alt Hacker NewsSeems like you are not downvoted on HN for rational argumentation.
I still think sabine has a point. When we consider occam's razor string theory is absurd. Just because einstein used math to show our perception of the world is flawed, doesn't mean it is likely repeatable with an overly complicated mathematical model.
Yet we live in a world, where highly decorated physicists spin a tale of consciousness beeing enabled by the collapse of the wave function (and other absurd stuff like many world interpretation). This wasted also my time, because it confused me for a while.
Let religion for the religious, philosophy to the philosopher. Physics should be a science based on observation.
My point was that sabine is claiming that the field is dying (or in a crisis). You can argue against string theory and quantum gravity research as much as you want. But this will not warrant sabine's conclusions about particle physics and why we should invest in other areas instead. She is doing this for almost a decade now.
And I don't understand your point about statistical interpretation and how it is related to being a religion. Pick up any of the mainstream interpretation and start doing calculations of lets say ground state energy of H atom and you will get the same results.
All mainstream interpretations yields the same results if calculations are done "correctly". The shut up and calculate works pretty well across interpretation because of two things you have to consider
The first thing is that all interpretations rely on four things to be able to do the calculations. ( I simplified a little bit)
1- Hilbert spaces to represent quantum states
2- Operators for observables (like momentum and energy)
3- Unitary evolution of states through the Schrödinger equation
4- Born’s rule for calculating probabilities of measurement outcomes
Thus, the underlying equations are the same regardless of interpretation.
The second thing you have to understand the role of Interpretations. They aim to explain what the mathematical structure of QM means. They differ on issues like: collapse, Is it real (Copenhagen)? just an apparent phenomenon (Many-Worlds)? or governed by additional variables (Bohmian mechanics) or the question of Determinism. Is the universe fundamentally deterministic (Bohmian mechanics)? or indeterministic (Copenhagen)?
The last thing is a really philosophical question about what exists physically—wavefunctions, particles, or multiple worlds?
These philosophical questions don’t affect the numerical predictions of quantum theory and that's part of the reason you shouldn't learn physics from science communication books.