Einstein agreed with the Lorentz theory

I have argued that Einstein never claimed this his special relativity theory was any different from Lorentz's, such as this:

The truth is that there was very little difference between the views of Lorentz and Einstein.

However I did not consider a Schwarz paper:

The only difference between Lorentz's approach and Einstein's is that Lorentz derived the transformation after an experiment forced him to, whereas Einstein starts with the generalized principle of relativity and derives the transformation from a necessary consequence of applying the second postulate.

That paper translates a 1907 Einstein paper as:

It required only the recognition that the auxiliary quantity introduced by H. A. Lorentz, and called by him "local time", can be defined as simply "time." ...

In what follows it is endeavored to present an integrated survey of the investigations which have arisen to date from combining the theory of H. A. Lorentz and the theory of relativity.

Taken literally, that reads as Lorentz having his own theory of local time, and Einstein claiming to have another theory called "the theory of relativity." But that is a mistranslation, as no one used the term "theory of relativity" in 1907. A better translation says:

Quote by Einstein 1907:
Im folgenden ist nun der Versuch gemacht, die Arbeiten zu einem Ganzen zusammenzufassen, welche bisher aus der Vereinigung von H.A. Lorentzscher Theorie und Relativitätsprinzip hervorgegangen sind.
In den ersten beiden Teilen der Arbeit sind die kinematischen Grundlagen sowie deren Anwendung auf die Grundgleichungen der Maxwell-Lorentzschen Theorie behandelt; dabei hielt ich mich and die Arbeiten von H.A. Lorentz (...1904) and A. Einstein (...1905).

Translated:
In what follows, the attempt is made to summarize into a whole the works hitherto emerged from the unification of H.A. Lorentz's theory and the principle of relativity.
In the first two parts of the work, the kinematic foundations as well as their application upon the fundamental equations of the Maxwell-Lorentz theory are dealt with; on that occasion, I relied on works of H.A. Lorentz (...1904) and A. Einstein (...1905).

That famous Einstein 1905 paper says the same thing:

we have the proof that, on the basis of our kinematical principles, the electrodynamic foundation of Lorentz's theory of the electrodynamics of moving bodies is in agreement with the principle of relativity.

That Lorentz theory refers to what we now call Maxwell's equations, the Lorentz force law, and the 1895 Lorentz paper giving a relativistic explanation of Michelson-Morley. Poincare criticized that theory in 1900 for not being fully compatible with the principle of relativity. Lorentz answered with a 1904 paper extending his theory to comply with the principle of relativity.

The technical content of Einstein's 1905 paper was essentially the same as Lorentz's 1904 paper -- responding to Poincare's conjecture that the theory comply with the principle of relativity. The main difference, as Schwarz explains, is that Lorentz show how the theory is a consequence of experiment, and Einstein takes a shortcut by using postulates instead. There were also minor terminological differences, such as saying "local time" or "time in the local reference frame".

No one else saw any difference between Lorentz's and Einstein's views, as the theory was often called the Lorentz-Einstein theory. Only decades later were they considered different, and now they have different Wikipedia articles: Lorentz aether theory and Special relativity.

Einstein spent much of his life bragging about his relativity originality, and in 1954 he gave this confusing explanation of how his theory was different:

By careful examination of the experimental facts, Lorentz found out that one has to think of the aether as rigid and acceleration-free (contrary to H. Hertz). Newton's space was "materialized" in this way. Though time didn't appear as a problem at first. Yet it became a problem, because it enters as an independent variable (besides the space coordinates) into Maxwell's equations of "empty space", upon which all electromagnetic processes were founded by Lorentz. Now, all would have been satisfying, when it would have been possible to demonstrate the state of motion of the aether ("absolute rest"). The systematic treatment of this problem by Lorentz led very closely to special relativity, because this problem forced Lorentz to transform spatial coordinates and time collectively. That he didn't make that step to special relativity, simply lied in the circumstance, that it was psychologically impossible for him to dispense with the reality of the aether as a material thing (carrier of the electromagnetic field). Those who witnessed this time will understand it.

