The Difference Between Relativistic Quantum Field Theory and Well-Made Physics

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I'm not completely surprised because both you and I have written papers about energy conservation and its failure in quantum mechanics, which anyone could have done in the 1950s. But is this a fact that you're talking about now, would it be a difference between well-made mechanics and other formulations of quantum? Or is it just that you can't ask the question?Yeah, it's a little hard to say because, and again, I'm now just reporting what Sid Hunt tells me and he's done all the research. He says, if you go into the standard physics literature about arrival times, you'll find 20 different suggestions about how to do it. They tend to agree with each other

Last year's Nobel Prize for experimental tests of Bell's Theorem was the first Nobel in the foundations of quantum mechanics since Max Born in 1954. Quantum foundations is enjoying a bit of a resurgence, inspired in part by improving quantum technology but also by a realization that understanding quantum mechanics might help with other problems in physics (and be important in its own right). Tim Maudlin is a leading philosopher of physics and also a skeptic of the Everett interpretation. We discuss the logic behind hidden-variable approaches such as Bohmian mechanics, and also the broader question of the importance of the foundations of physics.

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Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/06/26/241-tim-maudlin-on-locality-hidden-variables-and-quantum-foundations/

Tim Maudlin received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently a professor of philosophy at New York University. He is a member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow. He is the founder and director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics in Croatia.

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