What is quantum mechanics?

[Pedro I Rengel]

This is the wrong question. The right question is: what is quantum analysis?

It's a form of analysis amenable to mathematics. That is to say, nothing with the beginning word "quantum" carries with it a claim on reality. It is a form of analysing physical phenomena mathematically that is not more or less true, but in every case more accurate than particle-wave analysis. Another more accurate way of saying this is that it is in every case more accurate than cause-consequence analysis. In cause-consequence, particle-wave, a thing is said to happen that causes another thing to happen. In quantum analysis, a thing is said to exist, then it is said to exist in a quantum state, then it is said to exist in a collapsed state. This is mostly applied to subatomic particles, but it can be and is easily applied to phenomena of any kind, on any scale.

Edward Teller, the inventor of the hydrogen bomb, would gingerly declare that hopefully soon classical physics would stop being taught altogether, and quantum analysis would be adopted. For everything. Not just subatomic physics.

But quantum analysis does reveal some things about reality. For instance, if you produce a quantum state, and you come back to it later, you can actually detect if anybody measured it or not. This means, roughly, that:

while classical physics holds that A comes to C, and B is just the swing from A to C, not actually existing as a distinct thing, quantum analysis shows that B, the state between A and C, the beginning state and the end state of a phenomenon, is actually real. Until B happens, distnctly from A (or C), C doesn't exist. Resolution is a distinct entity. This has been proven in laboratory.

You cannot set A, put it in motion toward C, and fast-forward. B must happen.

[MagsJ]

_
A distinct entity in the form of what?

[Pedro I Rengel]

In the form of a quantum field.

That's why quantum analysis is, not to be redundant, analytical, not physical.

The quantum field is a reading that you predict you will get if you follow a set of measurement procedures on a phenomenon.

[Pedro I Rengel]

If you like, in the form of the act of resolution.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Particle-wave cannot measure (or detect) the act of resolution.

Quantum analysis does.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Cause-cansequence is liable to the atomic fallacy.

It's a particle. What is a particle? A set of subatomic particles. What are the subatomic particles? Etc.

Quantum analysis gives:

It's a set of readings. What are the sets of readings? These.

It does not require to declare the most basic element of existence, which is an imaginary philosophical idea that does not actually correlate to reality. It requires a set of parameters that are coherent with eachother. Then it can predict how they will change.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Quantum mechanics is said by some to inject fundamental uncertainty into physical reality. But actually, it only assumes fundamental uncertainty in human understanding.

You can never get a whole picture of all of reality. Once you set it out in words like that, it actually even seems obvious.

But you can catch reality. As in a photograph. Once you accept the limitation of reckoning itself, of understanding, then you can actually devote yourself fully to understanding the given phenomenon you are looking at, and get a much more accurate picture than if you leave an open space for "all of the rest of reality that is not being accounted for at the moment."

[Pedro I Rengel]

Then also, if you get a funky reading, it doesn't demolish all of what you had measured so far and force you to reasses your entire fundamental theory. The assumption that you were not measuring all of reality to begin with was already there, so instead of a fracture in reality, you get a new avenue to investigate.

[Pedro I Rengel]

I'm not saying quantum analysis is the end-all be-all of science. It is basically guaranteed to be superceded some day by some superior method of analysis.

But it does give some advance, over what was had. A much greater utility value. A key to a million new doors that were locked before.

And a better understanding, if nothing else, of our own understanding of reality.

[Mad Man P]

Quantum mechanics is said by some to inject fundamental uncertainty into physical reality. But actually, it only assumes fundamental uncertainty in human understanding.

True, people treat science as though reality was a slave to it, instead of the other way around.
We're utilizing models to apprehend reality, quantum physics is no more true than is astrophysics or chemistry or biology.

These are models we built in an attempt to understand reality... and by understand, I mean predict reality.
All of our models are slaves to reality and subject to revision and replacement if a superior model should present itself.

A better way to view the objection to quantum mechanics is to frame it as a failure to understand and predict the elements it declares as "random".
No doubt considering those elements random permits us to make predictions in other areas.

Take for example coin flips and die rolls... we might consider them "random" and under most circumstances, given enough iterations, we will predict the distribution of outcomes with a fair degree of accuracy.
But that does not mean that they are in fact random... yet if we were to believe them to be random that would undermine any motive to seek out a causal mechanism.

Arguable we've exhausted our current means of seeking out any causal mechanism for quantum uncertainty
and given the scale of things we're talking about, we may never have a means of detecting such mechanisms...

But the declaration that there are no such causal mechanisms seems unfalsifiable and therefor unscientific.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The problem with quantum mechanics is largely a marketing one. Quantum, sounds like some kind of pseudo-magic spell. Ooooo... Quantum....

