Philosophers reject scientific method

On a recent podcast, scientist-turned-philosopher Massimo Pigliucci says:

It has become clear: Among philosophers of science, it is now a given that there is no such thing as the scientific method. That science is a family resemblance concept, that it is a vague fuzzy concept. [at 20:50]

This is the same guy who complains:

It seems like my friend Neil deGrasse Tyson [1] has done it again: he has dismissed philosophy as a useless enterprise, and actually advised bright students to stay away from it. It is not the first time Neil has done this sort of thing, and he is far from being the only scientist to do so. But in his case the offense is particularly egregious, ...

Here is Neil’s reply, in full:

“Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences. Pretty much after quantum mechanics, remember the philosopher is the would be scientist but without a laboratory, right? And so what happens is, the 1920s come in, we learn about the expanding universe in the same decade as we learn about quantum physics, each of which falls so far out of what you can deduce from your armchair that the whole community of philosophers that previously had added materially to the thinking of the physical scientists was rendered essentially obsolete, and that point, and I have yet to see a contribution — this will get me in trouble with all manner of philosophers — but call me later and correct me if you think I’ve missed somebody here. But, philosophy has basically parted ways from the frontier of the physical sciences, when there was a day when they were one and the same. Isaac Newton was a natural philosopher, the word physicist didn’t even exist in any important way back then. So, I’m disappointed because there is a lot of brainpower there, that might have otherwise contributed mightily, but today simply does not. It’s not that there can’t be other philosophical subjects, there is religious philosophy, and ethical philosophy, and political philosophy, plenty of stuff for the philosophers to do, but the frontier of the physical sciences does not appear to be among them.”

I criticized him for this here and here.

Tyson is right to tell bright students to stay away from modern philosophers. XX century philosophers have started a war against modern science. Sometime about mid-century they all decided that there was no such thing as the scientific method.

World is not deterministic

Quantum gravity physicist Marko Vojinovic posted on a philosophy site:

Despite all developments of modern science in the last century, a surprising number of laypeople (i.e., those who are not familiar with the inner workings of quantum mechanics) still appear to favor determinism over indeterminism. ...

By “determinism” I will refer to the statement which can be loosely formulated as follows: given the state of the Universe at some moment, one can calculate a unique state of the Universe at any other moment (both into the future and into the past). This goes along the lines of Laplace’s demon [2] and physical determinism [3], with some caveats about terminology ...

The analysis presented in the article suggests that we have only two choices: (1) accept that Nature is not deterministic, or (2) accept superdeterminism and renounce all knowledge of physics. To each his own, but apparently I happen to be predetermined to choose nondeterminism.

It is a fantastic achievement of human knowledge when it becomes apparent that a set of experiments can conclusively resolve an ontological question. And moreover that the resolution turns out to be in sharp contrast to the intuition of most people.

I mostly agree with this. If determinism means completely defined by observables or hidden variables obeying local differential equations, then quantum mechanics and chaos theory show it to be impossible.

In the comments, some argue that some interpretations of quantum mechanics (many worlds and Bohmian) are formally deterministic. But this is mainly playing stupid word games. What good is determinism, if the outcome is only determined on some goofy parallel universe that no one can ever interact with?

Einstein had a religious belief in determinism, and so he rejected quantum mechanics. History has favored quantum mechanics.

Lack of interpretation consensus is embarrassing

A reader notes that Elliott Tammaro claims to explain Why Current Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics are Deficient in a new paper:

Quantum mechanics under the Copenhagen interpretation is one of the most experimentally well verified formalisms. However, it is known that the interpretation makes explicit reference to external observation or "measurement." One says that the Copenhagen interpretation suffers from the measurement problem. This deficiency of the interpretation excludes it as a viable fundamental formalism and prevents the use of standard quantum mechanics in discussions of quantum cosmology. ...

We argue, and where possible, demonstrate, that all common interpretations have unresolved deficiencies.

This so-called problem really bugs some cosmologists, but not because of any pressing scientific question. Occasionally you hear someone argue that it matters to one falling into a black hole, but that is just a stupid thought experiment.

At this point in time it appears that a stalemate has been reached with regard to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, despite the roughly ninety years since its conception, there is currently no single widely accepted interpretation. The variety of interpretations has acted to divide the physics community into camps. For example, one might be a “Bohmian” or an “Everettian” or in the “I shut up and calculate” camp. There is virtually no travel between camps, but there is much in the way of campaigning for new recruits. In addition to being a mere inconvenience, we currently stand at the cusp of physics beyond the standard model and it may be that further advancement will demand a deeper understanding of 20th century physics. It is firmly established that string theory, while still the most promising attempt at unification, does not provide any deeper insight into quantum mechanics.

