David Albert: The Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia, and a faculty member of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. This is David’s eighth appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. He last appeared on episode 210 with Tim Maudlin, which was a more advanced episode on Niels Bohr and the foundations of quantum mechanics. In this episode, David gives a pedagogical and introductory overview of the measurement problem, which is the issue at the core of many discussions about the foundations of quantum mechanics. David’s most recent book is A Guess at the Riddle (2023). If you’re interested in the foundations of physics, then please check out the JBI, which is devoted to providing a home for research and education in this important area. Any donations are immensely helpful at this early stage in the institute’s life.

Note: Unfortunately, the cameras turned off in the middle of the episode. For twenty minutes there is no video, and for most of the episode only the camera focusing on David is recording.

OUTLINE
00:00 Introduction
04:54 On Philosophy and the Foundations of Physics
15:35 The Bizarreness of the Quantum World
19:16 What Is the World of Classical Physics?
24:00 How Quantum Mechanics Destroyed the Classical World
32:18 How Quantum Mechanics Became the Theory of Reality
39:53 What Is the Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics?
51:05 Niels Bohr and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
01:01:14 Niels Bohr and the EPR Paper
01:08:45 Was Niels Bohr the Most Charming Physicist of All Time?
01:15:59 Is the Measurement Problem a Scientific Problem?
01:21:24 Is String Theory Pseudoscience?
01:31:03 Why Don’t Many Philosophers Work on String Theory?
01:34:08 The Wave Function and the Measurement Problem
01:41:34 Hidden Variable Theories of Quantum Mechanics
01:48:47 Solving the Measurement Problem with Experiment
01:56:41 Quantum Mechanics and the Scientific Project

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, historians, economists, and everyone in-between.

[david-joeklotz]

Hooray 😊 Prof Albert is one of the very few people that I watch every interview he does and read everything he writes 😎

[spencerwenzel]

I am really enjoying these in person interviews

[johnsolod]

I watched this for 2hrs instead of Deadpool & Wolverine, so here's my movie ticket money

[johnsolod]

Don't worry about the camera problems :) You are doing the work of a host, researcher, audio engineer, cameraman, and probably a few other roles as well

[expr]

I want to express my gratitude for these interviews - they're so illuminating, and the space and time (spacetime!) you give these experts to explain their ideas is just incredible!

[michalmalicki]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall during David's dinner with Bohr...

[MrCartmannn]

This is so interesting! I am a philosophy major, so its greatly appreciated when such an educated person gives a simplified yet not misleading picture of the problem, Thank you.

[salim]

came here because of Norman Flekenstien podcast. Great work ❤

[anotherelvis]

1:13 You should interview Helge Kragh who wrote the book: Quantum generations. He makes the point that the second generation of quantum physicists stopped worrying about philosophy.
They just focused on the mathematical formalism.

[TurdFerguson]

David is quickly becoming my favorite scientist! He might be the most thoughtful physicist, and truly isn't afraid to use the most amount of words to convey his thoughts & opinions, which is always very interesting.

The first time I saw him, which was on an early ep. of the World Science Festival, I didn't appreciate him, oddly, I think because I didn't realize the depth of how he explains something, which is different than anyone else. I mistook his use of words as exaggeration. Thankfully, every time I saw him after that, I appreciated his unique way of communicating more and more and more, and here we are today, he's probably my favorite! 👍

Thanks, Robinson

[JoshuaStadler]

Your interviews with David Albert are my absolute favorites. I appreciate all the work you've been doing to make these happen, Robinson!

[Billybo]

Good on you making the effort to get in person - it is in fact much, much better. You cannot match the energy of in-person discussion, and of course audio/video is better too. Happy also to see a young gun getting out there and making a splash

[Thecrd]

The algo finally spit this at me a month or so ago. Love your approach as an interviewer and how you let the guests speak with no interruptions. Sub complete.

[timewalker]

This is the good stuff, Another david Albert and in person

[peteunderdown]

Could it be conceived that one way to describe the Measurement Problem is that it is inherently a recursive procedure? We have to measure the instrument we just measured with, then repeat with whatever we made that measurement with. The process doesn't bottom out.

[brettharris]

As a retired physicst, I disagree with David on the idea that string theory has any merit, given its predictions have zero correlation to the world as it exists. The enormous time wasted in physicist-hours could have been far more useful investigating far more promising physical theories.

Surely 50 years is sufficient to demonstrate any utility, at least we can count on time for the passing of the string hawkers.

[joshuadiliberto]

"The marital status of the number 5" is my all time favorite quantum mechanics quote.

[fraktalv]

Hey, Robinson! Thank you so much! Great progress and all the best!😎😎😎

[jonathans.bragdon]

How do you know that the whole scientific project COULD NOT HAVE an imperfection?

[ywtcc]

I like thinking about this chain of events Daivd Albert brings up here.
It's from his example of a pointer entering superposition, when it's pointing at an electron in superposition.
Then, the observer looking at the pointer enters superposition, as the pointer enters position.
It's not just the observer that enters superposition, though.
It's also the observer's sense of space.
Ultimately, these measurements all broke down into timings, in our analysis.
The sense of space was derived from a chain of energetic events, with timings associated with them.
It appears that, even though our theories are based on space, at the point of measurement we don't even know that much yet!
To me, this speaks to the nature of time, and energy.
It may be the case that time is imaginary in the sense that it is perspective dependent.
However, it may also be the case that time is always the first step in moving from physical reaction to data that can be written down and shared with other scientists.
At this scale, and in this way, scientific independence has been denied to us, and we make the most of the interactive universe that we can sense with our timings and energies.
This is the solution I came to when working on digital signal processing problems. The spatial coordinates always start like this in your sensors!

Instead of "where in space am I?", the observer should be asking "how do I orient myself in my environment?"
The simplest observer is going to live in a one dimensional universe, then the next most simple a two dimensional, and so on.