# Should I give up on QM?

After further and deeper studies of the Schrodinger formalism, I have now come to understand the exact position from which the physicists must be coming (I mean the couple of physicists with who I discussed the ideas of my new approach, as mentioned here [^])—why they must be raising their objections. I came to really understand their positions only now. Here is how it happened.

I was pursuing finding correspondence between the $3ND$ configuration space of the Schrodinger formalism on the one hand and the $3D$ physical space on the other, when I run into this subtle point which made everything look completely different. That point is the following:

Textbooks (or lecture notes, or lecturers) don’t ever highlight this point (in fact, indirectly, they actually obfuscate it), but I came to realize that even in the $1D$ cases like the QM harmonic oscillator (QHO), the Schrodinger formalism itself remains defined only on an abstract hyperspace—it’s just that in the case of the QHO, this hyperspace happens to be $1D$ in nature, that’s all.

I came to realize that, even in the simplest $1D$ case like the QHO the $x$ variable which appears in the Schrodinger equation does not directly refer to the physical space. In case of QHO, it refers to the change in the equilibrium separation between the centers of the two atoms.

Physicists and textbooks don’t mention this point, and in fact, the way they present QM, they make it look as if $x$ is the simple position variable. But in reality, no it is not. It can be made to look like a position variable (and not a change-in-the-interatomic-distance variable) by fixing the coordinate system to one of the two atoms (i.e. by making it a moving or Lagrangian coordinate system). But doing so leads to losing the symmetry in the motion of the two atoms, and more important, it further results in an obfuscation of the real nature of the issue. Mind you, textbook authors are trying to be helpful here. But unwittingly, they end up actually obfuscating the real story.

So, the $x$ variable whose Laplacian you take for the kinetic energy term also does not represent the physical space—not even in the simplest $1D$ cases like the QHO.

This insight, which I gained only now, has made me realize that I need to rethink through the whole thing once again.

In other words, my understanding of QM turned out to have been faulty—though the fault is much more on the part of the textbook authors (and lecturers) than on the part of someone like me—one who has learnt QM only through self-studies.

One implication of this better understanding now is that the new approach as stated in the Outline document isn’t going to work out. Even if there are a lot of good ideas in it (Only the Coulomb potentials, the specific nonlinearity proposed in the potential energy term, the ideas concerning measurements, etc.), there are several other ideas in that document which are just so weak that I will have to completely revise my entire approach once again.

Can I do that—take up a complete rethinking once again, and still hope to succeed?

Frankly, I don’t know. Not at this point of time anyway.

I still have not given up. But a sense of tiredness has crept in now. It now seems possible—very easily possible—that QM will end up defeating me, too.

But before outright leaving the fight, I would like to give it just one more try. One last try.

So, I have decided that I will “work” on this issue for just a little while more. May be a couple of weeks or so. Say until the month-end (March 2019-end). Unless I make some clearing, some breaththrough, I will not pursue QM beyond this time-frame.

What is going to be my strategy?

The only way an enterprise like mine can work out is if the connection between the $3D$ world of observations and the hyperspace formalism can be put in some kind of a valid conceptual correspondence. (That is to say, not just the measurement postulate but something deeper than that, something right at the level of the basic conceptual correspondence itself).

The only strategy that I will now pursue (before giving up on QM) is this: The Schrodinger formalism is based on the higher-dimensional configuration space not because a physicist like him would go specifically hunting for a higher-dimensional space, but primarily because the formulation of Schrodinger’s theory is based on the ideas from the energetics program, viz., the Leibniz-Lagrange-Euler-Hamilton program, their line(s) of thought.

The one possible opening I can think of as of today is this: The energetics program necessarily implies hyperspaces. However, at least in the classical mechanics, there always is a $1:1$ correspondence between such hyperspaces on the one hand and the $3D$ space on the other. Why should QM be any different? … As far as I am concerned, all the mystification they effected for QM over all these decades still does not supply any reason to believe that QM should necessarily be very different. After all, QM does make predictions about real world as described in $3D$! Why, even the position vectors that go into the potential energy operator $\hat{V}$ are defined only in the $3D$ space. …

… So, naturally, it seems that I just have to understand the nature of the correspondence between the Lagrangian mechanics and the $3D$ mechanics better. There must be some opening in there, based on this idea. In fact my suspicion is stronger: If at all there is a real opening to be found, if at all there is any real way to crack this nutty problem, then its key has to be lying somewhere in this correspondence.

