Did ey? As far as I know, ey continued to resist quantum mechanics (in its ultimate form) for eir entire life, and eir attempts to create a unified field theory led to nothing (or almost nothing).
I feel like I’m walking into a trap, but here we go anyway.
Einstein disagreed with some very specific parts of QM (or “QM as it was understood at the time”), but also embraced large parts of it. Furthermore, on the parts Einstein disagreed with there is still to this day ongoing confusion/disagreement/lack of consensus (or, if you ask me, plain mistakes being made) among physicists. Discussing interpretations of QM in general and Einstein’s role in them in particular would take way too long but let me just offer that, despite popular media exaggerations, with minimal charitable reading it is not clear that he was wrong about QM.
I know far less about Einstein’s work on a unified field theory, but if we’re willing to treat absence of evidence as evidence of absence here then that is a fair mark against his record.
It seems that Einstein was just factually wrong, since ey did not expect the EPR paradox to be empirically confirmed (which only happened after eir death), but intended it as a reductio ad absurdum. Of course, thinking of the paradox did contribute to our understanding of QM, in which sense Einstein played a positive role here, paradoxically.
Yes, I think you’re right. Personally I think this is where the charitable reading comes in. I’m not aware of Einstein specifically stating that there have to be hidden variables in QM, only that he explicitly disagreed with the nonlocality (in the sense of general relativity) of Copenhagen. In the absence of experimental proof that hidden variables is wrong (through the EPR experiments) I think hidden variables was the main contender for a “local QM”, but all the arguments I can find Einstein supporting are more general/philosophical than this. In my opinion most of these criticisms still apply to the Copenhagen Interpretation as we understand it today, but instead of supporting hidden variables they now support [all modern local QM interpretations] instead.
Or more abstractly: Einstein backed a category of theories, and the main contender of that category has been solidly busted (ongoing debate about hidden variables blah blah blah I disagree). But even today I think other theories in that pool still come ahead of Copenhagen in likelihood, so his support of the category as a whole is justified.
experimental proof that hidden variables is wrong (through the EPR experiments)
Local hidden variable theories were disproved. But that is not at all surprising given that QM is IMHO non-local, as per Einstein’s “spooky nonlocality”.
It is interesting that often even when Einstein was wrong, he was fruitful. His biggest mistake, as he saw it, was the cosmological constant, now referred to as dark energy. Nietzsche would have approved.
On QM his paper led to Bell’s theorem and real progress. Even though his claim was wrong.
While I don’t object to the overall statement that gender pronouns are likely to be net harmful, I do find sentences without them a lot harder to read, and the switching cost has proven to be quite significant to me (i.e. I think it takes me about twice as much time to parse a sentence with non-standard pronouns, and I don’t think I have any levers of changing that faster than just getting used to it, and in the absence of widespread consensus on a specific alternative I expect that cost to mostly just continue accruing because I can’t ever get used to just a small subset of non-standard pronouns).
Depending on your values it might still be worth it for you to use them, but I do think it roughly doubles the cost of reading something (relatively short) for me. I am much more used to singular “they” so if you use that, I expect the cost to be more like 1.2 or, which seems much less bad.
Did ey? As far as I know, ey continued to resist quantum mechanics (in its ultimate form) for eir entire life, and eir attempts to create a unified field theory led to nothing (or almost nothing).
I feel like I’m walking into a trap, but here we go anyway.
Einstein disagreed with some very specific parts of QM (or “QM as it was understood at the time”), but also embraced large parts of it. Furthermore, on the parts Einstein disagreed with there is still to this day ongoing confusion/disagreement/lack of consensus (or, if you ask me, plain mistakes being made) among physicists. Discussing interpretations of QM in general and Einstein’s role in them in particular would take way too long but let me just offer that, despite popular media exaggerations, with minimal charitable reading it is not clear that he was wrong about QM.
I know far less about Einstein’s work on a unified field theory, but if we’re willing to treat absence of evidence as evidence of absence here then that is a fair mark against his record.
It seems that Einstein was just factually wrong, since ey did not expect the EPR paradox to be empirically confirmed (which only happened after eir death), but intended it as a reductio ad absurdum. Of course, thinking of the paradox did contribute to our understanding of QM, in which sense Einstein played a positive role here, paradoxically.
Yes, I think you’re right. Personally I think this is where the charitable reading comes in. I’m not aware of Einstein specifically stating that there have to be hidden variables in QM, only that he explicitly disagreed with the nonlocality (in the sense of general relativity) of Copenhagen. In the absence of experimental proof that hidden variables is wrong (through the EPR experiments) I think hidden variables was the main contender for a “local QM”, but all the arguments I can find Einstein supporting are more general/philosophical than this. In my opinion most of these criticisms still apply to the Copenhagen Interpretation as we understand it today, but instead of supporting hidden variables they now support [all modern local QM interpretations] instead.
Or more abstractly: Einstein backed a category of theories, and the main contender of that category has been solidly busted (ongoing debate about hidden variables blah blah blah I disagree). But even today I think other theories in that pool still come ahead of Copenhagen in likelihood, so his support of the category as a whole is justified.
Local hidden variable theories were disproved. But that is not at all surprising given that QM is IMHO non-local, as per Einstein’s “spooky nonlocality”.
It is interesting that often even when Einstein was wrong, he was fruitful. His biggest mistake, as he saw it, was the cosmological constant, now referred to as dark energy. Nietzsche would have approved.
On QM his paper led to Bell’s theorem and real progress. Even though his claim was wrong.
The question is QM is local or not is precisely what is still up for debate.
Off topic but… Is there something I don’t know about Einstein’s preferred pronouns? Did he prefer ey and eir over he and him?
Oh, I just use the pronoun “ey” for everyone. IMO the entire concept of gendered pronouns is net harmful.
While I don’t object to the overall statement that gender pronouns are likely to be net harmful, I do find sentences without them a lot harder to read, and the switching cost has proven to be quite significant to me (i.e. I think it takes me about twice as much time to parse a sentence with non-standard pronouns, and I don’t think I have any levers of changing that faster than just getting used to it, and in the absence of widespread consensus on a specific alternative I expect that cost to mostly just continue accruing because I can’t ever get used to just a small subset of non-standard pronouns).
Depending on your values it might still be worth it for you to use them, but I do think it roughly doubles the cost of reading something (relatively short) for me. I am much more used to singular “they” so if you use that, I expect the cost to be more like 1.2 or, which seems much less bad.