Reply To: God knows where all the particles are!

#2806
Dustin Lazarovici
Participant

Hi Travis, thank’s for clarifying! I’m not sure that Reinhard was thinking about planets and the “classical limit” of BM, though. I thought he was referring to the (indeed undisputed) fact that, on the microscopic level, particles interact via the wave-function, so that the interactions are strikingly nonlocal and need not depend on the actual positions in the way classical intuition would dictate.

For instance, if you take a beam splitter and you wiggle the mirror on the left and you see that the point on the screen is wiggling as well, you cannot conclude that any Bohmian trajectory was actually passing by the left mirror.

At least, that’s the kind of argument that I always hear from Lev Vaidman or Nicolas Gisin. And it’s not a bad argument, I think. It’s were for me, the debate usually hits a dead end. Because either you’re willing to take BM seriously and except these things as (correct) predictions of the theory and maybe unavoidable consequences of nonlocality. Or you insist that you can’t take the (microscopic) trajectories seriously, unless they are somehow operationally accessible. And indeed, that’s not quite what the Bohmian has to offer.

I’m sorry to interfere in your exchange. Of course, Reinhard doesn’t need me to come to his defense. 🙂 I’m just eager to see how you (Travis) will respond to this particular argument.

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