So, I have decided to work on seeing if pursuing this line of thought yields something definitive or not. If it doesn’t, right within the next couple of weeks or so, I think I better throw in the towel and declare defeat.

Now, understanding the energetics program better meant opening up once again the books. But given my style, you know, it couldn’t possibly be the maths books—but only the conceptual ones.

So, this morning, I spent some time opening a couple of the movers-and-packers boxes (in which stuff was still lying as I mentioned before [^]), and also made some space in my room (somehow) by shoving the boxes a bit away to open the wall-cupboard, and brought out a few books I wanted to read  / browse through. Here they are.

The one shown opened is what I had mentioned as “the energetics book” in the background material document (see this link [^] in this post [^]). I am going to begin my last shot at QM—the understanding of the $3ND$$3D$ issue, starting with this book. The others may or may not be helpful, but I wanted to boast that they are just a part of personal library too!

Wish me luck!

(And suggest me a job in Data Science all the same! [Not having a job is the only thing that gets me (really) angry these days—and it does. So there.])

BTW, I really LOL on the Record of 17 off 71. (Just think what happened in 204!)

A song I like:

(Hindi) “O mere dil ke chain…”
Singer: Kishor Kumar
Music: R. D. Burman
Lyrics: Majrooh Sultanpuri

Minor editing to be done and a song to be added, tomorrow. But feel free to read the post right starting today.

Song added on 2019.03.10 12.09 AM IST. Subject to change if I have run it already.

/

# An update on my research

28th February is the National Science Day in India.

The story goes that it was on this day (in 1928) that C. V. Raman discovered the effect known by his name.

I don’t believe that great discoveries like that are made in just one single day. There is a whole sequence of many crucially important days involved in them.

Yes, on this day, Raman might have achieved a certain milestone or made a key finding regarding his discovery. However, even if true in this case (which I very much doubt), it’s not true in general. Great discoveries are not made in a single day; they are usually spread over much longer span of time. A particular instant or a day has more of just a symbolic value—no matter how sudden the discovery might have looked to someone, including to the discoverer.

There of course was a distinguished moment when Kekule, in his famous dream, saw a snake swallowing its own tail. However, therefore to say that he made the discovery concerning the ring structure of the benzene molecule, just in a single moment, or in a single flash of imagination, is quite a bit of a stretch.

Try it out yourself. Think of a one-line statement that encapsulates the findings of a discovery made by a single man. Compare it with another statement which encapsulates any of the previous views regarding the same matter (i.e., before this discovery came along). This way, you can isolate the contributions of a single individual. Then analyze those contributions. You would invariably find that there are several different bits of progress that the discovery connected together, and these bits themselves (i.e., the contributions made individually by the discoverer himself) were not all discovered on the same day. Even if a day or an hour is truly distinctive in terms of the extent of progress made, it invariably has the character of taking an already ongoing process to a state of completion—but not of conducting that entire process. Mystical revelation is never a good metaphor to employ in any context—not even in the spiritual matters, let alone in the scientific ones.

Anyway, it’s nice that they didn’t choose Raman’s birth-day for this Day, but instead chose a day that was related to his most famous work in science. Good sense! And easy to remember too: 28-02-’28.

Let me celebrate this year’s Science Day in my own, small, personal way. Let me note down a bit of an update on my research.

1. I have had a bit of a correspondence, regarding my new approach, with a couple of physicists. Several objections were made by them, but to cut a long story short, neither seemed to know how to get into that mode kind of thinking which most naturally leads to my main thesis, and hence helps understand it.

The typical thought process both these physicists displayed was the one which is required in finding analytical solutions of problems of a certain kind, using an analysis of a specific kind. But it is not the kind of thought process which is typically required in the computational modeling of complex phenomena. Let me remind you that my theory is nonlinear in nature. Nonlinearity, in particular, is best approached only computationally—you would be hopelessly out of your wits if you try to find analytical solutions to a nonlinear system. What you should instead pursue is: thinking in terms of the following ingredients: certain objects, an algorithm to manipulate their states, and tracing the run-time evolution of the system. You try this algorithmic way of thinking, and the whole thing (I mean understanding the nature of a nonlinear system) becomes easy. Otherwise, it looks hopelessly complicated, incomprehensible, and therefore, deeply suspicious, if not outright wrong. Both the physicists with who I interacted seemed to be thinking in terms of the linear theory of QM, thereby restricting their thought modes to only the traditional formalism based on the abstract Hilbert-spaces and linear Hermitian operators. Uh oh! Not good. QM is fundamentally nonlinear; the linear formulations of QM are merely approximations to its true nature. No matter how analytically rigorous you can get in the traditional QM, it’s not going to help you understand the true nature of quantum phenomena, simply because a linear system is incapable of throwing much light on the nonlinear system of which it is an approximation.

