Hi Dan,
Dan74 wrote:This is a nice story and it sure does drive its point home, and yet the very founders of QM and many who followed spent a fair bit of time worrying how to interpret it and what it all means philosophically. Also serious mathematical physicists like Penrose, have been "guilty" of those crimes your professor has mentioned - positing quantum origins of consciousness, for example.
Yes, and Penrose has been criticised repeatedly, especially by philosophers, for some of his meanderings.
Much of the meanderings of the 1930s were rendered irrelevant by Bell in the 1960s, and subsequent experiments, which showed that what Einstein would have liked (a local realistic theory) does not agree with experiment. Therefore, I don't take the early discussions on quantum mechanics too seriously, since they are often arguing about what are now moot points.
Dan74 wrote:
So it's not all so clear cut, but sure it is hard science in the way it models observable events.
And that's the point. Quantum mechanics is the
most accurate theory we have, predicting the g-value of the electron (how an electron reacts to a magnetic field) to better than one part in 10 to the power of 10.
And, of course, an overwhelming amount of modern technology (e.g. semiconductor chips and lasers) are based on harnessing the quantum properties of matter and light...
Mike