Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different First Edition, Kindle Edition

Among all intellectual matters, the interpretation of quantum mechanics is for me the most interesting subject there is. This was true when I studied physics, which I left for a different career in part because I care very much about what QM means (kind of the point of learning physics) but discovered that ‘shut up and calculate’ was the standard interpretation when I went in school in the ‘70s. Yet the subject remains so compelling that I’ve spent a lot of time during the last 25 years keeping up. Now that the foundations of quantum theory are a reputable subject, there is a lot of literature to study in addition to popularizations like Beyond Weird.One interesting thing about quantum interpretation is the psychological or sociological fact that there are quite a few incompatible views, each held by many highly intelligent, thoughtful people who sort into a number of incompatible camps. There are older anti-realist views like Copenhagen, their descendants the ‘Psi-epistemic’ views that focus on information, and at least three ‘Psi-realistic’ camps – Bohm, objective collapse and Everett – where the last two come in multiple flavors.Beyond Weird surveys this landscape, which one would hope of any such book, but Ball has a definite preference. As he says: ‘I believe that most if not all of the thinking I have discussed in this book has converged, in one way or another, on this question: what is and is not permitted about information?’ He is clearly in the epistemic, information-focused camp.What makes it difficult to write a review of Beyond Weird, but also motivates me to write one, is that I am a confident, committed, died-in-the-wool Everettian, where that is the realist interpretation that Ball expends the greatest amount of effort arguing against. My challenge here is to resist launching into a long panegyric in favor of the Everett interpretation and a polemic refuting all of Ball’s arguments against it.In favor of Ball, he clearly understands the physics and is an excellent writer. Would I recommend his book? Yes, for those who are spending some effort on quantum interpretations and have read, or are going to read, other authors to develop a broad view of the subject. I cannot recommend it to people for whom this will be their only read on the subject, simply because I believe the book’s conclusions are wrong! Because of this I can give it no more than four stars.Another recent book that has sometimes been reviewed together with Ball’s is Adam Becker’s ‘What is Real?’ Becker takes a more historical, sociological (kind of Kuhnian) approach toward the development of quantum interpretation since its inception. In contrast to Ball he is partial to realism, although he remains agnostic between the three realist camps mentioned earlier. I enjoyed his book. Also, Sean Carroll (Caltech physicist) is coming out with a popularization this September entitled ‘Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime.’ I’m going to love it – I hear it’s mainly an argument for the Everett interpretation.For what it’s worth, I will offer a reading list for those who really want to take a serious crack at quantum foundations. First, if you’re not familiar with quantum mechanics try ‘Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum’ by Leonard Susskind. Then go to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online) and read all their articles listed under Quantum Mechanics and then under Quantum Theory. These have long bibliographies, mainly of philosophy journal articles. Great reading lists across the philosophy of physics can be found by Googling ‘David Wallace USC’ and going to his website. Wallace is in my opinion the best professional philosopher of physics hands down, while Sean Carroll is the best philosophy writer among practicing physicists, where Max Tegmark comes in second. Wallace’s reading lists of books and articles are very thorough and evenhanded, covering the spectrum of interpretations, although in fairness he is the most vocal exponent of the Everett interpretation among philosophers. In general, free versions of most journal articles can be found on the authors’ websites, through Google Scholar, or on the University of Pittsburgh PhilSci preprint archive. All this reading will provide an even-handed rundown of the state of play in the field. It should keep you busy for a couple years. Happy reading!