I believe it was out of this reason—their continuing to think in terms of linear systems defined over hyperspaces and the operator algebra—that one of them raised the objection that if $\Psi$ in MSQM (mainstream QM) is defined on a $3ND$ configuration space, how come my $\Psi(x,t)$ could be defined over the physical $3D$ space. He didn’t realize, even after I supplied the example of the classical $N$-particle molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, that using an abstract higher-dimensional space isn’t the only viable manner in which you can capture the physics of a situation. (And I had indicated right in the Outline document too, that you first try to understand how a Newtonian evolution would work for multiple, charged, point-particles as in classical physics, and only then modify this evolution by introducing the system wavefunction.)

I came to gather that apparently, some people (who follow the Bohmian mechanics doctrine) have tried to find a $3ND \leftrightarrow 3D$ correspondence for a decade, if not more. Apparently, they didn’t succeed. I wonder why, because doing so should be so damn straight-forward (even if it would not be easy). You only have to realize that a configuration space refers to all possible configurations, whereas what an evolution over a $3D$ physical space directly deals with is only one initial configuration at a time. That is what specifying the ICs and the BCs does for you.

In case of MD simulations, you don’t define a function over the entire $3ND$ configuration space in the first place. You don’t try to produce an evolution equation which relies on only those kinds of operators which modify all parts of the entire hyperspace-function in one shot, simultaneously. Since you don’t think in such hyperspace terms in the first place, you also don’t have to think in terms of the projection operators bringing the system dynamics down to $3D$ in particular cases either. You don’t do that in the context of MD simulations, and you don’t do it in the context of my approach either.

This physicist also didn’t want me to say something using analogies and metaphors, and so I didn’t mention it to him, but I guess I can use an analogy here. It will allow even a layman to get a sense of the issue right.

This physicist was insisting on having a map of an entire territory, and was more or less completely dismissing my approach on the grounds that I only supply the surveying instruments like the theodolite and the triangulation algorithm. He expected to see the map—even when a theory is at a fledgling stage. He nevertheless was confident that I was wrong because I was insisting that each physical object in the actual territory is only at one place at any given instant, that it is not spread all over the map. This analogy is not exact, but it is helpful: it does bring out the difference of focusing on only the actually followed trajectory in the configuration space, vs. an insistence on using the entirety of the configuration space for any description of an evolution. But that guy didn’t get this point either. And he wanted equations, not analogies or metaphors.

Little wonder they have not been successful in finding out what logical connection there is between the abstract $3ND$ hyperspace on the one hand, and the $3D$ physical space on the other hand. Little wonder they don’t progress despite having worked on the problem for a decade or so (as this guy himself said).

Yeah, physicists, work harder, I say! [LOL!]

2. Apart from it all—I mean all those “discussions”—I have also realized that there are several errors or confusing explanations in the Outline document which I uploaded at iMechanica on 11th February 2019. Of course, these errors are more minor in nature. There are many, many really important ideas in that document which are not in error.

The crucially important and new ideas which are valid include, just to cite a few aspects: (i) my insistence on using only those potentials that are singularly anchored into the point-particle charges, (ii) the particular nonlinearity I have proposed for the system evolution, (iii) the idea that during a measurement it is the Instrument whose state undergoes a cascade of bifurcations or catastrophic changes, whereas the System state essentially remains the same (that there is no wavefunction collapse). And, many, many other ideas too. These ideas are not only crucial to my approach but they also are absolutely new and original. (Yes, you can be confident about this part, too—else, Americans would have pointed out the existing precedence by now. (They are just looking to find errors in what(ever) I say.)) All these ideas do remain intact. The confusing part or the one having erroneous statements indeed is more minor. It concerns more with how I tried to explain things. And I am working on removing these errors too.

