This Quantum Physicist Says The Wave Function Isn't Real: Rob Spekkens

From Ancient Egypt to Leibniz... Brand‑new interview out with Robert Spekkens of the Perimeter Institute, one of the sharpest minds working on quantum foundations. In 2004, he constructed a classical toy theory where your maximum knowledge is always incomplete—and out popped the no-cloning theorem, teleportation, and interference effects Feynman deemed impossible to reproduce classically. Spekkens compares our situation to Egyptian hieroglyphs before Champollion: a category mistake where we treat quantum states as descriptions of reality when they actually describe knowledge of reality. If you’re interested in the topics above, you’ll love this podcast. As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe SUPPORT: - Support me on Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/subscribe - Support me on Crypto: https://commerce.coinbase.com/checkout/de803625-87d3-4300-ab6d-85d4258834a9 - Support me on PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=XUBHNMFXUX5S4 JOIN MY SUBSTACK (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com LISTEN ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e TIMESTAMPS: - 00:00:00 - Defining Quantum Innovation - 00:06:40 - Realism vs. Empiricism - 00:12:12 - Leibnizian Methodological Principle - 00:23:40 - Causal Explanations of Correlations - 00:30:24 - Epistemic Quantum States - 00:41:00 - Foil Theory Methodology - 00:54:00 - Causal Influence vs. Signaling - 01:07:27 - Thermodynamics and Ignorance - 01:15:00 - Conceptual Understanding in Physics - 01:21:00 - Philosophy of Physics Utility - 01:30:00 - Speckins' Toy Theory Origins - 01:40:13 - Perimeter Institute's Ambitious DNA - 01:52:00 - PBR Theorem Implications - 02:05:40 - Ontic Separability Assumptions - 02:17:40 - Hieroglyphs and Category Mistakes - 02:29:00 - Revolutionizing Modern Physics - 02:37:20 - Unscrambling Causation and Inference LINKS MENTIONED: Journals, papers, books: - https://www.rwspekkens.com - https://pirsa.org/speaker/Robert-Spekkens - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.01122 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0401052 - https://arxiv.org/abs/0706.2661 - https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0406166 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.11779 - https://amazon.com/dp/1108066488?tag=toe08-20 - https://www.jstor.org/stable/687269 - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/ - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-indiscernible/ - https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/ - https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/hidden-variable-theory - https://www.nature.com/articles/299802a0 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.01286 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02058098 - https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.07161 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/maxwells-equation - https://www.einstein-online.info/en/spotlight/equivalence_principle/ - https://perimeterinstitute.ca/ - https://amazon.com/dp/9810241054?tag=toe08-20 - https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328 - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/rosetta-stone-hieroglyphs-champollion-decipherment-egypt-180980834/ - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932707000282 Videos: - https://youtu.be/gEK4-XtMwro - https://youtu.be/YWbjI-QsH2E - https://youtu.be/fU1bs5o3nss - https://youtu.be/NKOd8imBa2s - https://youtu.be/6I2OhmVWLMs - https://youtu.be/Tghl6aS5A3M - https://youtu.be/HIoviZe14pY - https://youtu.be/bprxrGaf0Os - https://youtu.be/4MjNuJK5RzM - https://youtu.be/c8iFtaltX-s - https://youtu.be/9AoRxtYZrZo - https://youtu.be/uOKOodQXjhc - https://youtu.be/3mhctWlXyV8 - https://youtu.be/gsSJPLX-BTA - https://youtu.be/FFW14zSYiFY - https://youtu.be/HhWWlJFwTqs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices