Quantum mechanics and randomness

Yes yes, we all love local causality. But then, doesn’t the EPR paradox rather illustrate that we don’t have it anyway?

I believe in hidden variables too. Just nest 'em inside a subroutine, or make 'em private in an object and no one on the outside can see em… :smiley:

Zev Steinhardt

Saw that coming. :slight_smile:

Quantum mechanics doesn’t say that nature is random it says that nature is stochastic - there’s a difference. The Schrodinger wave equation describes a fully deterministic time evolving superposed wave of probability amplitudes, and when we square psi we get the probability of a particle being in a certain state. This is literally all we can know about the quantum world until we make a measurement and collapse the wavefunction. I wonder what a probability wave looks like, anybody know? If a quantum particle is a probability wave between measurements what can this mean?

I think we have to keep in mind that we have no idea whatsoever what reality really is. All we have are mathematical models that predict what nature will do, and zero knowledge of how or why she does what she does. I suspect if we were somehow able to perceive reality as it really is it would be so ineffably profoundly alien that we would feel we had seen the face of God. What’s electric charge? Why does mass/energy cause space to have an intrinsic curvature, and on and on.

Ring…

What do you mean when you say “Quantum mechanics doesn’t say that nature is random it says that nature is stochastic”?

If we are dealing with probabilities and measurement there’s always a certain amount of “randomness” involved in mapping outcomes. At least, if we have to model stochastic systems we use random selection techniques to determine outcomes.