I have also come to realize that I need to explicitly give a set of governing equations, as well as describe the algorithm that could be used in building the simulations. Yes, the physicist had asked me for an evolution equation. I thought that any one, given the Schrodinger equation and my further verbal additions / modifications to it, could easily “get” it. But apparently, he could not. So, yes, I will explicitly write down the evolution equation for my approach, as an equation that is separate from Schrodinger’s. In the next revision of the document (or addition to it) I will not rely on the only implicitly understood constraints or modifications to the TDSE.

3. There also are some other issues which I noticed entirely on my own, and I am working on them.

One such issue concerns the way the kinetic energy is captured in the MSQM vs. how my approach ought to handle and capture it.

In MSQM, the kinetic energy consists of a sum of 1-particle Laplacian operators that refer to particle coordinates. Given the fact that my approach has the wavefunction defined over the $3D$ space, how should this aspect be handled? … By the time I wrote my Outline document (version 11 February 2019), I had not thought a lot about the kinetic energy part. Now, I found out, I have to think really deep about it. May be, I will have to abandon the form of Schrodinger’s equation itself to a further extent. Of course, the energy analysis will progress on the same lines (total energy = kinetic + potential), and the de Broglie relations will have to be honored. But the form of the equation may turn out to be a bit different.

You see, what MSQM does is to represent the particles using only the $\Psi(x,t)$ field. The potential energy sure can be constructed in reference to a set of discrete particle positions even in MSQM, but what the $\hat{V}$ operator then yields is just a single number. (In case of time-dependent potentials, the value of this variable varies in time.) The multiplication by the hyperspace-function $\Psi(x,t)$ then serves to distribute this much amount of energy (that single number) over the entire hyperspace. Now realize that $|\Psi(x,t)|^2$ gives the probability. So, in a way, indirectly, even if you can calculate / compute the potential energy of the system starting from a certain set of particle positions, in the MSQM, you then have to immediately abandon them—the idea of the discrete particles. The MSQM formalism doesn’t need it—the particle positions. You deal only with the hyperspace-occupying $\Psi(x,t)$. The formulation of kinetic energy also refers to only the $\Psi(x,t)$ field. Thus, in MSQM, particles are ultimately represented only via the $\Psi(x,t)$ field. The $\Psi(x,t)$ is the particles.

In contrast, in my approach, the particles are represented directly as point-phenomena, and their positions remain significant throughout. The $\Psi(x,t)$ field of my approach connects, and causally interacts with, the particles. But it does not represent the particles. Ontologically, $\Psi(x,t)$ is basically different from particles, even if the background object does interacts with the particles. Naturally, why should I represent their kinetic energies via the Laplacian terms? … Got the idea? The single number that is the kinetic energy of the particles, need not be regarded as being distributed over the $3D$ space at all, in my approach. But in 11th February version of the Outline document, I did say that the governing equation is only Schrodinger’s. The modifications required to be made to the TDSE on account of the kinetic energy term, is something I had not even thought of, because in writing that version, I was trying focusing on getting as many details regarding the potential energy out as possible. After all, the nonlinear nature of QM occurs due to the potential term, doesn’t it?

So, I need to get issues like these straightened out too.

… All in all, I guess I can say that I am more or less (but not completely) done with the development concerning the spin-less 1-particle systems, esp. the time-independent states. So far, it seems that my approach does work fine with them. Of course, new issues continue to strike me all the time, and I continue finding answers to them as well—as happens in any approach that is completely new. New, right from the stage of the very basic ideation  concerning what kind of objects there should be, in the theory.

I have just about begun looking into the (spin-less) multi-particle states. That is the natural order in which the theory should progress, and my work is tracing just this same path. But as I said, I might also be revising some parts of the earlier presented theory, as and when necessary.

4. I also realized on my own, but only after the interaction with the physicists was already over, that actually, I need not wait for the entire multi-particle theory to get developed before beginning with simulations. In fact, it should be possible to handle some simple 1-particle $1D$ cases like the particle in a box or the QHO (quantum-mechanical oscillator) right away.

I plan to pursue these simulations right in the near future. However, I will not be able to complete pursuing all their aspects in the near future—not even in the simple cases involving just $1D$ simulations. I plan to do a preliminary simulation or two, and then suspend this activity until the time that I land a well-paying job in data science in Pune.