Einstein believed in the aether after about 1916, but back in that 1907 paper, he had much more faith in electromagnetic fields:

Only the idea of a luminiferous ether as the carrier of electric and magnetic forces does not fit in in with the theory presented here; for electromagnetic fields do not appear here as states of some kind of matter, but rather as independently existing objects, on a par with matter, and sharing with the latter the characteristic of inertia. [Schwarz translation]

Einstein is taking a strange philosophical view here. When people back then talked about the aether, they often just meant the possibility of electromagnetic fields.

Lorentz does acknowledge that he had not abandoned the concept of a preferred frame. He wrote in 1910:

Provided that there would exist an aether: then one of all systems x, y, z, t, would be preferred ... Now, if the relativity principle had general validity in nature, however, one would consequently be unable to find out whether the reference system momentarily employed is that preferred one. Thus one arrives at the same results, ... To which of both ways of thinking one adheres to, we can leave to the judgment of each individual.

In other words, you can believe or not believe in an unobservable preferred frame. He wrote in 1914:

Einstein ... arrives at the abolishment of the aether. The latter is, by the way, to some extent a quarrel about words: it makes no great difference, whether one speaks of vacuum or aether. Anyway, according to Einstein it has no meaning to speak about a motion relative to the aether. He also denies the existence of absolute simultaneity.

Most cosmological models do have a preferred frame for time and stationary objects. That is why you can read stories about the age of the universe, and how some stars are older than other stars. So there is (probably) a preferred frame, and it does not have much to do with special relativity.

Those who say that special relativity somehow depends on there being no preferred frame are just wrong. There may or may not be a preferred frame, and it does not make any difference to the Lorentz transformations or any other part of special relativity.

Einstein does not mention Poincare, who introduced the spacetime geometry that is central to what everyone has called special relativity for the last century.

Defending philosophy again

I mentioned Massimo Pigliucci defending philosphy below, and now he has an audio/video discussion of the same topic.

Pigliucci mainly defends the value of philosophical thinking, and accuses physicists of being ignorant for thinking that philosophers are all post-modernists. He also says that string theorists are upset with philosophers saying that their untestable ideas are unscientific, and that the theorists would like to re-define science without any interference from philosophers.

He says physicists should respect philosophy because Bohr and Einstein had philosophical debates. Okay, but what philosopher has said anything worthwhile about physics in the last 50 years?

He says that some physicists have conceded value to ethics and moral philosophy, but have their strong objections to philosophy of science. I have tried to read some supposedly important moral philosophy, and I have found it to be nearly 100% worthless.

He misses the point of just how anti-science philosophers have become. Scientists believe that they are searching for truth and philosophers deny it. And not just the postmodernists.

Evolutionists and teachers confused about randomness

Here is a evolution acceptance paper:

Is Oklahoma really OK? A regional study of the prevalence of biological evolution-related misconceptions held by introductory biology teachers
by Tony B Yates and Edmund A Marek

Biological evolutionary explanations pervade all biological fields and bring them together under one theoretical umbrella. Whereas the scientific community embraces the theory of biological evolution, the general public largely lacks an understanding, with many adhering to misconceptions. Because teachers are functioning components of the general public and most teachers experience the same levels of science education as does the general public, teachers too are likely to hold biological evolution misconceptions. The focus of this study was to identify the types and prevalence of biological evolution misconceptions held by Oklahoma high school introductory biology teachers and to correlate those findings with demographic variables. ...

Such a high misconception rate in teachers concerning the mechanism of randomness in evolution is disconcerting because there is probably no other misconception which better indicates a lack of understanding of evolution than the belief that evolution proceeds by random chance (Isaak 2003). With the environment selecting specific variations within populations, evolution in totality is a nonrandom process. However, randomness does play a role in pivotal evolutionary mechanisms including the origination of variations via both mutations and gene recombination (Smith and Sullivan 2007). As Dawkins puts it, ‘ … evolution is the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information’ (Dawkins 2009, p. W2).

