Timeline for In Bohmian Mechanics, are non-local influences travelling through a medium?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 7 at 17:00 | comment | added | Ghoster | Did Cory delete his account? | |
| May 7 at 8:41 | comment | added | Wookie | Instantaneous, no. Simultaneous, yes. | |
| May 7 at 7:57 | comment | added | Ghoster | Also, those SEP articles are arguably more reliable than Wikipedia, are they not? I don’t know which is more reliable. Since I’m a physicist, I’ve never looked at an encyclopedia of philosophy, except for the occasional link on this site. | |
| May 7 at 7:50 | comment | added | Jos Bergervoet | Why should "talking about" something be better than an equation? The equation is the way to talk about reality. If you miss something there you have to augment (not interpret) the theory. And if you talk about the theory as it is, you have to simply stick to the equations and nothing more. (Actually, before the renaissance, and also in antiquity, people talked about mathematics and physics without having the algebraic notation of equations, it didn't speed up their progress...) | |
| May 7 at 7:42 | comment | added | user401242 | @JosBergervoet How can an equation by itself describe everything without talking about the reality that it affects? Every theory has postulates. I am not the only person who thinks this. Gerard T’Hooft does as well: youtu.be/r0tMVN_9-x4?si=fWw0aWmw2dXbC7dv. Anyways, this is getting a bit off topic now so I’ll leave it at that. | |
| May 7 at 7:40 | comment | added | Jos Bergervoet | I'm a theoretical physicist and also worked in engineering, therefore I do not know what you mean with "seemingly instantaneous action", also not if you replace that with "influence". I only see a differential equation for $\psi$, and that describes everything. The words you use have no meaning if you can't relate them to the equations that comprise the theory. | |
| May 7 at 7:34 | comment | added | user401242 | @Ghoster I am neither, I’m a software engineer and I’m interested in physics, philosophy and math. Also, those SEP articles are arguably more reliable than Wikipedia, are they not? Of course both can be useful. Just to also add, that particular article is written by a physicist. | |
| May 7 at 7:33 | comment | added | user401242 | @JosBergervoet What is going on in BM is that there is seemingly instantaneous action at a distance and it is deterministic. That is the whole point of the interpretation. “Naked” QM does not have particles in it or waves guiding these particles. It posits a definite reality at each moment which is also not present in naked QM. Lastly, it is debated as to whether BM can be reconciled with QFT. As I said, the traditional version is explicitly non relativistic | |
| May 7 at 6:48 | comment | added | Ghoster | Just curious: Are you a physics student or a philosophy student? (Anyone interested in physics is welcome here, regardless of what they are studying.) I see that you prefer the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to physics articles in Wikipedia. | |
| May 7 at 6:44 | comment | added | Jos Bergervoet | @Cory As explained on "de Broglie–Bohm" Wikipedia, a relativistic version also exists (by just straightforwardly applying it to relativistic quantum field theory, see: arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0202104 and arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0407089 ). But even if you restrict yourself to the nonrelativistic case there is still nothing else going on then in nonrelativistic schroedinger wavefunctions! So please explain, what has BM got to do with it? | |
| May 7 at 6:44 | comment | added | Ghoster | As Andrew’s answer says, “the equation of motion for (say) $\vec{q}^1$ at time $t$ depends on the positions of all the other particles $\vec{q}^2, \cdots \vec{q}^N$ at time $t$”. This is “true instantaneous action at a distance” as far as I’m concerned. | |
| May 7 at 6:36 | comment | added | user401242 | @Ghoster It does not seem as if there is a propagating medium the likes of which I am thinking of indeed. I guess the natural question then is how the influence happens, or what the guiding wave represents physically if it is a function on configuration space. I can’t tell whether my question is ill posed or whether the theory itself is silent on this. Is it just true instantaneous action at a distance? | |
| May 7 at 6:33 | comment | added | user401242 | @JosBergervoet Bohmian Mechanics is explicitly nonrelativistic as already stated. There is nothing to be clarified here. “Like nonrelativistic quantum theory, of which it is a version, Bohmian mechanics is not compatible with special relativity, a central principle of physics: Bohmian mechanics is not Lorentz invariant.” See seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/qm-bohm | |
| May 7 at 6:33 | answer | added | Andrew | timeline score: 3 | |
| May 7 at 6:11 | comment | added | Jos Bergervoet | @Cory Bohmian Mechanics is only nonrelativistic if the wavefunction you use in it is nonrelativistic. This question can only be answered if we first establish that it is just a question about the ordinary QM wavefunction and BM has nothing to do with it. Or else it must be clarified what the (different) question in BM context actually is... | |
| May 7 at 6:00 | comment | added | Ghoster | I’m no expert on Bohmian Mechanics, but I certainly don’t see any “medium” in its equations or its ontology, unless you want to give that name to the wavefunction. | |
| May 7 at 5:23 | comment | added | user401242 | @JosBergervoet Bohmian Mechanics is explicitly nonrelativistic. How does this not imply superluminal influences? Or do you only mean that they don’t travel? Are these different ideas? | |
| May 7 at 5:13 | comment | added | Jos Bergervoet | In BM it's all governed by the wave function(al) and adding the classical particle is a kind of afterthought. So you could just as well ask: "In ordinary QM, [ copy the same text ... ] is this influence traveling through some medium, even if superluminal?" (And the answers are of course: QM does only require 4D space without any other medium properties, and influences in QM do not travel superluminal. | |
| May 7 at 5:08 | history | edited | Qmechanic♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
edited body; edited tags; edited title
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| May 7 at 5:04 | history | asked | user401242 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |