Quantum Mechanics as Classical Physics, by Charles Sebens. It’s described as yet another new QM interpretation, firmly many-worlds and no collapse, with no gooey “the wave function is real” and some sort of effort, if I read correctly, to put back the wave-function in its place as a description rather than a mysterious fundamental essence. Not in quite those exact words, but that does seem to be the author’s attitude IMO.
Sounds interesting and very much in line with LW-style reductionist thinking, and agrees a bit too much with my own worldviews and preconceptions. Which is why I’m very much craving a harsh batch of criticism and analysis on this from someone who can actually read and understand the thing, unlike me. If anyone knows where I could find such, or would be kind enough to the world at large to produce one, that’d be appreciated.
I’ve retracted my (epistemically unhealthy) previous responses about great physics discoveries. I’d say “oops” as per the LW tradition, but when I look back on what I wrote all I see is a rather shameful display of cognitive dissonance. There’s no mere “oops” there, but plain old full-blown contrarian, academic-hipster biases. Sorry.
On the other hand, my confidence that the ultimately correct and most useful Next Great Discovery (e.g. any method to control gravity) will not come from a physics department is above 50%.
Philosophy simply happens to be one of the more likely departments where it might come from, though still quite a ways behind “unaffiliated” and “engineering”.
Maybe not from a Physics department, but from a research lab of IBM or similar. Do you have any examples from the reference class of Great Discoveries in Physics? If so, what fraction of them did not come from trained physicists?
Einstein was working at the patent office in 1905 while also working on his phd. He published his first annus mirabilis paper in March, was awarded his phd is April and published the remaining papers in May, June and September. He didn’t take a position as a lecturer until 1908. This means Einstein was outside of physics while publishing his papers on Brownian motion, Special Relativity and Mass-Energy equivalence. Or did I miss something?
My understanding is that this was a normal career path at the time and the fact that he was not paid by the university after getting his degree is no more evidence of him being outside the physics department than his not being paid by the university before completing it.
Added: But it is relevant that this isn’t normal today.
My best take on the thing is that, historically, most great physics discoveries were made by generalist, wide-branching natural philosophers. Granted, “natural philosophy” is arguably the direct ancestor of physics from which spawned the bastards of “chemistry” and “biology”, but even regardless, the key point is that they were generalists and that, if we were going to solve the current problem simply by throwing more specialized physicists and gamma ray guns at it, this is not the evidence I’d expect to see.
Given historical base rates of generalists vs specialists in physics, and the ratio of Great Discoveries made by the former rather than the latter, it feels as if generalists have a net advantage in “consolidating” recent research into a Great Discovery.
I do have to agree, though, that all of them came from physicists, if not necessarily formally trained, although in most cases they were. Good knowledge of physics is necessary, that I won’t argue. But what I’ll point out is that I’ve personally met many more game developers and programmers with a much better grasp of (basic) physics (i.e. first volume of Feynman’s Lectures) than college physics department members, on a purely absolute count. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched, to me, to assume there’s a comparable difference in base rates of people within and outside physics departments with a solid enough grasp of physics for the Next Great Discovery, whatever that threshold may be (and obviously, the lower the actual threshold, the more likely it is that it will come from outside Physics Departments).
I am hard pressed to think of any significant discovery in the last 100 years or so which was not made by specialists (granted, often with a wide view of things). I’m sure there are some, but likely only a tiny fraction. If you look through the list of Nobel laureates in Physics, Chemistry and Biology, do you find any “generalists” there? Or, assuming the Nobel committee is biased toward the establishment, inspired by “generalists”?
To expand on shminux’s point about what has happened in the last 100 years that’s different: There’s a serious lack of low-hanging fruit. Ideas are more complicated and the simple ideas that a generalist has any chance to find have to a large extent already been discovered. Note also that in fact it is well before 100 years ago that this trend already started. Darwin, Maxwell, Faraday and many other 19th century researchers were already specialists by most notions of the term. So really this trend has been going on for almost 200 years.
my confidence that the ultimately correct and most useful Next Great Discovery (e.g. any method to control gravity) will not come from a physics department is above 50%.
