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Schrödinger's cat |
A bit less nervous?
Richard Feynman wrote: “We have always had a great
deal of difficulty understanding the world view that quantum mechanics
represents. At least I do, because I’m an old enough man that I haven’t got to
the point that this stuff is obvious to me. Okay, I still get nervous with
it ... You know how it always is, every new idea, it takes a generation or
two until it becomes obvious that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the
real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure
there’s no real problem” (Simulating Physics with Computers, 1981).
I'm studying the article "Relational Quantum Mechanics" by Carlo
Rovelli (search the internet for: arXiv: quant-ph/9609002). Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical
physicist and writer that works in the field of Quantum Gravity, where he is
among the founders of the Loop
Quantum Gravity theory.
In this article Rovelli provides an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
that I didn't know and it just seems to make sense! This is the first time I
see a chance to understand what nature is telling us with the laws of Quantum
Mechanics. Rovelli's critics of the physical meaning of the mysterious wave function
is in my opinion illuminating. His work is based on the analysis of the famous
problem of Wigner's friend (the third person problem) and on the concept of
Everett's relative status. The interpretation of the theory makes use of the
concept of Shannon information.
The consequences of the relational interpretation is that properties of
quantum systems have no absolute meaning but they must be always characterized
with respect to other physical systems. It turns out that Relational QM is
compatible with realism in the sense that there is a world outside our mind,
which exists independently from us, but is incompatible with realism in a
stronger sense that it is possible (at last in principle) to list all the features
of the world as we can do in classical mechanics.
Work in progress. I’m studying again (starting from The Theoretical Minimum) Quantum Mechanics(*), but I'm a bit less nervous now.
(*) https://theoreticalminimum.com/courses/quantum-mechanics/2012/winter
