I think it depends what you want out of it - the experimentalist doesn't much mind if the theory is unintuitive if they get results, but the theorist wants to insist that it can be 'understood' in principle (anything else is more than their job's worth)[...]
Yes, I concur. But my problem has not so much to deal with what one wants to get out of an interpretation of quantum physics (or, taken from another perspective, what one can or could get—regardless if they actually do get or truly want to get anything—from the interpretation); rather I am concerned with the presupposition of if there even is anything tenable or scientifically appreciable to extract or derive from such an interpretation (and I'm presuming here that there is but a single correct interpretation that exists, insofar as there exists any correct interpretation at all).
That is to say, I agree with the notion that experimentalists and theoreticians would have disparate wants and putative applications from which they'd get out of the correct and real interpretation of the mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics.
Notwithstanding, this presupposes there to be
anything, as opposed to
nothing, from which one can get out of that foregoing interpretation. This is difficult to take, as I have not (and I leave open the possibility that I am an aberration or simply too unintelligent or uneducated, and therefore leave open the adjuvant possibility that my knowledge, and all my delusions and biases and fictions and presumptions unwittingly mistaken for or conflated with knowledge therewithal, is not reflective of all that is heretofore known to be the case) heard any convincing argument of it being possible for deriving something
at all, most especial something arguably necessary or scientifically valuable, from arriving at such an interpretation of these mathematical formalisms.
(And I apologise if I sound repetitive or too obscure; I have always found taking thoughts from my head and formulating them in language a precarious thing. Either I come off as redundant and circumlocutory by dint of an overdone explanation, or I give the impression of being a wordy obscurantist that beggars interpretation. You never know exactly what one will find to be unnecessarily emphatic or unintelligibly enigmatic, so to say.)
they might both argue about which has primacy to science, but it seems obviously some sort of yin/yang dialectical relationship or cycle (reflection/action). I'd say that the inability to understand what understanding actually is (except recursively through 'understanding' it), is maybe part of the problem. The semi-mysterious unconscious process of intuitive leaps and understanding seem to be responsible for much of the progress of science, and yet the rigourous intellectual experimentalism is also vital to objectify the insights found this way (or else your 'just' a mystic (or an internet waffle merchant (i'm speaking about me (but if the cap fits
).
That was a close call. I nearly got caught in a snare of my own convoluted cogitation, dragged overboard and dropped in the deep end of a benthos of a profundity of pages of protracted, prolix harangue and a densely drawn-out declamation of difficult- to-parse, distended dialectical disquisition on my philosophical ruminations about the nature of knowledge and its acquisition.
I am starting to see I cannot discuss quantum mechanics without divagating away to the philosophy of physics. It is a subconscious reflexion of the agile and implacable intellect, I suppose: when I have neither the logic nor the mathematics to discuss a hard topic, I naturally recourse to philosophizing about it.
Then we could speculate whether understanding quantum physics as is requires finding something else out/creating a new theory, or whether it requires our intuition to adjust to match it - is intuitive understanding fixed with certain perspectives derived from the physical environment, or can it change over time, responding to the psychic environment? (if born now, would einstein still insist on the no dice rule? in 100 years?). Or put another way, is intuition really a sort of shortcut to some platonic higher realm ('real' or symbolic) as some mathematically minded might say, or just another part of our flexible intelligence that works on different timescales.
In terms of many worlds theory of quantum physics, this is already 'intuitively' more appealing in principle (no copenhagen deus ex machinas needed) but the scale is so mind boggling it makes it less attractive for many intuitively (quantitively at least).
(as you can tell, i'm no quantum physicist (though i'm roughly familiar with the maths via different fields) - i've learned a lot from science fiction, which i consider to be the imagination of science, and vital for laying the boundaries of future intuitive leaps) (or just a good read)
I'm enticed, but unsure if it would be wise or wasteful to engage and submit my own thoughts about the matter. Nevermind, I shan't; I don't think it would be well-received nor fairly respected. In fact, the purport of my writing will most likely be overlooked entirely, and my ideas diminished to mere nonsensical concatenations of large and lofty lexemes, debased and derided for its phraseological grandiloquence rather than praised and lauded for its philosophical grandeur. As if the two—turgid pomposity and cogent philosophy—were somehow incompatible (an earmark of the unread philosopher—compare myself to, say, Kant or Hegel or Heidegger or any renowned philosopher for a well-needed perspective).