No songs section this time because I happened to post several entries almost back to back here, and in the process, I seem to have used up all the songs that were both new (not run here before) and also on the top of my mind. … May be I will return later and add a song if one strikes me easily.

Bye for now, and have a happy Science Day!

Minor editing may be done later today. Done by 20:15 hrs the same day.

/

# An intermediate update regarding my intermediate development regarding my new approach regarding QM

Update on 2019.10.02, 17:00 IST

I have completed writing (more like somehow filling in the contents for) the alpha version of the outline document. However, it is not at all readable. So, I am not in a position to be able to distribute it even as a private communication. (Talking besides the black-board is so much easier to do!)

By now, the outline document alone runs into 18 pages (some of the contents being repetitive). The background document has become another 12 pages. Editing 30 pages should take at least about a week or so, if not a little more.

So, no promises, but chances are good that both these documents could get finalized and distributed within the next 7 to 10 days.

In the meanwhile, feel free to look for the other things on this blog, and bye for now.

Update over; original post, below the fold.

0. As mentioned here earlier, I have been in the process of writing a point-by-point outline document on my new approach to quantum mechanics.

1. A certain preliminary version of the outline document was completed on the afternoon of 4th February 2019. It is about 10 pages long, and roughly at a pre-alpha stage. Separately, there also has been an additional document covering some of the background material for understanding QM. (An earlier version of this background document was posted here at this blog few days ago—too bad if you never noticed it—bad, for you, that is.) It too has been under expansion and revision; currently it stands at a total of further 10 pages (i.e in addition to the outline document).

2. As things usually go at such a stage (i.e., in the stages before the alpha), certain mistakes (including some basic conceptual errors too) were noticed even in the main document, but only after it was “carefully” completed. Currently, these are being addressed.

3. In case you are wondering about the nature of the inadvertent errors or lacunae:

Contrary to what many people might be expecting from me:

3.1: First, errors or lacunae were mainly found not regarding my new ideas concerning the measurement postulate, but rather with the more philosophical ideas concerning the quantum-physical ontology!

3.2: Second, perhaps then not very surprisingly, lacunae were also found on the more applied side of the QM postulates, especially regarding the many- particles systems and quantum entanglement.

The nature of the lacunae / errors somehow gives me a confidence that the basic ideas of my new approach themselves should be right!

4. Pre-release versions starting from the (upcoming) alpha version could perhaps be made available to select physicists, as a private communication. …

… Of course, it is a different matter altogether that I think that none would be interested in the same. (Indian and American physicists and others think that way, anyway!)

… But still, if interested, drop me a line, and I will consider having you on the distribution list (which is expected not to carry more than 8–10 people at the most, so as to keep my own email communications and the attendant diversions and confusions down to the minimum so that I myself the jobless could at all handle it).

5. The Release Candidate should get posted at iMechanica, but only for the purposes of securing an external “time-stamp”—not so much for the purposes of discussions. (The focus of iMechanica is obviously different; it’s much more on the classical engineering side—which fact I love.)

6. I will try to finish the alpha by this week-end.

The next milestones until the final release (or even the release candidates) will be decided once the alpha is actually at the hand.

7. I will announce the availability of the alpha at this blog via a separate post.

A song I like:

(Hindi) “teraa meraa pyaar amar, phir bhee mujh ko lagataa hai Dar…”
Singer: Lata Mangeshkar
Music: Shankar-Jaikishan
Lyrics: Shailendra

[No specific order is being implied by the order of the credits. … In other words, I can’t decide on it. Not for this song.]

History:

First written on my private machine: Wednesday 06 February 2019 08:35:32 AM IST
First finalized here: Wednesday 06 February 2019 11:31:05 PM IST

/

# Absolutely Random Notings on QM—Part 3: Links to some (really) interesting material, with my comments

The “pride of place” for this post goes to a link to this book:

Norsen, Travis (2017) “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: An Exploration of the Physical Meaning of Quantum Theory,” Springer

This book is (i) the best supplementary book for a self-study of QM, and simultaneously, also (ii) the best text-book on a supplementary course on QM, both at the better-prepared UG / beginning PG level.

A bit expensive though, but extensive preview is available on Google books, here [^]. (I plan to buy it once I land a job.)

