Post #3124421

2026-03-20 07:16 UTC

@dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @internic@mathstodon.xyz @davidsuculum@mathstodon.xyz It strikes me as deeply funny that Kant (that overrated jackass) read Hume's "What we rely on for learning about the world is something else than the fallacious deductions of our Reason" and then said "WE HAVE NO WAY OF LEARNING ABOUT THE WORLD!!". Like, what an ass. Similarly, it strikes me as problematic for an interpretation of quantum mechanics to "rule out" anything at all. All interpretations state the same fact : quantum mechanics. In that sense, it is weird to consider them to rule things in or out. For any such constraint to apply the interpretation that dictates it must first be crowned the One True Interpretation, and that's not really possible in a field where everyone is competing over the same observational patterns.

Replies (1)

@internic@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-20 19:36

@androcat@toot.cat I guess I'd roughly think of interpretations of quantum mechanics (IQMs) as marrying a certain ontology to the math and observed behavior of quantum mechanics (QM). So it's definitely true that these can rule in or out certain statements about ontology, but they always have some story for how it still matches up with the math and observations. I'd also point out that while we can expect there to be many IQMs that are consistent with the math and observations of QM, I think it is possible to have an IQM that you discover is actually inconsistent with some of these fixed aspects of QM. The simplest example of these would seem to be pilot wave theory, which in its most rudimentary form is not, so far as I know, consistent with relativity. So while it does match non-relativistic QM (which makes it quite interesting), it does not extend to relativistic QM (though I gather that there are extensions or modifications of pilot wave theory that purport to). @dougmerritt@mathstodon.xyz @davidsuculum@mathstodon.xyz

Open ##3124422