In today’s episode, Jacob Barandes, a physicist specializing in quantum mechanics, explores groundbreaking ideas on measurement, the role of probabilistic laws, and the foundational principles of quantum theory. With a focus on interdisciplinary approaches, Jacob offers unique insights into the nature of particles, fields, and the evolution of quantum mechanics.
New Substack! Follow my personal writings and EARLY ACCESS episodes here: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
SPONSOR (THE ECONOMIST): As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe
LINKS MENTIONED:
– Jacob Barandes’ website: https://www.jacobbarandes.com/ (find his papers and seminar talks there, on the double-slit and more)
– Jacob Barandes’ “The Stochastic-Quantum Correspondence” paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778
– Jacob’s Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BepZY0gAAAAJ
– Wigner’s paper ‘Remarks on the Mind-Body Question’: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/wigner/Wigner_Remarks.pdf
– Jacob’s lecture on Hilbert Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmaSAG4J6nw&ab_channel=OxfordPhilosophyofPhysics
– John von Neumann’s book on ‘Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics’: https://amzn.to/48OkeVj
– The 1905 Papers (Albert Einstein): https://guides.loc.gov/einstein-annus-mirabilis/1905-papers
– Dividing Quantum Channels (paper): https://arxiv.org/pdf/math-ph/0611057
– Sean Carroll on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AoRxtYZrZo
– Scott Aaronson and Leonard Susskind’s paper on ‘Quantum Necromancy’: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.07450
– Scott Aaronson on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZpGCQoL2Rk
– Leonard Susskind on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_Hlm6aCok
– Ekkolapto’s website: https://www.ekkolapto.org/
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 – Introduction
01:26 – Jacob’s Background
07:32 – Pursuing Theoretical Physics
10:28 – Is Consciousness Linked to Quantum Mechanics?
16:07 – Why the Wave Function Might Not Be Real
20:12 – The Schrödinger Equation Explained
23:04 – Higher Dimensions in Quantum Physics
30:11 – Heisenberg’s Matrix Mechanics
35:08 – Schrödinger’s Wave Function and Its Implications
39:57 – Dirac and von Neumann’s Quantum Axioms
45:09 – The Problem with Hilbert Spaces
50:02 – Wigner’s Friend Paradox
55:06 – Challenges in Defining Measurement in Quantum Mechanics
01:00:17 – Trying to Simplify Quantum for Students
01:03:35 – Bridging Quantum Mechanics with Stochastic Processes
01:05:05 – Discovering Indivisible Stochastic Processes
01:12:03 – Interference and Coherence Explained
01:16:06 – Redefining Measurement and Decoherence
01:18:01 – The Future of Quantum Theory
1:24:09 – Foundationalism and Quantum Theory
1:25:04 – Why Use Indivisible Stochastic Laws?
1:26:10 – The Quantum-Classical Transition
1:27:30 – Classical vs Quantum Probabilities
1:28:36 – Hilbert Space and the Convenience of Amplitudes
1:30:01 – No Special Role for Observers
1:33:40 – Emergence of the Wave Function
1:38:27 – Physicists’ Reluctance to Change Foundations
1:43:04 – Resolving Quantum Mechanics’ Inconsistencies
1:50:46 – Practical Applications of Indivisible Stochastic Processes
1:57:53 – Understanding Particles in the Indivisible Stochastic Model
2:00:48 – Is There a Fundamental Ontology?
2:07:02 – Advice for Students Entering Physics
2:09:32 – Encouragement for Interdisciplinary Research
2:12:22 – Outro
TOE’S TOP LINKS:
– Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!)
– Listen to TOE on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e
– Become a YouTube Member Here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join
– Join TOE’s Newsletter ‘TOEmail’ at https://www.curtjaimungal.org
Other Links:
– Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt
– Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs
– iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802
– Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything
#science #sciencepodcast #physics #quantumphysics #theoreticalphysics
27 Comments
New Substack! Follow my personal writings and EARLY ACCESS episodes here: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com
SPONSOR (THE ECONOMIST): As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe
1:06:40 "non-markovians are hard to deal with" … us LLM people are grinning, because we subsume that complexity in latent states of a NN :))
This guy was the BEST guest you've had Curt!!! When nerding out pays off
Best yet Curt!