I was interested in the material from the first three chapters only, more or less. It was a delight even just browsing through these chapters. I intend to read it more carefully soon enough. But even on the first, rapid browsing, I noticed that several pieces of understanding that I had so painstakingly come to develop (over a period of years) are given quite straight-forwardly here, as if they were a matter of well known facts—even if other QM text-books only cursorily mention them, if at all.

For instance, see the explanation of entanglement here. Norsen begins by identifying that there is a single wavefunction, always—even for a multi-particle system. Then after some explanation, he states: “But, as usual in quantum mechanics, these states do not exhaust the possibilities—instead, they merely form a basis for the space of all possible wave functions. …”… Note the emphasis on the word “basis” which Norsen helpfully puts.

Putting this point (which Norsen discusses with a concrete example), but in my words: There is always a single wavefunction, and for a multi-particle system, its basis is bigger; it consists of the components of the tensor product (formed from the components of the basis of the constituent systems). Sometimes, the single wavefunction for the multi-particle system can be expressed as a result of a single tensor-product (in which case it’s a separable state), and at all other times, only as an algebraic sum of the results of many such tensor-products (in which case they all are entangled states).

Notice how there is no false start of going from two separate systems, and then attempting to forge a single system out of them. Notice how, therefore, there is no hand-waving at one electron being in one galaxy, and another electron in another galaxy, and so on, as if to apologize for the very idea of the separable states. Norsen achieves the correct effect by beginning on the right note: the emphasis on the single wavefunction for the system as a whole to begin with, and then clarifying, at the right place, that what the tensor product gives you is only the basis set for the composite wavefunction.

There are many neat passages like this in the text.

I was about to say that Norsen’s book is the Resnick and Halliday of QM, but then came to hesitate saying so, because I noticed something odd even if my browsing of the book was rapid and brief.

Then I ran into

Ian Durham’s review of Norsen’s book, at the FQXi blog,

which is our link # 2 for this post [^].

Durham helpfully brings out the following two points (which I then verified during a second visit to Norsen’s book): (i) Norsen’s book is not exactly at the UG level, and (ii) the book is a bit partial to Bell’s characterization of the quantum riddles as well as to the Bohmian approach for their resolution.

The second point—viz., Norsen’s fascination for / inclination towards Bell and Bohm (B&B for short)—becomes important only because the book is, otherwise, so good: it carries so many points that are not even passingly mentioned in other QM books, is well written (in a conversational style, as if a speech-to-text translator were skillfully employed), easy to understand, thorough, and overall (though I haven’t read even 25% of it, from whatever I have browsed), it otherwise seems fairly well balanced.

It is precisely because of these virtues that you might come out giving more weightage to the B&B company than is actually due to them.

Keep that warning somewhere at the back of your mind, but do go through the book anyway. It’s excellent.

At Amazon, it has got 5 reader reviews, all with 5 stars. If I were to bother doing a review there, I too perhaps would give it 5 stars—despite its shortcomings/weaknesses. OK. At least 4 stars. But mostly 5 though. … I am in an indeterminate state of their superposition.

… But mark my words. This book will have come to shape (or at least to influence) every good exposition of (i.e. introduction to) the area of the Foundations of QM, in the years to come. [I say that, because I honestly don’t expect a better book on this topic to arrive on the scene all that soon.]

Which brings us to someone who wouldn’t assign the $|4\rangle + |5\rangle$ stars to this book. Namely, Lubos Motl.

If Norsen has moved in the Objectivist circles, and is partial to the B&B company, Motl has worked in the string theory, and is not just partial to it but even today defends it very vigorously—and oddly enough, also looks at that “supersymmetric world from a conservative viewpoint.” More relevant to us: Motl is not partial to the Copenhagen interpretation; he is all the way into it. … Anyway, being merely partial is something you wouldn’t expect from Motl, would you?

But, of course, Motl also has a very strong grasp of QM, and he displays it well (even powerfully) when he writes a post of the title:

“Postulates of quantum mechanics almost directly follow from experiments.” [^]

Err… Why “almost,” Lubos? 🙂

… Anyway, go through Motl’s post, even if you don’t like the author’s style or some of his expressions. It has a lot of educational material packed in it. Chances are, going through Motl’s posts (like the present one) will come to improve your understanding—even if you don’t share his position.

