• Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    This mistake makes clear you haven't studied QM or don't understand it.Raul

    I did my PhD in quantum transport theory.

    You're mixing up Schrodinger equations and wave equations.Raul

    The Schrödinger equation is a wave equation.

    A photon is not a click, but if you go to the laboratories like in the CRN you will see that particles are not clicks but probabilities everywhereRaul

    Do you mean CERN? In quantum mechanics, predictions concern experimental outcomes. If your experiment concerns certain photon emissions with certain probabilities, then this equates to the number of "clicks" you'll read at a certain angle of a certain energy across a large number of experiments. Unlike, say, the trajectory of Mercury around the Sun, we can't "see" photons without destroying them. One can model the photon using the wavefunction but cannot conflate the two: the latter is a mathematical encoding of all the information we have, which might be more than that needed. One cannot even speak of the photon existing in space and time between the emission and absorption events: even that is an interpretation. All one can say with surety is that we expect N number of clicks in a photon detector at a certain angle and energy.
  • Raul
    215
    The Schrödinger equation is a wave equation.Kenosha Kid

    Right. And do you insist QM is not probabilistic?

    Do you mean CERN?Kenosha Kid

    Yes, sorry, CERN.

    "clicks"Kenosha Kid

    I insist, it is not about "click", but if you like to think on a "click", up to you.

    we can't "see" photons without destroying them.Kenosha Kid

    Right, so when you say QM is phenomenological you refer to phenomenology as understood in physics, not the philosophical one.

    Anyway, I think we're losing the point of the question, these theories do not explain everthing but are the closest ones to give an kind of ontological explanations of the real. Would you have other to propose?
  • Wayfarer
    21.3k
    The problem is that the general question concerning being or existence, as distinct from questions concerning beings or existents, is unanswerable.Janus

    In that case philosophers ought to give the game away. :lol:

    Heidegger is obviously on the right track, but I'll never get over his association with Nazism. But anyway I'll but out of this thread, as they're not talking philosophy.
  • Janus
    15.8k
    In that case philosophers ought to give the game away.Wayfarer

    Most philosophers have given that game away. I wouldn't say Heidegger wanted to answer the kind of question you are interested in, in any case. His answer is a phenomenological, not an absolute, one. He actually referred derogatorily to the kinds of traditional metaphysical questions you seem to be interested in as "ontotheology".
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    And do you insist QM is not probabilistic?Raul

    There are probabilistic (Copenhagen-like) interpretations of QM and deterministic (MWI-like) interpretations of QM so, no, it's not fundamentally probabilistic. The Born rule applies either way, but in MWI is a classical probability, like the probability of pulling a blue marble out of a bag. Further, there is no probabilistic mechanism even in Copenhagen-like interpretations. The Born rule is epistemological.

    Right, so when you say QM is phenomenological you refer to phenomenology as understood in physics, not the philosophical one.Raul

    It's the same phenomenology, it's just specific to physical experiment.

    Anyway, I think we're losing the point of the question, these theories do not explain everthing but are the closest ones to give an kind of ontological explanations of the real. Would you have other to propose?Raul

    QM is the best theory we have in terms of its predictive power. How ontological it is... *shrugs* I like pondering it, but in a working capacity I'm a shut up and calculate guy. I suspend judgement largely because we're not technologically advanced enough to jump that phenomenological barrier. It might well be that QM is complete and deterministic, we just can't simulate large enough systems to observe how macroscopic superposition is avoided. Or maybe it's complete and probabilistic. Or maybe it's incomplete, or an approximation to a better theory. No one knows.
  • SolarWind
    207
    It might well be that QM is complete and deterministic, we just can't simulate large enough systems to observe how macroscopic superposition is avoided.Kenosha Kid

    I have already written it in another thread:

    I think the answer is the Schrödinger-Newton-Equation.

    "The regime where the mass is around 10^10 atomic mass units while the width is of the order of micrometers is expected to allow for an experimental test of the Schrödinger–Newton equation in the future."

    Wave functions of more heavy parts than 10^10 atomic mass units will catch their own wave function.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    I think the answer is the Schrödinger-Newton-Equation.SolarWind

    Yeah, something like it perhaps. I do lean more towards a general relativistic quantum theory than a quantum theory of gravity. The S-N equation itself has two approximations: it is non-relativistic (a la the Schrödinger equation), and it is essentially a mean-field theory. But it does encode potentially many-body effects.

    Environmental decoherence is another factor, but tbh it's not like anyone can simulate measurement using the many-body Dirac equation anyway. We presume it behaves like the many-body Schrödinger equation (which is basically an oscillation between different possible measurement outcomes), but it's not something we can check. There are huge differences between the way solutions to the Schrödinger equation and solutions to the Dirac equation behave (e.g. the phase velocity of Dirac equation solutions is tachyonic, which impacts interference effects).
  • Mr Bee
    551
    Are Relativity and Quantum theories the best ever descriptions of the ontology of reality?Raul

    QM literally has dozens of interpretations all claiming things like multiple realities, nonlocality, and indeterminism. So you have to be more specific as to what kind of ontology you think it's describing.

    Same goes for Relativity too since it is also not immune to having multiple interpretations. The predecessor to SR, the Lorentz Ether Theory, was an equivalent theory that had an ether and there are multiple different formulations of GR, such as Shape Dynamics which trades the relativity of time with the relativity of size, which also exist.

    There is no such thing as an ontology based purely on science. Sure you can go and try to attach one to the theories we have but then at that point you're no longer doing physics, but metaphysics.
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