Bacon Versus Bohm
December 17th, 2006 by WaltDave Bacon explains why he is not a Bohmist. While I doubt it will turn out to be a correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, I think the Bohm interpretation deserves to be better known, since its existence contradicts a certain amount of conventional wisdom on the meaning of quantum mechanics.
I had no idea that David Bohm himself was driven out of the country by McCarthyism.
May 31st, 2007 at 3:55 pm
In particular, the existence of a Bohm interpretation - however ugly, cumbersome, dislikeable, undesirable it may be - surely implies that quantum mechanics is not *inherently* non-deterministic; which in turn means that people such as Penrose who look to QM to provide space for free will in an otherwise deterministic universe must be barking up the wrong tree.
This is not to say that the universe is necessarily deterministic; merely that you can’t use QM to prove that it isn’t. The much-derided “God of the Gaps” doesn’t become any more viable if you transform him into the “God of the Very Little Gaps”.