If you care to expand on this, I’m curious to hear your reasoning.
Meanwhile, I’d also pounce on the “Ontological Alternatives” chapter there to ask a slightly unrelated question: Regarding the “fourth option” there, has anyone ever tried to analyze a world ontology where, unlike here, particles can belong to multiple different worlds according to some kind of rule or per-particle basis? e.g. Instead of having a particle belong to World # 872 as an elementary property, which lets it only interact with other W-872 particles, it would have a set of “keys” where any other particle that also has at least one of those keys can be interacted with, while that other particle might have a slightly different keyset and thus be able to interact with a third particle “located” right next to the first one (insofar as position of two non-interacting particles is relevant to the second one in question)?
I realize I’m throwing ideas around while having no idea at all what I’m talking about, but at the same time from where I’m sitting it feels like all the “sides” of the QM interpretation debates always share a humongous bag of uncontested assumptions. Namely, assumptions about pesky details like “position” being a necessary, elemental and fundamental property of particles.
I haven’t read Sebens’ article and my a priori estimate of its value is very low. Maybe I’ll take a look at it later.
Regarding what you write about particles. Particles are not fundamental entities in modern physics: quantum fields are (or quantum string fields, whatever the latter are). A state of matter can only be described as a collection of particles in certain limits and approximations. The position of a particle is especially ill defined because of Compton wavelength non-locality in quantum relativity.
Also thinking of QM worlds as “keys” is not a good idea. The wavefunction can only be decomposed into “worlds” as a macroscopic approximation, there are no “worlds” on the fundamental level.
Quantum Mechanics as Classical Physics, by Charles Sebens. It’s described as yet another new QM interpretation, firmly many-worlds and no collapse, with no gooey “the wave function is real” and some sort of effort, if I read correctly, to put back the wave-function in its place as a description rather than a mysterious fundamental essence. Not in quite those exact words, but that does seem to be the author’s attitude IMO.
Sounds interesting and very much in line with LW-style reductionist thinking, and agrees a bit too much with my own worldviews and preconceptions. Which is why I’m very much craving a harsh batch of criticism and analysis on this from someone who can actually read and understand the thing, unlike me. If anyone knows where I could find such, or would be kind enough to the world at large to produce one, that’d be appreciated.
My ad hominem argument of the day: the author is in the philosophy department… figures...
I’ve retracted my (epistemically unhealthy) previous responses about great physics discoveries. I’d say “oops” as per the LW tradition, but when I look back on what I wrote all I see is a rather shameful display of cognitive dissonance. There’s no mere “oops” there, but plain old full-blown contrarian, academic-hipster biases. Sorry.
Peter Spirtes is in a philosophy department too.
“It’s too bad all the people who know how to do philosophy are too busy driving taxicabs or cutting hair.”
The version I heard was about professional sports players and coaches.
On the other hand, my confidence that the ultimately correct and most useful Next Great Discovery (e.g. any method to control gravity) will not come from a physics department is above 50%.
Philosophy simply happens to be one of the more likely departments where it might come from, though still quite a ways behind “unaffiliated” and “engineering”.
Maybe not from a Physics department, but from a research lab of IBM or similar. Do you have any examples from the reference class of Great Discoveries in Physics? If so, what fraction of them did not come from trained physicists?
The obvious example example of a (/several) great discovery(s) in physics by someone outside of a physics department is Einstein.
Grad students count as people in physics departments.
From my reading of Wikipedia:
Einstein was working at the patent office in 1905 while also working on his phd. He published his first annus mirabilis paper in March, was awarded his phd is April and published the remaining papers in May, June and September. He didn’t take a position as a lecturer until 1908. This means Einstein was outside of physics while publishing his papers on Brownian motion, Special Relativity and Mass-Energy equivalence. Or did I miss something?