That was great. Great summary of the history of QM. I'm glad Hilbert space and wave functions are not fundamental in Barandes' theory. But it wasn't super clear how everything translates to his theory. For example, it's not clear how non-locality comes about.
Lol he called Sean Carrol a mystic
oh shit, this is going to be a straight banger!
https://youtu.be/7oWip00iXbo?t=6261
"There's some sociology there."
S-tier dismissive. My new favorite put down.
54:57 this seems insane to me. Building on a foundation that has a legitimate chance of being wrong is just insane. Shouldn't the first endeavor be to binarily determine for sure if it's true or false–before accumulating decades-worth of literature on it?
His framework might help with the renormalization of quantum gravity!! I'll apply to his PhD
1:55:20 Curt's best question imo
It seems to me that the reason he says "that's a great question" so much, is becuase he has come across a rare situation where someone is eqipped with enough physics-knowledge to understand him.
Fake ass bro "science-y" content.
For the "I had a hard time in skool" set.
just wow, best video ever , checking out jacobs paper now! so cool
Can this framework emerge from wolfram physics or are they contradictory?
Very interesting, but I have a million questions about this perspective, and I really don't know whether this perspective is actually moving us forward in understanding quantum mechanics, or is just repackaging the mystery. The thing that is weird about the "indivisible stochastic processes" is that if you only describe probabilities to get from time A to time B, then there is the question of: What is happening between those times? Do intermediate times just not exist? Is the state of the universe at those intermediate times not exist? Or, is the indivisible process point of view just simply saying: We don't care about the intermediate times, and we don't need to answer those questions. (Sort of reminiscent of Heisenberg's attitude of not regarding atoms and microscopic phenomena as real).
Another question about this approach is the choice of times for the indivisible evolution. Barandes says that they roughly correspond to measurement times, and that they are basically the times of decoherence. That's nice, except for one thing: Decoherence is not an objectively real phenomenon. Let me explain what I mean by that. The story behind decoherence is roughly this: You have a microscopic system (say an electron) that is in a superposition of several different states. As time goes on, the electron interacts with other particles (or with the electromagnetic field, or whatever) and at some point, it's more convenient to describe the universe as being in a definite state, with such-and-such probability, rather than as a superposition. The decoherence essentially allows us to go from the weird quantum amplitudes to the more familiar probabilities of classical mechanics (or classical stochastic processes).
However, to see decoherence happen, we need to split the state of the universe into the degrees of freedom that are observable (we can observe whether a cat is alive or dead, or whether a detector has made a click, and that sort of thing) and the degrees of freedom that are unobservable (for example, the details of the electromagnetic field, and the details of the microscopic state of systems of many particles). So we describe the observable universe as having definite values, and we treat microscopic details as unobservable degrees of freedom. But this division is only a matter of simplification of the mathematics. When there are only 3 or only 10 or only 20 degrees of freedom, then there is never a time when decoherence happens. We can continue to describe the system as a pure state forever. When, instead, there are 1000 or 10,000 or billions of degrees of freedom, then for practical reasons, we can no longer do the mathematics for the evolution of pure states. So we switch to a probabilistic description and invoke decoherence. (Basically, decoherence happens when a system with a small number of degrees of freedom becomes hopelessly entangled with a system of an enormous number of degrees of freedom.) So to me, the exact time of decoherence is fuzzy. It's a limitation of our ability to keep track of many degrees of freedom, and doesn't represent anything fundamental about the universe.
Sorry, I don’t have a hours. Can anyone give me the jist of it?
I have to think this guy is right. It makes much more sense.
I live that his discovery came from him trying to explain quantum mechanics to a beginner.
The fact that they wouldn’t understand all the mystical stuff and tried to find a way to explain things without it… then realize theory itself didn’t need it.
It supports the idea that everything is determined. Anything else wouldn't make the slightest sense.