This is a review of the Kindle edition of “Beyond Weird”, the format was easy to read.The book comes with a comprehensive bibliography which appears to be useful. It also has a good index.I imagine that the book will appeal to students and educated laymen alike.I found it absorbing and interesting. Hence the 5 stars. I will be rereading it and following up on some items in the bibliography.Firstly, this is not about how quantum mechanics is weirder than you ever thought. If you don’t know quantum mechanics (QM) is weird, it would be a good idea to introduce yourself to the history of the subject; you will see why It has this reputation.Neither is this a book from which you might teach yourself QM. You should seek out another if that is what you need. The book contains no mathematics or equations. It is an ideas book in which Ball provides the reader with an excellent account of the state of play as of 2018. I use the words “complex Hilbert space” in a quote from the book below. It is neither necessary to know what a complex Hilbert space is to read the book (or understand my review!) nor is it the case that if you know what this is then the book is a waste of time for you.Bohr and Einstein could not agree on what, if any reality underlay QM. It may be tempting (justifiably so) to give up, abandon further inquiry and dismiss QM as “weird”. After all, it remains true that attending “any meeting about the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics is like being in a holy city in great tumult. You will find all the religions with all their priests pitted in holy war”. The priests agree on the foundational scriptures, but they diverge on the interpretation. The experts are not of one mind. Ball invites us to go “Beyond” our concern with weirdness and bring ourselves up to date with current thinking about what the theory means. What underlying reality if any, does Schrödinger’s equation describe or even hint at?Paradoxes which have illuminated difficulties with the subject have been with us for many years. Schrödinger's Cat (is it, could it be, both dead and alive?) and the EPR paradox (does “quantum entanglement” entail instantaneous action at a distance, breaking relativity?) are amongst the conceptually difficult ideas tackled here.Interpretations of QM are explained and evaluated. We are taken through Bohr's (the Schrödinger equation tells us all that can be known) Everett and Deutsch's (many worlds interpretation), Qbism (an even stronger reliance Schrödinger than Bohr) and others. Currently, attempts are being made to find satisfying axiomatic foundations; some are described here. The motivation behind this can be appreciated if we compare an example of a “standard” set for QM like:“1. For every system there is a complex Hilbert space H.2. States of the system correspond to projection operators onto H.3. Those things that are observable somehow correspond to the eigenprojectors of Hermitian operators.4. Isolated systems evolve according to the Schrödinger equation.”with the laws of motion underlying Newtonian mechanics:“1. Every object keeps moving at the same speed if no force is applied to it. If it is still to begin with, it stays still.2. If a force is applied to an object, it accelerates in direct proportion to that force, and in the direction of that force.”3. For every force that one body exerts on another, the other body exerts an equal force back in the opposite direction.”Ball points out that given the difference in the language in the two sets of axioms, it is not surprising that there is a push for a quantum reconstruction.He describes an informational approach to QM and why it is seen as potentially fruitful given the peculiarities and limitations of types of information available from quantum systems.I get the impression that the informational approach is his favourite. A substantial minority of practitioners in the field still favour Bohr's view. Ball is harshest with the many worlds interpretation.To repeat, I found this to be an excellent survey which has equiped me to venture deeper into the alleyways of that tumultuous city, listen to the priests and perhaps form an opinion of my own on the merits of their competing interpretations.

"Beyond Weird", despite its cheesy title, makes a good impression from the very start. Ball is an engaging writer who knows his stuff and doesn't patronise the reader. It's like he's talking to a curious colleague who uses quantum theory (a chemist or applied physicist, for example) but doesn't research it. The tone would work well for a recent physics graduate or someone in the final stages of their QM course.The problem with quantum mechanics is that the mathematics makes plenty of sense in itself (Schrödinger's equation and its many solutions in concrete circumstances such as the structure and behaviour of the hydrogen atom, for example) but the many constructs of the theoretical apparatus don't align with any compelling concept of 'reality'. To properly engage with the 'interpretation problem' you have to understand the maths, which means taking a course first.Before I studied quantum mechanics (with the Open University - SM358) I thought I had a grasp - as an educated person with a technical background - of quantum theory, at least at a conceptual level. I knew, or thought I knew, about the uncertainty principle, the wave function and its collapse, the double slit experiment and its paradoxical interpretation and so on.I spent the first third of my QM course learning a lot of details about Schrödinger's equation in its time dependent and stationary forms, about spin spaces, kets, operators, expansions in terms of eigenfunctions, Hilbert spaces and so on. I was internalising this complex apparatus and making it work and I couldn't anchor any of it into the real world. I was confused, baffled, a sufferer from extreme cognitive dissonance. It was not pleasant.Eventually I managed to organise all this stuff into something which kind of made internal sense, and kept reminding myself that in the end its only function was to produce a number between zero and one as regards observable outcomes. I had become acculturated, but I still didn't know what any of it really told me about reality.And I think that only after this 'preparation' is a reader really able to engage profitably with Philip Ball's book.Ball is good on superpositions and what it would mean if they were observable. He's as good as you could expect on decoherence and einselection, although it would have been useful to have a more explanatory appendix (perhaps that's more a signifier for my own lack of clarity). He is also good at debunking some of the more ontological-realist views of the wavefunction. There are also clear accounts of Bell's theorem and quantum computing.And then it starts to unravel. Ball clearly has a thing about the many-worlds interpretation (which has a stronghold at his alma mater, Oxford). His customary cool deserts him for visceral distaste. His debunking is anticlimactic, however, depending on philosophical sophistry about identity-continuity before and after 'splitting' of worlds. The MWI does not hang on such arguments.In the final chapters things get worse. Ball's enthusiasm for 'it from bit', an information-centric approach to the interpretation problem, gets the better of him. Unfortunately the ideas swirling around in this currently active area of investigation are even more formless and confusing than the more conventional ideas he's been debunking all along. We finish the book shaking our heads and asking, 'What was that about?'.If you read one book on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and you have studied QM as an undergraduate, this may well be the book for you. It will confirm that you were right to be concerned that the Copenhagen stuff you were taught does not put an end to the discussion, and it will straighten out and firm up many of your questions and half-formed, tentative conclusions.Just don't think it will give you any final answers: there are none.

