EHeller comments on Rationality Quotes June 2014 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 June 2014 08:32PM

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Comment author: EHeller 10 June 2014 01:05:39AM *  7 points [-]

Yves Couder's experiments are neat, but the underlying 'quantum' interpretation is basically just Bohm's interpretation. The water acts as a pilot wave, and the silicon oil drops act as Bohmian particles. Its very cool that we can find a classical pilot-wave system, but its not pointing in a new interpretational direction.

Personally, I would love Bohm, but for the problem that it generalizes so poorly to quantum field theories. Its a beautiful, real-feeling interpretation.

Edit: Also neat- the best physical analogue to a blackhole that I know of is water emptying down a bathtub drain faster than the speed-of-sound in the fluid. Many years ago, Unruh was doing some neat experiments with some poor grad student, but I don't know if they ever published anything.