This week there's been an apparent exchange between some fairly high-profile media:
People like Sean Carroll are a bit like an analogue of an anti-vaxxer promoter for physics. It's really a shame because his general relativity textbook is genuinely good.
New York Times: Even Physicists Don't Understand Quantum Mechanics: Worse, they don't seem to want to understand it.
Quanta: Where Quantum Probability Comes From
Forbes: Quantum Physics Is Fine, Human Bias About Reality Is The Real Problem
IMHO the only one with a lick of sense is the Forbes article:Quanta: Where Quantum Probability Comes From
Forbes: Quantum Physics Is Fine, Human Bias About Reality Is The Real Problem
What's somewhat interesting to me is less the particular exchange itself, but it being the latest events in the increasing trend of the sort of anti-quantum quackery being addressed directly to the popular audience, making it very transparently a vehicle for self-promotion and making money. There is no genuine experiment and the research programme is still completely sterile, so over the last few decades, drumming up popular appeal is necessary to justify their existence.Forbes said:... The idea that there is a fundamental, objective, observer-independent reality is an assumption with no evidence behind it, just thousands upon thousands of years of our intuition telling us "it should be so."
But science does not exist to show that reality conforms to our biases and prejudices and opinions; it seeks to uncover the nature of reality irrespective of our biases. If we really want to understand quantum mechanics, the goal should be more about letting go of our biases and embracing what the Universe tells us about itself. Instead, Carroll regressively campaigns for the opposite in teasing his upcoming new book. Unsurprisingly, most physicists are underwhelmed.
People like Sean Carroll are a bit like an analogue of an anti-vaxxer promoter for physics. It's really a shame because his general relativity textbook is genuinely good.