Non-mathematicians tend to have funny views about randomness. I mentioned before the Causalist-Statisticalist Debate about how some scientists emphasize randomness and some do not.

Interpretations of quantum mechanics have similar confusions, with some arguing that randomness is essential to the theory, and others not.

Random chance is not a physical thing. It is just way of describing our inability to predict something. Dawkins is saying that he can predict the survival but not the DNA changes. But some DNA changes in a population are predictable, and some extinction events are not.

If this is the biggest misconception about evolution, then the teachers probably understand it pretty well.

BICEP2 skepticism

For BICEP2 skepticism, see Big Bang Blunder Bursts the Multiverse Bubble and What is direct evidence and does the BICEP2 measurement prove that gravity must be quantized?.

UI wonder why the professional skeptics are not more skeptical about big announcements like BICEPS being proof of big bang inflation causing quantized gravity waves and the multiverse. Instead they are always writing about how there is no good evidence for homeopathy or astrology.

Mermin has pedantic quibble about QBism

Cornell physicist David Mermin was quoted in NewScientist magazine, and then wrote a hair-splitting letter attempting to somehow correct his view of quantum mechanics:

I am delighted that you take the quantum Bayesianist view of science seriously enough to feature it on your cover (10 May, p 32). But you overemphasize the subjectivity of the scientist almost as much as conventional physics underemphasizes it.

Your article attributes to QBism the view that "measurements do not cause things to happen in the real world, they cause things to happen in our heads". The actual QBist position is that a measurement is any action that a particular person (Alice) takes in her external world, and the outcome of that measurement is the experience this world prompts in Alice through its response to her action.

Other consequences of Alice's action are part of her external world and potentially accessible to others. Alice has her own private subjective experience, but she can attempt to describe this to others through the imperfect medium of language, which helps account for the common features of the different external worlds that each of us individually infers from our own private experience.

It is of course hard to convey all this in three pages, let alone a short letter. After all, it has escaped the awareness of almost all physicists for nearly 90 years. For a more nuanced view of QBism I recommend the paper cited in your article, bit.ly/qbism.
Ithaca, New York, US

No, QBism is not some view that has escaped physicists for 90 years. It is nearly the same as Bohr's view, as I have noted previously.

Recent Mermin explanations of his view of quantum mechanics are here and here, and how he has gripes about how the above letter was edited.

The first omission — of the New Scientist’s own words — diminishes the degree to which their article misrepresents QBism as antirealist. The second omission — from both my versions — eliminates the heart of my explanation of QBist realism. Their combined effect is to turn my correction of the New Scientist’s gross misrepresentation of realism in QBism into what sounds like a pedantic quibble.

His letter is a stupid pedantic quibble because he cannot explain how hi view is any different from what Bohr and others said in 1930.

He seems unhappy to be put in the antirealist camp. That is a confusing term. It is not that quantum mechanics is contrary to realism, but some physicists, like Einstein, Bell, and other quantum-haters, had a belief that realism requires that measurements be equated with hidden variables. Quantum mechanics rejects that view, and for that it is called antirealist.

Mermin complains about the shortness of his letter, but go ahead and read his longer articles to see how empty they are. He thinks that he has discovered something, because he used to pitch a different interpretation of quantum mechanics, and he seems to have finally come around to the view that Bohr and Heisenberg and Schroedinger had it right all along. But there is no need to read his papers; just read an old textbook and ignore the modern physics gurus who babble nonsense about quantum mechanics being wrong.

Taking quantum mechanics seriously

A new physics paper starts:

Many advocates of the Everettian interpretation consider that their approach is the only one taking quantum mechanics really seriously, and that by doing so a fantastic scenario for our reality can be deduced, made of infinitely many and continuously branching parallel worlds.

