<story><title>Pilot-Wave Theory Gains Experimental Support</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160517-pilot-wave-theory-gains-experimental-support/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andybak</author><text>&amp;gt; According to Englert [...] the Bohm trajectories exist as mathematical objects but “lack physical meaning.”&lt;p&gt;That sounds strange coming from a defender of orthodoxy. By my (layman&amp;#x27;s) understanding the rallying cry of the Copenhagen school could be paraphrased as &amp;quot;Just do the maths. Everything else is just metaphysics&amp;quot; or to put it another way - questions about what the equations &amp;#x27;mean&amp;#x27; are unscientific and Occam&amp;#x27;s Razor supports Copenhagen because it is the simplest interpretation that doesn&amp;#x27;t contradict observation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GregBuchholz</author><text>For another take on &amp;quot;Just do the math&amp;quot; see, &amp;quot;Clearing Up Mysteries - The Original Goal&amp;quot; by E.T. Jaynes:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bayes.wustl.edu&amp;#x2F;etj&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;cmystery.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bayes.wustl.edu&amp;#x2F;etj&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;cmystery.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;While it is easy to understand and agree with this on the epistemological level, the answer that I and many others would give is that we expect a physical theory to do more than merely predict experimental results in the manner of an empirical equation; we want to come down to Einstein&amp;#x27;s ontological level and understand what is happening when an atom emits light, when a spin enters a Stern-Gerlach magnet, etc. The Copenhagen theory, having no answer to any question of the form: What is really happening when - - - ?&amp;quot;, forbids us to ask such questions and tries to persuade us that it is philosophically naive to want to know what is happening. But I do want to know, and I do not think this is naive; and so for me QM is not a physical theory at all, only an empty mathematical shell in which a future theory may, perhaps, be built.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pilot-Wave Theory Gains Experimental Support</title><url>https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160517-pilot-wave-theory-gains-experimental-support/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andybak</author><text>&amp;gt; According to Englert [...] the Bohm trajectories exist as mathematical objects but “lack physical meaning.”&lt;p&gt;That sounds strange coming from a defender of orthodoxy. By my (layman&amp;#x27;s) understanding the rallying cry of the Copenhagen school could be paraphrased as &amp;quot;Just do the maths. Everything else is just metaphysics&amp;quot; or to put it another way - questions about what the equations &amp;#x27;mean&amp;#x27; are unscientific and Occam&amp;#x27;s Razor supports Copenhagen because it is the simplest interpretation that doesn&amp;#x27;t contradict observation.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sampo</author><text>Funnily enough, a central piece of the Copenhagen Interpretation is the collapse of the wave function. But there is no mathematics to describe the actual process of the collapse, only the outcome. It even happens instantaneously and discontinuously, which natural processes usually don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;I mean, it does it&amp;#x27;s job, it gives correct observable results. And everyone knows when and where to apply the &amp;quot;and then it just collapses&amp;quot; rule to get the results. But the rule is defined in English, not mathematically.</text></comment>