And a reconstruction of the wavefunction over all the points produces a map of probabilities, not a description of an actual trajectory. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please read what I wrote again and make an effort to absorb it.

The problem being that there is a real difference between a spatial separation and a temporal separation, because by the nature of time, a temporal separation is not invertible, while a spatial separation is. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is your repeated claim but it's not shown. Neither in relativity nor relativistic quantum mechanics is there a preferred direction of time. Histories of particle motions constitute worldlines in 4D, with no intrinsic arrow.

The separation between time1 and time2 cannot be treated in the same way as the separation between spatial point A and point B, because the empirical evidence demonstrates that things only move from time 1 to time 2, and the opposite is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually the empirical evidence proves that time and space are interchangeable, i.e. those dimensions in one frame of reference get mixed together in another frame of reference. Look up the Lorentz transformations.

The power, or force, which causes the material world to be as it is, at each moment as time passes at the present, must be prior to the passing of time at the present, and therefore a cause which is in the future. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting. It sounds a bit similar to the OP, in so far as the physical requirements of the existence of the material world in the future dictate the possible causes in the past. Coherence is very much a wavefunction feature.

When one of them excludes the possibility of the other, this means that the two are incompatible. — Metaphysician Undercover

See my above response to Wayfarer. A wavefunction can *always* be written as a linear combination of states from any basis set. This is the expansion postulate of QM.

The very idea of an electron with a definite ‘position’ or ‘momentum’ is meaningless prior to an experiment that measures it.

'Position' is a state. All of the possible positions constitute a complete basis set. Any wavefunction can be written as a superposition of these positional basis functions (the Eigenstates of the position operator). After measurement of position, the wavefunction somehow collapses to a single position. This is an example of the measurement problem.

Likewise 'momentum' is a state. All of the possible moments constitute a complete basis set. Any wavefunction can be written as a superposition of these momentum basis functions (the Eigenstates of the momentum operator), including an Eigenstate of the position operator (which is a plane wave in momentum space). After measurement of momentum, the wavefunction somehow collapses to a single momentum. This is another example of the measurement problem.

It is not that the electron doesn't exist when it's a wave: the wave conserves charge, mass, etc. It's that the wave spontaneously changes from a superposition to a single Eigenstate upon measurement.

Here's a random image I found of an electron wavefunction in some wave-packet state collapsing to a position Eigenstate on measurement of position:

Is there any 'given electron' - prior to it being measured? — Wayfarer

Yes, in quantum theory, including quantum field theory, the electron is considered to be there whether it's measured or not. For instance, it interacts with the Higgs field all the time, without which it would move at the speed of light.

Interestingly this popped on my radar today, describing something very similar to what the OP describes but with light waves instead of electron waves.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-crack-quantum-physics-puzzle/ — Kenosha Kid

Full paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18652-w

This isn't quite what I thought it was, but exhibits similar behaviour.

Anderson localisation is caused by impurities in semiconductors that cause the wave to scatter so much and so randomly that it interferes out almost completely and cannot progress.

In the OP, the scattering sites are just other electrons in the screen, which will be much less severe.

However both cases have similar outcomes insofar as paths that aren't viable in the future are never tried in the past.

Another unjust accusation. — NOS4A2

That's what I mean by defending racists, rapists, sex offenders and tax dodgers. And colluders, how could I forget colluders.

I never tire of defending people from unjust accusations, just as you never tire of making them. — NOS4A2

Racists, rapists, sex offenders, tax dodgers... I forgot tax dodgers.

I thought he “reached into his trousers”. I haven’t seen the scene, but the article makes no mention of dick rubbing. Have you seen it? — NOS4A2

Do you ever get tired defending racists, rapists and sex offenders?

Although unfortunate, the circumstances of the setup appear consensual, with Giuliani led to believe he was being courted. — NOS4A2

So if a woman asks you out for coffee you'd think it appropriate to start rubbing your dick!

Damn. A consensual act with a 25 year old woman? How could you do this, Rudy? — NOS4A2

In what sense is rubbing your genitals in front of what you believe to be a journalist consensual?

Interestingly this popped on my radar today, describing something very similar to what the OP describes but with light waves instead of electron waves.

