Saturday, July 1, 2023

Sabina Hassenfelder. Existential Physics.

 Very serious and accurately researched book. Some statements are questionable and open to discussion. For instance, her denial of the free will contains multiple caveats of "occasional" quantum phenomena, which, she asserts are totally independent on the mind. Sure, but the mind is not independent on them. Quantum phenomena are not "occasional". They are the very fabric of reality. Only when we look at "coarse-grained" (another of her favorite words) reality, we observe the classical world. 

    Her figure Fig. 11 is thus plain wrong. The picture must look something like... 



The problem is that, by observation, one cannot establish an initial state, even in principle, because some of the intermediate states could have been entangled and later experienced decoherence. One can only establish distribution of probabilities and exclude some eventualities. For instance, one can safely assume that Martin Luther, the author of the "Slavery of the Will" was not born in Peru and was not influenced by Inca society and culture. 

    Another problem with her narrative. Having a perfect description of something is different from the ability to recreate the object. No amount of technical documentation on Boeing 747 can deliver her from Frankfurt to LA. 

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