As to me: No, speaking from the new understanding which I have come to develop regarding the foundations of QM [^] and [^], I don’t think that all of Motl’s objections would carry. Even then, just for the sake of witnessing the tight weaving-in of the arguments, do go through Motl’s post.

Finally, a post at the SciAm blog:

“Coming to grips with the implications of quantum mechanics,” by Bernardo Kastrup, Henry P. Stapp, and Menas C. Kafatos, [^].

The authors say:

“… Taken together, these experiments [which validate the maths of QM] indicate that the everyday world we perceive does not exist until observed, which in turn suggests—as we shall argue in this essay—a primary role for mind in nature.”

No, it didn’t give me shivers or something. Hey, this is QM and its foundations, right? I am quite used to reading such declarations.

Except that, as I noted a few years ago on Scott Aaronson’s blog [I need to dig up and insert the link here], and then, recently, also at

Roger Schlafly’s blog [^],

you don’t need QM in order to commit the error of inserting consciousness into a physical theory. You can accomplish exactly the same thing also by using just the Newtonian particle mechanics in your philosophical arguments. Really.

Yes, I need to take that reply (at Schlafly’s blog), edit it a bit and post it as a separate entry at this blog. … Some other time.

For now, I have to run. I have to continue working on my approach so that I am able to answer the questions raised and discussed by people such as those mentioned in the links. But before that, let me jot down a general update.

A general update:

Oh, BTW, I have taken my previous QM-related post off the top spot.

That doesn’t mean anything. In particular, it doesn’t mean that after reading into materials such as that mentioned here, I have found some error in my approach or something like that. No. Not at all.

All it means is that I made it once again an ordinary post, not a sticky post. I am thinking of altering the layout of this blog, by creating a page that highlights that post, as well as some other posts.

But coming back to my approach: As a matter of fact, I have also written emails to a couple of physicists, one from IIT Bombay, and another from IISER Pune. However, things have not worked out yet—things like arranging for an informal seminar to be delivered by me to their students, or collaborating on some QM-related simulations together. (I could do the simulations on my own, but for the seminar, I would need an audience! One of them did reply, but we still have to shake our hands in the second round.)

In the meanwhile, I go jobless, but I keep myself busy. I am preparing a shortish set of write-ups / notes which could be used as a background material when (at some vague time in future) I go and talk to some students, say at IIT Bombay/IISER Pune. It won’t be comprehensive. It will be a little more than just a white-paper, but you couldn’t possibly call it even just the preliminary notes for my new approach. Such preliminary notes would come out only after I deliver a seminar or two, to physics professors + students.

At the time of delivering my proposed seminar, links like those I have given above, esp. Travis Norsen’s book, also should prove a lot useful.

But no, I haven’t seen something like my approach being covered anywhere, so far, not even Norsen’s book. There was a vague mention of just a preliminary part of it somewhere on Roger Schlafly’s blog several years ago, only once or so, but I can definitely say that I had already had grasped even that point on my own before Schlafly’s post came. And, as far as I know, Schlafly hasn’t come to pursue that thread at all, any time later…

But speaking overall, at least as of today, I think I am the only one who has pursued this (my) line of thought to the extent I have [^].

So, there. Bye for now.

I Song I Like:
(Hindi) “suno gajar kya gaaye…”
Singer: Geeta Dutt
Music: S. D. Burman
Lyrics: Sahir Ludhianvi
[There are two Geeta’s here, and both are very fascinating: Geeta Dutt in the audio, and Geeta Bali in the video. Go watch it; even the video is recommended.]

As usual, some editing after even posting, would be inevitable.

Some updates made and some streamlining done on 30 July 2018, 09:10 hrs IST.

# Yes I know it!—Part 2

This post directly continues from my last post. The content here was meant to be an update to my last post, but it grew, and so, I am noting it down as a separate post in its own right.

Thought about it [I mean my last post] a lot last night and this morning. I think here is a plan of action I can propose:

I can deliver a smallish, informally conducted, and yet, “official” sort of a seminar/talk/guest lecture, preferably at an IIT/IISER/IISc/similar institute. No honorarium is expected; just arrange for my stay. (That too is not necessary if it will be IIT Bombay; I can then stay with my friend; he is a professor in an engineering department there.)

