quantum mechanics: answers? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, September 19, 2013, 16:01 (3873 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: I take you back to Feynman. Paraphrased: If someone tells you they understand quantum theory, they lie. The amazing part is that the formulas work.
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> dhw: I do wish they would at least lie coherently.-Now there is a claim to do away with Feynman and use a newly invented math tool, which of course is not reality:-https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart-of-quantum-physics/-"the amplituhedron, a newly discovered mathematical object resembling a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated — the probabilities of outcomes of particle interactions."-"Locality is the notion that particles can interact only from adjoining positions in space and time. And unitarity holds that the probabilities of all possible outcomes of a quantum mechanical interaction must add up to one. The concepts are the central pillars of quantum field theory in its original form, but in certain situations involving gravity, both break down, suggesting neither is a fundamental aspect of nature.
 
In keeping with this idea, the new geometric approach to particle interactions removes locality and unitarity from its starting assumptions. The amplituhedron is not built out of space-time and probabilities; these properties merely arise as consequences of the jewel's geometry. The usual picture of space and time, and particles moving around in them, is a construct."-What these folks are doing is constructing their own mental math reality. Ruth's postulate, echoing Heisenberg, is that the quantum uncertainty layer of reality, does not exist in this system. It may help in computations, but there is no evidence it is real as a construct of reality.