I guess its true that those advocates claim that they are the ones taking quantum mechanics seriously, but the truth is more nearly the opposite. he many-worlds interpretation has no scientific merit, and is just a way of mocking quantum mechanics.

Taking quantum mechanics seriously means only believing in observables, and not in imaginary worlds that can never be observed.

Counterfactuals: Quantum Mechanics

Some interpretations of quantum mechanics rely very heavily on a certain style of counterfactual reasoning. Quantum mechanics teaches that an electron has wave and particle properties. It is observed as a point particle, but otherwise it behaves like a wave. The uncertainty principle says that you cannot measure the precise position and momentum at the same time.

J.J. Thomson won the 1906 Nobel Prize for discovering that electrons are particles (his acceptance lecture called them "corpuscles"). His son won the 1937 Nobel Prize for showing that electrons are waves. The subject has confused people ever since.

The interpretations differ in their view of the electron before it is observed. Some say that it is a wave, with no precise location. Others say that it is a particle, but a funny kind of particle that can be many places at once. It thus has multiple histories, unlike anything in our ordinary experience.

The multiple histories get confusing when we consider counterfactuals. Suppose you ask, "where would the electron be if it were in a particular location at a particular time?" This question makes no sense because the electron could not be at a particular location at a particular time because of the uncertainty principle (unless a measurement is disturbing the system). Admitting that the electron could have been in other places as well at the same time only makes the counterfactual meaningless.

To see how this dilemma plays out, consider the Double-slit experiment. An electron beam is fired thru a double-slit, and wave properties cause an interference pattern at the detector. The confusion occurs when you introduce counterfactuals about which slit the electrons pass thru. You can ask "if the electron goes thru the top slit, then where is it detected?" The question has no clear answer. Attempts to answer it involve saying that the electron has some sort of spooky action-at-a-distance effect on electrons going thru the other slit.

The best answer is to refuse to answer the question as a meaningless counterfactual. The question presupposes that the electron is a particle, and it is not a particle. It is a wave that goes thru both slits at once. If you put detectors in the slits then you find the electron in one slit or the other, but without the detector the electron cannot be localized to one slit.

As Asher Peres explained, "unperformed experiments have no results." The electron only looks like a point particle when certain measurement experiments are done. If no such experiment is performed, then there are no point particle consequences.

At this point you are probably wondering why we even talk about the electron as a particle if it is really a wave and if treating it as a particle causes so much trouble. The answer is that treating it as a particle is incredibly useful. Every electron appears identical, with the same mass, charge, spin, and zero radius. We can even see the particle tracks in bubble chamber pictures. R.P. Feynman worked out a diagram calculus for electrons where predictions are based on sums over their many possible histories. Under his interpretation, each diagram is a counterfactual but they all contribute real measurement.

Feynman's quantum mechanics textbook has his version of Peres's slogan:

Another thing that people have emphasized since quantum mechanics was developed is the idea that we should not speak about those things which we cannot measure. (Actually relativity theory also said this.)

The particle interpretation of electrons and photons works quite well as long as you avoid something called counterfactual definiteness. That is, you must not assume that the particles have particular properties that could be obtained by measurement, unless you actually do the measurement.

The 1965 Bell's theorem and subsequent experiments have shown the paradox of quantum mechanics more strikingly than the double-slit. The theorem has been called “the most profound discovery of science.” It is usually explained in terms of correlations between measurements on two equal and opposite electrons.

The correlations are hard to understand, and have two common explanations. Either one measurement has a spooky non-causal effect on the other, or we have to reject counterfactual definiteness.

Many physicists prefer the spooky explanation, and say that this proves that quantum mechanics allows non-locality, meaning one measurement can have an action-at-distance effect on another. As no experiment has ever demonstrated such an effect and we have no mathematical theory for how that would happen, this is indeed a striking conclusion.

