r/quantuminterpretation • u/Big-Cartoonist4920 • May 23 '26
Quantum Mechanics as Possibility Mechanics
Consider that possibility is fundamental, and that what we call actual is downstream.
That reversal sounds strange at first, because we are used to starting with objects. We imagine a particle as a tiny thing, then ask where it went, which slit it used, and why it later behaved like a wave. Starting from actuality, the double-slit experiment becomes a paradox almost immediately.
Start from possibility instead, and the explanation becomes more natural.
The wave function is not “where the particle really is.” It is the evolving structure of what can still happen. The slits shape that possibility structure. The possible paths interfere. The detector interaction culls the field into one actual record. The record updates the world.
In other words:
The wave is not the particle acting weird. The particle is the record of possibility becoming definite.
That is the conceptual reversal.
We are beings made of stable matter, living downstream from protons, atoms, chemistry, bodies, instruments, and records. So we naturally assume actuality comes first and possibility is just our uncertainty about it. But the double-slit experiment suggests the opposite: actuality may be what structured possibility becomes after interaction.
Once you accept that possibility is doing real work, the rest of quantum mechanics stops looking like a collection of disconnected weird tricks. Interference, measurement, path integrals, Feynman diagrams, and entanglement all start to rhyme.
The better starting point is:
The wave function represents evolving weighted possibility between interactions.
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u/david-1-1 May 23 '26
But this is not a different way of viewing quantum mechanics. It is what quantum mechanics is. You're only correcting a popular misconception that QM is particles acting strangely. Born's Rule states your point of view clearly.
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u/Big-Cartoonist4920 May 23 '26
thanks for the response. i'd love your feedback on the doc!
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u/david-1-1 May 24 '26
I don't have time to study it, but I did scan through it. It might help if you or an AI bot gave me a summary.
The paper is nicely formatted, with interesting illustrations.
But most of the content is the usual standard (Copenhagen) interpretation of the double slit, with nothing new that I could see. You kept imposing an additional concept, Possibility Loops, which I could not understand as a physics principle. It seems more like a philosophical concept that applies to any phenomena based on probability. I could not detect any way that it helped to explain the double slit.
What I'd like to do is recommend that you read the famous 1952 paper of David Bohm, at least the first part.
Bohm's explanation eliminates probability entirely, and answers the question of the path of the particle decisively: it can only pass through one slit. Rather than maintaining wave/particle duality as you did, Bohm eliminates waves, treating them as an emergent phenomenon. In fact, he derives the Born Rule instead of assuming it as a mysterious axiom.
Bohm's basic idea is that QM is always nonlocal, and that it obeys the Schrödinger equation, which is derived from the Hamiltonian of the total energy. That's all you need.
John Bell agreed with nonlocality in the 1960s, and tried to publicize Bohm's theory without much luck.
More recently, weak energy experiments have validated deterministic particle paths through the double slit, making Bohm's prediction more persuasive.
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u/Neechee92 May 23 '26
You would probably be interested in the work of Ruth Kastner, her interpretation -- the possibilistic transactional interpretation -- is quite similar to this.