David Albert - Events in Quantum Mechanics and Relativity

Quantum mechanics, the best theory of the very small, and general relativity, the best theory of the very large, are deeply incompatible. One way to compare and contrast the two is by discerning the nature of an “event” in each. It is very different.



David Z Albert, PhD, is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the MA Program in The Philosophical Foundations of Physics at Columbia. He received his BS in physics from Columbia College (1976) and his doctorate in theoretical physics from The Rockefeller University (1981).


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[kafkaten]

I'm certainly no physicist... but every other physicist I listen to does NOT agree with Albert that we've put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to the measurement problem. Far from.

[matishakabdullah]

Without without experience....not knowing history... no entanglement... nothing matter... everything disconnect.

[nts]

So what are "events" in quantum mechanics and relativity?

[Adrian-yfzg]

I think it's a mistake to overlook conciousness in these discussions.

It seems a decision made purely to avoid the difficult problems

[robertschlesinger]

Very interesting and worthwhile video.

[dongshengdi]

"A delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, first performed by Yoon-Ho Kim, R. Yu, S.P. Kulik, Y.H. Shih and Marlan O. Scully, and reported in early 1999, is an elaboration on the quantum eraser experiment that incorporates concepts considered in Wheeler's delayed choice experiment. The experiment was designed to investigate peculiar consequences of the well-known double slit experiment in quantum mechanics as well as the consequences of quantum entanglement.

The experiment supports the observer effect in quantum measurements.
…
"Further studies have shown that even observing the results after the experiment leads to collapsing the wave function and loading a back-history as shown by delayed choice quantum eraser."

Basically, what causes the collapse is knowledge. And knowledge requires a knower.

"The observer plays a key role in deciding the outcome of the quantum measurments - the answers, and the nature of reality, depend, in part on the questions asked."

John Archibald Wheeler said: "It begins to look as if we ourselves, by a last minute decision, have an influence on what a photon will do when it has already accomplished most of its doing...we have to say that we ourselves have an undeniable part in shaping what we have always called the past. The past is not really the past until it has been registered. Or put it another way, the past has no meaning or existence unless it exists as a record in the present."

A conscious choice affects the behavior of previously measured, but unobserved particles.

Physicist Asher Peres, who elaborated the experimental results with his delayed choice for entanglement swapping, says:

"If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance but also, as seen here, influence future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded."

Our choice affects how the particle acted in the past. The factor of time has nothing to do with quantum mechanincs. This was predicted by quantum mechanics and the exact same result is what we see when we put it to experimental test.

[johnmalik]

The observer is the observed. When the observer is not the observed, there is duality, a measurement, a model, time.

[leonoradompor]

My hometown Don Carlos, Bukidnon, Philippines is balance of Sunshine and Rain !

[PeterMorganQF]

No mention of decoherence? Not that it’s necessarily right, but it’s as relatively demystifying as an approach as are Bohm’s and GRW’s approaches, has come to prominence in approximately the same timeframe, and many physicists espouse the idea in general terms.
Events, let it be remembered, are just features that are identifiable by some algorithm as the signal level varies on a signal line out of an apparatus: there’s nothing mysterious about there being events, because we have chosen materials and engineered them to produce identifiable events. If a device doesn’t produce events, we monitor the output from some other device that does.

[jamesruscheinski]

Is the quantum wave function random or determined? If quantum wave function determined, what causes the quantum wave function with energy frequency and probability distribution?

[grnDestiny]

Have you talked about the universe being a living organism yet? Who’s the expert at that?

[TupacMakaveli]

Hidden variable were turned over by bells theorem i think. Objective mind independent world still true tho. The world exists but not knowable with 100% precision as we are use to in Newtonian world.

[grnDestiny]

Oh damn I was many worlds, I was collapse, what most accepted now?

[voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang]

Yakir Aharonov: "There is a non-local exchange that depends on the modular variable....I'm saying that I have now an intuitive picture to understand interference by saying that when a particle moves through two slits, it always goes through one slit or the other, but it knows which other slit, the slit through which it did not go, whether it is open or not, because there are nonlocal equations of motion." Finally making sense of the double-slit experiment (2017, Aharonov): The nonlocal equations of motion in the Heisenberg picture thus allow us to consider a particle going through only one of the slits, but it nevertheless has nonlocal information regarding the other slit.... The Heisenberg picture, however, offers a different explanation for the loss of interference that is not in the language of collapse: if one of the slits is closed by the experimenter, a nonlocal exchange of modular momentum with the particle occurs....Alternatively, in the Heisenberg picture, the particle has both a definite location and a nonlocal modular momentum that can “sense” the presence of the other slit and therefore, create interference." as John Bell states: "Is it not clear from the diffraction and interference patterns, that the motion of the particle is directed by the wave?"

[tigdogsbody]

Still no closer to the truth, when the gods are part of any equation.

[B.S...]

Is the Uncertainty Principle considered dead?

[cryptolicious]

great video BUT he left out Simulation Theory as the 4th one to explain quantum wierdness and collapse.
more probable than multiverse which many of you take seriously ;)

[robertflynn]

That comment could not be farther from the real truth 2021. Nanotech is a new a vaster horizon to explore.

[voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang]

David Albert has been debunked by the research team of Yakir Aharonov and the research of Professor Jean Bricmont

[Gringohuevon]

waffle: there is no measurement problem because there is no measurement