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-crack-quantum-physics-puzzle/

Is everyone in Trump's circle a predator? Rudy's surely fucked... https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/21/rudy-giuliani-faces-questions-after-compromising-scene-in-new-borat-film

We're the rational animal, and that's a difference that makes a difference. — Wayfarer

I'm aware of your position, hence my qualification. As far as I see it, in terms of evolutionary history, it makes no difference at all.

Do you think the principles that reason recognises - the law of the excluded middle, and so on - are 'the product' of evolutionary biology? — Wayfarer

I think that anything that living organism does has that organism's genetic heritage as a pre-requisite. In order to discover the law of the excluded middle, we need a biological capacity for reason. In order to have that, it must have evolved in our ancestors. In order for that to be true, it must have had a survival benefit. This does not determine that the law would be discovered, merely that it _could_ be discovered.

H. sapiens evolved, no doubt whatever, but at the point of being able to realise such abstract truths, escaped the bounds of biological evolution, became something more than what biological evolution can explain — Wayfarer

Sounds like magic again.

So the challenge to you is to explain how you manage to reduce the wave transmission of energy to a trajectory. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is discussed in the OP here:

in relativistic quantum theories, we do not proceed by specifying an initial state, time-evolving it forward, and asking the probability of spontaneously collapsing to a particular final state. Rather, we have to specify the initial and final states first, then ask what the probability is. This is constructed as a Green's function G(r, t; r', t'). — Kenosha Kid

In perturbation theory and path integral formalisms of relativistic QM, such as quantum electrodynamics, one specifies initial and final states, as per the form of the Dirac equation which is power 2 in space and time (momentum and energy). This is what is meant by a path or trajectory.

If we do this with final position states for all positions on the back screen, we reconstruct the wavefunction defined over all of those points. The wavefunction and the Green's function are highly related.

So how would you reconcile these two incompatible descriptions of the electron, one in which it has a momentum as a wave packet, and the other within which it has a position with the capacity to leave that position creating a hole there? — Metaphysician Undercover

These descriptions aren't incompatible. Any wavefunction can be written as a superposition of Eigenstates of any measurement operator. If my electron collapses to an exact position state, for instance, and an electron in the screen is a wave-packet spread around that position, either the latter has to be scattered away from that position or the former is blocked from being found there.

In relation to quantum trajectory theory, here's an article (I haven't had time to read completely read it yet) which might interest you, if the link works: https://doi.org/10.3390/e20050353
entropy 2018, 20(5), 353 — Metaphysician Undercover

Great title! Yes, in Bohmian mechanics the electron always has definite position and momentum, and thus a well-defined trajectory.

And this is a philosophy forum, where [E−V]u=12m[p−A]2u is not, as it were, lingua franca. — Wayfarer

Ha! And that was the nice version. It's not written like that normally. The important thing is not the terms, but that energy and momentum are not linearly proportional: E ~ p^2. This translates as requiring two boundary conditions in space and only one in time: the initial state. It's the shape of the equation that's of interest.

Please point out where you think I failed to understand it [the interpretation of the wave function collapse]
— Kenosha Kid

If you posted your OP at physicsforum.com, I'd be interested to see what other physicists say about it. I intuitively feel there's a problem with it, but of course I don't have the skills to say what, exactly. — Wayfarer

That's a conversational dead-end then :rofl: I would expect the controversies would be different. Transactional QM, while mathematically identical to any other QM, is not as supported as Copenhagen, MWI, or SUaC (shut up and calculate). The reaction from Copenhagenists will be that it's absurd because it's not Copenhagen, just as MWI is absurd. The reaction from MWIers will be that it's wrong because it's not MWI, just as Copenhagen is wrong. That is the usual quality of debate about QM interpretations on Physics Forum.

The genuinely controversial part of the OP is the idea that, if we could solve the many-body wave equation for the whole apparatus, we would find that a given electron does not have the characteristic double-slit band pattern at a given time. I expect that most would say it would, but we cannot solve the equation to find out. I say it wouldn't, but we cannot solve the equation to find out. But my take includes more physics.

I don't think the stuff you're bringing up matters so much except maybe at extremes such as the wavefunction being a "metaphor" which is so far from conventional QM as to be also irrelevant here. As per my discussion with fdrake, I don't assume a particular ontology beyond the Born rule, which is a postulate of QM. The extent to which the wavefunction mathematically represents or encodes something about the physics -- which is valid since it makes physical predictions -- it is something that can be calculated and discussed as an object.

