/lit/ - Literature

>Bohr showed as much obsessive attachment to his brainchild as Kant had to his. When granted the Danish Order of the Elephant in 1947, he chose as the motto on his coat of arms Contraria Sunt Complementa (opposites are complementary). He even appealed to complementarity to account for the obscurity of his own writings. According to Rudolf Peierls, Bohr would often say, “truth and clarity are complementary.” This sentiment is the death of Enlightenment rationality. Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hume all strove for both clarity of expression and for truth. But according to Bohr, necessarily the more you have of one, the less you have of the other. Bohr triumphed through anti-rational aphorisms such as this. As the great physicist Murray Gell-Mann said, after conversations with Putnam, “Bohr brainwashed a generation of physicists.” A vivid illustration of Kuhn’s kinship to Bohr in this respect can be drawn from Morris: “What I hated most about Kuhn’s lectures was the combination of obscurantism and dogmatism. On one hand, he was extremely dogmatic. On the other, it was never really clear about what.” It is no stretch to apply this precise description to Bohr, and not much of one to apply it to The Critique of Pure Reason as well...

>What of Kuhn? He was quite explicit about his relationship to Kant. Late in his life, Kuhn declared, “I am a Kantian with movable categories.” That is, he embraced Kant’s thesis that the mind imposes structure on the experienced world rather than discovering structure in it, but, contrary to Kant, the imposed structure can change. Such a change is a paradigm shift, the ultimately irrational replacement of one experienced reality with another incompatible one. Caught in our own little thought-worlds, deprived of access to objective truth (because there is no objective truth), we can do no better than miscommunicate, misunderstand, and ultimately resort to raw institutional power to resolve our disputes. As appropriated and mangled by Bohr and Kuhn, Kant—despite his own embrace of science and reason—becomes the agent of the anti-Enlightenment, the post-truth Age of Spin and Branding we live in.

We all hate the Kant goblin and want to escape the epistemological prison he placed our minds in, but you have to do it the hard way and defeat the critiques.

A female author writing:
>(Kant is) famously obscure, and his writing forbiddingly impenetrable
Is a sulk, not an argument.

What's her point too? Her complaint seems rather mild, that naive physicalism is reduced to a regulative idea. Does that really matter to science? Proving that their theories are constitutive rather than regulative is an inherently philosophical task, why not just stick to your bunson burners and beakers. Regulative theories will function just fine, it makes no difference within scientific thinking.

>>15594192
(You)

>>15594192
Have you been drinking?

>>15593723
i knew maudlin was a tard but did he really write this?

>>15593723
>>15593726
All good points, though I think Kant can be salvaged the same way Jaynes was partially salvaged in that internet essay posted here recently. The theories of Kant and Jaynes can each, in their own way, be reimagined as analyses of the 'folk theory' of the world (folk metaphysics and folk theory of mind, respectively). Actual physics/metaphysics and actual psychology/philosophy of mind may have been initially inspired by folk intuitions, but not ultimately constrained by them.

What he said about Bohr is spot on. Easily the most destructive influence in 20th century science.

>>15594625
>What he said about Bohr is spot on. Easily the most destructive influence in 20th century science.
>>>/x/

>>15594609
Not an argument.

>>15594628
Bohr is the king of /x/-tier 'science'.

>>15594637
the dude literally thinks that bell's theorem proves physics is nonlocal. his understanding of the subject is worse than an undergrad's
>>15594641
so is this guy's

>>15593723
>>15593726
Ok... this doesnt seem to refute kant. Just gives an interpretation of the effects in schoolarly methodology it influenced and spawned.

>>15594609
your issue with maudlin...
*sniff* *sniff*
yea, I think I can smell what metaphysical issue with have with maudlin to make you seethe this much...
*SNIFFFFFF*
Mmmm, yes, a delicate bouquet of semite worship with after notes of determinism seethe

>>15594660
>the dude literally thinks that bell's theorem proves physics is nonlocal.
Wow, you're a fucking moron. Experimental violation of Bell's Inequalities literally does prove that quantum mechanics is nonlocal. John Stewart Bell says as much. That is the entire purpose of his theorem.

