Thanks, Eliezer, and fair enough, but in the context of “Hello! You may have been directed to this page because you said something along the lines of Science has disproved the idea of an objective reality,” …
I’m not sure how the Seed article on Zeilinger’s work fits in here:
“But whereas Bell’s work could not distinguish between realism and locality, Leggett’s did. The two could be tested.”
“If quantum mechanics described the data, then the lights’ polarizations didn’t exist before being measured. Realism in quantum mechanics would be untenable.”
“The data defied the predictions of Leggett’s model by three orders of magnitude. Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured.”
“Leggett agrees with Zeilinger that realism is wrong in quantum mechanics …”
“Late last year Brukner and Kofler showed that it does not matter how many particles are around, or how large an object is, quantum mechanics always holds true.” (Macrorealism)
“It could very well be that the distinction we make between information and reality is wrong. This is not saying that everything is just information. But it is saying that we need a new concept that encompasses or includes both.” (Zeilinger)
Just looking for an orientation from a layperson-with-some-physics-background perspective trying to resolve an apparent difference (if not contradiction).
I had a feeling it would come down to “it depends what you mean by realism” even though (1) realism as “preexisting properties” seems to have been disproved on a quantum level and (2) macrorealism apparently also fails.
So I’m supposed to ignore Leggett and Zeilinger? I did go read Quantum Non-Realism and came away non-enlightened, largely because of the use of the word “consciousness” which seems to be as fuzzy for physicists as quantum reality is for philosophers.
I don’t think Zeilinger was “philosophizing”—they were trying to hire an actual philospher.