Why should we assume that anything can only exist or not exist when most of reality (space) does not follow that rule? — Hippyhead

Your argument, presumably by design, says absolutely nothing about anything. From your argument alone, we can deduce nothing. So the answer to your question is to consider different arguments.

In that case they should stick to their knitting and not write books which end up in the Religion section of the bookstore. — Wayfarer

I perhaps did not anticipate having to make this clarification and should have: evolutionary biologists are not in the business of existential plights in their capacity as evolutionary biologists. What they do in their free time is all part of that freedom. It doesn't follow that evolutionary biology in particular is obliged to answer questions about environments that evolution itself has not been privy to. If it has no bearing on our genetic heritage, there will be a limited answers from genetics.

That said, while we are an animal evolved in one environment now living in another, we are still that animal, so the answer is never completely independent of our genetic heritage either. If we accept the genetic basis of evolution and the truth of evolution, that is

Kenosha Kid likes to waffle. When it suits Kenosha's purpose, the electron is a particle. When it suits Kenosha's purpose, the electron is a wave. But Kenosha adheres to no concrete principles to distinguish between when the electron is observable as a particle, and when it is observable as a wave. Kenosha Kid will call it a particle, or a wave, depending on what is required at that point in the discussion. — Metaphysician Undercover

This isn't addressed to you per se, just for general clarity: the concrete principle adhered to is the expansion postulate of QM, which states that the wavefunction is always a linear admixture of one or more Eigenstates of a given operator. After measurement, this is equal to a single Eigenstate of the measurement operator.

QM does not maintain two different types of electron: one wave-like, one particle-like, and swap between them. It is always a wave. That wave can be a position Eigenstate or not. I think I've already addressed this once before.

The particle-like behaviour evident in measurement is not that the electron ceases to be a wave at all, but that the wave somehow reduces to a single Eigenstate of the measurement operator.

They all acknowledge that there is a deep philosophical problem sorrounding the ontological status of the wave function - whether it's real, or simply a mathematical device, or an artefact of the understanding. None of that is resolved. — Wayfarer

True, and discussed in this thread in some depth. Please point out where you think I failed to understand it. The OP is fairly ambivalent about the ontology of the actual wavefunction. At one extreme, you can consider the full solution to the Schrödinger equation as ontic. At the other, only the transacted trajectories are ontic. It's not my intent to push anyone one way or another.

The back screen is physical, it's not 'ideal'. When you run the experiment, the results are recorded on a physical screen. — Wayfarer

As is clear from the preceding text:

It referred only to the general ideas of himself and Bohr with respect to what could and could not be stated on the basis of quantum physics. So I hardly think it's 'simplistic'.
— Wayfarer

In truth, it's less the interpretation and how it's applied — Kenosha Kid

this is regarding the Copenhagen interpretation. The probability of finding the electron anywhere on it is given only by the electron wavefunction, which is equivalent to treating the back screen as an ideal metal.

But again, the Schrodinger equation is wave-like, but it is an actual wave? — Wayfarer

The solutions to the Schrödinger equation are waves. The equation itself is not a wave. I think all of those books you mentioned would have told you this

But that got smacked down with: don't be stupid, the particle interferes with itself! (per Dirac). — Wayfarer

That's harsh of them. The wavefunction is time-dependent, but only in its phase. The probability of finding it at a given position is unaffected by this phase. This is not a general feature of wavefunctions.

The inconvenient fact you seem to be avoiding is that the vast majority of reality can not be said to either exist or not exist, one or the other. So, should you be an atheist who bases your philosophy on observation of reality, you might consider observing that. — Hippyhead

Once again, that is independent of what God is.

1) The vast majority of arguments both for and against theism assume, typically without any questioning at all, that a God exists or doesn't exist, either/or, one or the other.

2) The vast majority of reality at every scale, space, can not be clearly said to either exist or not exist, as this phenomena has properties which fit our definitions of both existence AND non-existence.

