Making Sense of Quantum Mechanics: Why You Should Believe in Hidden Variables

Abstract

The nondeterministic character of quantum measurement can, and should, be taken to imply a deeper ‘hidden variable’ description of a system, which reproduces quantum theory when the unknown values of the variables are marginalised over. Differences in measurements on identically prepared systems then represent differences in the hidden variables of the systems. Not to seek the hidden variables, as the Copenhagen interpretation. of quantum mechanics arbitrarily instructs, is to give up all hope of improvement in advance, and is contrary to the purposes of science. Correspondingly, it can never be proven that hidden variables don’t exist; the most that can be done is to place hypothetical restrictions on them and prove that the resulting theory cannot be marginalised into quantum theory — implying that the hidden variables violate the restriction. The best known example is Bell’s theorem, which rules out all local hidden-variable theories and explains why the variables are so coy: it is not easy to isolate and influence something nonlocal. A promising way forward is to proceed from the Dirac theory of the electron in its natural, geometric language of Clifford algebra. This approach, due to Hestenes, suggests that the free electron is in fact a massless point particle executing zitterbewegung at the speed of light, with radius the electron Compton wavelength. This proposal improves the correspondence of the physics with the formalism and resolves many paradoxes; it also hints that the hidden variables are concerned with those parameters needed to define the electron orbit completely. These ideas all represent a demystification of quantum theory.