Discussion

This space is for responses to My Quantum Experiment, and, in some cases, my responses to those responses. If you have something constructive to say about my book and you wanted it posted here, email me at horganism3@gmail.com. Destructive is okay too, if it’s interesting. If I edit your email(s) for clarify or brevity, I’ll run it by you first. I’ll also link to my own writing—for example, columns for my free online journal “Cross-Check,” if it’s related to my book.—John Horgan

The April 2023 Physics Today reviews My Quantum Experiment as follows:

“Many of us had pandemic projects. Some got into baking sourdough; some started knitting. The science journalist John Horgan decided to learn quantum mechanics, and in My Quantum Experiment, he documents his quest to understand the famously strange theory. Despite making a name for himself as a prominent skeptic of so-called theories of everything, the iconoclastic Horgan had little formal training in any scientific field. He first began with self-study, using books like Leonard Susskind and Art Friedman’s Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum (2014) as his guide, and eventually enrolled in an undergraduate course on the topic, where he found several helpful study buddies. But the book is more than just a quantum diary: Interspersed with reflections on the theory’s weirdness are Horgan’s trademark ruminations on politics, love, and the meaning of life.”

ONLINE CONVERSATIONS, 2020-PRESENT

Over the past few years I have recorded zoom chats about quantum mechanics with assorted folks. Many chats were for my podcast “Mind-Body Problems,” which is part of Meaningoflife.tv, which is run by my pal Robert Wright. Below are links to conversations in reverse chronological order:

Deepak Chopra, March 18, 2023.

Robert Wright, mega-pundit, Sep. 7, 2021.

Sabine Hossenfelder, physicist, August 2021.

Philip Ball, science writer, June 7, 2021.

Tim Maudlin, philosopher, March 8, 2021.

Adam Becker, physics writer, Feb. 21, 2021.

George Musser, physics writer, January 6, 2021.

Amanda Gefter, physics writer, Dec. 28, 2020.

Michael Brooks, physics writer, Dec. 16, 2020.

HORGAN’S QUANTUM-ISH COLUMNS FOR CROSS-CHECK (FREE ONLINE JOURNAL)

Entropy, Meaninglessness and Miracles, August 18, 2023

The Delusion of Scientific Omniscience, August 13, 2023

Pluralism: Beyond the One and Only Truth, August 12, 2023

My Encounter with Philosophical Anarchist Paul Feyerabend, August 6, 2023

The Popper Paradox, August 4, 2023

Thomas Kuhn’s Skepticism Went Too Far, July 26, 2023

My Meeting with David Bohm. Tormented Quantum Visionary, June 29, 2023

Physicist John Wheeler and the “It from Bit”, June 29, 2023

My Meeting with Claude Shannon, Father of the Information Age, June 29, 2023

Confessions of a Namedropping Humblebragger, June 20, 2023

What Is a Question?, April 6, 2023.

On God, Quantum Mechanics and My Agnostic Schtick, March 31, 2023

Sabine Hossenfelder, The End of Science and My Quantum Experiment, March 10, 2023.

Conservation of Ignorance: A New Law of Nature, Feb. 25, 2023.

Physicists Teleport Bullshit Through “Wormhole”!, Jan. 19, 2023.

Is Ultimate Truth an Equation? Nah, January 19, 2023, Jan. 19, 2023.

Huge Study Confirms Science Ending! (Sort Of), Jan. 19, 2023.

David Kagan, physicist (with whom I corresponded while writing my book)

I love the way that you weave your observations and reflections about all aspects of life with those of your very specific project of learning quantum mechanics. It simultaneously takes me back to the relatively recent past (the pandemic era) as well as the somewhat more distant past when I was first really grappling with quantum mechanics myself about 25 years ago. The superposition of those two different eras, just at a personal level, is really quite a trip!

I'm impressed at the amount of technical detail you've managed to pack into the book alongside all the emotional depth. The mixture of the personal with the technical reminds me of Janna Levin's book "How the Universe Got It's Spots." 

After I finished your book, life took some dramatic turns. My father, who is elderly, had recently moved to my town to live in an assisted living facility nearby. Unfortunately, he had a serious fall, and pretty much the entirety of April and a good chunk of May was spent dealing with the immediate emergency care and then the longer-term recovery. I'm happy to say that he's better.

I'm so glad I read your book, though. Not because it's a happy story, but because it put me on a contemplative wavelength during the tumultuous events of April and May. I'm sure I would have muddled through all the hospital visits and so on somehow, but thinking about your own journey helped a lot.

