The Amazing History of Locality in Theoretical Physics | David Albert

Robinson's Podcast #157 - David Albert: The Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and one of the world’s most respected philosophers of physics. He is also the 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 fifth (!) appearance on Robinson’s Podcast. He appeared on episode #23 with Justin Clarke-Doane on metaethics and absolute space, episode #30 on the philosophy of time, episode #67 with Tim Maudlin on the foundations of quantum theory, and episode #106 with Sean Carroll on Many-Worlds and fine-tuning. In this episode, Robinson and David discuss his new book, A Guess at the Riddle: Essays on the Physical Underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics (Harvard, 2023), and the metaphysics of quantum mechanics. If you’re interested in the foundations of physics—which you absolutely should be—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, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.

[michalmalicki]

Man! David Albert is one of those guys who define clarity of communication. My goodness. This is wonderful stuff.

[Celeste-Katseyeanis]

David! I love the Brilliant Man, love Celeste. ❤

[josephkahr]

A simple way to recover locality in QM is to fully exploit the time reversal symmetry of quantum waves. John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation uses this approach. A completed transaction is the result of many iterations where quantum waves are exchanged among potential end points. Waves repeatedly propagate (locally) from many sources to many destinations, both forward and backward in time. The iterations converge to a stable solution, enforcing the usual boundary conditions like energy and momentum conservation. The emergence of the solution happens with no time lapse, because every retarded wave propagation delay is matched with an equal and opposite advanced wave propagation delay. This atemporal feature is what we interpret as a non-local effect. To us and our detectors it acts like spooky action at a distance. TI provides a way to understand the hidden physical mechanism, avoiding the need to rely on magic. No magic is need if locally propagating retarded and advanced waves underlie the macroscopic detections. Non-local enforcement of correlations (think EPR entanglement) is not so spooky after all.

[dadsonworldwide]

As I've studied ancient history I see this same type of etymological flipping where words and interpretations get done the same way as this locality history.
In fact magic & mysticism is one such word that seems to have been done this way which is likely because of movies, books and even later philosophers usage.
Freud comes upon it himself in a more physical ritual sychololgical way .😮

[wordysmithsonism]

Educational and concise. Please spell it "Albert."