On Apr 27, 2:08*pm, wrote:
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is the majority
view, held by most physics professors in the country. Since we live in
a democracy, majority views should dominate and the goal of this post
is not to challenge this dominance. The goal of this post is to point
out that the common view that a lot of big names in physics such as
Einstein, Bell, de Broglie, and Schrodinger, disagreed with the
Copenhagen interpretation is a massive understatement. Einstein did
not just disagree with it, he repeatedly said on many occasions that
he "did not take it seriously". "did not take it seriously" is a
euphemism for his thinking that the view currently held by the
majority of professors around the country about one of the most
important theories in physics is (sorry) BS. Bell, they guy who
authored the Bell inequalities which led to the dominance of the
Copenhagen interpretation also did not just disagree with the majority
view... he called it "immoral". "immoral" is a euphemism for (I REALLY
APOLOGIZE)... pornographic. So the goal of the post is to challenge
the "controversy" qualification and claim that it is more like a
scandal than a controversy. Actually more like a family scandal where
in this case Einstein is the drunk grandpa making unacceptable
comments and everyone is trying to hush him (don't take that last
comment seriously).

Well, actually, if it were just a matter of esteemed experts arguing,
with the surviving theory being the product of one group
overwhelmingly convincing the bulk of another group, then you'd be
right -- it'd be just a family scandal, a political brouhaha, a
corporate power fight.

But fortunately, there is a simple recourse that physicists use. What
they do is they say, "OK, let's just *suppose* that you're right for a
second. Then the theory you're proposing would also suggest that under
certain circumstances, we'd be able to perform an experiment and see
such-and-such and NOT so-and-so. I don't believe for a second that
you'd see such-and-such. Everything I've learned tells me the answer
will be so-and-so." And then the experiment is performed and the
matter is settled. And in fact, Einstein and Bell both did this --
though they didn't believe the Copenhagen version of quantum mechanics
and they didn't believe in quantum entanglement, they proposed the
idea of the experiment and they calculated what the result would be if
they were wrong and what it would be if they were right. Then, in a
set of experiments initiated by Aspect et al., the measurement was
actually done, and lo and behold, Einstein had gambled wrong. Now, the
thing to note is that, even though Einstein was wrong about what the
result would be, he thought about it long enough to propose the
experiment that would prove him wrong.


How is this related to relativity? The majority of physicists do agree
with Einstein on that General Relativity is THE most beautiful theory
of physics ever written. A huge field of research now is of course
that of trying to quantize GR. This, to Einstein would amount to the
most subversive of conspiracies.

Well, to tell you the truth, he would have seen the experimental
evidence in support of quantum mechanics by now, so I'm fairly sure he
would have changed his mind on that. Note that Einstein also did not
believe in black holes, which were a direct consequence of his own
theory. Neither did Johnny Wheeler, who in fact coined the term "black
hole". He thought the whole notion of unstoppable gravitational
collapse, infinitely dense matter, and a spacetime singularity was
just ugly as all get out. But, after a while, he convinced himself he
was wrong about that, too, and then he worked like crazy to understand
them better.

He gave us the most beautiful theory,
and how do we show are appreciation? By submitting it to what he
thought was the most ridiculous of theories... mindless quantization!
I plead that people trying to mindlessly quantize GR pause and try to
think of a more clever way of joining GR with quantum mechanics one
that would also solve the measurement problem.