Thanks so much for sharing it with me, David

Thomas McKinne, retired high school science teacher

Dear Professor Horgan,

I am now finishing your book "My Quantum Experiment".  I will honestly say that I enjoyed it very, very much.   For me it was a really fun walk down memory lane.   I have shared many of the experiences and thoughts you write about.   Pond hockey, geology (Moh's Scale), political views (I am fearful of another 4 years of Trump - at 81 what a shitty way to spend my last years), and difficulties with high powered math.  My guess is that even in the classroom we would be very similar.   I had a lot of empathy for my students, especially those kids from tough backgrounds who struggled academically.   I always gave those kids a chance to pass my course by having them keep a notebook that I allowed them to use during quizzes.   I felt that getting them to accept that responsibility was one of the best lessons I could give them.   They would never have to use the math I had my higher level kids do. I have no idea whether or not the hands on - you can do this - atmosphere exists in high school classrooms today.     

Reading your book was almost like listening to a friend who I might know much better than I know you.   I think that because we shared an email exchange and you wrote in a personal way, it allowed me to enjoy your book that much more.   That personal touch allowed me to share your learning experiences and to understand some things about quantum that I had not understood before - NOT the math - and I can say I really enjoyed that learning experience.

I doubt that your book will become a best seller and I know that you didn't write it that way.   I don't know how much of an audience you would have - 'older people (more guys than women)' who have a desire to learn quantum and who share as many of your thoughts and feelings about life as I do.   I could write much more about the personal feelings I experienced when reading your book - again what a great walk down memory lane for me!! - but you don't need to know that. 

Stay safe, hone your curmudgeon skills, take Epicurus's advice and avoid politics, play hockey and enjoy life!!! Tom

Oliver Linton: retired Physics teacher. October 2024

It is incomprehensible to me how, after a century of debate, scientists are still arguing about determinism. There are two fundamental reasons why we know that determinism is dead.

The first is that time has an arrow. Eggs scramble; they do not unscramble. Things get broken; they do not mend themselves. The bath water goes cold; it does not spontaneously warm up again. A deterministic world has no preferred direction. In a deterministic world all these things are possible, indeed equally likely. 

The second is the existence of free will. I cannot argue the case for this here; suffice it to say that if you are reading this and you do not have free will then you cannot choose to argue with me.

I would like to thank you, John, for pointing out these two fundamental truths in your own quirky and idiosyncratic way - but I do think you could have spared us all the agonies which have accompanied your quest to understand the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics. Let’s leave that to the professionals, shall we? On the other hand, I passionately believe that scientists have a duty to explain to us what all their equations actually mean. This they have singularly failed to do.

If determinism is dead, we can rule out two of the most popular interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely the de Broglie-Born interpretation (which is explicitly deterministic) and the Many Worlds interpretation (because the Time Dependent Schrodinger Equation on which it is entirely based is time-symmetric). The only interpretations that are left are those which include an irreversible process such as the so-called 'collapse of the wave function'.

Here's another thing which astonishes me. At the very heart of Quantum Theory is the idea that the equations do not predict the actual results of an experiment, they only predict probabilities. In other words, we already have the source of randomness, or perhaps choice, which is needed to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics and why human behavior is unpredictable. Why has nobody put two and two together?

Well I have. And it would appear that John has come pretty close too. Cheers!

If you are curious to know how to solve all the riddles of Quantum Theory with one simple assumption and a good dose of common sense, please read the article called 'Suspended Reality' on my website: www.jolinton.co.uk

Emil Mottola, physicist

Concerning Quantum Mechanics and your “Quantum Experiment,” your befuddlement comes upon any thoughtful physics student the first they hear of it. I recall my own struggle with QM as a graduate student at Columbia years ago, and reading the Einstein-Bohr letters. Einstein was clear and rational, Bohr obscure and mystical. The advice I received then was not quite "shut up and calculate," but pretty close, to the effect that "Strong men have gotten lost in that swamp where dwell dragons. Best not to go there."

Since my research is on the interface between quantum theory and general relativity--
in particular black holes, vacuum dark energy and cosmology
(https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C32&q=Emil+Mottola&btnG=),
the fundamental issues raised by quantum theory have never been far from my mind. A career of working in the subject also makes one appreciate its consistency and "rightness." That light is both a particle and wave, as is matter, is quite satisfying, and a unification that was not possible in classical physics.

