quantum mechanics: Kastner\'s brilliant blog (Introduction)

by rekastner , Wednesday, July 17, 2013, 19:39 (4148 days ago) @ David Turell

Thanks very much, David, for your kind words and interest. I do think that the biggest impediment to finding a good interpretation of QM has been the often-unconscious identification of 'real' with 'existing in spacetime'. If one thinks that anything real has to exist in spacetime, then by definition (based on their multi-dimensional mathematical properties and nonlocal behavior) quantum objects can't be real, so they become representations only of our 'knowledge'. I think it's time to get beyond these types of subjectivist, antirealist approaches and to acknowledge there there could be a more subtle kind of reality that is sub-empirical -- and therefore beyond spacetime.-Again I discuss all this in great detail in my book. Some chapters are technical but others are accessible to the layperson, and the chapters on these mataphysical issues don't require a background in math or physics.