>his understanding of the subject is worse than an undergrad's
Clearly your understanding is worse than a middle-schooler's.

>>15594704
>Experimental violation of Bell's Inequalities literally does prove that quantum mechanics is nonlocal.
no, it doesn't. take an actual QM class and stop learning science from "philosophers"
>John Stewart Bell says as much.
no one cares.

>>15594673
It's not supposed to be a "refutation of Kant". It's a book review written for a mass audience.

>>15594715
You are an embarrassing idiot. Actually read JS Bell's papers if you want to understand what the Bell tests prove or don't prove.

>>15594727
bell's results are trivial and not at all the kind of thing you need to dissect his original papers to understand, although it's typical for "philosophers" to make those kinds of arguments from (perceived) authority when they're out of their depth. physics is local, bell did not disprove this and you're stupid for thinking he did.

>>15594192
>and want to escape the epistemological prison he placed our minds in
wtf how is being brainwashed in kant's mental prison real nigga like just read guenon haha like just metaphysically intuit

>>15594192
>he hasn't personally overcome Kant
ohnonono bruh look at this dude ohnonono

>>15594739
>bell's results are trivial and not at all the kind of thing you need to dissect his original papers to understand
Obviously you do need to read them because you are utterly clueless what the whole point was.

>although it's typical for "philosophers" to make those kinds of arguments from (perceived) authority when they're out of their depth
It's not an "argument from authority" when I direct you to read the research you are misinterpreting.

>physics is local, bell did not disprove this and you're stupid for thinking he did.
Lmao. The Bell test results are inconsistent with any locally causal theory of quantum mechanics. If you had any understanding of the math involved, you would know that. And yes, I have degrees in physics and mathematics. You don't even have a degree in trolling.

>>15594766
>The Bell test results are inconsistent with any locally causal theory of quantum mechanics.
this is wrong, and your QM professors should have told you as much (hopefully they did and you just weren't paying attention). QM is local, that doesn't contradict bell's result. you only need to introduce non-locality if you're trying to fake the real quantum results with a classical theory (one with "beables" or whatever stupid shit bell/maudlin like to talk about)

>>15594739
What the violations of bell inequalities show is that there is no locally realistic (by locality he means constraint of causality and by realism he means variables with definite properties) theory that can account for the strength of the correlations measured in nature by the bell experiments. It's not quantum mechanics that violates bell inequalities, it's nature, and any theory that might supersede QM, any final theory of physics, will have to incorporate that fact into its account of the world. The reason it's profound is because it says something about the nature of the world and not about what to expect from any particular theory. Maudlin is well within his rights to interpret this as a violation of locality, but interpretations of the results are not restricted to this. There are plenty of local intepretations of QM (Everett, transactional, etc.), but what is certain is that you will have to give up some intuitive "metaphysical" presumption about the world.

>>15594837
>Maudlin is well within his rights to interpret this as a violation of locality
no, he isn't. that's a violation of relativity. the correct interpretation of bell's results is that locality holds and realism does not, which is true in QM.

>>15594848
but the presumption that the quantum state acts as a probability density (which is the denial of "realism) is what accounts for the non-local signaling between collapsed wave functions for the first place. I think that is what Maudlin is getting at. The only way around it is to deny wave function collapse.

>>15594813
1) despite being spacelike separated, Alice's measurement settings are predictably correlated with Bob's measurement outcome
2) this causal "connection" cannot be implemented in the usual way, by means of a signal traveling from A to B, as that would violate special relativity
3) therefore, the causal connection is implemented nonlocally.

Exactly how the connection is implemented is a matter of interpretation. What we do know is that it is not locally causal. Hence Einstein's concern about "spooky action at a distance".

>>15594862
there's no non-local signaling, wave function collapse is a reflection of the observer's knowledge about the system rather than an "objective" feature of the system itself.
>>15594896
none of this is a problem for locality any more than bertlemann's socks are.

>>15594837
Fair and balance post, 100% agreed.

I would quibble with the chart, though. The failure of locality does not entail 'superluminality' in the usual sense of signal velocity exceeding c. Also, I would replace superdeterminism with retrocausality.

>>15594911
"Bertlmann’s socks" is an example of a locally causal theory that the Bell test results conclusively rule out.