For the measurement problem, the best working interpretation in my opinion is the Ensemble Interpretation
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_interpretation), which I almost never see discussed in all the popular articles on "quantum weirdness." It doesn’t “explain” entanglement, which leaves many unsatisfied, but neither does it leap to artificial constructions such as the Many Worlds forced on us by too literal an interpretation of "wave function collapse," which even Bohr did not hold was a physical process. The Ensemble Interpretation leaves the door open to some more “complete” theory as Einstein would have wanted, but does not require it.

Harry French

I was last in academic physics in 1980 as a Research Assistant Professor at Columbia University. I have lost my academic contacts.

For your "Quantum Experiment", I want to unify Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics. This yields the interpretation I present in Vixra:2303.0015. The loophole in the PBR theorem is very basic: they assume that the quantum representation of any object is a wavefunction (or its equivalent). With Thermodynamics, the quantum representation of any object is a probability distribution over wavefunctions. Then it is simple to see that whenever entropy can increase the Born Rule gives the probabilities of the paths to that increase. Wavefunctions still propagate by the old rules, but their probabilities change.

Ephraim Y. Levin, physicist

Dear John

Though we have never met, due to your wonderful vivid personal writing style you seem to me familiar enough to forgive me the above use of your first name.

My name is Ephraim Y. Levin. I am a retired Israeli physicist (PhD). For my pleasure I have recently read some of your free articles, posts and online books.

I have found them interesting, amusing and informative. However, reading My Quantum Experiment`s thirteen chapter I stumbled upon your answers to your assessment quiz to sum up what you have learned. I could not stand a feeling that you have missed the main lessons from QM. In view of your inquiring open mind and your free will obsession, this surprised me.

Below are some examples:

Concerning the “wave function” you wrote “Experts debate whether a wave function is just a handy tool or a real thing, existing out there, in nature. I’m going with tool, because the alternative is too weird; it defies common sense.” Does it really defy common sense? Why are you so sure about your commonsensical materialistic worldview? The renowned psychologist Jean Piaget that studied the development of children clearly showed a long time ago that babies begin to believe in Object Permanence only at about one year old. (That is, at about this age they adopt the model that objects continue to exist even when they can`t see them.) This Object Permanence is merely their pragmatic model. Due to its success to explain a lot of their macroscopic third person observations on inanimate entities the children develop a fixation on this primitive model. However, as adults we all realize that this primitive model is insufficient. Not only are there (our and) various others` minds, a lot of feelings, many abstract concepts, Classical Mechanics itself with its pieces of matter (i.e., permanent objects) concept was proved wrong and replaced by QM. Moreover, one realizes that his mind is the only thing he cannot doubt to exist and that our inquiring minds and our observations are the sources of all knowledge and science. So, as an adult, that have studied and contemplated some QM, heard about experimentally verified violations of Bell type inequalities, proven theorems such as the Bell-Kochen-Specker and PBR, and interviewed thinkers like Wheeler and Popper, why do you surrender to the inadequate and by now disproved naïve Object Permanence fixation and prefers the “handy lool” interpretation over the “real thing, existing out there, in nature” (i.e., propensities or ontological tendencies) interpretation? 

This is related to the question “Does an electron, cat or friend exist when we don’t look at it?” as well. You hastily answer “Yeah, it definitely exists.” However, it may well be that while the cat and the friend exist (since they are consciousness agents with minds) the electron does not exist. As far as we know the electron represent a point like entity. It has no conscious mind. It has imaginary properties such as no priory definite position, nonintegral spin and no distinguishing identity. Hence, it is easier to think about it as a mathematical fiction, as an abstract entity that only misleadingly pretends to exist.

