waveman comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 May 2007 06:36AM

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Comment author: waveman 06 December 2010 09:12:50AM *  1 point [-]

Does anyone have a book they can recommend that explains the actual math of quantum mechanics?

You could try "The structure and interpretation of quantum mechanics" by R I G Hughes or "The Interpretation of quantum mechanics" by Roland Omnes. Either has enough math to articulate the problem.

I also really liked "Quantum mechanics and experience" by David Z Albert - it was this book that led me to realize that many-worlds is obviously true (as it now seems to me). Albert himself does not believe in many-worlds but he explains it really well.

I'm now working through the university physics texts because none of the above cover relativistic QM. They physics texts though are - to a man - in the "shut up and calculate" school of thought. It is claimed that many a promising physicist has disappeared down the rat-hole of the philosophical interpretation of QM.

You may also enjoy "A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down" by Robert Laughlin. He argues that so-called fundamental physics is just the lowest layer of emergent froth that we are able to see. Quantum Field Theory shows that "empty space" is full of stuff for example.