Hacker News Reader

Comment by rudimental | Hacker News Reader

From a blog comment- is it convicing?

"One central question in the philosophy of physics is how we should understand quantum mechanics (QM). We may want to know what we should take QM to be about. It’s worth noting that, in some (but not all) cases, this is no longer an empirical question: for instance, the traditional Copenhagen interpretation of QM is empirically equivalent to the Everett "many worlds" interpretation of QM. So, if we can’t do an experiment to settle the issue, we need to resort to some other method, which is where philosophers of physics come in."

View on HN

If we can't do an experiment to settle the issue, then maybe the two are equivalent, and Occam's Razor says don't get all theoretical about many universes without good reason?

On the other hand, sooner or later, someone may figure out how to do an experiment that can tell the difference (unless it's provable that the two interpretations always give the same physical results).

I'm currently reading Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...). A common point he makes is that most scientists operate under an informal paradigm. A paradigm, to Kuhn, are the set of shared understandings and interpretations that are not themselves formal theories.

The importance of such paradigms is that they seem to determine what scientists investigate, and what they're primed to even see. An example Kuhn gives are X-rays. Their discovery caused some consternation, even though their existence did not need a full theoretical overhaul. The consternation was that they were completely unexpected, but they also must have been present in many prior experiments, yet never directly reported.

To directly address your point, scientists are human, and will probably lean one way or another on understanding quantum mechanics. How they lean will influence what sort of questions they investigate, how they investigate it, and what sort of outcomes they will look for.

Occam's Razor is a philosophical tool. It's strange to see the argument "This philosophy says don't use philosophy". It's a bit like a sign that says "don't read this sign".

The scientific method is philosophy, falsificationism is philosophy. This is the irony: scientists failing to see that they're using the tools of philosophy to claim philosophy is useless. I wonder what the experiment was that observed Occam's Razor?

Priceless!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com