The why remains the big question. Why anything at all?
It is also related to the teleportation paradox, in the sense that every division (space and time) creates a new you, and everything else. It undermines the many worlds idea.
Get Eric. Reiter in and you will understand why there are probabilistic laws, because there are unseen hidden variables which are the atomic energy states of atoms that we can never know. Planck' loading theory as defined by Reiter.
Q. Why do you keep mispronouncing the word 'Schrodinger'?
A. That's a good question.
This definitely Your best episode!
3:00 Becoming concious as a kid and not having it explained properly as a catalyst to become a scientist is a neat origin story
One of the best things I've seen in forever. Very, very well done. Great guest, great interviewer!
Skip to 12:20 (!) if you don't care about every class this dude took since he was 5. The topic starts there.
A big clap to this interview. I found it exceptional, with incredible quality from both the interviewed and the interviewer.
Going back to what was said in it, I retain two domains of questioning or commentaries.
First one is with respect to reality. This interview is very refreshing in telling us to stop thinking that our physical models are real. It is very easy to question the reality of hilbert spaces, or of actions, for sure. But fields, potentials, forces and even 4d space-times, continuous or not, are not more real. Forces are abstract objects too, and philosphers have been arguing on reality of fields versus reality of vector-potentials for ages, without providing anything usefull on the subject, and will continue to do so. What is funny is that the new proposed model, as presented, also goes into the same conundrum. Maybe this model is more fundamental, more deep, whatever, but that doesn't make it more real. I have always felt there was a big misunderstanding with regards to Copenhagen interpretation. To me, those who adhere to it aknowledge that they are not speaking of reality, while people who refute it still want to stick to a correspondance between interpretation and some reality. Wigner's friend is just another cat decohered into the superposition of two clean eigenstates who both believe, wrongly, that they have made a collapsed measurement. So what ? Going back to Hamiltion action, yes at first we do claim Feynman diagrams "are just a tool", but who can deny that interpreting all these as actual "possible real" interactions is very very tempting… Every physical theory is an interpretation, and once you accept that, Copenhagen one is not a problem, just a recipe that aknowledges it is a recipe. The only non dillusional "interpretation" in the game here.
Second one is that I have a some feeling of cheating whith regards to using "indivisible Markov processes" as a new interpretation of what is "really" happening. The same actually I, and so many before me, have with respect to de Broglie-Bohm theory. I agree 150% with Sean Carroll when he says Bohm theoretists are many-world people in deny, because their theory needs an object that describes the entire multi-verse and it is indeed fundamentally contradictory to assess that the wavy thing, which is not-the-same-but-does-look-very-much-the-same as the Copenhagen one, is "objective", then claiming that this particular pathline there, on the full objective wavy thing, is actually more objective than all the other pathlines, which, wait for it, "do exist on this objective object but are not realised in the objective reality". I have the feeling, but I can be wrong of course, that we are swimming into the same kind of things here, because, as with de Broglie guide wave, we fundamentally touch the subject of memory of our mathematical objects. The Copenhagen collapse is fundamentally here to wash all memory. The de Broglie-Bohm theory keeps the full memory but washes it away into non-realised pathlines, and the Everett many-world washes it into other univeses which for some reason are not the ones we found ourselves in. As I understand it, if you have a non-Markov process from A to B, then you have to provide a final probabilistic process for B given A, with no process whatsoever in between as per definition it is not possible. It does suggests that you need, for any possible experiment , to measure experimentally these probabilities A->B, then claim these probabilities to be "fundamental" representation of reality, and then you can claim voilà, here is a nice explanation of what happened, I just had to check first. Basically, it looks like this entire memory problem has now been hidden into "the process", which by its own definition, doesn't allow you to look into. It is easy to see that such a "classical" theory for Quantum Mechanics can be seen as a supplementary argument for the Copenhagen one.
All this being said, we can hope we have finally all the contenders to explain where the memory can go. And I don't deny this is very interesting and hopefully, who knows, it will lead to something new in terms of predictions.