Recently, the far-flung QBism discussion group nominally centered at UMass Boston has been conversing about Carlo Rovelli’s relational interpretation of quantum mechanics. Trying to think all this through halfway clearly, I wrote some notes. They don’t seem to be moving in the direction of a paper, and they’re too chatty for the arXiv even by my standards, so this seems the best place to host them.
EDIT TO ADD (8 September): To my surprise, I was able to edit those notes in the direction of being a paper. A few items came out after my post which lifted the burden of discussing certain topics and let a theme come together. Accordingly, see arXiv:2109.03186.
One thing I just don’t get is people proclaiming “the End of Physics”. Like “the End of History”, it’s a very mockable phrase! Folks will be going, “Oh, our giant colliders haven’t found any surprises in years, and we never figured out an experiment to test string theory, so everyone’s drifting into quantum information and exotic condensed-matter physics, truly this is the sunset of an era.”
And I’m all, “So, instead of testing one effective field theory by putting matter into extreme conditions, you’re testing … multiple … effective field theories … by putting matter into extreme conditions.” I’m making my astonished face, can’t you tell?
"no matter how gifted, you alone cannot change the world"
