Jacob Barandes: There Is No Quantum Multiverse (Here's the Proof)
episodePreviously titled “"There is No Quantum Multiverse" | Jacob Barandes” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
Transcript
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What is the historical debate over Schrödinger’s wave function and wave‑particle duality?
We don't have a single
interpretation of quantum mechanics that doesn't have serious problems. I traveled to the oldest laboratory in the United States to meet with theoretical physicist Jacob Barandes at Harvard. He's the co-director of the Graduate Studies Department there. We delved into the technical depths of his innovative reformulation of quantum theory based on more fundamental mechanisms called indivisible stochastic processes. My name is Kurt Jaimungle, and this was part of my three-day tour at Harvard Tufts and MIT, where I recorded five podcasts, one of them you're seeing now with Jake. Barndes. It was actually over seven hours long, so we're splitting it into two parts, and this is part two. Part one is also linked in the description.
The others are with Michael Levin, Anna Chaunica, Manolis Kellis, and William Hahn. Subscribe to get notified. In this episode, we talk about what are the misconceptions of the wave particle duality and entanglement. Is gravity indeed quantum? What about non-locality and Bell's theorem? And what exactly are in Indivisible stochastic processes. Kurt, good to see you again. Wave particle duality. What is that? All right. So
um When Schrdinger introduced the idea of his wave function in that paper in early nineteen twenty-six, building out of Hamill the Jacobi theory, his undulatory theory of mechanics, this wave function that lived in high-dimensional configuration space. He had provided a new methodology, a technique for computing things in quantum mechanics. He used the wave functions an indirect way to calculate energy levels. What are the energy levels of atoms which then corresponded to the frequencies of radiation that came out of atoms? Um Einstein had a lot of problems with this. So did Heisenberg. One of the few things that Einstein and Heisenberg agreed on was they didn't really like Schrdinger's wave mechanics, metaphysically speaking.
Einstein I think said that physics had been fully Schrdingerized at this point. Um And part of the reason that that Einstein in particular was concerned was because Schrdinger embraced a kind of what we would call wave function realism, that the wave function is a real thing, physically, metaphysically real thing in a high-dimensional configuration space that somehow projects its meaning into three dimensions of physical space. And that really where everything was happening was in this high-dimensional abstract possibility space, this configuration space. That's where the waves were. Eventually Schro Schrdinger recanted that view. In one of our earlier conversations, I talked about how in nineteen twenty eight in his fourth lecture on wave mechanics, Schrdinger expressed some doubt about wave function realism.
He indicated that you know maybe you could think of the wave function as playing out all the possible realities of what could happen to the system in sort of a very like embryonic version of the Many Worlds interpretation, but Schrdinger recanted that view in nineteen twenty eight. Um In the face of things like Bourne saying that the wave function should be understood as a tool for computing measurement probabilities. But in the period from nineteen twenty six to nineteen twenty eight, when Schrodinger was still pushing this idea of the wave function as being sort of physically fundamental, uh Einstein was very confused. There's a very famous letter from december fourth, nineteen twenty six from Einstein to
to his colleague, Max Bourne, the same Bourne of the Bourne rule. Um in which Einstein famously says Uh that he doesn't believe that God plays dice. There's this famous, I just don't believe that God plays dice. Well people don't Often know is that the very next sentence in that letter. is a criticism of Schrdinger's wave function reality. He says waves in three n dimensional space are As if rubber bands and he he even has like dots. Like he he writes an ellipsis in the letter. He's like doesn't even know what to say. What's interesting is that in the canonical translation of the Einstein-born letters
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the historical debate over Schrödinger’s wave function and wave‑particle duality?
0:00–15:11
2
How does the indivisible stochastic approach reinterpret quantum waves and fields?
15:11–35:49
3
Can quantum field theory and gravity be described without assuming fluctuating spacetime?
35:49–1:03:48
4
What are entanglement and Bell’s theorem, and why do they matter for quantum foundations?
1:03:48–1:23:47
5
What are Bell’s beables and why do they matter for causal explanations?
1:23:47–2:02:43
6
How does the indivisible stochastic formulation describe entanglement and measurement?
2:02:43–2:48:28
Speakers
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Tim Maudlin: Quantum Nonlocality Explained FROM SCRATCH
Adrian Owen: Awake. Aware. Unable to Move.
Peter Godfrey-Smith: This Scientist Found Earth’s “Alien” Minds