3) Thus it's not reasonable to assume without questioning that a God could only exist or not exist. — Hippyhead

And as has also been pointed out to many times, that entire argument was independent of what God is. So really the most it says is that something either does or doesn't exist.

and as MU observed, this is a philosophy forum, not a physics forum. I do ask questions on that forum also, but they give pretty short shrift to philosophy over there. — Wayfarer

This is a thread about the implications of QM for determinism on a philosophy of science channel of said philosophy forum. If I'm out of line in my OP, can you be a bit more explicit?

Or rather, to the genes of Toxoplasma gondii. — Banno

I thought of bringing this up when you mentioned you're a cat owner, but then I remembered that Toxoplasma gondii tends to effect men in the opposite way, and you come off as guy.

yet 'the altruistic gene' doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? — Wayfarer

Well that wouldn't make sense, because the "selfish gene" is not a "gene for selfishness".

Dawkins and his ilk are generally tone-deaf to the existential plight of h. sapiens. Indeed, they show no awareness of what an existential plight might consist of. — Wayfarer

But that would be perfectly reasonable. Evolutionary biologists are not in the business of existential plights, nor should they be. What you do with the you you've been given is part of that gift. You can thank evolution for being able to breathe in your sleep; your life choices are on you.

They ridicule religion as 'failed empirical hypothesis' but it was never intended as that to begin with. And for those who never thought that the Bible was literally true in the first place, the fact that it's *not* literally true doesn't have the devastating philosophical implications that Dawkins hopes for. — Wayfarer

Actually, I've read The God Delusion and his target is not non-literalist Christians. The poorly named 'militant atheism' movement is not a reaction against people finding meaning by going to church. It's a reaction against people trying to ban scientific education in schools and replace it with creationism claiming to be science. I'm sure you'll agree that is not a good thing.

For some yet unknown reason, Dawkins misrepresented the thesis in his book, turning a work on altruism into a book on the selfishness of genes. — Olivier5

This is still the book you assessed in 2 seconds without reading, right?

I’m still curious where Singer fits into this conversation. — Pfhorrest

Did I miss Rand? I thought we were working from left to right.

How is this difference bearing on your question? — Olivier5

How could it not? My suggestion to Wayfarer was the sort of existential doubt about meaning he discussed, and about morality as discussed in the thread I mentioned, would not likely occur in hunter-gatherer groups. Your quote if anything supports this, since his ode to his former way of life is very sure about its correctness.

And how the heck are we supposed to know of a tribe who knows of no other existence?????? — Olivier5

As I already explained to you, less invasive contact with hunter-gatherer tribes, e.g. Levi Strauss, while still not ideal, would be informative.

The particular thing I was just looking into was how peaceful tribes become warrior tribes. Anthropological evidence suggests that the default reaction to another tribe is one of mutual respect and reciprocal altruism: an extension of how individuals within a single tribe treat each other. Tribes only tend to become hostile to other tribes only once they've encountered a warrior tribe. (War is a cancer.)

What would be interesting is how they handle the transition. Is there disagreement, schism? Does anyone think what they're doing is wrong? And if so is it merely transitory? That's an example of existential doubt in a hunter-gatherer tribe.

What part of "This concept of life and its relations was humanizing and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all" did you fail to see, read, or understand? — Olivier5

The difference between A) a hunter-gatherer tribe which knows of no other existence, small, close groups based on cooperation and like-mindedness, and B) a hunter-gatherer group destroyed by a more powerful non-hunter-gatherer group, forced to adopt a completely different lifestyle based on less egalitarian and fair-minded principles, does not seem subtle to me. In fact it seems immense. How is it that no matter how often you look at this difference, you completely miss it?

Google is your friend. You should have researched your subject earlier. — Olivier5

I have, for the other thread quite extensively. Hunter-gatherer tribes tend to have strict, fairly static ethics and ways of life. There is typically no disagreement on what is right and good. I've seen zero evidence that hunter gatherers worry about the meanings of their lives.

You're not listening. — Olivier5

I am. You're missing the point. What I want to know about is not former hunter gatherers reminiscing, but actually hunter gatherers with existential angst. I've given up on you ever understanding and am looking into myself.

Nope. You said:

Like morality, the question of what meaning we should find for ourselves — Olivier5

Yes, that's what I meant by executive freedom. What you posted was a man regretting that his hunter-gatherer existence had been overturned by a more powerful non-hunter-gatherer lifestyle. That's not pertinent. What would be pertinent would be data from actual hunting and gathering tribes that had never been otherwise that showed existential doubt about the meanings of their lives or how they should behave with one another. If you know of anything I'd be interested, not for this thread; for something else.