My understanding is that this was a normal career path at the time and the fact that he was not paid by the university after getting his degree is no more evidence of him being outside the physics department than his not being paid by the university before completing it.
Added: But it is relevant that this isn’t normal today.
My best take on the thing is that, historically, most great physics discoveries were made by generalist, wide-branching natural philosophers. Granted, “natural philosophy” is arguably the direct ancestor of physics from which spawned the bastards of “chemistry” and “biology”, but even regardless, the key point is that they were generalists and that, if we were going to solve the current problem simply by throwing more specialized physicists and gamma ray guns at it, this is not the evidence I’d expect to see.
Given historical base rates of generalists vs specialists in physics, and the ratio of Great Discoveries made by the former rather than the latter, it feels as if generalists have a net advantage in “consolidating” recent research into a Great Discovery.
I do have to agree, though, that all of them came from physicists, if not necessarily formally trained, although in most cases they were. Good knowledge of physics is necessary, that I won’t argue. But what I’ll point out is that I’ve personally met many more game developers and programmers with a much better grasp of (basic) physics (i.e. first volume of Feynman’s Lectures) than college physics department members, on a purely absolute count. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched, to me, to assume there’s a comparable difference in base rates of people within and outside physics departments with a solid enough grasp of physics for the Next Great Discovery, whatever that threshold may be (and obviously, the lower the actual threshold, the more likely it is that it will come from outside Physics Departments).
I am hard pressed to think of any significant discovery in the last 100 years or so which was not made by specialists (granted, often with a wide view of things). I’m sure there are some, but likely only a tiny fraction. If you look through the list of Nobel laureates in Physics, Chemistry and Biology, do you find any “generalists” there? Or, assuming the Nobel committee is biased toward the establishment, inspired by “generalists”?
To expand on shminux’s point about what has happened in the last 100 years that’s different: There’s a serious lack of low-hanging fruit. Ideas are more complicated and the simple ideas that a generalist has any chance to find have to a large extent already been discovered. Note also that in fact it is well before 100 years ago that this trend already started. Darwin, Maxwell, Faraday and many other 19th century researchers were already specialists by most notions of the term. So really this trend has been going on for almost 200 years.
If you care to expand on this, I’m curious to hear your reasoning.
Meanwhile, I’d also pounce on the “Ontological Alternatives” chapter there to ask a slightly unrelated question: Regarding the “fourth option” there, has anyone ever tried to analyze a world ontology where, unlike here, particles can belong to multiple different worlds according to some kind of rule or per-particle basis? e.g. Instead of having a particle belong to World # 872 as an elementary property, which lets it only interact with other W-872 particles, it would have a set of “keys” where any other particle that also has at least one of those keys can be interacted with, while that other particle might have a slightly different keyset and thus be able to interact with a third particle “located” right next to the first one (insofar as position of two non-interacting particles is relevant to the second one in question)?
I realize I’m throwing ideas around while having no idea at all what I’m talking about, but at the same time from where I’m sitting it feels like all the “sides” of the QM interpretation debates always share a humongous bag of uncontested assumptions. Namely, assumptions about pesky details like “position” being a necessary, elemental and fundamental property of particles.
I haven’t read Sebens’ article and my a priori estimate of its value is very low. Maybe I’ll take a look at it later.
Regarding what you write about particles. Particles are not fundamental entities in modern physics: quantum fields are (or quantum string fields, whatever the latter are). A state of matter can only be described as a collection of particles in certain limits and approximations. The position of a particle is especially ill defined because of Compton wavelength non-locality in quantum relativity.
Also thinking of QM worlds as “keys” is not a good idea. The wavefunction can only be decomposed into “worlds” as a macroscopic approximation, there are no “worlds” on the fundamental level.
It strikes me as a potentially fruitful SF novel idea.