Bell's Theorum vs. Hidden Variables schools: How do you view quantum mechanics?

If you want people who understand physics, post in the physics section. Religion is discussed here. Few here are trained in understanding quantum mechanics.

I agree with you; I've always taken the Einsteinian philosophy, "God doesn't play dice," despite having actually gone through the mathematics involved rigorously. It seems that every scale of probabilistic model we've perceived so far has dissolved into working mechanisms once we examined it closely enough. And if we can't examine it any closer, no reason to think a maximally knowledgeable being would view it the same way.

However, for QM, the quantization of certain variables (energy spectra for a bound particle, angular momentum, spin, etc.) implies that some of the variables actually don't GET any more fine-grained without us having to revise what we actually mean by these quantities. And so it would be hard to imagine as humans these quantities being anything other than non-deterministic, to which I say, the variables themselves we are defining likely only approximate the actual physics. Particles exist in a superposition of seemingly indeterminate states along a probability wave until observation occurs, so effectively from a human perspective the world cannot be viewed as entirely deterministic. BUT isn't that what "probability" has been all along? An ignorance of all possible variables relevant to a system? I think QM assuming it would be faulty, since we know it is not the final physics or the theory of everything, and neither is relativity. Flipping a coin is "nondeterministic" random process if you examine it on a coarse-grain scale as well.

I think the fundamental problem is the assumption that we can somehow 'understand' quantum mechanics. We can't! Physics is, in my opinion, wrongly portrayed as a subject studying 'how the universe works' or some variation on that phrase. Actually, what physics really studies is 'what the universe does' - given this particle and this other particle, what is the magnitude of the force between them as a result of their electric charge ... or given this particle under these conditions, what is its wavefunction and probability of it tunnelling out of the potential well, etc.

Physics is a human construction, like language or art. We look at the universe and come up with concepts like energy or mass or charge or whatever to 'explain' what we observe. We then relate these human ideas to one another with mathematical 'laws'. The point I'm making is that we, as humans, have no idea why the universe works in the way it does. What we do have is ideas we came up with that allow us to predict and model it, which is not the same thing. We have, for example, a theory of gravity that is at odds with quantum mechanics. Therefore, neither of these is correct and neither is actually 'how' the universe 'works'. Even if we come up with a 'theory of everything', all that means is that we were successful in finding a mathematical framework to describe what happens in our universe, which doesn't necessarily means that that framework is actually HOW our universe works.

So, 'cause' and 'effect' are simply human ideas that have worked well in allowing us to categorize and quantify and make sense of our universe. Hidden variables and all the rest are simply ideas we have to try and make sense of what we observe. And what we DO know is that humans, living in a macroscopic world with brains that rely on familiarity and comparison to that familiar are always going to have a problem in reconciling what we 'think' should happen with what happens on the quantum scale.

Whether we call it randomness or hidden variables or whatever matters not one iota. What does matter is that the world of the small behaves in a way that is completely alien to us, defies our common-sense, and will never 'make sense' to us macroscopic beings. And unfortunately, we now have experimental evidence that you have to abandon locality (no spooky action at a distance) or reality (the moon is still there when not being observed) or both. We might not like it, but that's what more than 30 years worth of data confirms.

I don't know as much quantum mechanics as you seem to, but I can't but agree with your estimation of the nondeterministic model on purely philosophical grounds; namely, it doesn't follow from the fact of quantum particles behaving in ways that are seemingly without cause (as we judge by our observation of cause and effect on the macro scale) that therefore they are indeed without cause.

It's as simple as asking "Is there something I am not seeing, or is there something completely irrational going on here?"

I don't know. Like I said, I have much to learn here. I'm hoping to get started on some books as soon as the summer begins.

The whole debate centers on the somewhat unreasonable need for our predictive tools - such as the mathematics used in quantum theory - to give us closure about the nature of "reality." Why this is so important to people is never discussed. If we cannot provide better predictions, who cares what the ontology turns out to be?

Do you believe everything must have a cause? What about random events?