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What Is Real?

The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics

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What Is Real?

By: Adam Becker
Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
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About this listen

The untold story of the heretical thinkers who challenged the establishment to rethink quantum physics and the nature of reality.

Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favoured practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics.

What Is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.

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©2018 Adam Becker (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc Physics Science Mathematics Cosmology
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Overall a great book recounting a fascinating and complex story. Explains very well some pretty technical issues in Quantum theory. However, I just wished it did a better job of explaining the more contemporary views in particular the arguments offered by David Deutsch in his books and of course by extension the arguments of philosopher Karl Popper in general (acknowledging that he did not get everything right with Quantum theory but his philosophy in general is misrepresented here). They are both mentioned very briefly and crudely at best.

overall very good but rushes on sth important

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best book on quantum theory I have read. I understand a lot more about it now and the weirdness is just weird, and not downright silly.

excellent book

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As good as a wholesome crime thriller! You can read it again and again and it will show you the universe in a handful of sand.

Brilliant!

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Probably the best survey material and narrative on the central conceptual issues in Quantum Philosophy.

I would recommend this more to people who have already had some exposure to Quantum Physics, but may be struggling to get their head around it. In this regard you are indeed in esteemed company, as this likely means you are now accurately understanding the concepts at play.

This is not the calculation heavy physics that will be taught in most undergrad or surveys that you many see online, it is a historical narrative of Quantum foundations, albeit a biased on, as may indeed be the case with all retelling of histories.

It is biased against the Copenhagen interpretation/s, this point is acceptable as long as you understand and categories the bias and work with it. Indeed the scientific method is about the mental separation from paradigms and narrative, and the theoretical modelling of testable/repeatable hypothesis (ie observable) To this end the Copenhagen is the most scientific sound version on all the hypotheticals as it does not necessarily appeal claims to more than what can be observed (or in this case can’t) explicitly.

That said, the point of the narrative is that paradigms, however scientifically ‘sound’ are by a sort of tautological principal to be overcome and that the Copenhagen was inconsistent with itself to a grievous degree with its dogmatism.

Overall a very worth listen, could not recommend it more enthusiastically, but recommend some terminology orientation and theoretical work before hand so as you can guide yourself through it all the same, as is perhaps with all narrative information.

Fantastic survey of the observation problem, albeit biased.

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This was my first foray into quantum physics and I found it easy to follow (well, as easy as such a topic could be) and surprisingly entertaining.

Fascinating

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