I'd hoped to get some understanding of the underlying truths of quantum mechanics. As a mere physics first, and even once able to solve Schrodinger's equation, but never really understanding what it was about, I hoped. But after reading this book I'm none the wiser. It seems there are no underlying truths but just a wealth of opinion; even the Equation itself was an educated guess...that happens to work. This book seems aptly summed up in a quotation from the author himself; he was in fact criticising the many-worlds hypothesis but it applies to the book as a whole: `it...denies language but gets away with it because language has a notorious capacity to express things that appear to have meaning yet do not'...decoherence, Shrodinger's kittens, contextuality, entanglement, measurement, information...etc.One specific thing that would have made it easier to follow the arguments would have been a summary at the end of each chapter. It's well-enough written but I found I was being swept along with the prose and frequently the words left their meaning some way behind, and often it was lost altogether. Perhaps it's just not possible to explain the counterintuitive ideas as he tries using mere words and no equations at all. And so few diagrams too. I just might try and read it again.

This is a very good book for people, like myself, who are curious bystanders to the science of quantum mechanics and it's inherent weirdness. Philip Ball, as the title suggests, attempts to demystify the subject and, I believe, largely succeeds. In particular, he explodes common misperceptions like superposition is about possibilities (in fact, probabilities) rather than actual replication as people tend to think. Of course, if you are a 'many worlds' advocate (called MWI by Ball) you may disagree, but Ball does his best to show that MWI creates more problems than it solves. Ball challenged my own point of view on this subject, to the extent that it gave me a deeper understanding. That's the best recommendation I can give.

I keep trying to tell my friends that the first person who can explain how a microwave actually works, will get the Nobel Peace Prize. Well Philip Ball, the author takes a while to get out of the starting blocks and into his stride (or maybe he's being courteous to his readers - I'm not sure). But he demonstrates clearly why Quantum Theory is not an explanation of how reality works, but a series of mathematical constructs that let us predict outcomes. And that really is what the book is about. You don't need to be a mathematician or a physicist, but being a philosopher helps. I'm still working my way through it. I'm enjoying it. If such things interest you then I thoroughly recommend it.

I love this book. It's a stunning, judicious investigation of quantum theory and many of its key interpretations. As an interested non-scientist, I've read several books on the subject, and this was refreshing on many levels. I found several of my beliefs about QT promptly opened up and dismantled, as PB propounds ways of understanding quantum phenomena that eschew the common tropes of thinking about QT. I liked the way PB explored the implications of various interpretations of QT for big philosophical questions about reality, knowledge and our interactions with the world. PB writes so clearly, and thoughtfully about the mind-bending quantum world and yet points, convincingly IMO, to how there needn't be any contradiction to what we're familiar with in the 'classical' world, so long as we are willing to accept the particular kind of conditional knowledge suggested by the outcomes of experiments into quantum objects. This is the book about quantum theory / mechanics I would recommend as a must-read.