Bohmian Mechanics Is Probably False

Ave We've hit some deep waters in this debate, so I'm afraid I won't be able to answer every single point presented, but I'll make my best effort to get to the most important parts. Contention 1 There isn’t a single part in my round where I stated that hidden variable theories are unfalsifiable. My contention states that Bohm’s mechanics can only be falsified if the rest of quantum mechanics goes down with it. I never wrote that Bohm’s mechanics is unfalsifiable, but that quantum mechanics would also be false if an experiment disproved Bohm’s theory. I have no idea as to where RT received the impression that I consider Bohm’s mechanics to be unfalsifiable. RT does cite some specific arguments, but the fact that alternative interpretations exist does not undermine the consensus in physics that Bohm's mechanics makes the same predictions as standard quantum mechanics. On top of my already existing sources, I could have cited Fiscaletti [1], Licata [2], Hemmick and Shakur [3], as well as Sole [4], to name a few. Simply put, the mere fact that outliers in the physics community exist shouldn't lead us to doubt the consensus. (Some may ask about RT's poll given the consensus I'm arguing for. The answer is that most objections to Bohm's mechanics were philosophical rather than empirical [5]). The quote RT provides is not even from Ilja Schmelzer. The article he cites in source two was written by Ilja Schmelzer, but the text provided by RT is actually Schmelzer quoting someone else. This was someone else was the physicist Lubos Motl, who Schmelzerer calls "lumo". He even introduces the text RT quoted by stating "this is also the point where lumo went wrong". It's not a quote from Schmelzer, but Schmelzer quoting Motl in order to criticize his arguments. This is where things get ironic. The second citation from RT is an article by Schmelzer critizing Motl's argument that Bohm's mechanics contradicts obserable facts and does not make the same predictions as QTF. RT's source, therefore, actually serves to help my first contention! Thanks! Furthermore, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, "This is not an objection to Bohmian mechanics but merely a recognition that quantum field theory explains a great deal more than does nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, whether in orthodox or Bohmian form." [6] Even if I granted that there are slight differences in experiment between Bohm's mechanics and standard quantum mechanics, some of these seem to help Bohm's mechanics rather than refute it. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes once more: "It is perhaps worth mentioning that despite the empirical equivalence between Bohmian mechanics and orthodox quantum theory, there are a variety of experiments and experimental issues that don't fit comfortably within the standard quantum formalism but are easily handled by Bohmian mechanics. Among these are dwell and tunneling times (Leavens 1996), escape times and escape positions (Daumer et al. 1997a), scattering theory (Dürr et al., 2000), and quantum chaos (Cushing 1994, Dürr et al., 1992a).". [7] Contention 2 RT tried to use violations of Legget's inequalities against Bohm's mechanics. However, as it was noted by his own source, Bohm's mechanics has nothing to do with Legget's inequalities. I understand that he impied that there were loopholes to this experiment, but the Bohmian doesn't even need to use these loopholes to respond to the argument. We simply have to note that Bohm's mechanics and Legget's inequalities are very different things. In the words of Anthony Legget himself (who is not a Bohmian, and criticizes Bohm), "The original paper is Foundations of Physics 33,1469.What it actually shows is that no theory of the class defined there as "crypto-nonlocal" (CN)(a subclass of the more general class of nonlocal theories) can reproduce all the predictions of QM; and since the predictions of the Bohmian pilot wave model (at least in its later incarnations in the hands of Goldstein,Hiley et al.) are by construction identical to those of QM, it presumably cannot reproduce the predictions of that model either. (so the latter must violate the subsidiary condition defining the CN subclass,though exactly how deserves further investigation). However, recent experiments have shown the class of CN theories to be invalid, and are consistent with QM, hence also with the (neo-)Bohmian model." [8] Bohmians don't need loopholes because there is nothing to get around. There is more that goes unexplained here. Why do correlations across time refute my argument? RT never explains this vital assumption, so there's not much to answer. RT uses Earman's symmetry principles to try and prove that space and time must be in one continuum, and therefore Minkowski space is real. This argument is circular, because his symmetry principles actually assume a space-time ontology. As Einstien, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity notes, "Earman's principles presuppose a space-time ontology and therefore cannot be employed to justify a space-time interpretation of the formalism of SR over a Lorentzian space and time interpretation." [9] (Note that Suarez's experiment deals with Legget's inequalities as well, so all of this special relativity talk isn't exactly pertinent, as it falls under the same criticisms offered in regards to other experiments on Legget.) RT has failed to explain why anything in Feynman's thought experiment entails an ontology. Even if it were impossible to measure position and velocity simultaneously, that doesn't entail anything about ontology. Rather, it would just mean absolute position and velocity are outside of measurement, which is an epistemological concern with how we come to know position and velocity, not what position and velocity are. As an analogy, it may be impossible to conclude with certainty who fired the first shots at Lexington and Concord, but this doesn't imply that nobody fired the first shot. Saying that the impossibility of measuring position and velocity simultaneously entails the ontological claim that they don't exist until measurement is rather like saying that the impossibility of finding out who fired the first shots entails that nobody fired the first shots. There is nothing about Bohm's mechanics which requires anyone to be able to measure position and velocity simultaneously, so this argument goes nowhere. As I cited earlier, Bohm himself agreed that in an experiment, you can't determine position and velocity simultaneously. In my last round, I defined an ad hoc hypothesis, and then asked RT to present one example of Bohmian mechanics being changed to fit the data. So far, no such examples have been provided. His analogy to evolution and fossils is more or less an opinion piece, because there is no evidence or sources presented that Bohm's mechanics requires anything that he says it does. It's not that I haven't sufficiently refuted RT's argument; It's that RT hasn't given a sufficient argument. It's too vague for me to make any constructive comments, which is why I asked for more explanation in the last round. What hidden variables is he talking about? Local, non-local? How does his specific definitions of hidden variable relate to Bohm's mechanics? By reading the actual source, the only thing I can get from the lecture is that it's impossible to measure position and velocity simultaneously ("'If we could look more closely at the electron, we could be able to tell where it would end up.”So far as we know, that is impossible."), which isn't inconsistent with anything Bohm ever said. Again, simplicity seems to favor Bohm's mechanics in this case. Even though a Copenhagenist may argue that a non-conscious observer collapses the wavefunction, it's not intuitive to our ideas on reality that the moon's existence is dependent on interactions with classical systems. We can ask, "Do you really think the moon isn't there if classical systems aren't interacting with it?". All forms of the Copenhagen interpretation have complementarity [10]. The counterintuitive nature is noted by Hiesmayr and Huber: "[Complemenarity] captures the most counterintuitive difference of a classical and a quantum world". [11] Bohm's mechanics doesn't comitt us to this ontology, so it gives it an advantage over standard orthodox quantum mechanics philosophically. I'm also not sure what prima facie case was offered by RT. Was he referring to his opening poll on physicists and their favorite interpretation of quantum mechancis? If so, I hardly see this as a prime facie case. Polling 14 physicists in a conference hardly gives the anti-Bohmians a bad start. Furthermore, RT states that he doubts the poll would be different if a larger amount of physicists were asked. This is just downright absurd; I certainly think that more than 0% of physicists would take Bohm's, a modal interpretation, the consistent histories interpretation, or the transactional interpretation. Vale References http://www.ujp.bitp.kiev.ua... http://link.springer.com... http://books.google.com... http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu... http://users.ox.ac.uk... http://plato.stanford.edu... Ibid http://van.physics.illinois.edu... Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity, pg 37 http://en.wikipedia.org... http://arxiv.org...