There’s No Wave Function? | Jacob Barandes
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters point to it as a credible, clearly explained alternative take on quantum foundations from a Harvard physicist.
What it is
Physicist Jacob Barandes discusses his view that quantum mechanics can be formulated without wave functions, using a stochastic, probabilistic approach. The long interview covers measurement, the foundations of quantum theory and the history of the field.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2024 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ilitirit · 2025-09 · on “Quantum Mechanics, Concise Book”
I would recommend watching Curt Jaimungal's series of talks with Jacob Barandes. He gives a nice background history of various aspects of QM, including the formulation of Matrix and Wave mechanics (and loads of other ideas). Barandes is excellent at clearly articulating complex ideas in very simple, concise terms. He also has his own formulation of QM based on "Indivisible non-Markovian Stochastic Processes". Even if you disagree with his ideas, the interviews are quite fascinating. In this interview he goes over pretty much exactly what you mentioned (and a lot more): [this video]
Recommends slowmovintarget · 2024-12 · on “The Google Willow Thing”
Jacob Barandes is a professor of physics at Harvard (not a crank). He recently did a great podcast with Kurt Jaimungal [1]. In the interview he explains that every year he searches for a good way to introduce his students to quantum mechanics, and every year he's ended up being unsatisfied with the approach and started again. One year he decided to attempt describing systems with traditional mechanics, using probabilities (stochastic mechanics). He worked at it and worked at it, assuming that he would eventually have to take some leap to cross the chasm into the world of gauge theory, Lie Groups, and Hilbert spaces. What he found is, to his surprise, the math just seemed to fit together at s
Cites phkahler · 2026-02 · on “Is Particle Physics Dead, Dying, or Just Hard?”
I'm convinced there are some semi-classical explanations that just haven't been figured out. Electrons are helically moving photons: [LINK] That's some interesting/wacky stuff, but there has been more research to improve those calculations - like deriving the electron charge and magnetic moment. Personally I like the idea that a proton is somehow literally an electron and 3 up quarks (a neutron gets 2 electrons and 3 up quarks). I am not a physicist though, so I'm sure there are reasons they "know" this is not the case. I find it fascinating that some physicists say wave functions are somehow "real" and then we've got Jacob Barandes saying you don't even need wave functions to do the computa