The essence of the scientific method is that it is based on being able to repeat results. If you get the same results every time you do the same operation, and when anyone else who repeats it get the same result, you can safely conclude that you have a scientific explanation. But quantum mechanics says no, you have to assume everything happens with a probability but not with a 100% certainty. It's always statistical only. The two views are not compatible. Now that gives us a problem, because QM breaks science. Yet physicists tell us that QM is real. Basically they are implying we cannot trust science anymore. I realized this tonight when I realized that quantum connectivity might mean that sympathetic magic might have a real basis, but would be very hard to prove as it would be probabilistic in operation. Holy smoke. Might we want to rethink parts of old-time magic after all? Something to ponder.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (45)
sorted by:
There can't be any magic, only processes we don't understand yet.
QM is a theory to explain some results we observe. Probability and outcome distribution is a result too. They perfectly and repeatably correlate with initial conditions.
You can't predict exact result of coin throw not because it is magic or fundamentally unpredictable, but because you can't measure and calculate all factors that influence the result. So you have a theory that throwing coin give you 50/50 probability of one or another outcome. Good enough to deal with real coin throwing. Same is QM. It gives results good enough to deal with most quantum effects for real world purposes.
When mechanisms that make quantum things works would be discovered, then QM will be replaced with something better.
QM is in no way a "final truth" or a dogma, just good enough theory for the current level of knowledge and technology.
The problem is not in QM or science. The problem is that science today is totally controlled by those who don't want or need any scientific and technology progress.
Magic, if it exists, is just a technology we are not aware about yet. Things get complicated because those who practicise magic don't want to allow honest scientific research on things they declare to be able to do. Try to talk about honest scientific experiments and research with anyone who declare himself able to use magic. It is always hilarious and you always will be guilty in something in the end of conversation.
There is a subtle difference. In the "classical" case, if we were to somehow hypothetically know the initial conditions to enough accuracy, we could predict the result. But bell's theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem) and the experimentally observed inequalities show that there are no "local hidden variables" that one could measure to determine the exact outcome in a quantum experiment. So either we are misunderstanding the problem and interpreting the bell experiments incorrectly (which I think is a definite possibility) or quantum behavior is just intrinsically different from macroscopic behavior in that we cannot absolutely predict anything.
Then you could get into David Bohm's ideas about the implicate and explicate orders of reality, and how perhaps there are "global hidden variables" that would determine the outcome of a quantum experiment that lie within an "implicate" order that is unseen to our "explicate" order of effects from this deeper order of reality.
You can't prove absence.
We just don't know mechanism behind entaglement. Mostly because it could ruin Einshten bullshit about speed of light as maximum possible speed of anything. There is nothing strange that those who try to keep itself in modern science trying to avoid anything that could spawn something FTL at any cost.