Answering the question “Does quantum mechanics give us free will?” you say “Some experts say quantum indeterminacy allows for human choices. Others, like my frenemy Sabine Hossenfelder, claim that quantum physics is as deterministic as classical physics and rules out free will. I don’t find any arguments linking physics to free will persuasive.” On this critical issue it seems to me that you missed the point. It is not the quantum indeterminacy that allows for human choices. That quantum indeterminacy allows for the choices by the Deus-ex-Machina (an immaterial “God”, or “Nature” if you wish). These are not our choices. QM gives us free will by allowing, yet remaining completely silent about, our choices. In QM one can (actually even must) select and pose a question. [In QM the choice of the question to be asked and the choice of the time to carry out this questioning experiment are free in the sense that QM does not forbid different tests and timings. For example, it allows a test of a position or a test of a momentum. Likewise, it allows angular momentum measurement along one out of infinite possible directions. (In fact, due to the non-commutativity of various observables, to measure some observable property exactly the physicist must usually select a single definite observable to study at a specific moment. This happens because QM forbids exact measurement of several non-commuting observables at the same moment in principle. Hence, in order to get some exact information about the relevant system the physicist has to select a specific questioning aspect.)] People like Sabine that “claim that quantum physics is as deterministic as classical physics and rules out free will” make a severe mistake. The very idea of making science heavily relies on our free will. The hope is that we can use our freedom in selecting experiments to disprove any wrong theory eventually. Hence, our capability to choose a question freely and pose it to nature at any moment we prefer is a fundamental presumption in advancing science. Were our apparently free decisions genuinely ineffective delusions the scientific method might become illusive. Its very status as a way to reject false theories and thus asymptotically discover the truth would be lost. If any interpretation rules out our free will it is necessarily wrong. As Bohr (1935) claimed “our freedom of handling the measuring instruments [is] characteristic of the very idea of experiment.” In my mind you are right in saying that the causes for our selections “are psychological, ethical, spiritual, not just physical.” [On this subject I recommend Henry P. Stapp`s (2017) book Quantum Theory and Free Will: How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions, Springer.]

In my mind your answer to “Does quantum mechanics corroborate ancient mystical doctrines?” is neither accurate nor complete. To completely cover the two gaps in QM theory one must introduce agents of consciousness (that is minds) that freely choose experiments on the agents` side and Deus-ex-Machina that in each specific test selects an answer to the posed question and eradicates all other possibilities on the other side. In standard QM the selections by Deus-ex-Machina statistically follow Born (1926) rule. It seems beyond our capabilities and pretentious to try to understand Deus-ex-Machina`s reasons. (Sometimes we hardly understand ours.) This is a matter of a personal belief.

Concerning “Can quantum mechanics help us understand ourselves?” you immediately start with “The mind-body problem asks: How does matter generate mind?”. This response clearly stems from your materialistic premise. As I argued above materialism seems to be a naïve, inadequate and disproved presumption. QM teaches us that conscious minds, propensities, perceptions and Deus-ex-Machina are primaries whereas matter is merely an illusion. Classical examples of matter such as atoms, molecules, rocks and bodies are entangled tendencies (i.e., bound states). Somewhere you naively rebuttal this by saying “Matter can clearly exist without mind, but where do we see mind existing without matter? Shoot a man through the heart, and his mind vanishes while his matter persists.” Indeed, the appearance of common earthy consciousness agent`s mind somehow depends on the proper functioning of its entangled propensities (so called “body”). However, the necessary Deus-ex-Machina can serve as an example of an immaterial Mind. Try to shoot at him. I can assure you that he will not vanish. He will survive!

This brings me to the question “Is physics finished?”. I believe that the feeling that “Physics seems unstable, ripe for a shake-up” is correct. Mainly because of the many conflicting interpretations of QM and the related “measurement problem”. It seems to me that a breakthrough would come from psychology and the currently marginal science of parapsychology. Too many unexplained results have been accumulated there. It is reasonable that at some point somebody would succeed in convincingly tying at least part of this bulk of empirical data to QM. Precursory research toward this goal already started. [For two recent papers in this direction see

Levin E. Y. (2023) The presentiment effect points to an occurrence of a von Neumann's collapse. Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition, 3(1), 174-193. https://doi.org/10.31156/jaex.24455

Lucido R. J. (2023) Testing the consciousness causing collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics using subliminal primes derived from random fluctuations in radioactive decay. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 14(3), 185-194. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20344.72969.]

It seems to me that the only thing that can escape Plato`s Cave is our imagination. Our bare perceptions simply mislead us to believe in “physicalism” (or even worth, in “materialism”). However, our mind can exploit our free will and results of empirical tests to uncover the correct ideas through imagination. Sometimes it simply takes time.  

In writing this letter to you I took advantage of your encouraging invitation: “Send complaints, corrections, critiques to me at horganism3@gmail.com, … Who knows, instead of me changing your mind about the mind-body problem, you might change mine.” By the way, I would be happy to see my remarks in “discussion”. But, of course, I leave it up to you.