>>15594930
yes, because in QM we can't assume one sock is definitively red and the other definitively blue. the correlation arises through the same local mechanism in either theory.

>>15594911
>none of this is a problem for locality
It's literally an empirical refutation of the principle of locality.

>any more than bertlemann's socks are
Bertlmann’s socks would imply a local hidden variable theory. Bell's results prove that such an account is impossible.

>>15594911
>there's no non-local signaling, wave function collapse is a reflection of the observer's knowledge about the system rather than an "objective" feature of the system itself.

Then the quantum state has definite properties, and realism is preserved, which is one of the three "intuitions" that are ruled out by the inequalities. Your other options are locality and freedom.

>>15594960
>It's literally an empirical refutation of the principle of locality.
it literally isn't.

>>15593723
yes

>>15594964
Just so we're on the same page: state what you think the Principle of Locality is.

>>15594963
the state is not an observable.

>>15594971
all the terms in your lagrangian are evaluated at the same spacetime point

>>15594955
>yes, because in QM we can't assume one sock is definitively red and the other definitively blue.
It's not about having definite values before measurement. It's about the fact that a causal connection exists between the two spacelike-separated wings of the experiment such that the settings in one immediately predict the results in the other. That is literally by definition what it means to falsify the Principle of Locality.

>the correlation arises through the same local mechanism in either theory.
It literally can't.

>>15595004
Lol, no.

>>15595007
>It literally can't.
it literally does. the wave function is not an observable, there is no causal connection between the events
>>15595021
this is the actual definition you will find in a physics textbook

>>15594972
We observe "something" when conducting experiments

I dont know what any of these words mean I wish I knew physics

>>15595031
the state of the system defined by the wavefunction is not an observable, by definition.
>>15595045
there's always time to start learning

>>15595050
>the state of the system defined by the wavefunction is not an observable, by definition.

What does it matter? This is about ontology. If you preserve locality, you reject realism. But realism means the state has definite properties before interaction with the environment, or as you put it "collapse is a product of the observer's knowledge". Either way, you're making an assertion about what the quantum state is like.

>>15595004
>>15595026
>this is the actual definition you will find in a physics textbook
Maybe this is where your confusion is. The term "locality" can mean a lot of different things in physics. The "Principle of Locality" relevant to Einstein's concerns in the EPR paper, and subsequently addressed in Bell's papers, is this:

>Principle of Locality: If two space-like separated sets of events A and B are correlated, then there is a set of events C in their common Minkowski past such that conditioning on C eliminates the correlation.

In layman's terms, PoL requires that if one event affects another, it does so by means of a signal traversing the intervening space.

That's the Principle of Locality which Einstein wanted to preserve, and which the Bell test results prove to be false.

>>15595050
Should I content myself with popsci explanations/books or are textbooks accessible for everyone.

>>15594192
Yeah this. The quote from the OP is just saying that it's frustrating we don't have direct access to the ontological categories of reality itself, and wrongly identifying this with Kant. His mistake is in thinking that Kant enjoys being limited to subjective realism, or transcendental idealism. He doesn't. It's a compromise solution after the failures of rationalism and vulgar materialism after two centuries.

>>15595084
>But realism means the state has definite properties before interaction with the environment, or as you put it "collapse is a product of the observer's knowledge"
these two things aren't equivalent at all, no idea why you think they are. prior to measurement nothing meaningful can be said about the system
>>15595094
no signal traverses between a pair of entangled objects
>>15595106
please for the love of god don't read popsci, you'll end up like people in this thread. if you really want to learn you'll need to start with basic textbooks, which will be understandable for people with a basic grasp of algebra and calculus, and work your way up to more advanced stuff.

>>15595116
>The quote from the OP is just saying that it's frustrating we don't have direct access to the ontological categories of reality itself
Nope, he's saying the opposite.

>His mistake is in thinking that Kant enjoys being limited to subjective realism, or transcendental idealism.
OP never speculated as to Kant's hedonic attitude toward his own theories.

>It's a compromise solution after the failures of rationalism and vulgar materialism after two centuries.
It turns out, he was too pessimistic.