The problem is you keep forgetting what your thesis is. — Olivier5

That hunter gatherers do not have existential crises about their ethical or executive freedoms. Showing that native Americans preferred their prior existence is hardly relevant.

Don't underestimate them. — Olivier5

Oh, I don't. The problem is, once again, you didn't read what I wrote.

I'm looking for where he's worrying about the meaning of his life or what is morally right. He seems to know what is right and regrets the incursion of the world.

But there's an interesting existential element here, arising from the fact that non-hunter-gatherer lifestyles were thrust upon his people.

Another that occurred to me was when I went hunting with a tribe in Tanzania. It was a show, really. Sure, they did live that way to an extent. They lived in mud huts and killed birds with sharpened sticks. But what we were seeing was how they negotiated with a non-hunter-gatherer world. It was, in reality, capitalism: they took their way of life and turned it into money to buy things from traders.

You should read people like Levi Strauss, who lived with hunter-gatherer tribes still living as hunter gatherers. Obviously there's still going to be some effect of dealing with a European, but it's not as stark or tragic.

Hunter-gatherers still exist, and they may ask themselves more profound questions than you think, thank you very much. — Olivier5

By all means, offer a counter-example.

I thought the electron couldn't be 'found' anywhere until it is measured? It is not a discrete entity that exists in some unknown location until such time as it is registered. In fact there really is no such thing as 'an electron' until it is measured, when it manifests as a registration on a plate - which is the basis of 'the measurement problem'. — Wayfarer

The measurement problem is that the wavefunction that describes the electron can be in a superposition of observables, but when we measure it it's always in one. It is always a wave. Even if we managed to measure its position to arbitrary accuracy, it would be a wave in momentum space still. (Likewise if we measure it's momentum exactly it's a wave in space. This is the uncertainty principle.)

So it's a question of how the electron transforms from one wave to another. The double slit example is of it reducing to the kind of wave that grows out from the slits to the kind of wave with a fairly precise position (exact, or some kind of wave-packet which is more realistic).

But your explanation presumes that there is an electron as a discrete existing particle that exists independently of being measured. Whereas, if you are to question the 'Copenhagen Interpretation', isn't that precisely the point at issue? — Wayfarer

No, Copenhagen is just the above with that transformation being probabilistic according to the Born rule. The question of the epistemology of the wave is related but separable.

It referred only to the general ideas of himself and Bohr with respect to what could and could not be stated on the basis of quantum physics. So I hardly think it's 'simplistic'. — Wayfarer

In truth, it's less the interpretation and how it's applied. In the double slit experiment, the back screen is treated as ideal. This means the only thing that affects where the electron can be measured is the electron wavefunction, which is ambiguous, hence the measurement problem.

The insight drawn from this is that the wavefunction evolves into this ambiguous state and can collapse to any position on the ideal screen. But this holds only for ideal screens.

We'd get a different answer if we could calculate the time-dependent many-body wavefunction of the entire apparatus, but we can't. So the ideal calculation becomes the only thing we have to go on. My point is that it's unwise to take artefacts of that idealisation seriously just because we lack the computing power to do it properly.

However, the 'collapse' of the wave function is actually a metaphor, as there never is an actual wave per se (any more than there is an actual particle). — Wayfarer

As per my many responses to MU, this may well be true, but it's not QM.

Saying it is 'nothing more than feelings' begs the question - it presumes that the notion of final cause can only be a matter of feeing, but that presumption is itself part of what is at issue in this debate. — Wayfarer

And I think that is an extremely well-worded description of the problem. And any explanation is going to seem like it's about something else, not 'I'. This is why Midgley and the like never criticise evolutionary genetics descriptions of ants or beavers. No one has a subjective experience of being either that, taken at face value, will appear different to the science. But for humans it's different. Any scientific explanation for, say, why humans love spending time by the water is always going to be compared to the feeling of being by the water, and qualitatively they do not correlate. We can acknowledge the survival benefit of living near water, but that's an intellectual experience, not an emotional one.

