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Quantumental
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In the past decade there has been a blossoming of all kinds of interpretations and variations of interpretations of quantum theory. Recently an outlier has entered the picture more and more, namely the retrocausal view which aims to tackle the measurement problem and no go theorems by taking the blocktime / B-theory of time we got from special relativity very seriously. In the retrocausal interpretation the future and the past together has an influence over the present in a deterministic fashion.
Retrocausality gives us locality and causality without violating Bell inequalities in exchange for accepting that the future can affect the present. Now as with pretty much everything that is even remotely related to quantum mechanics, this makes your head hurt. But I would argue that it is no more weird than the idea of indeterministic random manifestations of reality, consciousness collapsing a mythical wavefunction, the universe splitting into infinite worlds, spooky action at a distance, anti-realism or any of the other ways of thinking of the quantum world.
A version of this view is called two state vector formalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_vector_formalism) that has been fleshed out by Yakir Aharanov, which eventually lead to the theory of weak measurements. However this idea of retrocausality had already been considered by Feynman, Wheeler, Watanbe and others before. Other models have been constructed, specifically Huw Price and Ken Wharton (as well as others) has contributed greatly to this view, which they've developed in numerous papers over the years.The latest of which was put up on arxiv just a few weeks ago and can be read here: http://www.ijqf.org/
While the retrocausal approach has been known for over half a century and been at least considered by most of the "titans of QM", it's first in the recent years it has gained coverage. In 2014 there were quite a few good articles written for laymen about this. This is a good one: http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/the-quantum-mechanics-of-fate.
Another big event for retrocausality took place in 2014; A conference stretching over 4 days were held where most of the quantum foundations researchers and thinkers gathered with different presentations and held stimulating discussions on this topic. Some arguing for, some being agnostic, some raising critical questions. One thing is for sure, there are quite a lot of the core of quantum foundations that are starting to take this view very seriously. It parallels what happened to the Many Worlds interpretation in the mid-00s with the Everett@50 conference, which spawned a lot of popular media coverage as well as interesting debates, which made people take it seriously. But this time around, it's literally times time to be picked apart and studied intensively.
All the talks from this conference can be viewed here: https://newagendasstudyoftime.wordpress.com/events/retrocausality-conference/
As with all interpretations, there is no single experiment that can prove/disprove any retrocausal model, at least not yet, but there are those who make the argument that the delayed-eraser experiment and partial/weak measurements give creedence to and is most naturally interpreted via the retrocausal view. Such argumentation can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-backwards/ and here http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/proceeding/aipcp/10.1063/1.3663720
I personally think it's time to take a deeper look at time...
Retrocausality gives us locality and causality without violating Bell inequalities in exchange for accepting that the future can affect the present. Now as with pretty much everything that is even remotely related to quantum mechanics, this makes your head hurt. But I would argue that it is no more weird than the idea of indeterministic random manifestations of reality, consciousness collapsing a mythical wavefunction, the universe splitting into infinite worlds, spooky action at a distance, anti-realism or any of the other ways of thinking of the quantum world.
A version of this view is called two state vector formalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_vector_formalism) that has been fleshed out by Yakir Aharanov, which eventually lead to the theory of weak measurements. However this idea of retrocausality had already been considered by Feynman, Wheeler, Watanbe and others before. Other models have been constructed, specifically Huw Price and Ken Wharton (as well as others) has contributed greatly to this view, which they've developed in numerous papers over the years.The latest of which was put up on arxiv just a few weeks ago and can be read here: http://www.ijqf.org/
While the retrocausal approach has been known for over half a century and been at least considered by most of the "titans of QM", it's first in the recent years it has gained coverage. In 2014 there were quite a few good articles written for laymen about this. This is a good one: http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/the-quantum-mechanics-of-fate.
Another big event for retrocausality took place in 2014; A conference stretching over 4 days were held where most of the quantum foundations researchers and thinkers gathered with different presentations and held stimulating discussions on this topic. Some arguing for, some being agnostic, some raising critical questions. One thing is for sure, there are quite a lot of the core of quantum foundations that are starting to take this view very seriously. It parallels what happened to the Many Worlds interpretation in the mid-00s with the Everett@50 conference, which spawned a lot of popular media coverage as well as interesting debates, which made people take it seriously. But this time around, it's literally times time to be picked apart and studied intensively.
All the talks from this conference can be viewed here: https://newagendasstudyoftime.wordpress.com/events/retrocausality-conference/
As with all interpretations, there is no single experiment that can prove/disprove any retrocausal model, at least not yet, but there are those who make the argument that the delayed-eraser experiment and partial/weak measurements give creedence to and is most naturally interpreted via the retrocausal view. Such argumentation can be found here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-backwards/ and here http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/proceeding/aipcp/10.1063/1.3663720
I personally think it's time to take a deeper look at time...
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