Comment by TuringTest
21 hours ago
I think the GP meant that quantum theory and relativity are incompatible and thus both cannot be exactly correct at the same time. Not referring to quantum vs classical.
21 hours ago
I think the GP meant that quantum theory and relativity are incompatible and thus both cannot be exactly correct at the same time. Not referring to quantum vs classical.
Indeed. I know it’s a lazy way out because I don’t have to assume anything about the actual correctness of either, given that they are famously incompatible in the details.
But as a physicist I have no illusion that any of our theories are actually true. They are all models that help us making sense of an unimaginably complex universe.
Quantum mechanics and General Relativity[0] are not fundamentally incompatible. It's just that the most straightforward approach to incorporating gravity into the Standard Model fails. In fact, we know that it is possible to construct quantum theories of gravity that reduce to General Relativity in the classical limit. String Theory is one such theory. We just don't know if it's the correct theory.
0. Special Relativity is already baked into the Standard Model, which is a quantum theory. It's General Relativity that causes problems.