The better and more mundane conclusion is that quantum mechanics is not amenable to certain counterfactuals. The disagreement is about whether this conclusion is profound. To some physicists, this proves that scientific realism is impossible. To others, it just shows that some ill-posed questions are unanswerable, just like many philosophical and theological questions, such as "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

There has been no Nobel Prize given for work related to Bell's theorem. While there is talk of such a prize every year, others just shrug it off as just a metaphysical confusion about counterfactuals. All of the Bell test experiments have confirmed the 1930 understanding of quantum mechanics.

Nature is not just the conjunction of quantum particle scenarios. An electron can be measured in a lot of different places, but the electron is not the union of those possibilities because that would not capture its wave properties.

In a mystery novel, Sherlock Holmes might list five possible explanations for a crime, eliminate four, and conclude that the fifth was correct. You cannot do that with quantum particle interpretations because electrons are not really particles.

It does make perfect sense in quantum mechanics to treat electrons and photons as particles with particle histories, as long as you admit that a large number of such histories are possible. The histories are like counterfactuals except that they cannot be said to be definitely true or false. They are just Feynman paths. They allow a particle interpretation of nature and have an extremely powerful predictive theory.

Feynman paths and diagrams are used to explain the simple transmission of light. According to the theory, the simplest interactions involve infinitely many diagrams showing paths and collisions of electrons and photons. The diagrams might involve energy being created or destroyed, particles going backwards in time, and causality violations. Consideration of all of these ridiculous scenarios is essential to calculating an answer that agrees with experiment.

You can choose to believe that all of these scenarios are real if you wish, but it is easier to think of them as counterfactuals. They are wildly implausible assertions that are somehow used to deduce a valid conclusion. You might think that agreement with experiment is strong evidence for the truth of the hypotheses used to make the numerical prediction. But in this case, it is not. The scenarios involve simultaneous precise positions and momenta for photons and electrons. We know that photons and electrons are not really particles, and they do not have specific positions and momenta. We also know that energy is conserved, and that cause precedes effect. We think we know those things, anyway.

Thus it is convenient to think of quantum particles as having multiple counterfactual histories as Feynman paths, and the theory makes predictions as sums over all those paths. One cannot say that some paths are true and some are false, as all must be used to get correct numerical predictions and none can be taken literally. This interpretation is popular but not required, as it is also possible to treat the electrons and photons as fields instead of particles.

For those who argue that time is an illusion, the possibility of multiple histories is very unsettling. They refuse to accept that the past is any different from the future, so they say that the multiple counterfactuals in the past implies that we also have multiple counterfactuals in the future. So they prefer the many-worlds interpretation, where all possible scenarios happen in alternate universes. There can be no physical evidence for alternate universes, but they find it more compatible with their prejudices against time. In my opinion, belief in many-worlds is nothing but a severe confusion about the nature of time and counterfactuals.

The uncertainty principle says that measuring position and then momentum can give a different result from measuring momentum and then position. In quantum jargon, the observable operators do not commute, so the operator order matters. This is hard to understand if you believe in some sort of counterfactual simultaneous observation of position and momentum. But if you follow the Feynman-Peres advice against counterfactual definiteness, then it is plausible that the order of observation can make a difference.

You need to reject counterfactual definiteness in quantum mechanics because the theory predicts observations that disturb the system. A system with an observation is different from one without. You cannot just assume that the system behaves as if everything were observed. If you did, then the electrons and photons would all seem like particles, and you would miss out on the wave properties.

Counterfactuals are understandable by children but troublesome for philosophers. I have posted below about counterfactuals outside the context of quantum mechanics, in order to clarify them without the added quantum confusion.

My conclusion is that the counterfactual is the most confusing thing about quantum mechanics. Understand counterfactuals and you will not be tempted to subscribe to quantum spooky interpretations, to believe in many-worlds, or to deny locality, causality, or realism. All of those mysteries are rooted in misunderstandings about counterfactuals.