Please enjoy Harvard’s Jacob Barandes and yours truly duking it out for 2.5 hours on YouTube about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and specifically Jacob’s recent proposal involving “indivisible stochastic dynamics,” with Curt Jaimungal as moderator. As always, I strongly recommend watching with captions turned on and at 2X speed.

To summarize what I learned in one paragraph: just like in Bohmian mechanics, Jacob wants classical trajectories for particles, which are so constructed to reproduce the predictions of QM perfectly. But unlike the Bohmians, Jacob doesn’t want to commit to any particular rule for the evolution of those particle trajectories. He merely asserts, metaphysically, that the trajectories exist. My response was basically, “OK fine, you can do that if you want, but what does it buy me?” We basically went around in circles on that question the entire time, though hopefully with many edutaining disgressions.

Despite the lack of resolution, I felt pretty good about the conversation afterward: Jacob got an extensive opportunity to explain his ideas to listeners, along with his detailed beefs against both the Many-Worlds and Copenhagen interpretations. Meanwhile, even though I spoke less than Jacob, I did get some opportunities to do my job, pushing back and asking the kinds of questions I imagined most physicists would ask (even though I’m not a physicist, I felt compelled to represent them!). Jacob and I ended the conversation much as we began: disagreeing on extremely friendly terms.

Then, alas, I read the comments on YouTube and got depressed. Apparently, I’m a hidebound academic elitist who’s failed to grasp Jacob’s revolutionary, paradigm-smashing theory, and who kept arrogantly interrupting with snide, impertinent questions (“OK, but what can I do with this theory that I couldn’t do before?”). And, I learned, the ultimate proof of my smug, ivory-tower malice was to be found in my body language, the way I constantly smiled nervously and rocked back and forth. I couldn’t help but wonder: have these people watched any other YouTube videos that I’m in? I don’t get to pick how I look and sound. I came out of the factory this way.

One commenter opined that I must hate Jacob’s theory only because I’ve poured my life into quantum computing, which depends on superposition, the confusing concept that Jacob has now unmasked as a farce. Presumably it’s beyond this person’s comprehension that Jacob makes exactly the same predictions as I make for what a quantum computer will do when built; Jacob just prefers a different way of talking about it.

I was reminded that optimizing for one’s scientific colleagues is wildly different from optimizing for YouTube engagement. In science, it’s obvious to everyone that the burden of proof is on whoever is presenting the new idea—and that this burden is high, especially with anything as well-trodden and skull-strewn as the foundations of quantum mechanics, albeit not infinitely high. The way the game works is: other people try as hard as they can to shoot the new idea down, so we see how it fares under duress. This is not a sign of contempt for new ideas, but of respect for them.

On YouTube, the situation is precisely reversed. There, anyone perceived as the “mainstream establishment” faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as “renegade” wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding. Crucially, the renegade’s own alternative theories are under no particular burden; indeed, the details of their theories are not even that important or relevant. I don’t want to list science YouTubers who’ve learned to exploit that dynamic masterfully, though I’m told one rhymes with “Frabine Schlossenfelder.” Of course this mirrors what’s happened in the wider world, where RFK Jr. now runs American health policy, Tulsi Gabbard runs the intelligence establishment, and other conspiracy theorists have at last fired all the experts and taken control of our civilization, and are eagerly mashing the buttons to see what happens. I’d take Jacob Barandes, or even Sabine, a billion times over the lunatics in power. But I do hope Jacob turns out to be wrong about Many-Worlds, because it would give my solace to know that there are other branches of the wavefunction where things are a little more sane.

This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 4th, 2025 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Metaphysical Spouting, Quantum.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.