Quantum just means quantity. In latin. It is a word for "unit devoid of any substance" or "generic unit" or just "unit." "Unit of x." Unit of quantity. Quantum.

Quantum of Solace..... Ooo....

[Pedro I Rengel]

Quantum mechanics is said by some to inject fundamental uncertainty into physical reality. But actually, it only assumes fundamental uncertainty in human understanding.

True, people treat science as though reality was a slave to it, instead of the other way around.
We're utilizing models to apprehend reality, quantum physics is no more true than is astrophysics or chemistry or biology.

These are models we built in an attempt to understand reality... and by understand, I mean predict reality.
All of our models are slaves to reality and subject to revision and replacement if a superior model should present itself.

A better way to view the objection to quantum mechanics is to frame it as a failure to understand and predict the elements it declares as "random".
No doubt considering those elements random permits us to make predictions in other areas.

Take for example coin flips and die rolls... we might consider them "random" and under most circumstances, given enough iterations, we will predict the distribution of outcomes with a fair degree of accuracy.
But that does not mean that they are in fact random... yet if we were to believe them to be random that would undermine any motive to seek out a causal mechanism.

Arguable we've exhausted our current means of seeking out any causal mechanism for quantum uncertainty
and given the scale of things we're talking about, we may never have a means of detecting such mechanisms...

But the declaration that there are no such causal mechanisms seems unfalsifiable and therefor unscientific.

No, there is no specific quantum uncertainty. No specific uncertainty to resolve. It is just the fact of uncertainty to be resolved. You can happily go and chase a coherent set of parameters for what a separate quantum analysis gave as random (pretty sure we are off the reservation now), and you simply already know, before hand, that there will be new randoms, which you can then later chase or not.

There is no specific, particular "unknown." It is just the fact of unknowability.

[Pedro I Rengel]

But the declaration that there are no such causal mechanisms seems unfalsifiable and therefor unscientific.

It is the postulation of causal mechanisms that is unsopported, suspect, and in need of justification.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Look at it this way:

There are no hermetic systems.

This is not a positive declaration, either. It is the postulation of hermetic systems that is weird and unprompted, and in need of justification.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The quest of science is not exhaustability. It is coherence.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Let me put it another way:

If you could look closely enough and with enough definition at the tiny systems that currently only quantum analysis can approach to apply cause-consequence analysis, then you are already redundant and it is a guaranteed fact that quantum analysis will be able to study new readings that came up that will remain inaccessible to cause-conseuence.

Cause-consequence brings with it a burden, a need for a large number of assumptions, that is #1 unjustified, #2 limiting and #3 makes it inaccurate.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The postulation of cause-consequence and hermetic systems probably comes from the very human instinct to be sealed off, like in a cave, only one entry from which you can see all possible threats approach.

The postulation of quantum analysis too, obviously, comes from human instinct. Its advantage is that it acknowledges itself as such.

[Pedro I Rengel]

But, as quantum analysis might have it, neither comes from anything.

[Pedro I Rengel]

A, then B, then C.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Particle analysis already at the atomic level presents problems. Isn't an electron, if you want to view it as matter, more a singularity than a "thing," a particle? What does "the location of" and "the direction of" even mean? Particle analysis just is dramatically unequiped.

[Pedro I Rengel]

It's not a wave, it's not a particle. It's a field.

Helpfully, a field can be a wave, or a particle, or a million other things. Those two are just two arbitrary patterns of dynamism.

[Pedro I Rengel]

In that sense, particle analysis is a doll house. Quantum mechanics is a lego set. But even this doesn't fully bridge the gap.

[Pedro I Rengel]

You say that limits the imagination?

The current theory is that reality is a hologram that manifests as units that don't conform to spacial continuity and appear in several locations in the form of energy strings on dozens of dimensions.

You will have to find another reproach.

[Pedro I Rengel]

In fact, lol, it holds that space is generated by these units.

[Pedro I Rengel]

The question changed from what can you see to what can you track.

This hare-brained convoluted scheme I just described, well, the thing of it is, they can track it. Mathematically, and keeping track of readings from measurments, the sonofabitch tracks.

I think of it as that something is suggesting itself. This new method of analysis brought them to a new veil. The closest they can get is something so infinitesimal that they can just call it Unit. It could be any of millions of things. That doesn't really matter right now. They stumbled onto something.

After however many years of discovering entanglement, they finally have a mathematical system that tracks it, and a theory that predicts it.

Probably even more importantly, it proves the power of this analytical paradigm.

Far from disuading discovery.

And we can trace it back to the simple assertion that B exists. The lazyness of cause-consequence lies in taking B for granted. A, then obviously B happens, and makes C. But actually, you have to wait for B to actually happen. You can't skip it. Quantum analysis requires it, because it has no cause-consequence to prop it up. It needs to account for the middle step, for the from and to.