<story><title>Fluid Tests Hint at Concrete Quantum Reality</title><url>http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-tests-hint-at-concrete-quantum-reality/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acqq</author><text>So please explain in a few sentences what is that that Yudkowski writes, did he make any new contribution to the standard model or made something else or do you agree that the standard model is the most researched and most usable model up to now, and he just made a lot of posts where he just writes a lot of text?&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of links in the article you gave, but I don&amp;#x27;t understand what we&amp;#x27;re supposed to discover in Yudkowski&amp;#x27;s writings after trying to follow most of them. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of free text, not much physics. The standard model is a lot of smart formulas supported by the decades of expensive elaborate measurements (and vice versa), however his texts look more like writings of some philosophy student who knows a little of the math than like a physicist&amp;#x27;s material. I&amp;#x27;d also really welcome opinions of professional physicists.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Wikipedia entry about him seems to fit my impression: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Eliezer_Yudkowsky&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;Yudkowsky (...) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for Friendly artificial intelligence (...) Largely self-educated.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>spacehome</author><text>Yes!  But the best theory is not Copenhagen or Pilot Wave.&lt;p&gt;Eliezer Yudkowski has a brilliant treatise on the Many Worlds interpretation here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;lw&amp;#x2F;r5&amp;#x2F;the_quantum_physics_sequence&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; that really should be required reading for anyone that wants to talk intelligently on the subject.&lt;p&gt;Edit: seriously, don&amp;#x27;t even bother reading the article.  It (like most science journalism) is garbage.  Take the time to work through Eliezer&amp;#x27;s sequence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sharlin</author><text>The Standard Model does not concern itself with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics. It can, as of now, neither verify or falsify any of the interpretations which, consequently, are not scientific theories or even hypotheses, but firmly on the side of philosophy of physics. The interpretations are attempts to answer &lt;i&gt;why&lt;/i&gt; Nature works as it does, &lt;i&gt;within&lt;/i&gt; the framework of the Standard Model which only appears to answer the question &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Yudkowsky certainly hasn&amp;#x27;t &lt;i&gt;invented&lt;/i&gt; the many worlds interpretation, which was originally formulated by the physicist Hugh Everett in 1957. Even though originally scorned, in the more recent times it has gained popularity among physicists. The series of blog posts by Yudkowsky are (in my opinion, at least) a persuasive argument in its favor against the competing interpretations, and are very much recommended reading for anyone who would like to better understand the issue.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fluid Tests Hint at Concrete Quantum Reality</title><url>http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-tests-hint-at-concrete-quantum-reality/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>acqq</author><text>So please explain in a few sentences what is that that Yudkowski writes, did he make any new contribution to the standard model or made something else or do you agree that the standard model is the most researched and most usable model up to now, and he just made a lot of posts where he just writes a lot of text?&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of links in the article you gave, but I don&amp;#x27;t understand what we&amp;#x27;re supposed to discover in Yudkowski&amp;#x27;s writings after trying to follow most of them. There&amp;#x27;s a lot of free text, not much physics. The standard model is a lot of smart formulas supported by the decades of expensive elaborate measurements (and vice versa), however his texts look more like writings of some philosophy student who knows a little of the math than like a physicist&amp;#x27;s material. I&amp;#x27;d also really welcome opinions of professional physicists.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Wikipedia entry about him seems to fit my impression: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Eliezer_Yudkowsky&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;Yudkowsky (...) is an American blogger, writer, and advocate for Friendly artificial intelligence (...) Largely self-educated.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>spacehome</author><text>Yes!  But the best theory is not Copenhagen or Pilot Wave.&lt;p&gt;Eliezer Yudkowski has a brilliant treatise on the Many Worlds interpretation here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lesswrong.com&amp;#x2F;lw&amp;#x2F;r5&amp;#x2F;the_quantum_physics_sequence&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; that really should be required reading for anyone that wants to talk intelligently on the subject.&lt;p&gt;Edit: seriously, don&amp;#x27;t even bother reading the article.  It (like most science journalism) is garbage.  Take the time to work through Eliezer&amp;#x27;s sequence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jach</author><text>Have you read Feynman&amp;#x27;s QED? It&amp;#x27;s a bit like that, in that it&amp;#x27;s meant for a layman, but with more algebra. Instead of abstract arrows, EY goes straight to complex numbers. It goes through a basic approach to quantum mechanics (taking diagrams from here for instance: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk/node/60&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.qi.damtp.cam.ac.uk&amp;#x2F;node&amp;#x2F;60&lt;/a&gt;) in a modern way and tries to build an intuitive understanding of the subject, especially demolishing a lot of confusions one may have gained through popular media. He then departs from the basic theory to elaborate on why the collapse interpretation is ridiculous and why Many-Worlds makes more sense. You can stop when you get to the Timeless stuff.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re not really going to find anything ground-breaking, but it may help your intuitions about QM even if you&amp;#x27;re a physicist. As a chapter from the Aaronson book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.scottaaronson.com&amp;#x2F;democritus&amp;#x2F;lec9.html&lt;/a&gt;) I linked to in a cousin comment says in the first two paragraphs:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;There are two ways to teach quantum mechanics. The first way -- which for most physicists today is still the only way -- follows the historical order in which the ideas were discovered. So, you start with classical mechanics and electrodynamics, solving lots of grueling differential equations at every step. Then you learn about the &amp;quot;blackbody paradox&amp;quot; and various strange experimental results, and the great crisis these things posed for physics. Next you learn a complicated patchwork of ideas that physicists invented between 1900 and 1926 to try to make the crisis go away. Then, if you&amp;#x27;re lucky, after years of study you finally get around to the central conceptual point: that nature is described not by probabilities (which are always nonnegative), but by numbers called amplitudes that can be positive, negative, or even complex.&lt;p&gt;Today, in the quantum information age, the fact that all the physicists had to learn quantum this way seems increasingly humorous. For example, I&amp;#x27;ve had experts in quantum field theory -- people who&amp;#x27;ve spent years calculating path integrals of mind-boggling complexity -- ask me to explain the Bell inequality to them. That&amp;#x27;s like Andrew Wiles asking me to explain the Pythagorean Theorem.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(And on EY himself, just read the million or so words of the Sequences and you&amp;#x27;ll see he is actually really smart across multiple domains. ;))</text></comment>