Cosmologist Sean M. Carroll made a similar argument, and was quoted on Why quantum mechanics is an “embarrassment” to science:

The result? Not a single one of the interpretations could even garner a simple majority vote. Ninety years after the theory was first developed, there's still no consensus on what quantum physics actually means. "I’ll go out on a limb to suggest that the results of this poll should be very embarrassing to physicists," wrote cosmologist Sean Carroll.

(On the plus side, the theory turns out to be very, very, very, very accurate in making experimental predictions. So there's that!)

I suspect that some of the excitement over string theory was that it might proved some sort of hidden variables interpretation to make quantum mechanics more philosophically acceptable. No one seems to think that is possible anymore.

Here is the core of the above objection to Copenhagen:

As a result, the collapse of the wavefunction is assumed nonphysical. We find this view untenable. The wavefunction after collapse represents a radically different physical system than before collapse.

Consider a gambler betting on a horse race. Assume she has some (incomplete) data on each horse. Her bets are distributed according to the data. If she is given new information about the horses, her bets will generically be different. Such is the case with wavefunction collapse in QBism. However, the gambler’s bets have no effect on the outcomes of the races, and as such the analogy breaks down.

Finally, the claim that the collapse is a result of the changing knowledge of the observer (agent) contradicts the well verified dictum that knowing the wavefunction of a system represents a state of complete knowledge of system.

This is a strange philosophical objection. He has some preconceptions about reality and observables, and does not like how they match up in quantum mechanics. In short, he wants an ontic wavefunction.

The argument is to say that the theory explains observations very accurately, but is somehow unsatisfying because it does not explain what is really going on. One could make similar objections to relativity, electromagnetism, gravity, and other theories.

The horse race bet is a little strange. Such bets do affect future bets by others, and maybe the race itself if the rider is crooked.

Yes, of course new info may convince us that the system is in a different state. I am not sure the wavefunction represents complete knowledge, but even if it does, a new measurement or new info can change that knowledge.

Bayesianism is a view of probability and statistics that elicits disapproval from others from similarly philosophical reasons. Yes, probability has more than one interpretation. Tammaro just doesn't like the idea of using data to update a probability.

These anti-Copenhagen attitudes are anti-science. Science is all about gaining knowledge from experiments and observations, and also recognizing the limits of what can be done. Quantum mechanics gives a way of quantifying our knowledge about a system. Nothing wrong with that. Some people want the wavefunction to do more than that. Sorry, not possible, as far as we know.

I have argued that QBism is essentially the same as Copenhagen as articulated by Bohr, in spite of Mermin's protests. Tammaro agrees:

QBism shares so much in common with the Copenhagen interpretation that it cannot rightfully be called a distinct interpretation. In particular, it uses a notion of measurement that corresponds precisely to that of the Copenhagen interpretation. No refinement in understanding of the measurement process is introduced. That is, there is no attempt at describing measurement in terms of more fundamental processes.

But Mermin has a new paper arguing that QBism something different, even tho he supports QBism with quotes from Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schroedinger.

Copenhagen, as expounded by Heisenberg and Peierls, holds that quantum states encapsulate “our knowledge”. This has a QBist flavor to it. But it is subject to John Bell’s famous objection: Whose knowledge? Knowledge about what?28 QBism replaces “knowledge” with “belief”. Unlike “knowledge”, which implies something underlying it that is known, “belief” emphasizes a believer, in this case the user of quantum mechanics.

A very important difference of QBism, not only from Copenhagen, but from virtually all other ways of looking at science, is the meaning of probability 1 (or 0).31 In Copenhagen quantum mechanics, an outcome that has probability 1 is enforced by an objective mechanism. This was most succinctly put by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen,32 though they were, notoriously, no fans of Copenhagen. Probability-1 judgments, they held, were backed up by “elements of physical reality”.

Got that? Sorry, but if that is the big difference, it is a pretty trivial philosophical difference. I think that Mermin is embarrassed that he was confused about the Copenhagen interpretation for so long, and spent much of his career saying foolish things about quantum mechanics.

After writing this, I see that Lumo has some sensible commentary on Mermin's paper:

Mermin writes several paragraphs about this alleged "difference" between QBism and Copenhagen. These paragraphs contain the (bizarre) word "user" many, many times, but he completely avoids the word "observer". But foundational discussions on Copenhagen have always contained many copies of the word "observer". Much of Copenhagen is about the "observer". Mermin has either forgotten about this fact or he is demagogically avoiding the word "observer" because he knows that most readers would then realize that Mermin's claims about the "users" and "observers" who have nothing to do with each other are completely silly. That's particularly the case of statements such as

Science is about the interface between the experience of any particular person and the subset of the world that is external to that particular user.