>>15595119
>no signal traverses between a pair of entangled objects
In other words, the Principle of Locality is false. Quantum mechanical reality is nonlocal.

>>15595106
Textbooks will only teach you how to do numbercrunching like a mindless drone. They won't give any insight into the deeper issues.

>>15595134
How is he saying the opposite? He seems to be saying that Kant and Kuhn are wantonly subjectivist and relativist. But they were only so because they thought it was the only defensible position in light of the evidence.

We've had this thread like 5 times now where a few undergrads don't understand what locality in physics means and think Bell's Theorem is a profound result.

>>15595141
no, you're misunderstanding what entanglement is. a signal doesn't travel in the same sense that a signal doesn't travel in the case of bertlemann's socks; the correlation between the pairs is produced by a purely local effect in both cases. the difference between QM and classical theories is that in QM we don't say that one sock is "really red" and the other is "really blue" a priori (i.e. realism is false) and that's the only difference.
>>15595151
nothing could be further from the truth

>>15595157
god i wish it was only 5 times

>>15595157
There is someone making and remaking it and similar threads

>>15595157
>>15595169
>thread about maudlin's take on kant
>schizos spam the thread with bell's theorem
since you are already imagining a sinister force of bell's theorem posters im going to go ahead and assume you are false flagging this thread in a disassociative state

>>15595169
>>15595163
Bell's theorem says that quantum mechanics is incompatible with local hidden variable theories. As far as we know, physics is local. So hidden variables aren't allowed, simple as.

>>15595119
>these two things aren't equivalent at all, no idea why you think they are. prior to measurement nothing meaningful can be said about the system

What do you think it means to reject realism?

>>15595202
I don't even know what bell's theorem is you schizo, I'm just saying there is a guy obsessed with Maudlin

>>15595158
>no, you're misunderstanding what entanglement is. a signal doesn't travel in the same sense that a signal doesn't travel in the case of bertlemann's socks;
A signal obviously does travel in the case of Bertlmann’s socks, just not at the point of measurement. No, the explanation for the correlation in the case of Bertlmann’s socks is right there in the common past light cone.

>the correlation between the pairs is produced by a purely local effect in both cases
That's exactly what Locality means. Read the definition again:

>If two space-like separated sets of events A and B are correlated, then there is a set of events C in their common Minkowski past such that conditioning on C eliminates the correlation.

This exactly describes what happens in the case of Bertlmann’s socks. All causal influences are confined to the common light cone. This is not what happens in the case of entanglement. There can be no hidden variables in the past light cone that can explain the observed results. If you condition on all shared events in the past light cone (C), the correlation still remains. That's what Bell's theorem shows.

>the difference between QM and classical theories is that in QM we don't say that one sock is "really red" and the other is "really blue" a priori
In other words, it's really not like Bertlmann’s socks at all. So stop bringing it up as a supporting example. The only thing it's an example of is a local hidden-variables theory of the kind that is falsified by Bell's results.

>>15595222
i've said it explicitly already
>>15595227
>A signal obviously does travel in the case of Bertlmann’s socks, just not at the point of measurement.
the signal that travels in QM is identical, that's the point. observing one of the entangled particles doesn't cause anything to happen to the other, the entanglement is already there to begin with.

>>15595249
>the signal that travels in QM is identical, that's the point. observing one of the entangled particles doesn't cause anything to happen to the other, the entanglement is already there to begin with.
There is a correlation between the two measurement outcomes that cannot be explained by anything in their shared history, nor by anything traveling from one to the other. That's just what it means to violate the Principle of Locality. The principle holds in the macroscopic classical world, but not at the quantum level.

>>15595272
the correlation (entanglement) is entirely explained by the rules of QM, which is a local theory. i suspect you would know this if you hadn't abandoned textbooks because you considered yourself above "number crunching"

>>15595249
>i've said it explicitly already

What you've implied is that you think the uncertainty is epistemic - a function of our knowledge concerning the state of the system. What you've also said is that you prefer the rejection of realism to locality (purely aesthetic choice) and that this is because it violates relativistic causality (never mind that this need not be necessarily so). But to reject realism, you have to reject counterfactual definiteness. If the uncertainty is ontological, then nothing definite can be said about experiments not performed, which is what you would expect from a REAL existing probability density.

