Dear Reinhard,

If a may add a word regarding the “hand-waving” objection (i.e. Travis’ point 2):

The parts of BM that you describe as “fuzzy” concern the treatment of very complex, macroscopic system. This is the stuff that physicists always get somewhat pragmatic about. At least, I’ve never seen a mathematically rigorous treatment of a…[Read more]

Dear Robert (if I may),

I would very much like to understand better the relationship between BM and the consistent history approach. I think Shelly once made the point that they are actually somewhat similar in spirit, as they aim for a consistent transition from the micro to the macro level. I will certainly take a look at your paper [1]. I’m…[Read more]

Hi Ken,

I also wanted to give you some feedback on your paper. Unfortunately, I don’t have that much to add, because I think your discussion is very much on point. 🙂 The Schulmann model is quite interesting (I didn’t know it before) and your arguments concerning symmetry are, of course, correct.

It’s not so much a factual critique, rather a…[Read more]

Hi Rod,
thanks for your answer. I understand that eq. (1) is supposed to be a projection. I’m pretty sure that, if psi(x,x’) is really a multitime wave-function, the expression, as it stands, is not correct. But I’m mostly concerned about the fact that “after an interaction has occured” or “two wave-functions have ceased interacting” is ambiguous…[Read more]

Dear Miroljub,

I believe the attitude I described has nothing to do with BM, in particular. Every mathematical physicist has to be very selective with the kind of problems he or she choses to work on. (Of course, this applies to every scientist, but to mathematical physics in particular, because the average time you have to invest in one…[Read more]

Dear Reinhard,

I really appreciate you sharing your point of view and I have thought (and will continue to think) about some of your arguments. If you don’t mind me saying: I believe that the discussion could have been even more productive, though, if you hadn’t been so polemic, at times. E.g. Bohmians don’t write papers or theses, they write…[Read more]

Hi Travis,

thank you very much for your very detailed feedback! That’s a lot to think about and I certainly won’t be able to give a satisfying answer to all of your questions/objections right away. For now, I can just add a few remarks.

You’re right that the discussion in the final section would have been different with Bell’s 1990 picture in…[Read more]

Dear Rod,
thanks for your patience. If you can help be better understand your model or if maybe even I could help you with some of the formalities, I’d be happy to stay in touch even after the workshop.

I’m also happy to answer questions about the DGZ-paper. It took me a while to fully appreciate the result, but it’s worth it. I think it’s fair…[Read more]

Dear Rod,

I was trying to study your paper. I think your motivations are exactly right and the paper contains a lot of exciting ideas. I must admit that I have great difficulties understanding the model, though. In part, it may just be an issue of (bad) notations, but many things don’t even make sense to me on the formal level.

For instance,…[Read more]

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…[Read more]

Dear Reinhard,

thank you very much for your very nicely written responses. I’m still not sure that your hostility towards BM isn’t fueled by some factual misunderstandings (the things that Travis keeps pointing out), but I think I’ve got a better sense for where your objections come from.

Please allow me to add a few remarks. I don’t try to…[Read more]

Thanks, Travis. If you find the time to revisit my paper, I’d be honored to receive your feedback. The model is essentially the same as in the arxiv version, but the discussion has been corrected and refined in certain important aspects. That reminds me that I should probably update the arxiv version…

Dear Rod,

I am very interested in your model. I hope I’ll be able to study it in more detail and ask more qualified questions before the workshop is over. Until then, I’d like to address your previous post and point out that in standard Bohmian mechanics, the Born rule CAN be derived from first principles in a rigorous way.

This was done in a…[Read more]

Dear All, If I may, I would like to add some general remarks. They might not do justice to all of your previous points and concerns, but maybe it doesn’t hurt to “dump things down” a bit (to borrow Travis’ phrase).

1) I believe that “realism” is a very unhelpful notion and that every scientific or meta-scientific discussion benefits from avoiding…[Read more]

Hi Travis,

thanks for shedding some light on this background story. I know your scholarpedia article on Bell’s theorem – which is a great article btw – but I didn’t know about the discussion you had with Nathan, of course. I guess Nathan could cite many other sources who neglect the possibility of retrocausal explanations, but I wouldn’t be…[Read more]

Dear Nathan,

thank you very much for your feedback and for pointing out your paper that I’ve read with great interest. I relize that I should have referenced your paper – I just didn’t know about it before!

Anyway, I think we’re definitely on the same page. Maybe your argument is more general, while my model can help to illustrate your point.…[Read more]