Holy cow, Copenhagen school's theory of quantum mechanics is all about this interface, too. Mermin has used several new words such as "users" and "agents" in order to make old ideas look new. But even when it comes to this amusing trick, he failed in the case of the word "interface". If you look at Wikipedia's entry describing the Heisenberg cut, you will see that the Heisenberg cut is defined as a "hypothetical interface", by almost exactly identical words that Mermin ascribed to QBism above. There is an observer/user who cares, there has to be an external object/world that he observes, and the theory predicts properties he cares about. ...

At any rate, this sport of spitting on the founders of quantum mechanics who got everything that matters correctly is deeply pathetic. If we lived in a scientific world, they would be celebrated and their priority and their victory in all the intellectual confrontations would be universally known. Instead, we are drowning in the mud of ambiguity and downright hostility, even when we listen to people who should know better.

This is not a scientific world.

Motl is right that the founders of quantum mechanics could be called QBist, but Bell would not be.

My only disagreement with Motl is this:

And indeed, the fundamental thesis of QBism – i.e. Copenhagen – that the probabilistic nature of the wave function is intrinsic means that one shouldn't invent any "mechanisms" that would "transform" the wave function into "what we really observe". No extra "mechanism" is needed.

I agree that no extra mechanism is needed, but not that "the probabilistic nature of the wave function is intrinsic". The wave function can be used to derive probabilities, but I am not sure it is even meaningful to say that the wave function itself is intrinsically probabilistic.

Opinions on an infinite universe

A Danish non-cosmologist writes Astrosociology: Interviews about an infinite universe

If the universe is infinite now it has always been infinite. This is the opinion of many astronomers today as can be concluded from the following series of interviews, but the opinions differ much more than I had expected. Many astronomers do not have a clear opinion on this matter. Others have a clear opinion, but very different from the majority. Detailed arguments by two experts on general relativity are also included. Observations show that the universe is flat, i.e. the curvature is zero within the small uncertainty of measurements. This implies an infinite universe, though most probably we will never know that for certain. For comparison with the recent interviews, opinions during the past 2300 years since Aristotle about the universe being finite or infinite have been collected from literature, and it appears that the scientists often had quite definite opinions.

English is probably not his native language, so I shouldn't blame him for the misspelling in the title.

I am not sure the question is meaningful. Some think that the universe is spatially infinite, but that matter only occupies a bounded portion of it. Should such people say that the universe is finite or infinite?

I say finite. We can only observe a finite portion of the universe, and our physical theories relate to finite quantities. I am not sure it makes any scientific sense to speak of an infinite universe.

The whole concept of actual infinity is dubious:

The legendary Carl Friedrich Gauss denied that anything infinite really existed, saying "Infinity is merely a way of speaking" and "I protest against the use of infinite magnitude as something completed, which is never permissible in mathematics."

Nothing did not turn into something

Bill Gates is pushing Common Core on the schools, and also this course:

As Gates was working his way through the series, he stumbled upon a set of DVDs titled “Big History” — an unusual college course taught by a jovial, gesticulating professor from Australia named David Christian. Unlike the previous DVDs, “Big History” did not confine itself to any particular topic, or even to a single academic discipline. Instead, it put forward a synthesis of history, biology, chemistry, astronomy and other disparate fields, which Christian wove together into nothing less than a unifying narrative of life on earth. Standing inside a small “Mr. Rogers"-style set, flanked by an imitation ivy-covered brick wall, Christian explained to the camera that he was influenced by the Annales School, a group of early-20th-century French historians who insisted that history be explored on multiple scales of time and space. Christian had subsequently divided the history of the world into eight separate “thresholds,” beginning with the Big Bang, 13 billion years ago (Threshold 1), moving through to the origin of Homo sapiens (Threshold 6), the appearance of agriculture (Threshold 7) and, finally, the forces that gave birth to our modern world (Threshold 8).

I listened to the first 2 minutes about the Big Bang, leading up to this:

Why is this so important? Because nothing had turned into something. And that something contained everything needed to build an interesting universe. One that could eventually include you and me.

No, we really don't know that "nothing had turned into something", and we certainly don't know that there is anything important about that.

We could say that the universe is expanding as if the observable portion of it were once in a much smaller volume. The early expansion may or may not have been accelerated by inflation.

L. Krauss wrote a book on how nothing turns into something, but of course he really explains that a vacuum quantum field theory can shift from one state to another.

It also says:

After the big bang there was space, which was rapidly expanding, and there was time.

I don't see how it makes any sense to say that time existed after something else.

This sort of grand synthesis course may be worthwhile, but it seems that the people who make these courses cannot resist injecting ideological biases of various sorts.

Google doing quantum chip

The quantum computer con continues. Yahoo reports:

Google said it is working on a super-fast "quantum" computer chip as part a vision to one day have machines think like humans.

