , that facts and value systems ( accounts of the world) are inextricably bound together. Thus, it is not just the human and nano scales of physical description that can’t be fully integrated. It is also the myriad descriptions of reality within the various subsegments of the biological and social sciences. Whatever we study within one approach responds also to other theories and procedures, but with different new precision. Since it responds to various systems, it cannot be how one system renders it. — Joshs
This is squarely false. It is a physics question. There are a number of quantum theories which vary considerably in how they explain quantum experiments, and none of them confirm your folk notions of reality.
You have misrepresented the scientific field in this thread and should by no means be talking down to anyone else. — frank
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