Quantum Philosphy

[jomifl]

Has anyone come across this and has an opinion on it?

[jim360]

I suppose it could be argued that we don't know anything about time at all, really. Or at least, what we call time at the moment is merely a convenient placeholder for whatever it really is that drives the evolution of the universe (or is it the other way round?).

It's all Einstein's fault, of course -- time in Special Relativity is famously mixed up with space, but still retains some sense of a special identity. In General Relativity, all hell breaks loose, in strong gravitational fields at least, as the mixing of what we'd call time with what we'd call space becomes so strong that the two can even invert roles, which is to say that "time" basically becomes "space" and vice-versa.

And that's even before trying to consider quantum effects, which may well end up messing everything up again.

[Old_Geezer]

I take it that the "silly" description was stated as opinion rather than fact. I don't think that bamboozle is the aim of most. If one doesn't believe in at least the possibility of what one is suggesting then it's a strange way just to make a little money from a book. I think folk form opinions and then believe they've found supporting evidence. It's a reasonable act, it helps build the creative pool of suggestions for consideration/debate.

[jim360]

Yes, it's certainly just an opinion and "many-worlds" (or any other interpretation) may appeal more or less to you, depending mainly on what the person describing it thinks. My main objection to "many worlds" is that Quantum Mechanics at its heart is about probability in nature (albeit with a few extra features). It seems to me that any interpretation that invokes the idea that all possible outcomes actually happen destroys the probabilistic side of things (or, worse still, just kicks the can a bit down the road by asking not "which of the things that could have happened actually did?" but "which of the universes that I created in making this decision did I end up in?"). Either way, I don't like it very much, but it's just a personal opinion. There's nothing wrong with it intrinsically -- like all other scientific interpretations of QM, it makes the same predictions, and these accord with experiment.