The Internet titan on Tuesday added renowned researcher John Martinis and his team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to the Quantum Artificial Intelligence team at Google, according to director of engineering Hartmut Neven.

The new hires are part of a "hardware initiative" to design and build chips operating on sub-atomic levels in ways making them exponentially faster than processors currently used in computers,

"With an integrated hardware group the Quantum AI team will now be able to implement and test new designs," Neven said of the quest for a transformative new chip.

Last year, Google's artificial intelligence lab partnered with US space agency NASA on quantum computing research.

I predict that 5 years from now, Google is still unable to show any quantum speedup, but the quantum computing enthusiasts are undeterred.

The FQXi August 31, 2014 Podcast has a part about the "Quantum Pigeonhole Principle". It is another little paradox showing that quantum particles cannot be treated as ordinary classical particles. But instead of admitting that there are no practical applications, the researcher went into a big story about how some Feynman comments led to quantum computers. Except that there are still no practical applications of quantum computers.

I posted on Sean M. Carroll's blog because he misquotes people he is attacking. He grudgingly corrected the Larry Summers quote, while denying that it makes any difference. The misquote is strange, because Carroll also attacks an article that explained how Summers has been misinterpreted. He also misquotes Nicholas Wade as saying “therefore Chinese people may be clever, but they’ll never really understand democracy.” I think it is a misquote, anyway. You would think that it if so important to denounce Summers and Wade, then Carroll would make some effort to accurately represent what they said.

Carroll also complains about someone losing a job for anti-Israel tweets. Apparently free speech for Israel attackers is a major dilemma for today's liberals. American professors are expected to take conventional liberal political positions. That is why Carroll is compelled to denounce Summers and Wade, even if it is a stupid straw man attack. Israel is trickier, because both sides are fighting for ethnic causes.

Update: Info about how the Palestinian Arab lost his job makes one wonder how he was ever offered the job. He has a long history of anti-Israel writings, and very little worthwhile academic scholarship:

The first thing one learns about Salaita is that very little of what he has written seems to have anything to do with the field of study in which he claims expertise and in which he was offered a job, American Indian Studies.

Update: Scott Aaronson is excited about the Google quantum computer, and wants to be able to claim that he correctly predicted the outcome whether it works or not.

Misguided uses of term quantum

The humor site Cracked has The 5 Most Misguided Uses of the Word 'Quantum' in Ads

Humanity's greatest minds know that no one fully understands quantum mechanics. Our worst minds took that as an excuse. Idiots scrabble to use quantum terms like they're living on a triple-word score, thinking that the words alone will make all their points for them. ...

#1. Deepak Chopra's Quantum Consciousness

Deepak Chopra believes that consciousness transcends reality, but you should still give him real money. He combines pseudoscience and pseudoreligion to create an alloy of assholery capable of supporting his tidal waves of bullshit. If a self-help book and a science textbook got merged in a transporter accident, it would sound like Deepak Chopra's theories on quantum consciousness. And he would still claim that the spiritual aspects were more responsible for what had happened. ...

One classic quote: "Consciousness may exist in photons, which seem to be the carrier of all information in the universe." ...

Luckily, true science is immune to such assholery. Quantum mechanics is humanity's greatest scientific achievement. It's the victory of the scientific method, revealing intellectual truths that contradict all our conceptions of common sense, because common sense was created to help a couple of meters of pork substitute have sex as often as possible and really doesn't apply to the fundamental laws of reality.

I would have listed quantum communications, cryptography, teleportation, computers, cat states, many worlds, and nonlocality.

Chopra seems like just a buffoon who parrots the goofy stuff that real physicists say. Here is his latest idea:

What forces such a radical change is reality itself, which science is obliged to follow. Reality has led us to the point where reductionism, a “bottom up” approach that seeks to build reality up from its smallest constituents, must give way to holism, a “top down” approach that accepts an undeniable fact: Reality is one thing. Up to now, reductionism has been successful in disguising the dualism that is threatening to become a fatal flaw. There is no credible bridge between classical and quantum physics, brain and mind, physiology and psychology. In effect, the march of science through theory and technology has yet to explain how atoms and molecules took the leap that produced human experience, our mental participation in the reality science is trying to explain. Science has relegated personal experience to the sidelines and at times even rejected that consciousness is a valid subject of study. The reason is obvious, because the scientific quest has been for objective findings, not subjective impressions. The split between objective and subjective lies at the bottom of every other duality. But without a top down, holistic framework, there will never be an adequate explanation of reality. The two big questions facing science (What is the universe made of? What is the biological basis of consciousness?) needs to be reframed. What’s at stake is actually “What is existence?” and “How is existence known?”

We do not even have a good definition of consciousness.

Here is a recent Dilbert cartoon on use of buzzwords.