Why is there so much effort spent on philosophical interpretations of QM, when there probably will be more fundamental levels of description such as string theory?
Is it to be expected that the least complex interpretation of QM will also apply to the one-day victorious string theory model?
It would be unlikely for any more fundamental theory not to be subject to the same set of evasions as QM. Roughly, we have people claiming that atoms are just theoretical figments of the imagination which merely yield good predictions, discovering neutrons isn’t going to change their arguments. String theory in particular doesn’t help.
I once asked a QM person (who shall remain nameless) why people argue about interpretations despite their untestability, and (s)he conjectured that what they are really arguing about is ramifications of these interpretations for “hard problems” (e.g. consciousness) which was an answer that surprised me.
The way that we currently build theories in physics is to write down a classical theory, and then ‘quantize it’ (which involves replacing classical numbers with operators and enforcing some non-commutation. Or it involves promoting the idea that the action is extremized with a path integral over the action). String theory is no exception, you typically start with a classical string-action.
Because of this, most of the underlying structure of quantum mechanics comes along for the ride. Unfortunately, this usually leads to formal problems (no one has yet developed a satisfying axiomatic quantum field theory, and the situation in string theory is even worse), but physicists ignore these issues, because such theories, while not formally developed, make the right predictions.
Why is there so much effort spent on philosophical interpretations of QM, when there probably will be more fundamental levels of description such as string theory?
Is it to be expected that the least complex interpretation of QM will also apply to the one-day victorious string theory model?
It would be unlikely for any more fundamental theory not to be subject to the same set of evasions as QM. Roughly, we have people claiming that atoms are just theoretical figments of the imagination which merely yield good predictions, discovering neutrons isn’t going to change their arguments. String theory in particular doesn’t help.
I once asked a QM person (who shall remain nameless) why people argue about interpretations despite their untestability, and (s)he conjectured that what they are really arguing about is ramifications of these interpretations for “hard problems” (e.g. consciousness) which was an answer that surprised me.
It is written: a physicist does not live on instrumentalism alone.
The way that we currently build theories in physics is to write down a classical theory, and then ‘quantize it’ (which involves replacing classical numbers with operators and enforcing some non-commutation. Or it involves promoting the idea that the action is extremized with a path integral over the action). String theory is no exception, you typically start with a classical string-action.
Because of this, most of the underlying structure of quantum mechanics comes along for the ride. Unfortunately, this usually leads to formal problems (no one has yet developed a satisfying axiomatic quantum field theory, and the situation in string theory is even worse), but physicists ignore these issues, because such theories, while not formally developed, make the right predictions.