Once arranged by mutual convenience, I will prepare some lecture notes (mostly hand-written), and deliver the content. (I guess at this stage, I will not prepare Beamer slides, though I might include some audio-visual content such as simulations etc.)

Questions will be OK, even encouraged, but the format will be that of a typical engineering class-room lecture. Discussions would be perfectly OK, but only after I finish talking about the “syllabus” first.

The talk should preferably be attended also by a couple of PhD students or so (of physics/engineering physics/any really relevant discipline, whether it’s acknowledged as such by UGC/AICTE or not). They should separately take down their notes and show me these later. This will help me understand where and how I should modify my notes. I will then myself finalize my notes, perhaps a few days after the talk, and send these by email. At that stage, I wouldn’t mind posting the notes getting posted on the ‘net.

Guess I will think a bit more about it, and note about my willingness to deliver the talk also at iMechanica. The bottom-line is that I am serious about this whole thing.

A few anticipated questions and their answers (or clarifications):

1. What I have right now is, I guess, sufficient to stake a claim. But I have not taken the research to sufficiently advanced stage that I can say that I have all the clarifications worked out. It’s far more than just a sketchy conceptual idea, and does have a lot of maths too, but it’s less than, say, a completely worked out (or series of) mathematical theory. (My own anticipation is that if I can do just a series of smaller but connected mathematical models/simulations, it should be enough as my personal contribution to this new approach.)
2. No, as far as QM is concerned, the approach I took in my PhD time publications is not at all relevant. I have completely abandoned that track (I mean to say as far as QM is concerned).
3. However, my PhD time research on the diffusion equation has been continuing, and I am happy to announce that it has by now reached such a certain stage of maturation/completion that I should be writing another paper(s) on it any time now. I am happy that something new has come out of some 10+ years of thought on that issue, after my PhD-time work. Guess I could now send the PhD time conference paper to a journal, and then cover the new developments in this line in continuation with that one.
4. Coming back to QM: Any one else could have easily got to the answers I have. But no, to the best of my knowledge, none else actually has. However, it does seem to me now that time is becoming ripe, and not to stake a claim at least now could be tantamount to carelessness on my part.
5. Yes, my studies of philosophy, especially Ayn Rand’s ITOE (and Peikoff’s explanations of that material in PO and UO) did help me a lot, but all that is in a more general sense. Let me put it this way: I don’t think that I would have had to know (or even plain be conversant with) ITOE to be able to formulate these new answers to the QM riddles. And certainly, ITOE wouldn’t at all be necessary to understand my answers; the general level of working epistemology still is sufficiently good in physics (and more so, in engineering) even today.  At the same time, let me tell you one thing: QM is very vast, general, fundamental, and abstract. I guess you would have to be a “philosophizing” sort of a guy. Only then could you find this continuous and long preoccupation with so many deep and varied abstractions, interesting enough. Only then could the foundations of QM interest you. Not otherwise.
6. To formulate answers, my natural proclivity to have to keep on looking for “physical” processes/mechanisms/objects for every mathematical idea I encounter, did help. But you wouldn’t have to have the same proclivity, let alone share my broad convictions, to be able to understand my answers. In other words, you could be a mathematical Platonist, and yet very easily come to understand the nature of my answers (and perhaps even come to agree with my positions)!
7. To arrange for my proposed seminar/talk is to agree to be counted as a witness (for any future issues related to priority). But that’s strictly in the usual, routine, day-to-day academic sense of the term. (To wit, see how people interact with each other at a journal club in a university, or, say, at iMechanica.)
8. But, to arrange for my talk is not to be willing to certify or validate its content. Not at all.
9. With that being said, since this is India, let me also state a relevant concern. Don’t call me over just to show me down or ridicule me either. (It doesn’t happen in seminar talks, but it does happen during job interviews in Pune. It did happen to me in my COEP interview. It got repeated, in a milder way, in other engineering colleges in SPPU (the Pune University). So I have no choice but to note this part separately.)
10. Once again, the issue is best clarified by giving the example. Check out how people treated me at iMechanica. If you are at an IIT/IISc/similar institute/university and are willing to treat me similarly, then do think of calling me over.

More, may be later. I will sure note my willingness to deliver a seminar at an IIT (or at a good University department) or so, at iMechanica also, soon enough. But right now I don’t have the time, and have to rush out. So let me stop here. Bye for now, and take care… (I would add a few more tags to the post-categories later on.)