Show Notes
This is a careful lecture that can be followed with zero background knowledge. Einstein thought he'd caught quantum mechanics in an act of spookiness — this podcast asks whether he was even worried about the right thing. Tim Maudlin, professor of philosophy at NYU and a leading philosopher of physics, delivers a rare full lecture tracing Einstein, EPR, and the road to Bell's theorem. The central claim: Einstein's real objection was never determinism — "God does not play dice" is a red herring — but non-locality, which he inferred rather than assumed. Maudlin traces the argument from Einstein's overlooked 1927 Solvay objection through the EPR paper's criterion of reality, showing why Bohr's famous reply never actually answered it.
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TIMESTAMPS: - 00:00:00 - Einstein's Quantization Hypothesis - 00:07:20 - Photoelectric Effect Implications - 00:12:30 - Wave-Particle Duality Myths - 00:20:40 - De Broglie's Matter Waves - 00:26:40 - Copenhagen's Completeness Doctrine - 00:34:10 - Solvay 1927: Two Conceptions - 00:41:20 - Pinhole Diffraction Problem - 00:48:00 - Collapse and Relativity Violations - 00:56:00 - Epistemic vs. Ontic Collapse - 01:05:00 - Ontological vs. Dynamical Locality - 01:14:00 - Configuration Space Objections - 01:25:00 - EPR's Criterion of Reality - 01:32:40 - Analyzing the Reality Criterion - 01:40:50 - Causal Isolation and Locality - 01:48:45 - Entangled Momentum Eigenstates - 01:56:45 - Logical Core of EPR - 02:04:40 - Position-Momentum Simultaneous Reality - 02:14:00 - Inferring Determinism from Locality - 02:26:30 - Conservation Laws and Information - 02:37:40 - Counterfactual Definiteness Debunked - 02:44:00 - Bohr's Incoherent Response - 02:52:00 - Schrödinger's Entanglement Confession
LINKS MENTIONED: - Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/1444331272?tag=toe08-20 - On a Heuristic Point of View About the Creation and Conversion of Light [Paper]: https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/lectures/Rotman_Summer_School_2013/Einstein_1905_docs/Einstein_Light_Quantum_WikiSource.pdf - The Ghost in the Atom [Paper]: https://vdoc.pub/download/the-ghost-in-the-atom-a-discussion-of-the-mysteries-of-quantum-physics-1guq071e2ukg - Collected Papers on Wave Mechanics [Paper]: https://mwolf.pracownicy.uksw.edu.pl/MK/Schrodinger_Collected_Papers_on_Wave_Mechanics.pdf - Quantum Theory at the Crossroads [Book]: https://amazon.com/dp/0521814219?tag=toe08-20 - Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777 - Bohr's EPR Critique [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.48.696 - The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics [Paper]: https://personal.lse.ac.uk/robert49/teaching/partiii/pdf/SchroedingerPresentSituation1935(1980trans).pdf - Bertlmann's Socks and the Nature of Reality [Paper]: https://cds.cern.ch/record/142461/files/198009299.pdf - On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/ppf/pdf/10.1103/PhysicsPhysiqueFizika.1.195
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