Sincerely yours, Ephraim Y. Levin

N.B. Regards to Emily. 😊

Simon Streib, physicist

Dear John, I write you to tell you that I really enjoyed reading your quantum experiment! I'm a former theoretical physicist and I recently left academia after a 10-year research career. I'm much happier now, working a steady 35-hour week in industry as a research/development engineer.

A couple of years ago, I was without a job for six months and I did the only logical thing: use this opportunity and spend my time trying to really understand QM (beyond just doing calculations). To keep it brief, my take on QM is that it has to be either many worlds or superdeterminism. Since there is no evidence for superdeteriminism (i.e., that QM is not fundamentally correct), I stick to many worlds. Pick your poison, I guess.

You question whether the wave function is “real.” What makes something real? Is a quark real? I would say the better something works, the realer it is. This reminds me of the issue of truth, where two prominent takes are the correspondence theory (Bertrand Russell) and the pragmatic theory (William James). I'm definitely more of a pragmatist. The correspondence theory makes no sense to me because we can never know if something really corresponds to "reality". But we can know if something works well!

Your point of view makes sense when we consider the wave function as describing point-like particles. But I would take the point that waves (or fields) are more fundamental than particles. So, when the electron is considered as a spread-out wave, then your objections seem less severe. But the big problem is then of course: why is there an apparent collapse of the wave function from the wave to a point-like particle? For me, only many worlds seems to be able to provide an answer.

Based on a wave description it is also possible to provide a physical picture of spin. See this recent non-technical article about the work by Chip Sebens: https://www.hss.caltech.edu/news-and-events/news/do-electrons-spin. I would say the wave function is not real if there is experimental evidence that quantum mechanics is fundamentally flawed, maybe some unexpected correlations (Sabine has proposed such experiments).

Regarding The End of Science, I think that there will be revolutionary physics discoveries in the future. Let me make two predictions:

1) Dark matter and dark energy do not exist. These phenomena are actually caused by subtle non-linear effects of general relativity which are usually not taken into account, as shown by the work of Alexandre Deur.

2) The BCS theory of superconductivity is incorrect, as argued by Jorge. E Hirsch. See for example this rant he wrote: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.09496

All the best, Simon

“Paul Edwards” (a pseudonym)

I’ll be honest, the last couple of chapters dragged. I’m old enough to have had a lot of depressing shit happen to me, so I don’t really want to read about someone else’s depressing shit anymore. I suppose that makes me a bad person, anyway sorry to hear about your friend.

I was curious why you didn’t tell your study buddy the truth about his failed exam (you’re in academia), that the answers probably came from the professor. My guess is the grades were so bad he was desperate to raise them.

I was struck by how my journey to learn quantum mechanics was so similar to yours. (I was a crackpot, I gave up, being a crackpot is a lot of work.) Feynman’s QED, learning calculus (again) I started form Cavalieri’s principle and Calculus Made Easy (one of the few books that lives up to its title), learning matrices. I even tried to do an online course (MIT has a free one on YouTube). In the end I came to the same conclusion as you, it would be like learning to play hockey like Sydney Crosby, yeah just practice 40 hours a week for 10 years and maybe you’ll make minor pro.

I did start to wonder who the real crackpots were though. Occasionally when watching physics videos (Maxwell’s equations explained in 20 mins!), you would come across a physicist who would actually talk about their career (such as Dr. Angela Collier’s YouTube channel acollierastro). Many like Collier spent years in school, lived in desperate poverty, had constant sexual harassment, then finally got a postdoc that paid barely enough to live. At least a crackpot has a rational objective, fame and fortune. Well maybe not fame. I’m old enough to remember John Lennon getting shot.

In the end I did actually get some validation, from Lubos Motl of all people. I’ll just say, that guy is a profoundly stupid man, I’m sure I could sell him meteorite insurance. I’m also glad you figured out how to deal with crackpots contacting you, just give them a place to send their/my shit even if it goes to a spam filter, I’m amazed these genius physicists haven’t figured that out.

Nate Hogan

I finished reading [Your] Quantum Experiment (in somewhat random chapter order) - thanks for sharing such personal detail about your quest: it emphasizes (my reading of) your point that the way to escape Plato's cave will probably be through connection (with nature and other people) rather than through understand the mechanics of the universe.

Maybe in the distant future humans will read the headline "Quantum Mechanics: it was just a monumental observer effect screw-up" and we'll all realize that the only thing we know for sure is that we can't know anything with certainty...