[extropy-chat] RE: Shadows of reality

[scerir at libero.it]

> In Bell's collected works on Quantum Mechanics "Speakable and
> Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics" published just before Bell
> died, he had not rejected Bohm.  The book you quoted from was
> an earlier work, which I have not read.  I would find it strange if
> Bell had rejected Bohm based on a careful reading of the later book.
> He called it a scandal within physics that Bohm's work is not being
> taught along side the standard QM approach.
> Dennis May

Einstein, after a very hot "tea-time" examination of Bohm's (realistic 
but non local) theory, said it was "cheap". And Bohm said that Einstein 
destroyed him, that afternoon (in Princeton I suppose). (Einstein himself
elaborated, in the late '20s a deterministic-hidden-variable theory, never
published, but rejected it exactly because it was non-local, rectius
"non-separable", thus useless for his purpose).

The problem concerning John Bell is that Everettistas say he was
a manyworlder, Bohmians say he was a realist of that kind,, even
Bohrians say he was a Copenhagenist since he wrote about measurement
that "the word has had such a damaging effect [that] it should be
banned altogether in quantum mechanics".

The late Bell liked the GWR approach, the "spontaneous
localizations theory (because it was relativistic,
on the contrary Bohmian mechanics is not so).

A good book, about Bell and his work, and future developments, is 
"Quantum Reflections", eds. Ellis and Amati, Cambridge U.P., 2000.