What I'm pointing out is that Dawkins quite reasonably rejects Darwinian thinking as a basis for social or individual morality — Wayfarer

Well let's be clear... He does not reject Darwinian explanations for moral instincts. He rejects the idea that how genes behave has anything to do with how people do or should behave. The Selfish Gene itself takes the view that humans are altruistic, not circumstantially but genetically. That those genes behave as metaphorically srlf-interested parties cannot yield the conclusion that our genes make us inherently selfish, although we are that too.

And yet the latter part of his career mainly comprises dissolving the traditional basis for morality in what his colleague Dennett calls 'the acid of Darwin's dangerous idea'. So - how to avoid nihilism? If the universe really is purposeless, and we just blind robots enacting the program of selfish genes, what is the philosophical basis for a humane culture? — Wayfarer

If we accept the genetic basis of evolution and accept evolution (if), are we really robots behaving according to instruction? Mostly, perhaps. Most of the things you do you are not aware of, and most of your decisions aren't really rational. You've largely had the problem of survival taken out of your hands, so most of the things you would, in hunter-gatherer times, have had to be aware of are no longer in your world. As a result we have a lot of spare capacity for thought and the freedom to do with that as we choose.

This question of non-essential meaning is best answered by existentialism, a point I touched on in my natural morality thread. Like morality, the question of what meaning we should find for ourselves arises precisely because we are living in an environment starkly different from anything that had any bearing on our evolution, thus evolution cannot answer the question. Hunter-gatherers likely did not have these profound questions.

By the way, why do you present this stuff on a philosophy forum when you are completely uninterested in philosophical discussion of it? Why leave your peers? Have you been rejected? — Metaphysician Undercover

It's posted in Philosophy of Science to examine the philosophical ramifications of QM on determinism. This thread isn't meant as an advertisement for QM. However QM is the scope of this particular question about determinism, reason being that people use QM a lot as if to prove that determinism is dead. It's not. There are deterministic and non-deterministic interpretations. My point here is that even the seemingly non-deterministic ones don't have anything to say about determinism.

Look, I resisted playing the PhD card for four pages and really didn't want to do it, opting to leave little hints here an there that I guess you didn't see. I don't feel good about it, but if you were as interested in the subject as much as you're interested in appearing like an authority on it, this wouldn't be an issue. Anyway, I'm sorry I lost my temper too.

Because what you miss in the passage above is that Dawkins's moral and political message is that, thanks to our unique intelligence and scientific society, we are not slaves to our genes, that we are free—precisely the opposite of what you imply he's saying. — jamalrob

:up:

And so effectively, that he can't even understand why someone would ask such a question as 'why are we here?' — Wayfarer

Not shown. Knowing that it's not a meaningful question does not imply not understanding the question. Everyone, even the most level-headed atheist, has to deal with the same feelings of feeling special, destined, more than a bunch of chemicals hewn from death and catastrophe. The trick is to not mistake this with knowledge.

. I could already spot a fake philosopher when the book came out. I remember it took me about 2 seconds of analysis, — Olivier5

That explains all, thanks.

Gould has blunt this weapon a tiny little bit. That's the only reason you are pissed off about him, and so blatantly unfair. — Olivier5

Anyone who blunts human curiosity, from the Holy Inquisition to the ID brigade, including SJG, will earn some measure of my contempt, sure.

He really did set the popular literature of the field back, misrepresenting it as in absolute chaos then plagiarising George Williams to appear to set it right again. — Kenosha Kid

No less a figure than John Maynard Smith:

Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory. — John Maynard Smith

As another leading evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr said:

He quite conspicuously misrepresents the views of biology's leading spokesmen. — Ernst Mayr

As evolutionary psychologist John Tooby attests:

nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.[2] The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism -- so properly are we all -- it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know.
...
For biologists, the central problem is that Gould's own exposition of evolutionary biology is so radically and extravagantly at variance with both the actual consensus state of the field and the plain meaning of the primary literature that there is no easy way to communicate the magnitude of the discrepancy in a way that could be believed by those who have not experienced the evidence for themselves. — John Tooby

His citations [2]:

(2) These include Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Bill Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Tim Clutton-Brock, Paul Harvey, Brian Charlesworth, Jerry Coyne, Robert Trivers, John Alcock, Randy Thornhill, and many others. — John Tooby

I could go on. But this guy has already collated a good selection of biologists' views on SJG.