Comment by ChadNauseam
5 days ago
> suffice to say that the lightbulb does not turn on immediately like he claims
Many people said this, but he set up an experiment to test it and the light does turn on instantly as claimed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI_X2cMHNe0
> There second one takes a mathematical model for the path integral for light and portrays it like that's actually what is happening
I know nothing about this. Is there a more accurate mathematical model available than the one he uses? Otherwise, I think it seems sensible to portray our best mathematical model as "what's really going on". And I didn't get the sense that light was "choosing" anything when watching the video, I got the sense that the amplitudes of all possible paths were cancelling out except for the shortest path (or something along those lines)
There are many equivalent formulations of quantum mechanics, the one the above post takes issue with is the path integral formulation. But because you can show an exact mathematical equivalence it makes all the same predictions as, for example, Hamiltonian evolution.
The words people like to use for the path integral is a sum over histories---that corresponds tightly with the ingredients in the path integral. So in this formulation it's what's "actually happening". But in other mathematical formulations other words are more appealing and what someone claims is "actually happening" sounds different.