: If everything's a wave, then many of these bizarre
: conclusions follow, at least for the epistemological
: (how I know about it) question, and maybe for the
: ontological (what's really there) question. But why
: should I think EVERYTHING'S a wave? It's not enough to
: have examples of several things that I thought weren't
: waves acting like waves. I'm perfectly prepared to
: think many things are really waves even though they
: don't appear to be on everyday macro-level perception.
: That doesn't lead me to everything's a wave.
Nor should it. It's your personal philosophical choice as to what's "really" going on. You can believe that a perfectly deterministic universe exists side-by-side with our own, or anything else you want. All QM says is that any deterministic processes that are going on are hidden from our perception, and do not directly affect the universe we can see.
Of course, one of the philosophical problems with science is that it can't *really* refer to the perceived universe, at least at anywhere near our level of knowledge. If it did, you could violate the inverse-square gravity law by taking LSD until stuff appeared to be floating.
So you have to take science as referring to "the ideal perceived universe, the one you perceive if you're not insane or on drugs," or something like that. A universe sort of midway between our actual perceptions and the hypothetical "real world." Which is obviously unsatisfying, but what can you do? Bertrand Russell suggested creating a universal science which would take your direct sensory perceptions and emotions as data and output the predicted sensory perceptions and emotions you'll feel shortly, but we're a hell of a long way from that.
: But suppose I do accept the conclusion that everything's
: a wave. Maybe that's like accepting that the answer to
: Life, the Universe and Everything is 42. I can know
: the words 'everything's a wave', and have no idea how
: that translate into a difference in the world, even
: though I know what the words mean. We all know what 42
: means, right? But do we have any idea what it means
: that 42 is the answer to Life, the Universe and
: Everything?
Well, they didn't have the question, did they? We do. "What is everything?" "Everything's a wave." Seems perfectly clear to me. :-)
--SiliconDream
