What is the Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics? | David Albert

Robinson's Podcast #221 - 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.

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

[david_porthouse]

Repeat the two-slit experiment with an alpha emitter like polonium 210. Use a silkscreen to paint wet nitrogen tri-iodide as a pattern of dots onto the screen, and let it dry out. Dots will be destroyed at random by alpha particles hitting them, but overall we will see an interference pattern being built up. Each individual dot starts and ends in a monochromatic state. I would just suggest that it is in a monochromatic state at all times in-between, and is therefore a tachyon some of the time according to the Dirac theory. As such, any one dot can intercept the entire wavefront of any one alpha particle.

This could be a candidate for computer simulation. Unfortunately even just two molecules of nitrogen tri-iodide will require dozens of dimensions of configuration space, and we just don’t have a computer which can cope with the need for exponential-time algorithms. If I had such a computer then I would be talking about adding tachyonic Brownian motion to destroy unitarity. I will stop here.

[garrettramirez]

And yet postmodern philosophers want to base our society on emulating this school of science...