Beables and Changeables

8 January 2003

Quantum mechanics is just plain weird. I don’t really understand it at all, partly because of the strange nature of the probabilities in QM. They certainly seem to fit observation (so physicists say), but what do they mean? Well, it just might be that they are traditional probabilities after all. That is, Gerard ’t Hooft has proposed a new deterministic interpretation of QM which makes sense of all of the numbers. Nature has an elementary article about it, and the preprint is available for the hard-core physicists among you. It looks neat from here, but as I have said, I don’t really understand the details. Those of you who do, let me know: does this account avoid the usual objections to “hidden variables”?

about

I’m Greg Restall, and this is my personal website. ¶ I am the Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and the Director of the Arché Philosophical Research Centre for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology ¶ I like thinking about – and helping other people think about – logic and philosophy and the many different ways they can inform each other.

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