The confusion comes from the term "realism", which is loaded with philosophical baggage. Rejection of counterfactual definiteness is not a rejection of philosophical realism. What we do know is that the violation of bell's inequalities necessitates a choice between counterfactual definiteness and locality. Maudlin's point, as far as I can tell, has always been that nonlocality is a necessary consequence of the rejection of countefactual definiteness, because the wave function is an ontic entity. If you don't like this, you can still get something approaching peaceful coexistence between relativity and nonlocality by differentiating between nonlocality and Albert Shimony's non-separability. Entangled states are in some sense inseparable without the need to invoke superluminal (or instantaneous) connections between them. Don't know if there's a useful distinction to be made there, but it's there.

>>15595334
>(purely aesthetic choice)
wrong
>and that this is because it violates relativistic causality (never mind that this need not be necessarily so)
also wrong. i'll be honest, i'm getting pretty tired of this so i didn't read the rest. physics in minkowski space is local, relativity shows this and there's no way to keep relativity and abandon locality.

>>15595345
>>15595321
Would you recommend studying physics in any particular way if I want to go beyond undergrad level, any tips?

>>15595345
Is it so difficult to believe that neither are final theories, and that the strength of bell's theorem should clue us in to the fact that this unresolved tension requires further study?

>>15595321
>the correlation (entanglement) is entirely explained by the rules of QM
No, the rules of QM tell you that the correlation exists. It does not eliminate the correlation by conditioning on certain events in the past light cone. To do that would be to provide a locally causal explanation, which Bell's theorem rules out. You can explain Bertlmann’s socks that way, but not entanglement.

>because you considered yourself above "number crunching"
I don't consider myself "above number crunching" - I'm a mathematician. As a general principle, if you want to discuss particular scientific research results, it is best to refer not to textbooks but to the original papers and the subsequent responses to those papers. In this instance, reading the original EPR and Bell's two main papers stating his theorem are essential. The relevant terminology (Principle of Locality, hidden variables, etc) will be clearly defined in those papers, so you don't end up misconstruing what the discussion is about.

>>15595204
God is a non-local hidden value
Simple as

>>15595352
depends on what you mean by going beyond undergrad level. if you just want to understand more advanced topics, there are textbooks and review papers that you can study in the same way you'd study undergrad material (of course the most cutting edge stuff won't be in books). if you mean you want to become a physicist, you'll need to go to grad school for that, which is a different can of worms entirely.
>>15595365
neither are final theories, but this is not an unresolved tension.
>>15595394
bell's theorem is a trivial result and the epr paper is straightforwardly wrong.

>>15595405
Would it be possible to have a physicist's level of knowledge and read the cutting edge stuff even without going to grad school? Even if it takes longer and it's harder

>>15595405
>the epr paper is straightforwardly wrong
That's what Bell (and subsequent experimentalists) proved: Einstein was wrong. But in order to understand what exactly was disproved, you have to read the paper and understand what Einstein meant by "locality", and why quantum reality is not local in that sense.

>>15595412
Absolutely.

>>15595412
if your goal is to have a good general understanding of well-established results in the field, that's something you can do without going to grad school in principle (it would be hard, and would require a lot of dedicated study on your part). the point of getting a phd isn't just to learn physics, but to produce new physics; that's something you probably won't be able to do on your own, because it's essentially always a communal effort to some degree

>>15595439
any place online to get started? I don't mean with literally newton's third laws, but some place that hits that sweet spot between accessibility and rigor?

>>15595405
>bell's theorem is a trivial result
The fact that you brought up "Bertlmann’s socks" indicates you still don't understand it at even a basic level.

>>15595439
Thanks, that's what I am mainly aiming for anyway. I'll stick with it. Yea I don't think I'll ever produce new knowledge but being able to understand what is at stake at the forefront of research is my goal.

>>15595462
incorrect
>>15595445
if you're starting from 0 then the books here https://4chan-science.fandom.com/wiki/Physics_Textbook_Recommendations will keep you busy for awhile.
>>15595471
happy studying, anon

>>15594591
Is it not a women?

>>15595486
Hey, we've all been there. Just don't get to the point where Habermas starts looking good.